The Lostness of Man

The Lostness of Man — One Motivation for Evangelism

In any consideration of evangelism and missions, the starting point ought to be to ascertain why they are necessary. 

It is common for evangelicals to say that evangelism and missions are necessary because man is lost; that we engage in evangelism to rescue, to save him. There is, however, a general inability to affirm (1) the source of our knowledge of man’s lostness, (2) lost man’s present state, (3) lost man’s intermediate state, and (4) lost man’s resurrection state. The purpose of this paper is to clarify these points. 

I. The Source of Our Knowledge of Man’s Lostness

Our knowledge of man’s lostness is derived from the Bible. It is an article of faith. It cannot be established or deduced inductively or deductively. It cannot be found by investigating philosophy, by reasoning, or by research. God Himself reveals it in His Word, and only in His light can it be perceived. It is one of the things of God’s Spirit which the natural man doesn’t receive (I Corinthians 2:14). Man with his darkened understanding is not capable of this awareness by his own reasoning (Ephesians 4:18). We come by its knowledge through revelation. Indeed, everything depends upon the Supreme Revelator Jesus Christ; for what we believe about Him, who He is, and what He teaches will ultimately determine our concept of man and his condition. 

Who, then, is Jesus Christ? John, the Apostle, writes: 

“The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

“Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

“Jesus said unto him, ​“I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

The King of Truth, Jesus Christ, clearly taught the Bible’s divine inspiration, impregnable truth, and complete authority. He declares, ​“Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law…” (Matthew 5:18). Similarly, in Luke 16:17 He adds that it is impossible for one particle of the Law to be set aside as void. Further, He rebukes His disciples for not believing all that the prophets had spoken (Luke 24:25). In an argument with the Jews He emphasized that Scripture cannot be broken, dissolved, or discarded (John 10:34,35).

“This testimony of Jesus Christ validates directly the Old Testament, but indirectly it includes the New Testament as well. Our Lord constituted His disciples as His witnesses who should follow Him. He promised to guide them into all truth (John 16:13). He assured them of confirming signs of their apostolic authority in predictive prophecy and miracles. After His death and resurrection, His apostles claimed to represent their Lord and to have the right to speak with authority in the Church of Christ (Galatians 1 – 2). Their claims were confirmed by diverse miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 2:4).” (Kenneth B. Kantzer) 

Since the question of man’s lostness is an article of biblical faith, we go back to the basic question, ​“What do we think about Christ?” Do we accept Him as the King of Truth? Do we accept His position on the inspiration and authority of Scripture? If we do accept Him as Truth, to be consistent we must necessarily accept and submit to His teachings and those of the fully attested Word on this so-important subject of man’s lostness. If Jesus Christ is Saviour and Lord and Truth, we are shut up to the position that He exercises His lordship over us by enjoining the Bible on us as the means of learning His will and, further, that His teachings have complete, final, and binding authority over the life and thought of every disciple. Conversely, to accept Christ as sovereign Lord and Supreme Teacher and at the same time reject His teaching about the Bible and about man is grossly inconsistent. It manifestly makes Jesus out a colossal liar. Indeed, ​“the strongest support of the doctrine of Endless Punishment is the teaching of Christ, the Redeemer of Man … Jesus is the person who is responsible for the doctrine of Eternal Perdition. He is the Being with whom all opponents of this theological tenet are in conflict.“1 On this account we accept without equivocation the Bible’s presentation of man’s condition. We require no other validation. On the basis that Jesus is Lord and TRUTH, we accept the Word as our only but completely authoritative and trustworthy source of Knowledge about man. 

II. Lost Man’s Present State

Jesus said that man is lost, like lost sheep for which the shepherd searches in the thorny wilderness. He has severed himself from the one who was his guide; removed himself from the fold; gone his own way; and became lost. He is devoid of bearings and without any homing instinct (Luke 15:4 – 7).

