It is a subject that we do not often hear preached on today – perhaps because it is so offensive to most people. Many people today are equally scandalized by Jesus’ teaching but for a different reason: the eternal punishment of hell seems disproportionate for all but a few utterly evil people. This was utterly scandalous to most Jews. But Jesus told them that not every Jew would go to heaven and unless they personally repented, they were all going to hell (Luke 13:28). ![]() Jesus had to speak about hell so much because he disagreed fundamentally about it with almost all other Jews. In each of these, he contradicted Johanan’s well-known parable in one important way: many people are excluded from the banquet – they aren’t ready and arrive too late, after the doors are closed they decide themselves not to go or they are thrown out. Jesus replied to Johanan’s teaching by telling similar parables of his own – people being invited to a king’s banquet, the wise and foolish girls waiting to join a wedding party, and the man thrown out of a banquet for not being dressed properly (Matthew 22:2-14 25:1-13 and parallels). ![]() Hell was an important part of Jesus’ teaching, in fact he taught more about it than any other Jew of his time – the Gospels record forty-five verses on hell, which is a large number when compared with the sixty-five verses on love. This parable reflected the common Jewish theology that all Jews would go to heaven, but they would not all receive equal honour – the fools didn’t share the honour (ie. He ordered: “Let those who dressed for the banquet sit and feast, but those who did not dress for the banquet will stand and watch them." The king rejoiced at the wise but was angry with the fools. The wise people put on their fine clothes and waited at the door of the palace saying, “Surely a royal palace already has everything ready.” The foolish people carried on with their work saying, “Surely a banquet takes time to prepare.” Suddenly the king called in the people the wise entered in fine clothes but the foolish entered in dirty clothes. Johanan was probably passing on a familiar story, one that Jesus’ listeners would all know.Ī king invited all his people to a banquet but did not say when it would start. He is significant because his forty-year ministry in Galilee overlapped with the time when Jesus was preaching and teaching, and Jesus is likely to have heard Johanan himself tell the parable. Normal Jewish teaching about hell in the time of Jesus is illustrated in a parable told by a rabbi called Johanan ben Zakkai. We want to shout out to him: “It’s not fair!” Like Abraham, we’d love to say to God: “Far be this from you! Surely the Judge of all the earth will act justly?” (Genesis 18:25). ![]() A shoplifter who doesn’t repent will be punished in exactly the same way as a multiple rapist or murderer who doesn’t repent. Of course, we try to explain to them that God will bring real justice… but then they learn the church’s teaching on hell and discover that all sin results in the same punishment. What begins as a cry for justice turns into a resigned silence – or sometimes even a quest for personal revenge. “It’s not fair” is an all-too familiar little phrase that children use before they learn that life simply isn’t fair.
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