On July 8, 1741, in the small colonial town of Enfield, Connecticut, Jonathan Edwards preached the most famous sermon of his life—and maybe in all of American history.

At the time, the Thirteen Colonies were in the throes of what would one day be called the First Great Awakening—a spiritual revival that saw renewed passion and zeal for at least some version of the Christian faith.

Enfield was one of the holdouts. The colonists there didn’t see what all the fuss was about—at least, not until Edwards took the stage in 1741.

“There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell,” he told the assembled crowd, “but the mere pleasure of God.”

The only reason that the unconverted, unrepentant men, women, and even children of Enfield were not currently writhing in agony for a well-deserved eternity in the clutches of hell was because God—for an indeterminate moment, and with a considerable amount of disgust—was holding them back from their inevitable tumbling into the unending torment that was waiting for them.

I might sound like I’m being a little unfair to Edwards, but I promise I’m not. I read through his sermon (you can too), and I think even he would call that a pretty accurate summary.

But why summarize? Here, I’ll get out of the way and let him tell you in his own words:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you do not this very moment drop down into hell. . . .

Now God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement of obtaining mercy. But when once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God, as to any regard to your welfare. God will have no other use to put you to, but to suffer misery; you shall be continued in being to no other end; for you will be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction; and there will be no other use of this vessel, but to be filled full of wrath. God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to him, that it is said he will only “laugh and mock” . . .

And though he will know that you cannot bear the weight of omnipotence treading upon you, yet he will not regard that, but he will crush you under his feet without mercy; he will crush out your blood, and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his garments, so as to stain all his raiment. He will not only hate you, but he will have you in the utmost contempt: no place shall be thought fit for you, but under his feet to be trodden down as the mire of the streets. . . .

It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long forever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite.

And those are just excerpts. It goes on like that for a while—but you get the gist.

Enfield got the gist, too. According to the diary of a reverend who was in the audience that day, Edwards was “obliged to desist” early because “there was a great moaning and crying through ye whole House.” People were wailing, “What shall I do to be saved?” and “Oh, I am going to hell!” and “Oh, what shall I do for Christ?”

* * *

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

That was the name of Edwards’ sermon. And here we are, more than 280 years later—still talking about it.

It made an impact. There’s no denying it. But there’s also no denying that Edwards got quite a few things wrong during that fateful message.

I don’t doubt his sincerity. And I don’t doubt the sincerity of the terrified parishioners, screaming and wailing at the thought of the gruesome, infinite, unrelenting torture chamber Edwards had envisioned for them.

Edwards saw a world where “there are but few saved, and that the greater part of men that have died heretofore are gone to hell.”

Their case is past all hope; they are crying in extreme misery and perfect despair; but here you are in the land of the living and in the house of God, and have an opportunity to obtain salvation. What would not those poor damned hopeless souls give for one day’s opportunity such as you now enjoy!

It’s now or never, Edwards was saying—for everyone. For the whole world. And most people have chosen the extreme, unending misery of “never.”

But that’s not God.

That’s not the God who looked out over Jerusalem with compassion in His heart and cried out, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37).

That’s not the God who is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

He is not a God who looks on His creation with such disgust that He can barely restrain Himself from stomping us down to the lowest reaches of hell. He is not a God who needs to torment the unrepentant in order to affirm His greatness. He is not a God who drags an audience out of heaven to witness the whole ordeal just so they can sing His praises.

Everything I see in Scripture tells me that we serve a God who, even in the process of meting out divine justice, still mourns the decisions that made His judgment necessary:

Why do you insist on being battered?
Why do you continue to rebel?
Your head has a massive wound,
your whole heart is sick.

(Isaiah 1:5, NET)

“As I live,” says the Lord GOD, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?”

(Ezekiel 33:11)

How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel? . . .
My heart churns within Me;
My sympathy is stirred.

(Hosea 11:8)

Who is a God like You,
Pardoning iniquity
And passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage?
He does not retain His anger forever,
Because He delights in mercy.

