Parallelisms of different sorts are used all throughout Scripture, but nobody used them better than the apostle Paul when he used them to explain what it is his Gospel really means (meaning, what the outcome of the Good News he proclaimed is).
The First Man: Adam = Condemnation [mortality and sinfulness]
The Second Man: Christ = Salvation [immortality and sinlessness]
Therefore as… (Romans 5:18)
even so…
by the offence of one
by the righteousness of one
judgement came upon
the free gift came upon
all men
all men
to condemnation
unto justification of life
For as… (Romans 5:19)
so…
By one man’s disobedience
by the obedience of one
many were made
shall many be made
sinners
righteous
For as… (1 Corinthians 15:22)
even so…
in Adam [because of what Adam did]
in Christ [because of what Christ did]
all die [all are mortal]
shall all be made alive [shall all be made immortal]
The above chart breaks Paul’s parallelisms down into their respective parts in order to explain exactly how both humanity’s current condition and humanity’s future condition come to be. The way a parallelism works is that every person listed in Column A is also in Column B (“all,” or “many,” which in this case is referring to every human who ever lived and ever will live, aside from Jesus Himself, of course, are the same “all”/“many” in both columns).
It’s also important to note that there isn’t a single thing we ourselves do to place ourselves into either column. It’s entirely because of the action (disobedience) of one man (Adam), apart from anything we do ourselves, that all humanity exists within Column A, and even so (or “equally so”) it’s entirely because of the action (obedience) of one other man (Christ), also apart from anything we do ourselves, that all humanity will also eventually exist within Column B (“for as… even so…”). Likewise, just as “judgement came upon all men” without anything we did (again, it was by the offence of one that it came upon us all, not by any sin of our own), “the free gift came upon all men” without anything we did as well, and just as we didn’t have to do anything (we didn’t even have to choose to believe anything) for that judgement to affect us, we also don’t have to do anything (not even choose to believe anything) for the gift to affect us either.
Yes, there are things we can do — both sin and believe — that affect us within those columns, but neither of those actions place us into (or remove us from) either column. Instead, those actions take place because of the fact that we all experience both columns (albeit at different times in our lives). We aren’t ultimately condemned because we ourselves sin. Instead, we sin because we’ve already been placed in Column A, meaning we’ve already been condemned by the action of Adam (because Adam sinned he became mortal and passed that mortality on to all of his descendants, and so we ourselves now also sin because we’ve been made mortal, as Romans 5:12 tells us). Likewise, the salvation that belief brings doesn’t place us in Column B, but is, in fact, a whole other sort (or stage) of salvation from the salvation Christ won for us through His death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection on the third day. Belief brings a special (“specially”) salvation, one that brings us to our understanding and experience of salvation sooner than everyone else, but the ultimate salvation of Column B is still given to all, and entirely apart from our belief or anything else we ourselves do (please read this if you aren’t familiar with the different types and stages of salvation).
So, with all that in mind, please re-read the above chart carefully, and it should become clear that both our condemnation and our ultimate salvation are entirely because of what the first Adam and the last Adam did, and not because of anything we ourselves do (even though we can experience a “special” salvation now if we believe the above Good News of everyone’s eventual salvation).
And if you want even more proof, check out this even greater parallelism that Paul used in Colossians 1 to prove the reconciliation of any and all creation that requires it (not just all of humanity this time, but every sapient being who ever needed — or will need — reconciliation with God).
For by Him… (Colossians 1:16)
And by Him… (Colossians 1:20)
were all things created
to reconcile all things unto Himself (having made peace through the blood of His [Christ’s] cross), by Him…
that are in heaven and that are in earth [whether angelic or human]
whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven [whether human or angelic]
There are even more parallelisms throughout this passage, making it into an Extended Alternation if you read all the verses from 15 to 20 (and there’s actually an entire chiasm there if you extend your reading to all the verses from 13 to 22), but those are the most important ones to understand. Once again we notice that we ourselves did nothing to place ourselves within Column A (we didn’t create ourselves), and likewise there isn’t anything we can or will do to place ourselves within Column B either.
And it’s equally important to note that this parallelism includes spiritual (angelic) beings, referred to as those in heaven (the spiritual principalities and powers in verse 16, who are said to eventually be reconciled in verse 20, are the same spiritual wickedness in high places mentioned in Ephesians 6:12), and only spiritual beings who were estranged from God would need to be reconciled to Him, so that means even the “fallen angels,” so to speak, will eventually be reconciled to God. And if all the “fallen angels” will be reconciled, how much more so will all humanity be?
“There’s only one way to heaven,” the street preacher proclaimed adamantly. “If you don’t accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, you can’t be saved! Repent and believe the Gospel before it’s too late, or else you’ll end up in hell for all eternity!”
”Are you absolutely certain about that?” I asked. “If I can convince you that some people can be saved without believing the Gospel or accepting Jesus as their Saviour, will you consider the possibility that perhaps everyone will eventually be saved because of what Christ accomplished through the blood of His cross?”
”There’s no way you’ll be able to do that,” he said, “but sure, give it a try.”
”Okay, let me ask you this. What happens if a four-year old child dies without ‘believing the Gospel’ or ‘accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour?’ Is that child doomed to end up in hell for eternity?”
“Well, no. If the child hasn’t reached the age of accountability before they die, they won’t go to hell,” he admitted.
”I don’t see the age of accountability anywhere in Scripture,” I pointed out.
“Well, Jesus said, ‘Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven,’” He countered.
”Okay,” I said. “Setting aside the fact that Jesus’ statement there wasn’t about ‘going to heaven’ when you die, but actually had to do with the type of people who will populate the kingdom of heaven when it begins on earth — specifically in Israel — in the future, we both agree that children who die without believing the Gospel won’t go to hell for eternity, which means one could say that children who die without ‘accepting Christ as their Saviour’ have still been saved, right?”
