Justification by Death

This week as our nation reflects on 9/11 I read a book written 10 years ago by R.C. Sproul, “When Worlds Collide.” It’s a wonderful read on the exclusivity of the Christian Gospel in comparison to the moral relativism of the day. He explains how one’s world view is defined by what they think of God, what they think of man, and the relationship between the two. The Christian worldview collides with the world’s endless stream of religions primarily because of the unique worldview of biblical Christianity.

To illustrate this fact, he makes an arresting statement about how so many religions and philosophies have argued about how a person is justified before God, how they can enter into heaven. He says:

The concept of hell has been all but erased from our consciousness. The currently most popular doctrine of salvation is not justification by faith, nor justification by works, but justification by death. In this view, all one has to do to be transported into heaven is to die.