There are many objections raised against the teachings of Reconciliation, but the principal ones can be covered under five heads. One is that if all are to be saved ultimately, there is no need for preaching and teaching the gospel; another is that we shall have salvation by compulsion; a third is that Reconciliation teaches a “second chance” gospel; the fourth is that Reconciliation would give to many men a “hell redemption”; and the fifth is the problem of Dives (i.e., the Rich Man) and Lazarus. Let us consider these briefly in the above order.
(1) Why preach and teach the gospel if all are to be saved ultimately? This is one of the first objections made. The writer used to make it most vehemently himself. But it just shows a lack of clear thinking; that’s all.
First, the Christian life is so rich and worthwhile that it would be the only life to live, even if there were no hereafter. Ask those who have really tried Christ over a long period of years. Was it not Dr. A. J. Gordon who met an old crippled man on the street, and asked him why, with all his handicap, his face was nevertheless so bright and shining? And the old man answered, “The Devil has no happy old men!”
- Let me grow lovely, growing old,
So many fine things do;
Laces, and ivory, and gold,
And silks, need not be new; - And there is healing in old trees;
Old streets, a glamour hold;
Why may not I, as well as these,
Grow lovely, growing old?
——K.W. Baker
Ah, but it is those who keep closest to Christ who grow loveliest, growing old. Wouldn’t you be glad to tell someone of that possibility?
Then we have the additional reason of keeping people from going into judgment. To be separated from God for a whole age, not merely three score years and ten, is a terrible fate. If you could prevent folks from having typhoid fever, or infantile paralysis, wouldn’t you do it, even if the question of dying from such diseases was not considered? Do you care?
Again, the ministry of reconciliation has been committed unto men–not unto angels. If men are taught the gospel at all, other men must do it. And those other men must be those who know our Christ. The angels of God would be happy to proclaim the message we have to give, but they can’t do it. We must do it (see 2 Cor. 5:18-20).
Moreover, we are commanded to evangelize the world. That was the last word the Master left with his disciples. If we do not herald the gospel, we are disobeying our Lord. We call it the Great Commission (Mt. 28:18-20). If we do not do that work we are disobeying our Lord.
Then, to, we should witness for Christ because of the great honor of being “workers together with God.” Some day we shall realize, as we may not now, just how great that honor really is, and how much we have missed if we fail to share in this task to which the Almighty has set His hand.
Not least of the reasons, possibly, from the standpoint of personal experience, is the joy of seeing people accept Christ as their own Saviour. Just ask anyone who has led some person to the Lord, what is the greatest joy he knows. He will not be slow in telling you. Or try it yourself.
Lastly, there is the urge of reward. Salvation is a free gift to be received by faith, and by faith alone. No one can buy it, or earn it. There is no way to get salvation except to take it as one takes any other gift, and then say, “Thank you!” But in addition to our salvation, the Lord offers us rewards for the service we render after we have accepted His salvation. We may have salvation here and now, and know it, too; but the greatest rewards for our service are to be given to us in the future. Only God knows how glorious they will be. Don’t miss out. Share the gospel you know!
(2) “Reconciliation would mean salvation by force,” men say, and they are thinking about the freedom of man’s will. They claim that when God made man in the first place, He endowed him with freedom of will, the ability to accept God’s love or to reject it, and that the decision he makes here and now is a final choice. But our Lord Jesus says, “No one is able to come unto Me unless the Father Who sent Me draw him” (John 6:44). Some men interpret 1 Timothy 2:4, “who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” as meaning that God desires or wishes all men to be saved, but that it does not mean that they will or must be saved. A little careful thinking will show that such an interpretation makes the will of man more mighty than the will of God. God wills (or wishes) all men to be saved, but He is not able to get His will (or wish) fulfilled. Man wills not to be saved, and he is perfectly able to have his will fulfilled. That deifies man, and dethrones God. Man is able to get his will done, but God is not.
Let us think a moment of just how free man is, how far his freedom can go. A little observation and study will show that man’s freedom has very narrow limits. One is able to wish or desire or purpose as he pleases, but when he comes to carry out his wish or desire or purpose, he finds that he faces a problem. One is not free in the physical realm. Just let him try to jump off the earth and land on Mars, for example. One is not free in the social realm. Not every man can marry the woman he wishes. One is not free in the moral and spiritual realm. He may desire with all his being to free the world of drunkenness and vice, of greed and hate and war, but who has yet accomplished that?
