Is Israel Folau Right?

Israel Folau claims that a range of sinners will go to hell unless they do not repent. How does this stack up in terms of what the Bible teaches? This is not an easy question to answer in a few words, but in my capacity as a Biblical scholar, let me have a go.

It is true that the teaching of Jesus and the authors of the NT reject a range of sins as less than God’s ideal. This includes any sexual activity outside of monogamous, heterosexual, marriage. So this would include masturbation (this is debated, forgive the pun), sex before marriage, sex with someone other than your marital partner, sex with another being (e.g. an animal), and so on. These fall short of God’s ideal.

It is equally true that Jesus and the NT writers rejected a whole raft of other attitudes and behaviors, especially those that cause injustice and oppression. Materialistic greed was especially singled out. Similarly, bad attitudes like envy, arrogance, hatred, destructive speech, anger, violence, are all rejected. While the NT was not explicit on matters like sexism and slavery, many texts point to the end of patriarchy and the enslavement of the other. Jesus was opposed to anything that is unloving toward others and is destructive of relationships. This is why Christians were at the forefront of women getting the vote (e.g. Kate Shepherd) and ending slavery (e.g. William Wilberforce).

Now the NT is also clear that everyone is a sinner before God. God is articulated as holy, perfect, and pure, without any corruption. Humankind are all flawed, and stand before him as imperfect. So, we are all guilty of sin before God.

The end-game in the NT is that the final outcome of history is that from humankind, those who want an ongoing relationship with God and place their trust in him, will be with him forever. He will accept them into the age to come. He will remove their sinfulness from them once and for all. Only those who have been transformed in this way will enter into eternity with God.

The NT uses a range of terms to describe what is required to have God forgive us of our wrongs and accept us into eternity. Israel Folau picks up the term "repentance" or "repent." The Greek means "to change one’s mind." In a religious sense, it means turning from a desire and propensity to sin to an intention to no longer do so. In that the NT makes it clear that Christians are still sinners, this is about intention and desire as much as outcome. We seek to live the life God wants for us.

Yet, the main term the NT uses for qualifying for eternal life is not “repent” or “repentance.” Rather, it is “believe, have faith.” It is those who believe or place their trust in God and Jesus who will experience eternal life. Repentance language dies out through Acts, although it is there on and off, and there is a move to belief language as seen through John’s and Paul’s writings (also Peter and James). Paul in Acts is nicely summarised: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.”

The emphasis in faith is not what one turns from, but what one orientates their life toward: God and his Son. It also holds an implicit recognition that none of us are perfect even after coming to believe in Jesus. We do repent, but our repent is inadequate. Indeed, Christians are no or little better than other people who do not believe. In some cases, we are worse. What differentiates us should be our trust in God and his Son and our desire to be repentant (even if we are imperfect).

By choosing repentance language, Israel amplifies the negative rather than accentuates the positive. I would urge him to think about shifting his language to “repent and believe” or “believe.” E.g. “Those who do not believe in God will go to hell.” Yet, I would not use the latter phrase.

This brings me to the last part of that statement: “go to hell.” Hell is a complex idea among Christians and what it entails is far from agreed. Popular ideas of Christians believing that everyone goes to burn forever are actually increasingly rare. These owe their origins to Greek myth, Dante’s Inferno, and literal interpretations of texts that are metaphorical. To put it plainly, “fire” and “burning” in the NT is figurative language. We can see this in texts where fire and darkness are impossibly juxtaposed (e.g. Jude 6–7). Indeed, across the Bible, fire speaks of God’s judgment, and should not be read literally.

However, hell language is used, so what does it entail? This is uncertain. Some argue it points to an actual place where people live on but experience eternal suffering. Some think it merely points to living on with eternal separation from God and all that is good. Some go as far as speaking of eternal solitary confinement. Catholics hold to purgatory, a kind of middle ground, a temporary time of purification before eternal life. Some protestants hold a similar view; that, the gates of hell and heaven are always open and one can move from one place to the other. Others hold that hell is essentially a metaphor for being dead forever. Either, one is judged and then destroyed forever. Or, that when one dies, one stays dead forever (which is what secular people think happens to us all).

