16. Conclusion: All Truly Will Be Well

I began this section with a question: Is universal salvation actually biblical? I did not want merely to prove that a handful of beautiful verses could be interpreted universally. I wanted to know whether the whole biblical witness could sustain that hope. That meant taking seriously not only Scripture's magnificent promises of restoration, but also its most difficult passages about judgment. So throughout this section, I have examined both. I have considered the passages proclaiming that God desires all people to be saved, that Christ draws all people to himself, that all who die in Adam will be made alive in Christ, that God has bound all over to disobedience so that He may have mercy on all, that God is reconciling all things through Christ, that every knee will bow, every tongue confess Jesus Christ as Lord, every enemy ultimately be subjected, death itself be destroyed, and God finally become all in all. And I have tried to face the judgment passages honestly too. Jesus' warnings. Gehenna. Aiōnios punishment. Destruction. Exclusion from the kingdom. The warnings in Hebrews. Paul's judgment passages. Revelation. The lake of fire. The second death. The Book of Life. The beast worshipers. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I did not want to build universal salvation by ignoring those texts. I wanted to understand them. And after examining them one by one, I reached a conclusion that changed my understanding of God more deeply than I expected: I do not believe Scripture teaches that God's judgment of human beings is endless. The judgments are real. They can be terrible. They can involve exclusion, destruction, loss, discipline, punishment, anguish, and consequences far beyond anything we should take lightly. But I came to believe that eternal conscious torment is not what these texts themselves actually say. It is an interpretive conclusion Christians have brought to them. And I no longer believe that conclusion fits the larger biblical story.

The story Scripture tells is not ultimately about God preserving part of His creation forever in rebellion. It is about God defeating rebellion completely. Not merely punishing sinners forever. Transforming sinners forever. Not allowing death to retain part of humanity eternally. Destroying death for all time. Not endlessly preserving enemies as enemies. Reconciling enemies and restoring them. Not judgment triumphing over mercy. But: “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” — James 2:13 That does not make judgment unreal. It tells us which has the final word. Judgment Is Real—But Judgment Is Not the End Universal salvation is sometimes caricatured as though it means: Nothing really matters. Everyone gets saved anyway. I believe almost the opposite. Sin matters profoundly. What human beings do to one another matters. The abused matter. The trafficked matter. The murdered matter. The oppressed matter. The person destroyed by another human being's greed, hatred, lust, violence, or indifference matters. Justice matters. Truth matters. Repentance matters. Consequences matter. Universal restoration does not require God to ignore evil. It requires Him finally to defeat it. A murderer cannot enter God's restored creation still loving murder. An oppressor cannot remain an oppressor forever. A trafficker cannot remain someone who desires to exploit another human being. A liar must become truthful. The cruel must become loving. The proud must become humble. The unjust must become just. The wounded must be healed. The guilty must face truth. What has been broken must, as far as God's wisdom permits, be put right. That is why restorative judgment is not weak judgment. It is judgment that actually accomplishes something. Punishment that continues forever while the sinner remains forever sinful does not finally remove evil from creation. God's victory is greater than that.

He does not merely punish His enemies. He makes enemies cease to be enemies. That is reconciliation. The Implications Are Enormous If this understanding of Scripture is correct, universal restoration changes far more than our doctrine of the afterlife. It changes how we understand election. God's people are not chosen because everyone else will be eternally punished. Abraham is chosen so that the nations will be blessed. Israel is called to be a kingdom of priests. Christians are sent into the world. Election is vocation (Genesis 12:3; Exodus 19:6; Matthew 28:19–20). Blessed to be a blessing. It changes evangelism. The gospel is not: Escape infinite torture before it is too late. It is: Be reconciled to God. Enter His life now. Leave destruction behind. Receive the Spirit. Become part of God's people. Learn to love. Become like Christ. Join God's work of restoring creation. That really is good news. It changes how we relate to God. If God's final purpose is restoration, we do not have to live beneath the terror that someone we love may pass beyond the reach of divine mercy forever. We can take judgment seriously without believing judgment is God's final word. We can pray. We can evangelize. We can plead. We can work. We can love. But beneath all of that can be something I struggled for years to possess: rest. And it changes how Christians understand justice. If God's justice ultimately seeks truth, protection, repentance, healing, restitution, righteousness, and restoration, then Christian justice should never be less restorative than the justice of the God Christians proclaim. Restorative does not mean permissive. Victims must be protected. Truth must be told. Dangerous people may need restraint. Positions of authority may be lost permanently. Consequences can be severe. But the goal of God's justice is not suffering for suffering's sake. It is the defeat of evil. And all of these implications eventually brought me back to something even more personal: Who did I believe God actually was? Coffee, Tears, and the Goodness of God

