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LOVE: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL
Those things we think will help us in life will ultimately fail us in death.
In contrast, that which seems to offer us little help in this life will never fail us in death.
Today’s gospel reading provides a vivid illustration of these realities, while giving us a glimpse into heaven and hell, two very real places.
The point of today’s theme is to urge us to put no confidence in that which appears to help us in this life and instead, like Lazarus, to confess that God is our only help in matters of this life the next.
Jesus is filled with mercy and love.
If you want to see the lovingkindness of God, look to the man Jesus.
There you will see love incarnate.
There you will see mercy.
There you will see patience, empathy, and deep compassion.
And when you listen to what Jesus says you learn some startling things!
You learn from this loving and merciful Jesus that there is a real hell and that real people go there to suffer forever.
What People Think About Heaven and Hell
But doesn’t this contradict what the Bible says about God’s love?
St.
John writes: “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us.
God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16).
God is love.
But how can a God of love damn people to eternal damnation?
How can a loving God condemn sinners to hell?
Many people don’t believe it is possible.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Unitarian-Universalists, and most contemporary liberal Protestants all deny the existence of hell.
They are convinced that God’s love and eternal damnation are utterly irreconcilable.
There is a real temptation to follow their lead.
Who wants to believe in hell?
I don’t.
I have a couple members of my family who have walked away from their baptism.
The thought of hell is repulsive.
It is simply incompatible with love.
Who can embrace the idea of hell without a great deal of personal anguish?
Why do we react as we do when we hear descriptions of hell?
Isn’t it because we know God is love?
But that’s just the point.
God is love.
We are not.
We need God’s love.
We need it for us.
We need it given to us.
We need it within us.
Without God’s love, we are all doomed to hell.
That’s because hell is where God’s love does not enter.
The Rich Man and Lazarus
You can see hell already in the man who was clothed in fine clothes and who feasted on delicacies every day.
You can see hell in his callused disregard for the suffering of Lazarus.
The rich man cared nothing for his fellow man.
He cared only for himself.
Perhaps he made a show of his love for God.
Undoubtedly he practiced some sort of religion.
But where was his love?
He ignored his neighbor in need because he didn’t care about him.
He cared only for himself.
Where is the love in this man?
It is nowhere to be found.
Don’t talk about loving God whom you have not seen if you don’t love your brother whom you have seen!
The rich man symbolizes the self-satisfied who, when they have all they want for themselves, are content.
They are the center of their own universe.
They know no higher good than to please themselves.
This is why they trust in the things that they have instead of the God who gave them the things that they have.
This is why they trust in what the world says on virtually every subject, rather than the God who created and sustains the world.
They don’t love God.
They love only themselves.
So they worship at the altar of their own selfishness.
Lazarus represents the person who has nothing in which he can put his trust.
He’s pictured as a poor beggar in poor health.
He relies on God because he cannot rely on himself.
His name means, “the one whom God helps.”
Lazarus cannot rely on anyone but God.
No one else can help.
No one else will help.
Only God’s love and God’s help will do.
The rich man ignores him, but God saves him.
People willingly believe there is a real heaven where real people go after they die to enjoy peace, happiness, and the end of suffering and sorrow.
But, they are not willing to admit that there is a real hell to which real people go after they die where they suffer torment.
Heaven and Hell Are Real
When the Bible talks about heaven and hell it is talking about very real places.
And to be at Abraham’s bosom is heaven, perfect fellowship with God.
A true child of Abraham is a true child of God.
It is to share everything God promised to Abraham.
It is to enjoy a home where you are surrounded by pure love forever and ever.
There will be no regrets.
There will be no bitterness.
There will be no sorrow or pain.
There will be no hatred.
There will be the perfect and permanent manifestation of pure and holy love forever and ever.
Likewise, the flames of hell is that place where love is entirely absent.
There is no fellowship, except the fellowship of mutual contempt and hatred.
There is no forgiveness.
No amount of remorse will take away the guilt because remorse never was enough to wash away sin.
Only the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God, could wash sins away.
Those in hell are those who refused God’s love.
In refusing God’s love, they did not love God.
They lived for themselves.
They did not live for others because they did not love them.
Having refused God’s love, they are punished forever by the total absence of that love.
Hell is the complete and permanent absence of God’s love.
There is no peace, no fellowship with God, and no love.
It is being tormented by a fire that cannot be quenched because only God’s grace can quench it and it is the denial of God’s grace that brings sinners to hell in the first place.
The rich man in the story went to hell and could not get out.
There was only one man who ever went to hell and got out.
That man was Jesus.
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