Is Hell eternal?

Before proving scripturally that hell is forever, it’s wise to make sure your friend knows where you agree with him. When he says God is love, and that God loves all and desires all people be saved, he is correctly summarizing 1 John 4:16, John 3:16 and 1 Tim. 2:4. We not only agree that Jesus died for the world’s sins (1 John 2:2), we even proclaim that God declared the entire world not guilty in Jesus (Rom. 5:18).

But while your friend is correctly sharing some scriptural truths, he is, perhaps unknowingly, omitting others.

Your friend isn’t alone. Many Christians feel that God’s reputation as a gracious God is forfeited if we don’t modify the historic confession that hell is conscious, eternal suffering for everyone who dies in unbelief.

Our task, however, is not to make God sound palatable to cultural sensibilities. Yes, Scripture is clear that Jesus is Savior of all and that he also desires the salvation of those who do not acknowledge him. His tears for the unbelievers in Jerusalem were genuine (Luke 19:41).

Yet Jesus talks about hell more forcefully, frequently, and fully than anyone. He tells us that the broad and busy superhighway is the one leading to hell not heaven (Matt. 7:13). It is Jesus who vividly portrays the conscious, eternal suffering of the damned as he tells us about the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19f).

It is also Jesus who coins the most common description of hell: the place where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 8:12, 13:42, 13:50, 22:13, 24:51, 25:30). If we inquire how long this “weeping and gnashing of teeth” continues, he tells us in Matthew 25. After Jesus pronounces judgment on the sheep and goats (believers and unbelievers), he announces that the unbelievers “will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:46). We can no more argue biblically against the eternity of hell than the eternity of heaven.