Again, Jesus pictures man as lost – like the patient whom the doctor gives up; worse, like a criminal on whom the sentence of death is carried out. In other instances, Jesus thus presents man as going astray and being condemned; lost in such a way that it requires more than that he be found – he must be saved and awakened to eternal life. And the whole of Jesus’ mission was to find man, rectify man’s acts, and place him in the right path. He came for this purpose.

Jesus, the King of Truth, taught that His mission to earth was ​“to seek and to save that which is lost” (Luke 19:10). Indeed, His mission cannot be defined without speaking of man as being lost.

1. Man is alienated from God. There can be no doubt that Jesus had the same concept of man as is set forth in Genesis 3 where are found in embryo almost all the great doctrines about man’s plight which appear in the remaining portion of the Bible. One writer has summarized it as follows:

“Here we find the divine explanation of the present fall and ruined condition of our race. Here we learn of the subtle devices of our enemy, the devil. Here we behold the utter powerlessness of man to walk in the path of righteousness when divine grace is withheld from him. Here we discover the spiritual effects of sin – man seeking to flee from God. Here we discern the attitude of God toward the sinner. Here we mark the universal tendency of human nature to cover its own moral shame by a device of man’s own handiwork.”

1. W. G. T. Shedd, quote in BIBLIOTHECASACRA, January-March, 1973, Vol. 130, No. 517, p6

2. Man practices wickedness, and is wicked. By their sin Adam and Eve detached themselves from God. They became sinners. They and their posterity became full of sin, the principles and acts of sin. ​“God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). Two things are here laid to man’s charge. First, he practices wickedness, great wickedness. I understand this to mean wickedness of his life, for it is plainly distinguished from the wickedness of his heart. Man had made – and continues to make – the earth a sink of sin, a stage on which he acts his wickedness in defiance of heaven. Secondly, ​“every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” All of man’s wicked practices are here traced to the fountain and spring: a corrupt heart was the source of it all. The soul which was made upright in all its faculties is now wholly disordered. It is a heart that is the reverse of what it originally was. It is a forge of evil imaginations, a pool of inordinate affections, and a storehouse of all impiety. Whatever the ​“imagination of the thoughts” frames by thinking – such as judgements, choices, purposes, devices, desires – is only evil. The frame, make, or mould is continually so. It means evil is ingrained in his heart, interwoven in his very nature, sunk into the marrow of his soul.

3. He is totally depraved. Thus, from the beginning, man is presented as totally corrupt in every part – in all his faculties, in all the principles of his nature, his understanding, his will, and in all his disposition and affections. His head, his heart, are totally depraved; and all his senses are only instruments of sin. All his senses of seeing, hearing, and tasting are only inlets and outlets of sin – channels of corruption. There is nothing but sin, no good at all.

Isaiah and Paul confirm this view of man’s condition when they state:

“The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it” (Isaiah 1:5, 6)

“We all are as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags”(Isaiah 64:6)

“In me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing”(Romans 7:18).

“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God… they are foolishness unto him” (I Corinthians 2:14).

“They … cannot please God” (Romans 8:8).

“There is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Romans 3:12).

These texts are indicative of a whole line of divine revelations about man which may be summed up in the Old Testament phrase: ​“The heart is deceitful above all things, and incurably sick” (Jeremiah 17:9, Hebrew).

The Bible does not mean to say there is no good in man from man’s point of view, but that there is no good in man from God’s point of view. Man in his natural state cannot satisfy God, for He can require no less than perfection. ​“The righteousness of God is that righteousness which His righteousness requires Him to require” (Thomas Chalmers). It is in this respect that ​“all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).

