Recently, I had a very sobering conversation with my nineteen-year-old nephew who has joined the Marines and will soon begin his basic training. As a young man he faces many temptations and has many questions about life. As we talked about sin, righteousness, and the judgment to come, he asked me if, in eternity, one person’s hell could become their heaven? In other words, can someone who is of their father the devil and doing the lusts of their father, can that person love the passions of the flesh so much that their hell becomes their heaven? I must confess that it is indeed an interesting question, and the biblical answer is twofold.
First, there is pleasure in sin, but only for a season (Hebrews 11:25). There is no doubt that giving free reign to the lusts of the flesh brings pleasure and a sense of personal power of self-choice. But, this pleasure, this "heaven," will not last long for there is a second truth which is that God has established a moral universe. God knows how to take the pleasure out of sin and how to make a person wish they had never exercised their freedom to violate His moral law. Jesus illustrated this truth principle in Luke 16:19–28.
Therefore, what a person who is facing temptation must ask himself is this: To whom do I belong? Do I belong to my father the devil and so I must and will do the works of the flesh for that is the only heaven I will know? Or, is God my Father because I have been born again through faith in Jesus Christ?
If the honest answer is that, "God is my Father by way of the new birth," then one of the grand objectives in the Christian’s life is to have a pure conscience so that belief and behavior match the rhetoric of the confession of faith. The command comes in 1 Timothy 3:9 to hold or to maintain "the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience." A pure conscience is what the true Christian desires.
It is possible for the conscience not to be pure because it has become desensitized to the point it is likened to being seared or branded with a hot iron. Nothing touches the conscience when it becomes this hardened. All sensitivity is lost. Notice the words of 1 Timothy 4:2. Paul writes of individuals who can speak "lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron." Neither fearful threats of exposure, nor faithful warnings of ultimate damnation, neither the tragic consequences of others, or the wretchedness of public shame and exposure, will stop the soul from sinning when the conscience is seared and the heart is hardened.
Following his conversion to Christ, Paul was able to maintain a good conscience before God. The apostle wrote, "I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day" (2 Tim 1:3).
Some of the most tragic words in the Bible refer to those whose "conscience is defiled" (Titus 1:15). The conscience is defiled through unbelief. Unbelief occurs when there is no longer anything that is considered holy or sacred. Unbelief defiles time so that even the Sabbath ceases to be a time for worship. Unbelief defiles sex so that marriage is no longer the divinely ordained place for intimacy. Unbelief defiles life so that any hope of a happy life is destroyed almost before it begins. Unbelief defiles the Moral Law, the Ten Commandments, so that they are no longer binding (Romans 13:8, 9).
Because all of this is true, Christians must pray for one another to have a good conscience. "Pray for us," wrote the author of Hebrews, "for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly" (Heb 13:18).
Gospel obedience produces a good and clear conscience before God. "The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet 3:21).
The Enemy of the soul suggests it can give a person his own personal and private "heaven" if only he will yield to temptation. The reality, however, is that it is just another lie of the devil.
