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Exhortation to Escape Hell | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to Reformed Thinking. I want to start today by asking
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you, the listener, a pretty strange question.
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Yeah, setting the stage right away.
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Right. So imagine a human being
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standing on the edge of this like crumbling Cliff.
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The wind is howling. The rocks are actively giving
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way beneath their boots. A completely lethal scenario.
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Absolutely lethal, but instead of stepping back they completely
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ignore the abyss just to pick up a single shiny penny sitting on
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the ledge. It makes absolutely zero sense.
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None. Why do humans so readily trade
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eternal safety for these, you know, fleeting momentary
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comforts? That is the big question.
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It is, and today we are doing a deep dive into the source
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material from one of the most sobering texts ever penned in
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the English language to answer it.
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We really are. We're looking at specific
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excerpts from Jonathan Edwards, a sermon Exhortation to Escape
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Hell. Yeah, which is basically the
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searing application section drawn from his broader mass of
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work, the Eternity of Hell torments.
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And we should acknowledge the gravity of this right up front.
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Oh, for sure. Modern sensibilities usually shy
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away from the doctrine of eternal conscious punishment.
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People want to soften the edges of divine justice.
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Right. Or just ignore the concept
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altogether. Like let's just talk about the
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love of God and completely omit his wrath.
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But Edwards? He just faces this terrifying
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reality head on. He does.
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He uses this relentless logic and intense sensory language not
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to manipulate, but to awaken his listeners.
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Yeah, to shatter human apathy. So let's unpack this text and
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look at the sheer scale of what he's communicating.
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Right, starting with the problem he identifies before we even
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touch the solution. The terrifying reality of human
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carelessness. Or that irrational carelessness
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sits right at the core of Reformed theology's
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understanding of human nature. Yeah, Edwards identifies what he
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calls the folly and madness of mankind.
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Folly and madness, That's a strong label.
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It is, but he points out the sheer irrationality of risking
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eternal torment for present momentary gratification.
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Like the penny on the Cliff? Precisely.
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People logically prefer a small pleasure, a little wealth or
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earthly honor that lasts for what, a fraction of a second?
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In the grand scheme of time? It's.
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Just a blip. A tiny blip compared to escaping
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infinite punishment. And he anchors this by quoting
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Mark chapter 8, verse 37. What shall it profit a man if he
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shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
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Yeah, that's the one. What's striking about his
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analysis is that this carelessness, it spans all
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demographics. He doesn't let anyone off the
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hook. No, he specifically calls out
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youth, middle-aged folks and those advancing years nearing
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the grave. People living completely at
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rest, you know, eating, drinking, planning their
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futures. While hanging over eternal
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burnings by a fragile thread. A thread that could break at any
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moment without warning. OK, so analyzing this through a
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strict reformed lens, what we're really seeing is the blinding
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nature of sin. Absolutely.
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The Westminster Confession speaks clearly about the total
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depravity of man. Chapter 6 I believe.
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Yeah, noting we are wholly defiled in all the parts and
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faculties of soul and body, including the mind.
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So sin makes humanity totally irrational.
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It breaks our risk assessment mechanisms entirely.
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Yes, think about it in a physical sense.
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If you see a predator charging at you, your brain releases
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adrenaline. Your pupils dilate, you run
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away, you perceive the danger. But in the spiritual realm, the
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noetic effects of the fall, the way sin corrupts our cognitive
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reasoning, mean our natural default is to suppress the
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truth. We suppress it in
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unrighteousness. We see the infinite danger of
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divine wrath, but the sinful mind just filters it out as
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irrelevant. We prioritize a tiny bit of
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earthly wealth over everlasting security.
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It's the psychological denial of death.
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Edwards notes that even when people do take pains for a
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little while to care about eternity, they stop.
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Right. Maybe after a severe illness or
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a friend dies, they think about it, but they soon leave off.
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Something else takes up their thoughts.
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Our capacity for distraction is our own worst enemy.
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We build these massive psychological defense mechanisms
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to keep the thought of that fragile thread out of our daily
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consciousness. That structurally corrupted mind
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really explains behavior that otherwise makes zero sense.
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Like your Cliff analogy? Yeah, risking A fatal plunge for
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a single cent. Any rational person would scream
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at you to step back. But to the person on the ledge,
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the penny is the only thing with gravity.
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That's the folly in madness. But I want to challenge you on a
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specific demographic point Edwards makes.
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OK, go for it. Why is it that the closer people
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draw to the grave those advanced in years, they often double down
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on those truthfully distractions?