”Yes, I suppose that would be correct,” he said.
“But would you also agree that it’s unlikely a four-year old child has never sinned?”
“It would basically be impossible for that to be the case,” he acknowledged.
”So on what basis is it that this sinner who died without believing the Gospel can be saved, then?” I asked.
”I suppose it would have to be on the basis of Christ’s death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection on the third day,” he said after thinking it over for a moment.
”That’s a good answer,” I confirmed. “In fact, that’s the basis on which anybody who is saved gets to experience salvation. But this means you’ve now agreed with me that some people can be saved without believing the Gospel, since you’re saying that children who die before they reach the so-called ‘age of accountability’ without believing the Gospel will still be saved, which was my original challenge to you.”
”Yes, but they’re young children,” he tried to counter. “Are you saying they should suffer in hell for eternity if they don’t believe the Gospel before they die?”
”Not at all. I actually agree with you that they’ll be saved,” I reassured him. “But this means that you and I are both in agreement that some people can technically be saved without believing the Gospel, or without ‘accepting Jesus as their Saviour,’ simply on the basis of Christ’s death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection on the third day. And if some people can be saved simply because of what Christ accomplished, why not go all the way and acknowledge that everyone else will also be saved because of what He accomplished? If what He did can apply to some people without them believing it, I can’t think of any reason it wouldn’t apply to everyone else as well.”
”But the Bible teaches that if somebody doesn’t believe, they’re condemned already,” he tried to argue.
”That’s very true,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean they haven’t also been saved. This comes down to understanding the different types of salvation mentioned in Scripture. Not every reference to ‘salvation’ is referring to the exact same thing. Some people will miss out on certain of the types of salvation while still ultimately experiencing the salvation Christ won for all of us through the blood of His cross.”
”What do you mean?”
”That’s a bigger discussion than I have time to get into right now,” I said, noticing the time, “but if you truly are curious, please visit www.kjvgospel.com where I go into detail on this topic.”
”It’s unlikely I’ll do that,” he said. “It sounds like you’re a Universalist who believes that everyone will get saved in the end, but we all know that nobody can get saved without accepting Jesus as their Lord and Saviour,” completely forgetting everything we’d just discussed, as is nearly always the case when it comes to street preachers. But if you, the reader, are interested in learning more about what Scripture actually teaches about salvation, please do check out that link above.
Before I explain why I’m now a heretical “Concordant” believer (if you aren’t familiar with our beliefs, I wrote about our core doctrines on my About page), It’s important to know that I grew up as a conservative, evangelical, “born-again” Christian, and that I believed quite strongly in all of the traditional, “orthodox” ideas that nearly every evangelical Christian out there assumes is taught in Scripture. This means that I believed in the immortality of the soul, in the doctrine of the trinity, that people who died without becoming Christians would suffer forever in the lake of fire, that premarital sex is a sin, that there’s only one Gospel taught in Scripture, that members of the body of Christ should be baptized in water, and, of course, that “going to church” — with all that this entails, such as dressing up nicely so that one can sit in rows in church buildings to sing some songs, donate some money, and listen to a speech, among other things — is something that should be done every possible Sunday.
It’s also important to understand that I wasn’t looking to stop believing in any of the above. In fact, my journey to “heresy” began because I wanted to make sure I really understood all of what Scripture teaches, which is one of the reasons I went to Bible college after I finished high school. And this wasn’t one of those liberal seminaries that teaches you to question God and Scripture. This was a very traditional, conservative Bible college run by members of the Plymouth Brethren denomination, where we were taught that Scripture is the inerrant word of God, and that it should be interpreted as literally as possible (which I still believe to be the case today, I should add).
So what happened, then? How could someone who was simply looking to better understand what Scripture teaches and to grow spiritually end up such a heretic? Well, it’s precisely because I was looking to better understand what Scripture teaches and to grow spiritually that it happened. You see, my ecclesiology teacher in Bible college seemed to recognize that I was indeed looking to dig deeper than perhaps my other classmates were, and because of this he gave me a copy of a book called The Open Church by James Rutz so I could do just that. Little did he know that this would trigger an entire cascade of events leading me to my current heretical beliefs.
He didn’t intend for this to be the end result of his gift, of course, or so I’d assume anyway. I’m pretty sure he just thought I’d find it interesting. The problem was, I took what I learned in the book seriously. As I read the book, I came to discover that the traditional practices and structures of most Christian assemblies, and the meetings held in their church buildings (yes, even in the Plymouth Brethren assemblies, even if they might be closer to the truth than most), is not actually taught anywhere in Scripture. In fact, I learned that Scripture seems to teach the exact opposite of how the Christian religion “plays church,” for the most part, with more organic, relational gatherings being how the first believers actually met, rather than using the rigid structure that “Churchianity” (as many of us now call it) practices today.
At first this might not seem like a big deal. It isn’t a salvation issue, after all. But when I discovered that this all-important church structure is something pretty much every denomination out there assumes to be scriptural yet isn’t, I quickly realized that, if basically every church leader out there could be wrong about this, they could be wrong about other things they assumed were scriptural too, and that I shouldn’t just take for granted that a doctrine or practice I’d been taught is scriptural by my church leaders was, in fact, scriptural. And so my journey into “heresy” moved forward as I continued to dig deeper into Scripture to confirm whether what I’d been taught about it growing up was indeed true or not; and, as I slowly discovered through careful study, that it was almost always “not.”
Now, it took about 18 years, with a number of missteps and detours along the way, to finally come to accept that all of the doctrines I now believe to be true are, in fact, scriptural, and I didn’t come to accept these doctrines which I now hold to simply because I wanted to believe them. In fact, the opposite was often true. I actually resisted accepting a number of the doctrines I now hold to at first, because it’s extremely difficult to let go of traditions that have been strongly engrained into your mind for decades by one’s religious leaders. But, thankfully, I was taught growing up to follow the evidence no matter where it might lead, and eventually I couldn’t deny the truth any longer and came to accept that nearly everything we’d been taught in church was, in fact, horribly unscriptural.
