Can someone know Jesus just through nature, based on Romans 1?

Whenever you study Scripture, you see that the Christian faith is extremely inclusive, yet at the same time extremely exclusive. It is inclusive in that Jesus gave His life so that everyone has an opportunity for salvation. It is exclusive because that salvation is found only in Him. There is no other way. Many times, this brings people to ask the question, how will the people in _____________ country be saved if they don’t know Jesus? An answer that a lot of people will respond with is based out of Romans 1, for what can be known about God is plain to them, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Paul is saying that God has revealed His power and nature through creation, and therefore anyone who sees creation has the opportunity to know about God. This leads us to the question we’re looking at today, so from nature, must a person conclude in Jesus as their Lord and Savior?


I believe that what Paul is stating in Romans 1 is not that people will conclude their salvation in Jesus Christ through nature, but rather that they will conclude that there is a God, a Supreme Being. This has been true for millennia before Jesus ever walked on the earth and professed salvation through Himself. When you look at the Exodus, and the plagues that God brought forth, they were not just a random set of plagues, but rather God was waging war on the gods of Egypt. At the final plague, God says I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute My judgements: I am the Lord (Exodus 12:12). When you do a study of the plagues, each plague was an attack on something that the Egyptians worshipped as a god.

1. The Nile is turned to Blood → this plague attacked Hapi/Apis, the god of the Nile. Isis and Khnum were also gods/goddesses of the Nile. The most important gods of Egypt were associated with the Nile.
2. Frogs all over the place → this plague was against Hekt, goddess of fertility, land, life, and death. She had the body of a woman and the head of a frog.
3. Gnats all over the place → this plague attacked Geb, the god of the earth/desert. Aaron struck the dust of the ground and gnats came out of the dust over all the land and beasts.
4. Flies all over the place → this plague attacked Khepri, the god of spiritual rebirth. Khepri looked like a scarab, or biting insect. The Egyptians also worshipped Uatchit, which was represented by a fly.
5. Death of livestock → this plague attacked Hathor, the goddess of love, protection, and beauty. She was in charge of femininity. Her image was represented by the head of a cow.
6. Boils on all the people → This was an attack on the god Isis, who was the god of healing/health.
7. Hail falling from the sky → this was an attack on Nut, a goddess of the sky, Osiris, the god of crops and fertility, and Set, a god of storms.
8. Locusts → A great storm of locusts comes upon the land, attacking the goddess Nut, as well as the god Osiris
9. Darkness → this plague attacked Re and Horus, sun gods, and Nut and Hathor, sun goddesses. The Egyptians represented Re with a dung beetle. They would look at the sky and see the sun moving, thinking it looked similar to the way a dung beetle rolled a ball of dung across the ground, so they thought that Re was rolling a flaming ball of dung across the sky.
10. Death of the firstborn → this was an attack on Min, the god of reproduction, Heqet, the goddess who attended women at birth, Isis, the god who protected children, and Pharaoh, who thought that he was a god himself.

This is just the Egyptians, and then you have all the other religions that look at creation and believe that there is a higher being that is to be worshipped. A quick google search resulted that only 7-10% of the world is atheist, meaning that 90-93% of the world has some view of a higher power. When you look at creation, you see that there is a call for a Creator. As Christians, we give that credit to the One True God, while other religions give credit to a different god, or many other gods (polytheists). So Paul tells us in Romans 1 that we can look at creation and see that there is a Creator, and that no one has any excuse to claim ignorance.


The question goes deeper though, will creation point them to Jesus? I would say not necessarily. Looking to creation does not cause me to know the name of Jesus and that He gave His life for me. Looking at creation reveals there is a power greater than myself, and therefore it invokes in us a desire to know this power. Salvation does not come through looking at creation, salvation comes through hearing the Gospel of Jesus and receiving it through faith. “’Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? (Romans 10:13-15). This is where God has entrusted His Body, the people of God, to go and proclaim the good news of salvation through Jesus.


We see this played out in Acts 17. Paul is on his second missionary journey, and he is traveling through Greece. He comes to Athens, and he sees that the city is full of idols, and it angers him. He goes to the Areopagus, the council that had authority over religion, morals, and education in Athens. In this council, Paul addresses them and says, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: To the unknown god. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man…. (Acts 17:22-24). Paul noticed that the people of Athens were very religious, having many depictions of the gods that they worshipped. Just to cover their bases, they even worshipped an “unknown god”, hoping to appease it if they were unaware of that god. Paul, seeing this, takes advantage of the opportunity, and share the truth about the One True God. They were aware of greater beings, yet it required Paul to share the truth with them.


God’s primary and main method for bringing salvation to the world is through you, His people. Not through pastors. Not through social programs. But through men and women who are intentionally living for God in everything they do, and sharing the eternal hope that they have. Men and women who are doing the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:12).


This may cause us to go back to the beginning and ask, what about the people who are in Unreached People Groups? What happens to them if they don’t hear? I would wonder what our motivation is in this. Often we worry about the people in Unreached Groups, but we aren’t concerned or convicted about the people in our own neighborhood, people who God has placed in our lives to minister to, yet we don’t take advantage. People who are equally destined for hell as every other person who does not receive salvation through faith in Christ. The Unreached People Groups need Jesus. They need men and women to go and proclaim the Gospel to them. But we have also seen that God reveals Himself, and His Son, in miraculous ways. Not to replace the ministry of the people of God, but to connect with people they don’t reach. We saw this with Paul/Saul, where Jesus revealed Himself to Him in a vision. There are many people in the Middle East, especially during the period of Ramadan, in which Muslims will receive visions from Jesus, revealing Himself to them.


In 2015, I went to a Junior High event at Ozark Christian College. While there, the speaker shared a conversation he had with a young man who had been a Muslim, literally fighting for terrorists in the Middle East. One night, he had a dream that he was supposed to start digging in the ground. That was the extent of the dream. The next day, while he was on patrol, he found himself at the very spot that he saw in his dream. He started digging, and in the middle of the desert he found a Bible buried in the sand. He hid it in his bag, and started secretly reading it. The more he read, the more Jesus became real to him. Finally, he realized he couldn’t continue with what he was doing, and so he just took off. He ran to the first house in the first town that he came to, knocked on the door, and the people inside were Christians. They shared the Gospel with him and he gave his life to Christ. This kid was 16 years old, and after receiving Christ, he started going and sharing Christ with the very people that were now trying to kill him. He saw the importance of the Gospel of Jesus, knowing that there is salvation in Jesus, or eternal hell without Him. There is no other option. No person, when standing before God, will be able to make an excuse for why they rejected Him. The question for us is, are we living a life that reflects Him? Are we living boldly for the Gospel of Jesus? Nature reveals God’s eternal power and divine nature, you reveal God’s divine love and eternal grace.