12.29.10
J.A. Matteson
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
Μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν κόσμον μηδὲ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ. ἐάν τις ἀγαπᾷ τὸν κόσμον, οὐκ ἔστιν ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ πατρὸς ἐν αὐτῷ:
1 John 2:15
The pilgrim of the Lord sojourns upon the earth, exiled in heart from the demonic siren call of the world system which is antithetical to the character of the Father. Daily the world system seeks to undermine the pilgrim's fidelity to the Father, but is continually frustrated in its quest. Here the Apostle underscores the object of devotion to which the pilgrim steadfastly adheres, for he cannot do otherwise for it is his new nature as one born again to desire to keep His commandments, and this willingly out of love and gratitude.
The world (κόσμος) has multiple meanings in the New Testament and the rendering of the word is known by its immediate context while considered in the broader context of its use in the whole of Scripture. This becomes obvious when the same word is considered, for example, in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have ever lasting life.” Unless context is considered as a rule for interpretation there would appear to be a glaring contradiction of the heart of God with regard to the world. For on the one hand the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of the Father's love of the world while His Apostle instructs pilgrims not to love the world. Taken in context world in John 3:16 cannot mean every human being on the planet, for that would be a direct contradiction of the Lord's use of world in the whole of John 17, “I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours” (v. 9).
If the Father loves the world as meaning every human being, desiring that every human being be saved, then why would the Son of God specifically not pray for all of them, why does He exclude them and qualify the objects of His prayer to only “those whom You have given Me”? World, as employed in John 3:16 and John 17 references the unconditional elect of God where its context finds complete harmony with the Lord Jesus who qualifies them for whom He died, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep” (Jn. 10:14). And it for those whom He died that He intercedes in John 17.
Speaking to some unbelieving Pharisees Christ makes a remarkable statement underscoring the reality that faith is a gift from the Father and not something conjured up in the sinner, “...but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” (Jn. 10:26). Here too the record of Luke in Acts finds total agreement, “When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed” (13:48).
Luke makes an important distinction in the Ordo Salutis; viz., individuals are first unconditionally appointed to eternal life while unbelievers, which is why they at God's appointed time become believers through the activity of the Holy Spirit and the Word; they do not first believe within themselves and as a result become appointed to eternal life, as that is a conditional election that finds no consistent contextual support in Scripture; salvation is of the Lord. A conclusion of that type turns Luke's words on their head, not to mention other passages previously examined.
Not surprisingly the Apostle Paul employees the same language while reminding the Philippian Christian's of God's unconditional choice of them for a faith leading to salvation, “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him” (Phil. 1:29). The clear implication being that their expressed faith is a gift that had been unconditionally granted to them. And we find harmony in Paul's letter to the Ephesians whereby he refers to God's unconditional election resulting in faith as grace, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not the result of works lest any man should boast” (2:8-9). Therefore, we conclude that grace is the basis of salvation and faith is the means by which God's brings it to pass.
So in our passage under consideration we see that love for the world system and love for the Father are antithetical. For the nature of the Father is forbearance and mercy while that of the fallen world is impatience and vengeance. The nature of the Father within His child turns the heart of the pilgrim toward eternal things which are unseen, while the world system glorifies that which is visual and temporal. The nature of the Father within His child is to bring glory to His Son, while that of the world system is to seek the vain glory of man and usurp the rightful glory do the Son.
While in the world the pilgrim is not of the world--he is rightly an alien. And for this reason he is a paradox to those of the unregenerate world system, for they do not understand him, nor can they. For his desires and focus are on Christ Jesus and the glory to come, things which the world does not perceive, nor can it. As he sojourns upon the earth he eagerly awaits the redemption of his body of sin and death, wearily deflecting the daily onslaught of the world system that vainly seeks his destruction.
From time to time he stumbles and grieves at the feeble nature of his flesh, but he is not despondent and rather confident that He who began a good work in him with be faithful to complete it, supplying spiritual strength in time of need (2 Thess. 3:3). The Apostle John makes the statement, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” may be understood two ways: 1) the new nature which God supplies to the regenerate is His nature—that which loves His Son—being antithetical to the world system which hates His Son, which is why the world hates him (Jn. 15:18); and, 2) the new nature within being the Father's nature is also His love of the Son who within the pilgrim in turn generates a love for or of the Father. It is for this reason that the Apostle concludes “By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother” (1 Jn. 3:10). And righteousness finds its origin in God, being an imputed gift, and foremost manifest by faith in the Father's Son, Christ Jesus, “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe....” (Rom. 3:21-22). The Apostle makes it plain, “the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious....”
Obvious (φανερά) as used here is to be easily recognized and used here is speaking to a persons profession of faith that finds agreement with his lifestyle. Genuine faith is accompanied by a heart desiring obedience to the Lord, “Why do you call Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?” (Lk. 6:46), and a life seeking obedience to the Lord will be a righteous life of faith and conduct set on the eternal and not the temporal, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Col. 3:2).
So the world does not understand the pilgrim and hates him when he does not pursue temporal pleasures that are fading away. As Christ was hated by the world system which stood in opposition to His Kingdom, so too it hates His seed which remains in the world; i.e., His Church. The pilgrim finds himself caught between two realities, on the one hand he is heir to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who will soon appear in glory; on the other hand he sojourns daily in the mire of a world system opposed to the King and His children. For this reason he groans within and like the saints of old looks for a better city whose foundation and walls are not made by human hands, but by God. His love is turned upward to the call of God, eagerly awaiting the last trumpet call and the descent of the Lord Jesus Christ for His bride. Oh glorious Day, come hence Lord Jesus, Your bride awaits!
Copyright (c) 2010 Immutable Word Ministries ("...the word of our God stands forever." Isa. 40:8).
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Consumer Christianity--Part 2
by T.A. McMahon
Consumerism was introduced to humanity in the Garden of Eden. Satan had a self-serving concept that he wanted to sell to a potential customer who had no need—one who, living in a perfect environment, had it all, materially and spiritually. His strategy (comparable to the prevailing methods of 21st-century marketing) was to create a desire where no real need existed, convincing Eve not only that she needed something more but that what she had was somewhat deficient. Moreover, in an effort to beat the Competition, Satan began his pitch by sowing doubt regarding God’s command and its resulting penalty for disobedience.
By calling God a liar, the adversary no doubt rattled Eve’s trust in Him: “And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?…And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.” Then, in the wake of further maligning the Lord’s character, came the irresistible “do it for you” sales pitch: “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:1, 4,5).
Consumerism, being all about profit, must include a profit-oriented buyer as well as seller. Eve certainly had her own desires stirred, for without them, no sale could have been made: “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat” (Gen 3:6). Thus, the cry of the soul of consumerism, “How will it profit me?” birthed itself in Adam and Eve and all their descendants.
Consumer Christianity is a mentality or methodology that attempts to enrich Christians both temporally and spiritually, as well as to attract converts to the faith, through ways and means that are true neither to the Word of God nor the work of the Holy Spirit. Whether introduced subtly or overtly, wittingly or unwittingly, it always involves what appeals to humanity’s fallen nature. Furthermore, consumer Christianity ultimately indulges and glorifies self rather than God.
History is replete with instances of man’s consumerism and selfism. Let’s briefly survey the history of God’s chosen people, the Jews (Deu 14:2), and His church (Titus 2:14), for a few such examples by those who should have known better. Sarai, Abram’s wife, attempted to solve her childless circumstance by coming up with her own way to have the son that God had promised (Gen 16:2-3); “her” child Ishmael by her servant Hagar became the son of grief for the Jews to this day. Centuries later, right after the Israelites had experienced God’s deliverance from the Egyptians in spectacular ways, they nevertheless formed a golden calf to worship in order to gratify their immediate spiritual desires. God’s response to Moses was that they had thereby “corrupted themselves” (Ex 32:4-7). Joshua was deceived and made peace with the Gibeonites, contrary to God’s command; his presumption of doing good for his people was in reality rank disobedience: “And the [Israelites] took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD” (Jos 9:14). The entire book of Judges characterizes God’s people during that time period as having a consumer mentality: “…every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Jdg 21:25). Later, David’s “eyes” for Bathsheba led him to satisfy his lustful felt needs in spite of what it would do to his personal relationship with God.
The New Testament gospels and epistles abound with examples of consumer “Christianity.” Peter’s objection to what Jesus said He would have to suffer for our salvation demonstrated more than just fleshly sympathy; Jesus intimated that it was disobedience of a satanic nature (Mat 16:21-23). Furthermore, Christ’s response to Peter defines what consumer Christianity is all about: “for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” Our Lord’s other disciples were also given to the “what-could-best-benefit-me” mentality.
Blinded by self-interest to what Jesus told them of His impending suffering and death, James and John reacted by seeking an elevated position in His coming kingdom: “Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory” (Mk 10:37). The Apostle Paul rebuked Peter, who, along with Barnabas, drew back from the Gentiles in order to accommodate those of the circumcision (Gal 2:11-14). Paul identified his own struggles, as well as ours, with putting self before God: “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Rom 7:18-19). He then declared his solution, which is the believer’s only solution: the Spirit-led life in Christ (Rom 8:1).
Consumer Christianity, whether manifested in the early churches or in today’s assemblies (from mega-churches to home fellowships), is simply doing things man’s way rather than God’s way. The history of the church from the first century on is a distressing chronicle of true and false Christians deviating from the Word of God, doing what seemed right in their own minds while professing to be doing it in the name of Christ and to His glory. Although the results have often been spiritually devastating, God has been faithful, merciful, and longsuffering with His own. As we draw near to the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, however, consumer Christianity will so transform the professing church that it will be shocking to any true believer unless, of course, he or she has been desensitized by the gradual acceptance of many of the appealing “new products and processes” (i.e., unbiblical teachings, practices, and worship forms) being “sold” today.
Following the Rapture of the Bride of Christ to be with Him (1 Thes 4:16-18), a professing Christian church will remain that has been groomed to accept the Antichrist. This apostate church does not just appear overnight, but its preparation has been ongoing for two millennia and will increase with great intensity up until the Rapture of truly born-again Christians. The deception at that time will be like nothing humanity has ever experienced, including Hitler’s seduction of, and absolute control over, civilized, highly educated, and technologically sophisticated Germany. What will be the major difference? This deception will be worldwide and, more astonishingly, facilitated by God himself.
After giving information about the coming apostasy and the Antichrist, “whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,” the Apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, further explains why the deception will be so pervasive and powerful: “…because they received not the love of the truth.” He then gives us reason to be astonished: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie” (2 Thes 2:9-11). This “strong delusion” affecting the lost is comparable to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. It neither induced sin nor subjugated Pharaoh’s will; yet it allowed circumstances to develop that his wicked heart could not resist.
