What Does the Bible Say About Hell? What Jesus Actually Taught — and Why
Introduction
There is no harder topic in all of scripture.
Heaven stirs wonder, longing, and excitement. The concept of eternal separation — of hell — lands differently. It is heavy. It is weighty. And for many people, it carries a lot of painful baggage, much of it left behind by a church that used it as a hammer rather than a lifeline.
But here is the thing: if you want to avoid the topic of hell, you cannot follow Jesus and do it. No teacher, prophet, poet, or apostle in all of scripture spoke about hell more than Jesus did. He returned to it again and again — not with the gleeful anger of a fire-and-brimstone preacher, but with the urgency of someone who came specifically to save people from it.
In week three of the Beyond series at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee, Pastor Keith opens Matthew 10 to do something the church has not always done well: teach about hell the way Jesus actually taught it — with honesty, with weight, and above all, with love.
Why Jesus Talked About Hell More Than Anyone
It is worth sitting with this fact before anything else. Of all the voices in scripture — Moses, Isaiah, the Psalms, the Apostle Paul — none spoke about hell with more frequency or more clarity than Jesus himself.
The question Pastor Keith raises is obvious: why?
The answer is equally clear. Jesus talked about hell more than anyone else because his entire mission was to save people from it. He did not raise the subject to frighten people into compliance. He raised it because he loved people too much to stay silent about a reality he had come to absorb on their behalf.
In Matthew 25 alone, Jesus tells three separate parables addressing eternal separation. He describes those cast into “outer darkness” where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. He distinguishes those who go away into eternal punishment from those who enter eternal life. These are not incidental details. They are central to what Jesus was trying to communicate.
And in Matthew 10 — the text at the heart of this message — Jesus is speaking to his disciples about the cost of following him. He has been honest about persecution, about being hated, about the real risks of allegiance to him. And then, in the midst of that difficult conversation, he says something that reframes everything:
“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
What Jesus Actually Meant by “Fear”
That verse lands hard. But the context immediately surrounding it is just as important as the verse itself.
Jesus uses the phrase “do not fear” three times in this same passage. He follows his warning about hell with some of the most tender words in all the gospels: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”
Pastor Keith draws out what is happening here. Jesus is not appealing to the fear of hell to drive people toward God. He is doing something more subtle and more profound. He is saying: be sober, be awake, understand the weight of this reality— and then hear the heart of a Father who sees you, knows you, values you, and is pleading with you to come home.
The context for every word Jesus spoke about hell was not condemnation. It was invitation. Come out of darkness and into light with me. God is not eagerly preparing people for eternal punishment. He is faithfully reaching to save them from it.
That distinction matters enormously — especially for anyone who grew up hearing hell preached as a threat rather than a warning given in love.
The Bad News We Need to Understand the Good News
The word gospel means good news. But good news only makes sense against the backdrop of bad news.
Pastor Keith uses a disarming illustration: the high temperature on Tuesday is 33 degrees. That is bad news. The good news is that forecast is for Duluth, Minnesota — not Franklin, Tennessee, where it will be 76 and sunny.
You cannot feel the full relief of the good news without understanding what you were being saved from.
So what is the bad news? Our default condition — every human being’s default condition — is one of separation from God. Romans 3 makes it plain: there is none righteous, not one. All have gone astray. Every sin, no matter how large or small, is a choice to find our delight in something lesser, something futile, something empty rather than in God. We have, as Romans 1 describes it, exchanged the glory of the Creator for the creation.
Pastor Keith gives this a searching and uncomfortably specific shape. We worship money, building our hopes on what we can acquire. We worship power and influence, treasuring what we can achieve. We worship comfort and excess, abusing good gifts. We worship our spouses as the supreme answer to our loneliness. We worship our children, turning them into little gods. We worship sports, entertainment, and popularity as our supreme sources of joy.
And then, Pastor Keith says, there is the greatest idol of all — the one we see in the mirror every morning. My way.
This is not a description of unusually wicked people. It is the description of all of us. Preacher included, as he notes. We have all, in countless ways, looked at the infinite glory of God and said, no thanks, I’ll choose me.
On an eternal scale, that rebellion demands justice.
The Question Everyone Asks About Hell
At this point in the conversation, a predictable objection arises — and it is a fair one. I cannot believe in a God who sends people to suffer this way. What kind of loving God is filled with wrath?
