Have you ever felt totally out of place somewhere? One of the things I do to be involved in our community is I’m a chaplain for our local Police Department. Now I’ve been a police chaplain for over three years now, and that role takes me some places I wouldn’t ordinarily be exposed to as a pastor. One night about six months ago I was on a ride-along on a Friday night and the officer I was riding with received a call to a popular single’s bar in the city. As we walked into the bar in our uniforms, I felt totally out of place, like I stuck out like a sore thumb. The music was too loud and the crowd was all younger than I was (I never thought I’d hear myself say those words). We’d no sooner gotten there and I was counting the seconds to when we’d be able to leave. My feeling of being uncomfortable had nothing to do with my past problems with alcohol. I simply felt totally out of place, like a fish out of water. When we walked out twenty minutes later I breathed a sigh of relief and swore I’d stay in the police car the next time.
All of us have had those kinds of experiences where we feel like we’re out of place. Maybe some of you here today are guests and just being in church makes you feel that way. The first thing we’re thinking when we walk into a new group of people is, "Is there anyone here like me?"
Well last Sunday we started a new series on death and the afterlife called BEYOND DEATH’S DOOR. In this series we’ve been looking at what the Bible teaches about life beyond the grave, and last week we explored the topic of whether there’s such a thing as the afterlife at all. But today I want to explore the question of who will be at home in heaven? Is heaven the kind of place where everyone will be, or would some people feel like a fish out of water in the presence of God in the afterlife? Who will "fit in" in heaven? Is heaven for everyone? Will every human who’s ever lived end up in heaven in the end? Or are certain people just not "heaven people"? That’s what we’re going to look at today as we continue to explore what the Bible teaches beyond death’s door.
I. Will Everyone Be In Heaven?
We start with this question, will everyone ultimately end up in heaven? Now the belief that everyone will ultimately be in heaven is what theologians call UNIVERSALISM. If you’ve ever seen the Unitarian Universalist Church, that’s what they believe, that everyone will be heaven in the end. The second century church leader Origen believed this...in fact Origen even though the Devil would ultimately end up in heaven. Diverse people throughout the ages have embraced universalism, including biblical scholar William Barclay, U. S. president John Quincy Adams, author Hanah Whitall Smith, and in our own generation, popular author Robert Fulgham. But what does the Bible teach? Does it teach universalism, that everyone will end up in heaven in the end?
Let’s look at the teachings of Jesus Christ on this issue.
Matthew 7:13-14-- "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (NIV).
According to Jesus there’s a right way and a wrong way in the spiritual life. There’s a way that ends in destruction and a way that ends in life.1 The path that leads to destruction is described as having a wide gate and a broad path. It’s a well worn road, it’s a road paved with "good intentions" as we like to say. The broad path is a direction in life that seems normal and pleasant, it feels agreeable and accommodating. Yet it ends in destruction, and the word here describes "eternal destruction."2
In contrast to this easy way, this common way, there’s a narrow gate, a gate with only a single entrance, and this narrow gate leads to the narrow road of following Jesus, a road of eternal life, a road of blessing. This is where we get the saying "straight and narrow" from in our culture, looking back on this restrictive road.
What we find in this teaching of Jesus Christ is a warning against danger: NOT EVERY ROAD LEADS TO HEAVEN.
I didn’t make this up. It’s not an arrogant claim that my way is better than someone else’s way, but it’s the clear teaching of Jesus Christ here.
Now it’s popular in our culture today to believe that all roads ultimately lead to heaven. The spiritual life is often pictured as a mountain, with heaven on top of the mountain, and every religion taking its own unique path up the mountain, but all paths end up at the same destination. But if that’s true, then it must be true that all religions without distinction ultimately end in heaven. When we think about that it poses a problem, because Satanism is also a religion, as well as some religions that practice human sacrifice. These religions must also be equally valid ways of approaching God if every road leads to heaven. In fact, we’d also have to include cultic groups like David Koresh’s Branch Davidians and the UFO cult Heaven’s Gate as equally valid ways to heaven.
You see, if we can’t make distinctions between truth and error when it comes to religion, then we must include all religions, including ones that have practices that we find repulsive and immoral.
Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft says, "If all roads lead to the same place it makes no ultimate difference which road we take."3 Our spiritual beliefs end up being no more significance than ice cream flavors; they become strictly a matter of personal preference. In fact, even the road of non-religion must be an equally valid road.
