I was chatting with a group of ladies in the Chapter Room during the fellowship time following the 10:30 service. Inciden-tally, the opportunity for fellowship is always so important, and meaningful conversations are often shared at times like this. Back to the story. I had just preached on the readings of the day about life after death, and the sermon left a question or two in the mind of at least one of the ladies. The gist of her question was this: If, as I seemed to suggest in the sermon, everyone goes into God’s eternal presence when they die, are we to expect that even people whose lives have been steeped in evil – the Hitlers and Jack the Rippers – will join the rest in eternity? Her question is a probing one. It bears on how justice and mercy, love and righteousness finally come out in the end. My response to the question seemed to make sense to the group, and one said she thought others would be helped by it.
So here goes. Clearly, everyone is at something of a different spiritual place when they die. Everyone has a different history, different experiences, and different positions of faith. The accumulated qualities of love, faith and good works differ from one person to another. The New Testament scriptures are very clear that God is love, and so God wishes no one to miss out on eternity with Him. And yet what about any person whose life lacks love? And whose doesn’t? Would the unloving and unrighteous not infect eternity with their evil and destructiveness? And what about those who haven’t sought faith or forgiveness for their unloving ways? Would they not bring their unloving ways into God’s eternal realm?
While the Bible describes God as love, it describes God in other ways, as well. And one of those ways is fire. Fire comprises light and warmth – light represents God’s truth, and warmth God’s love. In the most significant encounter between God and Abraham, God passed by as fire. In Moses’ encounter with God, fire seemed to encompass the bush. God appeared as fire when He led the Hebrews through the wilderness. Scripture says, “God is a consuming fire.” Clearly fire has been closely associated with God throughout the Bible – not fearfully but as a basic attribute of God’s character and dealings with people over time.
If God is fire or like fire, then, as I understand it, this is spiritually what happens. When we – our souls (that which is essentially us) – go to meet God and come into direct contact with God, all our sins, failures and unloving ways, similar to combustible material, simply and immediately evaporate and will no longer exist. Whatever remains of us will live in God’s eternal and loving realm forever. Love is eternal. And so whatever is loving will live with God in eternity; whatever is not will not. It may be that for a Hitler nothing will remain to go on into eternity. God alone knows that. Since Christ Jesus is the fullest expression of love in human terms, when we embrace Him by faith, His love covers and replaces whatever is less than loving in us, no matter how foul.
This is the core of the Christian faith. The point at which God’s love and mercy meet God’s righteousness and justice is the cross. Jesus came to take our place – not just to show us how to live, but also to make up the difference of what lacks in us. Jesus came to show us the way, but also to provide forgiveness. That is actualized by our faith in Christ and our wish to be forgiven. Would that apply even to Hitler? Yes. Such is the uncompromis-ing measure of God’s love, God’s forgiveness and God’s grace (unearned favor). And this is why it’s so important to spread the good news of God’s forgiveness through Christ.
Now you might well ask what kind of article this is for the December issue of the Communicant with Christmas outstretched before us only four weeks away. Well, when I was a kid, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed to move with glacial speed. But nowadays they seem to move with more the pace of an express train. Since that’s the case, we often miss the point of Advent altogether. And the Advent season is all about preparing to meet Christ. The word, itself, is taken from two Latin words ad, meaning toward, and venere, meaning come. It was the time to prepare to meet Christ at his coming. Of course what we think of when we hear this is preparing to meet Christ at his first coming – by celebrating his birthday. But for the longest time there was a much greater emphasis on meeting Christ at the time of his return or our death. And that, my friends, is why these reflections seem to me to be timely.
Let us never be afraid to meet our maker, as the saying goes, and certainly not fear meeting Christ. All of us will, one day, and that’s meant to be a reunion, a time of great joy. Fear not; whatever is love within us will continue with God forever, and Jesus came the first time to forgive, redeem and replace the rest. Prepare to meet Christ by your faith and your love.
Affectionately in Christ,
Phil +