The difference between Heaven and Hell is not a subtle one. When the Almighty God separates the sheep and the goats, at the end of the day, that judgment day, there will be no nuance. Light and darkness are too entirely different sorts of things—and children of light and children of darkness have entirely different points of origin. Children of God and children of the devil have different fathers. This is not an obscure point.
So what is an evangelical? I am not speaking about cultural evangelicals, or nominal evangelicals. What is a true evangelical? In short, an evangelical is someone who knows, on the basis of the substitutionary death of Jesus, and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, that nobody has God in a box.
James tells us that men have tamed and domesticated all kinds of wild animals. A man can get into a cage with a whip and a chair, and make a lion do tricks. Swimmers can stand on the tip of a killer whale’s nose and amaze the crowds at Sea World. Man can tame all kinds of things. But James goes on to point out that for all his prowess, man cannot tame his own tongue. Because he cannot tame his own tongue, he finds himself proclaiming formulae and composing liturgies which make the implicit claim that mankind knows how to tame God.
But God is the living God, and can be tamed by no one. Jesus became one of us, and knows exactly how we feel—He tamed restless humanity. He can sympathize with us in our weakness. But we do not tame Him. And that is what makes an evangelical—someone who knows—experientially knows—that because Jesus died, and because the Spirit was given, we can be tamed. We come to this point by repenting of our sins, and by believing in Jesus.