Universalism also has another major problem with it as well. For all people to ultimately end up in heaven God would have to force some people to be there. You see, the Bible teaches that God has given us the freedom to reject his plan, the freedom to spurn his love, the freedom to reject his offer of heaven. God didn’t have to give us that freedom--in fact he could override our freedom at any time--yet he’s given us this freedom nonetheless. So if everyone ultimately ends up in heaven, God must overpower some people’s will and force them to be there even though they’d choose not to be.
I have a police officer friend who believes in universalism, and I’ll tell you what I told him: "If everyone ends up in heaven--including people who didn’t want to be there--then heaven will be just as bad as earth and the cops have job security in the hereafter." Oxford theologian Alister McGrath is exactly right when he says, "Universalism denies humanity the right to say no to God."4
The clear teaching of Jesus is contrary to universalism, as Jesus warns us that the broad road doesn’t lead to heaven at all, but that it leads to a much more disastrous destination. So the answer of Jesus--and therefore the answer of the Christian faith--to our question is no, not all will end up in heaven.
II. What Is The Entrance Requirement To Heaven?
That leads us to our second question: What’s the entrance requirement for heaven? If entrance into heaven isn’t automatic, then what’s the deciding factor? Is it like the academy awards where some committee somewhere votes on who to let in? Maybe some of you remember that movie Albert Brooks directed a few years ago called Defending Your Life. In that movie, the character played by Albert Brooks has to prove before a heavenly court that he deserved to be admitted into heaven.
The first place we look to for what qualifies entrance into heaven is our own MERITS. After all, every other religion of the world presents its own unique method of gaining merit for the afterlife, to try to earn our way into bliss. Whether it’s Buddhism’s eightfold path to nirvana, Islam’s four pillars, or Hinduism’s cycle of reincarnation and karma, every major world religion presents a "do it yourself" way to gain merit for the afterlife.
Multiply these major religions a hundredfold and you’ll find all kinds of cults and sectarian groups promising their own brand of merit to earn access to heaven, whether it’s the Hare Krishnas, the Moonies, Scientology, or whatever. According to a survey by Time magazine two years ago, 62% of Americans think our merits play a role in determining whether we end up in heaven or not.
Yet when it comes to our own merits the Bible presents a very unflattering picture. We’ll never make it by our own merits.
Isaiah 64:6-- "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags... (NIV)"
The best we have to offer to present ourselves as deserving heaven is woefully inadequate. We’re like Cinderella trying to get into the big dance with only our peasant’s smock. The best we have to wear won’t get is through the front door. We need something beyond what we can provide for ourselves, we need Cinderella’s fairy godmother to provide a heavenly gown.
You see, for all our attempts to do the right thing, all of us have miserably failed. This is why the Bible tells us very bluntly, "All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory" (Rom 3:23). We’ve blown it, we’ve sinned, and that’s caused us to be in a state of moral uncleanness, a condition of alienation and hostility from God. We’ve been quarantined from God’s perfect goodness and holiness, so much so that if we were in the holy presence of God in heaven in our natural condition, it would be more like hell for us.Instead, the Bible offers us a different way to find entrance into heaven.
2 Corinthians 5:21-- "For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ" (New Living Translation).
The only person who doesn’t stand before God unclean and in filthy rags is Jesus Christ. According to the Bible, Jesus never sinned, not once did he break God’s law, not once did he fail to obey God to the full. This is hard for us to even imagine since all of us have grown so accustomed to failure and sin in our own lives, yet this is the clear claim of the Bible. Yet this one person who stands before God righteous became the offering for our sin.5
The text literally reads, "he became sin on our behalf." This doesn’t mean that he became a sinner, but that his perfect life was the sin offering for us, as was predicted back in Isaiah 53:10 by the prophet. He willingly and voluntarily became that sin offering on the cross so we could be made right with God, so Cinderella could exchange her filthy smock for a heavenly gown to gain entrance into the great dance. This passage is clearly claiming that entrance into heaven is gained through the merits of Christ. Since our merits are at best inadequate, Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience to provide us with his merit.
The New Testament describes two totally different approaches to getting right with God. One way is the way every other world religion seeks--the way of self improvement, do-it-yourself righteousness, the way of relying on our own merits and seeking to establish our own righteousness before God. The other way--the Christian way--is pure gift, because it’s someone else’s righteousness that comes to us and covers us as a gift. The New Testament author the apostle Paul contrasts these two ways in Philippians 3:9."Now that I belong to Christ, I am right with God, and this being right does not come from following the law [my merits]. It comes from God through faith. God uses my faith in Christ to make me right with him" (NCV).
