They Are Without Excuse

2021-08-05

Some people have asked questions like this:

  1. What about the remote tribal person who has never heard the Gospel?
  2. Why did God wait for endless centuries before He sent Jesus, when all those people would have been damned?

The motive behind this question could be one of two things. Some people genuinely wonder whether God will give a free pass to those people who never heard the Gospel. Others do this to discredit the goodness of God, who withheld salvation from the vast majority of people throughout most of human history.

First, human beings are without excuse:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; (19) Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. (20) For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:18-20)

Knowing God’s power via the creation is called “general revelation.” One cannot really know God’s salvation in Jesus Christ via this form of revelation, but it should be enough to get people to recognize the power of the Creator God. For those who genuinely seek God, they will find Him. A possible example is the wise men who came to see the baby Jesus (Matthew 2:1-2).

In the Old Testament, there are plenty of people who existed outside the covenant people of Israel who knew about the Creator God. Before Israel was a nation, Job and his friends, contemporaries of Abraham (ca. 2000 B.C.), knew about the LORD, though many of them knew Him imperfectly. Melchizedek the king of Salem was another such contemporary (Genesis 14).

As Israel became a nation, many people heard of the fame of the events that happened in Egypt (namely, the 10 plagues and the Exodus). The nations of Canaan certainly knew. The Gibeonites seemed to fear the LORD, which led them to deceive the Israelites to spare their lives (Joshua 9). Balaam knew the LORD, though He did much wickedly for godless gain (Numbers 22-23). The Queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon (1 Kings 10:1-13).

In the New Testament, we see many examples of people who were not Jewish who worshipped the LORD, known as “God fearers.” Cornelius certainly was one (Acts 10), as was the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-40). Because of the Diaspora, many non-Jewish people came to know the God of the Bible long before Jesus came to save us.

Regardless of what we see in extrabiblical written records, there was plenty of witness throughout the ancient world of the Creator God. Now with the printing press and the Internet, the Gospel can go farther than ever before.

The question is, what do you do with this information? How are you going to propagate the message of the Gospel to reach people around you, or even to the ends of the earth?