If you will turn to the Bible, you will find some clear teaching about the limits of man’s freedom. “Oh, Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jer. 10:23). “Man’s goings are of the Lord; how can a man then understand his own way?” (Prov. 20:24). These seem to teach that man is not free at all. How much freedom does he really have? “A man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps” (Prov. 16:9). That is, it is clearly within a man’s province to believe what he wants to believe, to desire and plan a certain way of action, but, unless God permits him to carry it out, his plan will never be accomplished. “The Lord directeth his steps.”
It is a strange theory that obsesses men that the human being is greater in power than God, and that, no matter what the plan of God for the world may be, man is able finally to wreck it. But it is not given to man finally to overthrow the will of God. Since God is God, His will must ultimately triumph. In Ephesians 1:11 we read that God is One “Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.” God is still God. “I know that Thou canst do all things, and that no purpose of Thine can be restrained” (Job 42:2).
We often forget that God not only allows sin and evil, but that He also uses them. Again and again, when trouble stalks his path, a man turns back to the God Whom he has despised. When his wife dies, or his children go wrong; when loss and disaster fall upon him, again and again he will seek the God he has neglected. Many men in military service find that danger and privation turn their minds back to God. Foxholes cure atheism, they say. Probably this occurs not so generally as such statements lead us to believe, but often. Weeks on a rubber raft in the ocean do something to a man; and he is a very different person when he lands on shore again. That is not because God coerces the man, but because God brings upon him such experiences as change his attitude. And God brings such experiences upon men, not in anger, but in love. He is too wise to err, too loving to be unkind.
God knows that some men will need judgments to bring them to their senses. He will see to it that ultimately all men will want God’s will to be done, because they will see that His will is wisest and best. That will not be salvation by compulsion, for love is the only ultimate power that is not coercive.
(3) Again, people say that Reconciliation makes a “second chance” gospel. No, no, no! We do not have a “first chance” gospel, nor a “second chance” gospel. Salvation is not by “chance,” it is by grace! Infinite grace!
There have been some people who accepted Christ as their Saviour at the “first chance” they ever had. Three thousand did that on the day of Pentecost. But I have asked many men if they accepted the Saviour the “first chance” they had, and have yet to find that man! I had hundreds of “chances” before I let Christ into my heart, and so have most of you.
One denomination, in an official publication concerning its belief, makes the following statement:
“Some people inconsiderately accuse us of rejecting the atonement of Christ entirely because we dissent from the view that the atonement was made upon the cross as is generally held. But we do nothing of the kind. We object to the view that the atonement was made upon the cross, because it inevitably leads to one of two great errors, thus, Christ on the cross bore the sins of all the world. John said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away (margin, ‘beareth’) the sin of the world’ (John 1:29). Peter tells us how Christ thus bore the sins of the world. ‘Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree’ (1 Peter 2:24). Paul says that ‘He died for all’ (2 Cor. 5:14,15). That which Christ did on the cross, therefore, was done indiscriminately and unconditionally for all the world, and if this was the atonement, then all the sins of the world have been atoned for and all will be saved—but all men will not be saved; hence the sins of all were not atoned for upon the cross.”
Little comment needs to be made about this quotation except to point out that the writer sees clearly that, if the usual understanding of the cross of Christ is accepted, all men will be saved. Hence, in order to maintain that not all will be saved, as he thinks, he claims that the atonement was not made upon the cross. But the Bible teaches clearly that the atonement was made upon the cross. “All we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). And in the Hebrew letter we read of the Christ Who “by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Heb. 2:9). But He did that on the cross.
Through the centuries the Christian understanding has been that when Jesus hung on the cross and cried, “It is finished,” the problem of atonement was settled for all time. We do not have, therefore, a gospel of chance, either first chance or many chances. We have a gospel of grace.
Jesus gave a wonderful teaching in Matthew 11, one aspect of which is often overlooked. He said that if Tyre and Sidon had only witnessed the mighty works which were done in Chorazin and Bethsaida they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. That is, more knowledge and information would have brought them to repentance. Do you think, therefore, that God will torment the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon forever because of their lack of knowledge? Again, He said that if Sodom could have witnessed the mighty works that were done in Capernaum “it would have remained until this day.” Do you think that the inhabitants of Sodom will be tormented forever just because they lacked the opportunities of Capernaum? Nay, indeed! God will not inflict ultimate punishment on men who have not had ultimate knowledge. “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3,4). It is not just a matter of one “chance.”
