The Most Foolish of Questions
Being one who knows and preaches that Jesus Christ will reconcile, and
in effect has reconciled, all men to Himself, and witnessing others who
believe in the reconciliation of all things, I have often heard this
question asked:
“If all sinners are going to be saved, what
was the point of Jesus Christ dying on the cross for us?”
That, I have to say, is one of the stupidest questions one could ever
ask, and here’s the simple answer:
“So that all sinners might be saved!”
Let’s say I go to the store and buy twelve chairs that are selling
for $50 each. I pay the price in full ($600), receive a receipt for the
purchase, and the salesclerk gives me one chair. I say, “Where
are the other eleven chairs?” The salesclerk looks at me like I
am an idiot and says, “What was the point of paying for twelve
chairs if you are going to get them all?”
Excuse me?! If I pay for twelve chairs, am I not entitled to them? If
I wanted one or two chairs, I would have paid for only one or two, and
I would only receive what I paid for.
Jesus Christ paid for the sins of all people, so all people redeemed
is what He will have. “For God did not send His Son into the world
to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him” (John
3:17 MKJV).
Somehow religious people who think they are among those chosen to be
saved have the impression that if only a small percentage will be saved,
then it was worth Christ dying for sinners, but if all are saved by His
precious blood, then it wasn’t worth it! Just how precious is His
blood anyway?
The problem most often leading to this silly notion is that these people
think they somehow earned their way in, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ,
confessing Him with their lips as their Savior, and perhaps even repenting
of their sins. The thought of everybody getting in is anathema to them
because they made sacrifices to believe and get in, while the vast
majority will get in for nothing! They assume others won’t need
repentance and faith.
They assume wrongly, and that is part of their problem. All those who
are reconciled to God go through the same process of faith and turning
away from themselves, their sin, and their world, whether in this age
or in the one(s) to come.
Who is going to cheat me out of the chairs for which I paid the full
price? Some thief might try. The retailer might try, and if it tried,
it would also be a thief. Now the thief who deals in the salvation of
mankind is Satan. If he succeeds in stealing fully-paid-for goods from
Jesus Christ and gets away with it, of what value was the precious currency
of shed blood for those perished? How great is our Savior if He simply
could not secure His purchased possessions? Can God be permanently robbed
of anything that is rightfully His and which He took measures to redeem?
Is He a loser or a winner?
So then we have the problem of the silly doctrine that man, having free
will, must choose
to be saved, coupled with the notion that God will
not go against man’s will if it chooses to go against His. Yet
Jesus said to His own apostles:
“You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained you
that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should
remain; that whatever you shall ask of the Father in My name, He may
give it to you” (John 15:16 MKJV).
“For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves,
it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we
are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God
has before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10
MKJV).
Perhaps there is another explanation as to why some religious people
think not everyone deserves to be saved. By the human, fallen, selfish
sin nature, we like to think of ourselves as privileged. “I’m
better than you; look at me; see how holy I am; I go to church, I read
the Bible, I don’t smoke or get drunk; I don’t cuss – I
preach and witness instead – I stick up for God! But look at you – you
don’t deserve to go to Heaven. ‘Without holiness, no man
shall see God,’ the Bible says. No, because you won’t believe
me, you’ll go to hell. Too bad, but I will be in ecstatic glory
without you. By the way, I love you.”
There is one more possibility for the misunderstanding many have. Because
they see people dying before experiencing repentance and faith toward
God, they assume their death to be the end of opportunity to be saved
for all time. This is not so. There are other worlds or ages to come.
All people serve their purpose in this world and the next as the Lord
sees fit. When it is their time to come to Him, He will summon them.
Nowhere in Scripture, but nowhere, does it say one can only be saved
in this life.
Putting away these false, ungodly, unScriptural notions will
clear the way for the peace and freedom of the soul.
Why This Question Is So Wrong:
- Christ has died for all; He will get His goods in full. It’s
only fair, He is no loser, He does all things perfectly, and as all
things were good in the beginning when He created them, so will they
be good
in the end, for He is the Beginning and the End of all things.
- Nothing
can prevent His total victory: “For I am persuaded that
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor
any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love
of God which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39 MKJV).
Not Satan,
no man, no angel, no legions of devils, or any other creature
(created thing), not even our own wills can rob Him of His success,
not
even the last enemy:
1 Corinthians 15:22-26 MKJV
(22) For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all will be made alive.
(23) But each in his own order: Christ the first-fruit, and afterward
they who are Christ's at His coming;
(24) then is the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God, even the Father;
when He makes to cease all rule and all authority and power.
(25) for it is right for Him to reign until He has put all the enemies
under His feet.
(26) The last enemy made to cease is death.
- Those who think they have
in any way earned the right to be included among the saved have some
disillusionment and an awakening coming. Such
thinking only proves they have not been saved at all.
Perhaps the question discussed could be phrased another way: “Well,
if everybody’s going to be saved anyway, what’s the point
of living a good Christian life?” Doesn’t this remark
expose the spiritual bankruptcy of the speaker? Is the person living
a godly life because God has done a work of grace in him that gives
him the will and power, by a new nature, to live godly, or is the
person trusting in his own righteousness,
as were the Pharisees and Sadducees, who crucified the Lord?
- All those saved
will go through the process of faith, repentance,
and they will be salted with fire. There
is no easy way into the Kingdom:
“For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice
shall be salted with salt” (Mark 9:49 MKJV).
Acts 14:21-22 MKJV
(21) And preaching the gospel to that city, and having made many disciples,
they returned to Lystra and Iconium and Antioch,
(22) confirming the souls of the disciples, calling on them to
continue in the faith and that through much tribulation we must enter
into the
Kingdom of God.
- Salvation will not come for all in this lifetime. Most
go on to the next world and perhaps worlds (ages) thereafter before
experiencing admittance
into the Kingdom of God.
So, to those who ask this most foolish of questions, allow me to ask
a question in return:
“If all sinners are not going
to be saved, what was the point of Jesus Christ dying on the cross
and paying the full price for
all of us?”
Victor Hafichuk |
