"Seeing New Creations" 2 Corinthians 5:6-17

June 14, 2015

          Two weeks ago, I labeled Christians – we are the “born-agains.”  I made the case that all Christians are born again Christians.  Anyone interested in why I say this can listen to the sermon on our website or read out my blog.  Better yet, read the Gospel of John, chapter 3.

          Last week, I declared that we “born agains” are “clay jars,” hard and easily broken.  We are all cracked pots.  Actually, the Apostle Paul is the one who said that.  did.  Again, you can listen or read my “Honest Talk with God” blog.  Better still, read 2^nd Corinthians 4. 

          I offer no labels this morning.  Instead, we are invited to see as Christ sees.  How do born-again clay pots see and regard people?

          Before we dig into the answer, a word from 2^nd Corinthians 5:15 is needed.  That verse says, “[Jesus Christ] died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”  That Jesus died for us is good news, the best news, because sin leads to death and eternal separation from God, and we all sin, every one of us.

          If I lie and get caught, others see me as a liar.  The consequence is no one will trust me.  He steals something, gets caught, and he’s convicted of a misdemeanor or a felony.  There may be jail time or a fine or community service.  You kill someone and get convicted, and you may face life in prison or the death penalty.  All these things are sins in God’s eyes and when we die in sin then we die eternally.  Eternal death means eternal separation from God, a condition we describe as Hell. 

          When Paul tells us “Jesus died for all,” we realize Jesus took sin, death, and Hell off of us and carried it on his own shoulders.  Because of the cross, we are saved from eternal separation from God. 

          Verse 15 goes on to give one of the results. We have our faith in Christ and thus we have life.  This means we live for him.  Jesus shares our death and shares with us His resurrection.  We have eternal life and that means our lives are no longer ours.  Our lives – our individual lives and us united as the body of Christ – are for Him.  We belong to the Lord, we live for the Lord. 

          OK – so what?  What, exactly, does this mean?  We live for Jesus.  What does this mean in the daily living of our lives?  Verse 16 gives us focus.  The verse begins “From now on.”  If you are reading The Message you see that it says, “Because of this.”  The New King James Version says, “Therefore.”  The NIV renders it “So from now on.” 

          All these English versions show the same thing – there is a change.  That Jesus died and rose and that we came to entrust our lives to him by putting our faith in him means a radical change in the direction and orientation of our lives.  We were self-focused.  Now, in Christ, we are God-focused.  We were, in life, headed away from an eternity with Him.  Now, in Christ, our lives are God-oriented.  A change has occurred.

          This shift from a life apart from God to a life that is lived under Jesus as Lord is radical enough that Paul found himself challenged.  He was opposed by his fellow monotheists, Jews who did not believe Jesus was the son of God or the Messiah.  He was confronted by Romans who felt an offense that he would claim Jesus, and not Caesar, is Lord.  And he was mocked by Greeks who lived by a loose polytheism and the wisdom of sages like Plato.  And, Paul was challenged by other Christians, people within the church. 

To all these he says in verse 13, “If we are beside ourselves, it is for God.” Paul knew some thought he was just crazy.  He accepted that.  Living for God meant taking whatever abuses might come.  In our era, we are in some quarters expected to live for our country.  Marketers want us to live for ourselves.  If we do then they will sell us products they have convinced us we need, if we want to be happy.  You need this new phone.  You need this new … whatever.  Why?  It will make you happy.  Other voices today may reject that life has any meaning at all.  There is no God and we are all results of a biological process, the collection of atoms.  To the nationalists, capitalists, self-worshipers, and atheists, we say what Paul said to the temple, the government, and the academy:  “Go ahead, call us crazy.  We are living for God and that looks insane to you, so be it.”

We do not try to live for God in a way that allows us to also idolize country or idolize self.  We do not dare say becoming a Christian is no big thing.  It is the biggest change we’ll go through.  “From now on;” “Because of this;” “Therefore;” we are in Christ.  He is Lord of our lives. 

Following his lead then, we see from his perspective.  We born-again cracked pots regard people as Jesus regards people.  Verse 16 makes this clear.  Because we are in Christ, how we approach others will be the biggest change we make.  “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.”

Jesus’ own teaching illuminates this.  If you ever watched Star Trek you know Vulcans live by a code.  “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.”  In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15, Jesus says God is like a shepherd who leaves his 99 sheep to go out and find one lost sheep.  When we see people, not from a human point of view but as God sees them, we then see them as ones for whom God goes out of his way to save.

You’re at the grocery store and you see a mom with her teenage son.  She is riding him hard.  You failed two classes last semester.  You father was a straight ‘A’ student.  You brother made the dean’s list in college.  You failed two classes.  And, three times I was called by the principle about your behavior.  If you don’t care school, at least care about your family.  You are embarrassment to us all.”  You are appalled at the way she demeans her son and you should be.  It is terrible to break a kid like that.  It is even in worse to do it for everyone in the Food Lion to hear.  And they do hear it.  You see heads turn to witness this major parenting fail.  You want to go over and tell that mom to shut it. 

From God’s point of view, she is a lost sheep who needs to be saved.  “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way.”  We know he was a human and he was God; we know he died on the cross.  And so the cross the lens we look through when we see the world and more importantly people in the world.

We see the overbearing verbally abusive mom and her actions may merit criticism.  If the child were young and she were beating the kid, authorities should be called in.  But we do not hold her in contempt.  The cross of Christ colors our visions.  We see her and we see her sins on him, nailed to a cross.  With love we see that she needs him. 

In our daily relationships, we no longer regard others as we did before we were in Christ.  We now see spiritually.  Love determines how we regard others – those in the church and those outside it.  Paul writes in 2^nd Corinthians 2:15, “We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.”

What then does it look like to regard people when we see as Christ sees?  Paul names it in 2^nd Corinthians 5:17-21.

¹⁷ So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,^[d] not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. ²⁰ So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

          We pray for the angry mom in the super market and the son she verbally flogs.  We look with the love the Spirit pours into our hearts and we pray for reconciliation.  Think about real people you know, those who anger you.  Think about those who hurt others, those you know who are difficult.  We look and see people who, if they turned to Christ, would become new creations in him.  We don’t see from human point of view but from his.

          We do this when we look in the mirror too.  Sometimes the one we hold in contempt most, the one we love least is ourself.  When you see yourself do you see the new creation Christ is creating – the new you Christ is forming in His image?  That’s how Paul saw himself.  He writes in 2 Corinthians 1:12-14,

¹² Indeed, this is our boast, the testimony of our conscience: we have behaved in the world with frankness^[c] and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God—and all the more toward you. ¹³ For we write you nothing other than what you can read and also understand; I hope you will understand until the end— ¹⁴ as you have already understood us in part—that on the day of the Lord Jesus we are your boast even as you are our boast.

When we see ourselves and others from Jesus’ perspective, through cross-colored lenses, through eyes of love, we see the new creation that we become in Him.  And in those who don’t know Him, we see what they can be if the join themselves to Christ.  We always see people as to who they are in Christ or who they might be in Christ. 

I close with an assignment.  Determine that this week, you will see from Jesus’ perspective.  You will see people as God sees people.  Now this is an assignment, so write it down.  When you leave this place, imagine the very next person you will see.  When you see him or her, imagine how Christ sees that individual.  And you see him that way and relate to him in kind.  Act toward him as if he is a new creation in Christ or is someone in need of Christ. 

This requires discipline.  You will see people you don’t like, at least not in the flesh.  Jesus did not say, love them unless they annoy you and then you can treat them like dirt.  No, he said, love as you love yourself.  Paul unfolds this teaching by telling us we are in Christ so we see people as new creations. 

So go out and see in this way beginning with the first person you encounter after leaving here.  We see with eyes of love and act on what we see.

AMEN

Truly Human and Truly Alive (Ephesians 2:1-10)

Sunday, September 7, 2014

            Certain passages from scripture need no introduction.

            “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

            “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  No one comes to the father except through me”(John 14:6).

            “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).

            And this one:

            ²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make humankind^[c] in our image, according to our likeness; … .”

²⁷ So God created humankind^[e] in his image,
    in the image of God he created them;^[f]
    male and female he created them.

³¹ God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good (Genesis 1:26a, 27, 29).

