Here’s another difficult passage for universalists, Luke 13:22-30:

Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”

He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’

“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’

“Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’

“But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’

“There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”

Now, I am a universalist — I believe that, eventually, all will be saved. But I also believe in hell. How is this possible? Well, I believe that hell is not unending. It is for correction, not outrageous, out-of-proportion punishment of unending torment for all time.

Notice that this passage never says the punishment is unending. In fact, saying “the first shall be last” implies their time will come, in the end. After all, Jesus didn’t say, “The first shall be never.”

Remember also that Jesus was speaking to religious people like the Pharisees who were very proud of their religion and believed they knew exactly what was necessary to please God. He was emphasizing to them that these Gentiles they despised would come from the east and west and north and south and enter into God’s presence before them.

Yes, this is a passage universalists need to explain — but taken together with so many other passages, I still think that universalism fits best with what the New Testament teaches.

Okay, this one’s a difficult passage. Luke 12:8-10:

I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.

George MacDonald has an entire sermon about this verse in the book Unspoken Sermons, Series One, the chapter titled “It Shall Not Be Forgiven.” I can’t include the entire chapter here, but I want to include some long sections from it.

First, he talks at length about what forgiveness actually is. When we’re talking about God’s forgiveness, it includes the remission, the sending away, of sins.

First, he looks at human forgiveness to give us the idea:

A man will say: “I forgive, but I cannot forget. Let the fellow never come in my sight again.” To what does such a forgiveness reach? To the remission or sending away of the penalties which the wronged believes he can claim from the wrong-doer.

But there is no sending away of the wrong itself from between them.

Again, a man will say: “He has done a very mean action, but he has the worst of it himself in that he is capable of doing so. I despise him too much to desire revenge. I will take no notice of it. I forgive him. I don’t care.”

Here, again, there is no sending away of the wrong from between them — no remission of the sin.

A third will say: “I suppose I must forgive him; for if I do not forgive him, God will not forgive me.”

This man is a little nearer the truth, inasmuch as a ground of sympathy, though only that of common sin, is recognized as between the offender and himself.

One more will say: “He has wronged me grievously. It is a dreadful thing to me, and more dreadful still to him, that he should have done it. He has hurt me, but he has nearly killed himself. He shall have no more injury from it that I can save him. I cannot feel the same towards him yet; but I will try to make him acknowledge the wrong he has done me, and so put it away from him. Then, perhaps, I shall be able to feel towards him as I used to feel. For this end I will show him all the kindness I can, not forcing it upon him, but seizing every fit opportunity; not, I hope, from a wish to make myself great through bounty to him, but because I love him so much that I want to love him more in reconciling him to his true self. I would destroy this evil deed that has come between us. I send it away. And I would have him destroy it from between us too, by abjuring it utterly.”

Which comes nearest to the divine idea of forgiveness? Nearest, though with the gulf between, wherewith the heavens are higher than the earth?

For the Divine creates the Human, has the creative power in excess of the Human. It is the Divine forgiveness that, originating itself, creates our forgiveness, and therefore can do so much more. It can take up all our wrongs, small and great, with their righteous attendance of griefs and sorrows, and carry them away from between our God and us.

Christ is God’s Forgiveness.

Before we approach a little nearer to this great sight, let us consider the human forgiveness in a more definite embodiment — as between a father and a son. For although God is so much more to us, and comes so much nearer to us than a father can be or come, yet the fatherhood is the last height of the human stair whence our understandings can see him afar off, and where our hearts can first know that he is nigh, even in them.

There are various kinds and degrees of wrongdoing, which need varying kinds and degrees of forgiveness. An outburst of anger in a child, for instance, scarcely wants forgiveness. The wrong in it may be so small, that the parent has only to influence the child for self-restraint, and the rousing of the will against the wrong. The father will not feel that such a fault has built up any wall between him and his child. But suppose that he discovered in him a habit of sly cruelty towards his younger brothers, or the animals of the house, how differently would he feel! Could his forgiveness be the same as in the former case? Would not the different evil require a different form of forgiveness? I mean, would not the forgiveness have to take the form of that kind of punishment fittest for restraining, in the hope of finally rooting out, the wickedness? Could there be true love in any other kind of forgiveness than this? A passing-by of the offence might spring from a poor human kindness, but never from divine love. It would not be remission. Forgiveness can never be indifference. Forgiveness is love towards the unlovely.

