How to Understand the Gnashing of Teeth

One point Jesus makes in the parable of the net in Matthew 13:47-52 is about the terrible fate of the unrighteous. I am glad Jesus taught that, and that it is not left for His ministers to imagine what the unbelievers’ fate might be. How could we say that their end will be so bad that it can only be adequately compared to an eternal burning? How could we say that it will produce an eternal “weeping and gnashing of teeth”? No mere human being would dare predict that fate for another human being. Yet that is what Jesus does. He has more to say about hell than does any other person in the Bible.

What is it that makes hell so terrible, according to Jesus Christ? There are a number of elements, the first being suffering. That point is made in the parable of the dragnet, for having described how the wicked are thrown into the fiery furnace, Jesus then pictures them as “weeping and gnashing” their teeth. Often someone will ask me whether hell has literal fire. That is the imagery the Bible uses for hell, but I know the Bible well enough to know that it often uses physical imagery to describe things that are beyond our earthbound imaginings. The fires of hell could be like that. But there is nothing here that one should take comfort from. For although the Bible uses imagery to portray the unimaginable, it does so precisely because the reality is unimaginable. That is, the suffering of the wicked in hell is so intense and so terrible that, if it is not an actual physical suffering by fire, only such intense physical suffering can be used to describe it.

Do not banter words with Jesus Christ. The point is that hell involves intense suffering. A person is a fool who does not try to avoid that suffering at whatever cost.

What is it that makes hell so terrible, according to Jesus Christ?

The second thing that makes hell terrible is memory, particularly memory of the blessings of one’s previous life. Though it is not said in Christ’s parable about the dragnet, it emerges quite clearly in His parable of the rich man and Lazarus. There Jesus sets up a comparison between a rich man, who “dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day” (Luke 16:19 NIV), and a beggar named Lazarus, who sat at his gate and longed “to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table” (v. 21). In time both died. The beggar, being a believer in spite of his unimposing earthly condition, went to heaven. The rich man, in spite of his favored condition on earth, went to hell. Being in torment, the rich man looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side, and cried out, “Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.”

But Abraham replied, “Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish” (Luke 16:24–25, italics added).

I believe that is one of the most chilling statements in the Bible. The rich man is told to remember, and what he has to remember is how he enjoyed a lifetime of good things without any reference to God. Now those things are gone, forever. He built his heaven on earth and is never to enter it again, while Lazarus had his taste of hell here and is now to enjoy God’s heaven. If you are without Christ, learn that however disappointing you may consider your life to be now, there will, nevertheless, come a day when it will seem “good” compared to your suffering. And the memory of your good things will haunt you and increase your suffering, unless you repent now and come to Jesus.

There is a third thing that will make hell terrible. It is guilt over the role the wicked have played in bringing others to their end. More than one hundred years ago, as part of the last great religious awakening to sweep Britain, a man named Brownlow North preached a classic series of revival sermons on the rich man and Lazarus, in one of which he makes that last point well.

He referred to the place where the rich man is said to have interceded for his brothers (“I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment,” vv. 27–28), and asked how it is that he had suddenly become anxious for his brothers’ well-being. It was not because he loved them; there is no love in hell. North believed that it was because of guilt. The rich man was his brothers’ keeper, but he had neglected his responsibilities. They had grown up in unbelief like himself, following in his footsteps. Their fate would be like his, and he anticipated how they would reproach him for his role in their destruction. North concluded, “The one thing that can add agony to the agony of the lost is, the being shut up for ever in hell with those they have helped to bring there.”[1]

Is that not true? Is Brownlow North not right? You godless fathers, be warned! If you lead your sons along the path you have chosen, they will be present to condemn and curse you in that day. Your agony will be greater because of it.

You mothers, be warned! If you have neglected the spiritual welfare of your daughters, the day will come when you will want to pray, “Send Lazarus to my daughters,” but the time will be past. They will perish, and you will be to blame.

Above all, be warned, all godless ministers! There are ministers who are so ignorant of the God they profess to serve that they never even truly pray. But they will pray in that day. Too late, they will beg God to send someone to warn their congregations. They will have condemned their people by their false gospel and criminal neglect, by their failure to warn them of the wrath to come. North concludes, “I do not believe there exists a more miserable being, even amongst the lost themselves, than a lost minister shut up in hell with his congregation.”[2]

[1] Brownlow North, The Rich Man and Lazarus: A Practical Exposition of Luke 16:19–31 (Edinburgh and Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1979), 103.

[2]  Ibid., 106.