Fear Him Who Can Destroy the Soul
But rather fear him who is able to destroy both Body and Soul in Hell. (Matt 10:28)
Beloved, you may remember that I have preached ten sermons on the glorified condition of the saints in heaven. I now intend to speak of the tormented condition of the damned in hell, so that if those earlier sermons about glory did not gain your affections, this sermon on hell might startle your consciences. Ministers, having a mixed congregation, must mix their doctrine, sometimes with comfort and sometimes with terror. You have heard ten sermons on the former text; you may hear as many more on this one.
Before I give you the sense of the text, I must give you the scope of the chapter. Jesus Christ had called his twelve disciples together and commissioned them to preach the gospel throughout the regions of Judea, and, to confirm their doctrine, to work all manner of miracles, cure all manner of diseases, and cast out devils. Yet he knew, as he tells them in Matthew 10:16, that they must go as silly sheep among ravenous wolves, and that they would meet persecution and opposition in carrying on the great work of the gospel. So Christ labors in this chapter to prop up the hearts of his people with four arguments.
The first argument comes in Matthew 10:19–20: “They shall bring you before Governors for my name’s sake; but take no thought what you shall say, for it shall be given you in the same hour.” It is as if Christ said: you will be called before courts of judicature for my name’s sake, for preaching my gospel, but do not worry about what you will plead for yourselves, for my Spirit will tell you what to say. In Luke 21:15 you find the same idea: “They should have a mouth, and wisdom given them” to make their defense and vindicate the gospel in their hands.
2. The second argument he brings is this: though they will meet troubles in the flesh, Christ will save their souls (Matt 10:22). If they suffer in their bodies, their soul will be saved, “for he that endures to the end shall be saved.”
3. The third is that before they had preached in every city, Christ promised to come in the blessing of his Spirit and make their preaching effective for the conversion of souls (Matt 16:28). Some say this refers to the destruction of Jerusalem, but Calvin understands it as the giving of the Spirit (Matt 10:23).
4. The fourth argument comforts them with the fact that Jesus Christ was their partner in suffering. They must not expect to be above Christ, above their master (Matt 10:24): “The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his Lord, it is enough to be as he is.” As if he said: do not be discouraged. I, your Lord and master, suffered and must suffer more, even death. So do not be discouraged, for the disciple is not above his Lord.
5. And a fifth argument stands in my text: do not be afraid, because the power of your enemies is limited. All your enemies can do reaches only the body and can never hurt your souls. Fear not him who can kill the body but not the soul. Christ tells them here whom they should, and should not, fear: “But fear him who is able to cast both body and soul into hell.” Having brought you to the words, I will now give you their sense.
“But rather fear him.” The word translated “rather” is not to be taken comparatively, as though you may fear men but must fear God more. It is an adversative: you are not to fear men at all, but God alone.
“But rather fear him that can kill both body and soul.” “Kill” here does not mean the annihilation or destruction of the body, but the continual tormenting of body and soul under the wrath of God for all eternity. Luke explains it this way in Luke 12:5: “Who is able to cast both body and soul into hell,” that is, to destroy both soul and body. It would be well for the damned if soul and body were destroyed in the sense of being annihilated. Both body and soul are mentioned because the body has been partner with the soul in sin, and so will share with it in punishment.
“Fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Hell in Scripture carries four different meanings.
1. It is taken for the grave, as in Psalm 16:10: “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor suffer thy Holy One to see corruption”; that is, Christ would not lie and rot in the grave, but would rise again. The apostle Peter refers to this prophecy, that he would not see corruption nor be left in the grave (Acts 2:31–32), speaking of Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
2. Hell in Scripture is taken for the belly of the whale into which Jonah was cast. So Jonah 2:2 reads: “Out of the belly of hell I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me.” Jonah was never in hell itself, but the belly of the whale was called hell because it was a dark place, as hell is. But that is not the sense meant here either.
3. Hell in Scripture is taken for the devil himself, or his malignant spirits. So (Jas 3:6): “The tongue of man is set on fire by hell,” meaning not the place but the devil in hell. The devil in hell kindles the fire of an enraged and passionate spirit; the tongue is set on fire by the devil of hell.
