CHAPTER SEVEN

THERE IS NO PLAN B

As American Christians, we celebrate the idea that “all men are created equal.” This statement from our Declaration of Independence is grounded in the biblical teaching that every person in the world has been formed in the image of God and therefore has intrinsic worth. It’s a beautiful idea.

Subtly, however, this equality of persons shifts into an equality of ideas. Just as every person is equally valued, so every idea is equally valid. Applied to faith, this means that in a world where different people have different religious views, all such views should be treated as fundamentally equal.

In this system of thinking, faith is a matter of taste, not of truth. The cardinal sin, therefore, is to claim that one person’s belief is true and another person’s belief is false. The honorable route is to rest quietly in what you believe and resist the urge to share your beliefs with someone else.

This line of thought has pervaded American Christianity in two particular ways. On one hand, many professing Christians have embraced the universalistic idea that religion is merely a matter of preference or opinion and that in the end all religions are fundamentally the same. People do not have to trust in Christ in order to know God or go to heaven. Therefore, there is no need to encourage someone else to embrace the truth of Christianity.

On the other hand, while some professing Christians have rejected universalism intellectually, practically they may end up leading universalistic lives. They claim Christ is necessary for salvation, yet they live their Christianity in silence, as if people around them in the world will indeed be okay in the end without Christ.

I think that each of us tends toward either intellectual or practical universalism. If you lean toward adopting universalism intellectually, I invite you to hang with me through this chapter. Together, let’s explore with open minds the question of what God’s Word teaches about this. Similarly, if you lean toward practical universalism, living each day as though it’s not absolutely urgent to tell others about Christ, then I invite you to approach this chapter considering the practical and eternal implications of what the Bible teaches.

Let’s not forget what’s at stake.

We have already seen that more than 4.5 billion people in the world today are without Christ. As if this were not serious enough, more than a billion of these people have never even heard the gospel. So what happens to them when they die? I am convinced that this is one of the most important questions facing Christianity in America today. If people will go to heaven simply based on their native religious preferences, then there is no urgency for any of us to go to them. But if they will not go to heaven because they have never heard of Christ, then there is indescribable urgency for all of us to go to them. If people are dying and going to hell without ever even knowing there is a gospel, then we clearly have no time to waste our lives on an American dream. So what does the Bible say about people who never hear about Jesus?

I invite you to take a brief journey with me through the book of Romans to discover seven truths that help us understand what Scripture teaches about people who have never heard of Jesus.¹ Then I implore you to consider the urgent need before us to forsake the American dream now in favor of radical abandonment to the person and purpose of Christ.