Many people think about going to Heaven or hell as a scenario in which God is holding a gun to our heads, coercing us to worship Him, and we just have to say the magic “Jesus” word or intellectually understand the propitiation and we will be rescued from God and His wrath. This view is categorically incorrect.
Salvation depends on one thing: a person’s response to the person of Jesus, and specifically the proposition of having Him as our lord. The idea of a “lord” isn’t something we exactly understand in the West. It’s basically the idea of Jesus being our owner or our boss forever.
Jesus’ ministry was not focused on warning people about hell. Jesus’ central message was, “Repent, because God’s Kingdom is within reach“. “Within reach” is my translation of what is commonly translated “at hand”. In this particular message, Jesus wasn’t warning people about hell. He was informing them and attempting to allure them with the promise of life in God’s Kingdom. We have a lord that doesn’t use threats but who wants to guarantee that we live in a paradise that is suitable for us personally because He loves us personally.
It is true that Jesus does acknowledge the reality of hell during His ministry. And while it was not the focus, I can see how it could be difficult for someone to not feel coerced by the reality of hell when considering whether or not to trust Jesus . I can also see how someone could find it difficult not to feel allured by the promise of life without sickness, death, or problems of any kind forever. Each person decides where their focus will lie.
Whether or not someone feels coerced, the fact is that nobody can be saved without trusting Jesus. Saying some magic words out of fear while not really trusting Jesus isn’t how you are saved, and forcing people isn’t God’s method.
God’s desire is for His peaceful Kingdom to come on Earth as it is in Heaven and to dwell here with humanity forever. If someone doesn’t trust God, it’s impossible for that person to be peacefully integrated into God’s Kingdom. They’re going to keep stealing, keep creating factions, keep looking out for #1 and keep starting unnecessary wars as long as God will let them, which won’t be forever.
This sounds kinda like works righteousness but it’s not. It doesn’t matter at all what you’ve done in the past as long as you’re willing to trust God now. And when Jesus comes back, there will be no devil, no evil, no death, no starvation. Practicing righteousness will be easy (Hebrews 2:15).
If you simply trust God, you are fit to be integrated into God’s Kingdom. You will bear fruit. When God gives you a command for how you need to act in order to maintain a peaceful lifestyle: because you trust Him you will naturally want to follow Him. You may not be perfect at it immediately, you may fall and stumble, but you will follow and keep following and keep being faithful until your training is complete (Luke 6:40).
Proverbs 24:16 is compelling. I’d like to note that all of the ESV, NASB and NIV, as well as almost all English translations translate the first personal subject in the verse as “the righteous”. It says:
“for the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity.”
Proverbs 24:16
This verse shows us that the righteous aren’t perfect. Rather, the righteous know God is worth pursuing. They trust Him. They are aiming at being like Him. They are aiming at righteousness, and when they fall short, they stand up and keep moving forward. They don’t make up their mind to permanently give up and resort to evil methods, as the wicked do. They don’t make up their mind to take care of #1 by whatever means necessary, as the wicked do. They don’t consider it a waste of time to serve God (Malachi 3:14), as the wicked do. Unlike the wicked, the righteous trust Jesus.
We see that salvation doesn’t come through anything mechanical that you can just perform. You can’t coerce God into saving you. You can’t do a dance, or say magic words or give enough money or be good enough. You have to have a genuine relationship with Him. You have to trust Him. It’s possible to perform morally to some degree without trusting God. You still aren’t getting into God’s Kingdom unless you trust Him (Romans 9:31-33).
God doesn’t form lasting relationship by forcing people or coercing people into relationship with Himself. Lasting relationship is formed through trust. If you are ready to trust God, God is already ready to trust you.
God is extraordinarily trustworthy.
Jesus died on the Cross. He literally had absolutely no legal obligation to do so. He is capable of peace. He lived, suffered and died as one of us and was at peace with all that He encountered, as much as it depended on Him. He can be trusted.
Some might say, “Well what if I am able to successfully create my own peaceful kingdom without God?” Are you willing to get to know Him? What will you do if you find Him to be trustworthy? All that’s being asked of you: trust at a basic level.
At the end of the day, it’s important to look at humanity’s history and see that there is no scientific evidence that humanity is capable of living at peace for any sort of extended amount of time or, as a whole, even for a day. At the end of the day it’s important to ask ourselves the important question: would I rather trust Jesus and have a world at peace or choose to exercise my perceived right to not trust Jesus and continue on with business as usual? Do you want a world of peace, or would you prefer a world without Jesus? To the sane, the answer to this question seems obvious.
None of us completely trusts God all of the time. We may not understand how God is working in this current evil age, and we may not like some of His choices, but at a very basic level, if you simply trust that Jesus is raised from the dead and you pledge allegiance to Him, you will be saved (Romans 10:9). Period. If God can raise the dead, He obviously has the ability to provide a lasting peace to all that want it.
You don’t have to do anything to get into God’s Kingdom except trust Him. That’s all. You do have to trust Him though. Can you really consider Jesus dying on the Cross a threat or a promise to kill someone or coercive behavior? That certainly wouldn’t be reasonable or logical. At that point it’s up to each of us to decide if trust is something we are willing to live with.
We see in 2 Peter 3:9 that God gives people all the time they need to decide whether or not they want to be in a relationship with Him, just like He did with Adam & Eve, and just like He did with the thief on the cross.