            God created with a plan in mind: the pinnacle of creation would not be the breathtaking sites of nature, the peaks of the Himalayas, the Northern lights, the endless blue of the ocean at the equator, or any other natural wonder.  Nor would the ultimate of all God made be any cosmological phenomenon.  God’s plan reached God’s purpose with the forming of you and me - humans. 

            The crucial point in God’s scheme was the creation of free agents – beings who could actually choose to go God’s away or to go against God.  In a sense, God created sin because God made beings – humans – who had the capacity to choose sin.  And with that choice available, we took it.  From Adam and Eve to Hitler to most of what is seen at the movies to you and me and everyone in between and everyone hereafter, humans sin.  Every one.  Jesus is the exception, the only person to be a human being and not at some point rebel against God.

            In Romans, Paul indicates the cumulative effect of thousands of years of human rejection of God’s authority (Romans 8). 

            ¹⁸ I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰ for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

            Something was lost when the first humans sinned.  We have continued to be more and more lost ever since.  Some authors suggest, we today are not even like the original humans. We are weaker, live shorter lives, and have more limitations on us in all aspects of living.  Sin has brought about degradation so that God’s good creation is now something less than it was at the start. 

N.T. Wright imagines humans who have rejected God.  Here is how he says it.  “Hell is what happens when human beings say to the God in whose image they were made, ‘we don’t want to worship you.  We don’t want our human life to be shaped by worshiping you.  We don’t want who we are as humans transformed by the love of Jesus, dying and rising for us.  We don’t want any of that.  We want to stay as we are and do our own thing.’  And if you do that, you’re saying you want to stop being an image-bearing human being within this good world God has made.  You’re colluding with your own progressive dehumanization. … The reality is … sober and sad. …  [It is a] progressive shrinking of human life that happens during this life.  If someone resolutely says to God, ‘I am not going to worship you,’” and, “deep down [in the heart] there is rejection of the good creator God.”  That is a choice we can make and God will honor that choice.  And then, stuck in sin with no hope of regeneration or redemption, we degrade so much we become no longer human but something grotesque and unrecognizable. 

            Biology and other sciences that study the ancient earth’s origin and the beginnings of humanity offer explanation for how we got here.  Theology, simply put, is a word about God.  Can there be comprehensive understanding of the world that accounts for science and theology?   The assertion that sin has effected a de-evolution of creation does not make sense from the view of Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is amoral.  I generally accept the explanations today’s biologists, physicists, and geologists give for the origins of the universe and of life on earth.  But I don’t think those explanations are perfect and I do not think they account for everything that exists.  Those disciplines are not able to anticipate the future in the way Christian faith can, informed by God’s plan as we are.

            Well, so what? 

Last week, we looked at what we know of God in Christ by looking at the activity of God described in Ephesians 1.  In Christ, we know God.  This week, we see in Ephesians 2 that in Christ we are alive. 

            “Alive” can mean breathing, heart beating, and maybe there are other conditions that need to be present for a technical definition of “alive.”  In Ephesians 2 “alive” means more than that.  When the first humans were truly alive, God could see His own image in each – in male and in female.  The world was so right, completely absent of sin, death, or corruption, that God declared it “very good.”  When Ephesians 2:5 says we are “made alive together with Christ,” it is declaring we are again in a state that is “very good.”

            I don’t think this means a return to Genesis as if the Fall never happened and the forbidden fruit was never eaten.  Salvation is not an eraser that eliminates history.  Salvation happens within history, redeeming the story.  In Jesus, God took on the particularities of gender, time, nationality, and socio-economic class.  Jesus was not just a person, he was a man, the son of Joseph and Mary.  He was not just a man.  He was a first century, Jewish man.  He was of the tradesmen, son of a carpenter. 

God, in Christ, stepped into the gradually decaying world, the world undone by sin.  “Made alive together with Christ” is the insistence that in spite of the undeniable corruption of earth it will be “very good” again.  It is not a harkening back to Eden.  It is an act of Christ that has future consequences and that determines the eternal reality – the coming together of Heaven and Earth.  Salvation also says a lot about our present reality.

We are loved (v.4).  The reason God brings life to us – to we who are fallen in sin – is God loves us.  Ephesians 1:5 states plainly that sin (trespasses in the NRSV) leads to death.  Progressive dehumanization, N.T. Wright called it.  Our sins are not just acts.  They are acts that accumulate and also indicate our condition.  Without ceasing, we slip away from what we were created to be – God’s image bearers.  But God will not just watch us go.  God loves us too much.  So, he comes as Jesus. 