There is no reason to assume that only “them that perish” (v. 10) will be caught up in the Last Day’s delusion. As we’ve noted from the Scriptures, many of the heroes and heroines of the faith at times opted for their own ways rather than God’s way. They let their own desires override God’s only antidote for spiritual delusion: a love for the truth. As it was then, so it is even more today, as the apostasy gathers unprecedented momentum.
In the third chapter of Second Timothy, Paul speaks prophetically, identifying some of the characteristics that we need to urgently heed concerning the end-times deception: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous…lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof….never able to come to the knowledge of the truth….[A]s Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth” (2 Tim 3:1-8).
Let’s consider these things in light of what is taking place in evangelical churches today. Humanistic psychology, with its emphasis on self-love and its brood of other selfisms, has become an accepted and promoted doctrine among pastoral counselors and “Christian” psychologists. Prosperity evangelists have turned covetousness into God’s foremost commandment for millions of professing Christians. Seeker-friendly churches are working at filling their pews with lovers of pleasure while discouraging (and in many cases dismissing) lovers of God. Purpose-driven churches are marketing formulas of godliness in place of the power and leading of the Holy Spirit. The growing adulteration of God’s Holy Scriptures in the form of subjective paraphrase and visual “translations” is creating both a resistance to the truth and an anemia regarding spiritual discernment. Finally, regarding the ingredients of apostasy, the magicians “wowed” those crowding Pharaoh’s court with their pagan showmanship, mystical presence, and counterfeit signs and wonders (Ex 7:11,12). So, too, are we seeing entertainment, experientialism, and contemplative (Catholic) mysticism seducing multitudes of churches that formerly majored in preaching, teaching, and sound doctrine.
Has “strong delusion” made inroads into the evangelical church? If you don’t think so, you may have difficulty finding another explanation for the following agenda and participation at the 2004 National Pastors’ Convention.
This event, sponsored by Youth Specialties (America’s most influential evangelical organization for youth pastors and leaders) and Zondervan (publisher of The Purpose-Driven Life, the NIV-Message Parallel Bible, and evangelical distributor for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ DVD) began its daily program with contemplative prayer (see “Please Contemplate This!” TBC Mar ’00) and “Yoga & Stretching” exercises. Emerging church liturgies based upon Roman Catholic and Orthodox rituals and sacramentals were introduced, including daily “labyrinth prayer” opportunities. The latter is a meditative prayer walk around a circular, maze-like pattern copied from a floor design found in Chartres Cathedral. This mystical Catholic ritual dates back to the Middle Ages, when it became a substitute for journeying to the dangerous, Muslim-controlled Holy Land in order to trace the “Passion route” of Jesus. As Catholics walked the labyrinth and meditated on the sufferings of Christ in their imagination, they obtained the same indulgences (pardons that would shorten their time of suffering in Purgatory to expiate their sins) for making the actual pilgrimage.
The Convention’s evening programs included Christian comedy acts, The Jesus Painter (who “paints portraits of Christ in under 20 minutes”), “Tribe Church Drumming Experience,” “Personal Emotional Health Discussion,” an “emergent Pub with Live Music,” and “Late Night Contemplative Prayer Services.”
The greater percentage of speakers were practitioners of mystical Christian prayer and worship forms (referred to as “authentic faith”), and the rest appeared to be advocates of, or at least encouragers for, the development of new methodologies and liturgies for the emerging culture of the 21st century. One topic was titled “A New Theology for a New World.” The double-location conference attracted thousands and featured many influential church leaders, including Gordon MacDonald, Henry Cloud, Brennan Manning, Dallas Willard, Joseph Stowell, Howard Hendricks, Gary Thomas, Tony Campolo, and Rick Warren. The 2005 convention promises to be more of the same, with Christian contemplative, experiential, and emerging church headliners such as Richard Foster, Calvin Miller, Philip Yancy, Ruth Haley Barton, Doug Pagitt, and Dan Kimball.
Most of Christianity, according to the Scriptures, will progress into an apostate church as the return of the Lord draws near. Jesus said to His disciples, “It is impossible but that offenses will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come!” (Lk 17:1). He later posed this question: “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Lk 18:8) The implied answer is no.
How could this happen? The essential “love of the truth” is being extinguished by “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 Jn 2:16). The professing church, consisting of true and false believers, increasingly turns to the world’s ways–its hedonistic philosophy, its evolutionary pseudoscience, its self-oriented psychology, its consumer-driven business methodologies, its religious ecumenism, and its pagan spirituality. Ironically, some have turned to these things in sincerity as a means of enriching and spreading “Christianity.” Nevertheless, the result is consumer Christianity in any and all of its self-serving forms, when “every man [does] that which [is] right in his own eyes” (Jdg 17:6).
As for the signs that would adversely affect the generation at His Coming, Jesus warned that His disciples should “take heed that no man deceive” them (Mat 24:4). If we are not the generation that is living in the time of “strong delusion” in preparation for that day, how much worse can it get? Pray that His Body of believers will increase in their love for His way, His Word, and His truth. TBC
Consumerism was introduced to humanity in the Garden of Eden. Satan had a self-serving concept that he wanted to sell to a potential customer who had no need—one who, living in a perfect environment, had it all, materially and spiritually. His strategy (comparable to the prevailing methods of 21st-century marketing) was to create a desire where no real need existed, convincing Eve not only that she needed something more but that what she had was somewhat deficient. Moreover, in an effort to beat the Competition, Satan began his pitch by sowing doubt regarding God’s command and its resulting penalty for disobedience.
By calling God a liar, the adversary no doubt rattled Eve’s trust in Him: “And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?…And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die.” Then, in the wake of further maligning the Lord’s character, came the irresistible “do it for you” sales pitch: “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:1, 4,5).
Consumerism, being all about profit, must include a profit-oriented buyer as well as seller. Eve certainly had her own desires stirred, for without them, no sale could have been made: “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat” (Gen 3:6). Thus, the cry of the soul of consumerism, “How will it profit me?” birthed itself in Adam and Eve and all their descendants.
Consumer Christianity is a mentality or methodology that attempts to enrich Christians both temporally and spiritually, as well as to attract converts to the faith, through ways and means that are true neither to the Word of God nor the work of the Holy Spirit. Whether introduced subtly or overtly, wittingly or unwittingly, it always involves what appeals to humanity’s fallen nature. Furthermore, consumer Christianity ultimately indulges and glorifies self rather than God.
History is replete with instances of man’s consumerism and selfism. Let’s briefly survey the history of God’s chosen people, the Jews (Deu 14:2), and His church (Titus 2:14), for a few such examples by those who should have known better. Sarai, Abram’s wife, attempted to solve her childless circumstance by coming up with her own way to have the son that God had promised (Gen 16:2-3); “her” child Ishmael by her servant Hagar became the son of grief for the Jews to this day. Centuries later, right after the Israelites had experienced God’s deliverance from the Egyptians in spectacular ways, they nevertheless formed a golden calf to worship in order to gratify their immediate spiritual desires. God’s response to Moses was that they had thereby “corrupted themselves” (Ex 32:4-7). Joshua was deceived and made peace with the Gibeonites, contrary to God’s command; his presumption of doing good for his people was in reality rank disobedience: “And the [Israelites] took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD” (Jos 9:14). The entire book of Judges characterizes God’s people during that time period as having a consumer mentality: “…every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Jdg 21:25). Later, David’s “eyes” for Bathsheba led him to satisfy his lustful felt needs in spite of what it would do to his personal relationship with God.
The New Testament gospels and epistles abound with examples of consumer “Christianity.” Peter’s objection to what Jesus said He would have to suffer for our salvation demonstrated more than just fleshly sympathy; Jesus intimated that it was disobedience of a satanic nature (Mat 16:21-23). Furthermore, Christ’s response to Peter defines what consumer Christianity is all about: “for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” Our Lord’s other disciples were also given to the “what-could-best-benefit-me” mentality.
Blinded by self-interest to what Jesus told them of His impending suffering and death, James and John reacted by seeking an elevated position in His coming kingdom: “Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory” (Mk 10:37). The Apostle Paul rebuked Peter, who, along with Barnabas, drew back from the Gentiles in order to accommodate those of the circumcision (Gal 2:11-14). Paul identified his own struggles, as well as ours, with putting self before God: “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Rom 7:18-19). He then declared his solution, which is the believer’s only solution: the Spirit-led life in Christ (Rom 8:1).
Consumer Christianity, whether manifested in the early churches or in today’s assemblies (from mega-churches to home fellowships), is simply doing things man’s way rather than God’s way. The history of the church from the first century on is a distressing chronicle of true and false Christians deviating from the Word of God, doing what seemed right in their own minds while professing to be doing it in the name of Christ and to His glory. Although the results have often been spiritually devastating, God has been faithful, merciful, and longsuffering with His own. As we draw near to the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, however, consumer Christianity will so transform the professing church that it will be shocking to any true believer unless, of course, he or she has been desensitized by the gradual acceptance of many of the appealing “new products and processes” (i.e., unbiblical teachings, practices, and worship forms) being “sold” today.
Following the Rapture of the Bride of Christ to be with Him (1 Thes 4:16-18), a professing Christian church will remain that has been groomed to accept the Antichrist. This apostate church does not just appear overnight, but its preparation has been ongoing for two millennia and will increase with great intensity up until the Rapture of truly born-again Christians. The deception at that time will be like nothing humanity has ever experienced, including Hitler’s seduction of, and absolute control over, civilized, highly educated, and technologically sophisticated Germany. What will be the major difference? This deception will be worldwide and, more astonishingly, facilitated by God himself.
After giving information about the coming apostasy and the Antichrist, “whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,” the Apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, further explains why the deception will be so pervasive and powerful: “…because they received not the love of the truth.” He then gives us reason to be astonished: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie” (2 Thes 2:9-11). This “strong delusion” affecting the lost is comparable to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. It neither induced sin nor subjugated Pharaoh’s will; yet it allowed circumstances to develop that his wicked heart could not resist.
There is no reason to assume that only “them that perish” (v. 10) will be caught up in the Last Day’s delusion. As we’ve noted from the Scriptures, many of the heroes and heroines of the faith at times opted for their own ways rather than God’s way. They let their own desires override God’s only antidote for spiritual delusion: a love for the truth. As it was then, so it is even more today, as the apostasy gathers unprecedented momentum.
In the third chapter of Second Timothy, Paul speaks prophetically, identifying some of the characteristics that we need to urgently heed concerning the end-times deception: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous…lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof….never able to come to the knowledge of the truth….[A]s Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth” (2 Tim 3:1-8).