4. Hell is taken in Scripture for the place of the damned, where God tortures and torments the souls and bodies of all the reprobate for all eternity. This sense is frequent in Scripture, as in Matthew 5:29, Luke 12:5, and Luke 16:23, and it is the sense meant here: “Fear him that can cast both body and soul into hell,” that is, into that place of torment which the Lord reserves eternally for the punishment of all ungodly men and women. That is the meaning of the phrase “into hell.”
The word rendered “hell” here comes from the Hebrew word gehinnom, meaning the valley of Hinnom. It was a valley near Jerusalem possessed by Hinnom or his son (Josh 15:8; Neh 11:30). Hell is named in Scripture after this place because the idolatrous Jews set up an idol there called Molech, made of brass in the form of a man, hollow within, in which they kindled a fire. Children were placed within the arms of the idol and burned. The Jews believed that a father who gave one of his children to the idol would receive a blessing on all his other children.
From this the Greek word for hell derives its meaning, carrying an allusion to that place: as there was a continual fire in that idol, along with continual shrieking and crying of children (so much so that bells were rung and instruments sounded to drown out the children’s cries), so it will be in the fiery torments of hell. The story is told at length in 2 Chronicles 33:6, 2 Kings 16:3, 2 Chronicles 28:3, Jeremiah 7:31, Jeremiah 32:35, and Leviticus 18:21. Good king Josiah destroyed this place (2 Kgs 23:10).
Having laid open the words, nothing remains but to give you the observations the text will bear. There are two observations I will draw from these words.
First, from the context, “but rather fear him,” observe this:
Doctrine 1: The fear of God fences the heart against the fear of man. The more you fear God, the less you will fear men. As Isaiah 8:13 says, “Fear not their fear but sanctify the Lord in your hearts; let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.” But I will pass over this point, since my only intention in handling this subject is to set before you the torments of the damned in hell.
That thought will awaken some drowsy consciences, and I trust it will deepen the joy of believers who have been delivered from these hellish torments. The observation that sums up the whole substance of this text is this:
Doctrine 2: That the consideration of this, that God has an absolute power over men and women, to cast their bodies and souls into hell, should work an awful fear of God in the hearts of his own people. This is the point, and it carries a great deal of dread and terror with it. Before I take up the doctrine directly, I must first lay down reasons why I preach on so terrible a subject, and then answer some objections that may be raised against preaching so dreadful a doctrine.
I confess this is a terrible doctrine, given the atrocity of the torments it describes.
First, the reasons why I take up this subject are four.
First, I handle it now because I have already spoken at length about the glory of the elect in heaven, for the comfort of the godly. Now I will speak of the torments of hell, for the punishment of the wicked, so that if the glory of the elect has not won your affections, hearing of the torment of the damned might startle your consciences and wake you from your security.
Second, I handle it so that none of you grow secure and presumptuous, nourishing ungrounded hopes of glory and expecting to be in glory with Jesus Christ on the strength of the previous sermons alone. To keep you from that vain hope, I thought it right to pair this subject with those sermons, so that you might be equally guarded against presumption on the one hand and despair on the other.
Third, because this is a doctrine so little preached and so little written about in our day. I know of only one English book written on this subject, by Mr. Bolton, and very few in Latin. It is a useful subject, useful for the wicked and useful for the godly, yet so little handled, and nowadays much cried down and argued against. This reason too moved me to take it up.
Fourth, I handle this doctrine because I am persuaded that if many people knew the torments of hell distinctly, they would never walk in the way of sin that leads there as they do. I believe that if this doctrine of hell were well studied and better known among the people, they would take far more care to avoid hell and gain glory than they do now.
If people knew that those who live and die unrepentant, burning in their lusts, will one day burn in fire; if they knew that those who drink bowls of wine to excess will one day drink draughts of brimstone in hell; if they knew that those who grind their teeth in hatred and indignation against the godly here will one day gnash their teeth in hell hereafter; if they knew that those who persecute and imprison God’s people now will one day be dragged into an everlasting prison and hauled by devils into hell, and that those who could not endure the company of saints on earth will be with devils and damned spirits in hell, then they would not be as profane and wicked as they now are. The lack of study of this point opens a wide gate to the world’s profaneness, and for these reasons I resolved to treat this subject.
