THE JUST GOD AND THE DESTINY OF EVERY SOUL
First, I want to say that the questions we're asking concerning salvation and the fate of children, the mentally unfit as well as those who lived before Christ, are very essential to our Christian Faith, and I am glad that we are discussing them.
If we say that there is only one way by which men are saved and that God is a just God, then there has to be a fairness to men who did not hear to be saved, Children/mentally unfit people who do not have the capacity to make these decisions, as well as those who lived long before the coming of Christ.
This is why I have named this teaching: The Just God and the Destiny of Every Soul.
Tonight, we will explore these truths through Scripture, seeing how God’s fairness and mercy extends to all people, and seek to understand the depth of His righteous and loving character.
Before we start answering these questions,
I would first like us to establish a truth about God. It determines and influences what we see as we look through scripture.
“who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” I Timothy 2:4 NKJV
You see this scripture right here; it is the basis for everything I’m about to teach. It will help us judge and discern correctly what is true and what is not.
Sometime last year, while preparing for the Upper Room Maryland, we were praying one morning for the unsaved. I was on the road heading home from a vigil when I clearly heard the Lord speak this scripture to me. I had never seen God’s heart in this way before, in all my life.
God does not desire that even one person should die unsaved. How could God create something in His image and be okay with its destruction? His will is that all men be saved. ALL, not some. Not just Jews. Every single person.
But to fully grasp this, I need to take you back to the beginning so you can understand the story.
“If all men can be saved, why can’t God just carry everybody into heaven and save them?”
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I have asked God this particular question before as a growing teen. I’m sure I stressed out my then pastor with questions on Salvation.
Good God!
All-powerful, owns everything, can do and undo, why not just save everybody since you desire all men to be saved? ðŸ˜
The answer lies in sin and God’s righteous demand for justice.
“You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, And cannot look on wickedness. Why do You look on those who deal treacherously, And hold Your tongue when the wicked devours A person more righteous than he?” Habakkuk 1:13 NKJV
“Your eyes are so pure that you cannot stand the sight of evil; nor do you look on wickedness with favor. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you so silent while sinners devour those more righteous than themselves?” Habakkuk 1:13 TPT
God’s eyes are too pure to behold evil!
God cannot behold evil.
To say that we should all make heaven and our sins be ignored is to say that God should behold evil and maybe cease to exist.
“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Mercy and truth go before Your face.” Psalms 89:14 NKJV
Righteousness and justice are how His throne was founded. They cannot be eroded.
God is perfectly holy and just. His throne cannot overlook sin; in fact, it is against His very nature to ignore sin.
Sin carries consequences, and God’s justice requires that these consequences be addressed. To simply “erase” sin without justice would compromise His holiness. God cannot save everybody by simply overlooking sin, even if He desires to save all.
And this is where the beauty and mystery of God’s plan come in; the only way to satisfy both His justice and His mercy was through the sending of Christ.
God had to come and die so that all men might be saved. This is His desire playing out.
He did not just come and die, He came as man.
Christ descended, lived as man, suffered, was beaten and spat on, crucified, hung as a public spectacle, until he drew his last breath.
The desire of God for men to be saved is so real, it is not "faabu" (fables)
We see this expressed in Jesus and how He became the Mediator between God and humanity, taking upon Himself the weight of sin that justice demanded.
But what does it mean to be a Mediator?
When we say that Christ is our mediator, what are we really saying?
A Mediator is someone who stands in the gap between two parties that cannot come together on their own.
Two parties have issues that they cannot resolve eye-to-eye? A mediator comes in.
Humanity was separated from God because of sin, and no one could bridge that gap on their own. So for humanity to stand before a holy God, a mediator had to step in to speak on our behalf and to bring reconciliation.
But simply being a Mediator was not enough. God’s justice demanded that the penalty of sin be fully addressed. That is where the role of the Sacrifice comes in.
A sacrifice takes upon itself the consequence of wrongdoing, paying the price that justice requires. Humanity could also not satisfy this requirement; we were incapable of standing in the place of ourselves.
This is how you know God truly desires that all men to be saved.
He is the one whose throne demands righteousness.