Let’s consider these things in light of what is taking place in evangelical churches today. Humanistic psychology, with its emphasis on self-love and its brood of other selfisms, has become an accepted and promoted doctrine among pastoral counselors and “Christian” psychologists. Prosperity evangelists have turned covetousness into God’s foremost commandment for millions of professing Christians. Seeker-friendly churches are working at filling their pews with lovers of pleasure while discouraging (and in many cases dismissing) lovers of God. Purpose-driven churches are marketing formulas of godliness in place of the power and leading of the Holy Spirit. The growing adulteration of God’s Holy Scriptures in the form of subjective paraphrase and visual “translations” is creating both a resistance to the truth and an anemia regarding spiritual discernment. Finally, regarding the ingredients of apostasy, the magicians “wowed” those crowding Pharaoh’s court with their pagan showmanship, mystical presence, and counterfeit signs and wonders (Ex 7:11,12). So, too, are we seeing entertainment, experientialism, and contemplative (Catholic) mysticism seducing multitudes of churches that formerly majored in preaching, teaching, and sound doctrine.
Has “strong delusion” made inroads into the evangelical church? If you don’t think so, you may have difficulty finding another explanation for the following agenda and participation at the 2004 National Pastors’ Convention.
This event, sponsored by Youth Specialties (America’s most influential evangelical organization for youth pastors and leaders) and Zondervan (publisher of The Purpose-Driven Life, the NIV-Message Parallel Bible, and evangelical distributor for Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ DVD) began its daily program with contemplative prayer (see “Please Contemplate This!” TBC Mar ’00) and “Yoga & Stretching” exercises. Emerging church liturgies based upon Roman Catholic and Orthodox rituals and sacramentals were introduced, including daily “labyrinth prayer” opportunities. The latter is a meditative prayer walk around a circular, maze-like pattern copied from a floor design found in Chartres Cathedral. This mystical Catholic ritual dates back to the Middle Ages, when it became a substitute for journeying to the dangerous, Muslim-controlled Holy Land in order to trace the “Passion route” of Jesus. As Catholics walked the labyrinth and meditated on the sufferings of Christ in their imagination, they obtained the same indulgences (pardons that would shorten their time of suffering in Purgatory to expiate their sins) for making the actual pilgrimage.
The Convention’s evening programs included Christian comedy acts, The Jesus Painter (who “paints portraits of Christ in under 20 minutes”), “Tribe Church Drumming Experience,” “Personal Emotional Health Discussion,” an “emergent Pub with Live Music,” and “Late Night Contemplative Prayer Services.”
The greater percentage of speakers were practitioners of mystical Christian prayer and worship forms (referred to as “authentic faith”), and the rest appeared to be advocates of, or at least encouragers for, the development of new methodologies and liturgies for the emerging culture of the 21st century. One topic was titled “A New Theology for a New World.” The double-location conference attracted thousands and featured many influential church leaders, including Gordon MacDonald, Henry Cloud, Brennan Manning, Dallas Willard, Joseph Stowell, Howard Hendricks, Gary Thomas, Tony Campolo, and Rick Warren. The 2005 convention promises to be more of the same, with Christian contemplative, experiential, and emerging church headliners such as Richard Foster, Calvin Miller, Philip Yancy, Ruth Haley Barton, Doug Pagitt, and Dan Kimball.
Most of Christianity, according to the Scriptures, will progress into an apostate church as the return of the Lord draws near. Jesus said to His disciples, “It is impossible but that offenses will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come!” (Lk 17:1). He later posed this question: “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Lk 18:8) The implied answer is no.
How could this happen? The essential “love of the truth” is being extinguished by “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 Jn 2:16). The professing church, consisting of true and false believers, increasingly turns to the world’s ways–its hedonistic philosophy, its evolutionary pseudoscience, its self-oriented psychology, its consumer-driven business methodologies, its religious ecumenism, and its pagan spirituality. Ironically, some have turned to these things in sincerity as a means of enriching and spreading “Christianity.” Nevertheless, the result is consumer Christianity in any and all of its self-serving forms, when “every man [does] that which [is] right in his own eyes” (Jdg 17:6).
As for the signs that would adversely affect the generation at His Coming, Jesus warned that His disciples should “take heed that no man deceive” them (Mat 24:4). If we are not the generation that is living in the time of “strong delusion” in preparation for that day, how much worse can it get? Pray that His Body of believers will increase in their love for His way, His Word, and His truth. TBC
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Consumer Christianity--Part 1
by McMahon, T.A.
What do I mean by consumer Christianity? Generally, it is any attempt to build the kingdom of God or build up the individual Christian (or attract the potential convert to Christianity) by means and methods that appeal to the flesh, i.e., the deceitful and self-serving heart of man. It had its beginning in the Garden of Eden when Satan manipulated Eve into disobeying God while believing she was enriching herself (Gen 3:1-6).
More specifically related to what’s taking place today, consumer Christianity is an endeavor to help Christian churches grow in size and become more effective through the application of business principles, marketing strategies, and management concepts. It characterizes the most popular venture in Christendom today, which should seem rather odd, if not disturbing, to anyone who has an understanding of both “consumerism” and “Christianity.” Why? Because these terms are antagonistic to one another.
Consumerism in the business sense is a concept based upon customer satisfaction, which is the key to any successful commercial enterprise. The product or service must be tailored to the wants and perceived needs of the customer, or there is no sustainable profit. The consumer rules, because where there is no customer, there is no profit and, therefore, no business. God rules in biblical Christianity. It is His revelation to humanity regarding “all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Pt 1:3). Simply put, biblical Christianity encompasses all that is necessary for man-kind to know and do in order to be reconciled to Him, to please Him daily, and to live with Him for all eternity. It is not a business endeavor and, in fact, has no relationship to business or its associated marketing concepts.
Any attempt to enhance the practice of biblical Christianity by means of business principles is, at best, adding futile methodologies to God’s Word. At worst, such an attempt rejects the sufficiency of the Scriptures in favor of works of the flesh, quenches the Holy Spirit, and subjects one to the deceptions of, the service of, and in the end, the bondage of the god of this world. In any case, it leads to spiritual destruction in the church and has eternal consequences.
Consumer Christianity is at the heart of the church-growth movement, and its deadly effect is found among all denominations (as well as pseudo-Christian cults). Many evangelical churches have committed themselves wholeheartedly to a marketing approach aimed primarily at attracting the lost, who are viewed as potential customers. As unbelievers attend the church and mix with new and long-standing members, the consumer concept unavoidably spreads to the entire congregation. This inevitably effects the preaching, music, Sunday School programs, etc., which in turn produces a biblical shallowness throughout the congregation.
More often than not, the business approach has been successful in adding numbers to a church. Tens of thousands of pastors across the U.S., and thousands more internationally, have been influenced by high-profile ministries and have put to use their various marketing methodologies for soul-winning and church growth.
Is that the biblical way to win souls and effect growth in the church?
To some biblical Christians the answer is an obvious “No!” But to increasing numbers who also claim to hold to the Bible as their authoritative and all-sufficient source of God’s truth, “No” has given way to “Possibly…Perhaps…,” or “Let’s be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water!” Well, let’s strain the water to see if there is indeed a baby to rescue.
Is consumerism supported by the Scriptures? Did God shape His Gospel to gratify the worldly desires of humanity? Are there some things in the Bible that should be strategically avoided in order not to put off “potential” believers? Does God’s Word reflect a concern that people might take their “business” elsewhere if their felt needs aren’t being met? Does the Bible tell us to make the truth more acceptable by feeding it to the lost in diluted or entertaining forms? And is it really the gospel that saves if it’s altered to cater to non-Christians? If any believer even remotely thinks so, I fear that the thinking of the world has grievously influenced his understanding of the Bible.
Certainly, pastors ought to know better, yet in most cases where consumerism has infected a church, they have been instrumental in implementing it. The pastors to whom I am referring here, and am most concerned about, are those who consider themselves to be biblical, who sincerely want to see souls saved, and who honestly want to fulfill their calling and ministry in a way that is pleasing to God. How could such a shepherd of the sheep be drawn into consumer Christianity?
The process often develops subtly. Let’s say a pastor loves his church members and wants them to be happy. He also wants them to grow spiritually, and he is always looking for ways for new sheep to be added to his flock. When conflicts arise or growth expectations are not realized, solutions to such problems are often sought from others who have been seemingly successful regarding those issues. The recommended remedies almost always involve some form of accommodation.
For example, a very common church conflict today is that of different tastes in music, which is usually resolved by establishing separate services—one with traditional hymns and one featuring contemporary songs. As that alteration seems to satisfy most members, many pastors are encouraged to add more souls to their church by combining the attraction of contemporary music with seeker-sensitive (appealing and non-threatening) messages presented in a convenient and casual Saturday evening service. Innovative programs are then formulated to sustain the interest of would-be converts and motivate the rarely active church members, with particular emphasis on entertaining activities to attract the youth and keep them coming.
Pastors tell me that they reluctantly glean ideas from the world in order to compete with the world that they might reach the lost in order to save them from the world. They’re aware of the irony of that approach but argue that it’s the only way to avoid preaching to empty pews. The preaching, by the way, is often shortened and supplemented by visuals, skits, and music productions.
This is a path that, though seemingly harmless at first, leads to the broad road of consumer Christianity. Although we empathize with pastors who feel compelled (some even coerced by church politics) to go down that thoroughfare, it is paved with biblical compromises and headed for a spiritual dead end.
This church-growth enterprise is hardly new to Christianity. It is a chronicle of doing things man’s way rather than God’s way. Fourth century Emperor Constantine has yet to be equaled in successful strategies for “growing the church.” He professed to have become a Christian and induced half of the Roman Empire to do likewise. This era of compromises made by the Emperor (the self-appointed “Vicar of Christ”/“Bishop of bishops”) in order to draw in new converts is characterized by Will Durant in The Story of Civilization as a time in which “the world converted Christianity.”1 Another historian writes, “Far from being a source of improvement [over the persecution the Christians previously suffered], this [political] alliance was a source of ‘greater danger and temptation’….[I]ndiscriminately filling the churches [with pagans]…simply washed away the clear moral landmarks that separated the ‘church’ from the ‘world.’”2
One millennium later, Martin “Luther saw and felt [religious] Rome utterly abandoned to money, luxury, and kindred evils,” writes Edwin Booth. “He was stunned and unable to understand it.”3 Nevertheless, he and others did something about it. The clarion call of the Reformation was “Sola Scriptura!” and, although “Scripture alone” wasn’t followed entirely, God’s Word and His way were restored as the authority and rule of life for millions deceived by the devastating compromise that became the Roman Catholic Church.
