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Q.
What happens to all of the people born before Jesus?
In an overly simplistic way, those who lived prior to Christ were saved
because they trusted the promise, and those who live after Christ are saved
when they trust that Christ was, indeed the fulfi llment of God’s promise.
People do not “go to heaven” because they are “Christians.” They “go to
heaven” because they trust some manifestation of God’s grace. While I do not
experience the presence and grace of God except through my faith in Jesus,
there are hints in Jesus’ own teachings (e.g., Jn. 10:16 and others) that God is
reaching out in other ways, too.
Paul and Barnabas in Lystra preached to people who had never heard of
God or Jesus and said to them, “God has not left himself without witness.”
The idea was that God has made God’s presence and grace manifest in every
time and in every culture. People who trust God on the basis of any of those
manifestations seem to me to be “covered.”
Scriptural References
Matthew 5:9–13; 7:21–23; 25:31–46; Romans 8:38–39; Ephesians 2:8–10
Suggested Additional Sources for Reading
- Dave Andrews, Christi-Anarchy (Lion, 2001).
- Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope (Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, 2005).
Suggested Questions for Further Discussion/Thought
- Is the primary focus of the Christian life here and now, or on the afterlife?
- What makes heaven an important concept to people? What about hell?
- Why is going to heaven the wrong question if you pray as Jesus
commanded in Matthew 5:9–13? - Is grace inclusive or exclusive? Is its purpose to weed out the riffraff or to
embrace the undeserving? - If there are any conditions at all, is it really grace?