You see, as long as we’re clinging to our filthy rags to defend ourselves before God, we’re not ready to receive the gift that Christ offers. We find ourselves tightly grasping our own merits, white knuckling our own efforts, and our hands aren’t open to receive the gift. We’re like the little boy who reaches into a vase to pull out a piece of candy: As long as we hold on to the candy in our hand we can’t get our hand out of the vase. As long as we hold onto our filthy rags, we can’t receive the gift God offers through Christ.
These passages lead us to some good news in answering our second question: ENTRANCE INTO HEAVEN IS AN UNDESERVED GIFT THAT’S MADE POSSIBLE THROUGH FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST.
This is why it’s not arrogant for Christians to claim that Jesus is the only way to heaven. Peter Kreeft tells us, "it is sheer imperialism to insist that only one man-made road up the divine mountain is the right road and all others are wrong. But Christ does not claim to be a man who became [a way to God]...Christianity claims to be the road God [himself] made down, not the road we made up."6 It’s not arrogance for one person in a burning building to show the other people where the fire escape is. It’s not arrogance for a doctor to prescribe a medication because that medication will provide healing from the disease.
This is good news, what Christians call gospel, something that’s exciting to share.
III. What About Those Who’ve Never Heard?
But that leads us to one of the most difficult and often asked questions of all: What about people who have no opportunity to receive this gift? How does God treat them? How does God treat the native of a tribal group in South America that’s never heard about Jesus Christ? How does God treat those people who have never heard about Jesus Christ?
Christians have offered creative solutions to this question down through the ages. Some have suggested that God has something called middle knowledge, that God not only knows what every person will do, but God’s knowledge also includes what every person would do in every possible set of circumstances, so based on what God knows a person would do if they had been given an opportunity to respond to Jesus Christ, God provides salvation to that person when they die.
Others have suggested that God works through creation and our inner sense of right and wrong to draw us to Christ, and that if people respond to the light that they do have, God will provide more light through a vision or a dream. These are reasonable solutions that I find helpful, but we must admit that the Bible no where tells us exactly how God treats people who have never heard of Jesus Christ. God has not given us any census of data of heaven’s population. The Bible’s point is not to tell us who will be in heaven but to tell us how to be in heaven.But with this said, let me list a few truths from the Bible that we no to be absolutely true that help us respond to this question.
We know that God loves the world.
John 3:16-- "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
The universal love of God is self evident for any honest reader of the Bible. God doesn’t just love religious people, or republicans, or married people. God loves every human person who’s ever lived and who ever will live, and he loves them with an unquenchable love, a love that didn’t just give God a warm fuzzy, but--according to this verse-- a love that motivated God to give his one and only Son. The word "world" in the New Testament usually refers to people in this world system in its condition of hostility to God. This refers to people at their worst, people in rebellion against God, before they respond to God’s grace, yet God loves them. God loves Marilyn Mansen as much as he loves Billy Graham, he loves Saddam Hussein as much as he loves James Dobson. The heart of God is as wide as the way to live is narrow. And God didn’t just give something he could replace, he gave his one and only son, or as older Bible translations put it, "his only begotten son." And God gave his only son--Jesus Christ--so people God loves wouldn’t perish--that’s the same word that’s translated "destruction" in Matthew 7:14. So we can be sure that God loves people who have no opportunity to hear about Jesus Christ just as much as he loves each of us who have been given that opportunity.
We can also know for sure that God is fair.
Deuteronomy 32:4-- He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.
All of Deuteronomy 32 is a song that Moses taught the nation of Israel to sing whenever they gathered together to renew their commitment to God. So several times a year they’d get together and sing this song that affirms the fact that God is just, his ways are just, he’s faithful, he won’t do anything morally wrong, but he’s upright and trustworthy. The could be absolutely true, that God’s standard of justice is not lower than ours, but his character is the very source of justice. So God is fair, he doesn’t play favorites or suspend justice in his treatment of people.
We also know for sure that God desires salvation for all people.
1 Tim 2:4-- "This is good and pleases God our Savior, for he wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth" (NLT).
