Walk in the light you have. I’m not here to dictate orthodoxy for others; I can only relate to you what I’ve experienced. Theology as commonly done among Western Christians is wholly misleading because it pretends certitude here in this life among the Shadows. It’s the wrong certitude. If you don’t first and foremost have a driving call to seek God’s face, your theology won’t mean a damned thing.
I consider it a cardinal sin to proclaim intellectual certitude of that sort. It misleads the soul and places the intellect in the executive, the very nature of the Fall itself. It opens the door to a wealth of false expectations and keeps you from turning your face directly to the Lord. We already have way too many things standing between us a God; we don’t need to create more false idols to drain away our one hope for getting out of this world alive.
Again, this is simply my pastoral advisory. You have to find your own path to peace with God. Mine includes rejecting a wide range of varied theological positions commonly found in Western Christian thought. One of those is a broad category called Universalism. This is another case of confusing the Two Realms. It presumes to assert things we cannot possibly know, and misses the point in things we can know.
In essence, Universalism asserts that everyone will go to Heaven and the only difference is that a few of us who are aware of that can walk in peace while waiting our turn. Naturally that’s a simplified characterization, but it flatly denies things Jesus said. It’s based on Western logical assumptions and presumes to judge Scripture.
The moral laws by which we live here are universal. They are universally available. What moves the hearts of humanity to accept or reject and all the varying degrees in between — all of it is wide open and God works with us according to the fundamental covenant of His divine justice, His mercy in revealing the moral nature of the universe. Everyone is free to embrace as much as they can and God has promised to meet us more than half-way. Every step we take closer to His character amplifies geometrically, as it were, the blessings possible in this life. At the same time, we become accountable to keep pushing ahead. Stasis is not really part of the covenant because it’s not possible to ever arrive in this life.
Eternal life in Heaven is beyond human grasp; we cannot even begin to understand how it works. We are permitted limited glimpses into some symbolic/parabolic indications of it sufficient to take action in confidence that God will take it seriously. We are permitted to see some aspects of it so that we don’t get off on the wrong track. One of the primary texts in Scripture is still Romans, particularly chapter 8. Paul flatly says we cannot possibly want eternal life if we don’t already have it. The fallen nature is that bad. Breaking us out of that is an act of divine grace and wholly on God’s initiative. It is most certainly not universal in nature. Some folks will end up in eternal damnation.
The main point to keep in mind is that we simply cannot know for anyone else. We can know for ourselves (see 1 John 1) in a certain sense, but it’s not that intellectual certitude humans crave. It’s more subtle than that. We cannot know how we were brought across the line into it, and cannot begin to formulate how it will be for others. We are warned not to pretend we can know. All this talk of “Jesus came to give us free salvation” has taken on a pool of conceptual falsehood that borrows way too much from an intellectual culture that is alien to Scripture. So while the words are proper, it’s what we make of them that is all wrong.
In the Old Testament, those who could gain eternal life would have to go through the applicable law covenant to get there. It was contextual; if you walked in the light you had, God would honor your faith. You were obliged to study it insofar as you had access to revelation. In the New Testament, we can claim that eternal birth without having to first wade through the full history of revelation. Not only do we have the record of revelation easily accessible in most human languages, but we can gain the awareness of our spiritual birth with precious little reading of it beforehand.
It’s not as if spiritual birth began with the Cross. It’s that the Cross reduced the ritual obligations and we need not go through a big rigmarole of conversion. There is one sacrifice for sins on the earth; Jesus closed that section of the Laws of God in His person. The Laws were forcefully moved into their proper place, as a parable for something much more important. The focus is not on observance of the Laws, but the meaning of divine justice itself. If we can embrace the meaning of Christ’s life and sacrifice, we can gain immediate access to the full blessings of the Laws.
His resurrection is another matter. It speaks in ways words cannot, offering to us an awareness of life beyond this realm of existence. It is the ultimate assertion of otherworldly focus, reducing this realm to insignificance. We have only one reason to live in this world, and that is to follow Christ out of it. The whole meaning of the Laws is outside this world where they apply. We blaspheme when we reduce the mighty miracle of grace to a mere formula of ritual and observance of particulars. We blaspheme when we reduce grace to mere intellectual assent. We blaspheme when we reduce grace to a human decision. How it is that someone comes to care in the first place is where the miracle of God begins. That sense of concern goes far beyond mere guilt over sin; it’s an overwhelming sense begging to make peace with God.
There is no magic formula. You cannot sell it; you cannot lead people there if they aren’t there already. In our Western world of manipulation, the whole business of religion has been deeply stained with human willfulness and blasphemy of presuming to understand and control human access to God. The Gatekeeper to Heaven is God Himself, and He alone. There is only one answer when God asks, “Why should I let you in?” It is: “You invited me.” Any other answer means you have no business there. You cannot come to the point of wanting in without having already a standing invitation. God has not changed since before Creation. The fundamental nature of revelation hasn’t changed, either; it has only blossomed into fullness in Christ.
Jesus Himself warned that the invitation is not universal. The story of Lazarus resting in the bosom of Abraham includes a warning that some would not make it.
