Sermons

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Exclusive Inclusivity
October 12, 2003
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
6th in a series on “Tough Issues”
John 14:1-7

We continue in our series on “Tough Issues for Faith” by looking together at the issue of exclusivity: Is Jesus the only way to heaven? We’ve got 20 minutes! Let’s turn to the gospel of John, chapter 14:1-7.

Who will end up in heaven? And who won’t?

I read through a famous sermon this week from Jonathan Edwards from the 18th century called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It’s a sermon that was quite influential in the 1700s, at the time of the spiritual Great Awakening. Edwards looked at his congregation and said:

“I use this awful subject to awaken unconverted persons in this congregation. It is the case that every one of you that are out of Christ…are in a world of misery, the lake of burning brimstone extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open, and you have nothing to stand upon…”

And that was the mild, gentle part of the sermon!

Who will end up in heaven? And who won’t? It’s a question that in our day and age seems to elicit moral outrage from those members of our population that don’t even believe in heaven! We live at a time in history where (I swore I’d never use this phrase)… the paradigm has shifted so strongly and recently, and the world in general is antagonistic toward any claim to universal or exclusive truth. There is no real Truth. There is merely what is true for you, and what is true for me. It’s all relative. And the acceptance of what one person feels is true has a higher value today than anything objective. Keep your truth for you. But woe to you if you try to put your truth on me.

And so the answers to “Who will end up in heaven, and who won’t?” come down all over the map: “Everyone will” or “All good people will” or “I don’t believe in heaven or hell.” Sometimes “I don’t even believe in god (God). I believe in a Higher Power, the Creative Process, the Womb of Being, the Primal Matrix, the Eternal Now. The end result of MY spirituality is nirvana, or oneness with creation, or release from reincarnation or the discovery of the god who is actually inside of each of me.” There is no end to interesting answers. The problem that Christians run into might be summed up in this little saying of Jesus:

“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me.”

Who will end up in heaven? And who won’t? (I’ve told you part of this story before, but I think it’s worth filling out:) I’d always wanted to share the message of Jesus Christ with my Grandpa Charles, who died in May of 1999. I’d tried several times to just open a conversation about faith with him, but as great a guy as he was, my little bald-headed grandpa with the big smile had no interest in engaging. For his whole life, in fact, he had studiously avoided anything to do with God. And that’s why I was so surprised when HE brought it up. I was driving a rented van down a gravel road near Genesee, Idaho, through acres of Palouse farmland. Grandpa Charles was in the passenger seat, Anne and our three then-quite-young kids were in the back seats. It was dusty and noisy, and we were all hot and tired. My mind drifted a bit, and I suddenly realized that Grandpa Charles had started to talk about death. His own death:

“I figure I’ve lived a pretty good life. I’ve tried to treat people right, and I’ve done pretty well…so I guess it’ll all work out in the end.”

My mind was going about a hundred miles an hour. This was clearly not the place for the long theological conversation that I’d longed to have. We only had about sixty seconds. So I said, “You know Grandpa…the way I read the Bible, whether you go to heaven or not…is not about what you’ve done…it’s Who you know.” He was puzzled, and so I had another minute to explain…that what happened after death had everything to do with God’s mercy and grace, seen most clearly in Jesus. Then the kids and the dust and the noise ended the conversation.

A month later, after we were back in Minneapolis, Grandpa called. Very abruptly near the end of our conversation he said, “You know, Dan…I’ve been thinking. And I think you’re right.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Right about what, Gramp?”

“About how what’s important when you die…is Who you know.”

That was it. No Believer’s Prayer, no recitation of the Four Spiritual Laws. And the next time I was with him I was standing next to his casket and doing his funeral. Is Grandpa Charles in heaven?