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It is a strange phenomenon. Right, you'd logically assume
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that as the reality of death becomes undeniable, a person
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would naturally turn their eyes toward eternity.
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Because the distractions of youth are fading.
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Exactly. The end is objective, linear.
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Yet Edwards observes the opposite.
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Older individuals often grip their temporal wealth even
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tighter. With a Jesper hold.
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What is the theological mechanism behind this
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calcification? Why doesn't the human heart
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naturally soften? Well, the answer lies in the
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habituation of sin. It's the progressive hardening
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of the human heart over time. So it gets worse, not better,
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Yes. In Reformed thought, unless the
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Holy Spirit regenerates the heart, the natural man
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calcifies. Decades of prioritizing the
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shiny penny creates deep grooves in the soul.
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Every single time an unregenerate person chooses
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momentary comfort over eternal realities, they reinforce A
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lifelong pattern. A neurological and spiritual
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pattern of suppressing the truth.
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The Westminster Confession teaches that those who are not
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elect are left to the blindness of their minds.
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And the hardness of their hearts.
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By the time someone has advanced in years, they've spent half a
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century building fortresses against God's judgment.
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They've trained themselves to be distracted experts at ignoring
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the howling wind. And earthly honors and wealth
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usually accumulate late in life, so the stakes of letting go feel
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substantially higher to them. Because it represents their
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whole life's work. Right, they lack any spiritual
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category for eternal security, so they grip the temporal world
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with white knuckles. Letting go would mean admitting
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their existence was spent chasing wind, the sunk cost
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fallacy of the soul. That's a great way to put it.
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And this leads directly to why human carelessness is so
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shocking to Edwards. Because of what awaits at the
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bottom of that fragile thread. He forces the reader to
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calculate the sheer scale of forever, the arithmetic of
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eternity. Oh man, the math he uses adding
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age to age, thousands to thousands.
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He describes a state where physical and spiritual torment
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involves wailing, shrieking, racking pain.
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Gnashing of teeth, dreadful grief.
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And he points out with terrifying clarity that there is
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0 possibility of ease. No pity from God, no hiding.
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No diverting of thoughts and absolutely no mitigation.
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He argues that a man experiencing a sharp pain in one
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single body part forever would have a vastly more lively
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impression of eternity. And that hell multiplies this
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effect immensely. Theologically, what he's
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describing is the complete and total withdrawal of common
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grace. We really need to define common
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grace for you listening to grasp this.
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Good point. On earth, even the most wicked
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person experiences the goodness of God through mitigation.
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God causes his son to rise on the evil and the.
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A cool drink of water, A moment of sleep, a change of posture to
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relieve an aching muscle. A distracting thought, beautiful
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sunset, the laughter of a friend.
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These are all unmerited graces. Mitigations of the curse.
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But in the State of Reprobation Edwards describes, all
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mitigation is stripped away entirely.
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The Sinner is left with nothing but the unshielded, unmitigated
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justice of God. Which brings us back to that
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sharp pain analogy. Yeah, that analogy strikes such
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a visceral chord. Think about having a severe
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infected toothache. Just a tiny localized infection
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in a few millimeters of your jawbone.
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Right when you have a truly agonizing toothache, it consumes
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your entire reality. You can't sleep.
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You can't hold the conversation. You can't enjoy a meal.
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The pain becomes your universe. And time dilates terribly.
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Lying awake at 3:00 in the morning with a throbbing tooth
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makes 10 minutes feel like 10 hours.
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Your entire conscious existence is reduced to a single desire
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for the pain to stop. Now Edwards takes that localized
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finite experience and expands it mathematically.
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Imagine that toothache never, ever stopping.
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Not tomorrow, not next year, not in 1000 years.
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And then he extends that racking agony to every single member of
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the body and soul, stripping away the painkillers, the sleep,
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everything. It is a heavy thought.
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It is, but I have to push back here, or at least play devil's
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advocate for a modern listener. Sure, go ahead.
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When reading the source text, a contemporary audience might
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accuse Edwards of cheap sensationalism.
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People say that a lot. Is he using this visceral,
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terrifying sensory language just to scare people into
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psychological submission, like an early American scare tactic?
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I hear that criticism frequently.
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Or is he actually forcing A strict logical reckoning with
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the mathematics of an infinite timeline?
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It feels like he's trying to overload the human imagination.
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Well, that accusation of sensationalism is levelled
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against Puritan preachers constantly.