4. Man, ​“in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:8). A comparison of Romans 8:8 with 8:9 leads to the conclusion that being ​“in the flesh” as the cause of sinfulness is the opposite of being ​“in the spirit” as the cause of holiness. Sin, then, is a property of the flesh, or something that dwells in the flesh (Romans 7:18) but is not the flesh itself. The flesh is that which ​“lusteth against the Spirit” (Galatians 5:17). By the flesh, then, is meant the nature of man as it is corrupted by the fall of Adam, and propagated from him to us, in that corrupt state, by natural generation. To be in the flesh is to be in a natural state. The corrupt nature is called flesh because it is received by carnal generation; and the new nature is called Spirit because it is received by spiritual generation. ​“That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:16). Man unborn of the Spirit is still and only in the flesh. And those that are in the flesh cannot please God (Romans 8:8).

5. By nature, man is a child ​“of wrath” (Ephesians 2:1). By nature he does not possess the benefit of remission of his sins or freedom from condemnation. In that state — the natural state – God is against him.

6. He is ​“dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). He is not dying or mortal or, yet again, condemned to death, but dead. Man’s natural state has the property not only never to be good but to be stark dead in sin. It is man’s present actual state. He can no more be brought to righteousness by the most vehement motives and endeavors than a carcass can be brought to life by heat and rubbing. In one man, Adam, all have sinned, and so death passed upon all men (Romans 5:12).

7. He walks ​“according to the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2). This is the standard to which man in his natural state confirms and the spirit by which he is ruled. It is the transitory world, the objective system of evil things to which he conforms.

8. He walks ​“according to the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). His life is determined and shaped by the master of all evil, the supreme ruler of all the powers of wickedness – by Satan himself. ​“We know…the whole world is in the power of the evil one” (I John 5:19 R.S.V.).

9. He is disobedient (Ephesians 2:2). The spirit of the prince of the power of the air (Satan) makes man disobedient – not merely unbelieving, but disobedient – possessed by an obstinate opposition to the divine will. Disobedience is man’s very nature and essential character. He wholly belongs to it.

10. He is a reprobate. If Christ be not in us, we are reprobates (II Corinthians 13:5). ​“Reprobate” is that which will not satisfy a test and so is rejected. Man – without Christ in him – God has rejected from partaking of His salvation. The only test that satisfied God is Christ in us. Without that, man is lost, rejected.

11. He is without Christ, an alien, a stranger, hopeless, and godless (Ephesians 2:12). He has no connection with Christ – no relation at all. He is a stranger to God and to His covenants and promises. He is not at home with Him. He is absolutely, utterly hopeless. Whether ignorant of, or ignoring, divine salvation as found in Christ, he has nothing to hope for beyond this world. Without God – whether ignorant of God or denying God or forsaken of God – he is truly immersed in darkness and misery. For being without God, he is without His help and mercy and protection.

12. He is a stranger and a foreigner (Ephesians 2:19). He does not possess the privileges and rights of citizenship in God’s Kingdom and household.

13. Conclusion.

The Apostle Paul in a summation cites Old Testament passages to prove the present lostness and corruption of all men:

“Both Jews and Gentiles … are all under sin. As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; Their feet are swift to shed blood; Destruction and misery are in their ways; And the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:9 – 18).

The lostness that Jesus, the King of Truth, taught and that Paul describes is already man’s state. It is so while he yet lives (I Timothy 5:6). He is lost with reference to God. He has removed himself far from the Father. He has been condemned by the judge. He is already out in the darkness, already hopelessly wandering and already weighed down with judgment. And to save lost man, Jesus states, was the reason for His mission to earth (Luke 19:10).

III. Lost Man’s Intermediate State

Next we want to discover what ​“lostness” means when the unsaved man passes into the next world. What does happen when a person dies, whether saved or not?

Fortunately, we are not left to vague conjecture on this most important subject. The declarations of Scripture, especially the New Testament, are clear, sufficiently abundant, and decisive. They lie everywhere upon the surface of the text, precisely designed to supplement the imperfect guesses and feeble hopes of humanity which has a natural longing to know what happens after death.