He is the one who then came to die and become a sacrifice, so He gets our consequence.
He is also the one who then rises as our mediator and advocate.
Yoruba people call "advocate" "agba ejó rò and I think this is such a perfect description; the literal meaning is "one who collects another person’s case to plead it."
God’s holiness and justice set the rules that could not be bypassed, and His love and desire for humanity meant He had to enter into the solution Himself.
Salvation required a perfect bridge between divine justice and human need, and Christ became that bridge, carrying the weight of sin and offering the opportunity for every soul to be reconciled to God.
This is God’s desire!
I need us to understand this part clearly as we move forward to answer the rest of the questions.
If God went through all of this,
If He could go out of His way to ensure that all men be saved,
Do we really think this desire was something He only developed later? Do we not believe that God desired this from the very moment humanity fell into sin? Do we not think that a God like Him, full of wisdom and love, immediately began to craft a plan to restore mankind?
And if this is true, do we not also believe that such a God would, out of His desire for salvation, make provision for those who were not yet alive, or who lived long before the perfect provisions for Christ’s coming came together?
The question then becomes: How did this good and righteous God fulfill His desire for salvation before Christ while remaining perfectly just?
We’ve said God desires all men to be saved.
Was this desire on pause before Christ?
How did He effect this until the coming of Christ?
Did God simply wait, watching generations live and die, with no provision in place until the cross was finally established?
Scripture makes it clear that the answer is no.
God did not pause His desire to save humanity. Even before Christ came in the flesh, He made a way for people to be reconciled to Himself. Those who lived before Christ were not left without hope.
“And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.” Hebrews 11:39-40 NKJV
From Heb 11:38-40, we see that these faithful men and women “did not receive the promise” in its fullness, yet their faith was counted to them. Their salvation was through Christ, even before His coming in time. God applied the redemptive work of Christ retroactively, ensuring that His justice and mercy were fully satisfied.
The sacrifices of bulls, the law, and the covenants were not the ultimate solution; they were but temporary coverings and signs pointing forward to the true Mediator and Sacrifice.
When we read Hebrews 10:4, it says
“For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.”
So even though they were sacrificing bulls and goats, their sins couldn’t be taken away by it. It was but a temporary fix. They symbolized the payment that would ultimately be made by Christ, showing that God’s justice required a penalty for sin, while His mercy made provision for forgiveness.
Notice carefully again from Hebrew 11: they “did not receive the promise” in its fullness, yet they were saved.
What saved them?
Faith!
In fact, Faith is how men are saved even in Christ today.
Faith was how men were saved before Christ.
Their faith and trust were counted as righteousness because God’s plan already had a solution, which is the cross. Salvation has always been by trust in God’s provision, not by works, sacrifices, or human effort alone.
What is God’s provision for us now?
Christ!
And scripture makes us to understand that Christ is the Word.
The word that existed from the beginning!
Fix that into my earlier statement, and we see that, salvation has always been trust in God’s word.
This is how men were saved in the Old Testament: they believed God.
They simply believed the word of God.
"Abraham, leave your father’s land and go to where I will show you."
Faith right there. Faith that bought salvation!
Faith in God’s Word is what connected every Old Testament saint to the ultimate provision: Christ.
Their obedience, sacrifices, and life were important not as a source of salvation, but as expressions of faith in the God who had already provided the solution for sin.
And this is the same for us New Testament saints. In fact, it is why we are called Believers.
I think we need to read Hebrews 11 again. You can read my verse-by-verse exegesis of Hebrews 11, as it relates to the subject of 'Faith', HERE.
Back to the Old Testament…
Abraham was not the only one who was saved by trusting God’s Word. Many others, including those outside Israel, were also counted righteous because they believed God’s promises. While we don’t have stories about our own forefathers documented inside of Scripture, I strongly believe that even some of them too may have obtained salvation by Faith.
Rahab, a Canaanite woman in Jericho, trusted the Word of God spoken through the Israelite spies. Even though Rahab was not part of God’s covenant people, her faith in His Word aligned her with His redemptive plan, and she was saved.
All she did was believe that God was going to help the Israelites win the battle and not only was Rahab saved through faith, but she also became part of the lineage of the Messiah.
