One critical question relating to the scope of salvation is what we are to say about the distinction between Christians and non-Christians. Can those who reject the gospel really find salvation?
In answering this question, Ellul (see previous post) begins by observing that what people are rejecting may not really be the gospel:
Without question we all know of innumerable cases in which people reject revelation. Swarms are doing so today. But have they any real knowledge of revelation? If I look at countless presentations of the Word of God by the churches, I can say that the churches have presented many ideas and commandments that have nothing whatever to do with God’s revelation. Rejecting these things, human commandments, is not the same as rejecting the truth.
However, this still leaves two questions that need to be answered:
- “If everyone is saved, what is the difference between Christians and non-Christians?”; and
- “What good is it for Christians to lead lives that are godly, worthy, honest, moral, etc.?”
As to the second, Ellul asserts that “we must be very firm”:
To lead a virtuous life in order to be saved is completely mistaken from a biblical standpoint. The evangelical view is that I lead a virtuous life because I know that I am saved. It is because grace has been granted to me that I can live an honest life before God. Salvation is not the result of virtue but its origin and source.
That still leaves the first question, however. If universal salvation is assured, then why bother preaching the gospel and seeking to convert non-Christians? Ellul gives three reasons.
First, “it is a matter of communicating knowledge”:
All are saved, but only those who believe the gospel know it. This is no small matter, for people are full of anguish and anxiety and fear, fear of the future and of war and of death. They are delivered up to the pain of a cruel disruption. They are desperate because they have lost their loved ones, or think they have lived in vain, or see the world degraded and nature violated and slowly plundered.
They are doubly crushed because they do not know that they are loved and accompanied and saved and reunited and promised a future of truth, righteousness, and light. Not to know this is the great tragedy of people today. Communicating the gospel is passing on the astonishing news that no matter what happens nothing is lost and we are loved. “Good news is preached to the poor” (Luke 4:18). It is a matter of the poor (all of us!) and of this good news.
Second, passing on the gospel enables those who hear and receive it to “become the servants of God”:
They are given a mission, a vocation. This gospel is to be proclaimed on earth. Believers become the servants of this proclamation. I will repeat what I have often said before, namely, that being a Christian is neither a privilege nor an advantage but a charge and a mission. Those who learn the good news of salvation are under obligation to live a different life, to become “saints” because they are now sanctified, and to make it their task to pass on what they have been given.
The third reason, though, is perhaps the most interesting and original:
The third [reason] is our response to the tragic and anguished question that Jesus poses: “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8). There is no guarantee of the permanence or perpetuity of the gospel among us. Jesus gives us the promise that he will be with us to the end of the age (Matt. 28:20), but there may not be anyone with him. There may not be a single Christian, a single bearer of the good news. This is a possibility that the question of Jesus opens up for us, and we cannot treat it lightly.
Again, if we are charged to communicate this gospel, it is also for Jesus, so that he may not have the further sorrow of having done everything but finding no one who believes it or knows it. Thus service out of love for Jesus (the only service that we can render him) ought to constrain us to evangelize all peoples and all classes.
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