That the human soul survives the shock of death we can affirm on the authority of scripture. Both the Old and New Testaments writers fully expected the conscious survival of the soul(apart from the body) after death. It is disclosed by Job (Job 19:25 – 27). Also, the frequent expressions, ​“gathered to his people”(Genesis 25:17, 35:29; 49:33) and ​“slept with his fathers: (I Kings 11:43, 14:31) do not mean that the persons simply died, for they are added to words that properly express that idea (“gave up the ghost,“etc.) nor that they were buried in the family cemetery for this, too, is often spoken specifically. The expressions signified to the Hebrew a reunion with their forefathers in the other world or, as David tenderly expresses it with regard to his deceased child, ​“I shall go to him” (II Samuel 12:23). The survival of the human soul after death is definitely told in Ecclesiastes 12:7.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19 – 31) is also legitimate and essential to understand what Jesus taught ensues immediately upon death – in the intermediate state. He taught that:

Consciousness will continue after death, together with memory, and the same instincts and sentiments as characterize persons during the present life.

The good will be happy and the wicked miserable, and both from a recognition of their true character and what they deserved.

They will be aware of each other’s final destiny, as well as their own.

There will be absolutely no means or possibility of a transition from the condition of the lost to that of the blessed (“a great gulf fixed, so that none can pass”).

All further efforts on the part of God for salvation after death will be abandoned.

Thus from the various Scriptures that bear on the subject, we can be certain that the soul will be conscious in the disembodied state. The faculties that constitute or belong to the soul – thought, memory, feeling, imagination – will remain after death, unaltered and unimpaired in their nature.

We are also warranted in saying that during this interim period, pending the reunion of the soul and the body, the saved will be occupied with unalloyed delights of a spiritual nature. The expectants of everlasting condemnation, however, will suffer misery. The double tediousness of suspense of anticipated doom and present incarceration will be like the state of the criminal during the interval between conviction and execution. Theirs will be nothing but a certain ​“fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries.”

Article 40 of the Church of England (adopted in the reign of Edward VI) states the case briefly and clearly: ​“The souls of them that depart this life do neither die with the bodies nor sleep idly. They which say that the souls of such as depart hence do sleep, being without all sense, feeling, or perceiving, until the day of judgment … do utterly dissent from the right belief declared to us in Holy Scripture.”

The Bible does not give us more information about the intermediate state. The sacred writers prefer to hasten forward to the resurrection state.

IV. Lost Man’s Resurrection State

The Bible teaches that all the human denizens of earth will be resurrected, irrespective of their moral qualities or their final doom. Jesus said:

“The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28, 29).

And Acts 24:15 says:

“There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.”

Because of our grossly fuzzy understanding of the resurrected body itself, together with its relation to the soul by which it is forever to be inhabited, a sufficient explanation is essential.

“Resurrection” is from the Latin ​“re,” again, and ​“surgere,” to rise–“to rise again.” According to the dictionary, it means the fresh bringing forth of the selfsame thing that was before. And Paul maintains it is the ​“mortal” body that is to be ​“quickened” (Romans 8:11). If, then, the body that was put into the grave does not rise again, as some maintain, we shall have to relinquish the word resurrection and find some other word to explain what does happen; however, this word resurrection and its true meaning have been preserved intact from the beginning. The Church will not give it up or alter its meaning.

Also, the unbroken testimony of the creeds of the Universal Church – which, without a missing link, runs on back through the ages to the days of the Apostles – maintains that the body that was buried is the body that will be raised:

The Apostles’ Creed.

Previous to A.D. 600: And the resurrection of the flesh. Amen. As it now stands: The resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

The Athanasian Creed–accepted by the Greek, Roman, and English Churches

English: At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall render an account of their own works.

The Scots Confession, adopted A.D. 1560 and still a part of the Constitution of the United Presbyterian Church:

In the general judgment there shall be given to every man and woman resurrection of the flesh. The sea shall give up her dead; the earth, those that are buried within her. Yea, the Eternal, our God, shall stretch out His hand on the dust, and the dead shall arise incorruptible, and in the very substance of the self-same flesh that every man now bears, to receive, according to their works, glory or punishment.