In my studies I came to learn that, because we were never taught certain key principles of scriptural interpretation by our religious leaders, and because we’d, in fact, been taught the exact opposite in many cases, it was nearly impossible for most people to actually understand Scripture at all (which explains why it’s so difficult for Christians who are introduced to the doctrines I learned and now write about on this site to be able to accept them as even possibly being true). In case you’re wondering, these mostly unknown key principles that those of us in the body of Christ have come to understand are 1) what it actually means to “rightly divide the word of truth,” 2) the difference between the absolute and relative perspectives, as well as the difference between literal and figurative statements, in Scripture, and 3) that it’s important to find out what a given word in a passage of Scripture actually means (remember, even if we believe that the words were translated correctly into English, the English words themselves might have changed in definition since the time the Bible was translated, so it’s imperative to not just assume 21st century definitions of words in our English Bible are what these words actually meant when they were originally translated into English hundreds of years ago). Without first learning and understanding these key principles of scriptural interpretation, it’s far more likely that someone who comes across the doctrines which those of us in the body of Christ sometimes refer to as “Concordant” will just assume these conclusions can’t possibly be true (and often won’t even be able to understand how we can believe such things to begin with) because they just won’t make sense to them.
Once someone does come to understand these principles of interpretation, however, it becomes quite evident that the religious presuppositions we’ve been taught to hold to by our religious leaders don’t actually appear to lead to the most accurate interpretations of Scripture after all, and that there are, in fact, other possible interpretations which seem to be a lot more consistent with each other and with what the rest of Scripture says when the whole of Scripture is taken into consideration.
Either way, the reason I wrote this post in the first place is to make it clear that nothing I believe now is because I wanted to reject the traditions and assumptions I’d been taught by my religious leaders, and that the opposite was actually true. Instead, I came to believe everything I do today because of 18+ years of careful study of Scripture, and that I sometimes had to be dragged kicking and screaming, so to speak, before I was able to agree that some of these “Concordant” doctrines are, in fact, what Scripture actually teaches. If you are someone who is at all curious about what all the conclusions I came to are, however, I wrote about them here. Just be warned, though, that if you are at all open minded to the possibility that you and your religious leaders could have interpreted Scripture incorrectly in places, you’ll likely soon have to endure being called a heretic yourself.
You did it! You made the right choice! The smart choice! The wise choice! The humble choice! The choice that ensured your salvation! So congratulations on your salvation! Now you get to go to heaven, unlike the majority of people out there, who are going to suffer in fire for eternity instead because they haven’t made the same good choice that you did.
It seems that you have something inside of you — something that so many other sinners don’t have inside of them — which made you able to make this good choice. Obviously, right? Otherwise, if they had it inside of them to make the same choice to get saved, they would have, wouldn’t they? Or maybe it’s something that’s inside of them that’s not inside of you which makes sure they aren’t able to make that smart choice to get saved. Or maybe it’s a combination of both. Maybe they just love their sin too much, while you’re just naturally more righteous than they are and don’t love sin as much as they do, so you were able to make the wise choice while they just can’t. Either way, you did it and they weren’t able to, so now you can brag about being able to make the right choice while nearly everyone else hasn’t been able to. (But don’t — even if you deserve it, because you’re naturally better than them in that you’re able to make the right choice while they just aren’t able to, it’s important to put on an outward display of humility — outward appearances are one of the most important aspects of Christianity, after all.) I mean, it’s too bad that those other sinners aren’t able to realize and reject their sin, and accept what Christ did for them, since some of them are your family members and friends, but they just aren’t as naturally humble as you are, are they, so what possible chance did they ever have anyway? Besides, I reckon there’s no point in worrying about something that you can’t do anything about. And if God can’t help them without them choosing to help themselves by making the right choice, how could you possibly help them, right?
And it’s a good thing you did make this choice, because Jesus’ death for our sins, along with His subsequent burial and resurrection, accomplished absolutely nothing on its own. So without you to make that choice on top of what He did, He would have failed to save you and you would have been out of luck. I mean, sure, He completed the first step, and that first step was, of course, necessary for your salvation. But without you to make that final — equally crucial — step, you never would have gotten saved, because God just can’t (or at least won’t) help you if you don’t decide to help yourself by helping the process along through choosing to believe what it is you believed for your salvation.
And what a belief it was! You realized that Jesus did everything necessary for you and me to be saved. I mean, He obviously didn’t, because if He did, you would have been saved without having to make any choice at all, so it was also necessary for you to choose to believe that “He did everything necessary for you to be saved” to be saved. Which also means that you were required to choose to believe a lie in order to be saved, since there was an additional step necessary (your choice to believe) even though Jesus supposedly did everything necessary to be saved, but if choosing to believe a lie can’t help save us, what can? (Obviously not Jesus, since He wasn’t able to save you without your additional contribution of a good decision to believe the lie.) You also chose to believe that Jesus took care of all of our sins through His death, burial, and resurrection. Although, again, we also know that this isn’t actually true either, since our sins are apparently still a problem for us if we don’t choose to believe that He took care of all of our sins, but again, what’s wrong with choosing to believe a lie if it’s necessary to be believed in order to be saved?
So, again, congratulations on your salvation! Oh, and I know you were told that Christianity isn’t a religion, but now that you’ve been saved, make sure that you give 10% of your income to the local church you decide to attend, and be sure you attend local church meetings as often as possible as well. Oh, and you’d also certainly best avoid anything the leaders of that church or denomination decide are sinful, especially when it comes to matters of the human body and sexuality (particularly when it comes to matters of sexuality that aren’t actually discussed in Scripture). There are also a large number of other rules, many unwritten (you couldn’t possibly have expected God to let us know everything He wanted us to know through Scripture, now, could you?), but you’ll figure them out. Or at least you’d better — and relatively quickly — if you don’t want to get disfellowshipped, or at least gossiped heavily about.