(Micah 7:18-19)

But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity,
And did not destroy them.
Yes, many a time He turned His anger away,
And did not stir up all His wrath;
For He remembered that they were but flesh,
A breath that passes away and does not come again.

(Psalm 78:38-39).

This is not the God Jonathan Edwards preached with fiery indignation on that fateful July day, almost 300 years ago. He got it wrong, and his words have misrepresented Almighty God for generations upon generations.

But you already know that, I think. It seems silly to try and convince you that Edwards got it wrong. Which is why what I actually want to talk about is what Edwards got right.

* * *

I know. It’s an odd thing to say. That sermon reeks of fear tactics and misapplied theology—and yet it’s not all wrong.

Take his stance on death, for example.

We are all going to die, and the arrival of that moment is not primarily a function of our health or our lifestyle or anything on an actuarial table, but the will of God. We are alive today because He wills it. We could all be dead tomorrow if He wills it.

And so the time we have left between this breath and our last is beyond our ability to calculate. It will come when and how God allows it to come—and after that, our time is up.

In Edwards’ mind, this meant an immediate and rapid plunge into the endless torments of hell. He was wrong on that front, but the reasoning that took him that far was sound.

Our days are numbered and tomorrow isn’t promised—which means, if we’re putting it off, we do not have an infinite amount of time to get right with God.

We have what we have.

For those of us who have “been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit” (Hebrews 6:4, ESV), today is our day of salvation. And if we neglect that salvation, there are consequences.

In a parable, God told the rich man, “Fool! This night your soul will be required of you” (Luke 12:20). In terms of our relationship with God, we must live as if the same fate is always possible for us.

Because . . . well, it is.

* * *

We call God a God of love—as we should. It’s His defining characteristic. He is also a God of incredible patience and mercy.

But sometimes we let those important Biblical truths distort our vision of God into something milquetoast—a God who never holds anyone accountable for anything, who offers us an infinitely blank check to live however we want as long as we mumble something about repentance every now and then.

Love bears all things, but it does not embrace all things. Love suffers long, but it does not suffer forever. Love does not seek its own, but it understands the difference between what’s needed and what’s desired.

Love “does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6).

The God of love hates sin.

Hates it.

Jonathan Edwards got that part right, too. All sins—our sins—are repulsive to God. The God who threatened to turn Jerusalem upside down and wipe it like a dish (2 Kings 21:13), who promised to render vengeance on His enemies and make His arrows “drunk with blood” (Deuteronomy 32:42), and who tells us that the Day of the Lord will result in blood up to the horses’ bridles (Revelation 14:20)—this is the same God who sent His Son to be a covering for our sins so that we could join His family.

God is love. And patient. And merciful. He gives us more time and opportunities than we deserve. But He sees sin for what it is—a way of life whose only fruit is a tragic, self-inflicted kind of misery that overflows from our lives into the lives of others.

Those who refuse to part company with their sin, who carry it with them as part of their identity and refuse to let the blood of Jesus wash it away, will ultimately be parted from their own existence.

God is bringing a world with no more suffering. There will be no place for those who insist on causing it—whether to themselves or to others. If we don’t let our sins go, God’s love means He’ll ultimately have to let us go.

* * *

Edwards got a lot of things wrong, and it’s easy to point at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God as the quintessential fire-and-brimstone, over-the-top, scare-’em-into-submission message.

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. To be a sinner in the hands of a loving God is a far better fate than what Jonathan Edwards dreamt up for the unsuspecting congregation at Enfield, but it’s still a far cry from a good fate.

The bent of our life improves considerably when we resolve not to be sinners at all, regardless whether the hands we find ourselves in belong to an angry or loving God.

Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is said:

“Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” . . .

Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

(Hebrews 3:12-15; 4:14-16)

No one has to fear the horrible eternity Edwards envisioned for sinners in the hands of an angry God.

But let’s not be content with merely sidestepping hellfire. Let’s instead aim for something far greater:

To be children in the hands of a loving God.