Choosing Hell or Heaven?

10 July 2025   Matthew 10:7-15  Dr. David C. Campbell

“Truly I say to you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.” Matthew 10:15

You don’t have to be a villain to wind up in hell. You only have to miss the point.

The point is that this world is not “about” this world, and your life is not about you. It is all about heaven. It is all about Jesus.

When Jesus was giving instructions to His apostles, He said, “If any one will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town, Truly, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” (Matthew 10:14-15). If people will see our acts of power, see the manner of our lives, hear our proclamation that the Kingdom of God is at hand, and not think about heaven, they have made their choice, and it is for this world only. It will come as a shock to many that ideas have consequences. This day, this life, this world will all come to an end one day, and when they do, the book will be opened, and we will all see where the ideas we have cherished have been inclining all along. That will not be the time for choosing. It will be the time when we see what we have already chosen, in fact chosen long ago. C.S. Lewis put it this way:

When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream, and something else – something it never entered your head to conceive – comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. (Mere Christianity, p. 65)

Hans Urs von Balthasar spoke of the decision we must all make in terms of the “theo-drama,” the story written by God with parts for every creature in the universe, and the “ego-drama,” the story we write ourselves, which has the universe as the bit player and ourselves as the stars. Heaven happens to us, here and now, when we realize that we are not the authors at all, but actors in the story that God writes. And when we get that right, we get not just heaven, but this world, too. It is not an accident that the Christians who have done the most to improve this world have done so precisely because they were thinking so hard about the next. There is a reason why Mary of Nazareth, after the Annunciation, “went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah” (Luke 1:39) to find her cousin Elizabeth. She ran because she finally knew what her role in the “theo-drama” was, realized also that Elizabeth was an actor in the same play. She knew what her life, in this world and in heaven, was about, and ran to meet it. It is a powerfully exciting moment to find out what your life is all about.

It wasn’t about her. It was about Him. He was the point.

You don’t have to be a villain to wind up in hell. You only have to miss the point.