It isn’t just backwoods fire-and-brimstone preachers who talk about Hell, you know. Isaiah’s vision of the new heavens and the new earth includes the eternal torment of those who have sinned against God, saying that “their worm does not die and their fire is not quenched.” And of course in His own teaching, Jesus underlined the truth of this prophecy, quoting from the last verse of Isaiah in verse 48.

So, given that Hell is real, how can we avoid it? Of course we need to trust in Jesus as our Savior, letting Him take the punishment that all our sins deserve – that’s the good news that Jesus and all His disciples preached, and Jesus alludes to such belief in verse 42. But He also taught us to repent, to turn away from our sin and to turn to God. And there are two particular kinds of sin that Jesus warns us against in this passage.

The first is obvious – causing others, especially young people, to stumble in their faith. But this isn’t just done by teaching the wrong things. We can cause others to doubt the truth of the gospel if we say all the right things about Jesus but then don’t live according to our words. After all, how many people have left the faith because of the hypocrisy they see among Christians?

And where it comes to living a consistent Christian life, Jesus says we must be willing to put all sin away from us, no matter how dear it may be, no matter how attached we are to it. Even if our sin is as close to us as the parts of our own body, we must turn away from it and from anything that is not in accordance with God’s will.

But doesn’t all this sound so extreme? I mean, how do we know that sin is such a big deal? How can we even be sure that Hell is real? Just look at the cross itself. Why would the very Son of God have had to die such a cruel death except to save us from our sins, to keep us from enduring such eternal torment? No, the only way the cross makes sense is as example of what all our sins deserve – the agony of eternal separation from God.

So today, let’s take sin and Hell as seriously as Jesus does. And let’s seek to follow Him more consistently for His sake, for others’ sake – and for our own sake as well.

Mark 9:42-48 (ESV)

42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.
44
45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.
46
47 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell,
48 ‘where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’