Why Does Jesus Talk About Hell?

Matthew 25:31-46
July 26, 2026
Matt Goodale

Today I am preaching on a topic that I’m sure everyone woke up today excited to come to church and hear about: hell. We’re in the middle of a sermon series where you tell me what to preach on, so thank you to the wonderful person who chose this topic.

As I stated last week when preaching on heaven, this is obviously a very dense topic. It’s a topic that Christians have disagreed about and split churches over for centuries. So I’m going to do my best to present the picture of hell that I think comes through most clearly in Scripture, particularly using Jesus’ words and hopefully clear up some misconceptions. And a fifteen minute sermon can hardly do this hefty topic justice, so if you’d like to sit down for coffee this week to keep discussing, please let me know.

We’re going on a bit of a journey so stick with me!

So today I don’t actually want to answer the question, “What is hell?” I want to ask the question, “Why did Jesus talk about hell?” Because I think once we answer that, many of the other questions we may have about hell begin to fall into place.

Have you ever noticed that almost everyone seems to have a similar picture of hell in their mind?

Maybe it’s flames and demons. Maybe it’s people being tortured forever. Maybe it’s Satan sitting on a throne, ruling over the underworld. Whether we grew up in church or not, many of us have inherited a surprisingly vivid imagination about hell, and it permeates our entire culture.

But here’s something that might surprise you: much of that picture isn’t actually found in the Bible.

In fact, if you opened the Bible and read it from beginning to end, you’ll discover that the Bible itself has an evolving view on hell, and there is actually an unfolding understanding about what happens after death and how God deals with evil—because that’s where the idea of hell originates from: the question of how does God deal ultimately with evil?

So just like we did last week with heaven, we’re going to take a brief journey through history.

The earliest books of the Old Testament don’t speak about hell the way most of us imagine it. They speak instead of Sheol—the shadowy place of the dead where all people (good and bad!) go. Israel’s hope wasn’t primarily about escaping Sheol; it was about God rescuing and restoring life.

As Israel’s story unfolded through exile, suffering, and longing for justice, that hope deepened. Books like Daniel begin speaking about resurrection and God’s final judgment. By the time Jesus arrives, there isn’t one universally accepted picture of the afterlife. There are many.

So when Jesus shows up, he begins talking about hell. But he doesn’t present one neat, systematic doctrine of the afterlife. Instead, he tells stories.

He speaks of Gehenna, a valley outside Jerusalem that had become a symbol of judgment. Other times he speaks of outer darkness, fire, a closed door, or weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The Bible actually uses several different words and images that our English translations often flatten into one word: “hell.”

That tells us something important.

Jesus consistently speaks about judgment through different images rather than giving us one literal description. He isn’t drawing us a map of the afterlife. He’s painting pictures that are meant to awaken people to the seriousness of the choices they are making today. Every time Jesus makes some mention of the afterlife, it’s always in connection with how we are living our lives today.

The Bible ends with one more striking image of the afterlife. Revelations speaks of a lake of fire and a second death, but it doesn’t end there. It ends with a city descending from heaven to earth. God coming to dwell with humanity, like we talked about last week. Tears are wiped away, death is no more. And then comes one little detail that has always fascinated me. Revelation says that this city’s gates will never be shut.

We’ll come back to that.

Before we do, it’s worth remembering that the picture of hell many of us inherited wasn’t shaped by Scripture. So what is it shaped by then? Where did we get these pictures of demons with pitchforks and eternal torture?

About 700 years ago, an Italian poet named Dante wrote The Divine Comedy, and the first part is called, Inferno. This is Dante’s Inferno. And it imagined hell as nine circles of increasingly severe punishment. It is one of the greatest works of literature ever written, and has profoundly shaped Western imagination.

Much of what people picture when they think about hell, and most of the art and depictions we see of it in movies and paintings are all based on Dante’s Inferno. It is a brilliant poem, but we must be careful not to confuse a brilliant poem with the biblical witness itself.

But as we’ve already seen, the Bible itself doesn’t offer one straightforward view on what hell is.

Faithful Christians have read these passages in the Bible and arrived at different conclusions. Broadly speaking, there are three major views.

The first view believes judgment is eternal conscious torment in hell.

The second view believes final judgment ultimately results in hell’s destruction rather than endless suffering.

The third view holds what is called hopeful universalism, taking judgment with full seriousness while hoping God’s redeeming love will ultimately triumph. In other words, that there may be a hell, but in the end it will be empty. This is not a new view but dates all the way back to the early church. Personally, I find myself hoping with this third tradition.

And here’s the thing: all three of these views of hell—eternal conscious torment, annihilationism and hopeful universalism—faithful Christians point to different biblical texts in support of each of these views.

Wherever you land, while Christians may not be able to agree on exactly what hell is and who is going to be there…Christians across history have agreed on this: judgment is real. And it has to be, because evil is real. God is depicted as loving and good, and part of that loving goodness is justice. God will not simply shrug at the suffering and cruelty of the world.

But I wonder if we’ve sometimes asked the wrong question.

