by John Piper
Whom does Jesus have in mind when he speaks of those who will hear his voice and follow him? He is referring to more than the Jews who actually heard him on earth. He says, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd” (10:16). “Other sheep that are not of this fold” refers to the Gentiles, who are not part of the Jewish fold.
But how will these Gentiles hear his voice? The answer is the same as with Paul: They hear the voice of Jesus, not in nature or in an alien religion but in the voice of Christ’s messengers. We see this in the way Jesus prays for his future disciples in John 17:20–21: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.” We infer from this then that the “sheep that are not of this fold” will hear the voice of the Shepherd through the voice of his messengers.
Eternal life, therefore, comes only to those who hear the voice of the Shepherd and follow him. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life” (10:27–28). This hearing is through the messengers of the Shepherd. This is what Jesus means in John 14:6 when he says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” “Through me” does not mean that people in other religions can get to God because Jesus died for them, though they don’t know about it. The “through me” must be defined in the context of John’s Gospel as believing in Jesus through the word of his disciples (John 6:35; 7:38; 11:25; 12:46; 17:20).
Eternal life is owing to the death of Jesus for his sheep (10:15)—a death that atoned not for a few Jewish sheep only but for sheep from every nation. We see this in John 11:51–53, where John interprets the words of Caiaphas: “Being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.”
The “children of God scattered abroad” (11:52) are the “other sheep that are not of this fold” (10:16). And when we look at John’s picture of the consummation of the missionary cause in Revelation, we see that these “sheep” and “children” are truly from all the nations.
And they sang a new song, saying, Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
Revelation 5:9–10
Here we see the true extent of the word “scattered” in John 11:52. Jesus died to gather the “children of God” who are scattered among “every tribe and language and people and nation.” The implication is that the messengers of the Shepherd must (Mark 13:10) and will (Matt. 24:14) reach every people under heaven with the message of the gospel and the voice of the Shepherd. The redeemed in heaven from all the peoples are not redeemed without knowing it. Rather, as Revelation 7:14 makes clear, those “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev. 7:9) are those who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14; cf. 22:14). They are those who “keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 12:17). The gospel of the blood of Christ crucified for sinners and risen in victory must be preached to all the nations so that they can believe and be saved.
Conclusion
The question we have been trying to answer in this section is whether some people are quickened by the Holy Spirit and saved by grace through faith in a merciful Creator even though they never hear of Jesus in this life. Are there devout people in religions other than Christianity who humbly rely on the grace of a God whom they know only through nature or non-Christian religious experience?
The answer of the New Testament is a clear and earnest no. Rather, the message throughout is that with the coming of Christ a major change occurred in redemptive history. Saving faith was once focused on the mercy of God known in his redemptive acts among the people of Israel and in the system of animal sacrifices and in the prophecies of coming redemption. Outside Israel we hear of Melchizedek (Genesis 14), who seems to know the true God apart from connection with special revelation in the line of Abraham.
But now the focus of faith has been narrowed down to one man, Jesus Christ, the fulfillment and guarantee of all redemption and all sacrifices and all prophecies. It is to his honor that henceforth all saving faith shall be directed to him.
Therefore, this great turn in redemptive history is accompanied by a new mission thrust ordained by God. God no longer allows the nations to walk their own way (Acts 14:16) but sends his messengers everywhere to call all to repent and believe the gospel (Acts 17:30).
God in Christ is himself the power behind this mission. He has ordained his people to life (Acts 13:48) and ransomed them by laying down his life for them (John 10:15; Rev. 5:9). Now he is commissioning Spirit-filled messengers to preach to them (Rom. 1:5; 10:15), and he is speaking through these messengers with power (Luke 12:12; 21:15; 1 Thess. 2:13) and calling the lost effectually to faith (Rom. 8:30; 1 Cor. 1:24) and keeping them by his almighty power (Jude 24).
Those who affirm that people who have no access to the gospel may nevertheless be saved without knowing Christ try to argue that this idea enhances the motivation to evangelize the lost. As we saw above, this is a futile effort. The arguments fall apart as you pick them up. For example, John Ellenberger cites four ways our motivation will be “enhanced.”
1. Citing Acts 18:10 (“I have many in this city who are my people”), he says that “the knowledge that the Holy Spirit has been working in the hearts of people prior to hearing the good news should encourage us.”42 I agree. But that is not the issue. Working in people’s hearts to prepare them to respond to the gospel is very different from working in their hearts so that they are saved apart from the gospel. The first motivates missions; the second does not.
2. He argues unintelligibly that “because the great majority have not responded to general revelation, they need to be confronted by the claims of Jesus.”43 This amounts to saying that if you believe some are saved without hearing the claims of Christ, you will be more motivated to share those claims because most are not saved that way. But that is not an argument that the view that some can be saved without the gospel “enhances” our motivation to evangelize the lost. On the contrary, it’s an argument that the more needed the claims of Christ are, the greater the motivation to share them.