Then the cross, then the resurrection, and then as we respond t0 the Holy Spirit’s prompting by receiving grace and putting our faith in God, we are raised.  Ephesians 2:6, God “raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus.”  There is no death there.

Imagine it, if you can.  I confess, I cannot.  My entire paradigm involves beginnings and endings.  I lack the capacity to conceive of an existence in which death has no role, is not.  Perhaps this is a failure of my own imagination.  I try to see it in my mind, but all that comes is bright, brilliant white clouds with blinding rays of sun shooting from all sides.  I see mountains and maybe imagine myself flying. Most of these images have been put in my mind by popular artists’ visions of what Heaven might be like. 

The Biblical picture stands as something more real.  There will be trees, fruit trees.  There will be a city with a river running down the middle.  There will be music.  All these images come from the metaphors of the book of Revelation.  The most important is the coming together of Heaven and Earth.  Biblically speaking, we don’t go to Heaven when we die.  Heaven and Earth come together.  The most important piece in the “raised up with him … in heavenly places” promise is the phrase “with him.”

When Jesus was resurrected, he had defeated death.  He will not die again.  His love for us means he takes us with him.  When we join him in resurrection, we will not die again either.  So to say we are made alive together with Christ is to say the corruption of the fall has been cleansed off us.  We will not die.  We are living into life – eternal life.  That redemption which, as we saw in Romans 8, the creation groans for comes in Christ. 

There is more.  We are raised by God’s love.  We are also created by God’s purpose.  Ephesians 2:10 – “We are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works.”  God created all that is in 6 days and rested on the 7^th.  Creativity was and continues to be an attribute of God as God creates us anew.  Read Genesis 1-2.  In the beginning the earth was a formless void and God’s creation was careful, precise.  God made order out of chaos.  In Christ, God continues His creativity, bringing order to the chaos sin has imposed in our lives.

Our church stands on three pillars.  This is our philosophy for life in Christ.  First, all are welcome.  Come as you are.  The body of Christ is a safe place.  Second, come ready to meet Christ.  When we encounter Him, we meet the living God.  No one can stay as they are after a true experience with God.  We will become a new creations; we are made new.  Third, having been born again, made for good works, we are sent out into the world in Jesus’ name to share the truth that He is Lord and that all people can have life in Him.

Ephesians 2:10 is one of the core verses for the second pillar in this philosophy, “made new in Christ.”  Raised, we know that death is longer part of our story.  Made new, we see that while we are not of this earth, as long as we live prior to the Second Coming and the dawning of the New Age, we have not just been created but created for something.  One alive in Christ cannot be indifferent in the world or toward the world.  It is not possible.

We try.  The Fall and all the corruption sin produces tries to lure us into ignoring God and living for ourselves.  One of sin’s deepest realities is that the self becomes our object of worship.  All sin, at its core is idolatry, the worship of something other than God, something not worthy of worship.  Andy Crouch says an idol is something that in the beginning promises us everything while asking nothing of us; but, over time, the idol asks more and more of us while giving less and less.  In the end, the idol ask us to give it everything while it gives us nothing in return.[i]  Whatever variety of sin tempts you or tempts me, down at the heart of it is an idol that will consume and obliterate our humanity.  To step toward an idol is a rejection of God and prioritizing my fleshly desires over God’s place in my life.   Even after we turn to Jesus, sin, Satan, and death will use idols to try to draw us away from Him.

But the Holy Spirit is persistent.  We have been created for good – good that is seen in our actions in the world.  To be alive in Christ is to point the world to the future time when Heaven and Earth come together.  Ephesians 2:10 is direct – we are what he has made us, “created in Christ Jesus for good works.”  The Spirit leads us to God, and after we put our trust in Jesus, the Spirit continues to be at work in our lives.  We can turn away even after having seen God, but we do so with the Spirit pulling on us, constantly trying to draw us back to God.  God could simply force us to worship and faith, but then we would lose our identity as image-bearers. 

We have been created as God’s image bearers.  Sin shattered each of us, but in Christ we are made new; we are re-created for life in Christ and with the mission of sharing his love and the Gospel with everyone who does not know him so they too can receive the salvation he offers. 

