The Big Questions About Salvation and FaithSample

What Happens to People Who Have Never Heard the Gospel?

I believe God is love. If that is so, how can he condemn everyone who has never heard about Jesus Christ and who never had a chance? There are a lot of people in that situation.

Think of all the people who lived in history before Jesus’ birth. Consider people who lived in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific before the modern era? What about the children who’ve died and the people who have suffered from mental disabilities? Are they all automatically lost as well?

If they are lost, it would be as if God saves people based on their economic status. If you are a middle-class, white person, living only in the last 200 years, then you have a chance to be saved. Otherwise, you are automatically lost, never having even heard the Gospel, let alone having had a chance to respond. It would be a cruel and vicious God who would strictly determine your salvation like that.

The Bible teaches that everyone will be judged according to the light they received and their response to that light. Psalm 87 tells us that in the judgment, God will consider the circumstances of your birth and life.

How is it that the light of God comes to people? It comes to us principally through the Word of God: the Bible. However, the apostle Paul in the book of Romans teaches us that the knowledge of God’s will comes to people through other ways, such as through the order and beauty of nature and our conscience. Of course, God can also reveal his will to people directly through miraculous means.

The apostle Paul argues that all human beings are without excuse before God, for all have had some opportunity to know something of him. People who haven’t heard the Gospel are not automatically lost.

Additionally, the Bible repeatedly teaches us that we cannot decide who is saved and who is not on God’s behalf. He is the judge, and I am not – and I’m happy to let God be the judge. The job would be too stressful for me. The Bible tells me that God is more loving than we could ever imagine. I’m happy to trust in the love of God, knowing he’ll always do what is right.

– Eliezer Gonzalez