Intro
Many people believe that Christianity is one, big, fat lie. It must be, they assume, because they see so much injustice in this world. They say, “How can there be a God if He allows so much evil to exist?”
Even in the Bible we find complaints about injustice in this world. One of the psalms says, “For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the well-being of the wicked. For there are no pains in their death, and their bodies are well-fed. They do not have their share of human suffering; they are not afflicted like the rest of humanity” (Psalm 73:2-5). Even Job, the patient one, complained, “The tents of robbers are at rest, and those who provoke God are secure” (Job 12:6).
Main Body
How do we make sense of this? To begin, how can we expect perfect justice in an imperfect world? We messed up the world, not God! Now we want to blame God for our mess ups? Come on!
Justice does exist in this world. Of course, it is flawed and fallen because we, too, are flawed and fallen. God gives governments authority to “bear the sword,” so widespread anarchy does not run amok in this world (Romans 13:4). Criminals don’t always get away with their crimes. They are often caught and punished. Most of the time, crime doesn’t pay. The average criminal would be far richer if he had honestly labored instead of stealing to gain his wealth.
Other sins are punished, as well. “Don’t be deceived … whatever someone sows he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Getting drunk all the time destroys someone’s liver. Wanton sex spreads many deadly diseases. Anger causes high-blood pressure. Laziness reduces some people to poverty. Rudeness and arrogance turns people into enemies instead of friends. A life of crime often leads to an early death.
When we look at justice, we, as God’s people, are to see everything that takes place though the lens of eternity. For we know that “godliness is of value, because it holds a promise for the present life as well as the one to come” (1 Timothy 4:8). God does provide for His people. He will never abandon them. Yes, “the righteous may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers them from them all” (Psalm 34:19).
So there is a reward in this life for those who love God and keep His commandments. Yet, justice will never be perfect in this imperfect world. This Lazarus knew well! Sores infested his body, and he was too disabled to walk. Every day, someone would place him at the rich man’s gate. There he would wait, hoping to get the leftovers that would otherwise be thrown into the garbage.
The rich man was selfish and wicked. He lived only for his own pleasure and cared nothing for Lazarus, or anybody else for that matter. Yet, he was the one who prospered, while poor, godly Lazarus lived in misery. Finally, poor and miserable, without seeing happy days, Lazarus died. Surely, it seemed that justice had deserted him in this world.
Yet, thanks be to God, that’s not the end of the story! There is perfect justice, after death separates us from this fallen world and our fallen flesh. After Lazarus had died, God’s holy angels carried him into God’s eternal and glorious presence. The rich man also died, but his after-death experience was different--decidedly different!
When the rich man died, he woke up, suffering the natural consequences of his sins. It was as the Apostle Paul wrote. “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive according to what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
The rich man had sinned in body, soul, and spirit, and so it was in body, soul, and spirit that he suffered his eternal torments. He mentioned his tongue being tormented by flame. That was the same tongue that he had bathed with cup after cup of delectable wine. That was the same tongue that had scorned poor Lazarus.
Sins do not go unpunished. No one will get away with anything. Justice is waiting ever so patiently in the wings. We find Abraham in heaven saying, “Son, remember that during your lifetime you received blessings, while Lazarus received hardships.”
The experience of hell is eternal. Jesus, through Abraham in the parable, speaks of an insurmountable chasm between heaven and hell, where no one may pass from one to the other. Only one gate leads into each of them, and after someone passes through death, he cannot go back to enter the other door.
Many think God would never be so cruel as to punish people and not relent after they have suffered for a time. People come to such a conclusion based on a shallow and improper understanding of hell. Hell isn’t so much God unleashing His hot fury and anger. Hell is the way Scripture describes eternity for someone who simply gets what he deserves, those who die without faith in Christ Jesus.
So then what is hell? Some say that hell is an eternal separation from God, but how can that be when God is omnipresent? No place exists where God does not exist. So hell isn’t an eternal separation from God, for that would mean that a place exists where God is not present. In eternity, both the Christian and the non-Christian will fully experience God in all His glory. It’s just that their experience of Him will be so different--an insurmountable chasm of difference!