There are two objections against preaching on a subject like this. First, some will say this is legal preaching, casting flashes of hellfire about the congregation, which is not preaching the Gospel but the law. To answer this, I will say four things.
1. Jesus Christ was surely no legal preacher, yet he preached this very doctrine, for these are Christ’s own words. Preaching of hell and its torments cannot rightly be called legal preaching, since Jesus Christ, the minister of the new covenant, preached about hell more than anyone. It is worth noting that neither the apostles nor the evangelists preached as much about hell as Jesus Christ did. Christ has seven specific texts on hell and the torments of the damned that the apostles never had. So this is not legal preaching, since it is the doctrine of Jesus Christ himself.
2. It is a great strategy of the devil to lull people into security in their sins by branding all soul-searching preaching, all sin-reproving preaching, all conscience-awakening and duty-pressing preaching as “legal preaching.” It is the devil’s great strategy to attach so bad a name to so good a work.
3. If preaching of terror is legal preaching, then the law was preached more in the New Testament than it ever was under the Old. I will show this. There are more terrible and dreadful doctrines scattered through the New Testament than the Old. Chrysostom notes that the word “damnation” is never used in the entire Old Testament, but appears thirteen times in the New. It is further worth noting that in the Old Testament, though the word “hell” is often used, it most commonly refers to the grave rather than the place of the damned. In the New Testament, except in two places, “hell” is taken entirely as the place of the damned (Acts 2:27, 31). So it is plain to every eye that the Gospel is backed with more terror, and more doctrine of hell and damnation, than the law ever was. The preaching of the law has only “anathema,” but the Gospel has “maranatha” too.
So all who hold the Antinomian error, crying down the pressing of duty as legal preaching, deceive themselves badly, for Christ himself, the apostles, and the evangelists all preached more of terror than any of the prophets ever did.
4. As for the claim that preaching of terror is legal preaching, I say this: sermons of terror have done more good on unconverted souls than sermons of comfort ever have. Sermons of hell have kept many people out of hell. I have read often of Mr. Throgmorton, who was converted by a sermon of terror on the text, “How shall you escape the damnation to come?” I have heard of another famous divine who tells us he was converted by the text on Christ preaching to the spirits in prison. I have heard of Mr. Greenham, a famous minister, whose conversion and first calling came from hearing a sermon on the last judgment and the torments of the damned. I have read of other ancient authors. Jerome tells us of himself, “Whether I eat or drink,” he says, “I hear a voice sounding in my ears: arise, arise, you dead, and come to judgment.” That very sound converted him, and many others besides.
Beloved, God has sanctified doctrines of terror for the conversion of souls more than any other doctrine in the world. It is worth noting that John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ who prepared his way, preached as his very first sermon one of terror and coming wrath: “You generation of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” And the second sermon Christ ever preached was likewise a terrible sermon about hell. As Gregory says in his Morals, we must not flee sermons about hell if we wish to flee hell itself.
Second, some may object that while preaching of hell is lawful, preaching of Christ’s love and free grace makes for more winning subjects, doctrines better suited to build upon, and better able to refresh and cheer God’s people, winning more of people’s hearts than such terrible doctrines do. To this objection I ask you to consider five things in answer.
1. It is true that if all our hearers were converted, doctrines of grace, love, and comfort might best serve their edification. But since we deal with a mixed congregation, our doctrines must be mixed as well, or we will never do them good.
2. It is true that if all people’s natures were alike, all of a soft and tender disposition, all troubled in mind and under a sense of God’s wrath, we should preach only love and only grace to lift up their hearts, for a person’s character is better guided than dragged. But Scripture tells us that people’s tempers differ: some are of a soft disposition, others of a knotty and rough spirit; some will be won by mercy, others only by judgment. Since Scripture tells us that people’s tempers vary, our doctrines must vary too, sometimes of mercy, sometimes of judgment, so that as sermons of love win over soft hearts, doctrines of terror serve for hardened spirits. “On some have compassion, making a difference; and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating the garment spotted with the flesh” (Jude 1:22–23).
