What about those who have never heard the gospel? A common objection from Calvinists about non-Calvinism deals with whether God could really love those who have never heard the gospel, such as unreached-people from remote tribes, and if God didn’t really love them, then how can non-Calvinists claim that God loves everyone?
The reality, though, is that when someone goes without hearing the gospel, it’s not because God did not take care of them, but because neither you nor I fought to bring that person the gospel. Jesus is not accepting blame whenever His followers refuse to do what He said:
Mark 16:15: “And He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.’”
Acts 1:7-8: “He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.’”
There’s a variety of ways to do this. We can become a missionary, or we can support a missionary, or we can repent of not doing either one. Christian child sponsorship is also a powerful tool to advance the gospel to reach remote villages.508
What do Calvinists believe?
What choice did you have in being birthed by your parents in this country versus a child born in Arabia that has no chance at hear the Gospel?
Our reply:
First of all, God will ask you how you contributed to helping the child born in Arabia to hear the gospel? Did you become a missionary or did you financially support a missionary? Secondly, whenever someone positively responds to the light that He gives them, then He will give more light. Thirdly, even the children born in Nineveh were sent the message of Jonah. God will get His message to people.
So, the reality is that God does love them, if people respond favorably to the light that God gives them, then He will give them more light. That’s a concept that deals with “General Revelation.” If people reject the light that God does give them, then there is no need to give them more of what they’ve already rejected. But, if people do positively respond to the light that God gives them, then He will give more and more. God will make a way to bring them a messenger of the gospel. (Acts 10:20) God did it with Nineveh, by bringing them the prophet Jonah, even when Jonah didn’t want to go.
Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”
Of course, the “General Revelation” of God’s existence alone is not the same as the gospel, and does not save anyone, but it is a necessary component to believing in the gospel. According to Acts 10:1-2, Cornelius was “a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually.” According to Acts 16:14, Lydia was “a worshipper of God.” However, Cornelius hadn’t heard the gospel until he met Peter, and Lydia hadn’t heard the gospel until she met Paul. When they did hear and believe in the gospel, they became saved, just as Ephesians 1:13 similarly shows: “In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.” So, don’t let Calvinists talk you into the idea that because some remote tribe hasn’t heard the gospel yet, that God somehow doesn’t love them, as part of a “non-elect” corporate entity.
Another way that Calvinists often argue that God must not love certain people (as a way to prove non-election in a larger sense), is to ask why God allows certain people to be born, that He knows will never become a Christian. After all, if God knows that they will never become a Christian, then it would be far more loving if God stopped them from being born in the first place. However, people are interconnected in a way that rebuts that argument. In other words, what if God also knew that the descendant of that person someday would grow up to become a Christian? If God stopped the birth of the father, then how would the eventual Christian descendant ever be born? God would have it that everyone come to know Him, but if some choose not to, then that is their choice, and God will allow them their dubious privilege of rejecting Him. So, again, don’t let Calvinists use clever arguments to talk you into the idea that God doesn’t love everyone because God absolutely does love everyone. Who in their right mind would suggest that the father of the “prodigal son” did not truly love his son because he allowed him to exercise his will to leave? As the parable of Luke chapter 15:11-32 shows, the father certainly did love his son and was gracious upon his return back home. So, in a similar way, even though God allows people to reject Him, He still loves them and sincerely desires their reconciliation with Him. He cannot rightly stop their birth though, having the foreknowledge of how they will end up, because otherwise that will have a negative ramification on their descendants who might otherwise come to be saved.
Doug Sayers: “Humble belief in God’s truth is no different now than it was before the coming of Christ. That which has dramatically changed is the amount of Truth and Light now available to the world since the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. But for those who never hear about Jesus there has been no change in the amount of truth and light available to them. They remain in the ‘times of ignorance,’ as it were. Acts 17:30. They will be judged based upon what they have been given.”509
Doug Sayers: “Those who perish may also include those who never hear the gospel but persist in willful sin against the law, which is written on their heart.”510
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508 Compassion International and One Child Matters are a couple examples.
509 Chosen or Not? A Layman’s Study of Biblical Election & Assurance (Bloomington, IN: CrossBooks, 2012), 384.
510 Ibid., 387.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