Consumer Christianity has never been a one-way affair. It takes both a deal maker and a deal taker. Tetzel, the sixteenth-century Dominican monk and the “P.T. Barnum” of the sale of Indulgences, was a master manipulator. Even so, his job was made all the easier by “indulging” the self-serving natures of his Catholic customers. Both rich and poor alike were willing to pay anything to avoid the flames of Hell and Purgatory.
Protestantism has had its own share of both spiritual rip-off artists and consumers ripe for the picking. Whereas Tetzel’s “fund raising” was instrumental in building St. Peter’s in Rome, the “health and prosperity” evangelists of the twentieth century (many still going strong today) helped build Trinity Broadcasting Network into the largest religious television network in the world. By distorting and turning the biblical doctrine of faith into a power anyone can use to obtain wealth and healing, these con men and women have personally amassed fortunes at the expense of the biblically feeble and illiterate, as well as from those “...whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things” (Philippians 3:19).
During the last fifty years, those most susceptible to the schemes of religious charlatans were professing Christians who had an affinity for spiritual experiences rather than sound doctrine. They were usually found among the Pentecostals and Charismatics. Most thoughtful, doctrine-conscious Christians seemed to be immune to the “seed faith” come-ons of an Oral Roberts or the blasphemous “Holy Spirit” power displays of a Benny Hinn, two leaders among a host of other “signs and wonders” promoters.
However, spiritual gullibility has found fertile soil—or, more pointedly, a widening swamp—among those who traditionally have fostered biblical discernment. Although the seductive methodologies are slightly different, the basis for an effective spiritual deception is the same: no Christians, evangelical or otherwise, are impervious to “…all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life…” (1 Jn 2:16). Furthermore, the only safeguard against such deception—the reading of and obedience to the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit—is being systematically diluted throughout the evangelical church.
Church history has demonstrated the necessity of adhering to God’s Word; when that takes place, holiness and fruitfulness follow. When biblical Christianity is adulterated (by adding the methods of men) or abandoned altogether, man’s religious distortions prevail, leading the professing church into spiritual anemia and blindness: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Pro 14:12). There is also a correlation between the depth of a church’s reliance upon the Scriptures and its acceptance of heretical beliefs and practices. As a church reaches a shallow state with regard to biblical understanding, the ability of its members to discern false teaching becomes practically impossible.
Consumer Christianity’s most deadly effect is what it does to the presentation of the gospel of salvation, the only hope a person has to be reconciled to God. It is nearly always a subtle sales pitch featuring all the wonderful things God has for mankind: He loves them so much and desires to have them spend eternity with Him, and they are significant and of infinite worth. This then becomes the reason for Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. That mixture of truths and self-indulging distortions is followed by a brief “sinner’s prayer” being repeated by those who were persuaded by the enticing offer. This method has become so commonplace that it’s difficult for some Christians to recognize any problem, let alone realize how misleading it is with regard to a person truly being saved.
How so? Let’s start with someone who is genuinely saved and work backwards. Everyone who is born again by the Spirit of God has a new heart, one filled with God’s love, for Him and for others, as well as for His teachings. He or she is a new creation, and although not perfect in these things, there resides within that person a heart that desires to please God rather than self.
One explicit example of this is found in Luke 7:36-50, involving the woman of sinful reputation who entered the home of Simon the Pharisee, where Jesus was invited to dine. She washed His feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, and kissed them repeatedly. Jesus declared of her that she loved much because she was forgiven much.
These passages teach how essential conviction of sin is in coming to Christ. The self-righteous and self-serving Pharisee had little or no conviction of sin and therefore sought no forgiveness. The woman, on the other hand, gave no thought to herself or the disdain with which she was regarded by the dinner guests. Her thankfulness that Jesus would and did cleanse her of her sins compelled her to die to self and live for Him.
The gospel according to consumer Christianity, on the other hand, must make its appeal to self, emphasizing things (both true and distorted) that meet the felt needs of the lost. This seriously restricts all but a hint of any biblical doctrines that would bring about conviction of sin. What’s the problem? Jesus came to save sinners, not consumers.
What do I mean by consumer Christianity? Generally, it is any attempt to build the kingdom of God or build up the individual Christian (or attract the potential convert to Christianity) by means and methods that appeal to the flesh, i.e., the deceitful and self-serving heart of man. It had its beginning in the Garden of Eden when Satan manipulated Eve into disobeying God while believing she was enriching herself (Gen 3:1-6).
More specifically related to what’s taking place today, consumer Christianity is an endeavor to help Christian churches grow in size and become more effective through the application of business principles, marketing strategies, and management concepts. It characterizes the most popular venture in Christendom today, which should seem rather odd, if not disturbing, to anyone who has an understanding of both “consumerism” and “Christianity.” Why? Because these terms are antagonistic to one another.
Consumerism in the business sense is a concept based upon customer satisfaction, which is the key to any successful commercial enterprise. The product or service must be tailored to the wants and perceived needs of the customer, or there is no sustainable profit. The consumer rules, because where there is no customer, there is no profit and, therefore, no business. God rules in biblical Christianity. It is His revelation to humanity regarding “all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Pt 1:3). Simply put, biblical Christianity encompasses all that is necessary for man-kind to know and do in order to be reconciled to Him, to please Him daily, and to live with Him for all eternity. It is not a business endeavor and, in fact, has no relationship to business or its associated marketing concepts.
Any attempt to enhance the practice of biblical Christianity by means of business principles is, at best, adding futile methodologies to God’s Word. At worst, such an attempt rejects the sufficiency of the Scriptures in favor of works of the flesh, quenches the Holy Spirit, and subjects one to the deceptions of, the service of, and in the end, the bondage of the god of this world. In any case, it leads to spiritual destruction in the church and has eternal consequences.
Consumer Christianity is at the heart of the church-growth movement, and its deadly effect is found among all denominations (as well as pseudo-Christian cults). Many evangelical churches have committed themselves wholeheartedly to a marketing approach aimed primarily at attracting the lost, who are viewed as potential customers. As unbelievers attend the church and mix with new and long-standing members, the consumer concept unavoidably spreads to the entire congregation. This inevitably effects the preaching, music, Sunday School programs, etc., which in turn produces a biblical shallowness throughout the congregation.
More often than not, the business approach has been successful in adding numbers to a church. Tens of thousands of pastors across the U.S., and thousands more internationally, have been influenced by high-profile ministries and have put to use their various marketing methodologies for soul-winning and church growth.
Is that the biblical way to win souls and effect growth in the church?
To some biblical Christians the answer is an obvious “No!” But to increasing numbers who also claim to hold to the Bible as their authoritative and all-sufficient source of God’s truth, “No” has given way to “Possibly…Perhaps…,” or “Let’s be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water!” Well, let’s strain the water to see if there is indeed a baby to rescue.
Is consumerism supported by the Scriptures? Did God shape His Gospel to gratify the worldly desires of humanity? Are there some things in the Bible that should be strategically avoided in order not to put off “potential” believers? Does God’s Word reflect a concern that people might take their “business” elsewhere if their felt needs aren’t being met? Does the Bible tell us to make the truth more acceptable by feeding it to the lost in diluted or entertaining forms? And is it really the gospel that saves if it’s altered to cater to non-Christians? If any believer even remotely thinks so, I fear that the thinking of the world has grievously influenced his understanding of the Bible.
Certainly, pastors ought to know better, yet in most cases where consumerism has infected a church, they have been instrumental in implementing it. The pastors to whom I am referring here, and am most concerned about, are those who consider themselves to be biblical, who sincerely want to see souls saved, and who honestly want to fulfill their calling and ministry in a way that is pleasing to God. How could such a shepherd of the sheep be drawn into consumer Christianity?
The process often develops subtly. Let’s say a pastor loves his church members and wants them to be happy. He also wants them to grow spiritually, and he is always looking for ways for new sheep to be added to his flock. When conflicts arise or growth expectations are not realized, solutions to such problems are often sought from others who have been seemingly successful regarding those issues. The recommended remedies almost always involve some form of accommodation.
For example, a very common church conflict today is that of different tastes in music, which is usually resolved by establishing separate services—one with traditional hymns and one featuring contemporary songs. As that alteration seems to satisfy most members, many pastors are encouraged to add more souls to their church by combining the attraction of contemporary music with seeker-sensitive (appealing and non-threatening) messages presented in a convenient and casual Saturday evening service. Innovative programs are then formulated to sustain the interest of would-be converts and motivate the rarely active church members, with particular emphasis on entertaining activities to attract the youth and keep them coming.
Pastors tell me that they reluctantly glean ideas from the world in order to compete with the world that they might reach the lost in order to save them from the world. They’re aware of the irony of that approach but argue that it’s the only way to avoid preaching to empty pews. The preaching, by the way, is often shortened and supplemented by visuals, skits, and music productions.
This is a path that, though seemingly harmless at first, leads to the broad road of consumer Christianity. Although we empathize with pastors who feel compelled (some even coerced by church politics) to go down that thoroughfare, it is paved with biblical compromises and headed for a spiritual dead end.
This church-growth enterprise is hardly new to Christianity. It is a chronicle of doing things man’s way rather than God’s way. Fourth century Emperor Constantine has yet to be equaled in successful strategies for “growing the church.” He professed to have become a Christian and induced half of the Roman Empire to do likewise. This era of compromises made by the Emperor (the self-appointed “Vicar of Christ”/“Bishop of bishops”) in order to draw in new converts is characterized by Will Durant in The Story of Civilization as a time in which “the world converted Christianity.”1 Another historian writes, “Far from being a source of improvement [over the persecution the Christians previously suffered], this [political] alliance was a source of ‘greater danger and temptation’….[I]ndiscriminately filling the churches [with pagans]…simply washed away the clear moral landmarks that separated the ‘church’ from the ‘world.’”2
One millennium later, Martin “Luther saw and felt [religious] Rome utterly abandoned to money, luxury, and kindred evils,” writes Edwin Booth. “He was stunned and unable to understand it.”3 Nevertheless, he and others did something about it. The clarion call of the Reformation was “Sola Scriptura!” and, although “Scripture alone” wasn’t followed entirely, God’s Word and His way were restored as the authority and rule of life for millions deceived by the devastating compromise that became the Roman Catholic Church.
Consumer Christianity has never been a one-way affair. It takes both a deal maker and a deal taker. Tetzel, the sixteenth-century Dominican monk and the “P.T. Barnum” of the sale of Indulgences, was a master manipulator. Even so, his job was made all the easier by “indulging” the self-serving natures of his Catholic customers. Both rich and poor alike were willing to pay anything to avoid the flames of Hell and Purgatory.
