Who Gets Into Heaven? (And What Happens to Those Who Don’t?)

I should say at the start that I’m not one to follow the latest trends and fads in the religious world. Most of them seem to me like a slick marketing strategy that encourages lightweight belief rather than deep discipleship. Not to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with WWJD, Prayer of Jabez, Purpose-Filled Life, Missional Church, and all the rest. It just isn’t my cup of tea. And so I have to admit that I don’t remember if I ever even heard of Rob Bell before this controversy about his new book has hit the fan. I haven’t read his book, and don’t plan to. But I can’t resist the temptation to chime in on the debate. You can click on the following link to see his promotional video for the book: http://vimeo.com/20272585. And you can follow this next link to read one of the prominent criticisms of it: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/files/2011/03/LoveWinsReview.pdf.

The controversy, as I understand it, focuses upon two questions. First, who will get into heaven? And second, what happens to the people do don’t make it? Regardless of what Rob Bell and his detractors have to say, these are questions worth asking.

First, who will get into heaven? Or, to word it slightly differently, what does it take to get into heaven? For now, I won’t get into what exactly heaven is. Let’s just agree that it’s a blessed state of being in presence of God after we die and/or after the end of the world as we know it. And let’s agree that “getting into heaven” is, for Christians, essentially the same thing as “being saved.” The Biblical witness is pretty clear: our access to heaven (or, the way for us to be saved) is only through Jesus Christ. About ten years ago I helped to draft a statement for our Presbytery which addressed this topic as follows:
We believe in Jesus Christ, “who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven (Nicene Creed),” and “is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6).” We believe Jesus “is the only Savior of the world (Second Helvetic Confession 5.077; see Romans 5:12-21 and Hebrews 9:15-28),” and that His life, death, and resurrection are the sole means of intimacy with God (see John 10:7-18). Our salvation is completely dependent upon the work of God’s free grace by which God credits Christ’s righteousness to those who trust in Him. We believe that salvation is the will of the Father for us (1 Timothy 2:3-6), and that the Holy Spirit opens us to receive this salvation that is offered through Jesus Christ (Romans 8:9-11). Consequently, we acknowledge that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12, see also Heidelberg Catechism 4.029).”
Obviously, since I helped to write this, I agree with it wholeheartedly, and I think it addresses the issue well.

But the current issue goes a bit deeper than this. Yes: Jesus is the one who makes it possible for us to get into heaven (or, to be saved). He is the means; but what do we have to do to avail ourselves of it? How do we get the benefit from the work that Christ has done? This, I think, gets to the issue that Rob Bell raises. How widely does God share the saving work of Christ? The Bible clearly tells us that if we believe in Jesus, we will be saved (John 3:16, Acts 2:38-39, Ephesians 2:8-9, for example). So, if you want to be sure to get into heaven, that’s what you have to do (and nothing else, by the way). But the question is still open: is it possible for people who have not put their trust in Jesus to be able to get into heaven? According to 1 Timothy 2:3-4, “God … wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” So, since he’s God, can’t he accomplish that? Can’t he, from his own free loving will, make the saving work of Christ efficacious for all people, regardless of whatever faith in Christ they may or may not have? Since I haven’t read Rob Bell’s book, I’m not going to say that this is his position. But there are Christians who have made this kind of an argument.

To explain my position, let me present two hypothetical people. Person #1 is someone who has never heard the message of Christ’s salvation in a meaningful way. But in her own way, as best as she is able with the knowledge of God that is available to her, she does her best to honor and follow God, or at least her perception of God. In my book, Christ’s redeeming and reconciling work touches her life. I do not believe that God holds us accountable for knowledge that is impossible for us to have. My formula is this: “We are to commit as much of our lives as we are aware of to as much of God as we are aware of, and we are to seek to learn more about ourselves and about God, so that we can offer more of ourselves to God.” After all, who among us is arrogant enough to think that we know absolutely everything about God? Every human being is upon a relative spectrum of knowledge about God. And, for that matter, we don’t even know ourselves all that well. Offer as much of yourself as you are able to the God that you know about, and seek to know God better and better. I believe that someone like Person #1 will be in heaven, because Christ’s work covers her.

Person #2 is different. He is someone who has heard about Christ’s work, but has rejected it. Because I’m describing a hypothetical person, let’s make him really easy to define. He is someone who has had regular exposure to a reasonable and understandable explanation of who Christ is and what Christ has done, and he has been given a clear opportunity to place his trust in Christ. But he refused to do so. He intentionally rejected the offer of salvation (or getting into heaven) from Christ. I believe that this is someone who does not benefit from Christ’s redeeming and reconciling work, and therefore will not be saved and go to heaven.

Perhaps you’ve already noticed: the distinction between Person #1 and Person #2 isn’t always very clear. It’s not always obvious if someone has really ever heard the gospel, or if they’ve accepted or rejected whatever amount of knowledge of God was available to them. To use the example that Rob Bell mentioned in his promotional video, did Gandhi ever really hear the gospel? What sort of trust or relationship did he have with Jesus? Did he offer as much of his life as he was able to as much of God as he knew about? I can’t answer that question, and neither can anyone else. I can’t answer it about Gandhi, or about anyone else. To use an opposite example, what about Hitler? Just before he killed himself in his bunker, did he offer his life to Christ, or to the best understanding of God that he had? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else. So none of us can ever presume to judge that someone else is Person #1 or Person #2.

This now leads to the second question that the Rob Bell controversy raises: what happens to the people who aren’t saved, or go to heaven? This question assumes that there are at least a few “Person #2”s in the world. What happens to them when they die, or when the world comes to an end? The conventional, traditional Christian answer is that they go to hell: a place or condition of eternal torment. Rob Bell is certainly not the first person to question this concept: that a loving God would allow people to be in agony for all of eternity, even if they intentionally and explicitly rejected Him. I like the way that my dissertation advisor framed the issue: Is it just for a person who has committed a finite offense to receive an infinite punishment? Remember, infinite isn’t just “a really long time;” it’s forever. After a million years of torment, you still have an infinity of torment to face. After all, any offense that we commit is finite, because we are not infinitely powerful and because our actions are limited to the time period of our lives. I’m going to agree with Tony that we can’t sidestep this issue by waffling on the term “justice,” by saying that God’s sense of justice is different from ours. If that would be the case, then it would be meaningless for us ever to talk about a “just” God. However, I take issue with Tony’s sense that our offenses are finite, because they are offenses against an infinite God. The “infinite-ness” of the offenses of Person #2 does not depend upon the actions themselves, but upon the One against whom they have been committed. Simple example: if I punch my friend, the offense is not as great as if I punch the President of the United States. The first offense might cost me a friendship, but the second offense will land me in jail for a long time, with a nasty record against me when I get out. Take that distinction and multiply it by infinity, and you get the sense of what it means to offend against God.

The conclusion I reach from all this is that it’s vitally, infinitely important to do all we can to make sure that there are no “Person #2”s in the world. And because we’re not exactly sure where the line between Person #1 and Person #2 is, we ought do what we can to help even the “borderline” cases.