For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. -- John 3:16
Like most people, I believe in free will. Everyone acts as though man can choose, even
those who declare that God has His elect who will be saved while He has chosen
in His indisputable wisdom and sovereignty that others will go to hell.
The words of John 3:16 are in red. Jesus said that the Father loves the world to
the extent that He was willing to send His only begotten Son to save it. God loves the world. It is what someone called an objective
universal.
Not only is divine love universal, it is unilateral -- as
the Apostle John says in his first epistle:
In this is love, not that we have
loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our
sins (1 John 4:10). We did not love
God. We did not even know God. Humanity is such a wreck that the Lord would
be perfectly justified not only in not bothering with us but in positively
condemning each and every one of us. Yet
Jesus says that He was not sent into the world to condemn the world but to save
it (John 3:17).
Despite all the Lord has done, despite the redeeming work of
Christ in His Incarnation, His death, His
burial, and His resurrection, it still comes down to us. We decide whether we will be condemned or
delivered. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe
is condemned already … (John 3:18).
There may well be some people who adopt universalism because
it has that liberal, I’m-ok-you’re-ok new agey vibe to it. Genuine Christian believers, though, may
become open to universalism because they grasp the nature of God’s love. Too, there is this plain statement by
Paul: For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive
(1 Corinthians 15:22). It may be argued, reasonably, that this applies only to the
elect. After all, if we are all dead in
trespasses and sin (and we are), how can a dead person respond to God’s call?
The blood of Christ opened the way for
all. The veil was rent from top to
bottom. The partition that separated the
elect from those outside of God’s sovereign choosing was taken down:
For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility … that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two … through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God … In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:14-22).
Strictly speaking, I am not a universalist. I think it possible for a soul to resist the
love and grace of God, to be so self-absorbed as to consign itself eternally to
the fires of hell. But I also think it
is possible for any soul, anywhere, anytime to respond to the Holy Spirit’s
call, to recognize and respond positively to God’s offer of
reconciliation. In the end, those
separated from a loving, forgiving, compassionate God will have no one to blame
except themselves, while those who have accepted the gift will have no one to
thank and praise but Christ alone.
