Cutting Straight

Is there a God a person must answer to?

Question 1 of 7. What creation, conscience, and the resurrection show every person, what Scripture says about its own record, and how far that knowledge reaches.

Where it begins

The rest of this study asks how a person is saved. Many readers will stop before that and ask an earlier question: is there anything to be saved from? Many people hold that there is no God, that the world is explained by natural causes alone, that the Bible is a human book, and that no one will be judged. If that were so, the question in this study's title would not need an answer.

Scripture speaks to that reader directly. Paul opens his letter to the Romans by showing that every person needs the gospel, and he begins with what people have always had in front of them. In Athens he spoke to people who had no Scripture and had built an altar "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD" (). This page answers from what Scripture says to such a person. It does not rest on arguments from philosophy or science, even where they agree.

The answer Settled

Scripture says the evidence for God is not missing. God Himself has shown it. Since the creation of the world His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen in the things He made, and that witness reaches every people, including those who never had a Bible. Every person also carries a conscience that bears witness to God's law, and people show they know that law every time they judge someone else by it. So no one will stand before God with the defense that he was never shown.

Scripture also says why people deny Him. The knowing comes first and the refusing after: people knew God and did not want to keep Him in mind. Turning away darkens a person's thinking, so a denial can feel sincere and still not be honest doubt. Jesus names the motive: people stay away from the light so that their deeds will not be exposed.

God has not left the judgment to be taken on trust. He has appointed a day to judge the world by a Man, and He has given proof of it to everyone by raising that Man from the dead. The risen Jesus was seen over forty days, once by more than five hundred people at one time. The apostles staked their word on it: if Christ is not risen, they said, they were false witnesses. The Bible's writers say they wrote down what they had seen and heard, and that the words did not start with them but with God, who backs His word by saying what will happen before it happens.

Yet what every person knows about God from creation and conscience cannot save him. It leaves him without excuse, and the law in his heart shows him his sin, but it does not tell him the gospel. Faith comes by hearing the message about Christ. Even Cornelius, a man who feared God and prayed always, had to hear words by which he would be saved.

So the question this study asks is a real one for every reader, including the reader who doubts it.

Grounding; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; , 34-35, 40-43; ; ; ; , 30-31; , 28, 32; , 12-16; , 23; ; ; ; , 14-15, 30-32; ; ; ; ; ; , 31; ; ; . Background illuminates only, for the approximate years given for three fulfilled prophecies; the conclusions rest on Scripture and the original-language work shown on the pages below.

What you can see for yourself

  • The sky over your head. Day follows night without fail, and the stars keep their places. David pointed to the same thing: "Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge" ().
  • Your next meal. Every person lives on rain and harvest he did not make. Paul told a crowd with no Bible that God "did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons" ().
  • "That's not fair." People say it in every culture, and they expect the other person to know the standard they mean. Paul says a person who judges another shows he knows the law he is breaking ().
  • Witnesses who could be asked. A court still weighs named witnesses who can be questioned. Paul said that of the five hundred who saw the risen Christ, "the greater part remain to the present" ().

Dive deeper

Each page below takes one part of this answer and shows the passages it rests on.