Who’s In and Who’s Out? | September 28, 2025

As we continue the fall series Wrestling with Doubt, Finding Faith, based on the book of the same name by Adam Hamilton,  we’re spending two Sundays exploring one of the biggest parts of our faith: Life after death. Next week we’ll look at what the Bible says about heaven, but this week we start with the other potential destination.

As Christians, we don’t need to be afraid of hell, because we are saved by grace through faith, redeemed by Jesus Christ. Because of the cross, you are saved now and forever. That’s the powerful, comforting promise given to all Christians, all who call on the name of Jesus for salvation. 

But…what about people who don’t share our faith? Is heaven limited to just those who have consciously chosen to trust in Jesus? What about people who never had even an opportunity to believe, who never heard the good news of the Gospel? What about those who lived their whole lives before Jesus, or before Christianity spread to their part of the world?

Wrestling with the question of “Who’s In and Who’s Out?” may not be comfortable, but it has eternal significance! Today’s Scripture readings are Isaiah 25:6-9 , Psalm 22:25-31, 1 Timothy 2:1-7, and John 17:1-5. In addition to Hamilton’s book, I’ve also found very helpful Zach Lambert’s book, Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing.

Here’s the livestream and sermon audio from Christ the King.

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Before we get into today’s topic, I have a question for you: What percentage of the world’s population is Christian? Any guesses?

The Pew Research Global Religious Landscape says 28.8% of the world is Christian, about 2.3 billion people. Christianity is the largest religion in the world. So the question for today is, are the other 5.8 billion people condemned to hell? Do we really believe God is sending 71.2% of the world’s people to eternal punishment?

Christin and I recently watched a tv movie called Toothless. Anyone seen it? It’s from 1997 with Kirstie Ally from Cheers, and it’s about a dentist who dies and because she’s a dentist she can’t go right to heaven; she has to do some good deeds in an in-between place, a sort of purgatory, and her specific job is to be the tooth fairy. It’s not a great movie. But there’s a scene that stuck out where someone in limbo—I think he might have been an insurance salesman—is locked into an elevator and sent “down.” There’s a band playing sad music, but after his elevator sinks into the sand, everyone just sort of shrugs and moves on. It’s disturbing!

If we really believe 5.8 billion of our fellow humans are on their way down, how do we live with that? I have friends who aren’t Christian. I hope you do too—38% of our country isn’t Christian, so I hope you don’t only know people who share our faith.

How can we believe in a God—actually, that’s not the right question. How can we be on the side of a God who would welcome Klu Klux Klan murderers into heaven because they’re Christian, but send both babies killed in the October 7 attacks on Israel and children bombed in Gaza to hell because they’re Jewish or Muslim?

I don’t believe that’s God’s character. I suspect most of you don’t either. But if we don’t believe all non-Christians are damned, is it just because it makes us feel uncomfortable? Or can we find support in the Bible to faithfully argue God’s love and salvation extend beyond the boundaries we expect? Who’s in and who’s out?

In the Old Testament, we hear a lot about judgment, about God intervening and punishing the wicked. Usually it’s meant as comfort, with verses like Psalm 92:7. “though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever.” Basically, even though it seems like things are bad now, God’s going to sort it out.

Judgement also comes as warning: Stop sinning, stop worshiping idols, stop oppressing people, or God’s going to get involved. (“Don’t make me pull this car over and come back there!”) For example, Malachi 4:1 – “See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.” God’s going to destroy the wicked, which is good news when the wicked are attacking you!

But the fiery image most of us imagine of hell, the eternal lake of fire, the devil constantly stabbing people with a hot metal poker, that’s nowhere in the Old Testament. It actually comes much more from Dante’s Inferno in the 14th century than from the Bible.

And the boundaries of who even the Old Testament says God cares for are more fluid than you might think. The prophet Jonah is sent to call the people of Ninevah to repent—not Israel, not God’s chosen people, but their enemies in Ninevah. And when those evil Ninevites listen to Jonah and repent, God forgives them. God relents from punishing them.

Jonah gets upset because they’re the enemy, but God says—and this is the very last verse of Jonah—“should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:11) God clearly cares about the people outside of Israel, the people of other religions (and apparently their animals too).

Many of the prophets call upon other nations to repent, to stop their violent oppression, rather than just condemning them to hell because they don’t follow the right God. Obadiah warns the Edomites they’re going to be destroyed by God, but there’s nothing about who they worship; it’s all about what they do, the ways they’ve treated others.

In the New Testament, Jesus talks about hell using the word “Gehenna” which is an actual literal place in Israel: The trash dump outside Jerusalem. There were fires constantly burning there, destroying the city’s waste. He warns about the outer darkness, where there’s wailing and gnashing of teeth.

But as Adam Hamilton writes, “Who does Jesus say will be consigned to hell? People of other religions? No. Jesus says, all those who, in anger, call others “you fool” will be in danger of hell. (Matthew 5:22) He notes that those who lust after a woman in their hearts will be in danger of hell (Matthew 5:27-30). He says that those who succumb to temptation (Matthew 18:8-9) and religious hypocrites (Matthew 23:1-33) will be in danger of hell.”

