Tag: Salvation

Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth

One of the problems with describing our existence after death is the limitations of words. Words have meaning because we can relate them to experience. If you have never experienced anything even similar to the glory of Heaven and the New Earth then all you can do is explain what is not there. Similarly, if you have not experienced the depth of sorrow, pain or hopelessness that characterizes Sheol or Hell, what do you say? 

The Bible pulls out a few negative experiences that happen on Earth to help us to understand damnation. Speaking of Hades/Sheol Jesus speaks of fire and the worm that never dies. Most of us have been burned at some time. It is intense pain. Many of us have seen maggots doing their work. The smell and the disgusting sight quickly elicits the gag reflex. Does this mean that there is actual fire and maggots? Maybe. It certainly means that the experience is intensely awful. 

A frequently used clause to communicate the horror of being exiled from God is the phrase, “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” All of the occurrences of this phrase are in the Gospels and out of the mouth of Jesus. Most are found in Matthew. Here are some examples:

11 I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, 12 while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Matthew 8:11-12 (ESV)

The context is Jesus responding to the faith of the Centurion. He is bemoaning the fact that many of the Jews will not enter Heaven because of their lack of faith in Him. ”Outer darkness” conveys that Hell segregated away from God’s presence in some way. Darkness is an often-used descriptor for a number of things including ignorance, evil and the literal lack of light. Could all of these apply to the experience of Hell or even to a lesser extent Sheol? You and all around you are evil. Nobody can trust anybody. There are no bonds, or friendship or kindness. God and good feel like a distant dream. Maybe you do not even understand why you are there.

C.S. Lewis, in his book The Great Divorce, describes some of the inhabitants of Hell as firmly convinced that they are innocent and unjustly damned. Even when they are given the opportunity to enter Heaven by grace they resist. They live in the darkness of ignorance about themselves. 

Then Jesus uses the phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. I expect that is a very literal description. What does the phrase connote? With damnation being an eternal sentence, all hope is loss and joy consumed. All good things come from God, so if God forsakes you, there are no good things. The sorrow must be overwhelming and so is the weeping. 

I have never been a tooth-grinder, but I can easily imagine such stress that one would grind their teeth together. Another reason for the gnashing of teeth may be anger. If not overcome by sorrow, a person may be filled with rage at God. It doesn’t matter which, both are horrible conditions that were avoidable since Jesus died for all.

Jesus also works this phrase into a bunch of parables that describe Judgment Day. The first is The Parable of the Weeds. This little story just conveys the fact that God is able to separate those who belong to Him from those who reject Him.

41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:41-42 (ESV)

A similar message is given using the same phrase in The Parable of the Net, Matthew 13:49-50. 

Then in The Parable of the Wedding Banquet, (Matthew 22:2-14) Jesus uses the phrase again to describe someone who is cast out of the banquet because they are not wearing “wedding clothes”. These “clothes” are the righteous of Jesus which are provided for a person. Just as the Gospel tells us that salvation is the gift of God and that Jesus provides the necessary righteousness through His obedient life and His forsakeness on the cross, so the clothes are a God’s grace to us but not optional.

A similar point is made in The Parable of the Talents, (Matthew 25:14-30). Here the person who is cast out does not invest the one talent (a unit of money) that the Master gives Him. This is not to suggest we are saved by a minimum level of good stewardship. The one talent must represent knowledge of the Gospel which the wicked servant buries. His punishment is to be cast “outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

There are a few more, but you get the point. ”Weeping and gnashing of teeth” is Jesus’ most used phrase to describe Hell. It gets to the emotional side of the experience. It is not an experience that anyone would want. Some people erroneously think of Hell as a party for those who prefer an immoral life. Nothing could be further from the truth. To be thrown out from any presence of God is devastating even for those who hate God. There is no party, pleasure or friendship–only suffering and hopelessness.

Jesus: God in the Flesh

Without an amazing act of love that we celebrate at Christmas there would be no point in writing or thinking about eternal life, because all that would be waiting for us would be judgement. The miracle of Christmas is all about God becoming human. But what does that mean? The discussion below is largely theoretical based on the little information that we have.

Jesus is a unique being in several ways. First, He is a being that pre-existed His conception as a human. The rest of us started our existence at conception. We were not a soul waiting to jump into a body. Jesus is the Son of God — a being united with the Father in a way that none of us can understand. Still, the Son of God is known to have acted as a distinct person in the creation of the world, in interacting with Israel during Old Testament times, and probably in many other ways. This being was a spirit. What’s a “spirit”? It is an intelligent, powerful being that has no set physical or observable form. A spirit can take on a form and “manifest” itself, but it is not bound to that form. When Jesus “manifested” in the Old Testament, as when three visitors came to Abraham, we refer to Him as the “pre-incarnate” Christ. Incarnating is not the same as manifesting.

There is no biblical glossary that sets down the defining parameters of what it means to be a spirit or spiritual. Similarly, theological terms like incarnate, pre-incarnate, triune or manifest are subject to the understanding of the user. The definition of “spirit” above is my own as I struggle to understand God, Angels, Seraphim, and ultimately humans and myself. For now, I will stand with my definition of what God and the Son of God is.

I believe Angels and Seraphim are slightly different, even though the Bible speaks of angels as “ministering spirits”. In their formal space, that of Heaven, I expect that individual Angels and Seraphim have a set form. They also seem to have the ability to access our space, this Universe, and here they can “manifest” taking any form that they wish. This would be true of Satan (a Seraphim) and demons (Angels), only now they are excluded from Heaven.

For the time being, living human beings are stuck here with a set form. We have a body, and that body’s form cannot be shifted (not including surgery). When we die, we temporarily leave our “Earthly” body behind. If we are connected to Christ, we go to Heaven and assume a Heavenly body, which again has a set form (superior to what we left behind). We cannot return to this time-space, until we return with Jesus at Judgement Day.

Christmas is the story of the Son of God volunteering to doing something that is very restricting to Him yet is a marvelous act of sacrificial love. He takes on a set human form. By incarnating rather than manifesting the Son of God is stuck with this union. He becomes Jesus.

The Angels are said to have marveled at this. They likely marveled not so much at the fact that God could do this, but rather that He would. It is akin to our choosing to be a rat. The reasoning for it is clear and beautiful. God became human so that humans could have a chance at eternal life with Him.

God is a being of laws. He had the sovereign power to ignore His laws and save sinful humans simply because He wanted to. That is not God’s idea of justice. The Law had to be fulfilled and a sinless human being would do it. Because of the process of how our sinful human nature is spread (by heredity), there was no and would be no sinless human being; so the Son of God became one. A virgin birth avoided the inheritance of a sinful nature. The incarnation put the Son of God under the Law.

The fact that Jesus is the incarnate Son of God also made possible that human beings like us could be united with Jesus in a way similar to how the Son of God is united to the Father and the Holy Spirit. This allows us to have the righteousness of Jesus and for Jesus’ forsakeness on the cross to apply to us.

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

John 17:20-21 (ESV)

Many people think this prayer of Jesus is unfulfilled, because the Christian church is divided structurally and doctrinally. That is incorrect. We are all united in some supernatural way to Jesus and therefore to each other. This saves us.

At Judgement Day we will take the final step of our salvation. We will acquire a resurrected, spiritual body. (1 Corinthians 15:44f) What does that mean? I don’t think it means that we will be like God without form, but rather a form for this Universe and a form for Heaven with the ability to move between both. Could that be a misread? Absolutely. Whatever having a spiritual body means, it will be great; and it will be because the Son of God chose transformation of Himself.

Does Jesus remain human? I think so. What will that look like? We will find out.