I began this morning identifying passages from scripture that are familiar even to people who don’t realize these things are in the Bible.

I close with a final look at one of those passages, Genesis 1, where we see that to be human is to be in God’s image.  If we are not bearing God’s image, we are something less than human.  Sin makes it impossible to bear God’s image.  But the testimony of Ephesians 2 is that Christ has come and our sins are forgiven.  Once again we are created, made anew, you and I, made to be image bearers who live in and guides other into the Kingdom of God.

AMEN 

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[i] A. Crouch (2013).  Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power.  InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, p.56.

He Descended into Hell

The backdoor, where people exit the sanctuary into the hallway (foyer) and then into the parking lot, is becoming quite interesting for me.  I am a pastor and at the end of our worship time on Sundays, stand at the backdoor and greet each person who has come to worship that day.  It does not present the opportunity for lengthy conversations, but it gives me a chance to touch our church family.  I have my role in the family and a crucial part for me is to be connected as much as possible to everyone.

So there I stood, at my backdoor post, and one of our faithful members said, “A visitor just asked me a question: does the pastor believe Hell is a place?”  Then she looked at me expectantly.   I was to give an answer she would relay to the visitor.  I immediately thought this visitor wants a “right answer.”  But, I don’t know what that is.  Even if I did, I would have to give my honest answer, not what she thought was the “right” answer.   If she did not come back because of disagreement over my views of Hell, so be it.  I have to say what I truly feel.

What bothered me that day was my own lack of certainty.  I was not 100% sure what I believed.  That took me and our church down the road of a 7-part sermon series on the Afterlife.  Now, we are several weeks in, past the ‘Hell discussions,’ and it happened at the back door again! 

One of our elders said, “I was really hoping you’d talk about the creed where it says, “And he descended into Hell.”  He smiled and I smiled.  He is a man full of grace and if I just leave this alone, I know he’ll leave me alone.  But I have come to believe God is speaking to me through these backdoor conversations. 

Our church does not say the creeds and I am so unfamiliar with the Apostle’s Creed that I could not recite it from memory.  But I was already aware of that line.  I had been asked about it before, years earlier in my work as a pastor.  I really did not know either when I was asked in previous years, or this past Sunday.  On the face of it, it does not make sense to me that Jesus, sinless as He was and victorious over death, would have descended to Hell.  But, things are not true based on whether or not they make sense to me.  Did Jesus descend to Hell as the creed states?

It is important to note that as powerful as the creed is, for Protestants, it is post-canonical.  This means it is not on the same level of power or authority as scripture.  One can read and pose the question, does this in any conflict with the Bible?  This is a legitimate exercise. 

The results of an internet search are varied.  As with any Google search, there is a lot of material out there, but I did find an article in a source I trust – Christianity Today magazine.  The author is Millard Erickson, theology professor at Truett Theological Seminary.  [i]

Erickson reviews several possible interpretations of the line “he descended into Hell.”  First, it may simply be a way of stating Jesus was fully dead.  According to the cosmology of the day, Hell was literally in the earth or “under” the earth.  If Jesus was buried, where else would He be but in Hell? Erickson says this view seems to be supported by Acts 2:31.  This view is along the lines of thought offered by Luke Timothy Johnson in his book The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters (2003).[ii]

Another view described by Erickson is that the descent comes in the pre-incarnate form of Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus, speaking through the prophets, specifically Noah.  Erickson cites 1 Peter 1:11 for support.  There it says His spirit was in the prophets.  And 1 Peter 3:18-20 indicates that Jesus “went and preached to spirits in prison” and these were those who were “disobedient in the days of Noah” (3:20).

Thus from Erickson, two views stand out.  That Jesus “descended” simply means he was fully dead; or, he went to the world of the dead, referred to as “Hell,” in order to preach.  Does this allow for post-death conversation and salvation?  Not necessarily as there are numerous nuanced explanations for what it means that Jesus descended.  Besides that, Erickson and other sites refer to many other possibilities for what it could mean to say Jesus descended to Hell.  One suggests his time in Hell is his time of suffering.  Only in this was can he take the place of sinners in death.[iii]

In addition to the references from Acts and 1^st Peter and the allusion to Noah, other Bible passages sought out in this conversation include Luke 16:19-31; Philippians 2:5-11; Ephesians 4:8-10; and readings from Job and the Psalms.  But, there is no uniformity of thought.  And to take any of these passages or any combination of these to reach conclusions requires several hermeneutic steps.  It is a worthwhile process, but for me it is unresolved.