I sat at Starbucks staring at my computer with tears streaming down my face. I had always hoped universal salvation was true. For more than four years, I had been studying Scripture trying to understand whether it was. After about three years, I had become convinced that universal salvation was true because the biblical promises seemed overwhelming to me. God desires all to be saved. Christ draws all. All are made alive in Christ. God has mercy on all. All things are reconciled. Every knee bows. Every tongue confesses. Death is destroyed. God becomes all in all. I believed those promises. But I still did not fully understand the judgment passages. And because I did not yet understand them, I developed another way of holding onto hope. I reasoned that perhaps some biblical passages really did announce eternal conscious torment—or at least permanent destruction or separation from God—but that intercession could somehow alter that outcome. Scripture contains remarkable examples in which God responds to intercession and relents from announced judgment (Exodus 32:10–14; Numbers 14:11–20; Amos 7:1–6). So I hoped: perhaps universal salvation could still happen because people could intercede. Perhaps God's announced judgment could be lessened. Perhaps it could be removed. I did not realize what this revealed about my remaining picture of God. Underneath my reasoning was still an assumption that I and others might somehow need to persuade God toward greater mercy. God had announced the terrible judgment, I thought. We needed to plead with Him not to carry it out forever. I still did not understand how good God was. I did not fully understand that when I desired every human being to be saved, I was not standing over and against God's heart and final intentions for every human being God crated. I was reflecting it. God loves the world infinitely more than I do. When Christians intercede for people who do not yet know God, we are not trying to make a reluctant God become merciful.

We are participating in God's merciful purposes. Intercession matters. Scripture shows that prayer can affect judgment and history. But our prayers do not create God's desire to save. That desire was His before it was ours. His heart did not need to become more loving. Mine needed to understand His. And then, after another year of study, something finally changed. As I completed my final articles examining the biblical judgment passages, passage after passage began to fit together. I realized that eternal conscious torment was not hiding inside these texts waiting to be discovered. The passages taught judgment. Serious judgment. Sometimes frightening judgment. But I no longer believed they taught punishment that consciously continues without end. And as that realization settled over me, I could not stop crying. God Really Was This Good Second Peter says that God is patient, “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). For much of my life, I automatically heard the word perish through the theology I had been taught: God does not want people to suffer eternally, so He delays Christ's return to give them one final opportunity to escape that fate. But as I studied the biblical language more carefully, I realized that the word itself does not mean eternal conscious torment (Strong’s G622; Thayer, G622). The text does not say that God is delaying because He plans otherwise to torment these people forever. And within the larger biblical picture I was discovering, the verse began to reveal something beautiful to me: God does not merely oppose endless punishment. He wants people to escape even temporary judgment through repentance, because His heart is mercy. He judges when love and justice require it, but He would rather forgive, heal, and restore. He is patient.

He wants repentance. He does not punish because suffering pleases Him. He judges because righteousness and love require evil to be confronted. Judgment is not the opposite of His love. Properly understood, it is one of the ways His love sets creation right. And suddenly something in me began to heal. I had spent most of my life believing that eternal conscious torment was God's plan for many—perhaps most—human beings. Then, for a period of time, I had believed that perhaps it was what God had announced, but intercession might persuade Him not to carry it out. Now I believed something radically different: Eternal conscious torment was never God's plan. It was never the ending He intended for His creation. God intends to save. God intends to reconcile. God intends to restore. And it brought me to tears. God really was good. God really was the most amazing Father – and Mother. His judgments were not arbitrary. They were proportional to wrongdoing (Romans 2:6; Luke 12:47–48). They were purposeful. He did not delight in suffering. He judged because love refuses to leave evil forever untouched. I kept crying on and off as I finished the articles. Partly from relief. Partly from joy. Partly because it felt as though an enormous weight I had carried almost my entire life was finally beginning to disappear completely. God will save all. That is His heart. That is His purpose. And He will accomplish what He intends. A Million Dreams As I finished those articles, I was listening to “A Million Dreams” from The Greatest Showman. In the film, the song expresses the hope of imagining a world that does not yet exist—a better, more beautiful world—and holding onto the belief that what seems impossible might someday become real. That idea hit me with unexpected force in that moment.