Most famously, in Matthew 25 Jesus describes separating people like sheep from goats based on how they treated him in their neighbors. Judgment is based on whether we give food to the hungry, a drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, visit the sick and imprisoned. But that story starts with Jesus gathering “all the nations” before him. And there’s nothing there about their religion or what they believe, just how they live out their convictions, how they reflect the love of the God who created them.

And of course, none of us meet that criteria. We all fall short. We’re all sinners. Christian or not, none of us can earn our way into heaven. We all depend on God’s grace. Only because Jesus forgives us are saved, able to spend eternity with God.

The question is: Who gets that forgiveness? Who does Jesus open the gates of heaven for? That’s what we wrestle with. Because if I love my neighbor, I want them to receive eternal life too. I want God to save them.

We’re not the first Christians to wrestle with who’s included in salvation. Let me share three basic theological positions, and maybe one of these describes what you believe, or what you were taught.

One view is Christian exclusivism. That’s the idea that only Christians are saved. You can only go to heaven if you believe in Jesus as God’s Son and your Savior. Biblically, John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Everyone who believes in him. We read John 14 last week, where Jesus says “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

But Christian exclusivism is not the only faithful, Biblical position.

Some Christians believe in Christian universalism, which leans on verses like Philippians 2:10-11, which says “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess Jesus is Lord.” Or 1 Corinthians 15:22, “As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” If God is love, if God loves all that God has made, if God so loved the world, if—as 2 Timothy 2 says, “God our Savior…desires everyone to be saved” then won’t God get what God wants? If God desires everyone to be saved, everyone’s going to be saved, like it or not.

Or there’s a third position, Christian Inclusivism, which says yes, Christ is the only way to salvation. (Remember, these are all Christian positions!) But Christian inclusivity says God’s salvation isn’t limited by human action or understanding or opportunity.

If a baby dies without being baptized or getting the chance to say “I believe in Jesus” God can sort that out. If you’re raised in another religion and you faithfully live in that religion, reflecting the love of God imperfectly, but as best as you know how, God can still have mercy. This is where most of us mainline Protestants land, along with the Roman Catholic church (see ¶847 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church) and some evangelicals.

Jesus spent much of his ministry with people on the margins, outsiders, people the good religious folks didn’t include. But Jesus cared about them. He spent his time seeking out sinners and tax collectors, prostitutes, people seen as outside the boundaries. The good shepherd goes out after the lost sheep. God is still seeking out the lost, the people on the other side of whatever line we might draw in the sand to identify who’s in and who’s out.

Don’t call the heresy police on me, but I’m honestly not sure if I believe in hell—it depends on the day and what atrocities are in the news. I do know I believe in a God of love. I know I’m depending on God’s grace for my salvation.

And so at the same time as I wrestle with the parts of the Bible about condemnation into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, I hold on to the Scripture we read today, Isaiah describing heaven as God making a rich feast for all people. All people. Psalm 22 promising that “all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; all the families of nations shall bow before the Lord.” Even “all who go down to the dust, though they be dead, shall kneel before the Lord.”

In John 17 Jesus himself says he’s “been given authority all over all people, to give eternal life to all whom [God] has given him.”

That said, the difference between Christian universalism where everyone ends up in heaven like it or not, and Christian inclusivity, is that Christian inclusivists believe it is possible to reject God’s love and grace.

There might be people, as Adam Hamilton says, who say to God, ‘I am not interested in living in your realm; I don’t want to dwell in a place where I’m expected to live a life of selfless love, to let go of my resentments, to give up my desires and to no longer do things my way.’ Perhaps, in God’s mercy, he created a place for those who reject him, his love, his kingdom.” And yet, as C.S. Lewis put it, “The doors of hell are locked on the inside.”

I end up coming back to first of all being glad that who gets saved and who doesn’t is well above my pay grade. Mostly, I have to believe Jesus is far more merciful, far more loving than I am. Jesus forgave the people who were crucifying him. Jesus is far more forgiving than I am.

If God can forgive my sins, entirely out of grace; if the only reason I’m “in” is because of God’s love, not because I’ve done anything to earn salvation, and if God loves everyone God has made, then I can faithfully hope everyone is drawn to the light of God and included in God’s salvation. I hope that’s good news for you too.

In the meantime, our call as Christians is clear: Love God and love our neighbors. Our mission is to share the good news of God’s love. Not because if we don’t, we’re responsible for 5.8 billion people’s salvation or damnation. That’s up to God.

But you and I have a calling, an obligation to share the love we’ve found, to share the hope we have in Christ that this world’s brokenness doesn’t get the last word.

We are called to introduce people to Jesus because Jesus is the best picture we have of God. Knowing the liberation and freedom Jesus brings makes this world a better place. What better way to spend our lives than by inviting people to know and live in the light of God’s love here and now?
Amen

Read part one of this sermon series: Is God Real? or part two: The Good Book? Wrestling with the Bible.