Pastor Keith answers it by turning the question around.
We all demand justice. We feel it in our blood when we hear about human trafficking, about abuse, about the exploitation of the innocent. That righteous anger does not embarrass us. We consider it evidence that we care.
Where does that instinct for justice come from? It comes from being made in the image of a Creator who is perfectly just. The anger we feel at genuine evil is a reflection of God’s own character — not a contradiction of his love.
Rebecca Pippert, in her book Hope Has Its Reasons, puts it memorably: anger is not the opposite of love. Hate is. And the final form of hate is indifference. The most loveless thing God could do would be to look at what sin has done to his image-bearers and simply not care.
God is not indifferent about you. He is not indifferent about the ways sin has ravaged human dignity, broken families, and stolen lives. His wrath against sin is not in tension with his love for people. It is an expression of it.
Hell as a Measure of Love
Here is where Pastor Keith takes the message somewhere unexpected — and where it becomes, strangely, one of the most hope-giving things you can hear.
Hell is not only the measure of God’s righteous anger against sin. It is also the measure of how radically, how seriously, how completely God loves you.
Because Jesus went there for you.
When Jesus cried out from the cross — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” — he was not speaking metaphorically. He was experiencing the full weight of separation from the Father. The physical agony of crucifixion, as horrific as it was, was, as Pastor Keith puts it, a flea bite compared to what was happening to his soul in that moment. Jesus, who had been in eternal, perfect, unbroken communion with the Father from before the foundation of the world, experienced the turning away of God.
He took our hell. Our forsakenness. Our sin — past, present, and future — laid on him at once. He was separated from the Father so we do not have to be.
And because he was the spotless Lamb — because he had no sin of his own to answer for — he did not stay there. He took the keys of death and hell. By the power of the Father, he rose. He came out alive.
And he stands now at the door of every human heart and says: I gave my life so that you could have it.
The Lengths He Was Willing to Go
What Jesus was doing in teaching about hell, again and again throughout his ministry, was not frightening people into reluctant compliance. He was showing them the lengths he was willing to go for them.
He looked at the woman caught in adultery and said: I forgive you. Go and live full. He looked at the woman at the well — five failed marriages and a man who wasn’t her husband — and offered her living water. He looked at the tax collectors, the most despised and treacherous members of his own culture, and said: there is a Father in heaven who will just forgive you.
Jesus was more honest about the Father’s love than any teacher. More honest about the Father’s holiness than any teacher. More honest about the just heart of God toward evil than any teacher. And over all of these things, he was more honest about the lengths to which he was willing to go so that you and I could be with him.
He took our punishment. He gave us his beauty.
That is what a truly loving God does — he endures the penalty of his own holy justice so that we can be with him.
The Invitation
The call that comes out of the doctrine of hell — when it is rightly understood — is not get scared and comply. It is not you’d better shape up.
It is: come home.
The Father does not want you separated from him. He has made a way. He is shouting through his Word, through creation, through the cross, and now through his church: I do not want you to perish. You have violated my glory, but I do not want you to be separated from me.
Ezekiel 18:23 captures God’s heart plainly: “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked?… and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?”
If you are carrying something this morning — sin, shame, guilt, failure, a life that feels too messy to be redeemed — hear this: the voice whispering that you have gone too far, that your life is too broken, that you are past the point of restoration, is not the voice of God. It is the voice of the enemy.
Jesus has washed people far messier than you. He does it today. You can hand over every broken place — every idol, every compromise, every regret — and receive in exchange his righteousness, his mercy, and his life.
That exchange is the gospel. That is the good news.
Join Us for the Beyond Series
The Beyond series continues each Sunday at New River Church as Pastor Keith works through what the Bible teaches about heaven, hell, judgment, and eternal life — and what all of it means for how we live today.
We meet Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064.
Plan a visit at newriverfranklin.com
Reflection Questions
- Has hell ever been used to manipulate or frighten you? How has that shaped the way you think about God?
- Pastor Keith says the measure of hell is also the measure of God’s love — because Jesus endured it for us. What does that stir in you?
- Where in your life are you most tempted to worship something lesser than God? What would it look like to hand that over?
- Is there someone in your life you have been praying for who is far from God? How does this message shape how you pray for them?
