The accounts of the last days of Jesus’ life have been extensively documented in the four gospels. He was unjustly tortured and sent to die. We read that He was crucified along with two other people that day. In fact, we know historically that Crucifixion was commonly practiced during that era. While we ought not to minimize the suffering that Jesus endured by the hands of men, we could say this particular form of torture and death was not unique to Jesus.

So what makes Jesus’ suffering different? First, He is God, and this type of suffering by man toward God was simply without precedent. Second, while other people may have also been unjustly punished, Jesus was completely perfect and innocent, meaning that there was no punishment of any kind which could have been justifiably directed toward Him. A third aspect, and one we will concentrate on, is that Jesus’ suffering was ultimately from God.

The Bible tells us that “the wages of sin is death.” (Rom 6:23) But our physical death is not the primary consequence of sin, because even believers, who are free from the punishment of God, will die a physical death. The real punishment by God is “the second death” (Rev 21:8), namely hell or God’s wrath. In our natural state, every human deserves this second death, and God, as One who is just and holy, must carry out the punishment for each sin committed by every human. He cannot just ignore our sins or sweep it under the rug, so to speak, for that would be no justice at all. What this all means is that each and every human is on a path to eternal punishment the likes of which is worse than any of us can even begin to imagine.

But God decided to do something about this awful situation. He sent His Son, one who “thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (Phl 2:6), to be ”in the likeness of men” and save a people for God. Jesus lived a perfect, sinless life, taught the people about God, and performed miracles, reinforcing His deity. But His greatest act would come at the end of His life when He would face a situation that no man has ever faced. Jesus fully understood what would happen to Him and even prayed,  “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.” (Mar 14:36) And what is this cup that Jesus desired to be taken away? We read in Rev 14:10, that those who follow the devil and sin “shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone…” This cup is the wrath of God poured out for sin.

Jesus endured the wrath of God on behalf of the people He would save. He became “sin for us” (2Cr 5:21) and paid the penalty for that sin. When a born again believer enters heaven, God did not admit the believer by ignoring the person’s sin. They were fully paid for and the just punishment for the sins were fully met when God executed the penalty for the sins upon His own sinless Son on the cross. (Gal 3:13)

The ramifications of Jesus’ selfless acts are extraordinary in many ways. We cannot even begin to conceptually grasp certain aspects of what transpired between Jesus and God at the cross. What does it mean that the Father poured out His wrath on the Son, God punishing God essentially? How did Jesus pay for an eternity’s worth of sins (actually numerous eternity’s worth of sin) within the span of His temporal death? Many of these things are beyond the scope of our understanding.

What we do know however is that this sacrifice by Jesus is far beyond any sacrifice we can ever conceive of. For none of us has ever experienced the horrific reality of hell even for a moment. Nothing here on earth, not the worse war, violence, pain or suffering will compare to God’s wrath poured out for our sins. He stood alone, no one to aid Him, no one to hide behind, against His own heavenly Father and dealt the full wrath of God. And He did it so we didn’t have to endure it. It’s the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate gift. And that is why we fall prostate before Him and worship Him crying out, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.” (Rev 5:12)

But there will be people who will not worship or even acknowledge the sacrifice of the Son of God. To them will be poured the full cup of God’s wrath. Jesus will not be their substitutionary atonement, but their Judge. To those who remain in rebellion against God, they will wake up from their last day on earth and find that they must stand and be accountable for each sin they have committed. When all is said and done, this is the bottom line. If Jesus does not cover our sins on the judgement throne, we will have to pay for them ourselves. But today, while we still have breath, we can look to Jesus and cry to Him for mercy.

If we think back to the missed opportunities of our past, we can often measure its severity by its consequences. Being late for the train may result in being late for work and losing some income, but missing an entire day of work without telling one’s employer may result in being fired. So if we were to rank the extent of a missed opportunity, could we say that we would put those things which affect us for a short time at the bottom and those which affect us for life at the top? Not necessarily.

What if there are things that affect us beyond our lives? If we as humans are more than just flesh, if we are really transcendent spiritual beings, then physical death does not mark the end of our existence, but a transition of our conscious form from our current state to another. Throughout history, man has formulated a number of ideas about our post-mortal state. Some believe our essence is reincarnated into another human or animal. Some believe we continue to exist in a ghostly form on this earth. The Bible has has a different explanation. It states that after our death, we will find ourselves in one of two places. If we are a follower of God, we will be with Him eternally in heaven. If we reject God, we will be eternally punished in hell, a place of “outer darkness”, where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mat 22:13)

The Bible records an account of such a transition. In Luke 16, we read about an unamed rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. The rich man lived opulently while Lazarus ate from the crumbs of the table of the rich man. When they both passed away, the rich man found himself in hell while Lazarus went to Abraham’s bosom, a state of heavenly existence. While the rich man lived a pleasurable life on earth, he woke up in horror to the torments of hell. The rich man asked for mercy, but it was too late by that time. Realizing the severity of his state, the rich man asked for Lazarus to be brought back to earth to see the rich man’s brothers “…that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.” (Luke 16:28) But Abraham replied that they already had Moses and the prophets as their witness.

