This morning I experienced one of those “coincidences” between writers in my devotional reading time.

First, I picked up J. C. Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on Matthew. I’ve been reading it off and on. Reading it in the morning as part of devotions is always enjoyable. It’s written in small easy to digest chapters. It’s very warm. It’s often challenging. Previously, I have read Ryle’s books on the Gospels of Luke and John. I loved them so much that I bought the whole seven volume set a few years ago.

After reading Ryle, I had a little time left before needing to get ready for the day. So I picked up Robert Haldane’s commentary on Romans. I had intended to finish that book last year but I got way off track on it. (I did finish 34 books last year. But not this one.) Now I am just taking it in small chunks – 15 – 20 minutes of reading at a time. It’s a long book – 729 pages. I’m on page 268. I’m going to be in this one for a while.

“Coincidentally,’ both authors touched on Jesus’ words regarding Capernaum and other cities that rejected Christ. These are the words from Matthew 11:20 – 24:

20. Then began He to upbraid the cities wherein most of His mighty works were done, because they repented not:
21. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
22. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you.
23. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.
24. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.

This is what Ryle had to say on these verses:

The second part of these verses shows us the exceeding wickedness of wilful impenitence. Our Lord declares that it shall be ‘more tolerable for Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom, in the day of judgment,’ than for those towns where people had heard His sermons, and seen His miracles, but had not repented.

There is something very solemn in this saying. Let us look at it well: let us think for a moment what dark, idolatrous, immoral, profligate places Tyre and Sidon must have been; let us call to mind the unspeakable wickedness of Sodom; let us remember that the cities named by our Lord – Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum – were probably no worse than other Jewish towns; and, at all events, were far better and more moral than Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom. And then let us observe that the people of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, are to be in the lowest hell, because they heard the gospel, and yet did not repent, – because they had great religious advantages, and did not use them. How awful this sounds!

Surely these words ought to make the ears of everyone tingle, who hears the gospel regularly, and yet remains unconverted. How great is the guilt of such a man before God! How great is the danger in which he daily stands! Moral, and decent, and respectable as his life may be, he is actually more guilty than an idolatrous Tyrian or Sidonian, or a miserable inhabitant of Sodom! They had no spiritual light: he has, and neglects it. They hear no gospel: he hears, but does not obey it. Their hearts might have been softened, if they had enjoyed his privileges: Tyre and Sidon ‘would have repented:’ Sodom ‘would have remained until this day.’ His heart under the full blaze of the gospel remains hard and unmoved. There is but one painful conclusion to be drawn: his guilt will be found greater than theirs at the last day. Most true is the remark of an English bishop, ‘Among all the aggravations of our sins, there is none more heinous than the frequent hearing of our duty.’

May we all think often about Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum! Let us settle it in our minds that it will never do to be content with merely hearing and liking the gospel: we must go further than this: we must actually ‘repent and be converted’ (Acts 3:19). We must actually lay hold on Christ, and become one with Him: till then we are in awful danger. It will prove more tolerable to have lived in Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom, than to have heard the gospel in England, and at last die unconverted.

This is from Haldane commenting on Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord:”

It is not to be questioned that there will be degrees in the punishment of the wicked. This is established by our Lord Himself, when He declares that it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for the Jews. This punishment being the effect of Divine justice, the necessary proportion between crime and suffering will be observed; and as some crimes are greater and more aggravated than others, there will be a difference in the punishment inflicted. In one view, indeed, all sins are equal, because equally offences against God, and transgressions of His law; but, in another view, they differ from each other. Sin is in degree proportioned not only to the want of love to God and man which it displays, but likewise to the manner in which it is perpetrated. Murder is more aggravated than theft, and the sins against the second table of the law are less heinous than those committed against the first. Sins likewise vary in degree, according to the knowledge of him who commits them, and inasmuch as one is carried into full execution, and another remains but in thought or purpose. The difference in the degree of punishment will not consist, however, in what belongs to privation – for in this it must be equal to all – but in those sufferings which will be positively inflicted by God.

