The Extent of Salvation—Who Will Be Included?
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REFLECTIONS ON SALVATION
Chris Wright
It is no exaggeration to say that Christianity is a religion of salvation,” John Stott affirms. He could have said “the religion,” rather than “a religion,” for, as he goes on to say, the God of the Bible is the God of salvation. No other word so frequently and comprehensively defines God in biblical revelation than that he is the God who saves, when all other alleged gods fail to do so. “Salvation belongs to our God,” sings the polyphonic choir of redeemed humanity (Revelation 7:10)—and to no other. This is something so distinctive of the biblical faith that it can be stressed even more strongly than Stott had space to do in this book. I devoted a whole chapter to it in my book Salvation Belongs to Our God (written, as it happens, at Stott’s request, when he was editorial adviser to the series Global Christian Library). I shall expand here on the resounding claims that Stott makes near the beginning of his chapter.
Salvation not only defines the particularity and uniqueness of the biblical God, but even, according to the Bible, defines the very identity of God. Sometimes Old Testament writers simply say, “Yahweh is salvation” (see, for example, Exodus 15:2; Deuteronomy 32:15). In the Psalms we see that Yahweh is above all else the God who saves. The Hebrew root yasha (“to save”) occurs 136 times in the Psalms (adding up to 40 percent of all the uses of this word in the whole Old Testament). Yahweh is
Turning to the New Testament, we find an angel instructing Joseph to call Mary’s son Jehoshua (Joshua, Jeshua—or in its Greek form, Jesus), for “he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Jesus’ name means, “Yahweh is salvation.” As believers bow at the name of Jesus, they declare God to be the saving God of the Bible. Paul contributes to this theme particularly in the tiny letter to Titus, which displays a most astonishing concentration of salvation language—in the space of three short chapters, Paul piles up the phrases either “God our Savior” or “Christ our Savior” seven times.
The God revealed as Yahweh in the Old Testament, and as Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament, is above all else the God who saves. That is the distinctive mark of his uniqueness, and the defining mark of his identity.
The Scope of Salvation—What Does It Include?
Stott’s passion for clarity leads him to make some sharp distinctions and definitions. Reacting against the kind of radical reframing of Christian salvation language, in terms of healing from sickness or (more pervasively) liberation from economic and political oppression, that had strongly influenced the liberal theology of the ecumenical movement in the 1960s and ’70s, Stott insists that biblical salvation is neither of those two things. Or, to be more precise, he was well aware that physical healing and justice for the oppressed are both good things in themselves—things that the Bible shows that God desires and Christians should be concerned about—but he did not see them as included in the salvation “which God works, which Christ achieves, which Scripture unfolds and which the gospel offers” (to quote his classic phraseology).
The definite article is significant. Again and again Stott insists on his careful, delimiting definition (in each case below, the italics are my own addition):
Nevertheless, Stott insists on two other points, and concedes a third, in order to guard himself against misunderstanding. But these balancing points seem to me, however, to lead to some difficulty and tension in his overall argument.
First of all, in line with all that he has argued in the first chapter about the holistic nature of Christian mission, he insists that Christians ought to be involved in works of healing and in sociopolitical engagement on behalf of the poor and oppressed. “Love compels us to labor in both spheres, seeking to promote physical health (by therapeutic and preventive means) and seeking to create a radically different social order that will bring people freedom, dignity, justice and peace.” So he argues that working for “liberation from oppression and the creation of a new and better society . . . could be included in the ‘mission of God,’ insofar as Christians are giving themselves to serve in these fields.” But such work is not part of, or connected to, God’s salvation, in Stott’s mind (at least as far as he expresses it in this chapter). This seems to me to create an odd disjunction between our theology of mission and our theology of salvation, when it would seem that the Bible holds them very closely together. It seems odd to separate off one part of our mission (the social aspect, which Stott believed to be fully mandated in the Bible) from the full biblical content of God’s saving work.
Second, Stott is fully aware, of course, and mentions it several times, that ultimately (eschatologically) the saving, redemptive work of God will include complete healing of the body (with the ending of all suffering, disease and death), and will include the complete establishment of justice and peace (with the ending of all oppression and violence) in the new creation. He does not at all deny that “illness, pain and death will find no place in the new bodies and the new universe that God is going one day to create.” On the contrary, he affirms three positives:
First, God is greatly concerned for both these areas, namely, our bodies and our society. Second, one day both body and society will be redeemed. We shall be given new bodies and shall live in a new society. Third, love compels us meanwhile to labor in both spheres, seeking to promote physical health (by therapeutic and preventive means) and seeking to create a radically different social order that will bring people freedom, dignity, justice and peace.
