There is already a detailed article on the subject of “Getting lost”. There you will find the reasons step by step. This short article is more about dealing with internalized thoughts that often stand in the way of a simpler and better understanding.

The issue at hand

There’s a tricky part about understanding the Bible. This problem is not the Bible itself, but our internalized thoughts, the glasses through which we read the Bible. The crux of the matter is our own understanding, which was formed at some point but perhaps never tested. These internalized thoughts can prevent us from understanding what the Bible says.

Here is an example on the subject:

“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

Many people will say that eternal lostness is mentioned here, which is so important for a doctrine of hell. I have received such reactions not once, but often. You can read this verse and still read over the statements. The fact that this happens is due to our internalized ideas.

• What is not written here
  The following ideas are not mentioned here at all: “lostness”, “eternal lostness”, “you must believe in Jesus so that you will not be lost”, “anyone who does not believe that Jesus died and was raised for him will be lost” and other things.
• What it says here
  This is simply a repetition of what the verse says: “everyone who believes in the Son of God will not perish”, “but will have eternal life”.

Nowhere is there a reference to a “lostness” (gram. noun). Instead, it merely speaks of “getting lost” (grammatical verb). Nowhere can it be deduced that the result of this “getting lost” means endless lostness. Even “eternal life” is not explained here. It is neither clear whether “eternal” means endless (this is often simply assumed), nor what the core of this life would be. The composition “eternal life” remains a mystery from this verse alone. Anyone who thinks with certainty that it means this or that is doing a so-called eisegesis (interpretation), more than an exegesis (interpretation).

This example shows quite clearly how our thinking is oriented. Many read this verse from a certain tradition and therefore conclude that the verse means this or that. The fact that much is not explained in the verse itself, but merely referenced, does not detract from this. You follow tradition more than the text. Recognizing this is not yet an explanation for the text. I just want to try to make it clear why some things remain hidden in the Bible. They remain hidden because they have been taught otherwise.

The trick is to learn to distinguish better between text and tradition. If this is successful, you suddenly no longer have just one view that is considered “true”, but you have found out about the text itself in order to learn directly from it.

Everything lost is found

Everything that is “lost” in the Bible is also found again. For example, in the parables of the Lost Sheep (Luk 15:1-7), the Lost Coin (Luk 15:8-10) and the Prodigal Son (Luk 15:11-32). This is so different from what the lovers of a hell keep emphasizing. These proponents of hell are looking for reasons why hell must be maintained at all costs, instead of rejoicing that things might turn out differently after all. Isn’t that strange?

Lose something or perish

The Greek word for “to be lost” (Greek apollumi) means “to dissolve completely”. You can compare this with our term “disappearing into thin air”. If the sheep or the coin or the son is lost, they are not completely gone, but they have disappeared for the viewer. They were just there and now they are “gone”. They have vanished into thin air, so to speak. Because they were not really gone, they could be found again.

When the same word is used in relation to people, it corresponds to dying. This is how Jesus describes it in the story of the Prodigal Son, for example:

“This son of mine was dead and has come back to life, was lost and has been found.”
Luke 15:24

Whoever is lost is also gone, as was the case with death. The son was lost, namely gone, and for the father this was tantamount to the death of the son. When the son reappeared, the father figuratively referred to this as receiving him resurrected from the dead.

In Matthew 2:13 we read of Herod trying to “kill” the child Jesus. This is the same Greek word in the basic text. Herodus tried to get Jesus “out of the way”, namely to kill him.

The Greek “apollumi” can therefore be rendered as “to lose” or “to perish”. This is true for all occurrences in the New Testament.

No one is lost forever

An important insight from this consideration is that the word “get lost” does not mean endless torment, punishment or the like. What is lost is gone and whoever is lost dies and is dead afterwards. The meaning does not go further than dying.

Here is the crux of the matter: many people hear about “being lost” and then have ideas of a doctrine of hell in their minds. Even when the doctrine of hell has been exposed as unbiblical and we are firmly convinced that God will reach his goal with all people, expressions such as “being lost” remain threatening for many. Why is that?

Until you get to the bottom of terms like “getting lost”, they can still trigger diffuse fears. This is why many people find it difficult to say goodbye to the doctrines of hell. It’s not just about one or two biblical texts, but about many ideas that have been interwoven with them over the centuries. A card may have been pulled out of the house of cards of the doctrine of hell, and the doctrinal edifice has collapsed, but the cards are still on the table. You still have to tidy the table. The old cards have to go, including the false idea of what “getting lost” means.

The realization that “getting lost” goes no further than people dying is valuable. You can remove this card from the collapsed house of cards. But perhaps this word was the most important point of the doctrine for you and this article the first critical examination of this term? If you have followed the explanations here, then with this realization you have removed a card from the doctrinal edifice of hell. No one is lost forever.

The expression “getting lost” indicates an activity and change. The word describes a transition. At worst, you pass from life to death. That is bad enough and death remains an enemy, but the concept has nothing to do with an alleged hell. A good translation for many biblical passages is therefore “perish” or “perish”, which sounds much more neutral and is not as heavily loaded as the idea that someone is “eternally lost”.

The sting has been removed, the old meaning has been exposed as misleading.

Context and basic text

There is a simple basis for every Bible study: you look at the context and the basic text. The basic text for the New Testament is Greek. This is where the word “apollumi” comes from, which is sometimes translated one way, sometimes another. The context for a verse like the one in John 3 is the Gospels and Jesus’ commission (Mt 15:24). He came with good news about the approaching kingdom of heaven (Mt 4:17). If the kingdom were to be established, it would be the dawn of a new age. This is the idea of the messianic kingdom, which was once far away, but had come near in and with Jesus. Both “perishing” and “eternal life” are included in this proclamation in the Gospels (cf. Mk 10:30).

Christian theology has left this context and turned “perishing” and “eternal life” into something completely different than could be understood in the time of Jesus. Theology has moved away from the text and context. Looking at a term and correcting its meaning in this short article is not a goal in itself, but a small building block in a reorientation.