Not so long ago I was listening to a sermon in Chelmsford Cathedral where one of the ministers preached with passion on the words of Jesus found in John 15.16: “You did not choose me, but I chose you”. Toward the beginning of his sermon he said that no doubt Peter and Andrew, and their friends John and James, thought they had chosen to follow Jesus. However, in reality, it was Jesus who chose them. Jesus it is who chooses us all to be his. Jesus who calls us to “love one another” as he has loved us (John 15.12). He went on, Jesus loves us all so much, that he wants us all to be with him in heaven. Nobody will be excluded. Those Evangelicals who say that we will only be saved if we believe are wrong. Everybody is going to go to heaven. As we see in the terrible scenes of suffering caused by wars today, hell exists in this world, but it will not be there at the end of time, for everybody – Christian, Jew, and Muslim together with the adherents of all the religions and indeed those of no faith whatsoever – will be saved. “I am a universalist”, the preacher thundered, and so should every thinking person be one too!
It was a powerful sermon and gave me much cause for thought. However, at the end of the service I went up to the preacher who by then was standing at the door farewelling worshippers, and said: Although I believe that F.W. Faber was right when he declared in his him that
“There’s a wideness ln God’s mercy
Like the wideness of the sea…”
When we reach heaven we will be surprised to see the number of people God has had mercy upon (including, of course, ourselves!), I find it impossible to believe that everybody will be there. What about Adolf Hitler and his henchmen who were responsible for the gassing of the Jews and others? Surely they will not be in heaven? At which point the preacher had the grace to say that he too would find it difficult to be there. So, in spite of what he said in his sermon, not all will be there. Not all sadists, not all child abusers together with lots of others whose behaviour has been worse than we could ever imagine, will be there.
Perhaps to the surprise of some of my fellow Evangelicals I do not think only Christians will be saved. As the Apostle Paul himself suggested, when “Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires” (Rom 2.14) they too will be saved – but ultimately not on the basis of how they have lived their lives but as a result of the saving grace of Jesus. In addition there will be those who in this life turned their backs on Christ not because they had no regard for Jesus himself, but rather because of how Christians who turned them off believing in Christ because of the appalling way in which they had behaved. That is part of the “wideness” of “God’s mercy”.
But I believe that those who have deliberately turned their back on God will not be there. The glory of the Gospel is that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3.16). The tragedy of life is that there who are “condemned” because they refused to believe “in the name of the Son of God” (John 3.17).
So to go back to the words of Jesus in the Upper Room: “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15.16). Jesus in his love chose in the first place those who responded to his call to be his disciples. Even atheists despite their profound differences with Christians would believe that if God were just then would be no place in his heaven for people who, for instance, brutally rape and murder young girls. Although there is much we do not know about heaven and hell, the one thing we do know is that if God is a God of love and justice then they are realities.
That morning when the preacher proclaimed himself a universalist we sang as our final hymn the great words of Timothy Rees, a former Bishop of Llandaff:
“God is love: and though with blindness sin afflicts the souls of men,
God’s eternal loving-kindness holds and guide them even then.
Sin and death and hell shall never oe’r us final triumph gain;
God is love, so love for ever oe’r the universe must reign.”
However, although God is love, alas not all respond to his love, and so not all will be saved.
I would go along with your final statement .
I am not a universalist as Jesus was not one either!
The narrow way on which there are only a few
Only 8 saved in time of Noah when it is estimated world population was 100million.
However I do think that many will be saved who we will be surprised about….who would have expected the thief on the cross to be in heaven before the disciples ! Or Rahab to be counted amongst the righteous?
Indeed I am more concerned about good Christians like us who become blasé about the grace of God and somehow move into pharisaism….
I also note in Rev 21 that the sins of
Cowardice and unbelief head the list of the vile and murders and sexually immoral.
I also note that the sexually immoral seem to be a moving feast as it were – things we count today as such are not same as years ago, yet there must be an objective sin in this department that is offensive to God ?