3. Third, he argues that believing that some are saved apart from the preaching of the gospel “broadens our understanding of the whole gospel.”44 In other words, if we are going to pursue missions with zeal, we need to do so for reasons other than merely providing escape from hell (which some already have before we get there). We need to desire to bring the blessings of salvation in this life. I suppose this is true. But why should we assume that the church will be more motivated to bring these blessings to people than it is to bring the blessing of eternal life? The risk I am willing to take to save a person from execution is not increased by telling me, “He is no longer on death row, but surely you will want to feel all the same urgency to help him find a good life.”
4. Finally, Ellenberger argues that believing some are saved apart from the preaching of the gospel “reaffirms love as the primary motivation.”45 Again this is unintelligible to me, because it seems to assume that the urgency of missions driven by the desire to rescue people from eternal torment is not love. How does saying some are saved without the gospel make a greater appeal to love?
So I affirm again that the contemporary abandonment of the universal necessity of hearing the gospel for salvation does indeed cut a nerve in missionary motivation. I say a nerve rather than the nerve because I agree that the universal lostness of man is not the only focus for missionary motivation. Arching over it is the great goal of bringing glory to Christ.46
Therefore, the church is bound to
engage with the Lord of glory in his cause. Charles Hodge is right that “the solemn question, implied in the language of the apostle, how can they believe without a preacher? should sound day and night in the ears of the churches.”47
It is our unspeakable privilege to be caught up with him in the greatest movement in history—the ingathering of the elect “from all tribes and languages and peoples and nations” until the full number of the Gentiles comes in, all Israel is saved, the Son of Man descends with power and great glory as King of kings and Lord of lords, and the earth is full of the knowledge of his glory as the waters cover the sea forever and ever. Then the supremacy of Christ will be manifest to all, he will deliver the kingdom to God the Father, and God will be all in all.
1. For a thorough assessment of the recent departures from a historic belief in hell as eternal conscious torment of the ungodly, see Ajith Fernando, Crucial Questions about Hell (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994); Robert A. Peterson, Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment (Phillips-burg, N.J.: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1995); D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 515–36; Larry Dixon, The Other Side of the Good News: Confronting the Contemporary Challenges to Jesus’ Teaching on Hell (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2003); Robert A. Peterson and Edward William Fudge, Two Views on Hell: A Biblical and Theological Dialogue (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2000); and Robert Peterson and Chris Morgan, eds., Hell under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004).
2. See, for example, his sermon on “Justice” in Creation in Christ, ed. Rolland Hein (Wheaton: Shaw, 1976), 63–81, where he argues forcefully that “punishment is for the sake of amendment and atonement. God is bound by His love to punish sin in order to deliver His creature: He is bound by His justice to destroy sin in His creation” (72). I have given an extended critique of MacDonald’s view of divine justice, self-atonement, and universalism in The Pleasures of God (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 2000), 168–74.
3. Clark Pinnock and Delwin Brown, Theological Crossfire: An Evangelical/Liberal Dialogue (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), 226–27. “I was led to question the traditional belief in everlasting conscious torment because of moral revulsion and broader theological considerations, not first of all on scriptural grounds. It just does not make any sense to say that a God of love will torture people forever for sins done in the context of a finite life. . . . It’s time for evangelicals to come out and say that the Biblical and morally appropriate doctrine of hell is annihilation, not everlasting torment.” Cf. Clark H. Pinnock, “The Conditional View,” in Four Views on Hell, ed. William Crockett (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 135–66.
David Edwards, Evangelical Essentials, with a Response from John Stott (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter Varsity, 1988), 314–20. “Emotionally, I find the concept [of eternal conscious torment] intolerable and do not understand how people can live with it without either cauterizing their feelings or cracking under the strain.” He gives four arguments that he says suggest that “Scripture points in the direction of annihilation, and that ‘eternal conscious torment’ is a tradition which has to yield to the supreme authority of Scripture. . . . I do not dogmatise about the position to which I have come. I hold it tentatively. But I do plead for frank dialogue among Evangelicals on the basis of Scripture. I also believe that the ultimate annihilation of the wicked should at least be accepted as a legitimate, Biblically founded alternative to their eternal conscious torment.”
Edward William Fudge, The Fire That Consumes: The Biblical Case for Conditional Immortality, rev. ed. (Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 1994).