Let us look a little closer at the way a father might feel, and express his feelings. One child, the moment the fault was committed, the father would clasp to his bosom, knowing that very love in its own natural manifestation would destroy the fault in him, and that, the next moment, he would be weeping. The father’s hatred of the sin would burst forth in his pitiful tenderness towards the child who was so wretched as to have done the sin, and so destroy it. The fault of such a child would then cause no interruption of the interchange of sweet affections. The child is forgiven at once. But the treatment of another upon the same principle would be altogether different. If he had been guilty of baseness, meanness, selfishness, deceit, self-gratulation in the evil brought upon others, the father might say to himself: “I cannot forgive him. This is beyond forgiveness.” He might say so, and keep saying so, while all the time he was striving to let forgiveness find its way that it might lift him from the gulf into which he had fallen. His love might grow yet greater because of the wandering and loss of his son. For love is divine, and then most divine when it loves according to needs and not according to merits. But the forgiveness would be but in the process of making, as it were, or of drawing nigh to the sinner. Not till his opening heart received the divine flood of destroying affection, and his own affection burst forth to meet it and sweep the evil away, could it be said to be finished, to have arrived, could the son be said to be forgiven.

He’s making a point that sometimes we can’t receive God’s forgiveness. And it’s because of us.

But, looking upon forgiveness, then, as the perfecting of a work ever going on, as the contact of God’s heart and ours, in spite and in destruction of the intervening wrong, we may say that God’s love is ever in front of his forgiveness. God’s love is the prime mover, ever seeking to perfect his forgiveness, which latter needs the human condition for its consummation. The love is perfect, working out the forgiveness. God loves where he cannot yet forgive — where forgiveness in the full sense is as yet simply impossible, because no contact of hearts is possible, because that which lies between has not even begun to yield to the besom of his holy destruction.

Then he talks about the two sins Jesus said will not be forgiven.

But there are two sins, not of individual deed, but of spiritual condition, which cannot be forgiven; that is, as it seems to me, which cannot be excused, passed by, made little of by the tenderness even of God, inasmuch as they will allow no forgiveness to come into the soul, they will permit no good influence to go on working alongside of them; they shut God out altogether. Therefore the man guilty of these can never receive into himself the holy renewing saving influences of God’s forgiveness. God is outside of him in every sense, save that which springs from his creating relation to him, by which, thanks be to God, he yet keeps a hold of him, although against the will of the man who will not be forgiven. The one of these sins is against man; the other against God.

The former is unforgivingness to our neighbor; the shutting of him out from our mercies, from our love — so from the universe, as far as we are a portion of it — the murdering therefore of our neighbor. It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart’s choice. It is spiritual murder, the worst, to hate, to brood over the feeling that excludes, that, in our microcosm, kills the image, the idea of the hated. We listen to the voice of our own hurt pride or hurt affection (only the latter without the suggestion of the former, thinketh no evil) to the injury of the evil-doer. In as far as we can, we quench the relations of life between us; we close up the passages of possible return This is to shut out God, the Life, the One. For how are we to receive the forgiving presence while we shut out our brother from our portion of the universal forgiveness, the final restoration, thus refusing to let God be All in all? If God appeared to us, how could he say, “I forgive you,” while we remained unforgiving to our neighbor? Suppose it possible that he should say so, his forgiveness would be no good to us while we were uncured of our unforgivingness. It would not touch us. It would not come near us…. With our forgiveness to our neighbor, in flows the consciousness of God’s forgiveness to us; or even with the effort, we become capable of believing that God can forgive us. No man who will not forgive his neighbor, can believe that God is willing, yea, wanting to forgive him, can believe that the dove of God’s peace is hovering over a chaotic heart, fain to alight, but finding no rest for the sole of its foot. For God to say to such a man, “I cannot forgive you,” is love as well as necessity. If God said, “I forgive you,” to a man who hated his brother, and if (as is impossible) that voice of forgiveness should reach the man, what would it mean to him? How would the man interpret it? Would it not mean to him, “You may go on hating. I do not mind it. You have had great provocation, and are justified in your hate”? No doubt God takes what wrong there is, and what provocation there is, into the account; but the more provocation, the more excuse that can be urged for the hate, the more reason, if possible, that the hater should be delivered from the hell of his hate, that God’s child should be made the loving child that he meant him to be.

But George MacDonald doesn’t think this is the final word.