“He’s already done everything necessary for you and me to be saved,” I heard a street preacher say once again today.
You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but it never ceases to be weird to hear “evangelists” say things they don’t believe. And it’s even weirder to know that they don’t realize they don’t actually believe what they’re saying. Because if I were to ask him if there was something else that was necessary to be added to what Christ did for my salvation, he’d (rightly) say no. Yet if I were to say, “So I guess that means I’ve been saved,” he’d quickly correct me and say it was necessary for me to choose to believe that “Jesus did everything necessary for me to be saved” to be saved. Which means Jesus didn’t actually do everything necessary for me to be saved after all, because apparently it’s still necessary for me to choose to believe that “He did everything necessary for me to be saved” to be saved. And he’ll probably never see the contradiction in his statement (at least, not during this age).
“We’re not preaching religion,” the street preacher said. “Religion makes you self-righteous.”
He was correct that religion can make you very self-righteous. When someone believes they’ve been saved because of their religion or because of some religious act or acts they’ve performed, it means they believe it was something inherent within themselves that was responsible for their salvation, which means they were ultimately responsible for their own salvation (making them their own saviours, or at least their own partial saviours).
“If it at all depends on your own doing… it will leave you condemned,” he continued. And, again, he was absolutely right. If there’s anything at all that someone thinks they have to do in order to be saved, it means they believe the Gospel is a proposition rather than a proclamation, and that they ultimately believe in salvation by works because it means they think they’ve been saved by their own religious act or acts (which, again, would make them their own — at least partial — saviour), and salvation by works doesn’t save anyone when it comes to Paul’s Gospel.
For those who don’t know, religion is basically anything at all that one thinks they have to do — be it believing, behaving, worshiping, and/or sacrificing — in order to get right with God or to be given salvation by God. Simply put, religion makes salvation a transaction rather than a gift: if we do this particular thing or set of things, then God will give us salvation in return. If someone thinks they have to choose to do anything at all in order to be saved, they’re making a transaction with God the method of how they’re saved rather than simply accepting that Christ’s death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection on the third day, is actually what saved us.
Now, at first glance, the preacher might agree with everything I wrote above. But after looking closer, he might notice the word “believing” in the list of religious acts I mentioned, and realize he’s not so sure he agrees with me after all. But the truth is, if you have to choose to believe the right thing in order to be saved, it means that there’s something you have to do on your own in order to be saved, and as he himself explained, if it at all depends on your own doing, it can’t save you. Yes, it’s certainly true that happening to organically come to a belief in a particular fact isn’t a religious act in and of itself, but having to do something — anything at all — in order to be saved means salvation would be a transaction, and so having to choose to believe that something they don’t currently believe to be true actually is true (which really isn’t even possible, but that’s a whole other discussion) in order to be saved couldn’t be anything other than a transaction one would be making with God for their salvation.
You see, while still claiming that salvation is all because of Christ, the preacher and his fellow “evangelists” also like to talk about how we have to “make a decision for Jesus” or “accept the gift God is offering us before it’s too late” in order to be saved. Yet, as he himself put it, if it at all depends on your own doing, it can’t save you, and being required to make a decision to believe something specific is the very definition of having to depend on one’s own doing (since they claim that one can’t be saved without doing just that). There’s no way around it: if someone has to decide to believe the right thing about what Christ accomplished on the cross in order to be saved, it means that, in the end, they’ve ultimately been saved by their own decision to believe the right thing about what Christ accomplished on the cross rather than simply been saved by what Christ accomplished on the cross (since, if it was simply what Christ accomplished on the cross that saved them, their decision to believe the right thing about it would be irrelevant and everyone would be saved regardless of what they believed about it). Yes, it’s true that Christ’s death and resurrection were still necessary, according to their view, because He still needed to perform the first step of our salvation for it to work. But when it all comes down to it, they insist (even if they don’t seem to realize they’re insisting) that it’s ultimately up to us to complete our salvation by contributing the final step of our salvation: deciding to believe the right thing about Jesus Christ and what He did (because if we don’t do that, we can’t be saved).
If only they understood that Paul’s Gospel is simply a proclamation of Good News rather a proposition of potential good news (as long as we do our own part and decide to believe the right thing), they wouldn’t be preaching the very religion to the crowds that they’re telling their audience they’re not preaching. Sadly, none of them have even the slightest understanding of what the end result of Paul’s Gospel is: for as, because of what Adam did, everyone is mortal and hence sinful, even so, because of what Christ did, everyone will be made immortal and hence sinless (which is what salvation under this Gospel is all about), although each in their own order — first the body of Christ, at the Rapture; then the sleeping members of the Israel of God, at the resurrection of the just; and then everyone else, at the end of the ages when Christ destroys death and God becomes All in all.
Of course, if God has elected them for membership in the body of Christ, He’ll “open their eyes,” so to speak, and give them the faith to truly understand and believe what Paul’s Gospel actually means. But it is important for us to not be judgemental of them if God doesn’t do this. We have to remember that faith itself does not come out of ourselves, but is rather the gift of God. If faith was something we had to choose to have — or something we had to build up enough of inside ourselves — in order to be saved, it would ultimately be a work that we could self-righteously boast in (and if it was something that some of us simply naturally possessed while others didn’t, it would mean we were saved by our own naturally-occurring faith, and that those who don’t have naturally-occurring faith inside themselves couldn’t ever be saved). But even if God hasn’t elected them for membership in the church known as the body of Christ, we know that even these ”evangelists” will experience salvation at the end of the ages because of what Christ accomplished, since that’s what Paul’s Gospel is all about.
