Luke 16:26 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 16:26

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Furthermore, what the rich man has asked for is impossible. ‘And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.’ The word ‘you’ is plural; there are many others with the rich man in hell. Even if Abrham had wanted to come and relieve the rich man, he could not. God has ensured that none can cross over either way. The Greek word for gulf is the same as our English word chasm. No one can go from hell to heaven once life is ended, neither can they cross over from heaven to hell. What is the nature of this great chasm? It could be described as a theological chasm, but it is very real. Only one has ever crossed that chasm, that gulf. It is the chasm that Jesus Christ crossed when he made an atonement for sin, and none but he could ever cross it. If we have not come to him before we leave this world, and received the benefit of his redeeming work, we are left on the wrong side of that gulf. Even all eternity will not be enough to find a way to cross it, because the justice of God stands in the way. The justice of God demands that the sinner pay for his sin, even to the last penny, and sin is a crime that demands an eternal punishment. Christ crossed that gulf, and he took his people over it with him, when he became the substitute for his people, their surety, and suffered the compressed punishment for all the sins of all his people in those hours on the cross. The Father poured out in him, not a token punishment, but the full punishment we deserve, until justice could ask for no more. He alone could bear the combined punishment of them all. He could do so in a period less than eternity because his divine nature upheld his human nature through that terrible ordeal. None other could bear it without spending eternity in hell. He has suffered an eternity of woe and lived. He emerged from hell when on the cross he uttered the words ‘it is finished’. He has died that we do not need to die. That is the measure of his love. Those who died and pass into hell, find that Christ is never going to repeat his saving work and come back for them. They are left alone to bear their sin. They cannot bear a compressed punishment to shorten eternity. Only he could do that.

Application

This is the day of grace. This is the day of opportunity. This is when we can turn to a loving God. This is when we can have our sins washed away. This is when we can turn to Christ and receive the benefits of his suffering and dying on Calvary's cross.

There is no love in hell, there is no friendship, there is no tenderness; there are no smiles, no laughter. Do you laugh away your life, laughing at coarse things, superficial things, filthy things? Do you sneer at God, sneer at the faith, turn everything into a laugh. But there's no laughter in hell; there's nothing of God, nothing good, only fear and hatred and suffering.

Once you pass into eternity, you stand before Christ not as Saviour, but as judge. You've left it too late. A great horror and fear will grip your soul. You will hear no more gospel. Those promises which you could once have trusted in and embraced, will be withdrawn from you. They were God’s genuine invitation to your soul; if you had responded, you would have received forgiveness, your greatest need. Salvation was offered to you and Christ pleaded with you to come to him. You could have come and you would not have been turned away, no matter how wretched your life was. You only have one lifetime, and you must respond in that lifetime. We do not return to this world after we leave it. That is a fiction men tell themselves to stifle the fear of death.

You will never again hear the earnest appeals of a preacher or of a Christian friend or of Christian parents, or a converted husband or wife. You will hear no more appeals turn to the Lord, to repent of your sin, to believe in Christ so that he will freely forgive you. There will be no more movement of the Spirit in your heart urging you to come to Jesus Christ. You will only hear the voice of the judge sending you into that terrible, terrible place. You will know it is deserved. You repudiated him, and now he has rejected you. Is your heart as hard as this?

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Luke 16:26 Commentary and Bible Study