So again, somewhat oddly, although biblically speaking salvation will include these great eschatological blessings, these things are not included in “the salvation that is now offered to humanity by Christ through the gospel.”
This disjunction (between evangelism that offers salvation, and social engagement that is pleasing and obedient to God but not connected to salvation) is what governed the structure of the relevant paragraph in the Lausanne Covenant:
We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all men. We therefore should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men from every kind of oppression. Because mankind is made in the image of God, every person, regardless of race, religion, color, culture, class, sex or age, has an intrinsic dignity because of which he should be respected and served, not exploited. . . . Although reconciliation with man is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we affirm that evangelism and sociopolitical involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and man, our love for our neighbor and our obedience to Jesus Christ. The message of salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination, and we should not be afraid to denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist.
It is clear in that paragraph that Christian social engagement is rooted in the doctrine of God as Creator, rather than being connected to God’s work in salvation—until, that is, the final curious sentence that applies “the message of salvation” precisely to those areas, presumably because Stott could not forget his biblical awareness that God’s salvation will eventually eliminate all “evil and injustice wherever they exist.”
Third, the concession that Stott makes is that the Bible actually does use the vocabulary of “saving” and “salvation” in a very broad variety of ways, including healing and political liberation. But he reduces the impact of this, once again by insisting that “the biblical doctrine of salvation” cannot be equated to “a kind of comprehensive insurance against physical ills of every kind, including disease, drowning and even death.” Such miracles were “signs of salvation,” not the thing itself.
How are we to respond to these things? It is very clear that Stott is anxious, and rightly so, to protect the biblical meaning of salvation on two fronts. On the one hand, he does not want it to be mutated into a purely material, physical, social or political kind of “liberation” that leaves the underlying problem of sin and evil and their ultimate and eternal consequences untouched and so has no time or place for the necessity of evangelism and personal regeneration through Christ. On the other hand, he is resisting an overrealized eschatology that imagines that all the ultimate blessings of salvation that the Bible speaks of in the new creation can be promised and enjoyed in our present life in this world.
However, it seems to me that a better way to obtain the same objectives—that is, to preserve the full biblical conception of salvation while avoiding a merely physical or political interpretation—would be not to “divide up” salvation in terms of its “content” (since the Bible in so many places in both Testaments fills the word with such a richness of content—all associated with God’s saving work), and then bracket out some parts and say they are not included in “the salvation that God offers through Christ.” Rather, it would be better to follow Stott’s own secondary instinct, which has to do not so much with the content of salvation as with the timing of our experience of its full content. In other words, we need to recognize that within the wholeness of biblical salvation (all of which is entirely the work of God and ultimately accomplished through Christ), there is that which we can be assured of here and now, and that which we may not necessarily experience here and now in this life, but will gloriously celebrate as reality in the new creation. In other words, we can make a distinction between present and eschatological dimensions of salvation, while holding both within the total “package” of what Christ accomplished and the gospel offers.
So what exactly can we promise to those who turn to God in repentance and faith? The Bible consistently affirms that if sinners repent and trust in the saving work of Christ they can know the forgiveness of sins, they can be assured of salvation from God’s wrath on the last day, and they can be sure they have received the gift of eternal life. God guarantees that, in relation to sin and its eternal consequences, we have been saved, we are being saved, and we will be saved, all based on the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These things we can confidently trust for ourselves and promise to others based on God’s own clear promises.
What about many other things the Bible speaks of in saving language—physical healing, liberation, rescue from danger and death, and so on? These all can happen in this life, and Scripture shows that God can and often does do these things for some people in particular times and places. But can we guarantee that he always will do so for everyone who asks or trusts?
Some Christian ministries claim just this—for example, it is always God’s will to save you from poverty and make you rich, here and now; it is always God’s will to save you from sickness and make you well, here and now. Have faith, or enough faith, or the right kind of faith, and all the benefits of God’s salvation can be yours here and now. Stott does not mention prosperity gospel teaching in his chapter, but doubtless he would have accused it of that kind of distortion.