No one, however, supposes for a moment that a man who has once refused to forgive his brother, shall therefore be condemned to endless unforgiveness and unforgivingness. What is meant is, that while a man continues in such a mood, God cannot be with him as his friend; not that he will not be his friend, but the friendship being all on one side — that of God — must take forms such as the man will not be able to recognize as friendship. Forgiveness, as I have said, is not love merely, but love conveyed as love to the erring, so establishing peace towards God, and forgiveness towards our neighbor.

To return to our immediate text: Is the refusal of forgiveness contained in it a condemnation to irrecoverable impenitence? Strange righteousness would be the decree, that because a man has done wrong — let us say has done wrong so often and so much that he is wrong — he shall for ever remain wrong! Do not tell me the condemnation is only negative — a leaving of the man to the consequences of his own will, or at most a withdrawing from him of the Spirit which he has despised. God will not take shelter behind such a jugglery of logic or metaphysics. He is neither schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in heaven. He knows that that in him would be the same unforgivingness for which he refuses to forgive man.

Here’s a little bit about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit:

The man who denies truth, who consciously resists duty, who says there is no truth, or that the truth he sees is not true, who says that which is good is of Satan, or that which is bad is of God, supposing him to know that it is good or is bad, denies the Spirit, shuts out the Spirit, and therefore cannot be forgiven. For without the Spirit no forgiveness can enter the man to cast out the satan. Without the Spirit to witness with his spirit, no man could know himself forgiven, even if God appeared to him and said so. The full forgiveness is, as I have said, when a man feels that God is forgiving him; and this cannot be while he opposes himself to the very essence of God’s will.

But he does not believe this is a fixed, final condition.

The Spirit of God is the Spirit whose influence is known by its witnessing with our spirit. But may there not be other powers and means of the Spirit preparatory to this its highest office with man? God who has made us can never be far from any man who draws the breath of life — nay, must be in him; not necessarily in his heart, as we say, but still in him. May not then one day some terrible convulsion from the center of his being, some fearful earthquake from the hidden gulfs of his nature, shake such a man so that through all the deafness of his death, the voice of the Spirit may be faintly heard, the still small voice that comes after the tempest and the earthquake? May there not be a fire that even such can feel? Who shall set bounds to the consuming of the fire of our God, and the purifying that dwells therein?

It’s a difficult passage — even George MacDonald acknowledges that. And yet Jesus forgave his murderers while they were still in the act of crucifying him. It makes sense to me that if there are people God cannot forgive, the problem is with the people, not with the heart of God. They simply can’t experience God’s forgiveness.

I think of my child, when he had done something he knew was wrong and I confronted him. I was ready to forgive — he was only a small child, and it was a small fault. But he wanted nothing to do with me! Or my ex-husband. I was ready to forgive. But again, he wanted nothing to do with me — He could not experience my forgiveness, and any overtures I tried to make were interpreted as unkindness.

May we all open our hearts to the amazing forgiveness and love of our Father!

As my church is reading through the New Testament together, I’m pointing out how you really can read it from the perspective of the belief that God is going to triumph and save everyone. It’s promised right in Colossians 1!

Now, I learned from my Concordant Literal New Testament that the original Greek version of Colossians 1 does not have the word “things.” That was inserted to make the English easier to read. I think it helps English readers, though, read it as if the “all” here isn’t talking about people. So I’m going to type out this passage without using “things.” Notice, though, that even if you use the word “things,” the ALL that is created is the same ALL that is reconciled. Here’s Colossians 1:15-20:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over ALL creation. For in him ALL were created: in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; ALL have been created through him and for him. He is before ALL, and in him ALL hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself ALL, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

Again I ask, does “all” mean ALL? Imagine for a moment that it does!

Some try to say that Philippians with “every knee shall bow” is talking about forced submission. Well, how do you explain away all being reconciled? How can reconciliation be forced? This isn’t talking about subjugation.

I’m not saying there won’t be judgment. But the judgment is for correction — for the ultimate goal of reconciling ALL to Jesus.

In fact, the very next verse emphasizes a point that George MacDonald makes many times in his writings. There’s not one word in Scripture of God needing to be reconciled to us. We need to be reconciled to God. He is always ready to forgive. Here’s how Paul puts it in Colossians:

Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation — if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.

We were enemies in our minds. We were alienated from God, not God from us.

