Imperishable Inheritance

The more I grow in the faith the more I am astounded by cer­tain rev­e­la­tions in the Scrip­tures. I believe that the Scrip­tures teach God alone saves sin­ners through His Son (John 14:6; Acts 4:12; Rom 8:29–33; Eph 2:8–10). That is already an amaz­ing teach­ing! But what strikes me even more than that is that our omnipo­tent god has cho­sen to use those ves­sels of mercy as an instru­men­tal role in the sal­va­tion of those He has cho­sen before the foun­da­tion of the world (Eph 1:3–11)!

Throughout history God has used prophets to rise up and proclaim truth to others. He used men such as Abra­ham, Moses, David, Isa­iah, Ezekiel, and Jonah all of which pointed to Jesus who is the apex of all God’s rev­e­la­tion. Jesus Him­self even enun­ci­ated the impor­tance of preach­ing in the com­mis­sion­ing of His dis­ci­ples: “Go there­fore and make dis­ci­ples of all the nations, bap­tiz­ing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teach­ing them to observe all that I com­manded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mat 28:19–20). Jesus teaches that in order to ful­fill His Father’s promise to Abra­ham (Gen 12:1–3), God’s peo­ple must “go” and “teach” out of “all the nations.”

The Chal­lenge of Inclusivism

There is a string of the­olo­gians today that teach that a man can be saved apart from hear­ing the Gospel and faith in Jesus the Christ. Schol­ars such as Clark Pin­nock and John Sanders (who can’t seem to get any­thing right) evan­ge­lize such a view. Their posi­tion is that one can be saved with­out con­scious knowl­edge of Jesus Christ by gen­eral rev­e­la­tion. Such a view I believe not only dis­torts Bib­li­cal sote­ri­ol­ogy, but it also under­mines the urgency that the Bib­li­cal char­ac­ters had to reach the lost. Why be con­sid­ered and involved in the mis­sion­ary endeavor when an unreached peo­ple group can be saved sim­ply by look­ing into creation?

This is prob­lem­atic for sev­eral rea­sons. First, no one in the Scriptural narrative is saved apart from hearing the word of Lord. Receiving the gift of salvation comes by God-given faith by grace alone in Christ alone. Paul tells the inquir­ing jailer that in order to be saved one must believe on Jesus as the object of his faith (Acts 16:31). Fur­ther, Paul rebukes the thought that one can be saved by gen­eral rev­e­la­tion alone in Romans 1–3. He pro­claims boldly and proudly that he is “not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for sal­va­tion to every­one who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom 1:16).

How Then Will They Hear?

What prompted this thought was first read­ing Let the Nations Be Glad by John Piper which includes a fan­tas­tic apolo­getic against the doc­trine of inclu­sivism (and plu­ral­ism), but before that Paul’s teach­ing in Romans 15 has always astounded me.

“For there is no dis­tinc­tion between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abound­ing in riches for all who call on Him; for ‘WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.’ How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear with­out a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is writ­ten, ‘HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET OF THOSE WHO BRING GOOD NEWS OF GOOD THINGS!’ How­ever, they did not all heed the good news; for Isa­iah says, ‘LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?’ So faith comes from hear­ing, and hear­ing by the word of Christ.” (Rom 10:12–17)

Paul walks right through the teach­ing that in order for one to be saved they must have faith, and faith only comes by hear­ing, there­fore a preacher must be sent. It was the impe­tus for Paul to con­tinue to labor in the Gospel despite per­se­cu­tion. It also gave him great moti­va­tion to go to the unreached peo­ples of the world: “And thus I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, so that I would not build on another man’s foun­da­tion” (Rom 15:20).

A Moti­va­tion For Action

I hope and pray that Paul’s pas­sion and desire to see Christ exalted amongst the unreached peo­ples of the world would seep into my con­scious­ness and the church at large. If you have been saved then you should have a burn­ing desire to see oth­ers come to the same sav­ing faith. The great pas­tor and the­olo­gian says of this: ‘Have you no wish for oth­ers to be saved? Then you are not saved your­self. Be sure of that.”

Peo­ple all around us and to the ends of the earth are on the broad road which leads to destruc­tion. Let the truth that the Gospel is God’s ordained means of sal­va­tion give us a burn­ing desire to tell others.

“What I tell you in the dark­ness, speak in the light; and what you hear whis­pered in your ear, pro­claim upon the house­tops. Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Mat 10:27–28)