The Belgic Confession, A.D. 1561

For all the dead shall be raised out of the earth, and their souls joined and united with their proper bodies in which they formerly lived. As for those who then shall be living, they shall not die as the others, but be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and from corruptible become incorruptible.

Confession of the Eastern Church, A.D.1643 (Greek and Russian)

There will be a resurrection of the human bodies, alike of the righteous and the wicked, from the death that has passed upon them… They shall be altogether the same bodies with which they lived in this world.

The Heidelberg Catechism, A.D. 1563 (German Reformed Church)

Question: What comfort does the resurrection of the body afford thee?

Answer: That not only my soul, after this life, shall be immediately taken up to Christ its Head, but also that this my body, raised by the power of Christ, shall again be united with my soul and made like unto the glorious body of Christ.

The Westminster Confession, A.D. 1647 (accepted by Presbyterian churches)

At the last day such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the self-same bodies and none other, although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever.

In the ultimate, however, the proof that all men will be resurrected is not the meaning of the word or the testimony of creeds but the resurrection of Christ. The biblical argument is that Christ predicted His own resurrection and actually arose in the manner predicted. He thus proved both His power to do everything, and His veracity in all His declarations. And He has declared that He will raise up at the last day all that are in their graves. Thus His own resurrection is a complete proof and the basis of the resurrection of all men. It is also the pattern or model of their resurrection. Let us, therefore, examine His resurrection and, as well, His resurrection body.

Peter says, ​“That same Jesus, whom ye have crucified” (Acts 2:36) ​“hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses” (Acts 2:32). If Christ had been completely changed after His resurrection, the apostles could not have recognized or identified Him, and therefore could not have been witnesses to Him. It was necessary, however, that Christ should be recognized, and so unmistakably identified, that His previous claims and predictions might be established, and Christianity proved true; for Christ’s resurrection was at once the testing point and crowning evidence both of His Sonship and Messiahship; and unless His resurrection had been completely proved, Christianity must have failed; therefore, Paul says, ​“If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain… ye are yet in your sins” (I Corinthians 15:14, 17). The rejection of recognition, then, is not a trivial matter; for it would render the proof of Christ’s resurrection impossible and lead to its consequent denial. It will be impossible to prove His resurrection if we fail to establish the fact of His recognition by His disciples during the interval between His death and ascension to heaven.

Accordingly, we find Christ affording to all His disciples the fullest possible evidence of His being still the ​“same Jesus” after His resurrection that He was before His death. In many different ways He gives them the most indubitable and minute proof that He had undergone no essential change in order to enable them to recognize Him. By His voice, by His hands and feet, by the nail prints in His hands, by the scar in His side, by showing them His ​“flesh and bones,” by eating before them, he convinced them He was still the ​“same Jesus,” having the same external appearance and possessing bodily organs with their ordinary capacities as before His death. All of the external marks and traits of His resurrection body substantially agreed with the body that was put in the tomb. ​“Behold my hands and my feet /​with the scars of the nails still in them/​, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39). This shows the minute correspondence of His resurrection body with His preresurrection body. It was recognizable and identifiable. His resurrection body was the same body that died.

All this is exceedingly suggestive to us, and is in exact accord with what we are directly told in Scripture as to the kind of resurrection body of all men. We have every reason to believe, both from revelation and the nature of the case, that for both the just and the unjust the same body that died will come forth in the resurrection. At that time the soul will return to inhabit the same body it was in before death.

The Bible gives considerable information about the postresurrection state of the lost. And it is enough to cause us to shudder with horror.

1. In their resurrection bodies they will be judged (Hebrews 9:27). Concerning them, the sentence has already been promulgated: ​“He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still”(Revelation 22:11).