Protestantism has had its own share of both spiritual rip-off artists and consumers ripe for the picking. Whereas Tetzel’s “fund raising” was instrumental in building St. Peter’s in Rome, the “health and prosperity” evangelists of the twentieth century (many still going strong today) helped build Trinity Broadcasting Network into the largest religious television network in the world. By distorting and turning the biblical doctrine of faith into a power anyone can use to obtain wealth and healing, these con men and women have personally amassed fortunes at the expense of the biblically feeble and illiterate, as well as from those “...whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things” (Philippians 3:19).
During the last fifty years, those most susceptible to the schemes of religious charlatans were professing Christians who had an affinity for spiritual experiences rather than sound doctrine. They were usually found among the Pentecostals and Charismatics. Most thoughtful, doctrine-conscious Christians seemed to be immune to the “seed faith” come-ons of an Oral Roberts or the blasphemous “Holy Spirit” power displays of a Benny Hinn, two leaders among a host of other “signs and wonders” promoters.
However, spiritual gullibility has found fertile soil—or, more pointedly, a widening swamp—among those who traditionally have fostered biblical discernment. Although the seductive methodologies are slightly different, the basis for an effective spiritual deception is the same: no Christians, evangelical or otherwise, are impervious to “…all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life…” (1 Jn 2:16). Furthermore, the only safeguard against such deception—the reading of and obedience to the Word of God in the power of the Holy Spirit—is being systematically diluted throughout the evangelical church.
Church history has demonstrated the necessity of adhering to God’s Word; when that takes place, holiness and fruitfulness follow. When biblical Christianity is adulterated (by adding the methods of men) or abandoned altogether, man’s religious distortions prevail, leading the professing church into spiritual anemia and blindness: “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Pro 14:12). There is also a correlation between the depth of a church’s reliance upon the Scriptures and its acceptance of heretical beliefs and practices. As a church reaches a shallow state with regard to biblical understanding, the ability of its members to discern false teaching becomes practically impossible.
Consumer Christianity’s most deadly effect is what it does to the presentation of the gospel of salvation, the only hope a person has to be reconciled to God. It is nearly always a subtle sales pitch featuring all the wonderful things God has for mankind: He loves them so much and desires to have them spend eternity with Him, and they are significant and of infinite worth. This then becomes the reason for Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. That mixture of truths and self-indulging distortions is followed by a brief “sinner’s prayer” being repeated by those who were persuaded by the enticing offer. This method has become so commonplace that it’s difficult for some Christians to recognize any problem, let alone realize how misleading it is with regard to a person truly being saved.
How so? Let’s start with someone who is genuinely saved and work backwards. Everyone who is born again by the Spirit of God has a new heart, one filled with God’s love, for Him and for others, as well as for His teachings. He or she is a new creation, and although not perfect in these things, there resides within that person a heart that desires to please God rather than self.
One explicit example of this is found in Luke 7:36-50, involving the woman of sinful reputation who entered the home of Simon the Pharisee, where Jesus was invited to dine. She washed His feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, and kissed them repeatedly. Jesus declared of her that she loved much because she was forgiven much.
These passages teach how essential conviction of sin is in coming to Christ. The self-righteous and self-serving Pharisee had little or no conviction of sin and therefore sought no forgiveness. The woman, on the other hand, gave no thought to herself or the disdain with which she was regarded by the dinner guests. Her thankfulness that Jesus would and did cleanse her of her sins compelled her to die to self and live for Him.
The gospel according to consumer Christianity, on the other hand, must make its appeal to self, emphasizing things (both true and distorted) that meet the felt needs of the lost. This seriously restricts all but a hint of any biblical doctrines that would bring about conviction of sin. What’s the problem? Jesus came to save sinners, not consumers.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
All Who Are Called
12.15.10
J.A. Matteson
He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.
καὶ αὐτὸς ἱλασμός ἐστιν περὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν, οὐ περὶ τῶν ἡμετέρων δὲ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου.
1 John 2:2
The act of propitiation (ἱλασμός) displays the justice and grace of God. For by it a vicarious sacrifice is made, redirecting the wrath of God from objects justly deserving condemnation towards an innocent (Christ Jesus), making the Father propitious (favorable) towards the guilty. In his epistle the Apostle does not specify the objects of God’s propitiation as it was assumed by his readers as a result of prior teaching. In the present day, however, with the Arminian controversy in the Church, two pressing questions arise from the Apostle’s discourse, and the manor in which they are answered will as a consequence heavily influence the nature of the Gospel and how it is communicated.
Therefore, let us first ask what is the extent of the propitiation and what is its intended effect. As to its extent the Apostle states that it is not only for “our sins, but also for those of the whole world”? Now, we disagree with the Arminian who claims the Apostle is speaking of the entire human race, as that conclusion finds no basis in fact when the context of the passage is considered. Certainly the Apostle is not speaking of “our sins” (τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν) in the sense of the entire human race as that assertion violates the context of his thesis. For the “our” and “ours” is contextualized in what precedes his declaration here, “but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7). We see, then, that the Apostle is writing to the church, believers, Christians who have received the Gospel and God has propitiated His wrath towards them as a result of their expressed faith in the shed blood of His Son.
As expected the audience of the Apostle’s epistle finds consistent agreement in his subsequent letter, “The elder, to the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth” (2 Jn. 1:1). Here “lady” is the bride of Christ, His church, the called of God. In a further reference to the Church as being the object of God’s propitiation activity the Apostle continues in Chapter 4, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (v. 10). The Arminian has a serious problem for his proposed propitiation is merely a potential one and not an actual accomplishment by the Lord toward any individual. He is welcome, therefore, to keep his jaded propitiation with its fatal deficiencies. Where as the Arminian considers the propitiation to be potentially unlimited for “whosoever will”, its effect by default must be limited, for at this juncture the Arminian is forced to concede that the death of Christ is of no value to those who die in unbelief. Therefore the Arminian must admit that the propitiation of Christ is in fact limited in its extent to those who believe. To deny this he is forced to admit he is a universalist, an untenable position. On the cross Jesus Christ cried out “It is finished!” (Τετέλεσται), He did not utter “It is started”, or “The way is now open” with the implication that He had performed His half in procuring salvation by dying on the cross, and now it is the responsibility of “whosoever will” to perform their half by believing in Him apart from the initiative of the Holy Spirit in order for the propitiation to be applied to them personally. To make that claim is to confess that Jesus Christ performed the same atoning act for the multitude who are at this moment in hell as for those who are in heaven.
At this point the Arminian asserts that Christ died for every one in the world and that His shed blood atoned for all their sins, all of them, that nothing can inhibit His saving power,…except…! Here the Arminian falls into the pit of his own weird theology by adding an exception clause to the propitiation of Jesus Christ. By his confused reasoning he is again forced to admit the propitiation of Christ is in fact limited, and it is limited to those who believe and is no value to those who die in unbelief. So he cannot rationally claim that Christ died for every mans sin as unbelief is sin. We conclude, therefore, the Arminian does in fact by necessity hold to a specific or limited propitiation. And who, then, are those who believe to which this propitiation is applied? Believers. For what does the Apostle say in this regard?, “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins….”
The verb “is” (ἐστιν) is in the present active indicative and speaks of the action happening today. The Greek is precise and leaves no room for the interpretation that the Apostle is speaking of a potential universal propitiation. A propitiation of that nature is untenable on many levels, not the least of which being that it denies the moral inability of unregenerate sinners to come to Christ apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. The Scripture is clear that there are none who seek after God, none who understand, none who believe the Gospel except by the power of God. All are spiritually dead and in bondage to their sins and trespasses. All are spiritually deaf, blind, and at enmity towards God, disinclined to obey and inclined towards rebellion to their Maker.
The total depravity of man is absolute and has polluted the entire person and left to his own devises he will never come to the Savior. It is for this reason the New Covenant was necessary, for the Lord promised, “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the LORD, I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” ( Jer. 31:31-33). In his epistle to the Romans the Apostle Paul also addresses the propitiation of Christ and specifically limits it to believers, “[Jesus Chris]…whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith” (v. 25). Note the application of Christ’s propitiation is through faith and is of no potential universal value to unbelievers. Also, we see that the writer to the Hebrews limits the propitiation to the children of God, “Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (v. 17).
Now the Lord Jesus Christ serves as High Priest for His people and not the entire human race, for the High Priest offered sacrifices and intercessions on behalf of the people of God. Here too Christ offers up Himself as the final sacrifice for those whom the Father has given Him; namely, the elect. In the upper room the Lord Jesus Christ interceded for those with Him and limited His intercession to those given to Him by the Father, those foreknown to Him, those unconditionally elected for salvation, those who are recipients of a holy calling, “I have revealed You to those whom You gave Me out of the world. They were Yours; You gave them to Me and they have obeyed Your word. Now they know that everything You have given Me comes from You. For I gave them the words You gave Me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from You, and they believed that You sent Me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those You have given Me, for they are Yours” (Jn 17:6-9). Here the Arminian has a serious problem with the Lord’s statement, “I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those You have given Me, for they are Yours.” That prayer is rendered incoherent when the Arminian position of a potential universal propitiation is considered. As High Priest Jesus Christ was not concerned in His prayer for the “world” of the reprobate. Jesus Christ was no Arminian.
As has been already demonstrated the propitiation He offers is limited in its extent to the elect, but is unlimited in its effect to the elect which is why on the cross the Lord Jesus cried out, “It is finished!” In our passage under consideration “world” in context is a reference to the elect on the earth, those who believe and those who have yet to hear the Gospel of their salvation. World (κόσμου) includes all kinds of people: Jew and Gentile, free and slave, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, powerful and vulnerable. It is the consummation of God’s promise to Abraham, “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice” (Gen. 22:18).
In Hebrew the nations (guii) is rendered in the Septuagint as τα εθνη (the ethnos) which speaks to various kinds of ethnicity’s or people groups on the earth. Not surprisingly it is all kinds of people to whom the Apostle John speaks of when he says, “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world”, which is to say the population of the elect in the earth being comprised of all kinds of people and not merely Jews. That world (κόσμος) is employed in this fashion is also used by the Apostle Paul in writing to Timothy, “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:1-4). Note again the context of the intercession, it is the same as Jesus in John 17. And unlike Christ the Church has no idea who the elect are but is informed that they make up all types of people in the “world” including kings and those in power, and it is not God’s will that any of His elect should perish.
Now, if as the Arminian’s assert “all people” here is a reference to a potential universal propitiation then they must harmonize it with John 17 and a multitude of other similar passages. And there is no danger in them doing that. We conclude, then, giving praise and glory to God for His completed propitiation on behalf of His people. And while we confess there remain mysteries within the secret counsel of God’s will, we can clearly discern that His propitiation is limited to those who believe—the elect—and unlimited in its effect in procuring their redemption.