Just as God dealt with the writer until he wanted to accept His grace, so will God do with all men, though it may take ages to accomplish His purpose. Infinite love is not exhausted in three score years and ten! Of course our creeds insist that mercy is ended when men die, but the Bible doesn’t say so. It says “the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting,” or correctly, “from eon to eon” (Ps. 103:17). Why do we not believe it?
(4) The fourth objection is that the doctrine of Reconciliation teaches a “hell redemption.” Chas. G. Finney opposed the teaching of the ultimate salvation of all by ridicule. He said that those who were saved after this “age of grace” would unceasingly sing, “Thanks be to the hell that saved us by our own suffering!” Just how much weight is there to that criticism? Those who accept the usual interpretation of Calvary believe that on the cross Christ dealt with the guilt of the whole world’s sin. But there is one thing that the cross of Christ has not yet accomplished, and that is the removal of man’s rebellion.
In our chapter on judgments we pointed out that the flesh is to be destroyed. The word “flesh” (Greek, sarx [σάρξ]) is the word used for “carnal.” “The carnal [sarx] mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom. 8.7). This carnal mind is enmity against God because it is blind. Now when this carnal mind, which is enmity against God, and which is blind, is destroyed, the enmity and the blindness will both disappear. The person will then be free to choose according to the truth.
Judgment destroys the flesh, the carnal mind which blinds, which is enmity against God; but judgment does not grant redemption. It only destroys rebellion! Redemption was purchased on the cross.
For instance, when the Prodigal was feeding hogs in the “far country” he “came to himself,” according to Jesus. Did he have a “hogpen redemption?” Well, hardly. He got some sense in the pigsty—it was there his willfulness and rebellion left him—but he was not saved till he got back to his father.
If soldiers become Christians on the battle front, do they therefore have a “war redemption”? Well, hardly. Men in the danger and horror of war no doubt begin to think as they never thought before; but war does not save. At best, it can only awaken, and turn men to the Christ they have ignored. And if they are saved at all it is because they accept in all sincerity the Saviour Who bore their sins on Calvary’s cross.
Now the Prodigal didn’t have to go home. He was not compelled to do so; he wanted to. But he didn’t want to until he got to feeding hogs. The men in the foxholes of battle are not compelled to become Christians, they want to. But they do not want to until the horrors of war grip their minds and hearts. The point is that both the Prodigal and the soldier come to the place where they choose to “arise and go to the Father.”
And yet even this is not ultimately the man’s own doing, any more than the good desires and actions of an earnest Christian are his own doings. “For it is God Who worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). And this gracious will of God is to be completely wrought out in Christ. “It is in Him and through the shedding of His blood that we have our deliverance—the forgiveness of our offenses—so abundant was God’s grace, the grace which He, the possessor of all wisdom and understanding, lavished upon us, when He made known the secret of His will. And this is in harmony with God’s merciful purpose for the government of the world when the times are ripe for it—the purpose which He cherished in His own mind of restoring the whole creation to find its one Head in Christ, yes, things in heaven and things on earth, to find their one Head in Him” (Eph. 1:7-10, Weymouth). No, we do not have a “hell redemption.” We have a redemption of infinite grace and love, made known, and made effective for us, by the sacrifice of our blessed Lord on Calvary’s cross. It is a God-planned, Christ-accomplished, blood-bought redemption sufficient for all creation.
(5) One of the commonest objections to the doctrine of Reconciliation is the insistence that the story of Dives and Lazarus pictures the fate of the wicked and the righteous, and that this makes Reconciliation not only impossible, but a rank denial of the plain teaching of Scripture. What shall we say about this?
In the first place, the story of Dives and Lazarus is usually considered without any reference to its setting, Near the close of Jesus’ ministry He had eaten dinner with a Pharisee, at which time He not only healed a man with dropsy, but gave some pointed instructions about how to give a dinner party. When He left the house, great throngs accompanied Him (Luke 14:25).
Many of this great company were publicans and sinners. In Luke 15:1,2 we read, “Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners to hear Him, and the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” It is against this background of criticism that the teachings of Luke 15 and 16 are given. Those teachings are called a parable. “And He spake this parable unto them, saying,” (Luke 15:3). The Greek is very definite in making the word for parable clearly a singular noun; it is, “the parable this.” Five seemingly separate stories enter into His teaching to carry the truth of “this parable.” The Lord’s regular method of teaching all, except the inner circle of His disciples, was by parable. “All these things spake Jesus in parables unto the multitudes; and without a parable spake He nothing unto them” (Matt. 13:34). “But privately to His disciples He expounded all things” (Mark 4:34).
