God’s judgment of the wicked is fearful but it is just. Christ’s teaching on the nature of hell is repeated often enough in sufficiently clear terms for us to be left in no doubt about its reality. Hell is a place of both physical and spiritual punishment, affecting all of man’s being. There is no deliverance from hell except that deliverance that can be obtained through the gospel in this life, by trusting in the Saviour who has himself gone to hell and suffered its torments in the place of his people. But for those who have left it too late to repent, there is no remedy, so that it becomes the matter of the greatest urgency that men make their peace with God before they die, for once a person is cast body and soul into hell (Matthew 10:28), the door is closed for all eternity; no repentance or reform is possible. The unredeemed character with which a man enters hell is his same character for ever. No improvement is possible and God will never change his mind about placing him there. He will not begin to feel after a thousand years that he has suffered enough, because sin deserves an everlasting punishment, being committed against an infinitely holy God. Existence is sustained by God to allow men to experience the pains of hell but without any prospect of release. Hell is a place where the justice is God is satisfied. There is only one other way in which justice can be satisfied and that is through the cross where Christ made an atonement for sin, taking on himself the same punishment that we would have borne in hell.
But for the righteous the future is altogether different. This sermon on future things cannot end with hell, for our God is one who must bring good out of this fallen world. The righteous – those who have been given the imputed righteousness of Christ and who have been sanctified by the Spirit over their lifetimes – have eternal uninterrupted joys to look forward to. Though they were once themselves lost sinners and do not deserve heaven any more than the ungodly, they accept the election of God which has fixed his love on them and do not feel guilt at their favoured status. They see the work of God that has transformed them into those with entirely different characters. This has been done to prepare them to live in the closest possible relationship that a creature can have with their Creator. It is because of them that the world was created and the fall was allowed to take place; it is so that God should inhabit heaven with those who have been redeemed from death and hell in the brightest possible exhibition of his grace through Jesus Christ to men, angels and all creation in the ages to come.