“But what about free will? Does God force people to repent?”
This is the most thoughtful challenge to Christian universalism I’ve heard. What if people don’t want to be reconciled and restored? We need to take some time to really think about this. Let’s begin by assuming—for the sake of discussion—that some people just won’t stop rejecting God. I’ll explain later why I don’t believe this is true, but let’s assume for now it is. Does this mean God’s hands are tied, that there’s nothing he can do? Is the free will of humanity somehow the most sacred, inviolate virtue above all else? And where exactly do we go in Scripture to see that human freedom is the one principle that overrides all others?
If your two-year-old is running headlong straight into a busy street, do you place their free will above all other concerns? Or do you take immediate, decisive action to prevent them from being destroyed? (“No!”) We do allow children to experience the consequences of their actions when it doesn’t actually destroy them. We allow them to pay the price for their free will choices so they can learn what is beneficial and what is dangerous. We may let them touch something that’s hot, for instance, so they learn that hot things burn. But there’s a limit to how much free will we allow them, isn’t there? It’s one thing touching something hot; it’s something else entirely to stick their arm in the fire. From God’s perspective, how much different are we than a two-year-old?
It’s common for some evangelical Christians to say things without realizing how contradictory they are. For instance, we frequently say that “God is always a gentleman,” that God won’t force himself onto anyone. And then, virtually in the same breath, we can talk about God as the “Hound of Heaven” who aggressively pursued us unrelentingly until we surrendered. And we never stop to realize these descriptions of God contradict one another.
If God is always a gentleman, someone needs to explain this to the apostle Paul who was knocked to the ground and blinded on the road to Damascus! Or to C. S. Lewis, who describes himself as being brought in “kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape.” (He goes on to say of God, “His compulsion is our liberation.”) That doesn’t sound like a gentleman to me, but it does sound like a very focused parent intent on doing what’s best for their child. I do find it a bit ironic that many of the same people who insist that passages such as Phil 2:9–11 can’t be describing voluntary worship—that these people are being forced to acknowledge God—will then turn around and question how God could force people to repent! Apparently for these people it’s okay for God to force the lost to confess Jesus Christ as Lord as long as he doesn’t actually save them!
So, am I saying that God doesn’t respect the free will of the lost but forces them to repent? Not at all. But we need to think about what we mean by a “free choice.” As many Christians who emphasize free will have clarified, they don’t so much believe in free will, as they do freed will. We were bound in sin and rebellion and our fallen sin nature, but God freed us, enabling us to choose, so that we could embrace him, placing our faith in Christ. For a choice to be free, it has to be . . . free.
Let me illustrate. Suppose a person is under the influence of a powerful drug and they attack someone. Are they responsible for their actions? We might say, “Maybe,” especially if they knew the dangers of the drug before taking it. But what if someone else put the drug in this person’s food or drink, and they consumed it without knowing? If they had no control at all over their behavior, then they would be deemed as not responsible for what happened. Their actions were not done by way of a free choice.
If we walked into a room and saw a young man holding his hand in a fire without pulling it out,1 even though it was being badly burned, what’s the first thought that would go through our minds? “There’s something wrong with that guy,” right? Why? Because people don’t do that—not freely. If we’re doing something that painful, that self-destructive, our action itself is evidence that something’s wrong with us. This isn’t a choice we’re making freely; there’s something else causing us to act in this manner.
Now let’s think about salvation. We were created to live in relationship with God. Even in our fallen state we long for that connection. This is why throughout history humans have been drawn to religion or spirituality of some kind (or at least some larger cause than themselves). As Christians, we know that all our most intense longings and yearnings, our deepest questions, even the ones we can’t express—all of this only finds satisfaction in Christ. We only find ultimate fulfillment and purpose in Christ. We even only come to truly know ourselves in him.
Do people reject God? Of course they do. (We did ourselves at one time.) Why do people reject God? We could make a list of reasons, couldn’t we? Some don’t believe that God exists; some resist authority; some don’t like religion or have been hurt by Christians; some feel they’d be giving up too much control. So, do people have reasons for rejecting God? Yes. But are they good reasons? Would we say that any of these are sound, logical reasons why someone should reject God? No, not at all. In fact, we’d try to help the person see that these “reasons” for rejecting God are illusions, they’re fairy tales. God does exist; Jesus is very different from religion; we don’t really have control over our own lives; etc.
