Questions and Answers #6 (What happens to those who have never heard the Gospel?)

Question: On judgement day i know that God makes a fair call on whether people go to heaven or not, and it is as simple as Christians go to heaven and non christians go to hell? But what about people that have been born into a non-Christian environment and never get exposed to the Gospel (e.g. babies and young children whose minds havnt fully developed and cant understand what being a Christian is). There are also people that claim they are Christians and believe in God but dont attend church. There are also people that hear about it but just dont understand it so therefore struggle to believe it? Are we to know who gets into heaven or do we just leave it up to him [God] to make the right decision?


Thanks for the question, to sum it up this video will help and get you thinking (only 2-3 minutes):
http://phillipjensen.com/video/how-can-people-be-saved-if-they-havent-heard-about-jesus/ 


There is more than just one question in this question. We have about 5. The first question is what happens to people who don't hear the Gospel. The second is what happens to babies and people with a mental handicap. Thirdly there is a question about people who claim to be Christians. Fourthly there is a question about people who don't understand the Gospel when they hear it and fifthly there is a question about what we can know. I have tried to answer all 5 questions so if you like you can probably skip to the relevant section your interested in or you can read the whole article.



1. Those who don't hear the Gospel
Firstly what we need to remember is that God is just (this is important for this whole topic). God is more just than you and I. God is more good than you or I so whatever God does will be the most just and good thing that can be done. 


What we need to remember when we think about people who haven't heard is whether they really haven't heard. See what Paul says in Romans 1:20
"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."


People are without excuse because it is clear that God is creator. We should seek him because it is clear that he is there and he is worthy of our devotion, praise and worship.


Secondly we should remember that all of us are sinners. Paul says it Romans 3:23
"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"


This means that none of us deserve relationship with God. All of us have ignored God and rejected God. God will judge us according to whether we have great opportunities or none (Romans 2) but this doesn't change the fact we are all sinners. None of us deserve God's forgiveness. We didn't earn it, it came as a free gift. If Jesus had never died for sin and God had sent everyone to hell, he would be perfectly just. That is exactly what we all deserve. But God in his mercy saves us through the death of the Lord Jesus, which is costly for God. He didn't have to but because God is good and loving, God chose to.


This means that those who don't hear the Gospel will be judged fairly but they are still sinners and still people who have ignored God. God takes sin seriously and it needs to be punished. We need to remember that God changes our hearts TO become Christians. It may feel like we are choosing God but it is only because God chose us to choose him. God choses to have mercy on whom he wants that is God's right and we have no right to complain.




2. Babies and People with mental disabilities
This is a hard one. The Bible doesn't explicitly say. We have a few glimpses though. After King David commits adultery with Bathsheba, Bathsheba becomes pregnant and her child dies as a judgement of God for David's adultery. David then talks about how the child will not come back but David will go to the child in the place of the dead (2 Samuel 12:23). It is hard to know what to make of this. But this is where we need to trust God. He is good and just, we may not have all the answers but we need to trust the God who does. By the way can you imagine if the Bible said all children under 2 would be saved? If that were the case many well meaning zealous Christians would probably go around and murder all the infants they could. There is probably a good reason why God did not include the answer in Scripture.




3. People who claim to be Christians
In his letter James writes to warn people who think they can have a merely intellectual faith. Read what he says:

^{"17In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.18} But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” 
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. ¹⁹ You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder."

James is saying that even the demons believe God exists and the shudder because they know they will face the anger and wrath of God for rebelling against him. Faith without action and a change of heart (seen by deeds) is dead, it is not real faith. You can believe all the right things about Jesus but if Jesus is not someone you trust, follow or love than you do not have real faith. We need to be careful here because when we hear this we can endlessly ask whether we have real faith. If you are worried whether you do or not, you probably do, ironically your concern shows you care about Jesus. But the point is a true trust/faith in Jesus will see lives changed. We are not saved by our works but we are saved to do works. Good works are the fruit of real faith. As Martin Luther said we are saved by Faith alone but not by a Faith that is alone.

Technically you can be a Christian if you don't go to church (e.g. locked in prison and can't go) but true Christians have a desire to go to church so they can build up Gods people and be fed by God's Word. True Christians will not pay Jesus mere lip service. Being a Christian is not just believing Jesus existed or that he died. Being a Christian is depending on Jesus death to pay for my sin and it is ALSO living with Jesus as my Boss/King/Lord/Ruler/Commander. If we don't have we really trusted him? 

People who say they are Christians but don't go to church and haven't really changed their life to make Jesus Lord need to ask tough questions of themselves about whether they have a false dead faith or a true living faith.


4. People who don't understand the Gospel
There will always be people who struggle to believe the Gospel. A lot of the answer was covered in point 1 but there are a few extra things to say. We should preach the Gospel clearly. Paul asks the Colossians to pray that he would (Colossians 4:3-4). We want to make the Gospel message as clear as possible so people will understand what the Gospel is.

But with that said people won't always understand the Gospel. Some people will misunderstand it and twist it because they love evil more than God (John 3:19-21). Others will misunderstand it because the message sounds strange. 

The Gospel is not something that we can work out is right by just using our human brains. It may seem that way but the Bible is clear, true belief in the Gospel is a miracle done by God's Spirit in us so that we receive the Gospel as truth. Without God changing our hearts we won't believe the Gospel. We tell the Gospel so people will hear and believe because they can't believe without hearing (Romans 10:14-15) but we don't just speak the Gospel we also pray that people will receive the Gospel because we know only God can change hearts so they do (John 3:8, 1 Corinthians 2:12). People will not understand and therefore be saved unless the Spirit changes their heart. They are still sinners and deserve hell but God in his mercy saves those whom he reveals Jesus to.


5. Do we know or does God know?
At the end of the day I can't know what is going on in your heart. I have had friends who by all counts looked Christians and then turned their back on Jesus. There is some mystery about babies etc but on the whole we are certain that only those who trust and follow the Lord Jesus will be saved. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:
"Therefore I want you to know that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, “Jesus be cursed,” and no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit."

and as he says in Romans 10:
⁹ If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰ For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

These are not magic words. Yet you can't say Jesus is Lord (and mean it) without the Spirit enabling you to do so. If people do this, we should have confidence that they are Christians. If we can see that people trust and follow Jesus than we should be confident they are Christian. Plus we need to remember God saves all who are his (John 6:39-40), God is keeping his chosen people for salvation (Philippians 1:6) but this doesn't mean we shouldn't keep watch of ourselves and others, we need to keep working out our salvation knowing God is the one saving us (Philippians 2:12-13). 

The answer is yes we can usually tell whether someone is Christian by the fruit of their faith but no, we won't know for sure until the judgement day but God knows that now. The only person we can really know before then is ourselves, and even then we need to be careful that we don't get self-deceived. What we can know is that only Jesus death and resurrection can save you and that we receive God's forgiveness trusting what God says (that Jesus is Saviour and Lord). If we trust that than we can have great assurance we are 100% saved.


In Summary:

• God is just and good, his judgement will be right
• All of us are sinners and deserve God's anger and punishment
• God choses and saves his people
• We can have a strong idea of who is saved but only God truly knows who are his
• Trusting in Jesus is the only way God saves his people