In 1865 hymn writer Elvina Hall penned the familiar “Jesus Paid It All” and she rightly understood that the propitiation of Christ was absolute and complete towards her as a believer. It was not some vague potential promise or reference to something Christ started and now she must finish what He initiated or forfeit it. God’s promise to her was not in constant jeopardy due to her sinful weakness, but it was rather a sovereign decree offered by a gracious Father, one which cannot fail. And in her hymn she understood that Christ Jesus is her propitiation, and not hers only, but also to all who are the called of God. Hear the words of the Apostle as he labored in broadcasting the Gospel to the called in the world, “…I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen [ἐκλεκτούς,unconditionally chosen by God before the foundation of the world to receive salvation through Christ], so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).
Beloved, like our Lord and the Apostles it is for these—God’s elect—that we labor in evangelism and intercession. We know not who they are and yet we remain confident that all who are called of God will respond positively to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be the power and the glory and majesty now and forever more. Soli Deo Gloria!
Copyright (c) 2010 Immutable Word Ministries ("...the word of our God endures forever." Isa. 40:8).
J.A. Matteson
He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.
καὶ αὐτὸς ἱλασμός ἐστιν περὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν, οὐ περὶ τῶν ἡμετέρων δὲ μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ ὅλου τοῦ κόσμου.
1 John 2:2
The act of propitiation (ἱλασμός) displays the justice and grace of God. For by it a vicarious sacrifice is made, redirecting the wrath of God from objects justly deserving condemnation towards an innocent (Christ Jesus), making the Father propitious (favorable) towards the guilty. In his epistle the Apostle does not specify the objects of God’s propitiation as it was assumed by his readers as a result of prior teaching. In the present day, however, with the Arminian controversy in the Church, two pressing questions arise from the Apostle’s discourse, and the manor in which they are answered will as a consequence heavily influence the nature of the Gospel and how it is communicated.
Therefore, let us first ask what is the extent of the propitiation and what is its intended effect. As to its extent the Apostle states that it is not only for “our sins, but also for those of the whole world”? Now, we disagree with the Arminian who claims the Apostle is speaking of the entire human race, as that conclusion finds no basis in fact when the context of the passage is considered. Certainly the Apostle is not speaking of “our sins” (τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν) in the sense of the entire human race as that assertion violates the context of his thesis. For the “our” and “ours” is contextualized in what precedes his declaration here, “but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7). We see, then, that the Apostle is writing to the church, believers, Christians who have received the Gospel and God has propitiated His wrath towards them as a result of their expressed faith in the shed blood of His Son.
As expected the audience of the Apostle’s epistle finds consistent agreement in his subsequent letter, “The elder, to the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth” (2 Jn. 1:1). Here “lady” is the bride of Christ, His church, the called of God. In a further reference to the Church as being the object of God’s propitiation activity the Apostle continues in Chapter 4, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (v. 10). The Arminian has a serious problem for his proposed propitiation is merely a potential one and not an actual accomplishment by the Lord toward any individual. He is welcome, therefore, to keep his jaded propitiation with its fatal deficiencies. Where as the Arminian considers the propitiation to be potentially unlimited for “whosoever will”, its effect by default must be limited, for at this juncture the Arminian is forced to concede that the death of Christ is of no value to those who die in unbelief. Therefore the Arminian must admit that the propitiation of Christ is in fact limited in its extent to those who believe. To deny this he is forced to admit he is a universalist, an untenable position. On the cross Jesus Christ cried out “It is finished!” (Τετέλεσται), He did not utter “It is started”, or “The way is now open” with the implication that He had performed His half in procuring salvation by dying on the cross, and now it is the responsibility of “whosoever will” to perform their half by believing in Him apart from the initiative of the Holy Spirit in order for the propitiation to be applied to them personally. To make that claim is to confess that Jesus Christ performed the same atoning act for the multitude who are at this moment in hell as for those who are in heaven.
At this point the Arminian asserts that Christ died for every one in the world and that His shed blood atoned for all their sins, all of them, that nothing can inhibit His saving power,…except…! Here the Arminian falls into the pit of his own weird theology by adding an exception clause to the propitiation of Jesus Christ. By his confused reasoning he is again forced to admit the propitiation of Christ is in fact limited, and it is limited to those who believe and is no value to those who die in unbelief. So he cannot rationally claim that Christ died for every mans sin as unbelief is sin. We conclude, therefore, the Arminian does in fact by necessity hold to a specific or limited propitiation. And who, then, are those who believe to which this propitiation is applied? Believers. For what does the Apostle say in this regard?, “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins….”
The verb “is” (ἐστιν) is in the present active indicative and speaks of the action happening today. The Greek is precise and leaves no room for the interpretation that the Apostle is speaking of a potential universal propitiation. A propitiation of that nature is untenable on many levels, not the least of which being that it denies the moral inability of unregenerate sinners to come to Christ apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. The Scripture is clear that there are none who seek after God, none who understand, none who believe the Gospel except by the power of God. All are spiritually dead and in bondage to their sins and trespasses. All are spiritually deaf, blind, and at enmity towards God, disinclined to obey and inclined towards rebellion to their Maker.
The total depravity of man is absolute and has polluted the entire person and left to his own devises he will never come to the Savior. It is for this reason the New Covenant was necessary, for the Lord promised, “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,’ declares the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,’ declares the LORD, I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” ( Jer. 31:31-33). In his epistle to the Romans the Apostle Paul also addresses the propitiation of Christ and specifically limits it to believers, “[Jesus Chris]…whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith” (v. 25). Note the application of Christ’s propitiation is through faith and is of no potential universal value to unbelievers. Also, we see that the writer to the Hebrews limits the propitiation to the children of God, “Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (v. 17).
Now the Lord Jesus Christ serves as High Priest for His people and not the entire human race, for the High Priest offered sacrifices and intercessions on behalf of the people of God. Here too Christ offers up Himself as the final sacrifice for those whom the Father has given Him; namely, the elect. In the upper room the Lord Jesus Christ interceded for those with Him and limited His intercession to those given to Him by the Father, those foreknown to Him, those unconditionally elected for salvation, those who are recipients of a holy calling, “I have revealed You to those whom You gave Me out of the world. They were Yours; You gave them to Me and they have obeyed Your word. Now they know that everything You have given Me comes from You. For I gave them the words You gave Me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from You, and they believed that You sent Me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those You have given Me, for they are Yours” (Jn 17:6-9). Here the Arminian has a serious problem with the Lord’s statement, “I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those You have given Me, for they are Yours.” That prayer is rendered incoherent when the Arminian position of a potential universal propitiation is considered. As High Priest Jesus Christ was not concerned in His prayer for the “world” of the reprobate. Jesus Christ was no Arminian.
As has been already demonstrated the propitiation He offers is limited in its extent to the elect, but is unlimited in its effect to the elect which is why on the cross the Lord Jesus cried out, “It is finished!” In our passage under consideration “world” in context is a reference to the elect on the earth, those who believe and those who have yet to hear the Gospel of their salvation. World (κόσμου) includes all kinds of people: Jew and Gentile, free and slave, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, powerful and vulnerable. It is the consummation of God’s promise to Abraham, “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice” (Gen. 22:18).
In Hebrew the nations (guii) is rendered in the Septuagint as τα εθνη (the ethnos) which speaks to various kinds of ethnicity’s or people groups on the earth. Not surprisingly it is all kinds of people to whom the Apostle John speaks of when he says, “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world”, which is to say the population of the elect in the earth being comprised of all kinds of people and not merely Jews. That world (κόσμος) is employed in this fashion is also used by the Apostle Paul in writing to Timothy, “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:1-4). Note again the context of the intercession, it is the same as Jesus in John 17. And unlike Christ the Church has no idea who the elect are but is informed that they make up all types of people in the “world” including kings and those in power, and it is not God’s will that any of His elect should perish.
Now, if as the Arminian’s assert “all people” here is a reference to a potential universal propitiation then they must harmonize it with John 17 and a multitude of other similar passages. And there is no danger in them doing that. We conclude, then, giving praise and glory to God for His completed propitiation on behalf of His people. And while we confess there remain mysteries within the secret counsel of God’s will, we can clearly discern that His propitiation is limited to those who believe—the elect—and unlimited in its effect in procuring their redemption.
In 1865 hymn writer Elvina Hall penned the familiar “Jesus Paid It All” and she rightly understood that the propitiation of Christ was absolute and complete towards her as a believer. It was not some vague potential promise or reference to something Christ started and now she must finish what He initiated or forfeit it. God’s promise to her was not in constant jeopardy due to her sinful weakness, but it was rather a sovereign decree offered by a gracious Father, one which cannot fail. And in her hymn she understood that Christ Jesus is her propitiation, and not hers only, but also to all who are the called of God. Hear the words of the Apostle as he labored in broadcasting the Gospel to the called in the world, “…I endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen [ἐκλεκτούς,unconditionally chosen by God before the foundation of the world to receive salvation through Christ], so that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10).
Beloved, like our Lord and the Apostles it is for these—God’s elect—that we labor in evangelism and intercession. We know not who they are and yet we remain confident that all who are called of God will respond positively to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be the power and the glory and majesty now and forever more. Soli Deo Gloria!
Copyright (c) 2010 Immutable Word Ministries ("...the word of our God endures forever." Isa. 40:8).
Monday, December 13, 2010
The Doctrine of Actual Atonement, Part 2
[An excellent simple explanation of Actual Atonement. Rationally sound, biblically based, Dr. MacArthur obliterates the absurdity of the Armenian proposition of a universal atonement put forth as "Christ died potentially for everyone." That argument, while common today, is unbiblical and logically incoherent, as MacArthur demonstrates. It is suggested that the reader read the two sermons in the order they were preached, beginning with Part 1--J.A. Matteson]
by Dr. John MacArthur, Jr.
Those of you who have been with us know we are tackling some of the more challenging and profound and difficult doctrines in the Scripture. And I trust we’re having a wonderful time digging deeply into God’s precious truth.
Last Sunday night we began to look at the subject, “For whom did Christ die?” Or, “The Nature of the Atonement.” Or as I chose to call it, “The Doctrine of Actual Atonement.” And I want to go back to that. If you weren’t here last week, it really would be helpful for you to get the tape or the CD, whatever is best for you, and to listen to what I said and pair it up with what we’re going to say tonight because you’re going to get just a very abbreviated review of that important foundation.
