Having previously clarified that not all who are lost through Adam will be saved through Christ, we must now address what will become of those who are not united to Christ by faith. Although God will continuously display His common grace to those who reject His Son in this life, that grace will not pass beyond death. As Hebrews 9:27 notes, “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” All who are united to Christ by faith will still stand before God on the day of judgment, but they need not fear any punishment for their sins, for the verdict has already been rendered. Upon the cross, Christ paid the debt of all their sins, once for all.

But for those who reject Christ in this life, their sins remain, crying out for judgment. And at the day of judgment they will receive the fearful but just sentence of condemnation pronounced against them. Notice the proper emphasis upon the justice of God. We must keep the justice and righteousness of God in mind while discussing something as rightly fearful as God’s divine condemnation of the wicked. Because their condemnation will be entirely just, it will also be entirely good. It is right that sin should be condemned, and though that condemnation is fearful, it would be far more fearful to live in an unjust cosmos. Whenever someone sins against us, we long for justice. The same must also be true on a cosmic scale.

This then is the judgment that the wicked will receive: They will be cast out from the favorable presence of God, into hell, to be justly and grievously punished, forever.

Notice that the catechism does not say that the wicked will be cast out of God’s presence. Of course, that is a rather common belief today, that hell is hell because God will not be there. But if the wicked were capable of finding pleasure in the presence of God, they would not be cast into hell at all, for it is only the saints who cry out to God, “In your presence there are pleasures forevermore’ (Psalm 16:11). Furthermore, the omnipresence of God makes the utter absence of God’s presence impossible. Of course, David attests to this by saying that God’s presence is both in heaven and in Sheol (Psalm 139:8). No, it is from God’s favorable presence that they will be cast out. Even God’s common grace will be removed from them, leaving them with only God’s burning wrath against them and the wicked “will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb” (Revelation 14:10). This means the face of the very one who offered them salvation will be eternally before them as they are tormented.

Of course, for all the problems that people believe they have will hell as a place of punishment, their real problem is with the answer’s final word: forever. Many simply refuse to believe such a horrific reality, choosing to disbelieve in hell entirely or to believe that the wicked will eventually be annihilated and erased from existence. Revelation 14:11 refutes such a thought explicitly: “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.” No, that is not talking about those who receive the Antichrist’s microchip during the last days; instead, the mark of the beast is worldliness. All who are not in Christ are marked by the beast, for apart from we all followed the course of this world and the prince of the power of the air, which is Satan (Ephesians 2:2). That is also why all who are not united to Christ by faith are among the wicked. All who have not been made into children of God remain “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:3). That is simply our default state, unless God’s grace intervenes, and we are saved in Christ.

Eternal punishment is just whenever we properly consider not simply what sins we have committed but who we have sinned against. In this life, we can find examples of the same crime carrying different levels of punishment depending on whom it was committed against. For example, if I randomly punch someone in the face while walking down the street, I may be able to get away with no consequences, if I am fast enough and if there are no security cameras around. However, if I punch one of my friends in the face during a disagreement, I will likely have severely damaged our friendship. If I punch my wife or one of my daughters in the face, I will certainly be brought under church discipline and perhaps arrested for domestic abuse. If I punch a police officer in the face, I certainly will be arrested and charged for assaulting an officer. If I attempt to punch the President of the United States in the face, I will likely not be alive long enough to be thrown in prison.

Notice that in each case the sin is the same: punching someone in the face. Yet depending on who is sinned against, the consequences vary greatly. That is why justice against sin must be an eternal punishment because God, the who is being sinned against, is eternal. Everlasting torment, while fearful and grievous, is also just and good.