Just look at!
Another example is Ruth, a Moabite.
She left her people and declared her faith in God
“But Ruth said: “Entreat me not to leave you, Or to turn back from following after you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, And your God, my God.”
Ruth 1:16 NKJV
Your God shall be my God!
This is how she was saved. God’s plan and His provision have always been both just and merciful.
He reaches ALL people in the ways that are consistent with His character, always offering a path of salvation through faith, in alignment with His ultimate provision in Christ.
In every age
Every tribe
Every Nation
God has been faithful to His desire: that all men be saved.
And He has provided the way through the promised Messiah, the Word made flesh, Christ Jesus.
Now, if God has always found a way to reach people, even before Christ, what about those today who have never heard the gospel? Or children and those who are not capable of making a conscious decision for themselves?
We see the same principle at work.
God’s justice is perfect. While sin must be dealt with, His mercy is boundless. His mercy exists for all!
Just as He applied the provision of Christ retroactively to the faithful of the Old Testament, we can trust that He is not and will not be unfair to those who, through no fault of their own, have never heard the gospel or cannot understand it.
“for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.” Romans 2:14-16 NKJV
“Those who are not Jews don’t have the law. But when they naturally do what the law commands without even knowing the law, then they are their own law. This is true even though they don’t have the written law. They show that in their hearts they know what is right and wrong, the same as the law commands, and their consciences agree. Sometimes their thoughts tell them that they have done wrong, and this makes them guilty. And sometimes their thoughts tell them that they have done right, and this makes them not guilty. All this will happen on the day when God will judge people’s secret thoughts through Jesus Christ. This is part of the Good News that I tell everyone." Romans 2:14-16 ERV
Reading this scripture at first glance, it might sound like God is judging people by their works. But read again carefully, and you will see God is not saying that good works earn salvation. Works are never the currency of salvation. Salvation has always been by faith in God’s provision.
In the Old Testament, that meant trusting His promises; today, it means trusting Christ.
What Romans 2 is showing us is that works reveal what is in the heart. They are evidence of whether a person has responded to the truth God has placed before them. Even people who have never heard the gospel still have a conscience, a sense of right and wrong, and God judges them according to how they respond to that, not by the mere number or doing of good deeds.
God judges according to the light and knowledge people have, and always applies salvation through the provision He has made in Christ.
So even for people who have never heard the gospel, or children and those unable to make decisions, we can be assured that God’s judgment is just, merciful, and consistent.
What I am essentially trying to say is this:
Everyone, at every point in history, has had a chance to respond to God in faith.
In the Old Testament, people like Abraham, Rahab, and Ruth were saved because they trusted God’s Word, even before Christ came. God’s provision was always available to Israelites and non-Israelites alike.
Today, even those who have never heard the gospel, as well as children and those unable to make decisions for themselves, are fully known to God, and His justice and mercy ensure they are given a fair opportunity to be saved.
Salvation has always been by faith. Faith in God’s Word and His provision, and this principle has never changed.
In every age, in every circumstance, God’s desire is the same: that all men be saved, and He has always provided a way for them to respond.
Deaf people, for example, probably cannot hear the gospel when I preach to them, does that mean they are condemned?
God finds ways to reach men, always!
Does this mean we can relent in preaching the gospel because God finds a way to save people?
Absolutely not.
While God’s justice and mercy ensure that every person is given a fair opportunity, Scripture makes it clear that the ordinary and primary way God brings people to salvation is through the proclamation of His Word.
Your preaching of the gospel is the fair opportunity for salvation to those who hear you.
There are men learning sign languages just so they can preach to the deaf, this is the understanding of that fair opportunity.
“How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, Who bring glad tidings of good things!” Romans 10:14-15 NKJV
Faith comes by hearing the Word, and God uses His people as instruments to carry the message of salvation to the world. Preaching the gospel is our God-given responsibility.
In every age, tribe, nation, for every kind of person, God has been faithful. His justice is satisfied, His mercy is extended, and salvation has always been available to all who respond in faith.
I will end here:
This is the heart of God: just, merciful, and desiring that none should perish.
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