Not only did Jesus teach both of these truths, He saw them as necessary and interrelated. There’s a literal hell, and helping the poor is essential. Together, Francis and his wife Lisa raise their seven children in Northern California and are co-authors of the new book You and Me Forever: Marriage in Light of Eternity.
Currently, Francis is planting churches in the San Francisco area. Why do we assume that it must be one or the other? Let’s keep the teeth of both truths. Francis Chan is the author of Crazy Love, Forgotten God, and Erasing Hell. Sometimes people even take Jesus out of the picture-fighting poverty, they believe, is an inherent virtue whether or not it’s rooted in the gospel. On the flip side, some want to keep the stuff about helping the poor but take hell out of the picture. But it’s ironic that some will fight tooth and nail for the literalness of Jesus’ words about hell in this passage, yet soften Jesus’ very clear words about helping the poor. We want to add all sorts of footnotes to fix Jesus’ shaky theology in Matthew 25-justification by faith, not by works you don’t really have to help literal poor people, etc. I know, I know, everyone wants to qualify this.
Put simply, failing to help the poor could damn you to hell. Contrast that with Jesus, who in His longest sermon about judgment made helping the poor a vital criterion of who goes where. Yet many hellfire preachers are overfed and overpaid, living in luxury while doing nothing for the majority of Christians who live on less than two dollars a day. And what about the poor? While Jesus is ambiguous at times about the nature and duration of hell, He’s crystal clear about the necessity of reaching the poor.
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