These doctrines challenge us. They challenge us because even when we understand them the best we can from a biblical viewpoint, there is still a lot left over. There is still the inscrutable reality of the incomprehensible mind of God. And there are always going to be things that just don’t quite resolve completely to us. Every doctrinal symphony is in some ways an unfinished symphony. Every major doctrine of the Scripture ends in an unresolved chord because we in our finite minds cannot in the end fully grasp the infinity of God’s mind. But we do the best we can and we leave the rest to Him. And so in the end we entrust to Him what we do not understand and embrace with all our hearts what we do.
Certainly the doctrine of the extent of the atonement is one of those doctrines that takes us way beyond where we will be comfortable to go. It stretches our minds to the breaking point. It takes our theology out to the perimeter of our tolerances. And in the end it leaves us with some incomprehensible realities and that’s as it should be. Since we are finite and He is infinite, there should be a vast distinction between what we can know and what God does know. But there are ways in which we can go to the edge of our comprehension and to the edge of biblical revelation to understand the greatness and the glory of the work of redemption.
Let’s begin tonight by sort of working our way up to discussing the extent of the atonement. Jesus came into the world, He said, to seek and to save those who are lost, Luke 19:10. He came to seek and to save those who are lost. He was on a recovery mission. He came into this world to rescue sinners, sinners who were alive then who had lived already and would live in the future. His redemptive work on the cross reached back and reached forward and reached out to those in His own generation.
The coming of the Lord Jesus was the most perfect revelation of the eternal God ever. God was never so clearly manifest as He was in Jesus. The nature of God, the character of God, the purpose of God, the will of God was seen in Jesus. And so we conclude that God is by nature a Savior. The Apostle Paul loves to call Him, God our Savior. He is by nature a Savior and so Jesus comes into the world to seek and to save that which was lost to fulfill that part of God’s nature which reaches out to redeem sinners. In order for God to save sinners, there had to be a sacrifice that paid the penalty for their sins. Jesus who is God came into the world, took on human form to offer Himself as that sacrifice, an unimaginable condescension, an undeserved act. On the cross Jesus died not under the wrath of men, really, but under the wrath of God. Not by the plans of the Romans and the Jews, but by the determined plan of God, predestined before the world began. And He bore the wrath of God and He bore separation from God for sinners, for all the sinners who would ever believe. And while it was a sacrifice for Christ to do this, it was a satisfying sacrifice. It was why He came to offer that sacrifice, to purchase God’s chosen people, to purchase His own bride.
Turn in your Bible to Isaiah 53, this is a good place to start as we look at this sacrifice of Christ. Isaiah 53, and verse 4, this is the classic Old Testament section of Scripture which deals with the substitutionary death of Jesus in which He dies in the place of sinners. And Isaiah is inspired to write of His death in these words, starting in verse 4, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.” That is to say that He was literally punished by God for our sins. Verse 5, “He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted yet He did not open His mouth like a lamb that is led to slaughter.”
I want you to go back for a minute to verse 4. “Our griefs, our sorrows.” Verse 5, “Our transgressions, our iniquities, our well-being.” “All of us,” verse 6 , “each of us, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” Our, our, our, our, us, us, us, and the question comes, who is this? Whose sins did He bear? Whose transgressions? For whose iniquities was He crushed? For whose healings was He scourged? Whose iniquity was placed on Him?
Go down to verse 10. “The Lord was pleased to crush Him.” It’s an amazing statement. Because God is by nature a Savior and He finds His own satisfaction in saving sinners which means He is pleased to have His Son be the sacrifice that saves them. “The Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief if He would render Himself as a guilt offering.” “He will see His offspring.” In other words, He is being crushed, He is being put to grief, He is being given as a guilt offering in the confidence that He will see His seed, His offspring. Verse 11 says, “As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied.” God was pleased and Christ was satisfied because out of it would come His offspring, His seed.
And then verse 11 says, the end of the verse, “My servant,” meaning Messiah, “will justify the many and He will bear their iniquities.” And at the end of verse 12, “He Himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors.” And the question is, “Who are the 'ours' and the 'us’s' and the many?” It must be the offspring. Must be those that are the seed born out of that sacrifice because that is what pleased God and that is what satisfied Christ.
In the New Testament, it tells us in 1 Timothy 1:15 that the Lord Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Paul said that, that’s his own testimony, “The Lord came into the world to save sinners.” That’s the great enterprise. God is an evangelist. God is a Savior. Christ then, God manifest, does a saving work. He came into the world to save sinners. And all those that He saves He then mandates to carry on this work. And according to the great commission, we are to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We are to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I’ve commanded you and lo, I am with you always. We are ambassadors for Christ, begging people to be reconciled to God. We have been redeemed to be caught up in this great evangelistic enterprise. In Acts 1:8 as Jesus leaves this world, His final words, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria, even to the remotest part of the earth.” That’s the last thing Jesus said on earth. “My Father is a Savior, I am a Savior and you are to pick up the glorious gospel of salvation and take it to the ends of the earth.”
That’s why we’re here. Everything else is secondary, everything else is tertiary in the church. Everything else in a sense is less important. And I don’t want anything to ever diminish that. That’s why when you’ve been teaching on the doctrine of sovereign election and you’ve been teaching on the doctrine of absolute inability and unwillingness and you’re teaching on the doctrine of the extent of the atonement, it is still absolutely consistent to follow all that up with four nights of evangelism on four Sundays because this is our mandate, this is why the church is here. We will worship better in heaven. We will serve the Lord better in heaven. We’ll love each other better in heaven. In fact, we’ll do all of that perfectly. But one thing we won’t do in heaven is evangelize the lost. They won’t be there. And God who weeps through the eyes of Jeremiah, and Jesus who weeps through His own eyes over the lost in Jerusalem, calls on us to weep over the impenitent and to go forth bearing precious seed with tears. God weeps over the impenitent. God weeps over the unbelieving. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And He offers a legitimate and genuine call to sinners across the face of the world, both from the pages of Scripture and out of the mouths of all of the believers who go and take the message, a legitimate call to come and believe and be saved. That evangelistic mandate defines why the church is in the world. It’s why we’re here, to preach the gospel of salvation and reconciliation and forgiveness and heaven to the whole world. We are to beg people to come to salvation. And as I noted in Psalm 126:5, “We are to go forth with tears, bearing the precious seed of saving truth and reaping the harvest of faith with rejoicing.” It was Jesus who said, “Come to Me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, I’ll give you rest.”
We are told to pray for the salvation of all people, 1 Timothy 2. We are told to set a godly example and to live our lives as shining lights so that men can see the power of Christ in us and be drawn to Him. We are told if we’re going to name the name of Christ we ought to be like Him. We are told to proclaim the gospel and never to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it’s the power of God to salvation. We are told to proclaim it to the Jew and to the Greek as well. And it is a legitimate offer, and a real offer. And every sinner on the planet is accountable for the response to that offer. And as we saw in our study this morning, every man has a stewardship that God has given him. It may be a stewardship of a law written in his heart, and a stewardship of his rational mind looking at the creation around him and being led to the knowledge of God. And if he follows the path as he should in obedience to that stewardship that God has given him, he will find the truth will open to him. Every man is accountable and no man has an excuse. And so we are mandated to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. But we know this, not everybody will repent and not everybody will believe, we know that. That has always been true, always.
There are numerable souls even now that have left this earth and are already out of the presence of God forever in eternal torment. That fact is inescapable. And they’re going there every day that we live by the thousands, they die. There is an eternal hell and it will be continually filled with sinners until redemptive history is over, sinners who ignored conscience, sinners who ignored the Law written in their hearts, sinners who ignored that which was known of God that was placed in them, sinners who ignored the truth when they heard it, the Scripture when they read it, the gospel when it was preached to them, sinners who rejected the grace and goodness of God, sinners who refused to repent. And they all end up in hell and if they were given the choice while in hell to choose differently, they wouldn’t do it. They showed no interest in God then, they will have no interest in Him now.
So we are called to a worldwide task and sinners are accountable for how they respond to the message at whatever level they receive it. Now as I will point out in the sermon next Sunday morning, there are degrees of punishment in hell. Not everyone’s punishment will be equally severe in hell. That will depend upon how much truth you had, truth is dangerous. The more you have, the more culpable you are, the greater your guilt, the greater your punishment.
We shouldn’t be surprised at this. Go back to Isaiah 6 while you’re in Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 6 and here’s a call of God on the prophet Isaiah. And in verse 8, the Lord asks a question and the question is this, “Who shall I send and who shall go for us?” The people of God are in serious trouble. They are in grave danger. The prior chapter, chapter 5, lays out the sins that were characteristic of God’s people and judgment is coming, severe and deadly judgment is coming. It’s described at the end of the fifth chapter. And God needs a messenger to warn, a messenger to call the people to repentance before the judgment comes. And the question is asked, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” Meaning the Trinity. And Isaiah responds, “Here am I, send me. I will go.” This, of course, should be the response of every believer. “Who am I going to send to this world plummeting into judgment?” “I’ll go.”
And then the most bizarre statement. “And the Lord said, ‘Go and tell this people, you go tell them, go and tell them about judgment, and tell them about grace and forgiveness and mercy as well. Tell them to turn from their sin. You go, you tell them.’” And then it says, “Keep on listening but don’t proceed, keep on looking but don’t understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, return and be healed.” What that is saying, and by the way, that passage is repeatedly quoted in the New Testament because it’s the defining passage on the obstinacy of an unbelieving society, in particular Israel. Know this, He says to Isaiah, they’re going to listen but not understand, they’re going to see but not comprehend, they’re going to be insensitive, dull of hearing, dim of sight. They won’t get it. They won’t return. They won’t repent. They won’t be healed. So know this, when you go.
I read somewhere, just yesterday, a little note that said, “There is a massive turning to Christ in the world today.” Really? Where is that? I...I must be missing something.
And they asked the right question in verse 11. He said, “Lord, how long? I mean, why should I do that very long? How long should I do that, like a couple of weeks maybe?” No, just keep doing it till the cities are devastated and have no inhabitants and houses have no people and the land is desolate and the Lord has removed everybody far away and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. Just do it till the place is devastated. Do it till there’s nobody left to do it to, just keep preaching... You say, “Wait a minute. This seems fruitless.” No. Verse 13 is the key. “There will be a tenth portion in it.” This is one of the very most tangled Hebrew constructions of any passage in the Old Testament, I’m not going to try to unscramble it for you. Simply to say, the Lord says there’s a tenth, this is what we call the doctrine of the remnant, there’s a tenth. There’s a stump. And at the end of verse 13, “There is a holy seed that is that stump.” There’s a ...there’s a group, there’s a remnant, there’s a seed. It’s that same seed that the Messiah saw in Isaiah 53 and He could see His seed and His soul was satisfied. Do you think God has some mystery about who’s going to be saved? Of course not. He knows. He knows it will be few. He knows it will be a remnant. He knows it will be only a portion, a holy seed. The word “holy” means set apart.