Who goes to heaven? And who doesn’t? One thing you hear a lot right now is: Don’t all religions just end up in the same place anyway? You have a good friend who is Muslim, and a very good, kind, loving person. She has never decided to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior. But it is inconceivable for you to imagine that God won’t welcome her into eternity. And even harder for you to believe that she would end up in hell…especially in comparison to some of those people who claim to be Christians and are about as kind and loving as a pit bull. So…Isn’t the Muslim God ultimately the same as the Christian one? Don’t all of the great religions of the world end up in the same place?

Here’s another response: Some of my favorite writers and theologians, people like C.S. Lewis and Karl Barth...have taken great heat over the years because some people thought they came too close (though they never taught), were a little too open to “universalism…,” the idea that somehow in the end, ALL will be saved. The problem that Christians run into might be summed up in this little saying of Jesus:

“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me.”

Is Christianity really this exclusive? Is Jesus this exclusive? Who will end up in heaven?

There is no question more important than this. Or more complicated. And there is nothing more obnoxious than an unloving, arrogant Christian person gloating over the supposed assurance of their own salvation and casting down judgment over everyone else around them.

Let me make four quick observations about this question (not points!).

FIRST: If I read scripture correctly…we will be very, very surprised at who all is in heaven…and who is not. I see Jesus taking time with the absolute outcasts of society. People who are poor, sick, possessed, outcast, crushed, ostracized, sin-weary. The people who generally received Jesus’ ministry were NOT listed in Who’s Who in Palestine in 30 AD. AND CONVERSELY, the recipients of Jesus’ wrath would have been the most logical to have received the keys to the Kingdom: religious leaders, teachers, professors, the wealthy, the influential. We will be very, very surprised at who is in heaven.

Perhaps my favorite book of C.S. Lewis’ is The Great Divorce, a little piece of fiction that deals with “the great divide” between heaven and hell. You have to read a bit into the book before you understand that the gray, dull civilization described at the opening of the book is Hell. And that the bus that people get on is their opportunity to journey to…and then to stay in…Heaven. They are actually taken there…but it is their choice whether or not to stay there. Some do. Some don’t. One scene shows two men who had known each other on earth meeting up. One had committed a murder, but had been in heaven for some time. The other was just getting his chance, but he couldn’t accept the fact that a murderer had made it there before him: “I’d rather be damned than go along with YOU…” And so he was. We will be surprised at who is in heaven, and who is not.

My Second Observation is this: There is just enough room in the scriptures…to both know something about judgment AND to leave the door open to WONDER as to exactly what God will do with eternity. In John 10, for example, when Jesus says

“I am the good shepherd…the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, I know my own and my own know me…”

he also says

“AND I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice.”

OR the Isaiah passage that Dave read earlier…all of the foreigners, the outcasts, the were not only invited to join themselves to the Lord…but welcomed, provided for.

“My house shall be called a house of prayer for ALL peoples,” says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel. “I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.”

If the only way to God is in Christ…How exactly are we to think about those who came before Jesus? Or the Jews of the Old Testament? Or those who never have opportunity to meet Christ in this life? It seems to me that there is room enough to speculate, to wonder, to hope…and to admit that we sometimes just don’t know. Someone may encounter Christ on their deathbed, but we never know. Perhaps there is even room for something we don’t see beyond death? In a couple places, the New Testament says Christ was “preached even to the dead.” Perhaps there is even some way in which those of other religions ultimately connect with Jesus Christ, and people are saved through Him…though as far as we can see, they are “not of this flock.”

For me, these are questions that I can’t fully know. I can pray. I can speculate, I can even hope. And my experience with Jesus is that every time I think I understand God’s grace and provision on our behalf…I find out it is even larger and deeper and more profound. And so there is room to hope at the edges…

BUT…scripture is quite clear that there WILL be a judgment. Luke 13:22…

“Lord, will only a few be saved?” Jesus said, “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many will try to enter and not be able.”

And in Matthew 25, there is a clear and final division between sheep and goats. In Revelation is the picture of the final judgment. In C.S. Lewis’ final Narnia book, there is finally a moment at the end of the seventh volume…when the Aslan the Lion (Christ) comes to the door between eternity and the time-bound land after trying to win as many as will follow him and says, “Enough. Shut the door.” And the door, icicles already forming on it, is SHUT. Some had refused to come through. The theologian Mark Heim says “the terrible judgment of God is quite simply this: God will let us have what we want if we really want it.”