I believe that the lack of a unifying theme means there are realities we will not know this side of Heaven and we may never know.  I do not think that because the Apostle’s Creed states “He descended into Hell,” we can conclude Jesus spent time in a fiery abyss being tortured either by God or by Satan.  Nothing in the Bible indicates that narrative.  However, nothing in the Bible completely rules it out either.  The fact that the Bible clearly indicates that Jesus claimed victory over death to me rules against the thought of Jesus in some kind of Hell.

The Creed is an ancient one. Even the English translation is quite old.  To say “Hell” does not mean what we mean when we say “Hell.”  Our study of Hell has been of a future punishment. Whatever Jesus experienced on the day of crucifixion and until his resurrection, it is not akin to a future punishment for sin.  Thus, whatever the Creed means to say, I cannot affirm that Jesus suffered helplessly in Hell.  In all places, He is Lord.  Demons cower before Him. 

I am happy to state that the Bible does not point us toward speculation.  Rather, the Bible assures us that if we are in Christ then we will become new creations and together, we stand on Judgment Day as the church, the spotless bride of Christ.  We face an eternity with him.  Hell is something we’ll never experience.   Even though this conversation is not about that, it is a fitting last word.

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[i] http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/february7/31.74.html?start=2

[ii] Johnson, p.174-5.

[iii] http://questions.org/attq/does-scripture-imply-that-jesus-descended-into-hell-after-his-death/

The Eternal Fate of those who have Never Heard the Gospel

            Dawson McAlister has answered the anxious phone calls of teenagers for almost 40 years.  In his career, he has seen youth ministry go from record albums to cassettes to CD’s to MP3 files.  He has been on radio shows and run hotlines where teens can call when they are in crisis.  But sometimes the calls are questions, not emergencies. 

He received this letter:

“Dear Dawson, I know the Bible says that knowing Jesus is the only way to get to heaven. But there are people in remote parts of the world who may never get a chance to hear about God or Jesus. What happens to them when they die?”[i]

            Popular pastor and author John Piper received a similar contact and he responded with the following words.

Dear [Sarah], You asked what happens to people who live far away from the gospel and have never heard about Jesus and die without faith in him.[ii]

            It’s really an age-old question.  These are examples of teenagers posing this question to Christians leaders.  But the same query might come to you or me.  How we would respond were we sitting in the seat of Dawson McAlister or John Piper?  What do we say when we are asked what is the eternal state for someone who dies having never known about Jesus?

            We might think of the uneducated peasant in North Korea, someone who never goes to school, never has access to media, knows nothing about the west and is told by oppressive government forces that religion is evil.  Or, perhaps we think of a woman in an extremist country where women are not permitted to get education and are not allowed to know about the world.  How could individuals in these situations know they are to surrender their hearts to Jesus?

            There are adults who have such extreme mental disabilities that they are not able to care for themselves.  Do they stand before God accountable for themselves?  Our courts take a person’s mental state in mind when rendering a verdict.  Is God as merciful as that?  Or, what about children?  We don’t like to say it, but sometimes, children die.  If a child dies and has never expressed faith in Jesus and never been baptized, does that child go to Hell?  I have heard people say a child is not guilty until the age of accountability.  I don’t know where that thinking comes from and I certainly don’t know what the age of accountability is.  I know I received my first spanking by the time I was 2 year old and I certainly knew when I was being naughty. 

            One other category of person I consider here are those who have been taught by abusive pastors or parents.  If the person who tells you to love Jesus is the same person who hits you or violates and rapes you, repeatedly, are you going to be interested in the Jesus that person is offering?

            This is a conundrum for Christians trying to come up with a neat salvation formula.  There are some who don’t fit the categories.  Or, if they do fit the model, then they fit on the side of those who don’t have the gospel, have not responded in faith, and are thus bound for a godless eternity.  Another way we refer to a Godless eternity is Hell.  But if someone never has the chance to receive Christ, then that’s horribly unfair. 