But back to “through him to reconcile to himself ALL, whether on earth or in heaven.” I’m going to quote a section from Thomas Talbott’s book, The Inescapable Love of God, talking about Philippians 2:10-11 and Colossians 1:15-20:

When Paul suggests that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, he chooses a verb that throughout the Septuagint is used to imply not only confession, but the offer of praise and thanksgiving as well; and as J. B. Lightfoot points out, the verb has such implications of praise “in the very passage of Isaiah [45:23] which St. Paul adapts . . .” Now a ruling monarch may indeed force a subject to bow against that subject’s will, may even force the subject to utter certain words; but praise and thanksgiving can come only from the heart, as the Apostle was no doubt clear-headed enough to discern. Quite apart from the matter of praise, moreover, either those who bow before Jesus Christ and declare openly that he is Lord do so sincerely and by their own choice or they do not. If they do this sincerely and by their own choice, then there can be but one reason: They too have been reconciled to God. If they do not do this sincerely and by their own choice, if they are forced to make obeisance against their will, then their actions are merely fraudulent and bring no glory to God; a Hitler may take pleasure in forcing his defeated enemies to make obeisance against their will, but a God who honors the truth could not possibly participate in such a fraud.

There remains an even more important exegetical consideration. In Colossians 1:20, Paul himself identifies the kind of reconciliation he has in mind; he does so with the expression “making peace through the blood of his cross.” Similarly, in Philippians 2:6-11, Paul himself explains the nature of Christ’s exaltation; he does so by pointing to Christ’s humble obedience “to the point of death — even death on a cross.” Now just what is the power of the cross, according to Paul? Is it the power of a conquering hero to compel his enemies to obey him against their will? If that had been Paul’s doctrine, it would have been strange indeed. For God had no need of a crucifixion to compel obedience; he was quite capable of doing that all along. According to the New Testament as a whole, therefore, God sent his Son into the world, not as a conquering hero, but as a suffering servant; and the power that Jesus unleashed as he bled on the cross was precisely the power of self-giving love, the power to overcome evil by transforming the wills and renewing the minds of the evil ones themselves. And Paul not only endorses this idea; he also tells us exactly what he means by “reconciliation” in the two verses following Colossians 1:20, citing as an example his own readers: “And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him” (1:21-22 — emphasis mine). So the blood of the cross does bring peace, but not the artificial kind that some tyrannical power might impose; it brings true peace, the kind that springs from within and requires reconciliation in the full redemptive sense. It seems to me without question, therefore, that Paul did envision a time when all persons will be reconciled to God in the full redemptive sense.

Amen. And what glory to God if He actually is able to save everyone! Hallelujah!

As my church reads through the New Testament, I thought I’d take the time to point out how some things sound different when you read them with Universalist eyes. I began this blog series after we’d already been reading for a quarter, so it doesn’t begin at the beginning.

My motivation was that when I realized that George MacDonald believed everyone will eventually be saved — but also knew that George MacDonald loved and revered the Bible and knew the original languages — I didn’t understand how those things could both be true. So one of the first things I did was read the New Testament asking if it is even possible to interpret it as saying what George MacDonald said it did.

It turns out, it’s not only possible, but as years went by, I’ve come to think it makes more sense and is a more natural reading of Scripture. But for this series, I’m just looking at what the New Testament says.

Today’s passage, Philippians 2:9-11 is one of the most obviously universalist passages. Mind you, I’m not saying that people with the Everlasting Hell View can’t explain this passage away. But they do have to explain it away — because the natural way to read it is that everyone will be saved. Here’s what it says:

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Combine this passage with Romans 10:9 —

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

— And it makes sense to conclude that this is talking about a future end of the ages when God triumphs and all are saved.

I was sitting in a Sunday school class in Germany when a man read this passage in Philippians. Without missing a beat, after he read it, he immediately said, “But then it’s too late!”

Ummmm, No, it doesn’t say that. There’s nothing that says there’s a deadline after which if you confess Jesus is Lord, you won’t be saved.

The Bible does say there will be judgment after death. But it does not, actually, say that judgment will last forever (at least not in the original Greek). And with God, punishment is always corrective.

And I have and will say more about that in other sections of this series. For now, think about how glorious it will be if this verse says what it seems like it says — that the time will come when all, ALL — those in heaven and on earth and under the earth — will proclaim that Jesus is Lord and bow before Him. That our loving Father has brought everyone to Himself through Jesus. That would indeed be to the great glory of God the Father.