Jesus loved the publicans and sinners and wanted to help and save them. But these self-righteous Pharisees and scribes, whose business it should have been to teach the people the love of God and to invite them to love and obey Him in response to His grace, not only hated these publicans and sinners, but ostracized and excommunicated them from all the privileges of Jewish worship and fellowship.
Hence, in the presence of both leaders and outcasts, Jesus gave this parable; part of it to bring hope to the outcasts, and part of it to condemn the leaders for their heartlessness and neglect. The first part, consisting of three stories, was for the encouragement of the publicans and sinners; the last part, consisting of two stories, expresses His condemnation of the Pharisees and scribes.
First came the story of “The Lost Sheep,” and the solicitude of the shepherd to bring it back to the fold.
Then Jesus told the story of “The Lost Coin,” and the eagerness of the woman to find it again.
The third story was about “The Lost Son,” and the yearning of the Father for his wayward boy to come home again.
These three stories all tell the same truth. God is anxious for all the lost to return to Him, whether they become lost just through heedlessness, like a wandering sheep, or whether they are lost because of the carelessness of someone else, as in the case of the lost coin, or whether they are lost because of their own willfulness and rebellion, like the lost son. God wants them back. How these stories must have thrilled the hearts of the publicans and sinners, who longed for fellowship both with man and God!
But this parable is not finished when Jesus has told of the love of God for the lost. It contains also his condemnation of those who were supposed to teach these sinners about the love of God, but who didn’t do what they were expected to do because their hearts were so full of self-righteousness and pride. They not only hated the Gentiles, but they also hated all the sons of Israel who failed to keep their man-made regulations. Through their influence and authority, many of the chosen people were permanently excluded from all public worship in Israel.
The story of “The Unjust Steward” becomes crystal clear in the light of this historical background. Some details may seem puzzling, but the story as a whole shines like the sun in the sky. “There was a certain rich man who had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods” (Luke 16:1). In this story, “the rich man” stands for God; the steward represents the leadership of Israel; while the rich man’s “goods” seems to carry a double meaning. First, God’s “goods” represent His Word, His truth, the message of His love for a lost world; this was being wasted by the steward. Instead of sharing it with all, it was most selfishly kept for the favored few. Next, God’s “goods” included His chosen people who were the custodians of His message to men.
All the Jews, including publicans and sinners, were called to be His witnesses to an idolatrous world. But the Pharisees and scribes who were the “steward,” who were supposed to dispense God’s Word and care for God’s people, not only ignored the publicans and sinners, but actually excluded them from the worship of God and the privileges of religion. Instead of being faithful stewards of God’s grace, they were haughty dictators, actually withholding God’s message from those to whom it belonged, and excommunicating many whose rightful place was within the religion of Israel. No wonder Jesus called them “unjust stewards.” Indeed, in the story, when the unjust steward was caught, he went further into deceit and trickery in order to protect himself. “He that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.” Did the Pharisees and scribes recognize themselves in this story? And what did the publicans and sinners think?
The last section of this parable is the story of Dives and Lazarus. In it Jesus changed His figures by using some of the traditions of the Talmud. The idea of a place of torment under the earth is Talmudic; the concept of Abraham’s bosom is Talmudic. In fact, the whole story of Dives and Lazarus is an adaptation of a story in the Talmud. But in this last section of the parable as well, Jesus is still keeping in mind the Pharisees and scribes on the one hand, and the publicans and sinners on the other. He is not describing the fate of all the saved and all the lost, as so many earnest Christians believe.
From what you know of Jesus’ teachings, could you say that He would use the figure of a rich man, well-clothed, and well-fed, to represent all the sinners of mankind? Is that condition in itself representative of all iniquity? Again, will you insist that a poor beggar, full of sores, is a proper representative for all the righteous of mankind? Some of the beggars of our land, full of sores, are rotting away because of loathsome diseases contracted in sin. Will you insist that all righteous men could be properly symbolized by such a person as a beggar, full of sores? The terms of the parable are strange, to say the least, to be thus universally applied.
Another problem in this story is the picture of hades. It is translated “hell” in some versions. This is a whole subject of study in itself. “Suffice it to say that the Hebrew word ‘sheol’ means to ask, to interrogate, — and the noun form of the word refers to something unperceived, unseen, or unknown. When a man dies there is a great question in the mind and heart of one who looks on. Hence this word came to mean “The invisible state of the dead, the place and state of those qui in quaestione sunt (Cocceius), who are out of the way and to be sought for,” (Bate).
