How Can a Loving God...

Probably the main argument given by “Christian Universalists” for why everyone will be saved goes like this: How can a truly loving God send people to hell?! As of late I have been reading through the Old Testament. So here are 10 responses to those who make the argument: How can a loving God send people to hell?!

HoHow could a loving God anoint Jehu as king over Israel and command him to “destroy the house of Ahab?!” Immediately after commanding Jehu to kill Ahab, God says, “I will avenge the blood of my servants the prophets and the blood of all the Lord’s servants shed by Jezebel. The whole house of Ahab will perish. I will cut off from Ahab every last male in Israel – slave or free” (1 Kings 9:6-10). How could a loving God want vengeance?!

HoHow could a loving God respond to Elisha’s cursing 42 teenagers?! Elisha was just walking down the road when a group of 42 youths started calling him a baldy. Elisha curses them and God answers the curse by sending two bears out of the forest to maul these kids. How could a loving God maul 42 teenagers for calling someone a baldy?! (2 Kings 2:23-25).

HoHow could a loving God throw fire down from heaven to destroy a captain and his men when all they were doing was obeying the orders of their king?! (2 Kings 1:9-10).

4. How could a loving God send a lion to maul a man for refusing to wound a prophet?! (1 Kings 20:36).

5. How could a loving God give his own prophet over to a lion to be killed because he listened to another prophet who insisted that he was speaking from God?! (1 Kings 13:26). He just made an “honest mistake,” didn’t he?!

HoHow could a loving God command his people to kill a man for picking up sticks on the Sabbath day?! (Num. 15:32-36).

HoHow could a loving God destroy those who disobey him?! (Deut. 30:17-18; Deut. 8:19-20)

HoHow could a loving God kill every firstborn in Egypt?! (Ex. 13:15).

HoHow could a loving God harden someone’s heart towards himself?! (Ex. 9:12).

HoHow could a loving God let Satan incite him against his own dearly loved, Job, without any reason?! (Job 2:3).

A loving God can send people to hell because he is also a just God, and disobedience is an offensive crime against him. If you struggle with the question of how a loving God send people to hell, you’re asking the wrong question. The questions you should be asking are:

HoHow could a just God not destroy king Ahab for his wickedness?! How could a just God not avenge the atrocities committed against his beloved prophets?!

HoHow could a just God let a bunch of rebellious and disrespectful teenagers get away scot-free with harassing his chosen servant?!

HoHow could a just God not oppose those who oppose his chosen prophet?!

HoHow could a just God not kill someone who directly disobeyed his command?!

HoHow could a just God not destroy his prophet when he directly disobeyed the Lord and listening to a mere man instead?

HoHow could a just God allow someone who directly violates his Sabbath to prove to everyone else that breaking God’s commands is ok?!

HoHow could a just God let anyone get away with breaking his perfect law?!

HoHow could a just God allow any nation to blatantly defy his commands and brutally oppress and mistreat his people with no consequence?!

HoHow could a just God not harden the heart of a man who mocked the Almighty saying, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go?!”

HoHow could a just God give a second chance to the wicked Ninevites?! (Jonah).

And here is the question that should leave you in awe and wonder every day:

Why didn’t God kill you in your sleep last night? You deserved it.

“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10-12).

You should wonder that you’re still alive after how you have defied, spurned, and treated the Lord Almighty with contempt!

Behold the mercy of God: that a man can be pardoned for reviling the glorious Creator and Sustainer of the universe by faith in Jesus Christ!

“…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement…he did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – [God presented Jesus Christ as a sacrifice of atonement] to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:23-26).

Did you catch that? God presented Jesus Christ as a sacrifice…so as to be just. In other words, God had to punish Christ in order to vindicate his own just character for all of the sins that he didn’t punish in the Old Testament.

Will Everyone Be Saved?

"Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?" He said to them, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ "But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ "Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ "But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’ "There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out" (Lk. 13:22-28).

