Jesus uses notion of Hell as a teaching tool. He uses Hell as a graphic and powerful way to teach about God’s love, to introduce peace and condemn violence, and to wake people up about their current practice and life choices.
The idea of hell arrived quite late in the theological development of Judaism. Even the notion of an afterlife arrived quite late, too. By the time of Jesus, the idea of an afterlife was well situated in the wisdom and teaching of the day, but only after having lived as an exiled people among other cultures and having adapted those understandings of the afterlife. It turns out that the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, and the Egyptians who all had their own versions of what happened after death provided influence in the development of a theology of heaven and hell for Judaism. The Christian theology of the resurrection advances those understandings to the place where the gates of Hell are blown open anddeath has no victory. God in Christ has conquered Hell. Which leaves us with the awareness that hell has no purpose or power in God’s compassionate realm of eternal life except perhaps has a teaching tool.