Can Souls Be Scared into Heaven?

00:00:05.000 | Pastor John, my name is Chase and I'm a senior in high school.

00:00:09.000 | I'm wondering if you could shed some light on an issue I've been wrestling with the past few months.

00:00:14.000 | The best way I can phrase my question is this.

00:00:16.000 | Does turning to Christ, motivated by a fear of avoiding hell, qualify as a legitimate form of saving faith?

00:00:24.000 | In other words, can someone be scared into heaven?

00:00:27.000 | Verses like Acts 8, 24, in my experiences in the church and in evangelism, make me think the answer is no.

00:00:35.000 | But I just read Jonathan Edwards' sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,"

00:00:39.000 | and he seems to think the answer is yes, and beyond him, Christ warns about hell a lot.

00:00:45.000 | That makes me think the answer is yes, that fear of hell can save a sinner.

00:00:50.000 | I don't want the comfortable answer here, Pastor John. I want the truth.

00:00:54.000 | So please help me. What would you say?

00:00:58.000 | Well, I am really glad that this question comes right now because it lets me perhaps kill two birds with one stone.

00:01:09.000 | A while back, I spoke in Vancouver at a Look at the Book conference, and a man named Andrew,

00:01:18.000 | and I'm saying his name so that he'll know I'm talking to him because I just wrote him a letter today

00:01:22.000 | to say I recorded my answer to your letter.

00:01:25.000 | Very smooth.

00:01:26.000 | So we got Chase and we got Andrew, and we're talking to both of them,

00:01:30.000 | and what Andrew asked me was a similar kind of question.

00:01:36.000 | He said, "I have no qualms when you say a person comes to saving faith by seeing the beauty of Christ's crucifixion

00:01:48.000 | and how it displays Christ's glory, but where I get confused," this is an exact quote now,

00:01:54.000 | "where I get confused is when you have stated that a person should not think they are truly converted

00:02:02.000 | if they come to Christ for any other reason than for Christ himself."

00:02:08.000 | Okay, so that's—you can see how similar the questions are.

00:02:12.000 | Chase is asking whether you can be truly converted if you are motivated by fear or desire to escape hell,

00:02:19.000 | and Andrew is asking whether you can be converted if you come to Christ for any other reason

00:02:24.000 | than the motive of fellowship with Christ himself or the enjoyment of the glory of Christ himself.

00:02:30.000 | So they're really very similar questions.

00:02:33.000 | So here we go. "It is not bad to be motivated by fear to fly away from hell into the arms of Jesus

00:02:46.000 | and there discover that he is 10,000 times better than anything, including hell."

00:02:55.000 | That's not bad. In fact, that's normal. I'd say that's normal.

00:02:59.000 | In other words, many motivations, many impulses, many experiences in life may drive us to Jesus.

00:03:09.000 | Whether those motivations and impulses and experiences prove to be a means of salvation

00:03:18.000 | depends on what we make of Jesus when we get there.

00:03:23.000 | It might be a car wreck. It might be cancer. It might be anything. Anything can drive us to Jesus.

00:03:30.000 | So what drives us there is not what saves us. What saves us is what happens when we get there.

00:03:38.000 | Now, the same thing would be true of positive motives alongside Jesus. That's Andrew's question.

00:03:47.000 | We may be drawn by desire for forgiveness or desire to be free from a guilty conscience

00:03:57.000 | or the desire to have a meaningful life or the desire to belong to a loving group of people

00:04:06.000 | because these church people seem nice or the hope of being free from disease someday.

00:04:12.000 | That's a nice promise to have. Now, none of those desires is evil. They're all good.

00:04:19.000 | And they may function as motives to lead us to Christ who bought all those things for us.

00:04:30.000 | But again, the question of whether they prove to be means of our salvation

00:04:36.000 | is what we make of Christ when we come to him.

00:04:40.000 | Now, my guess is that virtually all Christians—and Andrew makes this point explicitly in his note—

00:04:48.000 | are motivated by desires that we have in addition to the desire to see Jesus himself and be with Christ himself.

00:05:00.000 | In other words, almost everybody comes to Christ with desires for more things

00:05:06.000 | in addition to being with Christ himself.

00:05:11.000 | It seems to me this is inevitable, not only because the way we were created and have physical appetites,

00:05:18.000 | which we can't stop, like hunger, like food. I like food because I'm made to like food and others.

00:05:26.000 | But it's true also because the Bible itself holds out to us promises and blessings

00:05:34.000 | that include satisfaction of those appetites. It pictures the future as a banquet.

00:05:39.000 | And there's all kinds of pleasures that are held out to us that are pleasures besides being in the presence of Christ.

00:05:51.000 | So let me throw out a few passages of Scripture that shed light on why I emphasize what I do.

00:05:58.000 | Here's Luke 12, verse 4. "I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body,

00:06:05.000 | and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear.

00:06:09.000 | Fear him who, after he is killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.

00:06:16.000 | Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies, and not one of them is forgotten before God?

00:06:21.000 | Why, the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not. Fear not. You are of more value than many sparrows."

