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How Can Churchgoers end out in Hell?

How do churchgoers wind up in hell? We should not be surprised by these words. Jesus warns that many who attend church, who call and think themselves Christians will on the last day find themselves unconverted – their names not found in the Lamb’s Book of Life. In one of the most frightening passages in the Bible Jesus warned that there will be many a churchgoer (not a few) who will find the gate to heaven shut and themselves condemned: “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” (Matthew 7:23). How did this happen? There are three ways this will commonly occur.

First, they have a knowledge of the Bible, but it is not saving knowledge. The Puritan Thomas Watson puts it this way: “Men have mere notions of Christ … but are not warmed with love to Christ. Their knowledge is like the moon, it has light in it – but no heat. The knowledge that hypocrites have of Christ, has no saving influence upon them, it does not make them more holy … it is informing but not transforming … Many in the old world knew there was an ark – but were drowned, because they did not get into it! Knowledge which is not personally applied, will only light a man to hell!”.

It is not just the average church attended who will fall into this trap – pastors will find themselves in hell if the knowledge they have is purely theoretical. We can memorise scripture, sing all sorts of hymns by rote and be leaders inside the church and still wake up in hell all because our knowledge was not transforming.

Consider this warning to pastors and leaders from the Puritan Richard Baxter (1616-1681): “God never saved any man for being a preacher, nor because he was an able preacher, but because he was a justified, sanctified man, and consequently faithful in his Master’s work. Take heed, therefore to yourselves first, that you be that which your hearers to be, and believe that which you persuade them to believe, and heartily entertain that Saviour whom you offer to them”. 

In the period immediately before the Reformation most preachers were unconverted but even since the Reformation till today many a preacher behind the pulpit has wound up in hell because he did not believe what he knew. Baxter writes with great concern the following “Many a man has warned others that they come not to the place of torment, which yet they hastened to themselves; Many a preacher is in Hell, that has a hundred times called upon his hearers to use the utmost care and diligence to escape it”.

You may be an orthodox Calvinist and find yourself in the very bottom rungs of hell if your knowledge does not come to you in life-saving Spirit power.

A second way that faithful churchgoers wind up in hell is by trying to get into heaven through their own self-righteousness then through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. This is common, and is spiritually and eternally fatal. In collusion with our dead hearts, Satan insinuates that all we need to be saved is to be reasonably good.

Hell, some church goers think, is for those morally bad people outside the church. As long as I have a Bible at home, get baptised (or “Christened” or “done”), perform some religious activities, and do more good things than bad things then I am in.

Spurgeon speaks powerfully against this error: “There is a clean path to hell, as well as a dirty one. You will be lost if you trust to your good works, as surely as if you trusted in your sins. There is a road to perdition along the ‘highway of morality’, as surely as down the ‘slough of vice’’.”

Morality may keep you out of prison but it will not keep you out of hell. The trap of self-righteousness goes even deeper, and we need to beware of it.

As a skilled spiritual physician, George Whitefield told unconverted church-goers: “Before you can speak peace to your heart, you must be brought to see that all your duties – all your righteousness … put all together are so far from recommending you to God, are so far from being any motive or inducement to God to have mercy on your poor soul, that he will see them to be filthy rags … that God hates them and cannot but away with them, if you bring them to him in order to recommend you to His favour … our best duties are so many splendid sins. Before you can speak peace to your hearts, you must not only [repent] of your sin …..but also of your righteousness. There must be a deep conviction before you can be brought out of your self-righteousness. It is the last idol to be taken out of the heart”.

A final way to hell is through cheap repentance. A prayer from Arthur Bennet’s book The Valley of Vison (www.banneroftruth) says: “Of all hypocrites grant that I may not be an evangelical hypocrite, who sins more safely because grace abounds, who tells his lusts that Christ’s blood cleanseth them, who reasons that God cannot cast him into hell, for he is saved, who loves evangelical preaching, churches, Christians, but lives unholily”.

Too many churchgoers never take their sin seriously. They presume on God’s grace by either persuading themselves they will repent eventually later in life, or by persuading themselves that they can sin safely because God is merciful. They make careful plans to repent of this or that sin one day and it is all in most cases a deadly delusion. They say to themselves “It is but one sin” or “It is a small sin” or “I will repent one day in the future” but it is wishful thinking. And it is deadly.

Jonathan Edwards warned: “Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do. Everyone lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail. They hear indeed that there are but few saved, and that the greater part of men that have died heretofore are gone to hell; but each one imagines that he lays out matters better for his own escape than others have done. He does not intend to come to that place of torment; he says within himself, that he intends to take effectual care, and to order matters so for himself as not to fail.”

But, what happens to many of them? They continue in their delusion and never ever repent of their sins. Their repentance is one mile wide and barely an inch thick. A hazy general repentance without any serious attention in rooting out particular sins will not save. A small unrepented sin will damn just as much as a big one. A small hole is all that is needed to sink a ship.

– Troy Appleton