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But looking closely at the text and Reformed dogmatics, his goal
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is strict theological precision. So logical reckoning, not
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manipulation. Right.
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Edwards was a logician and a philosopher of the highest
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order. He's not trying to conjure a
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gothic Horror Story. He's trying to describe a
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factual reality using the severely limited tools of human
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vocabulary. The logic flows like this, if
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God is infinite in His Holiness, and sin is a crime committed
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against that infinite majesty. Then the punishment must
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correlate to the dignity of the one offended.
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Therefore, the punishment must be infinite.
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Edwards is forcing the listener to do the agonizing math.
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Because humans naturally think in finite, highly restricted
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terms. We think in days, weeks, months.
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We plan for a 30 year retirement.
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We cannot natively comprehend an endless timeline.
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So by using phrases like thousands to thousands, he's
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trying to break the listener out of their finite framework.
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He is arguing that if the punishment is truly infinite,
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the no temporary torment you've ever experienced is anything in
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comparison. He's aligning human perception
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with divine reality. The terror the listener feels is
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simply a byproduct of the facts. If the facts are terrifying,
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then terror is the only rational response, right?
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And this brings us to the transition from the physical to
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the psychological. Right, because it's not just the
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unending duration of the physical pain that makes it
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unbearable. It's the mental weight of
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knowing it will never end. Edwards moves into the agony of
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absolute despair. He defines despair in hell as
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knowing assuredly that you will never be delivered, having
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absolutely no hope. He writes that the dam would
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wish to be turned into nothing, or even into a serpent, but have
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no hope of it. And he uses this crushing
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astronomical illustration. After wearing out the age of the
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sun, moon and stars, a person is not one whit nearer to the end.
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The damned are perpetually amazed and swallowed up by two
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infinites. The two infinites.
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Yes, an infinite God seen as a perfect, irreconcilable enemy,
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and the infinite duration of their torment.
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To analyze this, we really have to look at the mechanics of
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despair. Let's do that.
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Hope is a forward-looking expectation of relief.
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It's the psychological engine that allows human beings to
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endure trauma. Historical and psychological
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studies consistently show that when prisoners of war lose the
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hope of rescue, their physical bodies rapidly shut down.
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Hope is the oxygen of the human will.
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When you remove hope entirely, the mind collapses into absolute
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suffocating despair. Furthermore, the concept of God
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as an irreconcilable enemy is terrifying.
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Especially contrasted with the Reformed understanding of God as
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a loving father to the elect. For the reprobate, God's
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omnipresence becomes the very source of their terror.
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They are not separated from God in the sense of his absence.
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God is omnipresent. They are separated from His
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love, but they are intimately, eternally present with His act
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of justice. And that psychological aspect,
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the suffocating absence of hope, is far more terrifying than the
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physical descriptions. I think so too.
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To connect this to the bigger picture.
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It's like a cosmic clock. OK, layout the clock analogy.
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Imagine a clock that ticks away the entire lifespan of a * star,
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ignites, burns its hydrogen for billions of years.
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Slowly exhausts its fuel. Swells into a red giant,
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collapses into a white dwarf, and finally fades into absolute
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cold darkness. A.
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Massive span of time. But all of those billions of
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years represent just one single second on this cosmic clock.
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Wow. And when that clock finally
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strikes midnight after trillions of millennia, it just resets to
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0 over and over. Without making a single dent in
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the timeline of eternity. You are, as Edwards says, not
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one Whitney. Nearer to the end, that thought
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alone induces severe psychological Vertigo.
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It breaks the brains ability to process reality.
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But I want to zero in on a very specific, fascinating detail
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from the text. The part about the serpent, yes.
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Edward says the damned would wish to be turned into nothing,
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or even into a creeping serpent. It's striking image.
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Doesn't this directly challenge the modern philosophical
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assumption that existence itself is always an inherent good?
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Absolutely. In our modern secular worldview,
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we prize consciousness above almost everything else.
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We fight for survival at all costs.
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The preservation of conscious life is our highest ethical
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mandate. Yet here Edwards posits a
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scenario where non existence, or even a subhuman existence as a
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reptile is a desperately desired upgrade.
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It turns our entire hierarchy of being completely upside down.
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It does. How does Reformed theology make
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sense of someone wishing to forfeit their humanity?
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Well, it overturns the classical assumption that being is
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inherently better than non being.
