What’s The Deal, God?
Feb 12
Is humanity lost? Have we walked away from God and gone our own way? Is the world really going to hell? Is that fair? Is there any way to return to God? Is God even willing to welcome us back if we tried? Does God require any terms for salvation? Would it even be fair of God to set up terms? Why not just save everyone if He really does love the world?
What do you think?
Well, not to be rude, but it doesn’t really matter what you think. It doesn’t even matter what I think. What matters is what God thinks. (No one likes to hear this.) And the only way we can know what God thinks is if God reveals that to us. And if He does, our own opinions/feelings/thoughts matter little if they contradict what God says about himself. John Wesley (the founder of the Methodist movement) wrote a commentary on the New Testament, including the book of Romans. In this commentary, Wesley states (emphasis mine):
[The Gospel] is the powerful instrument of salvation…by means of faith… The world greatly needed such a dispensation–the Gentiles being in a most abandoned state, and the Jews (though condemning others) are themselves no better…so that all were under a necessity of seeking justification by this method.
Why did John Wesley write this? Because it’s what the book of Romans lays out as the condition of the world. The question is, did Paul just write this out of his own thinking? Or is this divine revelation from God? If it’s just his own opinion, there’s no need to affirm it or live by it. But if this is revelation from God about humanity’s state–it demands our greatest attention. In Wesley’s commentary, he also states (I paraphrase):
God has an absolute right to show mercy on what terms he pleases, and to withhold it from those who will not accept it on his own terms.
God says, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy – According to the terms I myself have fixed. And I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion – Namely, on those only who submit to my terms, who accept of it in the way that I have appointed. “
God has an indisputable right to reject those who will not accept the blessings on his own terms.
In other words, Wesley is saying that God has the right to dictate whatever terms he wants to. And as humans, if we don’t accept and live by those terms, God has every right to reject us as candidates for salvation. Wesley also affirmed the existence of hell. He believed it to be a place of literal fire and torment that never ends. He preached a sermon on hell that is pretty shocking, actually. It’s something you’d think a Baptist would preach, not a Methodist. For those who do not inherit salvation, Wesley believed they would go to this hell.
Now does any of this sound attractive or appealing in today’s world? Well, to be honest, it doesn’t sound appealing to me. I often find it difficult to accept that God would require that people put their faith in Jesus in order to go to heaven. And if they don’t, they go to hell. That’s mind-boggling.
But this reaction to God’s terms isn’t new. It was around when Paul wrote Romans. Basically, we elevate ourselves higher than God, and we think we know better than God knows. We are pretty arrogant sometimes. Wesley further expounds on some verses in Romans:
O man – Little, impotent, ignorant man. That repliest against God – That accusest God of injustice, for himself fixing the terms on which he will show mercy? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, “Why hast thou made me thus – Why hast thou made me capable of honour and immortality, only if I believe?”
Paul (and Wesley) remind us that it’s not our place to accuse God of being unjust if He states that we can only be saved by believing in Christ. If that’s how God has fixed His terms–that’s the terms.
I think this is why to some people, the gospel is life, freedom, joy, power, treasure. While for other people, it is a stench to their nostrils. They find it repulsive that you must believe the gospel to be saved. Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25:
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.
Even if I perceive God as being foolish in how He does things, I would rather go with God’s foolishness than man’s wisdom.
Abraham asked God when convincing Him to spare Sodom and Gomorrah, “Will not the judge of all the earth do right?” and proceeded to intercede with God over what “right” meant.
And what we learned was that Abraham didn’t feel right about asking God to save Sodom over less than 10 righteous people. We also learned that Sodom only had 4 righteous people (Lot and his wife/daughters), and even that was very borderline. After all, his wife looked back at Sodom and died, and then his daughters got Lot drunk and had incest with him to get pregnant. Lot wasn’t exactly impressive when he offered his two daughters to a crowd to be raped in order to protect the two strangers (angels).
So I think that when all becomes known, God will prove to be far more lenient than we think, and he will definitely prove to have judged rightly.
If it were not for God’s leniency, where would any of us be?
While God certainly has the right to dictate His own terms, I think that this argument causes many people to believe that if God exists that He acts way too arbitrarily to be loving. I personally do not believe that God is arbitrary or unloving, but that perspective can be a natural reaction to the argument that God can set whatever terms He wants.
Do you have specific thoughts about those who think God arbitrary, capricious, or unloving? I have some responses to that position about God but they are difficult to state clearly and rely heavily on my personal conception of sin, salvation, heaven, and hell.
Hey Drew, I agree with you that people have this view. In fact, at times I wonder the same thing myself. I think partly this is because we see things from our limited perspective. I decided this question was so good that I’d write another blog post on it! I had so much I wanted to say about this. (What else is new? 🙂 )
Thanks for the well-thought-out post. 🙂 I replied there.