Will God Play Fair?

Is there a second chance after death? The common answer everywhere is this: We'll all pull through somehow. And lately a word has been added, "Easily."

There are those called Universalists, who say there is a disciplinary value in punishment after death, and then all are included in the universal salvation.

There is a sort of first-cousin group to these who would include Satan and his hosts. These call themselves Restorationists.

Others say that you won't have a second chance after death because there is no "you" left then. These say that if you believe in Christ you are saved, and if you don't when you die that’s the end of you. They call this Conditional Immortality. Others called them Annihilationists.

The common orthodox answer says if you believe in Christ you are saved, otherwise damned, unqualifiedly. This is the answer of a diminishing minority.

Now turn to the Book. It is the one dependable source of information. Its answer in effect is this: so far as the character of God's love is concerned man’s chance never runs out; but-underscore that but-but, so far as man's decision is concerned there is not another chance. And man's decision is the vital thing. He casts the decisive ballot.

The old Book is chock full of statements that death is the dividing line of opportunity. But it also makes it unmistakably clear that everyone shall have the fullest, fairest opportunity. And on his use of that opportunity hinges his future.

It is striking to find that God is controlled here by a principle of strong tender love. It is this: every man shall be utterly free to choose, and always will be, so far as God is concerned.

At the beginning of the Book there are two standing in a garden by a tree. It is distinctively the Tree of Choice. God is saying in effect: "Please don't eat of this tree, simply because I ask you not to.

   "This is your opportunity to choose to keep in intimate touch with me, with all that involves. But you're free to do as you please."

Now on the last page of the Book is this: "He that is set in his choice to be unrighteous, still let him be utterly free to follow the bent of his choice, even though it be to choose the wrong." And the threefold variation following gives the peculiar emphasis of repetition.

Now, slowly turn the leaves from first page to last. And you will find a ceaseless repetition of this. Choose; choose right; don't choose the wrong; but you choose, with countless illustrations of bad and good choice.

With that principle goes a process. It is the process by which man goes, the pen sticks in the paper with sheer pain-by which man goes to hell. No one is sent there, nor put there by superior physical force overcoming his own choice.

Every man there goes on his own feet, in his own shoes, by his own free choice, against the will of a brokenhearted God. In the Cain story he said, "Thou hast driven me out." But a few lines lower down it says that "Cain went out."

The Eden story uses the same words "drove out." Clearly the driving power was moral. Utterly abashed and humiliated before that pure Face, the guilty pair shrank away. The Book is full of just this.

Now, what are the chances that a man who chooses not to choose what he thinks the right now, will change his choice across the dividing line of death?

You know there is a science of chances. The life insurance companies do a business in billions, based on the findings of certain experts in the science of chances as applied to length of life. The Britannica has 28 pages of close print on the science of chances.

This is a question of chances. What are the chances here? Let me put it this way. The man who thinks in his inner heart he ought to accept Christ as his Savior now, with whatever chance of habit that implies, but he simply doesn't, he is a-listen softly, please, it's hard to tell the story lest it sound only harsh. He is a fool. He isn't even a bright fool. I'm talking just now solely from the standpoint of the science of chances.

Why? Because he has made a choice. And the choosing power in him is like the concrete mixer, it has become set. A hardening has begun. Not much, but some. And that goes on. It gets harder and more set, like the concrete. Until by and by it loses the power of changing.

For, mark keenly, the thing that softens a hardened will back to normal freedom of action is not pain, not suffering, not judgment. It is the thing commonly called the grace of God. This man shuts out the one normalizing factor.

And so I repeat again the sentence put down at the start. So far as the character of God's love is concerned man's chance never runs out; but-but, so far as man's decision is concerned there is not another chance. And man casts the decisive ballot.

The science of chances and the old Book of God tally. God may be brokenhearted by the way man uses his freedom of choice, but He never takes that freedom away.

God plays fair.

--S. D. Gordon