In this view, it seems nearly to answer to the Greek hades (by which the LXX almost constantly renders it), the invisible, or the unseen, and to our old English word “hell,” which though now scarcely used but for the place of torment, yet being a derivative from the Saxon hillan, or helan, or from holl, a cavern, anciently denoted the concealed or unseen place of the dead in general. (In parts of England men still say, “I plan to hell my potatoes,” meaning to bury them in a hole or pit, that is, a covered place. Formerly, a lover would take his sweetheart into a “hell” to kiss her, that is, into a place where others could not see.)
“Sheol does not mean the sepulcher; another Hebrew word is used for that. Instead, it refers to that which is common to all, the common receptacle of the dead. When Jacob said he would go down mourning into sheol to his son, it did not mean `hell’ as the place of the damned, for he never thought his son to be gone thither, nor into the grave, properly so named, for he thought his son had been devoured by a wild beast; but into the place of the dead” (see Parkhurst’s Hebrew Lexicon, p.673; see also Gesenius, p. 798.).
Sheol is often translated “hell” in our common versions. So also is the Greek word hades, which has the same meaning. Sometimes these words are translated “the grave,” or “the pit,” instead of “hell.” Then, too, the Greek word gehenna, the place where everything such as refuse was burned up, is translated “hell,” along with the word tartarus. In popular usage, “the lake of fire” is also understood to mean “hell.” It is no wonder that folks do not know what “hell” really is. Now if you will check each and every occurrence of the Hebrew word sheol and the Greek word hades, you will find that they are never used to picture a place of torment except in this story of Dives and Lazarus. In only three places is the idea of sorrow or pain used (2 Sam. 22:6; Ps.18:5; 116:3), and there it is used as synonymous with the pain of dying. Hades or sheol is sometimes described without being named. It is “darkness” (Ps. 143:3); it is “vast and never full” (Prov. 27:20); it is not a place of torment (Job 3:11-19). But to Dives, hades was a place of torment. Read the story and compare with other uses of “hades.”
Again, it is difficult to be certain where literal and figurative language are to be distinguished in this story. For surely some of it seems to be literal, and some of it seems to be figurative. But just where the one leaves off and the other begins may not always be clear. For instance, the description of their human lives seems very literal—they lived thus and so and they died. When the beggar died, he “was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom.” This was the title of the part or section of sheol or hades to which the righteous went at death, according to Talmudic tradition. Did the beggar’s body go there, or only his spirit? “The rich man also died and was buried.” That sounds literal enough to suppose that his body was really put into a grave somewhere in the earth. But when he awakened in hades, near enough to Abraham and Lazarus to converse with them, it was his tongue that was tormented in the flame. Was that his literal tongue, or only his figurative tongue? Was his literal tongue buried with his body? If so, what was suffering in hades? Some reader will insist that I am sneering at the story of Dives and Lazarus. I am not. It is the common interpretation of that story that I am calling in question. Whatever it may mean, it is surely not a parable of the fate of all the wicked on the one hand, and all the righteous on the other hand.
Another point that should be noted, is that Lazarus began his bliss, and Dives began his punishment, from the moment of death. There is no reference to a resurrection on the one hand, or to a judgment on the other. Everywhere else the Bible is consistent in teaching the necessity of resurrection before judgment, and of judgment before penalty. Neither of these is even hinted at in the story of Dives and Lazarus. If this is a parable of the ultimate fate of all the righteous and of all the wicked, how can it be reconciled with general Biblical teaching?
The real meaning of the story of Dives and Lazarus is that it is Jesus’ ironic adaptation of a story out of the Talmud which He applies to the Pharisees and scribes on the one hand, and to the publicans and sinners on the other. The one group constituted the favored class of Jewish society in that day; the other were outcasts. The one had the enjoyment of political, social, economic, and religious standing; the other was destitute of them all.
And so this parable is finished. It contains three stories emphasizing the love of God for sinners and outcasts, and two stories portraying His condemnation of those who should have been just stewards of the grace of God, but were not; His condemnation of those who fared so sumptuously every day without sharing the social and religious privileges which they enjoyed with those who had none of them. There is nothing in the story of Dives and Lazarus to overthrow the doctrine of Reconciliation.