Do Good People Who Don’t Hear the Gospel Still Go to Hell?
You may have heard this question before – “If a good man who lived alone on an island dies with no chance to hear the gospel, does he still go to hell?” People in every culture wrestle with this question, and Kurdish believers are no different.
It makes sense that Kurds would struggle with this issue, especially if they are the first generation of their family that has believed in Jesus. It’s not just some of their ancestors, but potentially all of them who have died and now spend eternity without Christ. Every parent, grandparent, great-grandparent, and renowned member of their family tree may have died with no witness to the gospel message and is now beyond hope. Because of this, the belief that only those who follow Jesus are saved can be very difficult for these Kurdish believers.
But it is somewhat strange that these believers struggle so much with this question. Because they, in one sense, are just like that man on the island, and they have now been unexpectedly reached with the gospel. As members of an unreached people group, they previously had no access to the gospel. They were cut off culturally, linguistically, or even geographically from the truth. And then one day they weren’t, because the gospel came to them.
I remember a new believer in Kurdistan asking the same question about an imaginary, isolated man in India, a place that to him must have felt like the remotest part of the earth. I smiled, knowing that many in America might ask the same question, but place the man in their example in the very country where we were sitting, having our discussion. I wanted to take my friend by the shoulders and say, “Brother, you are the man you are asking about. And look what happened to you!”
In truth, everyone struggles at some point with the fact that Jesus is the only way of salvation, no matter their language, culture, people group, or degree of isolation. This means that believers need to be ready to give an answer to this common question.
A good way to begin that answer is to call them to look in the mirror, to examine themselves. Any believer asking this question was also at one point truly “without hope and without God” (Eph 2:12). Yet because the Bible tells us that Jesus has other sheep that are not of this fold, and those sheep hear his voice, that believer was found by Jesus and enabled to hear the voice of the shepherd (John 10:16). Before he rescues them, Jesus’ sheep are scattered throughout the world and cut off from the truth. But the shepherd will find each and every one of them, just as he found the particular believer asking the question.
There is a second aspect by which those struggling with this question can be called to look in the mirror. Often, the emotional weight of the question is based on the belief that there are people out there who are better than the question asker. “I’ve got this holy uncle,” as it was once said to me. But in the real world, there are no holy uncles. When we look in the mirror, the person who looks back is someone who is deserving of hell because of their sin. And everyone else in the world, when they look in the mirror and their conscience is honest, feels that same truth down in their core. We all naturally know that we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 2:15).
However, we are easily deceived into thinking others are not like us, that other people are better than us, and don’t deserve hell. The main answer from church history to the man on the island question is still a strong one; namely, the question doesn’t work.
There are no good people. Only sinners, just like us.
Every person in the world is a sinner. And sinners are, by nature, separated from a perfectly holy God and cannot earn their way back to God by being good enough or through their good deeds. We who have come to believe in Christ can confess, along with the apostle Paul,
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
“We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ…because by works of the law no one will be justified” (Romans 3:23, Galatians 2:16).
We must then call the one struggling with this question to look from the mirror to the Bible. The Bible clearly commands that we take the gospel to the ends of the earth.
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt 28:18-20).
From the very beginning, Jesus has entrusted his Church with proclaiming the good news. Without the gospel, salvation is impossible.
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:18).
Believers are called to labor to get the gospel to every person, even those isolated on an island (1 Cor 9:22). The logic of scripture is clear – unless they follow Jesus, who is “the way, the truth, the life,” they are lost (John 14:6). If there were some kind of exception to this rule based on never hearing the message, then this would completely disagree with the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles and their global mission. If sinners can be saved by never having the chance to hear the gospel, then the Great Commission makes no sense, and it would be more loving to tell no one the gospel message.
Further, the logic of the scriptures is not that we are first condemned for rejecting the gospel, but that we are condemned for rejecting whatever spiritual light that we have. According to Romans, the man on the island has the law of God in some way written upon his heart (Rom 2:11-16). He has a conscience. He has access to creation, which preaches to him daily that there is a creator who is worthy of his worship (Rom 1:18-23). He himself is a witness to this truth, being made in the image of God. Even his unbelieving ancestors passed down to him fragments of truth that have survived in his fallen culture (Acts 17:23). Yet universally, each of these witnesses, whether a small light or a great light, is suppressed by each and every human heart.
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Romans 1:18-21)
This is why we are universally condemned, whether growing up on an island alone or with the strongest possible Christian family. Hell is deserved in each case. Hell is the just conclusion to every life, unless God miraculously intervenes and causes the sinner to hear the gospel and love the light, rather than suppress it.
How can it be right and just that after 2,000 years, some people’s ancestors have been granted access to the gospel while others haven’t? This doesn’t seem fair. Here, we must hold on to the mystery of how God has scattered his chosen sheep throughout time and history. There is much in this mystery of election to which we are not yet given full understanding, so we must trust in the goodness of God’s character (Rom 11:32-36).
Yet we also need to remember that what we know of church history is only a very small picture of everything that has taken place. As with history in general, the vast majority of records throughout church history have been destroyed, lost, or were never written in the first place. And yet what has been discovered is far more global in scope than most Christians are aware of. The ancient church didn’t just preach the gospel in the Roman empire, but also far beyond it. Ancient and medieval Christianity stretched from Ireland to China, to Ethiopia, India, the Arabian peninsula, and on up to Scandinavia. There are even old reports of Irish missionary monks 1,500 years ago embarking for North America in their one-man little boats.
Far more people groups than we might expect do indeed have a Christian history, or at least a period in history when their ancestors had access to gospel preaching. Remember how people from many countries, including the land of the Medes, were present in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost and heard the gospel preached by Peter. In fact, for many of the unreached people groups of Asia and North Africa, including the Kurds, the churches planted today represent a renewed witness, rather than the first one in history.
One Christian missionary in Uzbekistan visited the tomb of Tamerlane, the great destroyer of Christianity in Asia and the Middle East. He said over the grave of this once powerful man, “You’re dead, and we’re back.” Even now, medieval Christian graveyards are being discovered in faraway places like Kazakhstan, demonstrating that the Church throughout history took its command to make disciples from all nations very seriously. Certainly, in eternity we will learn some fascinating missions history that has never been told here on Earth. Yes, even among the Kurds, scholars say that there were many Christians in the past, even though recent centuries have been dominated by the darkness of worldly religions. In this, there is a degree of comfort for the Kurdish believer who feels that until his generation, God had left his people without a witness.
The exclusivity of Christ and the man on the island are questions that all believers from every background are likely to wrestle with. Limited human logic struggles to understand the wisdom of the sovereign God. Yet there are many good answers in the mirror, in the Scriptures, and even in church history that help us equip the struggling believer with solid truth. This is truth that strengthens us, but even more, truth that lifts our eyes to ask what it will take to reach those islands – to reach the isolated peoples of the earth that are still left.
Brothers and sisters, let’s follow the example of faithful believers from the past. Like the Irish so long ago, let’s get the little boats ready. And then go and reach that man on the island.