4. John Hick, “Whatever Path Men Choose Is Mine,” in Christianity and Other Religions, ed. John Hick and Brian Hebblethwaite (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), 188. Hick ends with a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, iv, 11: “Howsoever man may approach me, even so do I accept them; for, on all sides, whatever path they may choose is mine.” For a survey of Hick’s thoughts, as well as a compelling response, see Harold Netland, Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth (1991; reprint, Vancouver: Regent Publishers, 1998); Harold Netland, Encountering Religious Pluralism: The Challenge to Christian Faith and Mission (Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter Varsity, 2001). Similarly, John Parry, the Other Faiths Secretary of the World Church and Mission Department of the United Reformed Church in London, wrote in 1985, “It is to the faith of Jesus Christ that we are called. The change of preposition from in to of is significant. It is a faith that is shown in one’s trust in God, in surrender to God’s purposes, in giving oneself. Such a response of faith I have witnessed among my friends of other faiths. I cannot believe they are far from the kingdom of heaven, what is more, as Dr. Starkey writes ‘. . . people will not be judged for correct doctrinal beliefs but for their faith. Those who will enter the kingdom on the day of judgment are those who in faith respond to God’s love by loving others.’ ” “Exploring the Ways of God with Peoples of Faith,” International Review of Missions 74, no. 296 (October 1985): 512.
5. Edwards, Evangelical Essentials, 327. For example, John Stott says, “I believe the most Christian stance is to remain agnostic on this question. . . . The fact is that God, alongside the most solemn warnings about our responsibility to respond to the gospel, has not revealed how he will deal with those who have never heard it.” In William V. Crockett and James G. Sigountos, eds., Through No Fault of Their Own (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991); Timothy Phillips, Aida Besançon Spencer, and Tite Tienou “prefer to leave the matter in the hands of God” (259n3).
6. Crockett and Sigountos (Through No Fault of Their Own) include some essays by evangelicals who take the view that those who have never heard are in fact led to salvation through general revelation. Their conclusion is, “Those who hear and reject the gospel are lost. And those who do embrace the light of general revelation must be willing to turn from their dead idols to serve the living God (1 Thessalonians 1:9). General revelation, then, creates in them a desire to reject their pagan religion; it does not help them see the saving significance of their own” (260). See a good response to this in Ajith Fernando, Sharing the Truth in Love: How to Relate to People of Other Faiths (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 2001), 211–33.
7. Millard Erickson argues from the revelation available in nature according to Romans 1–2 and 10:18. The essential elements in the “gospel message” in nature are: “1) The belief in one good powerful God. 2) The belief that he (man) owes this God perfect obedience to his law. 3) The consciousness that he does not meet this standard, and therefore is guilty and condemned. 4) The realization that nothing he can offer God can compensate him (or atone) for this sin and guilt. 5) The belief that God is merciful, and will forgive and accept those who cast themselves on his mercy. May it not be that if a man believes and acts on this set of tenets he is redemptively related to God and receives the benefits of Christ’s death, whether he consciously knows and understands the details of that provision or not? Presumably that was the case with the Old Testament believers. . . . If this is possible, if Jews possessed salvation in the Old Testament era simply by virtue of having the form of the Christian gospel without its content, can this principle be extended? Could it be that those who ever since the time of Christ have had no opportunity to hear the gospel, as it has come through the special revelation, participate in this salvation on the same basis? On what other grounds could they fairly be held responsible for having or not having salvation (or faith)?” But here he is very tentative, for he goes on to say, “What Paul is saying in the remainder of Romans is that very few, if any, actually come to such a saving knowledge of God on the basis of natural revelation alone.” Millard Erickson, “Hope for Those Who Haven’t Heard? Yes, But . . .” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 11, no. 2 (April 1975): 124–25. He is following here A. H. Strong: “Whoever among the heathen are saved must in like manner [i.e., like the patriarchs of the Old Testament] be saved by casting themselves as helple
ss sinners upon God’s plan of mercy, dimly shadowed forth in nature and providence.” Systematic Theology (Westwood, N.J.: Revell, 1907), 842. This view is different from that of the older Reformed theologian Charles Hodge, who argued that only through the
Word of God heard or read does the effectual call to salvation come. Systematic Theology, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952), 646.
8. Crockett and Sigountos, Through No Fault of Their Own, 260.
9. Clark Pinnock of McMaster Divinity College argues that “the ‘fire’ of God’s judgment consumes the lost. . . . God does not raise the wicked in order to torture them consciously forever, but rather to declare his judgment upon the wicked and to condemn them to extinction, which is the second death.” “Fire, Then Nothing,” Christianity Today 44, no. 10 (20 March 1987): 49.
10. Edwards, Evangelical Essentials, 317.
11. Scot McKnight devotes extensive treatment to Matthew 25:46 in view of recent efforts (such as John Stott’s) to see the eternal consequence of unrighteousness as annihilation. His conclusion is solid: “The terms for eternal in Matthew 25:46 pertain to the final age, and a distinguishing feature of the final age, in contrast to this age, is that it is eternal, endless, and temporally unlimited. It follows then that the most probable meaning of Matthew 25:46 is that just as life with God is temporally unlimited for the righteous, so punishment for sin and rejection of Christ is also temporally unlimited. . . . The final state of the wicked is conscious, eternal torment.” “Eternal Consequences or Eternal Consciousness,” in Through No Fault of Their Own, 157.