So does faith guarantee every kind of salvation the Bible uses the vocabulary of salvation for? Not according to Hebrews 11. In this chapter is a catalog of the saving acts of God in relation to the faith of many Old Testament individuals. Faith was common to all. According to Hebrews 11:32-35, many of them experienced material, physical and military dimensions of God’s salvation (Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and “the prophets” are given as examples).
But others did not experience salvation in this immediate way. Instead, they “were tortured, refusing to accept release . . . suffered mocking and scourging . . . chains and imprisonment . . . were stoned . . . were sawn in two . . . were killed with the sword . . . went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated . . . wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth” (Hebrews 11:35-38). So then, the writer tells us, salvation in many senses never came for them, in their earthly lifetimes. But “these were all commended for their faith.”
This passage pushes back against all false and exaggerated claims for instant health and wealth as the inevitable product of faith. The difference in the fates of these individuals did not lie in the presence or absence of faith, but in the mysterious ways of God. We can promise what God unquestionably promises (eternal salvation for those who repent and trust him, and deliverance from all sickness, death and oppression in the new creation). But we should not promise what God does not promise (deliverance from all problems or suffering in this life). Whatever measure of healing and justice that God brings to people in this life through our missional engagement in works of love, compassion, peacemaking or justice seeking (however partial and provisional such efforts may be) constitutes anticipatory firstfruits of the ultimate salvation that God has accomplished through Christ for his redeemed people in the new creation.
Stott is fully aware of the temporal distinctions within the biblical understanding of salvation—its past, present and future tenses. He applies them very effectively in the major section of this chapter, “Salvation and Personal Freedom.” As that subheading shows, his emphasis is on the blessings and benefits of salvation enjoyed by the individual believer. There is another dimension, however, that is not adequately addressed in this chapter on salvation, namely the corporate and cosmic (or creational) dimension of salvation. Without a doubt, this is not mere oversight, since Stott had plenty to say on both in later works, and we should recall the point I made in the preface that this book was based on five lectures in which it was impossible to say everything. For the wider, mature reflection of John Stott on the vast dimensions of biblical salvation—including its ecclesial and social outworking, and its ultimate consummation in the new creation, one should invest very profitable time in reading The Cross of Christ and The Contemporary Christian.
More recent evangelical thinking and writing has happily recaptured something of this biblical fullness of salvation—in all its tenses (past, present and future) and in all its dimensions (personal, social and creational). I am confident that Stott himself would have applauded the biblically balanced and richly hope-filled emphases of the books mentioned in the following endnote, for the prime reason that they remain as committed as Stott himself to affirming that salvation is exclusively the work of the God revealed to us in the Bible (Yahweh the Holy One of Israel, embodied in the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, God’s Son), and that God has accomplished that salvation exclusively through the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ—as the central accomplishment of the great biblical narrative of God’s saving work that extends from creation to new creation.
The Hermeneutics of Salvation—How Should We Use the Old Testament?
Writing this book in 1975, John Stott was among the earliest British evangelicals to respond to Latin American liberation theology when it burst on the awareness of the English-speaking world through the translation of Gustavo Gutiérrez’s seminal book, A Theology of Liberation. Stott’s response is characteristic. First, he has clearly studied the book with great care and thoroughness. Second, he seeks to applaud all that he can find that is positive and that he feels evangelicals ought to endorse and learn from. But then, third, he brings a sharp biblical critique, exposing those places where he believes Gutiérrez has gone way beyond what is biblically justifiable, or where he has confused categories that need to be kept distinct. In the following years, others took up the challenge of interacting with liberation theology, in its various flavors—some more evangelically congenial than others.
Stott claims in this chapter that his main point of contention with the kind of liberation theology advocated by Gutiérrez and others is hermeneutical—their handling of Scripture. And in particular, Stott disputed their use of Old Testament texts. He mentions especially their strong use of the exodus narrative. While he wholeheartedly recognizes that the Bible as a whole, and that story in particular, shows that “oppression in every form is hateful to God,” and that Christians ought to be in the forefront of exposing and resisting it, he objects to liberation theology’s use of the exodus on two fronts. Negatively, he asks “whether this biblical narrative can be applied to any or every group of oppressed people, and whether it can be regarded as the kind of liberation which God intends or promises for all the oppressed. Surely the answer must be ‘no.’” And positively, he affirms that the New Testament transforms the exodus into “a picture of our redemption from sin by Christ, not a promise of liberation for all politically oppressed minorities.”