In eternity, God is simply being God. He is not humbling Himself behind objects of creation to come to us, as He does now. That’s why we can gather here in worship without God’s presence killing us. Here, in worship, God comes to us in His hidden ways, giving us of Himself to create and strengthen our faith.
How does God do this? Think about it. God comes to us in the waters of baptism, through which He brings us into His family like circumcision did in the Old Testament (Colossians 2:11). He comes to us in the spoken Word. He comes to us in His body and blood to forgive and strengthen us.
In eternity, God does not hide Himself in any way. It’s in eternity where we experience the reality of God in all His glory and fullness. Here, in our present life, we receive a foretaste of the feast to come. In eternity, we will delight in the full feast! That’s what heaven is all about--experiencing God in His glorious and eternal presence!
Scripture describes God as both an all-consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29) and an illuminating light (Psalm 119:105; 1 John 1:5). Both the rich man and Lazarus saw the same reality: God in all His blazing glory. Lacking faith, the rich man entered God’s eternal and glorious presence, but he could not share in it. He only received burning torment and anguish, experiencing God as an all-consuming fire. However, poor and destitute Lazarus could share in God’s eternal presence. He received eternal joy and comfort, experiencing God as a son of light. That’s the insurmountable chasm between heaven and hell.
Christ is the Resurrection into eternal life. For those who have received Him, they will become the sons and daughters of light, glowing with eternal radiance and joy. For those who rejected Christ, He becomes their death and their hell. Heaven and hell, then, are not so much a reward or a punishment as we understand those terms in our fallen ways, but how we will experience being in God’s eternal presence. That’s how heaven and hell are to be understood.
Those who die in the faith will experience the eternal glory of God an incredible, joy-filled way. Those who die apart from faith will experience eternity in a most-negative way. It will be hell, pure hell! In the parable, the rich man cried out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me! Send Lazarus, so he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue! For I am in agony in this flame!”
Did you hear the conversation between the rich man and Abraham? We heard the rich man trying to argue with Abraham. When Abraham said he wouldn’t send anyone to his brothers because they have Moses and the Prophets, what did the rich man say? Still thinking he knew better, he said, “No, father Abraham! If someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” The rich man--even in hell--still thought he knew better.
Yes, even in hell, those who have died apart from faith still think they know better than God, just like they did in this life. Even with all the terrors and torments of hell, in the hardheartedness of unbelief, those in hell still won’t repent. They are still trying to tell God how to be God. They are still trying to be god in the place of God. Even in eternity, they still won’t let God be God.
Eternal heaven is also perfect justice. One gets what he deserves (if we can use that word) because of Christ. There is justice also for the Lord’s little flock of believers, for “great is their reward in heaven” (Matthew 5:12). Theirs is not a reward because they have earned it. No, it’s a reward of grace, a gift. We deserve it only because of Jesus. He makes us fit for heaven.
Yet, how can it be that God rewards us with eternal life when we haven’t earned it? Where’s the justice in that? The answer is found in Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul tells us how. “God presented Christ to be an atoning sacrifice through the shedding of His blood, to be received by faith ...that He would be righteous and declare the one who has faith in Jesus as righteous” (Romans 3:25-26).
When Jesus took all the sins of the world into His flesh, He suffered what every single person deserves in God’s glorious presence. That’s why Jesus prayed the 22nd Psalm on the cross. It begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” In baptism, we have already died for our sins and have suffered the torments of hell in Christ Jesus. It is as Scripture says: “We who were baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into His death” (Romans 6:3).
It’s only in that way that someone deserves heaven. We deserve heaven only because Jesus deserves heaven. Jesus gives us what He earned for us--in that way, and only that way--do we deserve what He give us: Eternal life.
Conclusion
Our eternal life is a reward that comes by grace in Christ Jesus. It is as the Prophet Jeremiah said, “The reward for your work will come” (Jeremiah 31:16). That isn’t because our works somehow deserve a reward. It’s only because God has done such works though us.
That’s the reason God tells us, “Great is your reward in heaven” (Luke 6:23). Jesus walked this earth as a poor man, yet He ascended wealthy into heaven (Chrysologus, Sermon 123). Whatever we lose or suffer in this life because we believe in Jesus and follow Him, we have not lost at all. From God’s endless storehouse of grace, He will fill us with everything good. Indeed, there is full and perfect justice in eternity. Amen.