I almost skipped a verse! This isn’t a verse I’d base all my theology on, but we do have an ALL verse in Ephesians 4, and taken together with other passages, it fits with Universalism.

Here’s what it says in Ephesians 4:4-6 —

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Now, I will even admit that Paul is talking about the church here, so he may just be saying that God is over all things about the church and through all things about the church and in all things about the church.

After all, if God is the Father of ALL, He wouldn’t be tormenting His children for ever and ever in hell, would he?

In fact, though there might be judgment after death, it would certainly be to correct and restore, wouldn’t it?

My first post in the series A Universalist Looks at the New Testament covered II Corinthians 5. I didn’t necessarily give the greatest explanation for verse 21 — “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

I’m currently reading a book called Nothing But the Blood of Jesus, by J. D. Myers. It’s about the theology of the cross. I have just begun the book. I don’t know if the author is a universalist, but I do find myself agreeing with the theology. One thing I’m sure he’s teaching is that God is not mad at us, that Jesus did not die to save us from God.

Anyway, today I read a section talking specifically about II Corinthians 5:21, on pages 62-63. I’m going to copy out that section here. It’s out of context — but if you find it intriguing, I recommend reading the whole book.

This is an important text in the discussion of sin because Paul writes that Jesus became sin for us. When we think of sin as some sort of ethereal force which causes people to do bad things or as disobedience to God’s commands, this verse makes very little sense. If sin is a spiritual presence or polluting force brought about by disobedience to God, how can it be said in any way that Jesus “became sin”? But when we understand sin as rivalrous, scapegoating violence done in God’s name, we see that this is exactly what happened to Jesus on the cross. Every aspect of the passion narratives in the Gospels is designed to reveal that since Jesus was viewed as a rival to both religious Judaism and political Rome, He was chosen as a scapegoat to create peace among the people. Then, as often happens with scapegoats, Jesus was murdered in the name of God. So although Jesus never practiced sin and was completely innocent of all rivalry, scapegoating, and violence, He became sin for us (not for God!) so that we would see sin for what it really was. In Jesus, the sin of humanity — the rivalrous, scapegoating, and violence we commit in God’s name — was clearly revealed for all to see. He became sin! When we look at Him on the cross, we finally see our sin for what it really is. Through the crucifixion, sin was unveiled before our eyes so that we would see that all scapegoats were wrongly killed, that God was never behind our religious violence, and that God was calling all people to follow Him in loving forgiveness toward one another.

It’s time for another installment of A Universalist Looks at the New Testament because today’s Scripture passage was Mark 9:30-50.

Before I talk about the passage, I’m going to post a pretty picture from a Sonderquote I just posted from a book on universalism.

But Mark 9:42-48 is a passage that people use to say that Jesus taught that sinners will go to hell.

Again, I do believe in hell and judgment, actually — but not that it will last forever. But I don’t think Jesus is even talking about that here.

This is what the passage says, using the New International Version:
“If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘the worms that eat them do not die and the fire is not quenched.'”

The word that’s been translated “hell” is the Greek word Gehenna.

Rather than try to explain it myself, for this one I’m going to quote from two other universalist authors.

First from Randy Klassen’s book, What Does the Bible Really Say About Hell?, pages 46-47:

“A great millstone hung around the neck,” “unquenchable fire,” “hell, where their worm never dies,” — such are the colorful terms for God’s judgment on those sins. The language is typical rabbinical hyperbole. The image of fire is a perfect metaphor for the fire of God’s judgment. Jesus no more intended a literal description of hell than for his hearers to cut off their hands or legs or pluck out their eyes. Moreover, it is hardly consistent with all resurrection passages to imagine the saints rising with limbs or eyes missing!

Since we do not take literally the drowning with a great millstone around the neck, nor the mutilation of the body parts that offend, is it not inconsistent to take these references to hell as literal? Yet time after time does one read reference to this passage as proof that Jesus taught a literal hell!

It is probably appropriate here to examine the word translated as “hell.” It is Gehenna, the name of the Valley of Hinnom, the ever-burning garbage dump southwest of Jerusalem. It had an evil history. Under the depraved leadership of King Ahaz, Israel was encouraged to worship the god Molech and burn little children there as an offering to this pagan god. King Josiah put a stop to that practice and labeled the area accursed. Thereafter Gehenna became a sort of public incinerator. Always the fire smoldered in it, a pall of thick smoke lay over it, and it bred a loathsome kind of worm that was hard to kill. Often the bodies of the worst criminals would be deposited here.