Christian Universalism is not a new idea. Very generally, Christian Universalism is the belief that everyone will be saved. There are many different shades of Christian Universalism which makes it difficult to explain exactly how they think this works. Some believe that everyone will come to saving faith in Jesus in this lifetime before they die. Others believe that you could die shaking a hateful fist at God and yet come to faith and repentance in eternity. The whole issue of whether some or all will be saved has been around since Jesus’ day.

While deep down in our hearts we long for it to be true that all will be saved, Jesus has made it crystal clear that this will not be the case. Again and again my attention comes back to Jesus’ call to “make every effort to enter through the narrow door.” I think the NASB and ESV translate the Greek better. They say: “Strive to enter through the narrow door” (emphasis mine). Really what Jesus has in mind is that we fight, struggle, strive, and make every effort to enter through the narrow door. I get a picture in my head of a small opening in a wall that is surrounded by a whole mob of people trying to jostle and squeeze and pull themselves through the opening.

This life is not a game. It’s not something to be taken lightly. Before all of us is a narrow opening that we must continually fight and struggle to get through, not giving up until we know for sure that we are safe inside and the opening has been closed. Do you live your days with this kind of seriousness? When confronted with the plethora of options as to how you spend your time, does this reality steer your course through the day?

Here’s the solemn warning of Jesus. Not everyone will be saved. There will be those who tried to enter the door and were not able to or strong enough to. They didn’t fight, struggle, and strive to enter and now it’s too late. There will be people who are left standing outside the door knocking and pleading with Jesus to open up the door and let them in. And Jesus will tell them straight up: “I do not know you or where you are from. Away from me, all you evildoers.” Accordingly, a true disciple of Jesus Christ is one who is right now fighting and struggling and striving to enter through the narrow door.

Have you been fighting to have real, deep, and vibrant faith in Jesus? Or are you just taking it easy? Have you been working out your salvation with fear and trembling? (Phil. 2:12). Or are you feeling pretty comfortable and ok that everything will be fine in the end if you just sit back, relax, and enjoy life?
Here’s the scary part to me. The people who are left outside knocking and pleading are the people who expect to be inside. ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ Come on Jesus! You know us! We know you! We heard your teaching in church every Sunday morning! To which Jesus replies again saying, I do not know you. “Away from me, all you evildoers!”

Notice Jesus’ evaluation of all the people that were left out who expected to be included. He calls them evildoers. Hypocrisy is deadly. The door of salvation is narrow and only few will enter it. Many many people think they are good people who believe in Jesus, but the way they live falsifies their claim. They are deceived. They are the people that Jesus calls evildoers and they don’t even realize it.

If you haven’t been fighting, struggling, and striving with all your might to enter through the narrow door, you could be one of those people! The final fate of the people who Jesus refuses to open up to is terrible. They are thrown out of the kingdom of God and experience weeping and gnashing of teeth (28). All over the place in the Gospels, Jesus uses this same language to refer to hell, the place of eternal punishment reserved for those who refuse to acknowledge, submit to, receive, believe, and obey Jesus Christ.

So my question for you is how’s the battle going? How goes the fight? Can you tell me about your striving and your struggling and how you are making every effort to be found secure in the glorious salvation of Jesus Christ?

Journal, Journal, Journal

“The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, but the folly of fools is deception”

(Pr. 14:8).

If you’re like most people, you don’t have time for journaling. You might also say that it’s not your love language or style or thing or whatever. But I would like to ask you to reconsider. We all know that we live in a fast -paced culture characterized by getting what you want immediately and doing what you want as soon as possible. And we do it! We reap all the benefits of instant access to everything and we get a lot done. But if we are not careful with how we live in this cultural climate, we can greatly stunt our spiritual growth.