2. Their punishment will be in Hell. The word hell occurs eighteen times in the Authorized Version. In five cases it is a translation of the word Hades; twelve times it is a translation of the word Gehenna used by our Lord; and once it is a translation of Tartarus.

“In the word Gehenna, occurring twelve times in the New Testament, eleven of which are in the first three Gospels, we come across a picture word having an historic origin. It is a shortened term for the Vale of Hinnom – Ge-Hinnom – a valley south of Jerusalem. The story of this place is told in II Chronicles 28:3.”

“In earlier days it was a fair garden, but under two kings became a place of idolatry. Little children were placed within a heated metal image, thus being made to pass through the fire as an act of worship. In good King Josiah’s time, he abolished this repulsive and cruel form of idolatry and defiled the Vale of Hinnom by making it the great rubbish-heap of Jerusalem. Dead animals, unburied bodies of criminals were consumed therein. Fires continually burned with an intense burning on that immense pile. It was still used that way in our Lord’s day.”

“Now, this word Gehenna is clearly used by Christ as the name for the place of punishment of wicked men (Matthew 5:22,29,30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15,33). In His use of it He did not mean the Gehenna burning outside the Jerusalem walls, but used it as a symbol of utter ruin. It means consignment to something equivalent to the great rubbish-heap of Gehenna.”(Herbert Lockyer, THE IMMORTALITY OF SAINTS. Pickering & Inglis Ltd. Pages 109,110.)

3. The lost will suffer in Hell in their bodies. The bodies of the lost which are laid in the ground shall be raised again in order that the same body which sinned here shall suffer. It is neither logical nor biblical that the body that sinned here should be replaced by another body to suffer in Hell for that sin; or that that body that was the soul’s companion in sin here should lie forever in the dust and another body, which took no part in the sinning, be the soul’s companion in torment. Then, too, since the Saviour Himself will forever bear the marks of the conflict through which He passed on the Cross, would it not be unreasonable and unjust that the ungodly unbeliever should not everlastingly bear the stigmata of his abuse of his body? And, further, since they would have none of Christ and His saving benefits for their souls in this life, how can they have any part of His redemptive benefits for their bodies in the resurrection life to come? If, therefore, the bodies of the righteous will be glorious, then those of the wicked will be repelling. Indeed, the profligate, the drunkard, the debauchee will bear a natural penalty in their bodies no less than a moral penalty in their souls. That tongue which in this life was employed in mocking religion; in cursing and swearing; in lying, backbiting, and boasting will need water to cool it in eternal flames. The same feet that stood in the way of sinners and carried them in their ungodly activities shall stand in the burning lake. And the same covetous and lascivious eyes shall smart from the smoke of the pit. The ears which refused to hear sermons or seasonable exhortations, admonitions, and reproofs will hear the abundant weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. They will suffer in their bodies – not ethereal, gaseous bodies, but solid bodies of flesh and bone.

4. They will continue to sin in their resurrection bodies. When Satan was cast out of heaven, he manifested his intense hatred of God and eventually his vehement malice towards man by seducing our first parents and destroying the world. Peter informs us that since that time, ​“as a roaring lion he goeth about, seeking whom he may devour.” John also declares that the same malignant being ​“deceiveth the whole world.” What a dreadful picture of furious and insatiable malice is presented to us when this evil being is exhibited as a lion, roaring with rage and hunger, and going about to devour, not the carcasses of beasts but rational and immortal persons in all the earth.

It is plain that the evil desires of Satan are not diminished by his banishment and sufferings. On this account it is reasonably believed that all other evil beings will sustain in the next world the same character and the same desires and the same practices that caused their banishment.

Revelation 22:15 gives and account of the lost continuing their sin in the next world, and these sinful desires and practices of the lost will be exceedingly powerful and unrestrained: ​“For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.”

5. Their state and condition as sinners is fixed. There will be no alternative in this. ​“There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation” (Hebrews 10:26,27). God has no additional or supplemental plan or provision for atonement, mercy or redemption known or probably possible.

