On several occasions, I’ve met people who recognize the elegance of a Gospel that saves all, but they stop short of embracing it because they think it turns us into robots. To them, a soteriology of universal restoration smacks of God saving people whether they like it or not.

Fair enough, and it’s not the worst argument. They don’t want anything shoved down their throats. I get that.

But part of me also wonders whether they are more affected by a rugged Western individualism than they might realize. If I see myself primarily as an individual, then yes, my salvation comes down to my choices and decisions. However, if I see my identity as woven in and through community (nobody is an island), then it starts to make sense that salvation is a project aimed at the human race rather than individual people.

What, after all, is the essence of a human? Is it our physical body? Hardly. The cells in our bodies change completely every seven years. That’s not to mention the speedy decay and ultimate decomposition of our bodies after we die.

Is it our achievements? Is it our memories? Our experiences? That might be getting closer. In truth, most of us probably attach our identity to non-physical markers such as these.

And that’s where it gets interesting: these markers are all intertwined with other people. Take memories and experiences. If we remove even one person involved with our memories and experiences and consign them to eternal damnation, our identity falls apart.

In other words, we can go ahead and remove people from the picture because they failed to make the heroic act of free will and assent to God’s offer of salvation. But our own identity will be fundamentally altered because of it.

Would we rather enter eternal bliss as robots, or as truncated, lobotomized versions of ourselves?

“That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth” (Philippians 2:10). “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Adam and Eve’s race is saved–or doomed–as one.

Yes, we have free will. Yes, we should make good decisions. Yes, our actions here have a profound impact on our trajectory. But there is a danger of overemphasizing these truths. We also desperately need God’s grace. As much as we want to will what is good, we find that our will is impoverished. Sick. Broken. Our very will is in need of divine intervention, in need of healing.

“Batter my heart, three-person’d God… Take me to you, imprison me.” That’s not New Age fluff, that’s John Donne writing four centuries ago.

Donne understood that if he was to be saved, it had to be the work of God, not the result of his heroic free will. And upon even a moment of cursory reflection, surely we must reach the same conclusion: the entire human race is saved by grace. (Unless, of course, we’re to go full Calvinist and say God will batter the hearts of some but not others, although poor Calvin probably said it with much more sophistication than we give him credit for.)

This Easter, it is good and right to celebrate God’s resurrection power in my life. Salvation is personal. Jesus loves me, this I know.

But it is far more glorious to consider Easter as a harbinger of salvation for all, as extending far beyond the vaguely-defined contours of my puny self to an entire human race and indeed the cosmos.