It is easy to feel resentful at the universality of grace. We may think to ourselves: Have we not done our duty? Have we not been faithful all our lives? Why should undeserving outsiders get in easily? Would it not be fairer for those outside the church to be outside salvation too? There is a voice in us, isn’t there, that says no one ought to gain entry to the kingdom who doesn’t really belong and is not wearing the proper badges.

I am glad to see a shift to greater hope in Christian thinking and a growing reluctance to restrict grace. This is a result not of contemporary cultural pressures by of paying closer attention to the nature of God and–I think–to the pervasive presence of the Spirit. As a result, God’s universal salvific will registers higher now in the hierarchy of doctrine than formerly. Belief in God as a serious lover who does not readily give up on the lost occupies a more primary position on the list, giving us more freedom to hope and to believe all things (1 Cor 13:7).

–Clark H. Pinnock, Flame of Love: A Theology of the Holy Spirit, 1999

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