FAITH SEEKING UNDERSTANDING: Chapter 8: Will Everyone be Saved?

Welcome to our next episode of Faith Seeking Understanding this video series where from the perspective of the crossings community, we address a variety of questions that are raised by ordinary people about the faith and life and scripture and so on. And the question I want to address here is a question that I know we all have heard asked by many people in our lives. Many times in the final analysis, will everyone be saved? What about those who’ve never known about Jesus? In the end, will they too be saved? I think one of the concrete examples, this kind of question comes home in all of our lives is with those family relatives, the ones that show up maybe at Thanksgiving and birthdays like Uncle Charlie. You all have an Uncle Charlie. Everybody loves Uncle Charlie. Uncle Charlie was a good man. He never went to church.

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I don’t think he was even baptized. He never really wanted to participate in those prayers. He probably really didn’t even believe in God, never wanted to talk about religion. We all have had Uncle Charlie’s in our lives and Uncle Charlie’s are more than just relatives that show up on Thanksgiving. And what about all those other people in the world? Pretty good people like Uncle Charlie, but they were born at the wrong place and the wrong time. The Aborigines in Australia and a poor person that got born in atheistic China or some jungle or desert in a distant place, some culture saturated with other religions. They were pretty good people, but they never heard about Jesus. What’s finally God’s going to do about them? Is he going to write ’em off in the end because they didn’t know Jesus? Jesus says, I’m the way the truth and the wife forgot to do so.

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Seems cruel, unfair. Come on. If God were fair, I mean fair treating people and giving them what they deserve. I mean, wouldn’t all the Uncle Charlie’s of this world be okay? I mean, I really don’t. We sometimes think that about ourselves. I mean, if God was really just fair with us and life would be okay, I mean a lot of people would be saved. I mean, maybe everyone in the end would be saved if God would only be fair with the Uncle Charlie’s of this world, really. I mean, if we are really honest with our lives and what goes on around us, I mean, do we really want God to be fair with us when we complain about the bad manners of Uncle Charlie and other people? I mean, if God were really to us to be fair with us, I think we’d be in trouble. I mean, everybody would be in trouble. I mean, even

Uncle Charlie. So what about Uncle Charlie? What about all those who are never baptized, who never believed? When we think we can try to answer that question, we are in trouble. We are trying to do something that God does and not us. That’s finally God’s problem, not ours. It is God’s job to save people. What is clear about life and certain and is ambivalent, is that God clearly loves all in Christ. And that’s really, thank God. Is God being unfair, not being fair with us, not giving us what we deserve in Jesus Christ. And that is the good news. That is the gospel. That is all people need to hear. And that is why the church even has a mission. That is why the mission is urgent and important to let people know about God’s unfairness, gracious mercy in Jesus Christ, but the rest is up to God. It is our job to bring them the story. We know that God loves everyone in Jesus Christ for the Uncle Charlie’s of this world. We pray for them, we tell them the good story, and then finally turn them over to the mercy of God. And the Uncle Charlies of this world may never got it in this world, but we pray and hope in eternity turned over to the grace and mercy of God that they will, and that is the promise of what God is up to in Jesus Christ.