The Universalist Delusion

‘Christian’ Universalism is the belief that all human beings will ultimately be saved. This belief contradicts Wheaton’s Statement of Faith, which asserts that those who believe in Christ will be saved and that there will be an “everlasting punishment of the lost.”

Some christians tend to find Universalism attractive because they struggle to believe that those of other religions will not be saved. Other times, it’s because of how unjust they find the doctrine of eternal damnation. Hell entirely contradicts our natural assumptions about ourselves. 

Before I discuss hell further, I’ll briefly cover those who tragically die without having heard the gospel. Those who have died without hearing the gospel deserve to go to hell for their sins. According to Romans 1 and 2, the testimony of nature about God and of their conscience about His law leave them without excuse for their sin and unbelief. There is no salvation in false religions, for “the gods of the peoples are worthless idols” (Psalm 96:5),  and “there is salvation in no one else [except Christ], for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). 

This should motivate us to go and proclaim the gospel, for, as Paul writes, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching” (Romans 10:14)? God could have engraved the gospel on leaves, but He has chosen — in His perfect wisdom — to send out laborers. 

Now back to the question of hell. Let’s be real, if someone gave a chapel message about how Jesus saves sinners from the wrath of God, people would immediately cringe and complain that we are getting too “fire and brimstone.” But would such a sermon be out of line with Scripture? Not necessarily, for the Bible speaks of God’s wrath roughly 470 times. 

Does God talk about hell to make Christians live in perpetual hopelessness? No! It shows us the depths of our sin and the depths of Christ’s love! We see our sin’s heinousness reflected in the wrath it deserves. But we also see our Savior’s love displayed when he took that wrath upon himself in our place! The doctrine of God’s wrath also gives people an undeserved warning about what will happen if we die in our sins.

Our self-righteous over-estimation of ourselves is like carbon-monoxide poisoning: it kills subtly. It’s like  sleep-walking on the rim of a volcano. We need an external warning from the Judge of Heaven to wake us up with an accurate theology, anthropology and soteriology. We are fools if we exchange God’s perfect revelation to us for seeker-sensitive figments of our imagination. As R.C. Sproul said, we need to stop asking why there is only one way to be saved, and start asking why there is even one way. 

The Scriptures never affirm universal salvation. It is a farce and a delusion; a concoction of speculation and Bible verses applied out-of-context. To believe it is to reject the clear teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, who said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn.14:6), and “Whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (Jn.3:18). Those who teach Universalism are false teachers. 

Universalism is a great thing to believe if you want to make Jesus out to be a liar, need a convenient excuse to not evangelize or prefer to avoid persecution, but even a child reading the Bible could see that this worldview is a sham. 

There are dozens of passages about how sinners can be saved if they trust in Christ alone! Universalism is not a belief that has been derived through careful exegesis of the many passages which speak of the eternal torment of the damned (Mt.25:41, Mk.9:43-8, 2 Thess.1:9).