I find myself in partial agreement and partial disagreement on both points.
On the first point, I agree that we cannot turn the historical fact of what God did for Israel into an expectation or a promise that God will do the same for every oppressed group in the history of the fallen world. Such a claim would amount to the same kind of distorted “realized eschatology” found in the prosperity gospel—the promise that physical healing and/or material abundance is guaranteed here and now. Nevertheless, we need to balance this with other thoughts.
First, it is clear that the Israelites themselves had a strong expectation that the God of the exodus could, and would, “do it again”—both at the personal level (hence the frequent appeals to God for deliverance from oppression in the Psalms), and at national level (witness the strong “new exodus” themes in the prophets). But, furthermore, we should not forget that Israel was called into existence for the sake of God’s ultimate purpose of bringing blessing and the extension of covenant relationship to all nations. Of course, this is an eschatological hope, not a present guarantee or an immediate geopolitical agenda. Nevertheless, it does mean that the exodus narrative functions not merely or exclusively as something “for Israel only” (though certainly it was one dimension of their unique identity as God’s people), but has a paradigmatic purpose also. The God who did this for Israel is in fact the God who is characterized by his love for the alien and the oppressed—in the widest generic sense (Deuteronomy 10:17-19).
Liberation theologians were not wrong, in other words, to see in this narrative a demonstration of God’s priorities and concerns. There is a biblically grounded hermeneutical route from the biblical narrative to social engagement with and for the poor, an engagement that seeks justice and liberation from oppression. However, Stott and others are right to complain when liberation theologies simply equate any human activity that challenges injustice as salvation per se, if it does not include also bringing people into relationship with God through Jesus Christ. The exodus is repeatedly described in the Old Testament as the great primal act of God’s redemption. Speak of God as “Redeemer” and you think “exodus,” in Old Testament Israel. But the purpose of the exodus was not just to get Israel out of Egypt (“freedom” in a purely geographical and political sense), but to get them to Mount Sinai to enter into covenant relationship with their God and then to live out that relationship of redeemed covenant obedience in the land he would give them. For that reason, a merely sociopolitical use of the exodus, though indebted to part of the story, is seriously deficient even in its use of the Bible.
On the second point, it is manifestly true that the New Testament uses the exodus narrative as a way of understanding Christ’s achievement in his cross and resurrection. That is characteristic of the narrative nature of salvation itself in the Bible: the great central story of salvation in the Gospels gathers up and “reenacts” all that God had done in the preceding story of Israel (part of what Paul meant in saying that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was . . . raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,” 1 Corinthians 15:3-4), and points forward to the new creation climax which, in Revelation 21–22, draws heavily on the Old Testament yet again. But the exodus is not merely “a picture” of a future spiritual redemption. It was itself a reality—God really rescued people from real oppression that was political, economic and social, as well as spiritual. And the Old Testament repeatedly uses the language of redemption for the exodus as a whole.
So we should not, it seems to me, reduce its full biblical significance to a spiritual understanding of redemption from sin and overlook those other dimensions of its paradigmatic force—any more than we should reduce it only to the sociopolitical realm and overlook its intrinsic spiritual significance. Either extreme ends up distorting the way the exodus narrative functions in a full biblical understanding of salvation (and mission). I have discussed this much more fully in a whole chapter of my book The Mission of God, and conclude with an appeal for an integrated interpretation of the exodus that gives full value to all its dimensions.
The Story of Salvation—Can Other Stories Prepare the Way?
We have stressed above the narrative nature of salvation in the Bible. That is to say, in the Bible, salvation is not a formula, technique or magic mystery. Salvation is always described as what God has achieved within history through the whole chain of promises and events that center and culminate in Jesus Christ. And that leads to a further point, which we may address here, though it would have been relevant also in relation to Stott’s chapter on interfaith dialogue.