6. The condition and the pangs of the lost will be forever. In Mark 9:43 the Saviour states their punishment will be in ​“hell, in the fire that never shall be quenched”.

In several other passages (Daniel 12:2, Matthew 3:12, 13:36 – 43, etc.) the happiness of the righteous and the sufferings of the wicked are set forth in what may be called a parallel manner; and yet no intimation is given that the duration of one will not be equally extended with that of the other. The words eternal, everlasting, forever as employed in the New Testament refuse to be despoiled of their content by linguistic analysis. As used by the Saviour and the Apostles, they mean what they bear upon their face and thus convey and intelligible and reliable, however awful, truth concerning the duration of the impenitent. If Heaven is unending, so is Hell; for the words are applied to both in the same manner and without any hint of a distinction in their use.

7. The lost man’s doom is inescapable. ​“There is a great gulf fixed and they that would come from thence cannot.” Mercy will not be extended, leniency will not be offered, amnesties will not be declared. Paroles will not be issued. Over the entrance of Hell is inscribed, ​“Abandon hope all ye that enter here.”

8. He will suffer irremedial loss. The unsaved man will have forever lost the grace of God – His unmerited favour and proffered mercy,. It will be irretrievably gone and that forever. He will never hear another gospel message. The church, prayers, and moving hymns will be past. Godly parents, children, husband, or wife will be missed; their company and faces never to be enjoyed again; the haven of rest exchanged in favour of an everlasting lake of fire and an abode of woe; a glorified body lost, and in its place an unredeemed body of sin, corruption, disease, and filth. He could have mingled with the saints in that fair celestial city, but now he mingles with beings filled with every imaginable evil. Time was when he could have been a child of the heavenly King, but now he is a vessel of wrath fit only for eternal torments.

It must not be forgotten or overlooked that this irremedial loss is his own deliberate and continued choice personally and freely made. It is, in fact, not so much an infliction of punishment as a withholding of that which could not be received, or if received would be a compulsory bestowal, an act of tyranny. His situation will be truly of a piece with all his previous conduct and chosen pursuits. His condition in the future state has all along been in his own hands, freely determined by himself. The question, therefore, is not what God imposes on him in the next life but what he – by disposition, and character, and nature – takes into it. He carries himself into it; he can take nothing else with him there. The penalty is inherent in the pride, envy, selfishness, and all evil passion which continue in the surviving, rejoined soul and body. His enormous losses in Hell are but God’s ratification of his decisive choices in this life.

V. Conclusion

When the unconverted dies, his soul goes out into immediate and conscious suffering. Then, at the resurrection, his unredeemed body will be raised from the grave and reunited with his unregenerate and tormented soul. And all of those thus resurrected will be confined to a region where there is no hope, no end, and no good beings to hold the balance against evil. It’s a place where nothing good can follow them. No holy beauty; no virgin innocency; no guiltless, guileless love of parents, wife, child, brother, friend – no virtue; no decency ever; none of the decorum which at least serves to make vice less hideous here– and no restraining providence of God – no interference by God at all.

It will be a congregation of the unsaved, in the unregenerate state in which they died, driven together into one settlement. There all the cruel acts of men will be played out remorselessly. Cannibals, headhunters, rapists, murderers, dope fiends, sodomites, rioters, the lawless, liars, and all the other varieties of unsaved men and women will be there. Added to that will be the tormenting demons and unquenchable fire and continual weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. In this place and condition they will exist forever.

This is the biblical meaning of ​‘lostness’ as it relates to the unconverted man’s present condition, the intermediate condition at death, and his final condition at the resurrection.

And this certain and terrifying and eternal condition of the lost is a vital and powerful motivation for engaging in evangelism and missions. It also offers a solid reason why evangelicals should never be drawn aside by giving priority attention to any other thing – not even social concern.