I have decided to transcribe my message about the fullness of God's love and the myth of hell that I shared in a
video
in January 2011 so that it can be read at any time. Besides, I don't
exactly speak in Queen's English, so my video might not have appealed to
as many people as I would have liked to. Here is the transcript for the
first half of the message. I have added subheadings where appropriate
to summarise the main points in my flow of thoughts. Enjoy. :)
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Hello,
I’m here to share the good news, and the good news of Christ is
something that we need to hear again and again every day – we need to
renew our minds, if we can.
Sometimes, faith comes by hearing.
Sometimes, faith comes by reminding ourselves, wherever we are, because
we are living in a world where there are condemning voices around us, if
not from our own conscience, it can be from other people, whether we
know them well or not. Sometimes, intentionally or unintentionally, the
way they treat us, the way they say something to us, we may all feel a
sense of condemnation, or a sense of being judged. But that is life;
that’s how life on earth is.
Maybe as children, we were not so
conscious of that, but as we grew up, we all tend to be more sensitive
and more conscious of how other people perceive us. It may come as early
as in our early teens, or in fact, children can be very sensitive
towards that. And of course, when we were very young, when we were still
babies, we probably were not that conscious because all babies probably
have only two fears to begin with – the fear of falling down and the
fear of being abandoned. But all other fears are learnt, as some
psychologists might observe.
The Good News is about the Love of God
So,
as we grow up in this life, we all need to have a sense of acceptance, a
sense of being cared for, because after all, God created us to be
loved. Out of that love, can we love ourselves and love other people.
So, it all starts with God. We can’t start with ourselves, no matter how
much we try to psych ourselves, or how much we try to meditate, or
refer to self-help books. But these only are temporary solutions.
There
is a deeper need in us, in every one of us, that God created
heart-shaped vacuum within us that can only be filled and satisfied with
the love of God. The good news is really about the love of God, and
that love is really beyond our understanding or human knowledge, that
Paul said that we might know the love of Christ – the length, the depth,
the height, the width – that passes knowledge. That love is something
that our human knowledge cannot grasp fully without the help of the Holy
Spirit because the Holy Spirit has been poured upon our heart to know
the love of God. And we need the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth
regarding how much God loves us.
Questioning the traditional concept of hell
Mainstream
Christianity or traditional Christianity has made it seem like God
loves everyone BUT… There is always a “but” at the end. For example,
those who don’t believe in Jesus Christ, they will be seen as forfeiting
the love of God, and the ultimate consequence for rejecting that love
of God by not believing in Jesus Christ would be to end up in a place
called “hell” or “the lake of fire” in the book of Revelation, but is
that really the truth?
Because as we think about the love of God
that transcends understanding, the love of God that passes all
knowledge, would it be possible that such a loving God would want, or
would allow, or would even create a whole time frame where finally all
those people who have not believed in Christ, or have not heard the
gospel therefore they did not have the chance to believe in Christ,
would end up in a place called the lake of fire where they would be
tormented day and night forever and ever? Is that really the truth? But
most areas, most aspects, most parts of the mainstream Christianity seem
to subscribe to that kind of teaching, even grace-based church.
So,
I want to address that because that is something that has to be… The
false doctrine will always hold people in bondage. This kind of
teaching, the “turn or burn” kind of doctrine – “believe in Jesus or you
will burn in hell” kind of teaching – will always turn other people
away, whether believers or non-believers because even some believers
will still question, “Oh, maybe there are some parts of the Bible I
don’t think is right, but because I’m a Christian, I’d better believe,
or else, just in case kind of thing.” Maybe their church elders may tell
them “Well, if you don’t believe in hell, then it means you are not
really a Christian.” That kind of thing only holds people in bondage.
Do we dare to rock the boat of Christianity?
So,
we are here actually, each one of us is born free. Ultimately, we all
do not like to be held in bondage in some ways. So, sometimes, we may
believe a lie because our pastor tells us so, or we don’t want to
question too much, we don’t want to rock the boat, and we are simply
satisfied to be just Christians and believe that “Oh, we are saved,
therefore I don’t have to bother about that, because anyway I am going
to heaven, and I really don’t have to find out more for myself, so that I
can share the good news in a more accurate way with others, and whether
others believe in Jesus, I don’t care. They can end up in hell for all
they want.”
But that kind of belies a certain self-righteous
attitude no matter how much we try to excuse ourselves because I came
from that kind of position before. I was self-righteous. I came to
realise that God’s love is much more than that. If I were to just ignore
this set of doctrine, ignore this false teaching on hell, and just live
my life like any other Christian in the evangelical or mainstream
circle, I would actually be forfeiting myself of knowing… I would be
robbing myself of the full benefits of knowing the fullness of the love
of God. And that includes whether God would really allow, or would
really want, or would really have in His plan of salvation where some
people will ultimately end up in the lake of fire to be tormented
forever and ever.
So, how can we reconcile the fact that God is
loving, and on the other hand, God, or rather we always say “Other
people send themselves to hell by rejecting Jesus Christ?” So, what is
hell like? And some people may say, “Well, I leave it to God, you know?
