Ask evangelical Christians to define hell and they may well say, “Hell is separation from God.” What they may mean is that hell is a place where God is not present. Ask them if Jesus was separated from His Father in the dark hours of suffering on the cross and they will say yes — that He was separated from God, that His Father abandoned Him and turned His face away from Him.

Hell means separation from God, and the cross, for Christ, meant separation from God. However, ask them if hell is a place, a part of creation, and they will agree that it is. Ask them if God is omnipresent, present in and to the whole creation, and they will want to affirm that as well. So if hell is a place, a part of creation, then God must be present in hell. If He is present in hell, then how can we speak of hell as separation from God? If we imagined hell to be an isolated place of seclusion, a far-off corner of the uni­verse where God is absent, where people have chosen to exist without Him and been given over to those desires, then we are no longer thinking clearly of God as omnipresent.

The reason we think of hell as separation from God is, I suspect, because Jesus readily uses that language to describe the misery of eternal punishment. After all, will He not say, “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt. 7:21-23)? Will He not on the last day, as the enthroned King, say to those on His left, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire” (Matt. 25:41)? Are we correct to think of hell as exclusion from God’s presence, and therefore as a state of separation from Him? Before answering that question, we ought to consider some of the strands that make up the biblical teaching about the presence of God.

God Is Omnipresent⤒🔗

The Bible affirms the omnipresence of God. God is infinite. With regard to space, He is immense without any “no-go” areas of creation from which He is excluded. He is not contained in His creation or limited by its dimensions in any way. Heaven and earth cannot contain Him. This is what Solomon acknowledges at the dedication of the temple. “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?” (1 Kings 8:27). God testifies to this same truth through Jeremiah, saying, “Am I a God at hand, saith the LORD, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the LORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the LORD” ( Jer. 23:23-24). Psalm 139:7-10 is also relevant here: “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or wither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”

Amos makes the same point in the context of those seek­ing to escape God’s judgment (Amos 9:1- 4). Paul told even the idolatrous Athenians that God was not far from them. Indeed, in Him they lived, moved, and had their being (Acts 17:24-28).

Sinners Are Said to Depart from God’s Presence←⤒🔗

Even though God’s omnipresence is clearly affirmed, the Bible also uses language about people departing from, or being sent away from, God’s presence. In Genesis 4:16, we are told that Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and lived in the land of Nod. Israel was sent away from God’s presence for persistent disobedience and idolatry (Jer. 7:15; 15:1; 23:39). Jeremiah announces the climactic judgment against Jerusalem in this way: “For through the anger of the Lord it came to pass in Jerusalem and Judah, till he had cast them out from his presence, that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon” (Jer. 52:3).

Judah and Jerusalem suffered the same consequences as the northern kingdom previously had known. As 2 Kings 17:18–23 says,

Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight ... and afflicted them, and delivered them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight...

For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they departed not from them; until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had said by all his servants the prophets.

There are numerous references, many of them bound up with the tabernacle and temple, that speak of God’s pres­ence in distinctly local ways. It ought to be remembered that heaven is specifically God’s dwelling place, and that He is especially said to be present there.

To the language of being removed from God’s presence we can add that of separation. Here we are confronted with Isaiah’s famous words (Isa. 59:2): “But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.”

Is God present everywhere or can we go away from His presence? Is there a contradiction between these two strands of biblical evidence? There is no conflict. We need to be careful, however, about how we relate them. We can slip into error because of certain connotations implied by the language of being separated from God’s presence. In one sense, God was as much present to Cain in Nod as He was to Adam in the Garden, and as He is now to you as you read this. None of the exiles from Jerusalem saw a sign on their travels that said, “Welcome to Babylon, God isn’t here!” I suspect that it is simply carelessness and imprecision of thought that leads us to think of hell as separation from God in spatial terms.

Understanding God’s Spatial and Relational Presence←⤒🔗

So how should we understand the language of departing from God’s presence? Not in spatial but in relational terms. Or, to put it another way, it is a spiritual separation that we experience because of our sin, not a strictly local separation. Although the church in its infancy did experience God’s presence in con­nection with holy places, this experience was abrogated by the coming of Christ (John 4:20-24). That is not to deny the pres­ent dwelling of the covenant God among His people by the Spirit, but it is to say that this dwelling is not associated with places on a map. This was understood by Solomon, who knew full well that, even though God would dwell in the temple, the highest heavens could not contain Him (1 Kings 8:27; cf. Isa. 66:1-2; Acts 7:47-50). So the language of drawing near and departing from God’s presence is not a matter of physical distance but of His relationship to us. Our sin creates a moral distance, not a geographical one. We know in a limited way that we can be in the same room as someone physically, but if we have fallen out with him, it is as if we are a million miles apart. Likewise, Isaiah says that on account of Israel’s sins God had hidden His face from them (Isa. 59:2; cf. Num. 6:25).

God’s Presence in Hell and at the Cross←⤒🔗

Is God present in hell? We have to say that He is. First, because Scripture affirms that He is. In hell, there is torment day and night in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb (Rev. 14:9-11). Secondly, to deny that He is present in all of His creation is to deny that He is omnipres­ent. Was God present at the cross when Christ was forsaken? He was spatially as present in Jerusalem then as He is today. Nevertheless, in a way that we cannot comprehend but which is the cause of all our hope in time and eternity, we believe that the Son of God knew all the torments of a condemned sinner, and all the relational distance that guilty sinners will receive. His experience of being forsaken was not imagined (Mark 15:33-34). In that cry of dereliction, He knew abandonment as He, the only true and perfect covenant-keeper, bore the full weight of the covenant curses in the place of His people (Gal. 3:10-14).

When we turn to the Westminster Larger Catechism question 29, which deals with the subject of God’s relationship to those who will experience future judgment in hell, we find a precision of thought on these matters that is often lacking today:

Q. 29: What are the punishments of sin in the world to come?

A: The punishments of sin in the world to come, are everlasting separation from the comfortable presence of God, and most grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, in hell-fire forever.

Hell is not spatial separation from God. It cannot be because God is omnipresent. No, hell is separation from the comfortable presence of God. It is the unshielded experience of the presence of God in His holiness and just wrath, and the total absence of His mercy and grace.