00:06:29.000 | So we're told to fear God because he can cast into hell, and then we're told not to fear him

00:06:36.000 | because we're more valuable than sparrows. And I think the proper function of fear in those verses

00:06:43.000 | is to warn us that it is eternally deadly to fear man. In other words, fear the consequences of God's judgment

00:06:55.000 | and let it drive you to be unafraid of God in the presence of Christ.

00:07:03.000 | Let it drive you away from fear of man into trust in Jesus so that you can realize

00:07:11.000 | that you're more valuable than sparrows, and therefore fear not.

00:07:16.000 | Here's another one. It says the same kind of thing. Romans 11 20. "You stand fast through faith,

00:07:22.000 | so do not become proud, but fear." Now what does that mean?

00:07:28.000 | "You stand fast only through faith." So trust him. Trust him. "Do not become proud, but fear."

00:07:33.000 | Fear what? Well, fear not trusting him. Fear becoming proud. Fear the horrible consequences

00:07:39.000 | of turning away from Jesus, and let it drive you to him and his gracious promises.

00:07:45.000 | So I think fear has a powerful, appropriate, biblical function and role to play

00:07:54.000 | in maintaining the very faith that overcomes ungodly fear.

00:08:02.000 | So what I want to maintain and to emphasize is that if we come to Christ only motivated by fear,

00:08:10.000 | this is answering Chase's question, I hope. If we come to Christ only motivated by fear

00:08:17.000 | or only motivated by desire for something other than the glory of Christ,

00:08:22.000 | and that's addressing Andrew's question, in either case we're not converted.

00:08:27.000 | I say that again because I don't know if they're going to like it. If we come to Christ

00:08:32.000 | and all we feel moving us, holding us there, is fear, or if we come to Christ

00:08:41.000 | and all we feel holding us in his presence is his gifts and not himself,

00:08:47.000 | then we're not saved. And here's why I say that. 1 Corinthians 16 22.

00:08:53.000 | "If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed."

00:08:59.000 | So if you don't love the Lord, you just love his gifts, you're cursed.

00:09:03.000 | Here's another one. 1 Peter 3 18. "For Christ also suffered once for sins,

00:09:09.000 | the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God."

00:09:15.000 | And if we don't want to be with God, if all we want—all we want—is a disease-free heaven

00:09:22.000 | with lots of physical pleasures there, and we don't really care whether God's there or not,

00:09:27.000 | if I don't have any pain anymore, then we're not saved.

00:09:31.000 | Here's another one. Philippians 3 8. "For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things,

00:09:36.000 | and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ."

00:09:40.000 | Now, here's the key. "In order that." I count everything as rubbish in order that.

00:09:46.000 | What does that mean? In order that I may gain Christ.

00:09:50.000 | I think it means that you don't gain Christ if you love your rubbish more than him.

00:09:57.000 | If you just have rubbish and Christ, and you don't see Christ as superior to the rubbish,

00:10:04.000 | you don't gain Christ. That's the logic of verse 8 of Philippians 3.

00:10:09.000 | So I want to emphasize that if we come to Christ only held there, put there and held there by fear,

00:10:18.000 | or only put there and held there by some gift of Christ and not his glory, no, we're not saved.

00:10:27.000 | So in answer to Andrew's question, I don't mean to teach—I think he misquoted me.

00:10:33.000 | I hope he misquoted me. I mean, I might say things wrong, but I don't mean to teach

00:10:38.000 | that it is illegitimate to desire other things besides Christ when we come to Christ.

00:10:48.000 | Rather, what I mean to teach is that if we do come to Christ with the desire for other things besides Christ,

00:10:58.000 | we must desire Christ more than the other things.

00:11:02.000 | And the reason is because of Matthew 10:37, "Whoever loves mother or father more than me is not worthy of me,

00:11:10.000 | and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

00:11:14.000 | So it's okay to love your mother and father, just not more than Jesus.

00:11:18.000 | And if they've died and gone to heaven, it's okay to want to see them someday, just not more than Jesus.

00:11:24.000 | We're idolaters. If we love any good thing more than we love Jesus—

00:11:30.000 | and here's one more thing—as we mature, we will come to experience the reality that we taste Christ

00:11:41.000 | not simply as sweeter than all other things, but that we taste Christ as the best sweetness in all other things.

00:11:53.000 | So, in summary, yes, we can be motivated to come to Christ out of fear, and that may be a good thing,

00:12:03.000 | provided that when we come to Christ, we want Christ and not only his gifts, and we want him more than his gifts.

00:12:13.000 | Beautiful. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for the question, Chase.

00:12:17.000 | And Andrew, thank you for the question. Andrew, I hope you get this episode sent to you somehow.

00:12:22.000 | And for everything you need to know about this podcast, you can go and find it at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:12:32.000 | Well, a listener from Hong Kong writes in to ask, "Why are all those Old Testament commands and laws no longer binding on the Christian?"

00:12:40.000 | It's an important question, and John Piper will sit down with us again tomorrow and explain.

00:12:45.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:12:49.000 | [Pastor John's Podcast - Ask Pastor John]

00:12:54.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Can Souls Be Scared into Heaven?

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