Besides, the truth is, having to choose to believe that Christ’s death for our sins, and subsequent burial and resurrection, actually saved us would be the biggest religious work one could do, and it isn’t even possible for someone to do that on their own, because the god of this world blinds the minds of the unbelieving so that the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, doesn’t shine unto them, as Paul explained. And while these “evangelists” haven’t believed it yet themselves, because they don’t have faith that what Christ did saved us all, but instead have faith in their own faith for their own individual salvation, Christ’s death for our sins includes their sin of unbelief, so they’ve also already been ransomed (and when a ransom is paid, everyone for whom it’s been paid is guaranteed to go free whether they believe it or not, unless the one who paid the ransom has been lied to).
Of course, those of us in the body of Christ also know the reason for their confusion when it comes to this topic. The truth is, while everyone will eventually experience salvation, it’s also true that not everyone will experience salvation, and the lack of understanding of how these two seemingly contradictory yet equally accurate statements can both be true makes it easy to misunderstand what the various passages in Scripture which teach the latter statement are actually talking about. But in the end, they’ll come to grasp it, even if they miss out on the special salvation that the body of Christ has been given.
Most Christians believe that there is only one “Gospel message” in the Bible (the word “Gospel” literally just means “a proclamation of Good News,” or ”news which is good”), and that the Gospel which Paul taught to the nations is the same one Jesus and His disciples were preaching throughout His three-year ministry on the earth. Because of this, a lot of evangelists like to hand out copies of the book of the Bible known as “the Gospel According to John” to people, telling them to read it so they can learn the Gospel and, by believing it, be saved. How they expect this to happen, however, is a question they really need to consider.
You see, most Christians would agree that the Gospel Paul taught was the Good News that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day, and that one needs to believe this Good News in order to be saved. (Even those of us in the body of Christ agree with this, although we also understand that it’s only salvation from a relative perspective that one gains when they believe this, and that the belief actually comes after the salvation, not before it, but that’s a whole other discussion.) Simply put, pretty much every Christian agrees that, if someone doesn’t “believe the Gospel,” meaning they don’t trust in Christ’s death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection on the third day, they haven’t been saved. And yet these same Christians somehow manage to also convince themselves that, while they walked around Israel preaching what is called the Gospel of the kingdom during Jesus’ three-year ministry, Jesus and His disciples were preaching the same Gospel Paul taught.
That this isn’t the case can be easily demonstrated from any of the four books generally referred to as the “Gospel accounts” (meaning the books called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Prior to Christ’s death and resurrection, none of the disciples understood, much less believed, that Jesus was going to die and then be resurrected by God. In fact, even when Jesus explained to them that He was going to die, they didn’t understand what He was saying to them, and John even tells us that, “when therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said,“ so it wasn’t until after His resurrection that they finally came to understand what it was that Jesus had been telling them.
But if this is the case, how is it possible that the Gospel Paul taught (which is about how Christ’s death for our sins, and subsequent burial and resurrection, saves us) is the exact same Gospel that Jesus sent His disciples out to proclaim during His ministry when they weren’t even aware of His impending death and resurrection, much less that it was for our sins? The answer is that it’s not possible. Since they didn’t believe in Jesus’ impending death for our sins, or in His subsequent burial and resurrection, none of Jesus’ disciples could have possibly been proclaiming it when they preached the message called the Gospel of the kingdom, which means they weren’t preaching the same Gospel message that Paul taught (which was always simply about the cross and what it accomplished). In fact, John even explained that the message one had to believe in order to be saved (or to “have life through His name”) was simply that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God, and there isn’t anything about His death for our sins included in that message which John’s audience needed to believe, so, again, it isn’t the same Gospel message, and no amount of trying to twist the text can allow Paul’s Gospel of Christ’s death for our sins to be squeezed into that message.
To put it another way, because the word Gospel means “news which is good,” and the word “news” quite literally refers to “a series of specific words which, when laid out in a specific order, conveys specific information about a specific subject,” this means that if you have another set of specific words which, when laid out in their own specific order, convey some other sort of specific information about that subject, you can’t say that you have the same news, even if both sets of news are good in nature, or even about the same person. For example, the news that “Joshua went to the graveyard” can’t be said to be the exact same news as “Joshua is now my boss” because the two messages mean something entirely different from one another since they convey entirely different pieces of information about this person from one another: one piece of news being about an action this person took, with the other piece of news being about the identity of said person. Because they’re providing us with different sorts of information about a subject from one another, it means they are, by definition, different sets of news. And since the news which is good that Jesus and His disciples preached prior to Paul’s conversion (which was the news that “the kingdom of heaven is at hand”) does not contain the same specific words that the news which is good that Paul preached to the nations does (which is the news that “Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day”), nor does it convey the same specific information (since it doesn’t contain anything about Christ’s death for our sins in it, which it couldn’t have since most of the people proclaiming it weren’t even aware of the fact of His impending death at the time they preached it), it should be very evident that the news which is good that Jesus’ disciples preached during Jesus’ earthly ministry simply can’t be said to be the same news which is good (meaning the same Gospel) that Paul taught, and so anyone who still insists there’s only one set of news which is good in the Bible is simply lying to themselves at this point.
That’s not to say someone can’t be saved by believing the Gospel of the kingdom, also known as the Gospel of the Circumcision, but that’s a whole other sort of salvation that has to do with getting to live in the kingdom of heaven when it begins on earth, specifically in Israel. So someone reading only “the Gospel According to John” can be saved, but if an evangelist wants someone to read Scripture in order to be saved by the Gospel that Paul preached (known as the Gospel of the Uncircumcision), I would give them a copy of 1 Corinthians 15 instead.
Unfortunately, most people who read this are going to manage to overlook nearly everything I said, so to recapitulate it all in point form:
Paul’s Gospel message to the nations is that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Jesus’ disciples didn’t understand or believe that Jesus was going to die or be resurrected prior to it occurring.
If they didn’t know it was going to happen, they couldn’t have been preaching Christ’s death for our sins when they preached the Gospel of the kingdom during Jesus’ three-year ministry.