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In the state of unmitigated divine judgement, existence
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ceases to be a blessing and becomes the vehicle of the
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curse. The desire to be a serpent
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highlights the unbearable weight of bearing the image of God
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while totally alienated from the grace of God.
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Think about what separates humans from animals.
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We possess A rational soul. We have consciousness, moral
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awareness, memory, the capacity to contemplate eternity.
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A serpent does not possess these faculties.
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A serpent can't comprehend the concept of forever.
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It can't feel the moral weight of divine justice.
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It has no conscience to accuse it, and no forward-looking dread
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of spiritual despair. Therefore to.
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Become a serpent would be an immense relief to the damned.
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It would means shedding the rational faculties that allow
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them to comprehend the two infinites.
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Because the damned possess perfect human consciousness,
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total memory of their earthly lives.
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And the gospel offers they rejected, plus an acute, searing
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awareness of God's infinite majesty.
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But they experience all of this purely through the lens of His
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wrath. The very faculties that were
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designed to allow them to enjoy God forever are now the
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instruments that allow them to comprehend their loss forever.
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And this bleak, terrifying reality presents a massive
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compounding debt that humanity owes to God's justice.
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Which brings us to the core of Edwards's theological argument.
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The mechanics of how this infinite debt is handled.
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Edwards lays out the strict economic reality of divine
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justice. He states clearly that the
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Sinner in hell will never pay the whole debt owed to God.
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Furthermore, they cannot even pay a part that bears any
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proportion to the whole. Therefore, justice is never
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actually satisfied in a sinner's damnation.
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This is a vital cornerstone of reformed thought.
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Hell is not a temporary purgatory where you work off
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your debt through suffering. Because the sin is committed
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against an infinitely holy God, the debt incurred is infinite.
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Since a finite being, a human can only pay out the debt over
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time, the payment is ongoing forever.
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Thus, Dodd's justice remains perpetually active, always
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extracting payment but never finalized.
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Never closed and never fully satisfied in the reprobate, the
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Ledger remains permanently open. Framing this as an economic
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crisis makes the abstract theological concept incredibly
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concrete for you as a listener. It's highly related.
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Think about your own bank account.
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Imagine trying to pay off an infinitely compounding trillion
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dollar loan by handing the bank a fraction of a penny each day.
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You can sacrifice. You can scrape together that
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fraction of a. Pen and you can pay every single
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day for a billion years, but because the principal is
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infinite and the interest keeps compounding.
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The total amount owed never actually shrinks.
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You are mathematically trapped. The balance never reaches 0.
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The bank is always collecting, but the debt is never cleared.
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That's the terrifying reality of it.
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But wait, let me stop and ask a structural question about this
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system, because this seems like a massive theological dilemma.
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OK, what's the dilemma? If eternal damnation never
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actually satisfies God's justice fully because the Sinner is
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finite and can never finalize the payment, doesn't that mean
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there has to be a vastly superior way for divine justice
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to be met? I see where you're going.
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If God's glory demands that his justice be perfectly and fully
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satisfied, and hell never actually finishes the job, it
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seems like the eternal punishment of the finite center
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is an imperfect solution. It feels like there must be a
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mechanism somewhere in the universe where the debt is
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actually paid in full. Where the Ledger is actually
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closed and where God's justice can declare enough.
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You've identified the exact theological dilemma that drives
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the entire gospel. It's the glorious heart of the
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Reformed doctrine of. That precise economic and
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judicial dilemma leads directly to the only logical and
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theological solution provided in Edwards text.
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Edwards pivot sharply from the terror of hell to his main
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exhortation. Flee and embrace Jesus Christ.
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He explains that Christ came for the very end of saving sinners
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from this exact unpayable debt. He paid the whole debt due to
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the divine law. Edwards uses this magnificent
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Rady phrase here. Christ exhausted eternal
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sufferings in temporal sufferings.
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This method, Edwards argues, is perfectly consistent with God's
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glory. In fact, he insists it brings
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more glory to God than the sinner's eternal punishment.
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Because in Christ, justice is actually and completely
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satisfied. He is accepted by the Father and
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believers are justified in him. Let's unpack the doctrine of
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penal substitutionary atonement here.
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It's the beating heart of the Westminster Confession.
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Edwards is dealing with the mathematics of the cross.
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How can a few hours of physical and spiritual suffering on a
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Friday afternoon outside Jerusalem equal billions of
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years of eternal torment for multitudes of sinners?
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The answer lies in the nature of the substitute.
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Because Christ is the God man, possessing an infinite divine
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nature, united perfectly to a human nature in one person.