Instead of asking, “What exactly is hell like?” or even “who is going to hell?” maybe we should ask, “Why did Jesus talk about hell so often?”

Because when Jesus uses these vivid images of judgment, he almost never seems interested in satisfying our curiosity about the afterlife.

He’s trying to wake us up. Jesus never talks about hell to satisfy our curiosity. He talks about hell to change our trajectory.

And really, he’s continuing a conversation that has been happening throughout the entire Bible.

From the very beginning, Scripture places before humanity two ways to live. In the Garden of Eden there is the Tree of Life, but humanity chooses its own way instead of God’s, and death enters the story. Later, Moses stands before Israel and says, “Today I have set before you life and death…therefore choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). The book of Proverbs constantly contrasts the way of wisdom, which leads to life, with the way of folly, which leads to destruction.

Jesus isn’t inventing a new message.

He’s continuing that same story.

Let’s listen to one of Jesus’ clearest pictures of hell and judgment in Matthew 25.

The nations are gathered before the Son of Man, and he separates them as a shepherd separates sheep from goats.

And here’s what strikes me every time I read this passage.

Jesus doesn’t ask them what creed they affirmed. He asks what kind of people they became. The dividing line of who gets eternal life and who gets eternal punishment has nothing to do with intellectual belief.

Instead, the dividing line is astonishingly practical.

“I was hungry.”

“I was thirsty.”

“I was a stranger.”

“I was sick.”

“I was in prison.”

Did you come help me?

The question isn’t whether they could define grace. The question is whether grace had reshaped the way they lived.

Whether they had learned to recognize Christ in the vulnerable. Whether they had become people of compassion.

Jesus isn’t saying that what we believe doesn’t matter.

He’s showing us that genuine faith always becomes visible in the kind of people we are becoming. Are we becoming people of love, or people of selfishness? One leads to life, the other to death.

Genesis tells us human beings are created in the image of God. We are made for love, generosity, mercy, forgiveness, communion and joy. Every act of compassion draws us deeper into that image. Every act of selfishness pulls us away from it.

From the very beginning, the Bible frames our choices in terms of life and death.

So sin isn’t simply a matter of breaking God’s rules. Sin is turning away from who we were created to be; it’s turning away from the abundant life we were created for. Sin slowly shrinks the soul. Have you ever met someone who wasn’t becoming more loving with age—but less? Someone who had become harder instead of softer? That’s what Jesus is warning about…that we’re all on a trajectory—so who are you becoming? Someone with more life or less?

C.S. Lewis wrote a masterpiece called The Great Divorce in which he imagines what heaven and hell are like, and his image has always resonated with me. Lewis imagines hell not as a torture chamber, but as a place where people continually choose themselves over love. They cling to pride, resentment, bitterness, and self-justification until they become smaller and smaller. Lewis famously writes that “the doors of hell are locked from the inside.”

Whether or not you agree with Lewis’ imagination, I think he captures something profoundly biblical.

And something we’ve all seen happen. We’ve seen bitterness consume a person until it becomes their entire identity. We‘ve seen greed hollow someone out. We’ve seen addiction narrow a person’s world until nothing matters except the next fix. We’ve seen ego and pride tear relationships apart. We’ve seen people become so trapped inside themselves that they can scarcely receive love anymore.

That sounds like hell to me. The idea of living like that—these continual choices to act and be other than who we were created to be, sounds a bit like conscious torment.

This is not because God delights in inflicting pain, but because life cut off from love inevitably diminishes us. This is what Jesus continually warned people about. That the choices we make every day are shaping us into someone—do we like who we are becoming?

And yet, this isn’t the final word. The final vision Scripture gives us is not of a God eager to condemn. It is of a God who comes to dwell with humanity. Who wipes every tear away and defeats death. Whose city gates are never shut. It is a God who wants to offer forgiveness and desires to see every person become who they were created to be: loving and compassionate people made in the image of God.

Now, I don’t know exactly what that means for every person who has ever lived. Christians have debated that for two thousand years, and I suspect the mystery is larger than any of us can fully comprehend.

But I do know this. The God revealed in Jesus Christ is perfectly just and extravagantly merciful. Judgment is real because God takes evil seriously. Justice is real because victims matter. But the deepest desire of our God has always been restoration, not destruction. And that’s why the apostle Paul wrote about our Christian hope that one day God would reconcile and redeem all things. Not just faithful things, not just good things. All things.

So perhaps the question Jesus leaves us with isn’t, “Can I avoid hell when I die?”

The question is, “Who am I becoming?”

Every day, our choices are shaping us into someone. They are teaching us to love…Or teaching us to close ourselves off from love. Jesus warned us because he wanted us to choose life.

And that’s why my hope finally rests not in my ability to answer every question about hell…

But in the God revealed in Jesus.

A God who never stops seeking the lost.

A shepherd who leaves the 99 to save the one.

The father who keeps watching the road for his prodigal son to come home.

The Savior who in his dying breath on the cross said, “Father, forgive them.”

I hope in a God who desires all people to be saved and to have life.

I hope in a King whose final city has gates that are never shut.

Amen and may it be so.