For several weeks on my recent radio shows, I explored the idea of exceptions regarding the command to consciously receive Christ as Lord and Savior.

 

For example, if a baby dies, naturally a baby does not get sent to hell by a loving God. That should be extremely obvious. We shouldn’t even have to discuss that one. And yet, people pose this question to me all the time. Entire denominations baptize infants, and although different churches have different reasons, some do so out of a genuine fear that an unbaptized baby will be sent to hell. So I did address this over the air by pointing to a Bible passage which went out of its way to say the obvious, that little children have no knowledge of good and evil (Deuteronomy 1:39).

 

We also looked at a verse which said that prior to the coming of Christ and spreading of the gospel,

God overlooked sincere ignorance (Acts 17). I added that I believe this would also apply to any culture today that never heard of Jesus. Not that ignorance would be an automatic ticket into heaven. Instead, God, who knows our hearts, is able to judge us according to what He knows we would have done if we had heard. He will apparently make this call based upon how we responded to our own consciences (Romans 2). When we were convicted of sin, did we cry out to whatever God might be out there, seeking His mercy, or did we ignore our conscience and rationalize our actions?(Luke 18:9-14)

 

Then, toward the end of the program, we got a call. Tim, our caller, asked about the person who did hear the Gospel but just wasn’t convinced it was true.  I gave a very quick answer to Tim.

I wished I’d had more time to offer a careful, detailed explanation which was certainly warranted by such a serious subject.

 

And so, over the air one week later, I explored his question again with detail and expansion. Here are the points I made:

 

God is concerned about the reason a person turns away from Christ’s forgiveness. It they are turning away because they would rather live a life of sin, this is the core problem. If, anybody knows or at least strongly suspects that Jesus is real, but they push him away for selfish, sinful reasons, that person will not spend eternity with God. On this matter, the Bible is abundantly clear.

 

Now, keeping that in mind, how does God feel about skeptics? If they are sincere skeptics, He has no problem. Paul sincerely did not believe in Jesus, but Jesus revealed Himself to Paul and then of course, Paul did accept Him. Thomas had doubts that Jesus had risen from the dead, but Jesus appeared to Thomas and then Thomas did believe.

 

You see, removing honest doubt is very easy for God. The barrier between God and man is sin, not doubt.

 

But there is also such a thing as an insincere skeptic. I often explain to people, “My friend, maybe you are not convinced, but let me say just as the apostles said; You can seek God through prayer. You can examine the historicity of the resurrection. You can examine the accuracy of the Bible, and the fulfillment of Bible prophecy.”

 

If somebody has been challenged, but they ignore the challenge, yes, they may stand before God on judgment day and say, “God I was never absolutely sure that this was true.”

 

But God will then say, “Why did you not take the time to pray, study, and seek? Was it because you did not want to believe this was true?”

 

So, yes, God will tolerate a sincere skeptic. But on judgment day, people and God will have a little discussion about how sincere or insincere their skepticism was.

 

The decision to deliberately refrain from seeking Christ for the reason that one would rather live a life of sin is the same as the decision to reject Christ after fuller knowledge.

 

Could there be other things that hinder a person from seeking, such as hypocrisy in the church for example? Yes. All I’m saying is; people should not play games. As human beings we have an incredible ability to rationalize.  God Himself will not be fooled.

 

One thing is certain: We will all stand before God someday and answer for the lives we lived.

If somebody is hearing a message about how this God reached out to them, wanting to forgive them, if only they would serve Him, and they choose to ignore the message rather than taking the time to investigate, there will be some accountability.

 

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