So, there is no sound, rational reason for rejecting Christ, and every reason to receive him. Anyone who rejects Christ, especially in hell, is not doing this freely. To refuse what you were created for and what will satisfy every longing and desire put within us by God, but to instead “choose” to remain in a state of torment and ongoing death, is not a free choice. It’s an insane one, one devoid of rational thought, just like the young man holding his hand in the fire. Just as Scripture describes the lost in this life, such a person is bound in deception and darkness. The question is what does God do with this person? Does he bring the young man to the point of clarity so he understands the insanity of holding his hand in the fire and can then make the free choice to remove it? Or does he say to the young man who is bound in delusion and completely irrational, “You want to hold your hand in the fire? Fine! I’ll make sure you hold it there forever!”
But some will say, “Yes, it’s insane and they’re deceived, but that’s just their nature! It’s their nature to reject God; that’s why they’re in hell!” But wait a minute. Let’s think about this again. Yes, we all have a fallen, sinful nature, but did we choose to have that nature? Did you choose to be born into a sinful, rebellious race? No, the Scriptures are clear about this: “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all” (Rom 11:32). We didn’t choose our sinful nature. All of us were subjected to this sinful nature (so that God could have mercy on all of us). God brought each of us who are now saved to the point of clarity and freedom where we knew the incomparable greatness of knowing Christ our Lord. That’s the only way we could be saved. Otherwise we remain bound in sin, rebellion, darkness, and death—not by free choice but because this was part of God’s plan. We were bound in disobedience. God freed us so we could make a free choice and choose life in him—just as he intended.
The very same thing is still true of the lost person in hell. They’re not able to make a free choice until God brings them to the point of clarity and freedom. Until then, they remain bound in sin, rebellion, darkness, and death—not by free choice but because it’s part of God’s plan. He’s bound us all in disobedience so he could have mercy on us all. And, just as with many of us, it can be a long, drawn-out process to bring us to that point of clarity, freedom, and surrender. God will use anything in our lives to bring us to this point of freedom of choice—even hell.
“But isn’t this torturing people until they give in? Isn’t this forcing them to believe?” Not at all. Most evangelical Christians are quick to describe hell as the absence of God. (This doesn’t necessarily mean that God can’t be active in hell. People in hell are experiencing ultimate alienation from God in a way that’s analogous to a child experiencing alienation from their parent while in time out. They’re strongly experiencing, from their perspective, the absence of their parent, even though their parent may be very close. This is why hell can be described as both being cast away from God, and torment “in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb [Rev 14:10].”) People insist on an existence without him, and so God complies, giving them what they think they want. The difference is that the Christian universalist doesn’t accept the idea that God unlovingly binds the lost eternally in their state of deception and delusion. He gives them what they think they want in order to show them it’s not really what they want! This isn’t torture, it’s punishment intended to bring clarity leading to repentance and restoration.
Anyone who’s struggled with addictions, or who has worked with those bound in addiction, has seen that some people have to hit absolute rock bottom before they come to a sense of clarity about their own problem. We see something similar in the story of the prodigal son and his father (Luke 15:11–32). The father gives the son his inheritance, hardening or strengthening him in his resolve and in his ability to pursue a self-destructive path, a path that would end in a pigpen—a horrible end that brings perfect clarity to this prodigal son. The universal reconciliation and restoration view is that, for many, hell is the pigpen. Hell is where many will come to that place of clarity and repentance. It’s the tough love of God, allowing his strong-willed, rebellious children to get exactly what they think they want, to show them what they really need and want. God will use anything—even our own rebellion—to bring the very last of his sheep back to him.
So, is this wishful thinking? Are we just making this up? What did we see when we searched the Scriptures in chapters 7 and 8? God desires to save everyone. We see this clearly in Scripture. We also see in Scripture that some people will be lost when they die and will experience hell. But we also saw passage after passage that tell us God will ultimately reconcile and restore everyone, all of his creation. And we saw in Revelation that even the evil, rebellious kings of the earth—who were cast into the lake of fire—eventually come into the city, the new Jerusalem, the heaven-on-earth church of God.2 This is God’s plan. He has bound everyone over to disobedience that he might have mercy on everyone.
The alternative is that either God doesn’t love some people and desire for them to be saved, or that he’s not able to save them. But we don’t see either of these in Scripture. We believe that God desires and intends to save everyone he has created, and that he is well able to accomplish everything he desires and intends. We believe that our perfect God has always had a perfect end for his perfect plan. As Thomas Talbott describes, he is the grandmaster chess player who doesn’t need to control our moves but who is always twelve steps ahead of us—and who is assured to win.3 And this is a good thing for all of us!
From chapter eleven, “Theological Challenges to Universal Reconciliation and Restoration” in Until the Last One’s Found: An Introduction to Universal Reconciliation and Restoration by Curt Parton.
Thomas B. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), 171–185.
Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed. (Eugene OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), 114–120.
Talbott, Inescapable Love, 170.