Salvation’s Alternative

One of the most difficult things for some to see is that without God’s love, mercy, and forgiveness there is inevitably his judgment.

In our day the concept of the love of God is extended to the point where love is confused with permissiveness and indifference, and because of this confusion the significance of the Cross is completely misunderstood.

I do not believe the Gospel can be adequately preached without its alternative, the judgment of God on sin and unredeemed sinners. Nor do I believe the Cross can be understood apart from the nature and consequences of sin.

We are often confronted today with a gospel of man’s devising. This situation was predicted by General William Booth at the turn of this century: “The chief danger of the Twentieth Century will be: Religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, Forgiveness without Repentance, Salvation without Regeneration, Politics without God and Heaven without Hell.” How true this is of much that now passes for “Christianity.”

How little emphasis we see on the Holy Spirit these days. We think we can get along without the One who has been sent into the world to endow Christians with the power that alone can enable them to live as Christians should.

There is no Christ other than the one revealed in the Scriptures—the eternal Son of God, born of a virgin, truly man and truly God. One who performed miracles to prove his deity and who preached and taught as no one else has ever done. One who died on the Cross for our sins and in our place, and whose blood became the world’s great detergent, cleansing the filthy stains of sin. One who arose from the dead, also “in accordance with the Scriptures,” and who is certainly coming again to ring down the curtain of human history and to “judge the world in righteousness.” Any other “Christ” is not the Christ of the Bible and of history but a figment of unbelieving minds and disobedient hearts.

We hear much today about “reconciliation,” but often the biblical concept is distorted to mean forgiveness without repentance, a sentimental “accepting of the persons.” Unless there is laid the foundation of a sinner’s reconciliation with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, there can be no genuine and lasting reconciliation with our fellow men. “Repentance” is almost a dirty word in many theological circles, for the traditional view is predicted on the innate sinfulness of man, and many now reject that concept.

Furthermore, neo-universalism proclaims “salvation” without regeneration. Our Lord’s statement of the imperative, “You must be born again,” is rejected out of hand—and why not? If man is not a lost sinner he needs not regeneration but reformation—a new environment instead of a new heart.

With the neo-universalism of our day there has come a question as to the reality of heaven and a certainty that there is no hell. Only recently I was told by a young man in one of our seminaries of a fellow student who had entered the seminary with a vital Christian faith only to lose it while he was there. After he was called home to his father’s death bed he admitted, “I had no word of assurance for him about the future life.”

Again and again I have heard it said that fear has no valid place in the proclamation of the Gospel of God’s love. I could not more heartily dissent. Our Lord made it abundantly clear that the alternative to salvation is “perishing,” and he did not leave its meaning to speculation.

God judges men and nations, and judgment is suited to their opportunities and privileges. He judged Israel and Judah, his own chosen people, because of their disobedience to his clearly stated commands, compromise with godless paganism, insensitivity to warnings repeated again and again by his prophets, and rejection of God’s standards in favor of those of the people around them.

What about us? What about America? True, we are dealing with the God who is infinite in his love. But he is also a “consuming fire” for those who are guilty of rejecting him and accepting other gods and other religions.

America, called a “pluralistic society,” now finds itself the victim of godless minorities. Many people no longer have any convictions at all. They shift to and fro on the currents of human opinion, heedless of the fact that it is not man but God to whom they are ultimately accountable.

As we face a situation in many ways comparable to the time just prior to God’s judgment on Israel and Judah, we should read Jeremiah’s words and apply them to America today: “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (2:13). “Your wickedness will chasten you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the LORD your God; the fear of me is not in you, says the Lord of hosts” (2:19). “Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, remove the foreskin of your hearts, O men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem; lest my wrath go forth like a fire, and burn with none to quench it, because of the evil of your doings” (4:4). “To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear? Behold, their ears are closed, they cannot listen; behold, the word of the LORD is to them an object of scorn, they take no pleasure in it. Therefore I am full of the wrath of the LORD; I am weary of holding it in” (6:10, 11a).

Why is there so little preaching on judgment today? Because man’s concept of wrath is so distorted by sin that he cannot understand the wrath of a holy and righteous God. Furthermore, man wants the approbation of others, and it is not “popular” to expose the nerve of sin and its consequences.

But can the Gospel be preached in any other way? We see the wrath of God at Calvary, not against his Son but against the sin Christ was bearing in his own body. And the wrath that eventuates for those who reject the offer made to “whosoever will” is as inevitable as the night that follows the day.

Paul’s exclamation of agony—“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”—is followed immediately by an outburst of praise, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7:24, 25a).

For those who are in Christ Jesus, there is no judgment, no condemnation. For those who reject him, judgment is certain!

L. NELSON BELL

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