[There's a verse in the Bible that says, "With fear and trembling carry out your salvation" (Phil 2:12) I always feel this fear and trembling when it comes to salvation and damnation. And I approach it now with particular fear and trembling, because there is a great danger of misunderstanding our subject today. And it is a disastrous thing to misunderstand the Word of God on this most existential issue of salvation and damnation. Today, we will first discuss the salvation or damnation of those who have never heard of Jesus, the saving grace of God in Jesus, and then the problem of so-called eternal damnation. These questions are not answered in the Bible in a way that sheds full light on the problems - rather, they are only glimpsed in a glimmer of light and we grope for a solution in the light of that light.So the first question is: what will be the fate at the judgment of those who have never met Jesus, who have never heard of God's redemptive plan and work? So, once again, it is not those who have heard the gospel of God but hardened their hearts and did not receive it - it is those who have never heard it! This question often arises in the minds of many believers - but we must be careful even to ask it. For if it is just an interesting "academic" question, or a curious question, there is no answer. There is only one case in which it is valid: if you feel that it is up to you, that you are one of the reasons why so many people have not heard the gospel of Jesus. So, if you feel a missionary responsibility towards them, if you are hurt by their plight, if your heart aches for them, because you love these people who are ignorant of the Gospel, and because you feel that it is a special grace of God that you should know it! That you can believe in Jesus! If it pains you that, even with the most fervent missionary responsibility and intention, there are so many who remain outside the circle of the knowledge of the gospel. Well, if such a spirit makes you wonder what will become of them in the judgment, then you are entitled.
So what will be the fate in eternity of all those Chinese, Germanic, Mexican, Negroes who lived and died without the knowledge of the gospel? Who have not even had the opportunity to decide for or against it. And the millions of people living today who are followers of Islam and other pagan religions? And to the completely secularised masses in today's big cities, to the modern pagans living among us, souls totally indifferent to all religions? What will be their fate? - I cannot accept, precisely in the light of the Gospel, that these billions of people will be excluded from salvation! Rather, I believe that God will find a way and a means of opening the gates of salvation for those who do not know Him. Of course: for them too, Jesus is the Saviour, He alone and no other. But the saving power of Jesus is much wider than the scope of the church. The redemptive power of Jesus embraces yesterday and tomorrow, life and death, heaven and earth. (Even hell - but more on that later.) The believing Christian church is only a witness on this earth to the exclusive redemptive power of Jesus, but not a depository. We, the church, we believers, are only visible witnesses of God's mercy on human misery and sin. We are only the "tender", the beginning (Jn 1,18), demonstrating, as it were, by belonging to Christ, that the whole human race belongs to Jesus. We are the infancy whose very existence prophesies that one day, I know not how, every knee will bow to Him.
From this faith in the universal reign of Jesus, two rays of light are projected on the future destiny of those who have never known Him: Paul speaks of this in Romans 8:19-22. In these mysterious words of Paul, the created world is precisely unbelieving humanity. It is therefore a question of the groaning and groaning of unbelieving humanity, of its labouring, its unconscious longing for salvation, which it will one day share, just like the believing children of God. So the human world, the unbelieving human world, is also groaning, groaning under the weight of so much suffering, sickness, injustice, death and sin. And this groaning of men, this groaning under burdens, which fills the earth, is in fact itself a subconscious confession of faith in the need of salvation, an unconscious plea for the help of God's grace. The many suffering human lives are themselves a great cry for the God who has come to suffering people with his saving grace in Jesus. And Paul is convinced that this unconscious cry of suffering humanity can go up to God and finally be heard. Just look around this earth: how many human sufferings of all kinds are almost crying out to heaven! Well, God takes it as a plea, an unconscious plea of fallen humanity for His mercy. He who groans and sighs in the consciousness of his own lost, painful, helpless condition: he also prays unbelievingly, he cries out for mercy! And one never cries for mercy in vain! For the grace of God is always closest to the lost, the miserable, the helpless. We see this in every word and action of Jesus. I saw a terrible photograph the other day: a Vietnamese mother clutching her 4-5 year old child convulsively in a bomb shower. Both faces show signs of mortal terror and mortal wounding. You can almost feel that one more desperate step or two and they will both fall to the ground dead. They probably never knew Jesus: can they not enter salvation? I am sure they can! Not because they are innocent - especially the little one. For no one is innocent, everyone is in need of mercy, but because their death screams are a prayer without faith, a supplication for the Saviour, and because their whole condition is a demonstration of the human misery that God, in mercy, sent a Saviour in Jesus to this earth.
But there is another ray of light on the future destiny of those who do not know the Gospel: in the well-known parable of Jesus about the Last Judgment, which I have read, there is a word we do not usually notice: 'nations'; in its full context: 'all the nations will be gathered together...' In the original text of the Bible, the word used here is the one that specifically refers not to God's believing people, but to the non-believers, the Gentiles. (Ethnos) So the question, "Lord, when would we have seen you hungry, when would we have seen you thirsty, and given you?" is a literal question. So there is such a thing as someone who, not consciously, not by faith, yet witnesses to the compassionate love of Christ by their actions. There are unbelievers, modern pagans, people who have never known Jesus, who often put many believers to shame by their philanthropic behaviour. Well, I said in my last sermon that the one who fed the hungry, clothed the unclothed, etc., that is, the one in whom the Jesus spirit of helping others lived and worked, will inherit a world in which eternal Love reigns. He will share in the so-called salvation. This is true even if this Jesus-spirit of helping others is not lived and worked in someone by a conscious faith in Christ, but merely according to the eternal law written in his heart (Rom 2,12-16).
