The Flood - An Epilogue (Part 4) - Saved in Ignorance
As I showed in The Flood - An Epilogue (Part 3) - The Gulf within the Church… and the World, the gulf between the godly and ungodly is not a gulf between the churched and the unchurched or between the professed Christian and the nonbeliever; it is a gulf that runs through both. The gulf, as it runs through the church, is rather obvious to nonbelievers and maybe less obvious to Christians; basically, some Christians are not Christians in faith (i.e., in faith), but in deed, and some not even in deed.Â
As for nonbelievers, that gulf much less obvious. In fact, it may prove only hypothetical, but it is at least theologically possible. It is like the question regarding a Christian’s “freedom” from the law, “If a person accepts Jesus into their heart, could they even murder and still go to heaven?” The short answer to that is yes, legally. However, murder as more than just killing someone; it is an act of the heart. A person with a heart for God therefore cannot also murder… or at least I don’t see how they could. Of course, to say this, I must divulge that to me, self-defense is not murder, defending your country in war is not murder, killing as a true peace officer is not murder. In other words, it is your heart that makes it murder… and when it comes to the gulf that runs through nonbelievers, it is the heart we are discussing.
I am not sure whether I know nonbelievers who believe God and obey Him. I think I may, because some have described the Christian God to me as they have been asked to accept Him, and it does not sound anything like my God! If that’s who I had been asked to accept, I would reject Him, too; the god they reject could not love, could not grieve, could not sacrifice, could not teach. But, mine does all of these. It makes wonder, who exactly are they rejecting? They apparently do not believe that God as I know Him exists; they wish they He did. So then the question becomes, what has God told them? Has told them, “I exist”? If He has, then they are not saved, because they God spoke and they did not believe Him. The righteous believe God and obey.
If God has not told them directly that He exists, but has told them to care for the poor and downtrodden, to sacrifice themselves at work for those they manage, to donate resource where food and clothes are needed, and so on, and they do it, then they have believed God and obeyed Him. If it is all He has said to them, then they are saved. But then we have Luke 16:31…
31 But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’
But in this case, I believe context is important. As I said in The Flood - An Epilogue (Part 3) - The Gulf within the Church… and the World, I believe the context is a rich brought up God’s ways, who then chose to indulge himself with his riches instead of God. In other words, he believed God but did not obey Him. Now, should it turn out that every nonbeliever who I think might be saved actually believes what God says through Moses and the prophets but does not obey, then I would have to say that none of them are saved. However, people increasingly do not believe. We have left the time when the unsaved were people who generally believed God but disobeyed Him. We have gone through a time when increasing population of unsaved knew it was God talking, but no longer believed what He said. We are now entering a time when an increasing population does not even realize it is God talking to them, but they believe it anyway and obey. It is this new variety of who may be making it onto the “saved” side of the gulf. If they exist, then they are saved in ignorance.