I have carried so many dreams for this world. I dream of human trafficking being completely defeated—not merely reduced, but gone. I dream of a world in which no child is sold. No woman is exploited. No vulnerable person is treated as an object. I dream of every person knowing God. I dream of every student I have ever taught personally knowing the God who loves them so deeply. I dream of all people learning to love one another. I dream of hatred ending. Violence ending. Exploitation ending. I dream of every wounded, sick, and disabled person being healed. Every sinner being restored. Every broken relationship being restored. Every lie exposed. Every injustice answered. Every person finally coming home to God. And sitting there, listening to that song, I slowly began to realize: My deepest dreams for humanity will actually come true. Not because I had dreamed something greater than God had imagined. But because what I was longing for was a reflection of what God Himself had promised. I did not need to persuade God to want human trafficking abolished forever. He hates evil more than I do. I did not need to persuade God to love the people I loved. He loves them more than I do. I did not need to persuade God to desire every sinner's restoration. He had already revealed His desire. These hopes were not dreams I had to convince God to share. They were echoes of His purposes for creation. And when that realization finally sank in, I could not stop crying because I was so happy. God really does intend to restore all things—and I did not have to persuade Him to want that. This was His purpose before it was ever my dream. I could simply trust Him, join Him in His work, and rejoice in the goodness of the God who had always loved the world far more deeply than I ever could. God’s plan for this world is not: fewer people trafficked. But trafficking gone. Not merely: more people healed. But all of creation healed. Not merely: more people know God. But every knee freely bowed, every tongue confessing, every creature reconciled to its Creator. Not merely: evil restrained. But evil defeated. Not merely: death delayed.

But death destroyed. I stood up and danced at Starbucks. I could not help it. God really was this good. I want to be careful about what I mean by that. Christians who believe in eternal conscious torment can and do sincerely believe that God is good. I did too. I had believed in God’s goodness my entire life. I had experienced His goodness personally, trusted His love, and confessed that He was perfectly just and perfectly loving. But I had never known how to make that goodness fit comfortably with the belief that God would allow human beings to remain in conscious torment forever. There was always a tension inside my understanding of God: God is love, God loves every person more than I do—and yet much of humanity may suffer forever with no possibility of healing or restoration. I had learned ways of explaining that tension, but I had never really resolved it. Universal restoration did not give me a new God. It allowed the character of the God I had already known and loved to finally fit together with the biblical story I was reading. His justice did not disappear. His holiness did not disappear. His judgment did not disappear. But none of them required me to believe that God would preserve suffering, rebellion, and alienation forever. For the first time, I could see how all of it could belong together: God is perfectly just. God judges evil. God loves every person. God desires every person’s salvation. God never abandons His restorative purposes. And God ultimately succeeds. That was why I stood up and danced at Starbucks. I could not help it. The goodness of God that I had always believed in was no longer something I felt I had to defend against the final outcome I had been taught. It all fit together. And I was overwhelmed with joy. Perfect Love Began to Cast Out Fear And something else began happening inside me. Fear started melting away. I had carried fear about eternal conscious torment for as long as I was old enough to understand it.

Sometimes consciously. Sometimes so deeply beneath the surface that I did not realize how much it shaped me. What if this person I love dies without knowing God? What if that person never converts? What if someone I care about runs out of time? When you deeply love people who are not Christians, eternal conscious torment can place an extraordinary burden beneath those relationships. You can believe: God loves them more than I do. And simultaneously: God may torment them forever if they do not turn to Him before death. I lived for years with that tension. And annihilation never fully solved it for me either. The idea that God would permanently destroy His human creation still seemed unimaginably tragic. But now I was seeing another possibility in Scripture. A God who never finally gives up. A God whose patience is greater than human stubbornness. A God whose wisdom is greater than human deception. A God whose healing is greater than human wounds. A God whose life is greater than death. A God who judges precisely because He loves. A God who will continue His work until His purposes are accomplished. And as I understood this, my anxiety began to give way to something else: peace. Joy. Relief. Comfort. Hope. Rest. I was experiencing healing. I was beginning to understand just how deeply the doctrine of eternal conscious torment had distorted my picture of God. God Is Love Scripture repeatedly calls God righteous and just. His justice matters. His holiness matters. His judgment matters. But Scripture gives us this extraordinary declaration: “God is love.” — 1 John 4:8 And again: “God is love.” — 1 John 4:16 Justice is not some rival principle inside God fighting against His love. His justice is righteous because His character is good. His discipline is loving. His mercy is loving. His opposition to oppression is loving. His judgment of evil is loving. And: “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” — James 2:13 For years, I had intellectually believed God was love while simultaneously imagining an eternal universe in which much of humanity would remain forever trapped in suffering, rebellion, destruction, or alienation.

I now see God's character differently. The God I have experienced throughout my life—the God whose goodness I had known in pieces—I finally began to recognize more clearly in the biblical story itself. The God who loves enemies. The God who seeks the lost. The God who forgives. The God who raises the dead. The God who makes all things new. The God who does not stop at punishment but accomplishes righteousness. The God who does not eternally preserve His creation in brokenness. The God who restores. I Can Rest Perhaps one of the greatest changes universal restoration has made in me is that I feel able to rest in God more deeply than I ever have before. God's purposes do not depend upon my ability to save the world. I can serve. I can pray. I can intercede. I can teach. I can evangelize. I can confront injustice. I can work against human trafficking. I can love people with everything I have. But I do not have to carry the universe. God does. And God loves people more deeply and perfectly than I ever could. He knows every wound I cannot see. Every trauma. Every lie believed. Every fear. Every motivation. Every distortion. Every sin. Every possibility for repentance. Every path by which a human heart may eventually be reached. He has wisdom I do not possess. Patience I cannot comprehend. Love I can only begin to imitate. And power even over death. I can trust Him with the people I love. I can trust Him with the people I cannot reach. I can trust Him with humanity. I can trust Him with judgment. I can trust Him with eternity. I can rest. The Final Word Belongs to Scripture My tears at Starbucks are not the evidence for universal salvation. My hopes for the world do not prove it. My discomfort with eternal conscious torment does not decide doctrine. Those things are my response. The case must finally stand or fall on Scripture. And after years of examining both God's universal promises and the judgment passages that initially appeared to contradict them, I believe Scripture tells one magnificent story.

God: “wants all people to be saved.” — 1 Timothy 2:4 Jesus says: “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” — John 12:32 Paul writes: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” — 1 Corinthians 15:22 God has: “bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” — Romans 11:32 Through Christ, God purposes: “to reconcile to himself all things.” — Colossians 1:20 And one day: “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow ... and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord.” — Philippians 2:10–11 Christ reigns: “until he has put all his enemies under his feet.” And: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” — 1 Corinthians 15:25–26 Then comes one of the most extraordinary conclusions in all of Scripture: “When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.” — 1 Corinthians 15:28 Not God all in some. Not God victorious while evil possesses an everlasting corner of creation. Not death destroyed except where it remains forever. Not every enemy subjected except the billions who remain eternally rebellious. The biblical vision is larger. Christ victorious. Enemies reconciled. Death destroyed. Creation liberated. Every knee freely bowed. Every tongue freely confessing. All things restored under God. And finally: God all in all. That is why I believe universal salvation is true. That is why I believe judgment is real but not eternal. That is why I believe mercy triumphs over judgment. That is why I believe no human being is ultimately beyond hope. That is why I believe Christians can proclaim genuinely good news. That is why I believe we can work for justice without abandoning restoration. That is why I believe we can look at the worst evil in this world and still say: God is not finished.

And it is why I can now look at the dreams I carry—for the trafficked to be free, for the wounded to be healed, for the whole world to become family, for every person to know God, for humanity finally to learn to love—and believe that the final reality will be better than anything I have yet imagined. And I can imagine quite a lot. I can imagine every victim healed. Every oppressor transformed. Every enemy reconciled. Every human being knowing God. Every person learning to love. Every wound finally made right. Every corner of creation restored. And yet Paul praises the God who is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20). For most of my life, eternal conscious torment placed a terrible ceiling over what I could imagine God's final victory looking like. However beautiful eternity might be for some, I believed that somewhere in God's creation suffering, alienation, and rebellion would continue forever. I no longer believe Scripture requires that ending. Instead, Scripture has given me reason to hope for something greater than even the restoration I can presently picture and imagine. I can dream of a healed world. God can do immeasurably more. God's purposes will not be thwarted (Job 42:2; Isaiah 46:10). Love will not fail. Death will not win. Evil will not last forever. The lost will not remain lost forever. God will finish what He began. All truly will be well. And I can fully and truly rest in God—with the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7), and with the joy Scripture describes as “inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). I can rest. And I can rejoice. Because in the presence of God there is “fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11). The story ends not in fear, but in peace. Not in mourning, but in joy. Not in everlasting loss, but in restoration. And that joy will be greater than anything I can presently imagine. So, considering my overall question for this section of my blog: what is God’s plan for the world? Love.

Love that judges what must be judged. Love that heals what has been wounded. Love that defeats evil. Love that restores what has been lost. Love that does not give up until all things and all people are made new. God really is that good.