First let me say that I am a fan of discussion. I love words and the ideas they represent. I love to see people be passionate about what they believe. Even when they are wrong. So part of my mission is to speak the truth as I believe it while showing God's love and God's grace.
When there is a cancer in your body you tell the doctor to be aggressive, to cut it out, to kill it, to leave not one trace of it in your body. The church has had an infestation of false teaching throughout it's history, from the very beginning, and even more so in these last days. Paul writes of this throughout his letters warning the churches. In Galatians specifically he was dealing with the false teaching that said you must be circumcised to have true salvation. These teachers were perverting the gospel. They were as Peter puts it, twisting the gospel to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16). And God's curse was upon them. But grace plus circumcision is not the only possible perversion of the gospel.
Can you be alive with cancer in your body? Of course. In the natural people live with it for years. Just so in the church. Can it survive, can we as individuals survive, believing false teachings, untruth, near truth, almost truth? Of course. But God wants us to walk in spiritual health. He wants us to walk in truth because He is truth.
When we know him, we know truth. There is no lie in him. There are no discrepancies between the way he acts and what he says. When we tell people that God is Love, we are not saying that's all he is. He is also righteous, and holy, and just.
I've been thinking a lot about John 3:16 lately. God so loved the world. God loved the world so much that he gave his son. Why did he need to do this? Because as the prophet said, our sins have separated us from God (Is. 59:2). John tells us that the reason Jesus had to come is because the world was already condemned. God has not condemned us, we have condemned ourselves by our choices. Because we love darkness and not light. This is what Rob Bell talks about when he talks about our choices bringing hell on earth. There is a pain and a suffering we bring both to ourselves and to others around us when we act selfishly. There is a separation from God. A distance between us. A great chasm.
God does always get his way. And he has established a law that says, mankind has a free will choice. So while the scripture clearly teaches that God wants everyone to be saved, that he wants everyone to experience this gift of God's grace called salvation, that he wants us to be set free from this condemnation we are all under, he is not going to force it on us. Because he has a greater will that he has established: our free will.
Rob Bell says he is not a Universalist because he doesn't believe in the big arm of God sweeping everybody into heaven against their will. He says nobody will be in heaven that doesn't want to be there. I agree. We have a free will to choose. Our choices do matter.
The gospel is the good news message of victory. The good news is that we are sinners, that we cannot save ourselves, that God alone is righteous, that Jesus was God himself come in the flesh a willing sacrifice for our sins, and that God loved us so much that he gave us this sacrifice so that we could have relationship with him. He has done all of the hard work, now we must just choose to accept this gift and walk in the eternal life that comes through him. For those who do, Love does win.
Unlike Rob Bell, I believe the Bible teaches we must choose now, here, today, while we are still in this body, to accept this gift of eternal life. Because while the gift is all about grace, it is also about free will. And it is about sin as well. And how we address the "sin issue" is just as important a thing to talk about as God's Love...
When anyone teaches that you can live a life committed to sin and still get into heaven, that is a false gospel because it does not deal with the issue of sin in one's life. After all it is the whole reason Jesus came - to save us from our life of sin, and the eternal consequences of it.
Additional Scripture Readings
2 Corinthians 6:1-2
We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says: "In an acceptable time I have heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you." Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.
Hebrews 9:27
And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,
Ezekiel 18:26-32
When a righteous man turns away from his righteousness, commits iniquity, and dies in it, it is because of the iniquity which he has done that he dies. Again, when a wicked man turns away from the wickedness which he committed, and does what is lawful and right, he preserves himself alive. Because he considers and turns away from all the transgressions which he committed, he shall surely live; he shall not die... "Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies," says the Lord GOD. "Therefore turn and live!"