So, to use going to hell language is very unhelpful as it brings up a whole range of ideas that most Christians are uncertain of. It needs to be unpacked so much that is just breeds uncertainty. I don’t think we are meant to have a perfect and complete understanding of hell. All we need to know is that it will suck compared to the wonders of living on with God forever.

If we take a traditional view of hell, are all homosexuals going there? Even Israel does not fully answer the question. He says they must repent. What does that mean? Never do it again? If so, most of us are stuffed because we all tend to sin in our areas of weakness repeatedly. I do. Is perfect repentance required? Can one repent, muck up, repent again, muck up, and do this repeatedly and be saved? The language is not the best way to speak of what is required, and this is why the passages Israel quotes don’t use it. The language of faith and trust and a consequent intention to please God in all we do is what is required. We will stuff up, I do, but we seek God’s forgiveness, accept it, and go on, trusting in him, and praying that we have the strength not to do it again.

The Bible never says that those who are adulterers, gay, lesbian, greedy, prone to anger, who are jealous, patriarchal, arrogant, are definitely going to hell. It speaks of them not entering the kingdom of God. The same writer who says this, Paul, says clearly that entry into the kingdom is by believing. When we enter, we remain sinners, but declared righteous by faith. This includes all manner of sin. So we can't simply say that those who do such things are going to hell unless we rip the passages out of the context of Paul's whole theology. The truth of the gospel for Paul is that we are all sinners. If we believe, our sins are dealt with. We should seek not to sin, but if we do, God's grace will deal with it, if we truly believe. There are plenty of adulterers, idolaters, and heterosexual sinners who are trusting in this grace. The same goes for homosexuals as much as any group.

Furthermore, hell may not be a place. We all do these things. Let those of us who are not sinners, cast the first stone. We all do the things God does not want of us, to some degree, some of the time. It does not mean we go to hell, whatever hell is.

The wonder of the Christian message is not so much our propensity to sin (all guilty as charged), but that God still loves us and wants to be our friend. He extends grace to us. It is not so much that he is offended by our sin, but that he weeps over us being sinned against and broken. He wants us to realize he is there, come to recognize that Jesus is Him, injected into the world to show us what he is like. He yearns for us to come to him, broken and sinful, and ask his forgiveness and believe in him. If we do, he fills us with his Spirit and we live with him forever. First, in this life, him in us, strengthening us to face the challenges of life that come at us day after day. Second, on the other side of death, we will be with him forever. This offer is the same for rich and poor, male and female, slave and free, gay and straight. 

This offer is open to all humankind. It is not so much that people who do the things in the lists of Israel and the NT are “going to hell,” it is that we all do these things, yet, our God still wants to be our friend and walks with us through them.

Jesus was the friend of sinners. Sure, he warned them of eternal destruction in some form. This is necessary to rid the world of evil (to me, hell is just God ridding the world of evil). But more importantly, he offers another way. It is the way of faith in God and his Son, love of all people no matter who they are and what they have done, and hope in the eternal future we have with this God.

I would humbly suggest that all of us who are Christians are very careful with the way we attempt to articulate this message. Bald statements that all sinners are going to hell unless they repent are likely to offend more than invite. They are full of associations, many of which are unhelpful. They are in actual fact wrong, as it is not that simple. 

Interestingly, hell does not feature in any of the sermons of the first Christians recorded in Acts. Repentance is, but not eternal destruction. Rather, they painted a picture of Jesus as God’s presence in the world and invited people into this world.

As Jesus says in John 3:17, he did not come to condemn the world, but to offer himself to the world as its salvation and prime example. As the previous verse says, if we believe in him, we will not perish but have eternal life. We are all sinners. We all sexually sin. We cannot stop ourselves. This is our “orientation.”  This is where God stepped in. Knowing this, he entered history, showed us what love looks like, invites us into his life, urges us to go out and share this with the world with grace and mercy, and then to live with him forever freed from all the crap that fills our hearts. In this life, we should seek to stop sinning, whatever our predilection. But lets not pretend that we are not all in the same boat. 

I would urge all Christians to think very deeply how we articulate our message to the world. Otherwise, many will be reinforced in their rejection of it. In a world coming apart at the seams, it is our hope.