So I am not a universalist but I am not someone who thinks all Christian’s will be saved and all non xians will be not saved.
Basically each salvation is a personal thing between a person and God
And No one but God has the list!
Yours
Peter
I am no universalist either. But Paul, your list of ‘who to expect’ and ‘who NOT to expect’ in heaven is NOT the gospel! As examples of the latter you list “Hitler and his henchmen”, “(some) sadists and child abusers”, those who “brutally rape and murder young girls.” But that is EXACTLY the error that the world makes in judging (and grading) sin according to human values – whereas before a Holy God EVERY sin is EQUALLY vile, EQUALLY heinous, and EQUALLY deserving of judgment. We all like to think that, whereas ‘they’ fall BELOW the bar, ‘we’ stand safely ABOVE it. Wrong, wrong, WRONG!
Just as NONE – NOT ONE OF US – is deserving of heaven; NEITHER NEED ANY be without hope of reaching it. The dying thief on the cross is proof of this. And that is because our hope (as his) is placed, not in ourselves and our own works, but in Jesus and His perfect righteousness.
I realise full well that you know this Paul. But it seemed to me that your words could be taken and understood otherwise.
I think we all should expect one day to be beyond dumb-founded when we finally see the unimaginable reach and depth of God’s grace and mercy. Not least, of course, to ourselves.
This business of choice is a rather more complicated thing than many Christians like to believe!
I have thought for a long time that when Jesus “called” the disciples it was not on the spur of the moment. After all, Jesus had lived at Nazareth for thirty years, and carpentry is a roving trade. Is it not perfectly reasonable to suppose that He had worked around the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and come across Simon and Andrew, James and John and the other Galilean disciples in the course of His work?
So He knew the kind of men they were, and that they were likely to respond when he called them; it was just a matter of choosing the moment. Of course there was no need for the gospel writers to explain the background, because most of the original readers would already have been familiar with it.
So, just as it is said that the ritual of courting consists of “a man chasing a woman until she catches him”, so becoming a Christian is a two-way process of call and response, both parties being involved and committed.
Did those first disciples understand the need for personal repentance? It seems likely that they were caught up in the movement towards the renewal preached by John the Baptist, and were looking for the restoration of the kingdom of Israel that was promised when the nation turned back to its traditional commitment to the God of its fathers – something they were still hoping for even after the Resurrection. Election was an essential part of the Jewish tradition, and they would not have been concerned with the fate of the Gentiles – that was something that came a lot later.
And now? Firstly, there is always an opportunity to make the right choice while life remains, and none of us can know what another person’s relationship with God really is. Murderers and rapists may yet truly repent, even if it takes years behind bars for them to get to that point. So yes, there may be some very unlikely characters waiting to meet us in heaven. On the other hand, maybe we’re no less unlikely characters ourselves!
Ouch! A tough one this Paul.
I’ve moved considerably in recent years to a point where I would describe my standing as within milimeters of universalism (NOT in the sense that all religions lead to God, but in the sense that all may be saved in and through Christ.) I didn’t say “shall be saved” as I do allow that there may well be those who post-mortem want nothing to do with Christ.
As far as Hitler, deviants etc. are concerned – I agree with Keith above. Further, the work of Christ either covers ALL sinners (and sin) or it doesn’t. I believe it does. Placing “Hitler and his henchmen” beyound salvation minimises the Crucifixion and doesn’t take into account the seriousness of “minor sin”.
Perhaps we are being too literal when we argue the reality of heaven in terms of contemporary relationships… “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”. Perhaps the change will be so great, and our understanding so full, that we will be able to do nothing other than stand “lost in wonder, love and praise”.
I agree with those who think we are in no position to make any judgement about who will be saved. God alone knows the state of our hearts ( and I am increasingly aware of the mixture of good and bad that remains in my own personality, in spite of effort to get rid of the bad!)- and so I believe this is a question that we simply do not consider.