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The hypostatic union, yes. His worth is infinite, therefore
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the suffering he endures possesses infinite value.
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A finite human requires infinite time to pay an infinite debt.
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But an infinite being can absorb, concentrate and
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completely exhaust and infinite punishment within a finite
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temporal period. This is the breathtaking
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theological concept. God is glorified more in the
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salvation of a Sinner through Christ than in their damnation.
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In damnation, the debt is always being paid but never finished.
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Justice is always working, but never resting.
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But on the cross, Christ cried out.
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It is finished. The Greek word tetaleste, an
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accounting term meaning paid in full.
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The Ledger is closed, the infinite debt is fully cleared,
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and divine justice is completely, perfectly satisfied.
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That completely reframes the entire discussion.
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It shifts it from a landscape of terror to 1 of staggering grace.
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To expand on the economic analogy we were using.
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It's not just a loan forgiveness program where the bank just
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waves a magic wand. Ignores the rule of law and
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pretends the debt doesn't exist. Justice does not allow for a
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legitimate debt to simply vanish into thin air.
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A penalty must be paid. Instead, it is as if a judicial
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singularity occurs. It's as if an entity of infinite
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wealth steps in and pays the infinite debt in one single
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massive reality altering transaction.
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Satisfying the bank completely. The capital is actually
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transferred. The penalty is actually paid.
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Drop for drop. But I have to ask, how does
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understanding Christ sacrifice in these strict satisfaction of
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justice terms alter the way a believer views their own
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salvation? When you view the cross as an
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exact economic and judicial payment of wrath, it completely
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removes any room for human effort, doesn't it?
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It absolutely mandates total humility.
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If Christ paid the infinite debt completely, what could you or I
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possibly add to it? Handing God my own good works,
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my church attendance, or my moral behavior would be like
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trying to hand the Creator of the universe a dirty penny after
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going to he just paid off an infinitely compounding mortgage.
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That's a great image. It seems like this specific view
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of the atonement totally annihilates any system of works
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righteousness. Or synergism.
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Or human merit in reformed theology we hold strictly to
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monarchism. The belief that God alone
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accomplishes salvation from beginning to end.
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The Westminster Confession chapters on justification and
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the mediator articulate this with incredible precision.
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If Christ truly exhausted the eternal sufferings, then to
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suggest we must add our own merits to Karis, His finished
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work is not just arrogant. It is a blasphemous denial of
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the sufficiency of the cross. It's telling God that the blood
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of his Son was insufficient to clear the Ledger.
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If you owe an infinite debt and an infinite Christ pays it in
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full, there's literally nothing left for you to pay.
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The scales of justice demand nothing more from you.
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Your good works, as the prophet Isaiah says, are like filthy
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rags in the context of justification.
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They are the necessary fruit of salvation.
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Absolutely. A justified person will live a
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changed life. But those works contribute
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nothing to the payment of the debt.
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Edwards is showing his listeners that escaping hell is not a
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matter of trying harder to be a good person.
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It's a matter of fleeing the crumbling Cliff entirely and
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throwing yourself upon the only person who possesses the
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infinite capital required to settle your account.
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And this clearing of the debt doesn't just return the Sinner
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to a neutral 0 balance state. It catapults them into an
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entirely new eternal reality. Edwards outlines the symmetry of
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eternity. Through Christ, believers
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inherit inconceivable blessedness and glory that will
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be of equal duration with the torments of hell.
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Just as the wicked go into everlasting punishment, those
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who trust in Christ go into life eternal.
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Edwards urges immediate action. He says it may be before this
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year, this month or this week is at an end before another
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Sabbath. He then quotes the Puritan
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William Bates as the glory of heaven cannot be fully
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understood until enjoyed, so the torments of hell cannot be
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comprehended until felt. We see the exact same infinite
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timeline that makes hell so dreadful is what makes heaven so
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glorious. And we see Edwards's pastoral
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urgency. He brings the infinite scale,
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the ages of the sun, moon and stars crashing back down to the
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present calendar. He's speaking to people sitting
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in the wooden pews of his church, telling them that the
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fragile thread holding them out of the fire could break this
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very week. Before they have the opportunity
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to sit and hear another sermon. That urgency is palpable.
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He scales from the infinite mind bending ages of the cosmos right
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down to this coming Sunday morning.
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It's a jarring, highly effective shift in perspective.
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It forces a listener to look at their own life, their own weak,
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their own fragile heartbeat. But I want to bring up that
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William Bates quote you mentioned.
