In the days of Noah, God destroyed the entire wicked human race with a flood in order to expedite His salvation of all mankind. Romans 9:28. While God did not hold them accountable for their sins of the soul and spirit, He did hold their fleshly consciousnesses accountable because He had given them a conscience of right and wrong to be their guides. Their destruction by water symbolized the fact that God always cleanses fleshly sins by the use of the water of His Word; that is, the Holy Spirit cleansing sin by using the water that flowed from Christ's body on the cross. Although God had cleansed them of all fleshly sins and did not hold them accountable for their sins of spirit and soul, nevertheless, the power of sin and death held them in the prison; that is, the abyss, following their physical deaths. But according to I Peter 3:19-20, the Spirit of Christ came to preach the gospel to them following the physical death of Christ on the cross. The moment they heard the gospel, God held them accountable for their sins of soul and spirit because they then knew God and His power to cleanse their souls and spirits with the blood that Jesus shed on the cross. No doubt some of them believed and were cleansed, and God transferred their saved souls and spirits to heaven. No doubt others rejected God's grace, and He left them in the realm of the abyss. But in the end in the general resurrection, God will use His consuming fire to separate His goodness that He originally put into those in the abyss from their total evil. I Corinthians 3:12-15. God will recreate their separated goodness to be righteous humans to live on His recreated earth, and He will consign all their total evil to the lake of fire forever. However, in the general resurrection of the entire unsaved human race, those who knew God but deliberately practiced cruelty and evil anyway, being rebellious and consigned by God to the fires of hell, God will recover very little of His goodness from them to be recreated. They will retain very little of God's goodness for Him to recover. These humans cannot be saved as individuals at all since their recovered goodness will be so widely scattered among the recreated humans. But at least they can be said to be somewhat saved in that God will preserve His goodness in them forever. Revelation 21:5; Revelation 21:8.
The second category of those not saved by grace belongs to those who know God because He has given them His Law. God originally gave His Law to His chosen people, the Hebrews, but He had them write it for all people to read so that all people can come to clearly understand that they are sinners and that it is impossible for them to keep the Law. Galatians 3:19-21. The law transcends the conscience because it clearly demonstrates the difference between right and wrong. This means God holds both Jew and Gentile responsible for their sins of soul and spirit. The law imputes sin to the spirits and souls of all those who come to know God by reading the law because it clearly shows the reader that he has sinned against God. But God will thoroughly cleanse with the blood of Jesus all who put their faith in Christ. God will save them by His grace, preserve their individualities and personalities forever, and give them the righteous and eternal life of Christ by which He can accept them into a home in heaven forever. Colossians 1:12-14; Romans 5:17; Matthew 16:24-25; I Peter 1:4.
God's Word thus progresses from a revelation of conscience given to Gentiles who do not know God, to a knowledge of God through His Law revealed to both Jew and Gentile to inform them that they are sinners, to the revelation that God has provided His highest form of salvation through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. But God's highest form of salvation does not mean that it is God's only form of salvation. God has put some of His goodness into every human He has ever created. Genesis 1:27 and 31. According to such passages as Numbers 23:19; Ecclesiastes 3:14; Luke 20:38; Romans 11:29; Romans 11:36; and others, God can never lose to the Devil anything He has ever created, and He has created absolutely every positive thing, visible and invisible. Colossians 1:16. According to Colossians 1:20, God will reconcile all things He has ever created to Himself through the sacrifice and resurrection of His Son. Jesus' descent into hell was a part of that sacrifice. Jesus left all of the sins of mankind behind in hell when He rose from the dead. The fire of hell is God's consuming fire. In the end, God will use His consuming fire to separate all of His created goodness that He put into man from all of the total evil that has infected man. With His recovered goodness, God will recreate a new, righteous human race to inhabit His recreated earth. Revelation 21:5. God will consign all of the total evil in man to the lake of fire forever. Revelation 20:15; Revelation 21:8. God's goodness in every human will not suffer in hell forever because God will destroy both death and hell in the lake of fire. Revelation 21:14. Jews and Gentiles can become Christians by faith in Christ's shed blood, and Christians can never lose their salvation by grace. Romans 11:29. But Jews who fail to faithfully practice Judaism can fall back to the level of the Gentiles. I Samuel 3:13-14. Gentiles who try to live righteous lives can, by revelation from God, rise to the level of salvation by grace as in the cases of Noah and Job. Genesis 6:8; Job 19:25-26.
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