My Third Observation is related: It is not OUR job to judge…who goes to heaven, and who does not. Judgment about these things belongs ultimately, according to scripture…to Jesus Christ. It is a job we dare not try to wrestle from Him. Now, please be careful to distinguish this from the judgments we ARE called to make. Scripture repeatedly calls us to make judgments of all kinds: to judge whether actions are right or wrong, whether ideas are godly or not, whether behaviors align with scripture or not, to discern who ought to take leadership in the church. When Jesus says, “Do not judge, or you will also be judged,” I don’t think he’s talking about these things. You hear this misused all the time. Anytime anyone wants to justify their lifestyle or choices, they pull out, “Doesn’t the Bible say you aren’t supposed to judge?” But Jesus continually calls his followers to make judgments. The distinction is between judging actions, ideas, behaviors…and judging a fellow human being’s location for eternity. That’s not our call.

My Fourth Observation is that what we KNOW from scripture is quite clear: Jesus Christ is God’s ultimate revelation. When we want to know God, we look at Jesus Christ. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is the way to God. He is the only way to a God whose overwhelming desire…is that ALL people would know Him. And so the New Testament if filled with scriptures of God’s exclusive particularity:

Romans 10:9 “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Acts 4:12 “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

But also God’s inclusive heart and provision:

I Peter 3:9 “The Lord does not want ANY to perish, but ALL to come to repentance.”

Romans 11:32 “God wills to have mercy on all.”

The heart of God is turned towards people. Israel was to be a light to the nations. Jesus’ Great Commission for the church was to “Go to all the world…” The heart of God is the most inclusive of all hearts. When people criticize Christianity as being exclusive, part of me says “yes, it is. As far as I understand it, Jesus Christ is THE way to God…” But the other part says, “Look at the cross. Look at the wide open arms of Christ there…spread out for your sake and for mine. What could be more inclusive than a God who would give Himself up…even for those who were far off? Whose largest desire was to lose not even one?”

NOW…if you have been blessed enough to meet God in Jesus Christ, and enter into that relationship with him...if we know the mysterious and wildly hopeful assurance that you will be with God…in life and in death…then the last possible thing that should make us…is arrogant, or threatening or judgmental.

• We ought to be thankful…beyond all measure.
• We ought to be humble…because there is so clearly much that we don’t know.
• We ought to be sharing Jesus with every person we know.

Shirley Guthrie, a longtime professor at Columbia Seminary, wonders…that if it’s true that some people never get in…who is responsible? Will God ask those people “Why did you not believe, obey, accept my free gift?” OR will God turn to US and say “Why did they not believe? Why did you not tell them? Why did you talk about love and yet live so unlovingly?”

We have instead been entrusted with the amazing responsibility…of taking GOOD NEWS to the people around us. That’s what “gospel” means…Not condemning, angry, reproachful news…but the news of a God who is madly in love with them. Who longs to know them, to heal them, and bring them home. God has seen each of us drowning…and instead of watching, or tossing us a life preserver…he jumped in and saved us. And gave his life to make it happen. Friends, the good news of Jesus Christ is to be carried out…to the ends of the earth...Not to get someone in the club, and not to get them to agree with us…but so that they might know Christ.

We can wonder, speculate, hope and pray about how the heart of God is manifest in the hard questions of eternity. But what we KNOW…is that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life…no one goes to the Father but through him.

Who goes to heaven? Your Muslim friend? Your loved one on their deathbed? Did my grandfather meet Christ? I think so. I pray so. I hope so. One day I’ll know for sure. But in the meantime…I will tell everyone that I know about Jesus Christ, the God who has welcomed the world with open arms. It’s good news. It’s the best news I’ve ever heard. And I would hate for anyone…to miss it. And so would God. So would God. Let’s pray.