What Will Happen to the Innocent People Who Have Never Heard About Jesus and the Gospel?

This question comes from a list of questions that a local youth apologetics group must be prepared to answer. I have prepared this article to present to the group to help them formulate their own unique responses to the question. I also have an older, similar article entitled “If someone has never heard about Jesus in his entire life, will he still go to hell?” that you might also find helpful.

This question often omits the word “innocent,” (e.g., “What will happen to those who have never heard about Jesus and the Gospel?”) but the question is the same--innocence is merely implied. But whether innocence is implicit or explicit in the question, it commits the fallacy of the complex question either way--much like the classic example “Have you stopped beating your wife?”

Caught on the Horns of a Dilemma

If you focus on the concept of innocence, knowing that God is perfectly just and would never condemn the righteous, and answer, “They go to heaven,” you would first of all be guilty of mishandling and misrepresenting Scripture (we’ll get to that in a minute). Secondly, if your answer were true then your interlocutor could rightfully demand that you stop telling people about Jesus so that they can go to heaven. Your feeble attempts to “save” people would only be snatching them off of the heaven-bound train of ignorance and throwing them into the pit of hell when they reject your message. Thus you would be accomplice to condemning people to an eternity of torment.

But if you answer, “They will spent an eternity in Hell because they have not believed in the One whom God has sent.” Your interlocutor is going to declare God to be an immoral monster who punishes innocent people for eternity just because they haven’t heard about some guy named Jesus who lived 2,000 years ago in Palestine.

We seem to be on the horns of a dilemma. So, how do we answer the question? Simple—go between the horns.

Poking the Bull In the Eye

In isolation, this question is difficult to answer adequately because the notion of innocence has no context--no precise definition. In an actual conversation, I would follow the example of Greg Koukl in his excellent book Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions, and ask some clarifying questions:

“What do you mean by innocence?”

“Innocent of what?”

“How is innocence (or guilt) determined?”

“Who sets the standard for innocence?”

A follow-up to each question might be, “How did you come to that conclusion?”

Often times, this question is used as a red herring to take the pressure and weight of the Gospel off of the shoulders of your interlocutor after you have presented the gospel to him. This is a tactic that we see employed by the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 to get Jesus to stop talking about her questionable life choices.

So, in this case a reasonable response would be to go between the horns and poke the bull squarely in the eye: “God will figure that out. The real question here is that you have heard about Jesus and the gospel, so what are you going to do?”

But alas, this is a monologue rather than a conversation so we cannot start from an interlocutor’s reasoning and work our way to Scripture; rather, we shall have to start with Scripture and work our way back to the question at hand.

Apologia, Not an Apology

When I posed the question to a young man I know, his immediate retort was “All the innocent people who have never heard about Jesus and the Gospel will surely go to Heaven; but there are are no innocent people, so they’ll all go to Hell instead.”

He hit the nail on the head. This might seem a bit too blunt, but we need not sugar coat the truth or beat around the bush. We are called to give an apologia--a reason for what we believe (with gentleness and respect)--not apologize for it. People need to hear the unvarnished truth of the Word of God, not our flush-faced, sweaty-palmed attempts to get God off the hook.

No One is Innocent

The question presumes the existence of innocent people (which, for our purposes, I will take to mean “Those who are entirely and consistently pure in thought, word, and deed”), but Scripture disabuses us of this mistaken notion:

For all of us have become like one who is unclean,
And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;
And all of us wither like a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
– Isaiah 64:6

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
— Romans 3:23

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned
— Romans 5:12

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.
— Psalm 51:5

This last verse—Psalm 51:5—drives home a point that should not be missed: we are not sinners because we sin; rather, we sin because we are sinners. From the instant we are conceived in our respective mother’s wombs, before we have the opportunity to do anything good or bad, right or wrong, we are stained with the indelible ink of sin. We are not holy. We are not pure. We are not perfect. We are fundamentally and fatally flawed, deserving death and quite unworthy to stand in the presence of a holy God (Isaiah 6:5), let alone dwell with him forever in heaven.

Death: The Consequence of Sin

Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. This death is realized in two realms:

Physical - the separation of the spirit from the body (Genesis 5:5), and
Spiritual - the separation of our spirit from God (Genesis 3:8, Isaiah 59:2)

We have what I call “spiritual inertia.” We are all born dead—spiritually dead, that is, separated from God—and unless some outside agent acts upon us during our short time on earth, we will all continue in this state of separation from God in a very real place called Hell after we die.

But, of course, the beauty of the Gospel is that even though we fully deserve the wrath of God for our sins of commission and omission alike, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). And we have the promise that if we but confess with our mouths and Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead (Romans 10:9), then we will be saved. There is no other way--Jesus is the only way to the Father (John 14:6).

No Excuses

So, really, what about the guy who never had the chance to respond to the gospel? Does God condemn him to Hell because of his ignorance? No, the man is condemned because his sin separates him from God. Will he be judged for rejecting a gospel he has never heard? No, of course not. As Jesus told the Pharisees in John 9:41: “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.” Simply put, we are only held accountable for that which we know.

But what is it that we know?

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.
— Romans 1:18-23

Based upon this passage, there are two things that condemn us...did you catch them?

We are condemned by an internal knowledge of God (“...evident within them…”), an innate knowledge of his existence and of right and wrong--we call it a conscience; and
We are condemned by evidence of a creator in nature (“...through what has been made…”)—God’s fingerprints are everywhere, e.g. in the stars wherein the glory of God is declared nightly.

No one will be able to stand before God and say “I never knew.”

Dan KreftJanuary 17, 2019