Along with immediate access comes incessant busyness. We learn to go from one thing to the next so fast because we want to accomplish more, more, more, and suddenly we get spiritually sick. So what do we do? We dive into entertainment, leisure, relationships, even sin and then we go to sleep and do it all over again. But even good things like entertainment, leisure, and relationships can become band-aids, escapes, drugs which we choose to get our minds off of things and ease our feelings.

The main problem with a high-octane-go-go-go lifestyle is that it leaves little to no room for a person “to give thought to their ways” (Pr. 14:8). The busyness of our days because of our readily available panorama of options for entertainment after a long day at work chokes out any time to ponder and wonder about how we are even living from one activity to the next. Are we keeping God-glorifying priorities or are we just letting our pleasure-gauges drive us from one activity to the next? Or do we even know?

Often the only place left for reflection on your day is the moments when you lie awake in bed at night before you fall asleep. Maybe we are able to give thought to our ways during this time, and make a few resolutions to do better tomorrow or next week, but then we wind up in our bed again having been carried by the brisk current of the day’s activities and surprise surprise – we’re in the same place we were the day before and nothing’s changed. Or it’s worse! Then we begin to struggle to keep even the time before bed from becoming an anxious or lust-filled swirl of thinking that carries us off to sleep.

“The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, but the folly of fools is deception” (Pr. 14:8). What is the wisdom of the wise? They give thought to their ways. Now try keeping even a half an hour per day just to be sitting and thinking about your life – without worry, without lust, without distraction. It’s pretty hard. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve tried to do that or just sit and pray and either fallen asleep or just failed at it. Then I say to everyone who mentions the word “journal” that I just couldn’t do that because I have a hard enough time just stopping to pray for 30 minutes.

But journaling is one of the most important disciplines I have ever cultivated. In fact, there is no equal, and nothing so practical as journaling to help you give thought to your ways when you’re immersed in a fast paced culture like ours. Try it! Sit down and write out a prayer and you’ll be amazed at how much easier it is to concentrate and focus your thoughts because you have a pen in your hand. Journaling makes contemplation, thinking, and reflecting 100 times easier, not harder! Not only that, but journaling trains your mind to think better. It also teaches you how to communicate more clearly and coherently.

Now, some of you may be thinking that journaling is boring because you have nothing exciting in your day to write about. Don’t use your journal to keep an orderly history of the happenings of the day. That’ll drive you nuts and be a waste of time if as much happens in the minutes of your day as it does in mine. Only journal about what you want to think, pray, or reflect about. You want to talk to God? Grab a pen and paper. You want to think about how you conducted yourself today? Grab a pen and paper. Once you get going on something that you care to contemplate, just let the thoughts of your head flow onto the page whatever they may be. As a rule of thumb, be completely honest with your journal. No secrets allowed! Journaling is a great way for you to be honest with yourself and with God.

Remember “the folly of fools is deceit” (Pr. 14:8 NASB). It’s really easy to deceive yourself when you don’t give careful thought to your ways. We need that time to be honest with ourselves about how we are really doing spiritually.

The most important benefit of journaling is that it facilitates personal spiritual growth. Why are the wise wise? Because they think very carefully about their ways. Thinking carefully about your ways not only means that you are wise, it makes you wise. You grow and learn when you think about your life. Generally we come away from things with some kind of impression, but we don’t make sense of that impression and learn the lessons and grow and cultivate wisdom until we give thought to it. That’s what journaling is all about. It’s about mentally and emotionally processing life so that you continue to grow in wisdom and understanding of God and of yourself and of how you ought to be living your life. Writing your thoughts down helps you sustain and direct your thinking keeping it free from distractions and worry.

So if after all I’ve said, you still aren’t sold on journaling…I have one more question for you: How else will you ensure that you give regular and proper “thought to your ways” in the midst of your busy life?

“Get wisdom, get understanding…Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost you all you have, get understanding. Esteem her, and she will exalt you; embrace her, and she will honor you. She will set a garland of grace on your head and present you with a crown of splendor” (Pr. 4:5-9).