Ask a Pastor Column

Q:  If someone hasn’t heard what the Bible says about what it takes to be saved, how can that be their fault? Will they go to heaven anyway?

A:  Before we can understand the answer to this question, I have to lay some groundwork about God, His rules, and our fallen nature. We must begin with the fact that God is our Sovereign Creator (Genesis 1:1; Psalm 100:3). Because God made us, He gets to make the rules that govern our lives and He decides the consequences for breaking them. The rules are fairly simple: those who do good are rewarded and those who do evil are punished (Romans 2:6-8). The problem is; nobody kept the rules (Romans 3:10-12). Because every single human being has violated God’s standard, He would be perfectly justified to punish us all with death. However, He chose to offer the world a way of escape through faith in Jesus Christ. Whoever believes in Him receives forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift (John 3:16; Romans 6:23).

Everyone who has ever lived has been surrounded with evidence for God’s existence (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20). The evidence we see around us in creation should have been enough to convince us to begin looking for an omnipotent creator. The fact that it doesn’t demonstrates our fallen nature and the fact that we are deserving of judgment. Therefore, those who do not respond to God’s offer of pardon are deserving of judgment, whether they reject the grace of God as revealed in creation or His grace revealed in the gospel (John 3:18, 36; Romans 3:11-12). As one person put it: “Humanity deliberately dove into the floodwaters of sin. The question we should ask is not “Why doesn’t God pull everyone out?” it is: “Why did God pull anybody out?””

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