This means the Gospel of the kingdom they were preaching wasn’t the same Gospel message Paul preached to the nations.
It’s really as simple as that. If you’d like to learn more about this, however, I wrote about it in far more detail in this article.
The Christian religion was created to drive people away from God and the truth. The devil uses it to trick people into not understanding that Christ actually died and that He was buried, as Paul’s Gospel states He did and was, as well to fool people into believing they have to choose to do something in order to be saved, and he also uses doctrines like Infernalism (aka never-ending conscious torment in the lake of fire) to make people think God is a monster, but another way that Satan uses Christianity to drive people from God is through the perversion of sexuality that Christians believe in. There are a number of things Christians get wrong about sexuality, and I’ve written about them here, but this quote by a woman named Melody in the comments of a blog of an atheist friend of my wife’s family (and, I like to think, a friend of mine too) really drives it home:
“Incidently it was realizing that I was gay that made the largest dent in my faith. I’d been trying to please God for so long – as a woman, even as a Christian feminist – being gay just was the last straw. I knew I’d never be able to truly please God as I was and it made me so angry at Him! I’d never be able to love, to marry, only because of some ancient God who hated women, who hated gays, who basically hated nearly everybody, and because of some old stupid book I’d never be able to have a loving relationship. It made me realize that if I could never truly please this grumpy God, should I even want to? It made me realize that perhaps I did have a choice in serving Him; that I could possibly walk away…”
What better way to drive a good portion of the population from God than by making them think God hates them for who they are? We know that there’s nothing wrong with being gay (for those who are new here, read that article about lust and sexuality I wrote that I linked to above), but Christians largely seem to think there is, and their perverted bigotry and confusion about what Scripture teaches perfectly succeeds in completing Satan’s plan to keep people from realizing that God actually does love them exactly as they are.
I was watching the usual suspects (aka the Toronto street preachers I’ve now written about numerous times before) again yesterday, and one of them made a statement I was surprised to hear even one of them make. He suggested that his listening audience should “ask Jesus into their hearts” in order to be saved. This unscriptural suggestion is something that most evangelists I’ve heard in recent years know better than to make at this point, so it was a shock to hear.
Thinking about it some more today, though, I realized that this suggested method of salvation is the difference between most Christians and those of us in the body of Christ when it comes to our understanding of how one gets saved. I’ve written about the fact that most Christians make salvation out to be a transaction before, but hearing this old chestnut really drove that fact home.
Salvation, for most Christians, is based upon one having to do something, such as “accepting Christ as their saviour,” or “asking Jesus into their heart,” or some other form of transaction between themselves and Jesus (or God). Simply put, for most Christians, salvation is an offer they must accept.
For those of us in the body of Christ, on the other hand, salvation (from a relative perspective, anyway) comes when we simply believe the Good News that Christ died for our sins, and that He was buried and rose again on the third day. It isn’t about having to choose to believe something specific, or having to ask Jesus to do something for us, or even having to accept an offer, but is simply something that happens to us when God gives us the understanding of, and faith to believe, what the Good News that Paul proclaimed means (which includes the eventual experience of salvation by all humanity).
And this brings up a related point. The street preachers are basically begging their audience to do something, such as to choose to “come to Christ” or to “accept Christ’s offer of salvation” or to “ask Jesus into their hearts” or some other thing that one has to make a decision to do if they want to be saved (“make a decision for Christ,” is along the lines of what I’ve heard at least one of them say). They seem to think that their unbelieving audience members are rejecting an offer they know to be true rather than simply not being convinced that what it is they’re being told is true to begin with (which is fine, because it isn’t true, since the so-called “good news” being offered to them is an entirely false gospel anyway).
What they don’t quite get is that, first of all, the actual Gospel Paul taught is not a proposition at all, but rather is simply a proclamation of Good News, and that the only way to “reject” the Gospel is to not be convinced by the evangelist proclaiming it that it’s actually a true statement. Nobody rejects a belief they know to be true, and if it actually was something they believed was true yet was something they didn’t want to be true, it means they still ultimately believed it to be true first, which means they’ve already believed the Gospel, which would mean they have already been saved.
Bottom line, Paul’s Gospel isn’t something one has to choose to believe or disbelieve (or something one can either decide to accept or reject), but is simply something one is either convinced is true (which is what it means to believe something, and which would mean they’ve already been saved if they believe it to be true) or hasn’t yet been convinced is true (which means they haven’t believed it to be true, and hence haven’t been saved, at least not from a relative perspective).
Of course, from an absolute perspective, everyone has already been saved because of what Christ accomplished anyway, which is actually what the Good News that Paul taught is all about. Part of the Good News we believe when we’re given salvation from a relative perspective is ultimately the understanding that everyone’s sins were already taken care of through Christ’s cross, and that everyone has already been saved ontologically (and that everyone will also eventually experience that salvation eschatologically) because of what Christ accomplished.
There are three main factors that keep the majority of people (including Christians) from understanding what Scripture is actually talking about in most passages. I’m not going to get into all the details here, since I’ve done so in various other places on this site, but as a refresher, these three factors are:
1) Not understanding how to “rightly dividing the word of truth.”
2) Not being familiar with the difference between the absolute perspective and the relative perspective in Scripture, and how this means that the same word can refer to different things in different parts of Scripture.
3) Not realizing that many of the terms they assume should be interpreted literally actually need to be interpreted very figuratively in the KJV, not to mention the fact that the definitions of the English words in the KJV might have changed in meaning over the centuries since it was translated.
Thanks to these three factors, and also because most Christians are content to assume that the doctrines they’ve been taught by their religious leaders are what Scripture actually teaches, these Christians hold on to some serious misconceptions about what Scripture says about most things in general, but especially about what it says regarding unbelievers in particular.
