Whosoever

The Bible says “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13) and “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Whosoever means whoever. It means anyone. It means everybody.

Jesus died for the sins of all people, over 7 billion people on the planet, and everyone who has ever and will ever live, past, present, and future. The Bible clearly states:

He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:2)

Jesus loves all people of the world and is actively drawing all people to himself (John 12:32) in accordance with God’s desire that all people of the world repent of their sins and be saved (1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9, Ezekiel 18:32, 33:11).

In light of this, who am I to put limits on “whosoever”? Who am I to put limits on the people who Jesus can and cannot save? Why am I so tempted to think “whosoever… except that guy”?

I think we often put limits on “whosoever” when we share the gospel message with others, or rather, when we choose who we will and will not share the gospel with. I know I am guilty of this. I easily share my faith with people who actively express an interest in it. But it is more difficult to step out in faith to share the gospel with someone who may or may not be interested. But how do we know?

Too often, we  judge people based simply on their appearance, race, socioeconomic status, or cultural background. It is human nature to put people into categories. We look at someone who is like us and we think “I can share the gospel with them, they seem like they would be interested,” but then we look at someone who is different from us and we think, “Don’t bother, I know their type, and there’s no way they would be interested in Jesus.”

But the Bible says “whosoever.”

In the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) Jesus commands his disciples to preach the gospel to “all nations.” We are called to preach to all people, regardless of their background and regardless of what we think of them. We cannot judge whether someone is “worthy” to hear the gospel based on our personal opinion of them – every person in the world is worthy and needs to hear the gospel message, because every person in the world is someone who Jesus Christ loved enough to died for, someone who God desires to reconcile to Himself.

Consider Saul, who dragged Christians from their homes and approved of their execution. He was a persecutor of Christians and a man Christians feared.

He was literally the last person in the world you would want to talk to about Jesus.

And yet, of all the people in the world who God could have chosen, God used Saul (re-named “Paul”) to write a large part of the New Testament. This is radical forgiveness. There is not a single person in the world who is too evil or too deep in sin that they cannot be reached, be redeemed, be forgiven, be reconciled to God, and experience lifechange through an encounter with Jesus Christ.

But as Romans 10:14 says: “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?”

1 Samuel 16:7 says “man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.” We simply cannot, by looking at a person’s appearance, know anything about the condition of their heart. Too often, the people we assume would be interested in hearing the gospel are not at all interested, while the people we assume wouldn’t be interested are actually dying to know! We simply cannot know the heart of another person, nor can we know the plans God has for that person. We need to stop pretending we know in advance how people will respond to the gospel. The reality is that God knows, but we don’t know.

Instead of only sharing the gospel message with people who are like us, we need to step out in faith to also reach those who are different – even radically different – from us. Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world, making the same forgiveness available to all people, and therefore placing all believers on equal footing before God regardless of their personal history or background. So we cannot allow barriers of race, class, nationality, or culture to hinder the Great Commission. Paul said: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

We also must be careful not to expect the people we share our faith with to adopt our cultural norms. Rather, we must adopt their cultural norms so we can be a more effective witness. Consider these words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:20-23:

And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you.

Questions I ask myself:

• Why do I act like some people aren’t worth sharing my faith with, when the Bible says “whosoever”?
• Why do I expect the people I share my faith with to adopt my own cultural norms, when Paul said, “to the Jew I become a Jew”?
• Why do I assume the people God places in my life don’t want to hear about my faith, when God has already examined their hearts and placed them in my life for a reason? Do I know better than God the condition of their hearts?
• Why am I so quick to judge people based on their appearance? Why do I think, “I know their type, they wouldn’t be interested in Jesus”? Isn’t this assumption really nothing more than an excuse to not share the gospel?