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Does God Save Everyone He Can?

Does God Save Everyone He Can?

Last updated on: October 23, 2026 at 9:02 am by Roger E. Olson

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Does God Save Everyone He Can? 2026-10-23T09:02:35-05:00 Roger E. Olson

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Let me remind you that what I write here is often my “theological musings.” Not everything is intended to convince. So, don’t take what follows as doctrine.

Yes, God saves everyone he can. Actually, Christians have always agreed about that. Calvinists agree even though they limit God’s saving action to those he foreordained, the “elect.” Leading Calvinist theologian Loraine Boettner said that God saves everyone his nature allows.

I’m not a Calvinist so I wouldn’t explain it that way. I believe God, whose nature is love, would naturally save everyone he can save without limiting salvation to the “elect” (in the way Calvinists mean that term).

But I feel forced by the Bible and reason to separate “salvation” into two parts. And here I’m talking about initial salvation, being forgiven by God. Being made right with God by God.

Jonah finally went to Nineveh and preached repentance. Nineveh repented and God forgave them. The story doesn’t say anything about the people of Nineveh doing anything but repenting.

John the Baptist called people to repentance and many responded.

Did God forgive people who repented? Does he still forgive people who repent, even if they do not know the person of Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross?

Evangelical exclusivists like John Piper (but many others) claim that once Jesus died salvation depends on hearing the gospel about Jesus Christ and accepting him as savior and lord. Do they think that God would turn a deaf ear to someone who has never heard but reaches out to God, without knowing who he is, asking for forgiveness?

Maybe they would. I don’t know. Their language leads me to believe they would.

I can’t believe that. God is not stingy with his forgiveness. Jesus stood on a hillside looking over Jerusalem and cried out that he would have embraced the people there if they would but they would not. That was before he died on the cross. God, in the person of Jesus Christ, sincerely wanted all of Jerusalem to be “saved.” The could have been, like Nineveh.

And yet, the Bible says in Romans 10 that salvation comes with confessing Jesus as lord and his resurrection. Does God limit forgiving grace to that? What, then, about the thief on the cross beside Jesus?

Well, exclusivists say, that was before Jesus died. As soon as he died, all who did not believe on him as lord and confess his resurrection are damned. Even if they repent? Yes. So it seems.

I once asked a seminary student who was headed off to a pastors conference at Piper’s church to ask him about faithful Jews and God-fearing Gentiles who had “Abrahamic faith” before Jesus died and who outlived Jesus but never heard of him. They would probably have lived out in the Roman Empire. Piper told the student that God “grandfathered them in.” But what about their progeny? Did their God-fearing offspring with Abraham faith go to hell when they died just because they never heard of Jesus. Surely there were some of those.

I am strongly tempted to believe that “God saves everyone he can” means he forgives everyone who truly repents of living against God’s will that is written on his or her heart (conscience). IF someone reaches out to God for forgiveness, surely God forgives.

But forgiveness alone is not all God wants to give us. He wants to give us Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and he wants us, humans, to become disciples for his kingdom, not just in the future but now.

That means there must be two “sides,” as it were, to “initial salvation.” Repentance followed by forgiveness, available to all, and entering by faith into relationship with God through Jesus Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit and beginning to walk as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

Talk to me. What do you, evangelical believers, think about this?

*Note: If you choose to comment, make sure your comment is relatively brief (no more than 100 words), on topic, addressed to me, civil and respectful (not hostile or argumentative), and devoid of pictures or links.*

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