For example, the majority of Christians are under the impression that anyone who fails to follow every rule in the Bible, and then also fails to become a Christian before they die, is automatically destined for never-ending punishment in the lake of fire. Many of these Christians believe the chart pictured below (which is a chart belonging to the Toronto street preachers I’ve written about elsewhere) is a good diagram of what happens to people, depending on whether they choose to become Christians before they die or not.
This diagram contains so many misunderstandings of what the various scriptural passages it references are talking about, thanks to the three aforementioned factors, that it would almost be comical if it weren’t leading so many people horribly astray. Somehow, it actually did get the general timeline of certain future events mostly correct, but there are so many problems with the rest of it that I hardly know where to begin.
I suppose the first thing we need to clarify is the fact that the Bible is not a morality textbook for humanity at large. Most Christians (including the aforementioned street preachers) seem to think that the Bible is a rulebook which everyone is required to follow, and that those who don’t manage to keep every rule in it are deserving of never-ending punishment in the lake of fire, and that any humans who don’t become Christians before they die will indeed end up trapped in there (although Christians get to escape this supposed consequence of our failure to perfectly obey all the rules in the Bible, or so we’re led to believe). This couldn’t be further from what Scripture actually teaches, however.
The fact of the matter is, the various rules and exhortations in Scripture are, almost without exception, solely meant for the specific audiences of the particular books they’re written in, and not every book is written to every human to ever live. Few people are aware of this, but the commandments and rules found in the books of the Bible known as the circumcision writings — meaning the books that were not signed by Paul — were only ever meant for Israel (and the relatively few Gentiles who proselytize into the Israel of God) to follow (please read this article if you aren’t familiar with the difference between the body of Christ and the Israel of God). Between the time of Moses and the writing of Paul’s epistles, Gentiles were not given any Scriptures or teachings from God (aside from a few commands that only applied to certain individuals at very specific times, such as Moses’ command to Pharaoh to let God’s people go, for example, or such as Elisha’s assertion that Naaman should bathe in the Jordan River to cure his leprosy), and the only rules that could be said to apply to Gentiles as a whole up until that point were the so-called Noahide Laws, at least the parts that were actually recorded in Scripture, but even they had no “eternal” consequences. Even after Paul did begin writing, though, the 13 Pauline epistles were written only for people who happened to become members of the church known as the body of Christ, and the principles and exhortations Paul wrote within them were only meant for those members to follow, not for every human everywhere to follow (and even then, some of them were time-and-location-dependant and aren’t meant for those of us in the church today). The only law from God that the members of the nations could be said to have in general is the conscience God gave them and the result of their reasonings with one another, and the only exhortations from God to unbelieving Gentiles outside of that is simply to believe Paul’s Gospel and to be reconciled to God (to be at peace with God in their mind, in other words, because God is already at peace with them and has already saved them from an absolute perspective through what Christ accomplished), but even that isn’t a rule one is required to follow or else they’ll be punished without end, as most Christians mistakenly assume it is.
But aren’t those people who don’t believe the Gospel (be it Paul’s Gospel, or even the Gospel of the Circumcision) “condemned already”? The answer to that question is, indeed, “yes.” However, almost no Christian seems to know what that actually means. Most of them presume it means that the sins of these unbelievers haven’t been dealt with yet and, as such, they must pay for their own sins by being without end forever in the lake of fire (in a conscious state, it’s generally assumed, although a few Christians have enough of a conscience still to realize how horrific that would be, and also understand what Scripture actually says about death, and realize that nobody will be conscious in said lake of fire any longer than the time it takes for a body to burn up).
Basically, no Christian seems to be aware of what it is that Christ’s death for our sins, and subsequent burial and resurrection, actually accomplished (which means they don’t know what Paul’s Gospel really means, which also means they haven’t truly believed this Gospel themselves, which ultimately means they haven’t actually been saved yet, at least not from a relative perspective — presuming they haven’t believed the Gospel of the Circumcision and been saved under that Gospel instead, of course). What the Good News which Paul proclaimed means is that nobody has to do anything to deal with their sin at all (which is good, because we couldn’t anyway) since sin has already been dealt with, once and for all, through the cross (whether one believes it or not, their sin has been completely dealt with, so nobody will have to “pay” for their own sins unless they want to insist that God double-charges). This also means that all of humanity will, in fact, eventually be made immortal and sinless (which is what salvation from an absolute perspective is) because of what Christ accomplished.
So what does it mean to be “condemned already,” then? Well, it first helps to know what that condemnation actually is. Paul explains it in various parts of Romans chapter 5, such as in verses 18 and 19 where he writes that the condemnation is our sinfulness (our inability to be perfect, to put it simply), which we inherited from one man (Adam) because of his disobedience. And if you go back a few lines to verse 12, Paul also tells us why we can’t be perfect, when he went into detail on the subject by explaining that sinfulness entered into the human world because of the action of that one man, who became mortal because of his sin, and his mortality was then genetically passed on to all of his descendants (all of humanity), and for that reason all humans have sinned (which means we aren’t mortal because we sin — only Adam became mortal because he sinned — but rather we sin because we’re mortal/dying, and we know this is true because otherwise newborn babies who haven’t sinned would never die, and it would be impossible to perform an abortion, at least once a fetus has reached the stage of being an actual person).
Simply put, while the wages of sin is indeed death (although technically Romans 6:23 is talking about something else altogether, but I’m using the term figuratively here to refer to the wages of Adam’s sin), we aren’t condemned because of anything we do, as Paul explained in that chapter, but because of what Adam did, and that condemnation is simply mortality leading to eventual death, and sinfulness because of that mortality.
Thankfully, he goes on to explain in that same chapter (as well as in other parts of his various epistles) that our ultimate salvation also isn’t due to anything we do (or even believe) at all, but is entirely due to the obedience of one other Man (Christ), and that everyone who is mortal (and hence sinful), because of what Adam did, will also eventually be made immortal (and hence sinless), because of what Christ did, although each in their own order (first the body of Christ, at the Rapture, then the dead members of the Israel of God, 75 days after Jesus returns to Earth, and finally everyone else, at the end of the final age, as Scripture teaches in various places).