This narrative nature of biblical salvation is at the heart of of its uniqueness. When the Bible speaks of salvation, it is not speaking of some common thing that all other religions also believe in, only in different ways. In the Bible, as soon as you mention salvation, you have to tell the story—this story, not any other. All other notions of salvation start out from the wrong place—that salvation is something we eventually hope to reach by our own efforts, with a little help from the gods or the gurus. In the Bible God is the subject, not the object, of salvation. God does it. God achieves it. God is the active subject. We do not have to work for salvation, in order to persuade or manipulate God to grant it to us. And, according to Scripture, God’s accomplishment of it is through the events recorded in this narrative history.
In the Bible, salvation is rooted in the “having-happened-ness” of the historical events by which God has acted to save humanity and creation. It is what God has done already in the past, and as a result, certain outcomes are assured in the future; because of this, we live changed lives in the present. Other religions do not save because they do not tell this story. They therefore cannot “connect” people to that story and to the Savior, who is the great Subject of the story. They have no gospel, for they do not know the story that alone constitutes the good news.
The Extent of Salvation—Who Will Be Included?
One issue that Stott did not tackle in his chapter on salvation in this book, but that he did address later on, is the question of the extent of salvation, or perhaps more accurately, its limits. He has spoken in this chapter often about the salvation that God offers to people through the gospel of Christ. But what about those who never hear about the offer? What about those who never learn about the good news of Jesus Christ? In other words, what is the destiny of the unevangelized?
In The Contemporary Christian Stott has a chapter titled “The Uniqueness of Jesus Christ,” in which he expounds with his customary clarity what it means to say that Jesus alone is Lord and Savior. At the end, however, he anticipates that his reader might ask exactly the questions above. In seeking to answer, he says, “we need to combine confidence and agnosticism, what we know (because Scripture plainly teaches it) and what we do not know (because Scripture is either unclear or even silent about it).”
He then states “what we know from Scripture,” namely: that there is no possibility of self-salvation; that Jesus Christ is the only Savior; “and that salvation is by God’s grace alone, on the ground of Christ’s cross alone, by faith alone.” He then continues:
What we do not know, however, is exactly how much knowledge and understanding of the gospel people need before they can cry to God for mercy and be saved. In the Old Testament, people were certainly “justified by grace through faith,” even though they had little knowledge or expectation of Christ. Perhaps there are others today in a somewhat similar position. They know they are sinful and guilty before God, and that they cannot do anything to win his favour, so in self-despair they call upon the God they dimly perceive to save them. If God does save such, as many evangelical Christians tentatively believe, their salvation is still only by grace, only through Christ, only by faith.
It seems reasonable, in view of this, to include Stott among those who could be called “nonrestrictivist exclusivists” (if it were not for it being such an ugly combination of words!). That is, he was very clear that salvation was exclusively in and through Jesus Christ and nowhere else, and that salvation was exclusively a matter of God’s grace, received through repentance and faith. But he was not willing to be dogmatic about whether salvation would ultimately be restricted only to those who, in their earthly lifetime, heard an intelligible explanation of the gospel and put their faith in Jesus Christ. Rather, he would align with those who reverently leave the destiny of all people, evangelized or not, in the hands of the all-just and all-merciful God. It is noticeable how careful Stott is in expressing this possibility, with the words, “Perhaps . . . If . . . tentatively.”
This debate on the extent of salvation and the destiny of the unevangelized continues among evangelical theologians and missiologists. The following endnote is the merest sample of some key works on both sides.
My own view in this matter was expressed in my books The Uniqueness of Jesus and Salvation Belongs to Our God—both of which were read and commended by John Stott, so I have confidence he agreed with the thrust of the arguments outlined below. However, both he and I would want to express this position without extreme dogmatism, and in respectful though disagreeing fellowship with those who hold that salvation is possible only and exclusively for those who hear the gospel and exercise conscious faith in the known Jesus of that proclamation.
Several arguments are put forward in support of the view that God will save through Christ some who, even though they never hear about Christ in their earthly lifetimes, nevertheless turn to God in some kind of repentance and faith. One relates to Old Testament believers. There were believers in the Old Testament whom we would unquestionably regard as “saved,” yet they never knew about the historical Jesus of Nazareth. They were indeed saved by Christ (whose death is effective for all human history), but not through knowing Christ (in the sense of knowing the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth—the New Testament gospel).