Now it’s difficult for us to comprehend the idea that God can desire something that won’t necessarily come to pass. After all God is God, and if he really wants everyone to be saved, can’t he just snap his fingers and make every single person a Christian? And the answer is yes, he could do that, he possess the power to do that, but he chooses not to do that because it would violate the freedom God’s given us. If God erased our ability to say yes or no to him, God would also have to erase his image on us, and we’d cease to be human. We’d become marionette puppets with God pulling the strings. So although God’s heart is for all people to come to salvation, God will not coerce anyone against their will to receive this gift. So we can know for sure that God desires the salvation for those who have no opportunity to hear about Jesus Christ.
And yet we also know for sure that salvation comes through Christ alone.
Acts 4:12-- "There is salvation in no one else! There is no other name in all of heaven for people to call on to save them" (NLT).
Without the sinless sacrifice of Jesus Christ, all we have to rely on for entrance into heaven is our own merit. So without the sacrifice of Jesus, no one would end up in heaven. This claim that sounds so exclusive, so restrictive, so dogmatic, is the clear teaching of the New Testament, and it’s been the position of the Christian community for 2,000 years now. Buddha might have been an enlightened teacher, but he can’t save people from sin. Muhammad may have inspired people, Moses might have led a nation out of slavery, Ghandi might have helped India find freedom through non-violent resistance, but the names of Muhammad, Moses, and Ghandi cannot save people.
So how can we put these clear teachings together, that God loves all, God is fair, God desires salvation for all, yet salvation comes through Christ alone? This calls us to a reality check: WE CAN TRUST GOD TO BE FAIR AND LOVING IN HIS DECISIONS.
The problem of people who have never heard is God’s problem, it’s his dilemma to solve the way he sees fit. Surely it’s motivation for us to seek to share God’s good news with these people, but the reality is that God doesn’t’ have a communication problem. If we can trust God to forgive our sins through Jesus Christ’s death, then surely we can trust him with those who’ve never heard. Personally, I’ve gone out of the business of taking heaven’s census. I think we’ll all be surprised by who’s in heaven when we get there, so I don’t want to venture a guess about anyone being lost in the end. Don’t get me wrong, people will be lost--we’ll talk about that next week--but I’m not the one who decides. God doesn’t consult me with these matters, so I think it’s wise to just leave them to him.Is heaven for everyone?
God certainly didn’t intend to exclude anyone when he created heaven, yet we’ve learned today that not every road leads to heaven. We’ve also learned that entrance into heaven comes as a gift through faith in Jesus, and that we can trust God to be loving and fair in dealing with everyone.
Now when many people in our culture first year these concepts it shakes them to the core. They feel like they’ve been going in one direction--thinking that entrance into heaven is based on self effort and person merit--only to find that the Bible claims otherwise. They feel like Roy Riegals must’ve felt when he played in the most famous Rosebowl game in history. It was 1929, and Georgia Tech was playing the University of California. In the first half Roy Riegals recovered a fumble for his team, University of California. But in his confusion he ran the wrong direction, 65 yards in the wrong direction, until one of his team mates outdistanced him and tackled him just short of the end zone. When California attempted to punt, Georgia Tech blocked the punt and scored a safety, which was the ultimate margin of victory. Many people feel like Roy Riegals when they find out they’ve picked up the ball but run in the wrong direction--not just for 65 yards, but often for many years. During half time at that Rose Bowl everyone wondered what coach Nibbs Price would do. Would he bench Riegals the rest of the game? As the men sat in the dressing room, Roy was in the corner, a blanket around his shoulders, face in his hands, weeping like a baby. Finally the coach looked at the team and said, "Men, the same team that played the first half will start the second half...and that includes you Roy." Maybe you’ve spent many years running the ball in the wrong direction, maybe you feel like it’s too late to receive this gift and go in a new direction, but today God is giving you the same chance Coach Price gave Roy Riegals. Georgia Tech ultimately won that Rose Bowl, but the Georgia Tech players will tell you that they’ve never seen a man play football with the intensity as Roy Riegals did that second half.
ENDNOTES
1. W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1988), Vol, 1, p. 699.
2. Davies and Allison, p. 699
3. Peter Kreeft, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven (Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 214.
4. Alister McGrath, "A Particularist View: A Post-Enlightenment Approach" in More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic Word editors D. Okholm and T. R. Phillips (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), p. 177.
5. For a defense of this translation as "sin offering," see R. Martin, 2 Corinthians, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco: Word Books, 1989), p. 339.
6 Kreeft, p. 246.