So, at that final judgment, God will also vindicate those who, though not consciously and not by faith, have in some way been followers of His compassionate mercy and love for their fellow human beings. Behold, these on the right hand had no idea that they had ever done anything good with Jesus - they did not even know Jesus. Yet their acts of philanthropy are judged as if they had done what they did or did not do with Jesus himself. And to them Jesus will say, "Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit this kingdom prepared for you." Do you understand? He's saying it to pagans, he's saying it to unbelievers, to people who have heard nothing of the gospel! So, if it is proved that the eternal law of love for man was in their hearts and in their deeds, God will justify them in the judgment. Of course, I know, there are all sorts of objections and questions that could be raised here. I have said that only a glimmer of light sheds a little light on these problems, and many questions remain unanswered, - but we can see beside it that salvation is wider than the believing Christian church, and that the man who does not know Christ cannot pass by Christ in judgment, but will be judged in the light of Christ. The erring man also will receive certain rays from the eternal revelation of God, by which he will also be judged according to faith and hardness. Perhaps this is precisely what Jesus is referring to in his statement that the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, and of Tyre and Sidon, will be easier at the judgment than that of those who have witnessed firsthand the grace that has appeared in Jesus (Mt 10,15), that is, as - for us! For a man is judged according to the light he has received! We are more bound by the light of divine revelation received in Jesus than those who have missed out for whatever reason and in whatever way!
But there still remains a painful question open here: the question of eternal damnation. Would those who, whether or not they knew the gospel of Christ, hardened their hearts and bore witness to it by their unmerciful, unloving behaviour towards their fellow human beings: would they really be condemned to eternal damnation? Would this bleeding wound remain forever in God's recreated, glorious world? Is God so consistently respectful of human hardening to Him that it sets an unquestionable limit to His will to save all men? Or is it God's infinite mercy that once limits the consequences of human hardening, that is, that He will ultimately have mercy on the damned?
Well, there is no doubt that in the Bible, on the one hand, we find passages and statements that speak of the eternal nature of the condemned state. For example, in the very parable we are reading, thus: "Depart from me into everlasting fire, prepared for devils and their angels." However, there are also other thought-provoking statements in the Bible. For example, 1 Cor 15:22; Eph 1:10; Col 1:20; 1 Tim 2:4-6; 1 John 2:2. Here the future is undoubtedly seen from two perspectives, namely, as far as damnation is concerned: on the one hand, as eternal damnation, and on the other, as not eternal damnation. And this is difficult to reconcile. It cannot be. Thus, side by side, these two halves appear to be contradictory. Shall we leave this dichotomy side by side? No! Perhaps it would be more correct to say, one after the other. That is, only after I have experienced the fear and trembling of the possibility of eternal damnation can I think that God will finally have mercy on all, including the damned! God's mercy on all can only be spoken of by one whose soul has trembled at the prospect of eternal redemption.
Does this mean that the merciful power of God is greater than the human callousness to this divine mercy? Maybe it does! Where would you and where would I be if it were not so?! For that is what we experienced in ourselves when we became believers! I have come to know God in Jesus Christ as one whose mercy for lost people knows no bounds. And does that mean then that there is a limit to the lost, to damnation? Yes and no. If I ask this with the light-heartedness of saying that it's okay, I can sin in peace, because in the end it will all end in a happy ending anyway: NO! - But if I ask with a humble believer, concerned for the fate of billions of people, trusting in God's infinite mercy, then yes! Maybe yes. How could we, a Christian minority in a non-Christian world, even breathe if we could not believe that God's grace will find a solution for those who cannot or will not believe in Him?! But at the same time, may God save anyone from not being able or willing to believe in Him! Having shrank in horror from damnation and wishing to save everyone from it (but only afterwards!): I look with some inexplicable hope to the power of God's grace to triumph over damnation as the ultimate, but truly ultimate, mystery of salvation!
Charles Barth, the great teacher of world Christianity, now deceased, expressed this dialectical tension most succinctly when he said, in connection with the ultimate salvation of all: "Das Evangelium verbietet uns bestimmt damit zu rechnen, abere gebietet uns wohl noch bestimmter, eben darauf zu hoffen, darum zu beten!" A little loosely translated, "The gospel most certainly forbids us to count on it, to speculate on it, but it forbids us still more definitely not to hope in it and not to pray for it!" So all that I have said about the possibility of salvation for those who do not know the gospel and eternal damnation: it does not weaken, but rather increases, our responsibility towards the people around us. The only way to make sense of it all was to be more inspired than we have been so far, to be witnesses in word and especially in deed of the saving, saving grace that has appeared on this earth in Jesus Christ!
Amen
Date: 19 January 1969 Evangelization