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The one about not comprehending it until it's felt.
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Yeah, because it challenges the very limits of human language.
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Bates says that neither heaven nor hell can be comprehended
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until they are experienced. Edwards just spent all this time
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using the most intense, visceral words available in the English
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language to describe eternity. He used compounding mathematical
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concepts, sensory of racking pain and psychological
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illustrations of absolute crushing despair.
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Yet, Base argues, we cannot truly grasp.
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It Does this mean all our theology, all our deep
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intellectual thinking, and all of Edwards's vivid, terrifying
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descriptions are just shadows of the true reality?
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Are we? Basically trying to explain the
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concept of color to someone who's been blind since birth.
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That is a highly accurate way to frame the limitation of human
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language. The Reformed tradition, relying
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on figures like John Kelly Calvin often speaks of God
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lisping to us. Speaking to us like a parent
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baby talks to an infant. Human language bound by time,
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space, and finite experience is fundamentally insufficient to
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fully capture eternal realities. Edwards pushed language to its
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absolute breaking point in this exhortation.
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Stretching vocabulary to its maximal elasticity to awaken his
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congregation. But even then, as Bates points
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out, it falls drastically short. The descriptions of physical
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torment, the toothache analogy, the psychological despair, the
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cosmic, they are all true. But they are analogous to a
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reality that is vastly more intense than human words can
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convey. A shadow is a true
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representation of an object, but it lacks the weight, texture and
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dimension of the object itself. The same limitation applies to
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the glory of heaven. We use biblical words like
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streets of gold or pearly gates. But those are finite earthly
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temporal treasures used to hint at an infinite divine immaterial
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joy. The theology provides a true and
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accurate framework. We know the mechanisms of
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justice and grace. But the experiential reality of
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both states will completely shatter our current paradigms.
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This is why Edwards's urgency is so entirely justified.
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If the linguistic shadows of wrath are this terrifying, the
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reality will be unbearable. And if the promises of the
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gospel are this beautiful in shadow, the reality of seeing
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Christ face to face will be unimaginably glorious.
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Let's pull all these threads together and summarize the
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progression of the source text we've been analyzing today in
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this deep dive into the source material.
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We began by looking at the utter madness of human apathy.
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The irrational, cognitively broken choice to prioritize
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fleeting earthly comforts while hanging by a fragile thread over
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infinite danger. We examined how sin blinds the
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mind to risk. We then moved into the
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terrifying arithmetic of eternity.
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Where time compounds infinitely without any mitigation relief
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for common grace. We analyzed the psychological
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agony of absolute. The horror of being crushed
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between the infinite wrath of God and the infinite duration of
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the punishment. Where non existence would be a
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mercy. From there, we looked at the
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strict economics of divine justice.
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Recognizing that a finite Sinner can never pay an infinite debt.
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Meaning justice is active but never actually satisfied in
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hell. And finally, we arrived at the
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glorious logical solution. Jesus Christ, the infinite God
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man who stepped in to pay the whole debt.
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Exhausting eternal sufferings and temporal ones.
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Thereby perfectly satisfying find justice and securing an
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eternity of inconceivable blessedness for all who flee to
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Him. As we wrap up this deep dive
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into the source material, we really want to speak directly to
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you, the listener. The weight of Edwards's
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exhortation is not a historical artifact meant for 18th century
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audiences. It is a present reality
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demanding a response today. The fragile thread he spoke of
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is the very breath in your lungs right now.
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But we want to leave you with a final thought to ponder.
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Building strictly on the theological mechanics of the
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text we discussed today. Edwards argues that Christ's
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temporal suffering exhausted an eternal debt.
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Think about what that implies concerning the sheer magnitude
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of Christ's agony on the cross. If he took upon himself the
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compounding wrath, the wailing, the absolute despair, and the
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infinite punishment meant for multitudes of sinners across
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millions of ages. And compressed all of that
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infinite justice into a few short hours in the darkness
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outside Jerusalem. In the physical pain of
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crucifixion, the nails driven through flesh, the crown of
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thorns, the slow suffocation was likely the absolute least of
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what he endured. The physical cross was just the
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altar. The spiritual agony of bearing
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the concentrated, unmitigated wrath of the infinite God is a
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terror we can scarcely imagine. Yet he drank that cup to the
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dregs so that the Ledger could be closed forever.
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Thank you for joining us for this deep dive into the source
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material. We look forward to having you
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with us next time on Reformed Thinking.