Let God do what is just. Some people just don’t believe in Jesus Christ.
Well, if that’s so, Lord, let God do what He wants. Maybe it’s torture.
Maybe it’s torment in the sense of… whatever it means. Because some may
say they are physically resurrected and then they will feel the pain or
feel the suffering, and the Bible talks about worms and all that.”
The symbolic language of the Bible
But
is that really the truth because the Bible is full of symbolic
knowledge? And the book of Revelation is actually full of symbolism
using the Jewish apocalyptic language, which unless we are familiar with
the Old Testament symbolism, we would tend to misinterpret, and I have
done that before. But we are here to know the truth because the truth
will always set people free – free from religion, free from
condemnation, free from fear, free from whatever that holds people in
bondage in some ways that deny them the freedom, the peace of mind that
they will feel at any point of time, not just when they are about to
die, but any point of time, they may feel a sense of alienation or
abandonment or being fearful that God will judge them if something goes
wrong in their lives, so we have to settle this once and for all.
So
this question of whether hell exists or whether hell is true or what
does hell really mean – it does not just apply to when somebody is
saved; it applies to even believers today because it will really affect
what we believe in about our God – the God that we believe in. Is He the
God of Christians only or is He the God of everybody?
What salvation really means
And someone might
say, “Well, are you saying that everyone will go to heaven without
believing in Jesus?” That
is another erroneous question; it’s not even a scriptural question to
start with because salvation is not about going to heaven; salvation is
about having your spirit, soul and body made whole in every way. The
word for “soteria” – that’s the Greek word for “salvation” – it means
preservation, health, wholeness, prosperity, deliverance, protection
from all dangers, deliverance from every evil in our lives, from lack,
from any kind of addiction. So, it’s an all-encompassing word
“salvation”. It is not “Oh, one day, we go to heaven.” That is actually
the wrong question to start with.
But unfortunately, even in the
evangelical world, even in the grace-based churches, “salvation” has
that kind of connotation that “oh, you are saved from hell”. But no, it
is not that. Yes, we use the Bible as our standard. Yes, we have the
Bible… Someone called it the “word of God”, and I don’t want to go into
that because the word of God ultimately is Jesus Christ, who is the
Living Word. The Bible - we should not take it literally or else it
becomes the “letter” that “kills”.
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3
that “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” and he said the
letter is simply when we take the Bible literally, it’s like using it as
the law to tell people do’s and don’ts, and that stems from the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, and that is actually bringing
condemnation into people’s lives, like you tell them “you have to do
this in order to become something”. But the truth of the gospel is that
we are already something – we are made in God’s image. There is nothing
that we can do to change our identity.
So Jesus came to actually
reveal (to) us that identity that has already been all this while, to
cause us to remember, to wake up from our amnesia that we are already
one with God, and we are made in His image. He has restored (to) us the
glory and honour that Adam and Eve used to have. So that is actually the
salvation that Jesus has come to give us in our spirit, soul and body.
When
we believe the gospel, we will benefit from that. We will enjoy the
benefits of salvation in this life. We know our sins are forgiven. And
that is another question, I mean, another topic altogether because “sin”
is actually referring to, or rather it applies to those who lived in
the Old Testament times. They were under the law; therefore, sin was
imputed to them. But we are not under the law in the first place because
we Gentiles live after AD70, after the destruction of the Jerusalem
temple, which actually signified the end of the old covenant age.
So
we are actually living in the new covenant age, which is also called
“the new heavens and new earth” in the last book, in the last chapter of
the last book of the Bible – the book of Revelation. So now that we are
living in the new covenant age, there is actually no “sin” issue. If
you want to talk about “sin”, sin is only a matter of the ignorance of
God’s love. Sin is called “missing the mark” or “falling short of the
mark”.
So, if you want to talk about sin, the Lamb of God has come
to take away the sin of the world. Well, in the Jewish context, it is
actually taking away the sin of unbelief, and the sin of not knowing who
they are. So, for Gentiles, you can still say the sin of unbelief, but
He has taken away that. And even if we don’t believe, God still sees us
righteous because 2 Corinthians 5:19 says that God in Christ has
reconciled the world to Himself. So we are all reconciled, as far as God
is concerned, He no more sees any sinner any more.
It is not as
if you say some magic words, and say “Oh, Jesus is my Lord and Saviour”,
and then God changes His mind about you. No, what and whether you
believe that Jesus is your Saviour or not does not change God’s mind
about you. God has already made up His mind that He has loved you with
an everlasting love and He has always seen you as His children. It is up
to you to believe that. When you believe, of course you benefit from
that. If you don’t believe, the truth is still that God sees you as His
children.
When you die, whether you believe or don’t believe in
Jesus, you will still be with God because the last chapter of the book
of Ecclesiastes says when a person dies, his spirit goes back to be with
God who gave it. So we will all still be with God forever.
So it
is a matter of “now”, here in this life. Salvation is for this life; it
is not for one day when we die. I think I covered that in my previous
video.
