I’ve been told there are three kinds of people in this world: those who can count and those who can’t.

But someone else said, “The three kinds of people in this world are those who make things happen; those who watch things happen; and those who ask, ‘What just happened?’”

But then I was told, “No, here are the three kinds of people: The have’s, the have-not’s, and the have-not-paid-for-what-they-have’s” (Earl Wilson).

But then along came Edward A. Murphy, Jr., the maker of “Murphy’s Law,” and he said, “No, there are two kinds of people in this world, those who divide people into two types, and those who don’t.”

I agree with Murphy that there are just two kinds of people in this world. And the two kinds are not the religionists versus the atheists. It is not the moral versus the immoral. Or the church-going, versus the church-avoiding, the wealthy versus the homeless, the young versus the old, the married versus the single...

It is those too good to need mercy versus those too wise to think they don’t. It it is those who say, “I can do it!” versus those who say, “God already did for what I could have never done!”

Would God Punish People Who Never Heard the Gospel?

You, I, and every human walking planet earth stands in one of these two camps. But no matter which camp we are in, you’ve probably entertained a question like this before: “How could God punish people who never heard the gospel before? Like those people on far off islands who will never hear a missionary tell them about Jesus—how could God still be righteous and send them to hell?”

Paul the Apostle tackled a very similar question in Romans 9. Here is how it came up: Paul listed the incredible advantages the Jew had over every other nation: They were adopted as God's child, witnessed God's burning glory enveloping the temple, received God’s promise that He would never forsake them and that He would be their God, given the Ten Commandments along with 603 other laws to show them how to live to please God, were provided with the entire temple service of priests and sacrifices where people could approach God and be forgiven of their sins, were promised huge blessings beyond any other nation, were in the line of Abraham, and to top it all off, they had the claim that Jesus Christ physically came from their own line (Rom 9:4-5).

But in spite of all these advantages, when God finally sent Jesus to save them from their sins, the Jews rejected him. But why? Why did they reject Jesus, the fullest revelation of God's Word? Naturally someone might question the validity of God's faithfulness, since after all, of all people these Israelites were the Navy Seals of religion (Rom 9:6). If anyone was going to receive Jesus as the Messiah, they would!

Yet though the Israelites stared Jesus in the face and watched miracle after miracle, they screamed "Crucify Him!" instead of "All hail the King!" Why? They failed to see their need for mercy. Instead of trusting Christ, God's gift of salvation, they trusted their religion. All those blessings of the temple, and promises, and lineage that were meant to turn them to Christ, ended up becoming replacements of Christ. What was supposed to prepare them for the Messiah became the sharp reed upon which they leaned. They didn't want Jesus. They found their security in religion. The very blessings meant to help them became their downfall.

From this story we encounter a powerful reality: Being forgiven of your sins, does not depend on your religious commitment. Find the most religious people on earth and you will find proud people trusting their liturgy, prayers, rituals, and songs to get God to owe them something. But this puts the burden of being forgiven on the sinner and his works instead of on God and His mercy.

So Paul corrects this erroneous thinking with a simple statement: "It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants" (Rom 9:8). Paul is saying that being a child of an Israelite and all the laws and promises and temple service that come with that won't save you. Then what does? Being a child of the promise! What promise? The promise that God would bless the world through Abraham's descendant. That descendant is none other than Jesus Christ (Gal 3:16).

All the religion and church attendance and Christian lingo in the world minus Jesus will do nothing but give a person a false sense of security, like running into a burning building in a fire coat made of Siran wrap. But Jesus Christ alone is ready not only to remove your sins and wash away your guilt, but to give you His righteousness and perfection, so that you too can be a child of the promise.

How Could God Both Love and Hate?

To make this as clear as possible, Paul draws an illustration from the sons of Rebekah, Jacob and Esau, her twin sons. While they were still in the womb, before they had done anything good or bad, God said, “Jacob I loved, Esau I hated" (Rom 9:13). Hate is a strong word. But this hatred is not the selfish hatred of a bitter God who enjoys punishing people. It is the holy hatred of a God who hates sin and loves righteousness.

Consider the Bible's teaching that God is not affected by time. He knew the sins Esau would some day commit even before he had done them. It was as if Esau had already committed every one, thus God’s response of hate was not one of cruelty but holy righteousness.

