The gospel of Jesus Christ is the simple truth that Jesus died in our place for our sins and that he was raised from the dead and now offers us forgiveness to remove our sins and reconcile us to God.

Jesus loves us more than we can ever know. The bible proclaims:

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him." [John 3:16-17]

This is the most important truth that we can ever know, that Jesus can save us to be with Him forever. An equally important truth is this:

"He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” [John 3:18]

Consider the following letter that I wrote to someone that I love very much and how desperate we all ought to be to believe this truth.

Dear Marie,

"Recently, as I was doing my bible reading, I thought about you and when we were at Aunt Sue's the night the storm hit. It was after the paramedics arrived to help Aunt Sue and you and Nicole were standing in the living room. I came out from Aunt Sue's room and I’ll never forget the look on your face, which was probably because of how things happened with Aunt Sue, but also because of the weather outside and that a tornado was predicted to come. Your expression was one of angst and fear and I felt really sad that you were feeling that way.

As I remembered this, I thought of the “things that are to come” for every human being and how there will be those whose faces are filled with fear when they stand before their creator in judgment.

"But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He will sit on His glorious throne.  "All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats;” [Matthew 25:31-32]

This judgment is final and the destination of the “sheep and the goats” has already been determined by the choices each person made while on earth. Now, before I go on, I acknowledge that I don’t know what your beliefs are regarding the origin and inerrancy of scripture. I believe it to be the inerrant word of God. Proving its veracity may be a subject for another time, but for now I hope that you can give it some validity.

So the passage goes on to say:

“and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’.” [Matthew 25:33-34]

Here, Jesus says that born-again believers (the sheep), will go into the kingdom of God, but of the unbelievers, he says,

" 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;” [Matthew 25:41]

This terrible reality made me think of when you will be standing at this judgment and I can’t bear the thought that you would be among those whose faces are filled with terrible fear as they are told to depart into the eternal fire. There are no second chances at that judgment because it is based on what was done in this life.

“And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.” [Revelation 20:12]

Every person will be judged for how they lived and the choices that they made in this life. God is definitely taking notes so to speak as to how we are living our lives, and as stated, there is no going back. Jesus will render judgment and those who have disobeyed His commands will be condemned.

Saved By Faith
But I want to make very clear that though we will be judged for what we have done, it is not the actions themselves that will condemn a person, but it is what we believe that determines our destiny.  This is because what we believe is the basis for what we do. Since I am a born-again believer, I act according to that.

I spend my time in bible reading, studying, talking to people about the gospel, serving in the band at church and basically just trying to love on everyone that I interact with.  There is a Chris Tomlin song I listen to called “Always” and one of the lines speaks of Jesus as being “the heartbeat of everything I do”. I love that and do all I can to live my life like that.

Judgment is Based on the Evidence
It is this manner of living that God is recording in the “books” that will be used at the judgment as the evidence that determines my destiny. Certainly what I do is crucial, but why I do it is even more important because an unbeliever could technically do all the things that I do and still be bound for hell. Motives must be right and right motives can only come from a heart that has been changed. Ezekiel 11:19-20 says:

"And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God.”

This is beautiful description of what it means to be born-again. This change of heart is necessary because all of us are sinners born with a “heart of stone”. Romans 3:12 says that “there is none who does good, there is not even one.”

Now this doesn’t mean that there aren’t nice people who do good things. Surely we see people being kind and generous and even self-sacrificing no matter what their beliefs about God are. I mean, those who are not believers can be much kinder and more considerate than certain Christians are.

But being nice and kind is not the “good” that is spoken of in this passage. What qualifies an action as good according to God’s criteria is whether it is done with a ‘heart of flesh’ (as only born-again believers have received). Unbelievers still have the sinful heart of stone that they were born with, so no matter what good they do, God does not accept it as good. Why is this?

“And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” [Hebrews 11:6]

This faith that we need to please God only exists in born-again believers, those who are in a right relationship with him. If God is not the reason why we do things, then what we do is done only with ourselves and or another person in mind with God left out of it.

