John 3:16-17 KJV "For God so loves the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through him might be saved."
I always thought that only a select few were going to be saved after Judgement Day but after reading this passage in the Bible (King James Version), I am reconsidering what I had always believed. If God has been actively trying to save the world from condemnation (and by extension, hell), then won't this have an effect on the quantity of souls saved?
I think it does because if God loves us all and wants the best for each and every one of us, then won't we be given all the chances we need to accept Him and become saved? The world clearly is a lot more than just Christianity and atheism.
Mainstream Christian teaching has, historically, emphasized that truly, really, God is pro-salvation, He is pro-active in saving us. He's not sitting in the back waiting for us to find Him, He meets us in our own weakness and sin, loving us through the Gospel, loving us through Jesus.
Paradise doesn't have limited seating. The great feast that God is inviting the whole world to come and share is more than enough for everyone. Will everyone, in the end, be saved? Tragically, at least as Scripture suggests, it seems at least some will fully and utterly and bitterly reject it. But it has nothing to do with God not wanting anyone, it's not even about God refusing anyone. God refuses none. God is for all.
So, in the end, the only thing keeping someone out of eternal life is themselves. God chooses us for heaven, it is only man who chooses himself for hell.
Anyone who claims to know who is and isn't saved is not speaking for God.
It is true that Christ said "narrow is the way to life, and few are those who find it", but it is a leap to claim this means heaven will have only a handful of people. Because in saying this people claim to themselves be among some special few who can follow the narrow way--that is hubris. We all are bent and orientated toward the broad way of destruction, St. Paul in Romans says "There is no one who is righteous, no not even one." In Romans 3:23 he says "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." All are condemned already, because all have sinned.
Salvation is not about living righteously to earn salvation from God. Salvation is Jesus Christ, the only One who is righteous, dying for us--for us sinners, all of us sinners, bearing our death, bearing the shame and weight of all our guilt and being crushed by it on the cross. Enduring the searing loss of life, His life, for us. That by death He might defeat death, and rising from the dead utterly destroy the power of sin, death, hell, and the devil which holds us in dread and terrible chains. Christ has overcome, and grants us by His own life, to share in Him and His life which He lives before the Father. To receive His righteousness as a pure gift, through faith, which is the grace of God. Our sins are freely forgiven. And so, through faith, God unites us to His own Son.
So in the end, how many are saved? All who are Christ's, all whom God knows in love through His Son. For He is "the Savior of the whole world, especially of those who believe." (1 Timothy 4:10).
-CryptoLutheran