Even if we come to the conclusion that Old Testament believers in the covenant nation stood in a special position, the Old Testament also describes how God responded graciously to others who did not stand within the covenant nation, such as “converts” like Rahab (Joshua 2), Ruth (Ruth 1:16-17), the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:24) and Naaman (2 Kings 5:15-18), and repentant sinners such as the Ninevites (Jonah). They all joined the community of the saved by coming to exercise faith in the God they encountered through Israelites’ witness, so in a sense they could be called “evangelized,” even if it was nothing like the New Testament gospel that they heard.
There were also those who were saved who lived long before the redemptive revelation embodied in the history of Israel had even begun—that is, before Abraham—such as Enoch. Enoch’s faith is held up also in the New Testament as a model. So the question can be asked: Have there been and are there still other people in similar circumstances as Enoch—that is, who believe God exists and earnestly seek him? And if so, does not God save them in the same way, for the same reason (their faith), and on the same basis—the death of Christ? If, then, the Bible tells us that it was possible for people in those ages before Christ to be saved by Christ without actually knowing Christ, because it was historically impossible for them to do so, is it not similarly possible for people today to be saved by Christ even if they do not know him because of geographical and other obstacles?
Revelation says that the song of salvation will be sung by “a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues” (Revelation 7:9, italics added). Such language could be taken in a general or approximate sense. But if we take it in a more intentional sense, then it is affirming that God will have saved people from every ethnic, cultural and linguistic group in the human race throughout history. If that is what Revelation 7:9 intends to say, then the final number of the redeemed will certainly include more than those who have been explicitly evangelized by Christian missionaries in the centuries after Pentecost since many tribes and languages disappeared from the face of the earth long before the New Testament era.
We have to be very careful about what is being said and what is not. First, this is not universalism, that everybody will be saved no matter what they believe or how they live. That is clearly contradicted by the Bible. Rather, this view is saying that we are saved by God’s grace only, received through the channels of repentance and trust in God’s mercy.
Second, this view is not saying that people in any faith are saved by their goodness and sincerity. It is the precise opposite of that. All who will be saved in the end will be saved by the grace of God. The heart of the gospel is that God saves sinners who know they are sinners and turn away from sin and self toward God.
Third, this view is not saying that people in other faiths can be saved through their own religious systems, or that other religions are provisional ways of salvation. The New Testament does not talk of salvation at all except in and through Christ.
Speaking for myself, it seems presumptuous to limit the sovereignty of God’s saving grace to the evangelistic obedience of the church. That is to say, while I strongly affirm that people can be saved only and exclusively by Christ, and that the normal way that God brings salvation is through those who know Christ witnessing to those who do not yet, and leading them to repentance and faith, I cannot take the further step of saying that God is somehow unable or not willing to save anybody at any time in human history, unless and until a Christian reaches them with an intelligible explanation of the story of the gospel.
Such a view, if pressed to its theological limits, would mean that in the end, the elect of God will be a subset of those evangelized by us. It would be saying: only those who have been evangelized can be saved, but not all who are evangelized actually are saved; so the total number saved (by God) will be smaller than the total number evangelized (by us). And that seems to restrict the operation of God’s grace to the limits of the operation of our human evangelistic efforts.
It seems to me that the Bible gives us grounds to believe that the reverse will be true. That is, those who will have responded to explicit Christian evangelism will be a subset of the finally elect and redeemed. God operates in his sovereign grace to reach out to and touch people to the ends of the earth and at all times of history. The history of Christian mission has many examples of encounters with people who had had an experience of, or some revelation of, the saving grace of God even before Christian missionaries arrived, and who therefore welcomed the news about Jesus with open arms. What the Old Testament prepares us to expect is replicated in the history of crosscultural mission.
The possibility that God may in his sovereign grace save some whom the church may never reach with the gospel (or who died before the church could ever have reached them) does not lessen the church’s obligation in mission and evangelism. If God, in the sovereignty of his grace but independently of human evangelistic activity, initiates in the heart of any human a response of repentance and faith that leads to their final salvation through Christ, this will be a matter of rejoicing when we do meet them, here or in the new creation. But it gives us no more valid reason to disobey the Great Commission than does the biblical doctrine of election, though that has also been accused of disincentivizing evangelism. The only way we can be sure, from our perspective, that people are being saved is to be faithful in our witness and see people responding in repentance and faith to Christ.