Those Who Will Not Dance (Matthew 11:1-19)
Rob Tennant, HillSong Church ,
Chapel Hill , NC
Sunday, September 22,
2013
Philippians 2:9-11
New Revised Standard
Version (NRSV)
9 Therefore God also
highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
In
Colossians 1:15-20, the word is
about Jesus. We read …
“15 He (Jesus) is
the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 for in[h] him all things in
heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones
or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and
for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in[i] him all things hold
together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the
beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first
place in everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to
dwell, 20 and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.”
And then in 1 Corinthians 15:20-28
20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead,
the first fruits of those who have died.[a] 21 For since death came through a human being, the
resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; 22 for as all
die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. 23 But each in
his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to
Christ. 24 Then comes the end,[b]when he hands over
the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every
authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his
enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For “God[c] has put all things
in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “All things are put in
subjection,” it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things
in subjection under him. 28 When all things are subjected to him, then the
Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection
under him, so that God may be all in all.
From these verses, can
we safely acknowledge that the New Testament affirms universal salvation, or at
least the letters of Paul affirm universalism?
Of course Universalism refers to the doctrine that in the end, the very
end, all people are saved. Hell is empty
because everyone, everyone, gets
saved. Everyone goes to Heaven.
“At
the name of Jesus every knee should bend … and every tongue confess that [He]
is Lord.” Every single one.
“Through
Him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all
things.”
“As
all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”
The
thread of universalism weaves through Christianity going back to the earliest
times. There have been theological
heavyweights who believed that all are saved.
The most notable in the history of Christianity is Origin, born in 185
AD in the Egyptian city of Alexandria
Origin
believed in Hell, but he believed the fires of Hell serve to purify, not
torture, punish, or destroy. This view
is a fringe view, far from the most widely-held view that Hell is eternal,
conscious torment inflicted by God as punishment for sin. However, even though it is a minority
position, many held it including Gregory of Nyssa.[ii] One of the most renowned of 20th
century theologians, Karl Barth, has universalist overtones throughout his
work. And more recently, there is the
provocative book Love Wins by Rob
Bell. Bell
Some
lesser known theologians, at least not as familiar to me, attempt to assert the
case more forcefully. I offer here a few
of the arguments for universalism.
Already we have considered some scripture passage, all from the Apostle
Paul, that indeed are suggestive.
To
this, universalists add the argument for the character of God. God is love.
This is seen in God’s actions throughout the Bible and is explicitly
stated in First John, chapter 4, the second part of verse 16. The nature of God is love and universalists
argue that God will not violate God’s own nature. To condemn people to Hell, an eternity of
suffering, even when the punishment is deserved, goes against God’s nature of
love. God will not go against God’s
nature. I heard one pastor say it this
way.
I love my children. No matter what they did, no matter how they
misbehaved, I would not sentence them to eternity in Hell. God’s love is more perfect than mine and each
person is a child of God. God would not
send his children to Hell for eternity.[iii]
Universalists
carry this sense of God’s love to their reading of Jesus’ parable of the lost
sheep, found in Luke 15. God is the
shepherd who goes out to find the lost sheep.
Jesus clearly says there that the shepherd does not stop seeking until
the lost is found. The implication? God is the good shepherd. He will not abandon us to Hell, but will seek
until each and every lost person is found.
The
proponent of universalism would undoubtedly take the point further and add much
in detail. But I think we can see from
what I have shared here a foundation for this doctrine. The scriptures I mentioned from Paul’s
writings declare Jesus has died for all and the case makes sense. It is a logical argument. So is the argument for the nature of God –
that God is love and love cannot abandon people to Hell and still be called
love. Love seeks desperately for the
beloved. If God is the one seeking,
well, God gets what God is after.
Karl
Barth came up short of saying that all would be saved. Barth writes,
We died; the totality of
all sinful [people], those living, those long dead, and those still to be born,
Christians who necessarily know and proclaim it, but also Jews and heathen,
whether they hear and receive the news or whether they tried and still try to
escape it. His death was the death of
all: quite independently of their attitude or response to this event.[v]
Though this and many comments by him carry the
potential for universalism, Barth would not commit to it. In fact, late in life he confided to a friend
that he had a dream about Hell as a vast, cold, utterly lonely desert. The dream haunted him and he told the friend
of it. He said he knows about that
place, Hell, and for that reason, he must preach Christ.[vi]
Bell
too comes up short of commitment to universalism. He asks, “Will everybody be saved, or will
some perish apart from God forever because of their choices?” Bell’s response to his own question is “those
are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are free to leave
fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because we can’t,
and so we simply respect them, creating space for the freedom that love
requires.”