            When we admit that there are a lot of people, probably in the billions, that have no opportunity to know Jesus, then we have a problem with our salvation model. 

            There is a video on You Tube in which Pastor David Platt sticks with the model.  He’s standing in India and he talks about being surrounded by hundreds of millions of Buddhists who are lost for eternity because they don’t know Christ.  His angle is that because we know so many are destined for Hell, we must evangelize with urgency.  Now before I disagree with Platt, I will say a couple of things.  First, I agree evangelism is of the highest importance and we are called to it.  Second, I think he does some good work and I recommend his book Radical.  It is excellent.

            However, on the notion that if we don’t evangelize then billions will go to Hell, I have to disagree.  First, it makes God look bad.  I know Platt and numerous Christians who believe as he does will respond by saying that all people are sinners and all people deserve Hell.  I know Romans 3 says all have sinned (v.23).  Romans 6 says the wage of sin is death (v.23).  Note it says death, not “Hell.”  I know those passages and I absolutely believe all are sinners.  Yet, to take that and say it is by grace that God saves some is still grossly unfair and unjust. 

What kind of tyrant is God to say He’s going to punish us all in Hell because we deserve it, but then He’ll rescue a few if they respond to Jesus correctly?  But to the rest, they don’t even get that chance.  This makes God look callous.  The God of this scheme is not a God of perfect love; limited love, maybe, but not selfless, agape love. 

This thinking is an assault on God’s character.  It also calls into question God’s power.  As we read in 2 Peter 3 two weeks ago, God wants everyone to be saved (v.9).  Is David Platt saying that God is depending on the success or failure of evangelistic Christians to achieve his desire of salvation of people?  Platt may forcefully deny that his is implying this.  Most of the time pastors who take such an approach find the implications distasteful.  But it is unavoidable.  To say we must evangelize because people will go to Hell if we don’t is to put the eternal life of others on our shoulders.  My shoulders aren’t that strong.  God wants me to work with Him – but not like this.

Paul never reduced salvation to a formula or a scheme.  Paul says salvation is worked out with “fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12).  Salvation is something we discover and rediscover throughout our lives.  It is 100% Jesus-dependent, but it is not built on us reciting a creed or having a great testimony.  Salvation is about the work He does on the cross and the places He occupies in our lives.  It is about receiving his forgiveness. 

Having said and having critiqued David Platt’s position, and let me re-emphasize how much respect and appreciation I have for Platt, I have to acknowledge we are still left with the question.  What about people who don’t know Jesus and never hear about him or lack the capacity to express what some call “saving faith”?  What about those who want nothing to do with church because they have only heard Jesus’ name come from the mouths of those who deeply wounded them? 

I reject the idea that we can be assured that they are Hell-bound because such a process makes God look callous and puts too much emphasis upon our evangelistic success.  But, I reject it for an even bigger reason.  This scheme is a failure to trust God’s goodness. 

In Romans 1, Paul identifies people who have never heard any scripture.

¹⁸ From heaven God shows how angry he is with all the wicked and evil things that sinful people do to crush the truth. ¹⁹ They know everything that can be known about God, because God has shown it all to them. ²⁰ God’s eternal power and character cannot be seen. But from the beginning of creation, God has shown what these are like by all he has made. That’s why those people don’t have any excuse. 

           

            Within us, part of being created in God’s image, is an innate sense of the holy.  We see this in Psalm 19.

                The heavens keep telling the wonders of God,
    and the skies declare what he has done.
² Each day informs the following day;
    each night announces to the next.
³ They don’t speak a word,  and there is never
    the sound of a voice.
⁴ Yet their message reaches all the earth,
    and it travels around the world.

            Through nature, through the whisper of the Holy Spirit, and through the hard work of evangelists and missionaries and Christians sharing their stories, God reaches people.  But it is not only through missionaries.  Missionaries do not “take God” to the lost.  God has always been with the lost.  Missionaries and evangelists and witnesses, you and me, we help people understand the truth about the God who has always been with them, speaking through the created world around them.

            When Jesus speaks about the end, the final judgment, he says,

¹³ But if [we]keep on being faithful right to the end, [we] will be saved. ¹⁴ When the good news about the kingdom has been preached all over the world and told to all nations, [then] the end will come (Matthew 24:13-14).

