An Objection to Exclusivity: Response Part 2

I phrased the second part of my friend's objection to the exclusivity of Christ in this way: If God is Love as the Bible claims, how can he condemn anybody that did not have a snowball's chance in Hell to believe in Jesus?

Recall that he felt it was "ridiculous" that Christians would think that everyone besides Christians will have no righteousness on which to stand before God, and will thus be eternally separated from the all righteous God. So, this Part 2 was not something my friend said explicitly, but it is at least one of the arguments for "why might exclusivity be 'ridiculous?'" and/or "how can Christians be consistent in saying 'some people will be damned' while also saying God is love?'"

First, two fundamentals for understanding God's love:

I. God's love is by necessity first for Himself, and only when that is so can He truly have love for mankind. I won't go into this much now (unless someone asks me to), but simple reason will enable you to understand I believe. If God did not first and foremost love the greatest thing in all of existance, then He would not be doing things perfectly - and a being that does not do things perfectly is certainly not the true God. So, if God did not love Himself first and us secondly, but instead "loved" us in some other order, it would be a tainted and imperfect love, not the love of God. All this just to say that whatever we call love in this ponderance must be first loving toward God, then secondly loving toward people.

II. God is not love to the exclusion of or at the expense of His own holiness, righteousness, justice, or glory. Rather, He is truly love, truly holy, truly righteous, truly just, and truly glorious because He is all of these to the greatest degree all the time. So, it is not the love of God that would make all men clean of their sins without somehow executing the just penalty (on someone or something) for those sins as well.

Okay, that's the foundation. Now let's suppose that God let someone into heaven that had no faith in God for providing forgiveness for the debt owed by sinners for their sin. If that were to happen, wouldn't God be unholy and unrighteous for saying something different would happen to those people when He inspired the Bible? Wouldn't He be unjust in not getting recompense for the sin? Wouldn't His glory be immensly diminished for having become unjust, unholy, and unholy. In reality, His glory is great for having both protected His own justice (and righteousness, holiness) and provided for the justification (legal term meaning removal of guilt) of sinners. This means is Jesus Christ, for our righteousness can come through faith in Christ's atoning (cleansing) sacrifice.

Now one might ask, "Then does everyone get a chance to have this faith in Jesus? After all, doesn't everyone deserve a chance to hear the good news of Jesus being the way, the truth, and the life and thus avoid the awful eternity of Hell?" Well, regardless of whether we deserve it or not, Romans 1 and Psalm 19 show how it is that everyone does in fact get that chance. These verses say that all of nature around us proclaims the work and attributes of God, so that by them we can come to know Him. They further say that anyone who doesn't know the truth about God (as accords with the Bible) from the evidence in nature has only themself to blame, for it is because they suppress the truth in their unrighteousness that they do not understand.

I actually know a guy who came to know Christ because of the witness of nature, just like these verses say. His name is Dien Nygun, and he started his journey to faith in Christ while in Vietnam with no one first telling him of Christ. He saw nature and knew there was a god, began an earnest search for God, and his eyes were opened to see Jesus as the answer to the longings of his heart and mind.

Couldn't God just force the unbelievers to worship Him and thus keep them in Heaven? It would be unjust of God to force someone to worship Him if they did not want to.

Then couldn't God just teach everybody the truth in Heaven, bring them to faith there, and then not have to send anyone to Hell? Not if He is going to be righteous and tell us the truth in His inspired Bible, wherein He says that some people will be condemned.

Wouldn't a good (loving) God let good people into His presence, including those people who have faith in a different God, or those who have a different faith in the same God? Again, He has said in the Bible, which He inspired, that
1) no people are truly good enough by their own doings, but
2) there is one criterion on which to enter His Heaven - faith in Jesus - our trusting that Jesus' righteousness is credited to us by faith alone. Note that this makes all of the glory God's - for He provides free of charge the goodness by which He accepts people into His presence.

This has not been an exhaustive response and has been written in one sitting (though I've taken a month to write), but I think the foundation has been laid to provide the basis of an answer to most, if not all, of the arguments one might give appealing to God's love and grace. Let me know if I left any gaps.

As an aside, know that faith is not oppressive, but liberating! No longer does a follower of Jesus have to try his hardest to do right and therefore be acceptable. No, instead, one can come to terms with their shortcomings, realize they will never be good enough, and decide to trust that Jesus' goodness will be theirs if only they have faith. God then changes a person's desires so that they desire the things of God more and more, thus progressively becoming more and more like Jesus in the way they think, act, and feel. Gone are the days of "If I do this list of stuff, then God will accept me." In are the days of "Thank you God that you are not basing my acceptance on my merits or lack thereof, but on the merits of Jesus."