George W. Sarris brings up the same things in his book Heaven’s Doors, and has some things to add, beginning on page 118:

What comes to your mind when you hear the word Auschwitz?

In the future, it’s possible that the word will take on a more metaphorical meaning. But right now, while the actual place still exists as a museum and in the memories of some who knew it firsthand, it reminds us of the repulsion, shame and horrible deaths experienced by those who suffered in Nazi concentration camps in World War II.

During the time of Jesus, Gehenna was well-known as a specific location near Jerusalem that had been associated with gross idolatry in the past and was then used as the common sewer of the city.

The corpses of the worst criminals were flung into it unburied, and fires were lit to purify the contaminated air. For the Jews of that day, it also implied the severest judgment that a Jewish court could pass on a criminal — throwing his unburied body into the fires and worms of that polluted valley.

Like Auschwitz, Gehenna was a place the people of Jesus’ day could actually visit. It spoke to them of repulsion, shame and horrible death. Instead of experiencing honor like their ancestors whose bodies were treated reverently when they died, those cast into Gehenna would experience the immense dishonor associated with those whose bodies had been disposed of in a dump to become an object of scorn for the masses….

Gehenna was definitely a reference to God’s judgment. But it was a judgment on earth. It was considered a temporary place of punishment. It never meant endless punishment beyond the grave.

The authors of the Apocrypha written between 500-150 BC, Philo who wrote around AD 40, and Josephus who wrote from AD 70-100, all refer to the future punishment of the wicked, but none of them ever use the word Gehenna to describe it.

He does have more to say about when Gehenna started being used differently — much later than Jesus. And even when it was seen as a place of future punishment, it was not eternal.

He’s got a whole chapter on Gehenna if that’s not enough, and I highly recommend the book!

I found another author who mentions Gehenna. Thomas Allin in Every Knee Shall Bow points out that bodies were already dead when they were thrown into Gehenna — so this wasn’t even talking about torment.

While I believe our Lord did not threaten everlasting torment if His words are correctly understood, yet they do convey a solemn warning to sinners. This warning should hold more weight than threats of eternal torment because the conscience can see the justice in it.

So that’s why I don’t think this passage contradicts universalism.

I’ve begun a new series, A Universalist Looks at the New Testament. I’m paralleling the reading of the New Testament that my church is doing (though I began this three months after the church did), and taking a look at verses that relate to universalism — the belief that God will, eventually, save everyone.

I’ll be honest — today’s passage, Mark 8:34-38, is a little tougher to read from a universalist perspective. Part of my point in doing this series is to show that there are tough passages from both perspectives, passages that both sides need to read a little bit into. Once I saw that you can interpret the Bible either way, I chose the view that I thought fit better with God’s character, as shown throughout the Bible. But we aren’t at the point of drawing conclusions yet in this series.

Mark 8:34-38 says, “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.'”

I’m going to start with that last verse, “The Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

Let me make it clear that even though I believe that all will — eventually — be saved, I still believe there will be a great judgment after death. I believe in hell — but not that it will be “eternal.” We’ll see this in other passages, but the Greek word that is translated “eternal” doesn’t have a good equivalent in English. It’s “eonian,” “of the eons,” or “of the ages.” It means an indefinite time period, or may even mean an eternal quality.

How I think it will go is this: There will be a judgment. Some will spend time — maybe eons — in hell, until the day when they will turn back to God the Father. At the “end of the ages,” God will be all in all and every knee will bow before Jesus.

So when the Son of Man comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels will be the day of judgment and is not inconsistent with this view.

That’s also the approach I take to “will lose” their life. You might say, well, losing your life sounds permanent. However, the same word is used in the second part of the sentence, “whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.” That second lose is talking about life on earth. The first lose may be talking about the time (maybe even eons) of judgment.

I’ll be honest — this isn’t the greatest explanation in the world. If there weren’t multiple verses in many different places saying that God loves the whole world and in Christ all will be made alive — then I don’t think I could accept universalism. But given all those other verses, I do think it fits. One thing it does point out — no matter how much I believe in universalism, I still hope that people will come to Jesus before they die. That can actually save their lives.

But please bear with me as we continue through the New Testament….