I take this to mean that the Gospel is going to reach the world.  I don’t believe anyone will die and be sentenced to Hell without a chance to respond to God’s grace. 

            In his response to the girl who asked about the eternal fate of people who don’t know Jesus, John Piper said people would not be condemned for knowledge they did not have.  They would not go to Hell for rejecting Jesus.  He also said they would not be saved without knowledge of Jesus.  His conclusion to the letter writer?  He invited her to pray for missionaries and consider becoming one when she got older.

            His answer is not bad, but I like Dawson McAlister’s better.  Like Piper, he invites the questioner to pray for missionaries and consider becoming one.  However, he adds,

We can be assured that God, who is loving and just, is in control. God is sovereign, and he will always do what is right. God is an awesome God, and nothing will stop him from getting the good news to even the most remote parts of the world.[iii]

It may sound too simple, but there are times when we are called to trust God.  He will accomplish salvation. 

            Jesus offers a somewhat stern example of the principle of trusting God after the resurrection.  Peter had denied knowing Jesus prior to the trial.  After the crucifixion and resurrection, three times Jesus asks Peter “Do you love me?”  Three times he says, “You know I love you, Lord.”  Three affirmations come for Peter’s three previous denials.  He is reinstated as an apostle, but then Jesus intimates that he will die a martyr’s death. 

            Uncomfortable with this, he wants to know if the same fate will befall the Apostle John.  Listen to the dialogue between him and Jesus:

²⁰ Peter turned and saw Jesus' favorite disciple following them. He was the same one who had sat next to Jesus at the meal and had asked, “Lord, who is going to betray you?” ²¹ When Peter saw that disciple, he asked Jesus, “Lord, what about him?”

²² Jesus answered, “What is it to you, if I want him to live until I return? You must follow me.” 

            Follow me.  That is His command to us.  It is not for us to know who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell.  As I said earlier, I enthusiastically support David Platt’s stance that there Christians must evangelize and do so with urgency.  But the reason I feel this way is not because God needs us to rescue people from Hell.  I am an advocate for evangelism because people are living without Jesus.  I cannot imagine that. 

            If you don’t think Jesus is so awesome you could not imagine life without him, then your biggest need is to discover how wonderful Jesus is.  Not a far off, hopefully-we’ll-see-Him-in-Heaven-someday-Jesus; that is not what I mean.  I mean Holy-Spirit-in-my-life-right-now.  In the Great commission, Matthew 28:19-20, he sends us.  We are to go to the world to make disciples.  We’re not on a mission to rescue people from Hell.  We are out inviting people to life.

            As for those who never hear the Gospel, I don’t know.  I am agnostic, without knowledge regarding their fate.  That is up to God and I am glad it is.  For a second week in a row I have said to you, I don’t know.  Last week, I admitted I do not know if Hell is eternal torment or temporary torment followed by annihilation.  I don’t know and I do not know what happens in eternity to those who do have never the opportunity to hear the Gospel.  I am grateful to leave that to God.  I know God is good.  I am happy to share the words of Anglican Bishop Rowan Williams.

We’re very reluctant, we Christians, to leave things to God to sort out.  We have, often, a vague feeling that God hasn’t read the right books.  And we need to be rather protective toward him and make sure he knows the right policy. 

I find [Williams continues], and I speak only for myself, that I am very content to let God be the judge of how far anyone outside the visible family of faith is related to Jesus or has turned toward the Father. 

Bishop Williams speaks for me also.  I am very content to let God judge people and determine their eternities.  God is fair and better yet, God is merciful.  God’s mercy is far superior to my sense of fairness.  

            I do have a job to do.  We all do, as Christ followers.  We are to announce His Kingdom in the world.  We are to love our neighbors as ourselves.  And we are to make disciples.  He does the work and in His mercy, God invites us to join Him at work in the world.

AMEN

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[i] http://www.christianitytoday.com/iyf/advice/faithdoubt/8c1046.html

[ii] http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/letter-to-a-12-year-old-girl-about-the-eternal-destiny-of-those-who-have-not-heard-the-gospel

[iii] http://www.christianitytoday.com/iyf/advice/faithdoubt/8c1046.html