Some, the apostle says, you must treat with compassion, preaching love and kindness to them; but others you must save with fire, that is, by showing them hellfire and terrifying them with the fear of God’s wrath. Some people are more yielding and tender, and these must be dealt with gently. Others, who are more stubborn and hardened sinners, must be saved with fear, pulled out of the fire of hell. That is my second answer: some people’s natures are better led than dragged, while others are so stubborn and hardened that nothing but flashes of hellfire will startle their consciences.
3. To those who argue so much for doctrines of free grace and comforting truths, insisting that such points of terror should not be preached to them, I answer that human nature is more prone to abuse doctrines of free grace, though these must be preached in their season, than to abuse doctrines of terror and coming wrath. Jude tells us this: “They turn the grace of God into wantonness” (Jude 1:4). And the apostle Paul raised the objection, “Shall we sin because grace abounds? God forbid,” implying that some men made it their practice to abound in sin precisely because grace abounds.
4. How can a minister discharge his conscience before God, claiming to have preached the whole counsel of God to his people, if he runs only on strains of free grace, Christ’s love, and doctrines of comfort throughout his ministry? Doctrines of terror are also the will of God, and must be preached as much as doctrines of comfort.
5. Those who have cried so loudly for preaching only on love and free grace have, as some manage the matter, hardened more souls than they have ever converted by such sermons. For my part, beloved, I know of no one converted by these new teachers who claim more light than their brethren and claim to present Christ more clearly than their brethren. I do not see holiness shining in their lives above others. Meanwhile, I am certain that those who preached mixed doctrines, sometimes fear and sometimes love, sometimes wrath and sometimes grace, worked most powerfully on the consciences of their hearers. I have read of Mr. Hildersham, a minister at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, a most forceful preacher; it is said God gave his ministry more success in converting souls than to all the other ministers in the region combined. And when Paul preached a sermon of judgment to come, it made the heart of Felix tremble, even that great man’s heart trembled to hear of judgment.
Scripture shows that just as God had his Barnabases, sons of consolation, so he had his Boanergeses, sons of thunder, to make the stout hearts of people tremble. So, lest any misled heart should be carried away thinking all this legalistic, I judged it right to offer this defense before entering the subject. Remember the doctrine: the consideration that God has absolute power over men and women, to cast both into hell, should work in God’s own children an awful fear of God. In handling this dismal subject, I have fifteen questions to work through: first, whether there is a hell or not; second, why there must be a hell to receive the souls and bodies of wicked men; third, what this hell is; fourth, whether there are degrees of torment in hell, and so on.
Question 1: Whether there is a hell or not. To answer this, I will show it first from the confession of heathens, who had only the glimmerings of nature and never saw the Bible, and second from the testimony of Scripture.
1.) From the confession of heathens: though they could not know clearly, never having been acquainted with the word, yet by the glimmering light of nature they had some notions and impressions of this place of the damned. Virgil tells us, “The descent to Avernus is easy” (Virgil, Aeneid 6).
So they had a figure called Pluto, the chief ruler of hell, who especially tormented the most wicked. They had their Charon’s boat, a fancy that a man with a boat ferried wicked persons into hell, and they had their Etna, their burning mountain, which they imagined to be hell. They pictured hell as a continual rolling of stones upon dead bodies, along with many other fancies. Pluto himself carried many footsteps of the idea of hell. As one said, if a man suffers no punishment after death, he will still carry some sense of guilt within him, enough to torture and torment him. All these were merely human impressions of hell. But I will pass over these.
2.) Just as you have testimony from the heathen, you have this truth clearly from Scripture as well. Let me name a few texts. “I will kindle a fire in mine anger, and it shall burn to the lowest hell” (Deut 32:22). “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God” (Ps 9:17). “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest” (Ps 11:6). “Ye serpents and generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell?” (Matt 23:33). “He cast them down to hell. They are locked up in chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment” (2 Pet 2:4). “They are reserved in everlasting chains of darkness to the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6). All of this plainly proves that there is a hell.
Question 2: Why must there be a hell? This appears from the following demonstrations.
1.) Because of the filthy nature of sin. Sin is committed against an infinite God, and since the offense is infinite, the punishment must be infinite as well. But the punishment cannot be infinite on earth, because we remain here only a short while and our bodies rot in the grave. There must therefore necessarily be a hell to keep the bodies and souls of the wicked, so that they may receive punishment proportionate to the sins they committed on earth.