This all means that it isn’t following rules, or even making the right choice to “accept Christ as one’s personal Lord and Saviour,” that unbelievers need to worry about (although believing the Gospel is still a good thing to do if one is able to, but only the elect are capable of it anyway). Because of what Christ accomplished, they’ve already been guaranteed to eventually be made immortal and sinless (to be saved, in other words), even if they miss out on the “special” salvation Paul wrote about, which is getting to experience that immortality early, up in the heavens during the still-impending ages (which is what “salvation” from a relative perspective means for the body of Christ, although there are other relative forms of “salvation” written about in Scripture as well, including the salvation that believing members of the Israel of God are looking forward to, which involves getting to live in the kingdom of heaven when it begins on earth in the future — specifically in Israel — rather than having to weep and gnash their teeth in anguish because they’ve been cast out of Israel into the “outer darkness” of the rest of the world with the goat nations who have also been forced to live out there in the figurative “everlasting fire” to be chastened for the age and to be prepared for the devil and his angels to lead them to rise up against Israel one last time at the end of the fourth age, known as the Millennium).
There are a couple other small exceptions but, by and large, the only parts of Scripture that might concern those who aren’t members of either the body of Christ or the Israel of God are Matthew 25:31-46 (and presuming that passage is even about Gentiles, which it very well might not be based on the fact that the rest of Jesus’ teachings were pretty much only to and about the lost sheep of the house of Israel, it will only apply to Gentiles who happen to live during the Tribulation, since it’s all about how certain people living in nations that aren’t Israel who don’t take care of believing Jews during that time will suffer the aforementioned consequence of not getting to enjoy living in the kingdom of heaven when it begins in Israel, but will instead have to live in less desirable parts of the planet), as well as Romans 2:5-10 and Revelation 21:8 (both of which tell us who will actually end up in the lake of fire at the end of the Millennium).
But even when it comes to those latter two passages, we have to be careful to interpret them carefully because they’re tricky passages to understand and don’t mean quite what most Christians assume they do. A careful interpretation of these passages, especially the verse and the surrounding passages in Revelation, reveals that most people who end up at the Great White Throne Judgement will actually likely get to live on the New Earth right away and miss out on the lake of fire altogether.
You see, while those who get to experience salvation early (those who experience salvation from a relative perspective, in other words) will indeed avoid ending up there, salvation itself isn’t actually about avoiding the lake of fire at all. As we’ve already covered, salvation (at least from an absolute perspective) is simply about being made immortal and hence sinless, and that will eventually happen to everyone, even those who will get die a second time by being burned up in the lake of fire, although not until quite some time afterwards, of course, after they’ve been resurrected a second time.
At this point, if they’ve actually made it this far in the article, many Christians are likely wondering how someone can be resurrected from the lake of fire if they haven’t been saved, but this is due to a misunderstanding of resurrection. Those who are thinking this are assuming that resurrection is only for those who have been saved, but if that were the case, nobody could have been resurrected for judgement at the Great White Throne to begin with (only those who haven’t been saved, relatively speaking, will be resurrected for that judgment, after all). Yes, one who has died (even a second time) needs to be resurrected in order to be made immortal, but it’s the immortality that our final experience of salvation consists of, not the resurrection itself, since everyone who has died will be resurrected at some point whether they’ve believed either of the Gospels first or not.
These Christians are likely also wondering, if sin has been dealt with, as I’m claiming it has been, and nobody has to pay the price for it again since Jesus already did so, why is it that anyone would be judged at the Great White Throne? The reason they ask this is because they haven’t read the passages about judgement very carefully. Nowhere in Revelation does it say that those who are judged at the Great White Throne will be judged for their sins, but rather they’ll be judged according to their works, whether good or evil, as Paul explained in his epistle to the Romans (this comes down to them not realizing that “sin” and “evil” are two entirely separate concepts). Those people who don’t do the specific evil acts that Paul and John warned about will have their name written in the book of life (being included in the book of life doesn’t necessarily mean one has been saved, since nobody who has been saved will even be judged at this time, although those who have been saved from a relative perspective will still be included in said book) and will get to live on the New Earth, albeit in amortal bodies, although they presumably won’t ever die again thanks to getting to partake of the fruit and leaves of the tree of life whenever it’s needed to do so in order to remain healthy and alive.
As I said, those whose names are written in the book of life haven’t necessarily all been saved yet, because they haven’t been made immortal yet (which is what salvation is ultimately all about). But, as Paul explained, at the end of the ages even they will finally experience salvation when they’re made immortal, and that takes place at the time when death is finally destroyed, and since the only people who will still be dead at that time will be those who suffered the second death in the lake of fire at the Great White Throne Judgement, or those who died on the New Earth (as we’re told in Isaiah 65, there will still be death on the New Earth for a period of time after the Great White Throne Judgement, at least prior to the conclusion of the final age; and for those who are thinking that Revelation 21:1–8 means there won’t be any death on the New Earth, a careful study of that passage should make it clear that this only applies to those who get to reside within the walls of the New Jerusalem, at least prior to the conclusion of the final age), this means that for death to truly be destroyed they’ll have to cease being dead, which will require that second resurrection I already mentioned, at which point everyone will finally be quickened (made immortal) and get to enjoy life with God forever, which is when the final salvation will have been said to have occurred.
Now, I realize that most of this is probably completely new to most of you reading this, especially if you aren’t familiar with what it means to read Scripture consistently the way those of us in the body of Christ do, and I’ve only briefly touched on each point in passing in this article, so if you are curious to learn the nitty-gritty details of how those of us in the body of Christ have come to all of these conclusions, I do go into all this in depth in this article.