Our Lord three times in one discourse repeats that awful declaration, ‘Their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’ The term fire presents the idea of the intensity of the wrath or vengeance of God. It denotes that the sufferings of the condemned sinner are such as the body experiences from material fire, and that entire desolation which accompanies its devouring flames. Fire, however, consumes the matter on which it acts, and is thus itself extinguished. But it is not so with those who shall be delivered over to that fire which is not quenched. They will be upheld in existence by Divine justice, as the subjects on which it will be ever displayed. The expression, ‘their worm dieth not,’ indicates a continuance of pain and putrefaction such as the gnawing of worms would produce. As fire is extinguished when its fuel is consumed, in the same way the worm dies when the subject on which it subsists is destroyed. But here it is represented as never dying, because the persons of the wicked are supported for the endurance of this punishment. In employing these figures, the Lord seems to refer to the two methods in which the bodies of the dead were in former times consigned to darkness and oblivion, either by incremation or interment. In the first, they were consumed by fire; in the second, devoured by worms. The final punishment of the enemies of God is likewise represented by their being cast into the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. This imports the multitude of griefs with which the wicked will be overwhelmed. What emblem can more strikingly portray the place of torment than the tossing waves, not merely of a flood of waters, but of liquid fire? And what can describe more awfully the intensity of the sufferings of those who are condemned, than the image of that brimstone by which the fierceness of fire is augmented?

These expressions, their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched, to which is added, ‘for every one shall be salted with fire,’ preclude every idea either of annihilation or of a future restoration to happiness. Under the law, the victims offered in sacrifice were appointed to be salted with salt, called ‘the salt of the covenant,’ Lev. 2:13. Salt is an emblem of incorruptibility, and its employment announced the perpetuity of the covenant of God with His people. In the same manner, all the sacrifices to His justice will be salted with fire. Every sinner will be preserved by the fire itself, becoming thereby incorruptible, and fitted to endure those torments to which he is destined. The just vengeance of God will render incorruptible the children of wrath, whose misery, any more than the blessedness of the righteous, will never come to an end.

‘The Son of Man,’ said Jesus, ‘goeth, as it is written of Him; but woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It had been good for that man if he had not been born.’ If the punishment of the wicked in the future state were to terminate in a period, however remote, and were it to be followed with eternal happiness, what is here affirmed of Judas would not be true. A great gulf is fixed between the abodes of blessedness and misery, and every passage from the one to the other is for ever barred.

The punishment, then, of the wicked will be eternal, according to the figures employed, as well as to the express declarations of Scripture. Sin being committed against the infinity of God, merits an infinite punishment. In the natural order of justice, this punishment ought to be infinitely great; but as that is impossible, since the creature is incapable of suffering pain in an infinite degree, infinity in greatness is compensated by infinity in duration. The punishment, then, is finite in itself, and on this account it is capable of being inflicted in a greater or less degree; but as it is eternal, it bears the same proportion to the greatness of Him who is offended.

The metaphors and comparisons employed in Scripture to describe the intensity of the punishment of the wicked, are calculated deeply to impress the sentiment of the awful nature of that final retribution. ‘Tophet is ordained of old; yea, for the king it is prepared; he hath made it deep and large; the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone, doth kindle it,’ Isaiah 30:33.

While the doctrine of eternal happiness is generally admitted, the eternity of future punishment is doubted by many. The declarations, however, of the Holy Scriptures respecting both are equally explicit. Concerning each of them the very same expressions are used. ‘These shall go away into everlasting (literally, eternal) punishment: but the righteous unto life eternal,” Matt. 25:46. Owing to the hardness of their hearts, men are insensible to the great evil of sin. Hence the threatenings of future punishment, according to the word of God, shock all their prejudices, and seem to them unjust, and such as never can be realized. The tempter said to the woman, ‘Ye shall not surely die,’ although God had declared it. In the same way that malignant deceiver now suggests that the doctrine of eternal punishment, although written as with a sunbeam in the book of God, although expressly affirmed by the Savior in the description of the last judgment, and so often repeated by Him during His abode on earth, is contrary to every idea that men ought to entertain of the goodness and mercy of God. He conceals from his votaries the fact that if God is merciful He is also just; and that, while forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin, He will by no means clear the guilty. Some who act as His servants in promoting this delusion, have admitted that the Scriptures do indeed threaten everlasting punishment to transgressors; but they say that God employs such threatenings as a veil to deter men from sin, while He by no means intends their execution. The veil, then which God has provided, is, according to them, too transparent to answer the purpose He designs, and they, in their superior wisdom, have been able to penetrate it. And this is one of their apologies for the Bible, with the design of making its doctrines more palatable to the world. On their own principles, then, they are chargeable with doing all in their power to frustrate what they affirm to be a provisions of mercy. Shall men, however eminent in the world, be for a moment listened to, who stand confessedly guilty of conduct so impious?

Infinitely great are the obligation of believers to that grace by which they have been made to differ from others, to flee to the refuge set before them in the Gospel, and to wait for the Son of God from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.