2.) Because otherwise the justice of God could never be satisfied for the sins wicked men committed on earth. The reasoning runs this way.
a) Christ would not satisfy and suffer God’s wrath on behalf of wicked men, so they must bear it themselves.
b) On earth they cannot satisfy God’s wrath, because sin, being an infinite offense, can only be punished finitely and temporarily here. So all their sufferings on earth cannot satisfy the wrath due for their sins. There must therefore necessarily be a hell to keep men through all eternity, so that by their everlasting torments God’s justice might be satisfied, which it could not otherwise be (2 Thess 1:5). As one has put it: divine justice requires that the wicked pay the penalties owed for their sins; and since this does not happen in this life, it will most certainly happen in the next.
3.) It appears there must be a hell from the horrors and terrors of conscience found in wicked men when they are dying. Many a man in good health will scoff at hell, scorn its fire, and mock its flames. Many a man in health never thinks of hell; he can drink one day, swear the next, commit adultery the third, and sin every day, and the thought of hell never troubles him. But bring this man to his sickbed, and what horrors and fears seize his soul! I would appeal from a healthy drunkard to that same man when dying, just as one appealed from King Philip drunk to King Philip sober, who then repealed his unjust act and gave the wronged man justice. You who by your sinning have spent your strength and wealth in drink, and never think of hell while drunk, I would appeal to you as a dying man and ask, what would you say then?
What would you then give for Christ? What would you then give for a pardon, that you might not be damned? The very horrors and wounds of conscience at your dying day demonstrate that a time of torment awaits you. How else could conscience become such a terrible torment to the souls of men at that hour, if no such thing as hell were prepared for them? What made the Roman emperors afraid of death, running under their beds in fear when it thundered? Only this: the very workings of conscience showed them that something awaited after this life. The very terrors of conscience declare there is a hell, a place of torment prepared for wicked men.
And thus, having finished these questions, the use I will make of them will be for condemnation and astonishment.
1. This is for condemnation, a condemnation of all who hold that there is no such thing as hell. The Photinians hold that there is no hell, and that what we call hell is merely the annihilation of the body, that man is reduced to nothing and no more. One author writes of fifteen sorts of heretics who deny a hell. Among them was one called Empecta, a view held by Barba, wife of the emperor Sigismund, who paid her followers money to hold this opinion, so that their consciences might be seared over in sensuality and lustful pleasure. As the saying goes, “Scarcely do children believe there are ghosts and underground kingdoms.” This truth condemns all who have seared their consciences so as to deny that there is a hell.
2. This is for astonishment. To whom? To all of you who add sin to sin, drunkenness to greed, and one provocation to another, as if there were neither a heaven for the godly nor a hell for you. You who are like Sardanapalus and say, “Eat, drink, play, for after death there is no pleasure,” meaning eat, drink, and be merry, for after death there is no pleasure and therefore no pain, and so while men live they should live as pleasurably and joyously as possible (Isa 28:19). O beloved, tremble, for if all these texts I have cited prove such a place exists, how should it astonish your soul that all the actions of your life have been but a race toward these chambers of death! All your life’s actions have been but a laying up of treasure in this place of torment. How should this astonish you, whose whole course leads only to this doleful dungeon of hell?
3. Though this is a terrible and dreadful doctrine, you who are the elect people of God may draw consolation from it. It is true there is a hell, and wicked men will unavoidably come to it, as John says: “You serpents and generation of vipers, how shall you escape the damnation of hell!” But all of you who are the elect of God are not only forewarned, you are also forearmed, and need not fear this place of hell. First, you need not fear the devil, that is, the torments of hell, because God shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. Though he now goes about like a roaring lion seeking his prey to devour, he shall soon be in chains and go abroad no more. Second, you need not fear the torments the damned undergo in hell.
Though there is a worm that never dies, a fire that never goes out, though there is weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, though the damned lie under the wrath of an incensed God, you may lift up your heads with joy, elect of God, for Jesus Christ is your redemption and your life. “He hath destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14). Because of this, you are delivered by Jesus Christ from the wrath to come (1 Thess 1:10). Here, then, is matter for joy: though there is a hell, and the wicked are tormented night and day, you are delivered by Jesus Christ from this wrath to come.