Without God as the goal, our deeds are not ultimately done for him. That is why we need the faith that reconciles us to him, by the means of confessing our sin and having God forgive us and then imputing the righteousness of Christ to us. He then declares us to be judicially innocent, counting Christ’s perfection as our own.

“For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!" [Romans 8:15]

It is in this relationship to God that we have been adopted as his own and approves our good deeds as good and as evidence of our faith in him.

No One Can Just ‘Decide’ to Believe
Now, this is speculation, but I imagine that because you were raised in church and have heard the gospel and it was impressed upon you that you ought believe it, that there may have been a time or still may be, that you feel like you “should” believe, but you just can’t or don’t want to.

The good news is, is that there is a sound reason for this. No one can just “decide” to have faith, because it is something that God chooses to give:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” [Ephesians 2:8-9]

Not only is salvation a gift, but we are all dependent upon God the Father to choose us. Jesus says in John 6:44:

"For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father."

In addition, scripture teaches that God has already decided who will be saved:

“just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will,” [Ephesians 1:4-5]

So if a person feels like they just “can’t” believe, it is only natural. But as with many things regarding the truth of God, there is great dichotomy, for he says,

“'You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.’” [Jeremiah 29:13]

“and it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.“ [Acts 2:21]

So while it is true that God has chosen those whom he will save, it is also true that a person can seek for God, find him and be received by him. And from a human perspective, people are free to choose to believe in him or not. Anyone who repents, asks for forgiveness and believes that Jesus paid the price for their sins and rose from the grave will be saved.

Nobody Wants to Believe In God
Because we are sinners from birth, separated from God and spiritually dead, we don’t want God. No one does. He may not even seem real and Jesus is just a name, a person who lived long ago and his life merely an historical fact.

To most, believing in God seems useless, because they are happy and content and feel that their lives are complete without him. 

Or people reject God because they may think that accepting him will require them to have to change their lives, give up things they like or have their relationships with others adversely affected.

I would say that this is true, that a person who becomes born-again will have a changed life and their relationships with others will be changed, but the benefits of God forgiving you, removing guilt, giving you hope and security and assurance of a glorious eternal life far outweigh everything else. Not to mention the fact that life in him saves us from an agonizing forever in hell.

So, while the majority of the world doesn’t accept God or maybe even believe that he exists, he is nonetheless real and Romans 1:20 teaches that the very existence of this world proves him to be so.

“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”

No one will have an excuse for having not believed in God. He has made the way for them to believe and has given them every opportunity to repent of their sin and give their lives to him.

So when they stand before the judge of the whole earth, they will have nothing that they can say in their own defense. God’s condemnation will rightly fall upon those who have rejected him. That is a scary thing and I hope and pray with all my heart and soul that you will not be among them.

Is The Punishment of Hell Fair?
Being condemned to hell may not seem fair but that sentiment comes from a belief that human beings have some kind of inherent “goodness” and so don’t deserve such a punishment.  But this is not so. We are all born as imperfect sinners and begin evidencing this as soon as we can crawl and steal toys from our siblings or yell a disobedient “No!” to our mom. Nobody has to teach kids to be bad, we’re born that way.

So from birth, our inherent sin nature has us all headed straight to hell. Apart from God providing a way out, that’s where we would end up. This is the fair and just destination since we all have sinned against God.

Not one of us has passed the “Ten Commandments test”. Though God has commanded far more than ten things, we all have failed at least one of the ten. God tells us that we must not lie, but we surely have all failed that one. 

“For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” [James 2:10]

We are “guilty of all” in the sense that we have broken the law and it doesn’t matter which laws or how many times because being guilty even once means that there is a debt to pay.

It’s like someone trying to say that they aren’t guilty of their speeding ticket because the other ninety-nine percent of the time they obeyed the law. All of that obeying the law can’t eliminate or atone for the one time that they broke the law, there is still the guilt for that one offense.

