I was glancing at my FB feed— something I don’t do that often, and hope in the future to do even less. One of my friends shared a quote. The quote does not have a name attached to it, but there was a picture of the speaker. He looks familiar. He is an Evangelical preacher in the the US, but I can’t remember his name. Anyway, the quote goes like this:

The Gospel is not salvation for everyone but salvation for those who believe, for everyone else it is a death sentence.

While I understand where this is coming from, I do have to push back on this a lot. The Gospel message “euangelion” literally means the “good news” or the “good proclamation.”

As I said, I do understand where the preacher is coming from. He is saying that the message is a message of hope for those who believe, but one of condemnation for those who don’t. On the face of it, it just makes sense. But, one must consider what the boundaries of the message of the Gospel truly are.

If we assume that the Gospel message includes both hope and condemnation, and we assume (correctly or incorrectly— God did not give us the ability or right to judge) that a majority will not embrace the hope side, then the Gospel message really is, for the average person, bad news. This is true regardless of whether one believes God chooses who to save (“Reformed Christians”) or one believes we have some level of agency in the response (“the Rest of Us”).

On the other hand, suppose one takes the Gospel message to include only the hope side of things. What happens then? It is indeed good news for everyone.

Consider the following. Suppose there is a cave-in at a mine. A bunch of miners are trapped down in this labyrinth of tunnels in the darkness. But a rescue team clears a shaft whereby people an be rescued. That would be good news correct? I don’t think they would say, “We have good news for those who follow our advice… but horrible news for those who don’t.” At least I wouldn’t. Or consider another scenario. Suppose I fell overboard on my ship (I used to be in the Navy), and the ship immediately carries out a man overboard maneuver, and then sends the SAR (search and rescue) swimmer into the water to bring me back safe. I would call that good news. The fact that rejecting that help pretty much guarantees my demise is not really part of the good news. It is a failure to respond to the good news.

I assume that the quoter above was simply trying to say that the Gospel is not a message of universal salvation. This I grant. We don’t know the limits of God’s mercy, and only God can judge the heart, but nothing in the Gospel message implies universal salvation.

Strangely, the person who shared the quote above on FB also gave a quote from R.C. Sproul. It goes:

“God just doesn’t throw a life preserver to a drowning person. He goes to the bottom of the sea, and pulls a corpse from the bottom of the sea, takes him up on the bank, breathes into him the breath of life and makes him alive.”

This seems to be a much more theologically sound quote, and conflicts a bit with the previous one. Now, you may not be concerned about the nuance here… but I think it does matter. The gospel in no sense condemns us. We were condemned. The Gospel gives life and hope.