Is God not the Saviour of unbelievers?

It is no secret that on the website GoedBericht.nl, the message of God as the Saviour of all mankind is central. Since the beginning (early this century), it has been prominently displayed on the front page of this site. I proclaim this with great boldness, because it is the essence of what Paul declares as a ‘mission statement’ in 1 Timothy 4:9–11.

This is a faithful saying and worthy of all welcome
(for for this we are toiling and being reproached),
that we have relied on the living God, Who is the Saviour of all mankind,
especially of believers.
These things be charging and teaching.

every word attacked

In every possible way, attempts have been made to undermine this message. Exactly what we could have expected, based on Paul’s statement. The most effective, and therefore most insidious, attacks are found in the Bible translations. For instance, the (Dutch) NBG-51 translation reads:

“… the living God is a Saviour FOR all men, especially for those who believe”

In this reading, God’s being a Saviour (= the Redeemer) is reduced to an offer. But in the Greek, we find the genitive case, so the unbiased reading ought to be “OF all men”.

The usually very precise Telos translation weakens the meaning of the Greek word sōtēr and renders it as:

“… the living God, who is a SUSTAINER of all men…”

This rendering is an unacceptable minimization of what the text says. The translators themselves acknowledge this, as they honestly add in a footnote: “elsewhere translated as Saviour.” But sadly, by then the damage in the translation has already been done…

Or what about the ‘New World Translation’ (of the so-called Jehovah’s Witnesses)?

“… the living God is a Saviour of ALL SORTS OF men…”

This too is a thinly veiled attempt to weaken the text. Paul uses the standard word for ‘all’ (pas in Greek), and nothing in the text gives any reason to dilute it by rendering it as ‘all sorts of’ or ‘various kinds of’.

from an unsuspected quarter

Yesterday I listened to a speech by a brother who wholeheartedly believes that God will ultimately save all mankind. But… so he argued, that truth is not relevant for today and therefore should not be emphasized in preaching at present. The initial title of his message was: ‘God is not the Saviour of the unbeliever’. The speaker reasoned that God saves only through faith and was able to support this from Scripture with ease. And rightly so, he also refuted the claim that all people are already saved, which is indeed plainly untrue, as I have also explained elsewhere. The speaker concluded: since all people are not yet saved, God is therefore not yet the Saviour of all mankind today. That seems logically reasoned, but it is a…

fallacy

That God is the Saviour of all mankind does not mean at all that all people are saved (completed). It means that He saves all mankind, regardless of when and how. It is a statement and declaration. Note that Paul writes: the living God is (present tense!) the Saviour of all mankind. He does not write that God will be or shall become that. Based on the speaker’s explanation, the text should have read:

… the living God WILL be the Saviour of all mankind, but IS that EXCLUSIVELY of believers.

The speaker’s conclusion, in my view, misses the mark in two ways. (1) He denies that God now IS the Saviour of all mankind and (2) he denies (de facto) that God is especially (most of all, particularly) the Saviour of believers, by claiming that God is exclusively the Saviour of believers.

undermining

What the speaker did in his message is not an attack on the truth that all mankind will be saved. But it is a distortion of the relevance, the power, and the significance of that truth. According to the speaker, the focus should not be on the message of the Saviour of all mankind, because this would pertain to ‘a distant future’. No, the emphasis should be on “… especially of believers.” But does the speaker thereby do justice to what Paul emphatically brings forward? No, on the contrary, because Paul himself says of this truth:

1. it is the faithful saying;
2. it is worthy of all welcome;
3. for this he toiled;
4. for this he was reproached;
5. and: be charging and teaching this!

Not by denying that God saves all mankind, but by teaching that this message should not be told to everyone, the Evangel is nonetheless rendered ‘harmless’. Its explosive power lies precisely in the fact that it is a Good Message for everyone and that no one can add to it, do anything for it, or take anything away from it.

especially of believers… in what?

When Paul writes: “especially of believers,” he is referring to those who believe the “faithful saying” for which he labored! And what is that “faithful saying”? That “the living God is the Saviour of all mankind”! The whole idea that it is not about “the Saviour of all mankind,” but about being a believer, is in light of this Scripture utterly absurd! For a believer is precisely someone who believes “the faithful saying”! And an unbeliever is someone who does not believe, does not accept, or even reproaches “the faithful saying.”

God is the Saviour of all mankind. That means that even if you do not believe it, God is still your Saviour. However, if you are granted to believe this (for God opens the eyes for it), then God is especially your Saviour!

Delen: