I wanted to have some discussion on "Robin: “Bell’s Hells: seven myths about universalism” as posted in this thread, however for some reason that area of the board isn’t allowing replies.
I’d be interested in finding out more about this view, because right now I cannot wrap my head around it. Can someone please explain?
To me, this is the key issue on the whole matter. What we think about God and who He is will have a direct impact on how we view both God’s justice and God’s mercy.
On the contrary. If anything, sin has become exceedingly sinful because the real issue isn’t about avoiding hell, it is about avoiding sin, which is the heart of the problem. By focusing so much on hell and it’s consequences, I believe many evangelicals, because they are ‘safe’ from the consequences of sin (i.e. hell) and are forgiven (past, present, and future), tend to lapse on the nature of the sin itself and it’s effects on the human soul. I know I have in the past. But now I fear that there just might be some reckoning for the sins I’ve committed since I’ve been saved. Not to mention the collateral effects my sin has caused on my loved ones, friends, amd aquaintances. There is still a fire that we will have to contend with in some fashion. I find it hard to believe that even in the condition that I am in, saved or not, that upon death that which is not perfected in me still needs perfection. We are not just going to wake up in heaven and all our current tendencies will just vanish away. I still believe that we will have to contine to learn and practice righteousness, however that plays out.
This is the view I tend to have. I believe that God lokketh on the hearts of those who perhaps by no fault of their own, grew up in another religion or circumstance where the full knowledge of the gospel has been suppressed, yet there is an intuitive yearning for God and the truth in their heart in which God works toward perfecting (in Christ) even though the knowledge is lacking. I base this on what Paul on Mars Hill said in Acts 17:26-27 "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: "
If there is any passage of scripture that drove me to this point about the sweet mercies of God and the hope for the world, it is this one.
What a great quote! The focus of evangelizism ought not to merely save them from hell, but to save them from themselves.
The ultimate purpose of God is not to save us, though that is certainly a part of it, but to conform us into the image of Christ. In fact, Salvation IS being comformed to the image of Christ and to know God and His Son (John 17:3).