Let’s say that one day you are walking through the park with your six year old daughter. And a gang of three men runs up and begins to hit your daughter with baseball bats. Would you smile and say, “I love you guys!”? Never. You’d attack. You’d fight with all you got for the life of your daughter. Why? Because you love her and when anything threatens to defile that which you love, you are against whoever threatens. In a very real way, you hate the attacker. God loves holiness. And for God to be against those who sin, against those who defile His name by taking it in vain, by lying, lusting, cheating, stealing, or living for themselves instead of Him, it is only right and good of God to respond with a holy hatred.

But this means that Jacob’s sin was equally before God’s throne, equally dark and detestable to God, as is mine, as is yours. So when you begin to understand God’s righteousness, the question is no longer, “How could God hate Esau?” but “How could God love Jacob?” And it is no longer, "What about those people who never hear about Jesus?" but rather, "Why did God allow me to hear about Jesus in the first place?"

The Right Question

Charles Spurgeon once preached a sermon on this passage in Romans 9. After he finished, a lady walked up and said, “How could God hate Esau?”

And Spurgeon replied, “Oh, no, that is the wrong question. Instead we must ask, ‘How could God love Jacob?’” That's the question we must ask. it's not as if there are six billion innocent-until-proven-guilty people walking this globe, all waiting for the day when God decides if they did enough good to deserve heaven. God's standard for justice did not come from the American court system. It existed long before 1787. A more realistic picture is this: six billion guilty sinners, all wait on death row, already condemned (John 3:18), and their only hope is if the Judge walks in and gives them mercy.

Instead of trying to figure out how a righteous and just God could hate a rebellious man like Esau, let us instead ask how a righteous and just God could love a sleaze ball like Jacob. Read even one chapter on Jacob’s life from the book of Genesis, and you will find that there was no explainable reason why God loved Jacob. I remember as a child searching Genesis thinking, “Maybe Jacob did something good, maybe his prayers, maybe there was some sacrificial deed performed by Jacob, something, even a sliver of innocence in his heart that moved God to love him.”

But no. Jacob was a sleaze ball. He was a spiritual grease rag, a moral coward, a heel-grabbing manipulator who couldn’t go three days without deceiving someone. He was like a hacker who hacks into people’s accounts and steals their hard-earned money. If he was put on trial in America today, he’d be thrown into prison for white collar crime. And you look at his life and say, “How on earth could God love that man?”

Paul anticipates his readers asking the same question: “What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there?” (Rom 9:14). And he answers the question before they ask it, “May it never be! For He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion'” (Rom 9:14-15).

Mercy cannot be challenged by justice because it does not operate by the law of justice. Mercy flies too high. Justice is actually irrelevant when it comes to mercy. Mercy is not based on someone’s actions. It is founded purely on the grace of the one giving mercy. It has nothing to do with how bad or good the sinner is. It has everything to do with how merciful and kind the mercy-giver is!

So how could God punish people who never heard the gospel before, like those people on far off islands who never had a missionary sent to them? The answer is simple: God doesn’t owe anyone anything. The question assumes that God owes everyone an equal shot at being forgiven of their sins.

50 Criminals on Death Row

Fifty criminals on death row awaited execution. They were tried and convicted for crimes like murder, rape, and butchering children. Shortly before the execution, the state governor entered the prison and talked to a few of the prisoners. On his way out, he took three prisoners with him and set them free. No consequences. No bail to pay. Just free to go. Did the three walk out complaining, "Why on earth didn't you let the other forty-seven out?" Not at all. They knew the forty-seven deserved punishment just like they did. Instead they asked, "Why me? Why would you let me go? I don't deserve this!" Exactly. If they did deserve it, it wouldn't be mercy, would it?

So instead of asking, “Why did some people never hear the gospel?” let's ask a different question: “Why, God, were you so merciful to let me hear the gospel? Why, God, would you save me?” People don't go to hell because they didn't hear about Jesus. People go to hell because they are sinners.

God’s kingdom is not for a bunch of moral people all trying to get better. God’s kingdom is for dirty, bedraggled, sinful people like you and me, who can say, “I’m a Jacob! And God, I’ll never be good enough! So all I ask is for Your mercy!”

Paul drives home the amazing mercy of God in verse 16, “So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy" (Rom 9:16). Being forgiven of one's sins and being made right with God is not about finding out what I can do for God. It’s about believing in what He has already done for me, through Jesus Christ His Son.