Heaven and Hell

Wayne A. Grudem

• Editore: Zondervan Academic
• Anno: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780310496205
• Argomento: Teologia e religione
• Categoria: Teologia cristiana

Who will be judged? What is hell? How will the earth be renewed? What will it be like to live in the new heavens and the new earth?

Derived from Wayne Grudem's perennial bestseller, Systematic Theology, this digital short presents in detail the Bible's teaching on heaven and hell.

In the wake of debates about God's judgment and the afterlife, Grudem's clarity and accessibility will help readers to better understand what the Bible says on these important topics and why it matters for their faith. Both instructional and edifying, Heaven and Hell is an accessible resource on core elements of historic Christian doctrine.

Chapter 1

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The Final Judgment and Eternal Punishment

Who will be judged? What is hell?

EXPLANATION AND SCRIPTURAL BASIS

A. The Fact of Final Judgment

1. Scriptural Evidence for a Final Judgment. Scripture frequently affirms the fact that there will be a great final judgment of believers and unbelievers. They will stand before the judgment seat of Christ in resurrected bodies and hear his proclamation of their eternal destiny.

The final judgment is vividly portrayed in John’s vision in Revelation:

Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead in it, death and hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done. Then death and hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:11–15)

Many other passages teach this final judgment. Paul tells the Greek philosophers in Athens that God “Now . . . commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30–31).¹ Similarly, Paul talks about “the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (Rom. 2:5). Other passages speak clearly of a coming day of judgment (see Matt. 10:15; 11:22, 24; 12:36; 25:31–46; 1 Cor. 4:5; Heb. 6:2; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6; et al.).

This final judgment is the culmination of many precursors in which God rewarded righteousness or punished unrighteousness throughout history. While he brought blessing and deliverance from danger to those who were faithful to him, including Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and the faithful among the people of Israel, he also from time to time brought judgment on those who persisted in disobedience and unbelief: his judgments included the flood, the dispersion of the people from the tower of Babel, the judgments on Sodom and Gomorrah, and continuing judgments throughout history, both on individuals (Rom. 1:18–32) and on nations (Isa. 13–23; et al.) who persisted in sin. Moreover, in the unseen spiritual realm he brought judgment on angels who sinned (2 Peter 2:4). Peter reminds us that God’s judgments have been carried out periodically and with certainty, and this reminds us that a final judgment is yet coming, for “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteousness under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority” (2 Peter 2:9–10).

2. Will There Be More Than One Judgment? According to a dispensational view, there is more than one judgment to come. For example, dispensationalists would not see the final judgment in Matthew 25:31–46:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at his left. Then the King will say to those at his right hand, “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food. . . . As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Then he will say to those at his left hand, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food. . . . As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.” And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

From a dispensational perspective, this passage does not refer to final judgment (the “great white throne judgment” spoken of in Rev. 20:11–15), but rather to a judgment that comes after the tribulation and before the beginning of the millennium. They say that this will be a “judgment of the nations” in which the nations are judged according to how they have treated the Jewish people during the tribulation. Those who have treated the Jews well and are willing to submit to Christ will enter into the millennium, and those who have not will be refused entrance.

Thus, in a dispensationalist view there are different judgments: (a) a “judgment of the nations” (Matt. 25:31–46) to determine who enters the millennium; (b) a “judgment of believers’ works” (sometimes called the bōma judgment after the Greek word for “judgment seat” in 2 Cor. 5:10) in which Christians will receive degrees of reward; and (c) a “great white throne judgment” at the end of the millennium (Rev. 20:11–15) to declare eternal punishments for unbelievers.²

The view taken in this book is that these three passages all speak of the same final judgment, not of three separate judgments. With regard to Matthew 25:31–46 in particular, it is unlikely that the dispensational view is correct: There is no mention of entering into the millennium in this passage. Moreover, the judgments pronounced speak not of entrance into the millennial kingdom on earth or exclusion from that kingdom but of eternal destinies of people: “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. . . . Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. . . . And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (vv. 34, 41, 46). Finally, it would be inconsistent with God’s ways throughout Scripture to deal with people’s eternal destiny on the basis of what nation they belong to, for unbelieving nations have believers within them, and nations that exhibit more conformity to God’s revealed will still have many wicked within them. And “God shows no partiality” (Rom. 2:11). Though indeed “all the nations” are gathered before Christ’s throne in this scene (Matt. 25:32), the picture of judgment is one of judgment on individuals (sheep are separated from goats, and those individuals who treated Christ’s brothers kindly are welcomed into the kingdom while those who rejected them are rejected, vv. 35–40, 42–45).

B. The Time of Final Judgment

The final judgment will occur after the millennium and the rebellion that occurs at the end of it. John pictures the millennial kingdom and the removal of Satan from influence on the earth in Revelation 20:1–6, and then says that “when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations . . . to gather them for battle” (Rev. 20:7–8). After God decisively defeats this final rebellion (Rev. 20:9–10), John tells us that judgment will follow: “Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it” (v. 11).

C. The Nature of the Final Judgment

1. Jesus Christ Will Be the Judge. Paul speaks of “Jesus Christ who is to judge the living and the dead” (2 Tim. 4:1). Peter says that Jesus Christ “is the one ordained by God to be the judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42; compare 17:31; Matt. 25:31–33). This right to act as judge over the whole universe is something that the Father has given to the Son: “The Father . . . has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man” (John 5:26–27).

2. Unbelievers Will Be Judged. It is clear that all unbelievers will stand before Christ for judgment, for this judgment includes “the dead, great and small” (Rev. 20:12), and Paul says that “on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed,” “he will render to every man according to his works . . . for those who are factious and do not obey the truth, but obey wickedness, there will be wrath and fury” (Rom. 2:5–7).

This judgment of unbelievers will include degrees of punishment, for we read that the dead were judged “by what they had done” (Rev. 20:12, 13), and this judgment according to what people had done must therefore involve an evaluation of the works that people have done.^3...