We can learn many things from this story and we will touch on a few points. First, we see that God “is not a respecter of persons.” (Act 10:34) He is not concerned with our standing before the world. The rich man was a successful man by society’s standards and Lazarus was a failure in the world’s eyes. But God looks at the heart. He is not concerned with our standing before man’s eyes. And by the results, we see that Lazurus was ultimately the successful one while the rich man was the failure.

Secondly, this story reminds us that our time on earth is limited. “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.” (Jam 4:14). It is a vapor, gone in the figurative blink of an eye. Who knows how long the rich man lived on earth? It could have been 50 years or even 100 years. But what is a 100 years compared to a neverending afterlife? The rich man traded ”…the pleasures of sin for a season” (Hbr 11:25) for an eternity in hell. Lazarus, on the other hand, found himself in the eternal comfort of God forever. No two situations, no two conditions can be diametrically farther apart than the eternal wrath of God vs the eternal comfort of God.

Thirdly, and the last thing we will mention, is that God is not silent on this earth. Abraham told the rich man that his brothers, like himself when he was on earth, had opportunity to know God’s decrees through Moses and the prophets. God has given us the Bible to allow us to discover Him. What excuse will we have when we stand before God if we have His Word and we had ignored it? If we were expecting the ghost of a dead man or another supernatural occurrence to show us the way of God, we will be disappointed, as Abraham reminded the rich man. The Bible along with the application of it’s wisdom to our hearts through the Holy Spirit is our escape from hell and it is sufficient.

Though we may not be anything like the rich man, many of us live our lives with a great deal of focus on the here and now. But as important as all the things we juggle today to maintain our lives are, we ought not to lose sight of the most important thing. Because as our stories of missed opportunities continue to be written as we live each day of our lives, the biggest missed opportunity yet lies before us if our hearts are not right before God. “To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts…” (Hbr 3:15)

But before we even begin to ask this question, we can legitimately ask another question: “Does it really matter that God exists?” For if the existence or non-existence of God does not affect our life in any meaningful way, we can make the case that being ignorant of the truth is fairly inconsequential. If God does exist, but He does not require our knowledge of Him or His existence, then we need not be concerned if we are ultimately wrong about our conclusions. In other words, the existence of God is one issue, but the other issue is, is God concerned that we discover Him, that we learn about Him, and that we heed His commandments?

First, let’s suppose that God does not exist. What then is the importance of finding out the truth of the matter? If we take a purely empiricalistic, naturalistic point of view, one that says that the things that exist in our universe are the be-all and end-all of existence, that there is no actual trancendent reality, then we can make the case that trying to discover the existence of God is futile. For if one believes in a God that does not exist, the consequences are ultimately the same as one who doesn’t believe in the existence of God. One man believes in God. Another man does not believe. Both men live different lives, but in the end, both go to the grave and suffer no additional consequences. In other words, if God does not exist, what penalty is there to a wrongly held belief? None.

Now if God does exist and is deistic, that is, God does not concern Himself with the affairs of man, the ultimate consequence is similar to an atheistic reality. One man may believe in God and another may not believe in God, but both men will go to the grave without any further consequences.

But what if God does exist and holds us responsible for acknowledging His existence and holds us accountable for our actions before Him? It is this scenario in which we must be most concerned with. For if the God of this scenario is the true God, the post-life consequences for us are enormous. And this brings us to the God of the Bible. He holds us accountable for acknowledging His existence and for obeying His Law. We read in 2 Cr 5:10:

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.

And if we are on the wrong side of this God’s judgement, what will be the end result? According to the book of Revelations, “…whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” (Rev 20:14) And in Matthew 25:46, it states that “…these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.”

From these passages, we can discover a few things. First, hell is the result of God’s judgement. Second, we see that this punishment will last forever. And third, God separates those He marks as righteous from those who will suffer the eternal punishment.

We can see that if the God of the Bible is the true God, that we absolutely do not want to be wrong about what we believe and where we stand before this God. Because unlike the other scenarios, the consequences of the God of the Bible being real and being true to His Word is not simply a matter of knowledge or enlightenment, but ultimately a matter of everlasting life or everlasting judgement for each individual. There simply are no bigger consequences than that. If the two sides of the coin were heaven vs annihilation, we could make the case that while we certainly desire to be in heaven for eternity, we won’t fret too much about annihilation as a result of an unfavorable judgement by God. But the Bible doesn’t say that. It’s eternal life vs eternal punishment, “where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Isa 66:24) And so, if the God of this scenario is God, it answers the question, “Does God’s existence matter?” in a dramatic way. Not only does it matter, but it is the ultimate matter.

We haven’t delved much into the plausibility of the God of the Bible being the true and only God, but if you have any suspicion that this is God, would it not behove you to take a Bible and search out the matter given the potential consequences? For this is ultimately where the rubber meets the road. The Bible either is the true revelation of God or it is not. And what better way is there to test its claims, to see if there is any truth in the words written, than by reading it with a sincere purpose to try to understand its message and meaning?