[vii]
I
understand Bell’s quote, opaque as it is.
There is much about the afterlife and God’s plans we do not know and
cannot know. We do not know whether
there literally is a book of life with names written or the idea of “book” is a
metaphor that represents God’s mind. Of
course it is a metaphor, but we don’t know God’s method of record keeping. There are many tensions in questions the
Bible does not answer or does not answer completely or does not answer the way
we wished it would. I appreciate
that. I appreciate the logic of saying
God is love and thus, God will not violate God’s own nature, and thus, God will
not allow anyone to spend eternity suffering in Hell. I see how that makes sense.
However,
in my own reading of scripture, I cannot accept universalism. I am not offering here a standard
traditionalist response that involves a listed of scriptures used to defend the
idea of Hell. You can find that argument
on the internet or read authors like Larry Dixon or J.I. Packer, just to name a
few of 100’s. My response comes from my
own sense of the New Testament. I
believe God is love. God as the giver of
perfect love and as the expression of perfect love implores us to choose to
worship Him. God does not force us. We choose.
God is broken when we choose not to love and worship God. But God knows some will make that
choice. When they do, God honors that
choice.
Consider
Matthew chapter 11. Jesus is addressing
a crowd that had followed John the Baptist.
Now, John is wallowing in Herod’s jail cell, and the crowd has
moved. From one Messianic voice to the
next, from John to Jesus, the crowd follows the wind. Jesus confronts this fickle crowd with the
truth. He says,
“What did
you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 8 What
then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes?
Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. 9 What
then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a
prophet. 10 This is the one about whom it is
written,
‘See, I am sending my messenger
ahead of you,
who will prepare your way before you.’
who will prepare your way before you.’
11 Truly I tell
you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist;
yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. 12 From
the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered
violence, and the violent take it by force. 13 For
all the prophets and the law prophesied until John came; 14 and
if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. 15 Let
anyone with ears listen!
16 “But to what
will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces
and calling to one another,
17 ‘We played
the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
18 For John
came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; 19 the
Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a
drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by
her deeds.”
When
Jesus plays his music, there will always be those who do not dance. There will always be people, made in the
image of God, lost sheep, who ignore the shepherd’s voice. The passage we read from 2nd Peter
3:9 says God wants all to come to repentance.
It does not say God will force all to come to repentance. Repentance is
not something that can be forced. It
must be chosen. Throughout the gospels,
Jesus teaches, with urgency, that all people must repent of sin and turn to Him
and there are consequences if they do not.
When he approaches Jerusalem prior to being crucified, he weeps saying,
“You did not recognizes the time of your visitation from God.”
Some
did see him and chose to follow him.
Many others did not. They cheered
him when he rode into town, but they also cheered and jeered when he was on the
cross. Of those who rejected Jesus, a
few came to faith after the resurrection.
His half-brother James is the most notable example. Most others did not turn to Him in
faith. They chose to reject the
salvation God offered. It has been the
same throughout history. People choose
to reject what God offers.
God,
I believe and I think the Bible shows, will honor that choice. God will honor our decision to reject God and
we can spend eternity without God. That
is Hell.
I
will say more about that next week.
Today, I want to finish by saying, thankfully, that this one thing is
most assuredly true. God is love. God is here for each and every one of
us. If we choose to turn away from our
sins and turn to Him, God will receive us.
God will adopt us. In Christ we
become sons and daughters of God, beginning now, today, and living in His
Kingdom for eternity. For a time, we
live in a fallen and broken world. But
God is going to redeem it. The Kingdom
we begin living in when we choose Jesus will become fully known at His Second
Coming.
Jesus
is playing His music. You have the
freedom to ignore it. But life is on the
dance floor. So come to Him, the Lord of
the Dance, come to Him for life.
AMEN
[i]
Jonathan Hill (2003), The History of
Christian Thought, p. 39-60.
[ii]
Ibid, p.57.
[iii]
Jim Dant ended his speech with this assertion of universal salvation. What I wrote here is a paraphrase of his
words that I am writing from memory. He
shared this at the workshop he led at the national meeting of the Cooperative
Baptist Fellowship in Charlotte ,
NC
[iv]
Rob Bell (2011) Love Wins. Chapter 4 is titled, “Does God get what God
wants?”
[v]
Larry Dixon (2003), The Other Side of the
Good News, p.45. Dixon is quoting Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol 4, part 1, p.295.
[vi]
Ibid, p.49.
[vii]
Love Wins, p.115.
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