Some would argue that an eternity in hell is not a fair price to pay for even a lifetime of sins, but this comes from a finite perspective. We have to consider the significance of our sins. It’s kind of like having an incident of road rage. A person runs a car off the road that is worth eight hundred dollars, and another, one that is worth two million. The action is the same, but the cost of making things right is astronomically higher for the one than the other. It is the worth of the car that determines what it will cost to fix the damage, not the accident that caused it.

When we sin, it is against God because ultimately, sin is disobedience to his law. Since God is worth far more than two million dollars, but is indeed infinite, our sins (the “damage” done to him) requires an infinite “payment”. This is what makes an eternity in hell a fair and just punishment.

How Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?
Many people who don’t like the idea of hell ask this question and then say that hell can’t be real because God wouldn’t be so cruel as to create such a place to punish people in.

The simple fact is that God didn’t create hell for people, he created it for Satan and his demons (Matt. 25:41). And God doesn’t “send people to hell”, they get there all on their own. 

When people reject God in this life saying, “I don’t want you in my life,” or “I don’t believe in God,” then he will abide by that and stay out of their life. Unfortunately for such a person, their life doesn’t end at physical death and just as they didn’t want God in their life on earth, neither will he be in their life after death.

But they will then wish for him to be. In Luke 16:23-24 Jesus describes a rich  man who had died:

"In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.  "And he cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.'”

It is hard for me to imagine that anyone would take this reality so lightly as to wave it off as untrue or irrelevant. I mean, hell is forever. I hope and pray with all my heart that you take it seriously.

Is God Evil?
Many would say yes since God sends people to hell. But what else is he supposed to do with unrepentant sinners?  Surely we would agree that the evil of mankind deserves punishment. Adolph Hitler deserved what he got. The terrorists that crashed airplanes into the twin towers deserved what they got. God is a righteous and just God and so he must mete out justice.

It is inexplicable to me that people see God as evil because of his justice. Who has ever had anyone commit a crime against them and not wanted justice? I think the sticking point is that they don’t want justice done to themselves for their sin. To justify themselves going scott-free, they have to assert that God is evil for sending anyone to hell.

But God is also a God of mercy and forgiveness. Yes, we deserve hell for our sin, but God is willing and wanting to forgive us.

"Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. "For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” [Matt 7:13-14]

People who have judged God to be evil seem to ignore the fact that he sacrificed his own life to save us from hell. I mean, he so wanted to save us from the excruciating agony of hell that he suffered it for us himself! How can God be evil when he loves us that much?

Is it Fair That People Go To Heaven?
In a word, no. As sinners who can do nothing to make ourselves pure and fit for heaven, none of us deserve to go there. It is only by God’s unmerited favor that he raises us up from being dead spiritually and gives us life in Christ, purifying us and making us holy and therefore fit for heaven.

Heaven is a place of perfection, beauty and holiness so nothing can enter which is not also holy and pure.

“For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” [Ephesians 5:5]

Heaven is the place where God dwells and for people to think that they will go there when they die, even though they have spent their whole lives rejecting God makes no sense.

Even for true believers in God it is not fair that we get to go there because we do not deserve it. We certainly have not brought anything to God except our sin. But by his grace he is willing to bring people to repentance and give them his righteousness, making them pure and acceptable in his sight. This is a merciful and generous and gift beyond imagination. I can’t imagine anyone not wanting this, but there are untold numbers of people who reject God’s gracious offer.

What is Truth?
More than two thousand years ago, right before Jesus was crucified, the governor, Pilate, asked him, “What is truth?” Scripture doesn’t record if Pilate waited for an answer, but in John 14:6, Jesus says that he is the truth. As the incarnate God, Jesus defines what truth is.

As I was working on my novel, The Curse and the King, which is a “Lord of the Rings” kind of style/atmosphere and presents the message of the gospel in a veiled, mystical way, one of the characters called the gospel all “fairy tales”, but the other character said,  “The truth is not truth because we say it is, but because truth just is. What is real cannot be denied, though you are free to disbelieve it.” 

I hope and pray with all my heart that the Lord will open your heart to respond to these things and that you will believe. There is nothing more satisfying to a person’s heart, mind and soul than to be filled with the presence of Jesus so that we can truly worship God who created us for this very purpose.




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