It’s safe to say that many people, including Christians, get their views of Hell more from literature and folklore than from Scripture. Even if we haven’t read the fourteenth century classic, Dante’s Inferno, we know the imagery of his deep lair of Satan, his disturbing demons, and the grotesque punishments for those residents. Pop culture’s devil is a mix of John Milton’s anti-hero in Paradise Lost, Hades from Disney’s Hercules, and the main character in Charlie Daniels’ epic fiddle song.  

In fact, our word for “Hell” isn’t even in the Bible. That came from an old Germanic word used to describe “the underworld.” In the Old Testament, the prophets and psalmists spoke of Sheol, a word that’s actually hard to define. Sometimes Sheol is what we think of Hell—a place of punishment. But other times it’s a broader reference, anything from the realm of the dead to a concept of being cast from the presence of God. Simply put, while the ancient Israelites believed in an afterlife, it wasn’t a big priority for them, meaning there was little need to get into detail. 

The New Testament brings more clarity, but only a bit. Some of the most vivid language comes, unsurprisingly, from the Book of Revelation. Revelation 14 speaks of “fire and sulfur” and that those who worship the Beast will find that “the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.” Revelation 20 talks of a bottomless pit and a lake of fire to which the devil, the unsaved dead, and finally death itself is cast. 

But the person most likely to talk about Hell might surprise people today: Jesus Himself. In fact, Jesus talked about Hell quite a bit, and what he says about it is stark stuff:  

[W]hoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire (Matthew 5:22).  

And 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 (Matthew 10:28).  

The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:41-42).  

It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire (Mark 9:43).  

It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched’ (Mark 9:47-48). 

Scholars quibble about the meaning of darkness, fire, and worms, but there are some things which are certain from Jesus’ words: Hell is real, it will be painful, and it mattered to Him. 

All this hardly fits the peaceful Jesus Americans prefer. “Our Jesus” might condemn Hitler and Jack the Ripper (for obvious reasons), but He certainly wouldn’t condemn the rest of the world. God is mostly just loving, right?  

But this misses the truth of the Gospel. This Americanized version offers only, as theologian H. Richard Niebuhr said almost a century ago, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”  

Hell is not a fable the Church made up to “scare us straight.” Much less is it the temper-tantrum of a childish deity who didn’t get his way. For the victim of abuse or oppression, Hell isn’t a doctrine of fear but of hope. It’s the promise of God’s justice—to us and to Himself—that no desecration of His creation will go unpunished. No crime or sin, no matter how well hidden in the shadows or protected by the powerful, will escape. Either on the Cross millennia ago, or in the hereafter, everything sad will come untrue.