So we go, as Isaiah went. We go to the world and we go with the gospel and we know that most will not believe. And we could be very discouraged and say, “How long do I do that?” And the Lord says, “Just keep doing it because there is out there a seed already designated as holy.” They’re already in the purposes of God set apart for God. They are the elect who upon hearing the gospel will repent and will believe.
You remember Acts 13:48, “When the Gentiles heard this they began rejoicing and glorifying the Word of the Lord and as many as had been appointed to eternal life, believed.” As many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. There is a remnant. There is a people appointed to eternal life.
In Acts 18 the Lord came to Paul in a vision. “Do not be afraid any longer,” the Lord said, “Go on speaking, do not be silent. I am with you and no man will attack you in order to harm you.” Listen to this, “For I have many people in this city.” They weren’t converted yet. They weren’t converted yet. You go there, you preach as I have many of the holy seed already there. They’re just waiting to hear.
So who will believe? Who will believe? Who will believe our report? Isaiah says. Who will be saved at the preaching of the gospel? All men are accountable and the offer is legitimate but who will be saved? And this launches us into our look at the doctrine of actual atonement or definite atonement or specific atonement or peculiar or particular atonement as it’s all been called. Now we already know this, when we ask the question...who will believe and be saved? We just finished talking about the doctrine of absolute inability and unwillingness, sometimes called the doctrine of total depravity. And that doctrine says no sinner, and this is taught in the Bible, no sinner on his own can or will seek God, right? No sinner on his own will pursue the truth, will pursue righteousness, will come to reconciliation and salvation. He will not because he cannot. His condition as being dead in sin makes that impossible. And so the only ones who can come are those to whom God gives life and light and understanding and repentance and faith. And we also learned from the study before that that those to whom God gives that are those whom He has chosen to give that to. God chooses whom He will save and God saves whom He has chosen.
Clearly then salvation is all of God. It’s His holy seed. It’s His holy offspring in the language of Isaiah 53. It’s His people he has already identified. Now, their salvation is not apart from their will, but it is in harmony with their will when their will is altered by the power of God. So that raises the question then...for whom did Christ die? For whom did He die? And we said last time, I’ll just quickly review, most people in the church think that He died for everyone potentially and no one actually, right? He just died for everybody potentially, it’s sort of out there, and you can pick it up if you want it or you don’t, it’s not going to be applicable to you. So He died for everybody potentially, and no one actually. Therefore the actualizing of the atonement depends upon the sinner deciding to actualize the atoning work of Jesus Christ on his own behalf. And if the sinner never believes, if he chooses never to receive Christ, then the death of Christ for Him remains an unrealized potential. So those who believe that, believe...now listen carefully...that the atonement of Christ is limited in its effect, okay? It’s limited in its effect, they like to say they do not believe in a limited atonement, they believe in an unlimited atonement. That’s not true. They believe in an atonement that is limited in its power, that is limited in its effect, that is limited in its impact to the will of the sinner. That’s a very limited atonement. They believe that it is unlimited in its extent, that it extends to the whole of the human race, but it is very limited in its effect.
What the Bible teaches is just the opposite. It is limited in its extent to those whom God chooses and saves. And for them it is unlimited in its effect, in its power. It is then not a potential salvation for all, it is an actual salvation for the many. Who is our, and our, and us, and us, and the many, and the many for whom He died, for whom He actually bore sin’s judgment? It is the holy seed. It is the holy offspring. It is the chosen of the Father. It is the bride of the Son. See, this changes everything. If you believe there’s this sort of hanging sort of a potential atonement floating around the world and you just have to convince sinners to pick it up to take advantage of it, then evangelism takes on a completely different approach. It all becomes working on the will of the sinner to get him to actualize this only potential atonement. And if they don’t do it, they’re going to end up in hell. And as I told you last time, it’s going to sound bizarre to say it again, but hell is full of people for whom Jesus did exactly the same thing that He did for the people in heaven. Is that bizarre? Hell is full of people for whom Jesus died, for whom He paid some penalty. He did the same thing for the people in hell that He did for the people in heaven, the only difference is the people in heaven were motivated to turn a potential into an actual.
And you have to ask yourself the question...who gets the credit for that one? Right? It doesn’t sound like the way to glorify God. See, that’s the idea that Jesus’ atonement is unlimited in its extent but very limited in its effect. In fact, it isn’t enough to save you. Is that amazing? Jesus dying on the cross, paying the penalty for your sin under that theology isn’t enough to save you. You’ve got to do something to complete it which sounds to me like salvation by works. But how is the sinner going to do that when he’s absolutely unable to do that and unwilling to do that? Dead in trespasses and sin, blinded by Satan, so we know not everybody’s going to be saved. The atonement is limited in its extent and the question is, who limited it? Who limited it? God.
I know that’s sometimes hard to take. But He did. There is hell and most people who live in this world end up there. That’s how it is. The real hard doctrine is the doctrine of eternal punishment. If there were no hell, we wouldn’t even need to debate these other issues, they’d be academic. But it’s God who decides who He’s going to save and who chose them before the foundation of the world.
I just can’t look at the cross and see Jesus at the very end of the cross looking up and saying, “It is started.” What? “It is potential.” That’s not what He said, is it? Was the death of Christ a full and complete payment to God satisfying His just wrath for some particular chosen people? Or was it a potential for nobody? An actual for nobody, a potential for everybody.
Let’s look at the Scripture and see how to understand that. We only have a little bit of time. This is going to be a survey kind of look. We have to...we have to look at some terms. Okay, world...let’s take world. Everybody comes and says, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, what about the world, what about the world?” Let me help you with that, okay? It’s going to be like those old sword drills, Bible drills that you had when you were a kid, you’ve got to move fast with me. We’ve heard the world mentioned, when we hear the word world we think the world means everybody who ever lived. That’s not biblical. John 1:9, “There was the true light which coming into the world enlightens every man.” What does that mean? Coming into the world, what does that mean? Does that mean He came to every human being on the face of the earth? No, it just means He came in to the human realm. He was in the world. He was in the human realm. “And the world was made through Him, and the world didn’t know Him.” World is just a term for humanity, the created world. He was in the world, God in human flesh. There’s nothing about every single individual on the planet being necessarily involved in that word, just the created order, just humanity.
So here you see the word world, immediately has to be qualified. John 1:29, “The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and he said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of...what?...the world.’” Now wait a minute, we have to qualify that immediately, don’t we? If He took away the sin of the world, what? Everybody would be...what?...saved. They’d all have their sin taken away. So immediately we have to qualify the word world. And how do you qualify it? “He came into this human realm, He came into this created order, He came to humanity to take away sin.” And in the future, of course, it will be removed completely in the New Heaven and the New Earth.
But you will notice that this is clearly limited. He didn’t come to take away the sin of everybody. Go back to verse 11, “He came to His own and those who were His own did not receive Him...verse 12...but as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God even to those who believe in His name.” So taking away the sin of the world is then qualified by whoever believed in Him. They were the only ones who had the right to be forgiven and become children of God. So world is just a generic term meaning humanity, the created order. And it has to be qualified.
In John chapter 3, again verse 16, “God so loved the world,” and that’s something we’re going to talk about in January, the love of God and how far and how wide and how high and how deep is it. God so loved the world. What does that mean? Humanity. “He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life, for God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world but that the world should be saved through Him.” Well immediately you know the world has to be qualified. If you don’t qualify it, we’re all going to come out universalists here, with everybody being saved. And we know that can’t be true because the Bible is so clear on judgment.
In John chapter 4, all it means in John 3 is He loved humanity, He loved mankind. He loved people from all tribes and tongues and nations. He loved and in a very general sense, the sense of common grace and the offer of the gospel and compassion He shows love to the world. But His saving love for the world is limited to those in the world, the realm of humanity who believe. “God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes.”
John 4:42, again it’s the same thing. It says, “It’s no longer because of what you said that we believe for we have heard for ourselves and know that this one is indeed the Savior of the world.” It doesn’t say He’s the potential Savior of the world, He is the Savior of the world. He is the Savior of the world unqualified so therefore the world has to be qualified, you can’t qualify the word Savior. He is the...well, potential Savior. You’re trying to protect the universal concept of world and you wind up limiting the Savior. It really points out the picture, doesn’t it? Either you’re going to limit the effect of the saving work of Christ, or you’re going to limit the extent of it, one of the two. He is the Savior of the world in this sense, He’s the only Savior this world will ever have. He’s the only Savior the human race will ever know. The world has no other Savior. And what’s really important to note in all the way through the gospel of John, whenever you read this, “the Savior of the world,” “God so loved the world,” “He was in the world,” etc., keep in mind that John is addressing an environment of Jewish anti-Gentile racism. And the idea that the Messiah is for the world was a foreign idea, no pun intended, it was a revolutionary idea.
In John 6:33, again the same emphasis, “The bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world.” To the world...what part of the world? Verse 35, “He who comes to Me shall not hunger, he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” You’re going to have life if you come and you believe from whatever nation on this planet. He’s the Savior of the world, 1 John 4:14 says the same thing in the sense that it’s not limited to the Jews. But it is limited. It’s limited always to those who believe. John 6:33 we just read, and John 6:51 follows it up, “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever. And the bread also that I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh.” He gives His life for the world, but who in the world? It says in the same verse, “Whoever eats the bread will live forever.” It’s always qualified by believing, by believing. You see it again, it’s all through the gospel of John. John chapter 12 verse 47 and 48, again always needing to be qualified, “If anyone hears My saying though he keep them, I do judge him, I didn’t come to judge the world but to save the world.” Obviously this does not mean that He’s going to save every human being whoever lives, it does mean that He is going to extend His salvation without regard for race or color or sex across this planet, humanity in general.
Look at chapter 14 verse 22, this is just another illustration of how you always have to qualify the world. Judas in John 14:22, “Judas, not Iscariot, said, ‘Lord, what then has happened that You’re going to disclose Yourself to us and not the world?’” What do you think Judas meant by that? What did he mean that You’re going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world? He certainly didn’t mean every human being on the planet. The wider world, the wider realm of humanity outside this narrow group, the general public, it means there. And Jesus even understood His own limitations on the word world. Look at John 17, very important, John 17, Jesus is praying and He prays for, verse 6, the men You gave Me out of the world. The men You gave Me out of the world I pray for them, they were Thine, they were and Thou gavest them to Me and they’ve kept Thy Word. And then go down to verse 9, “I ask on their behalf, I do not ask on behalf of the world.” There you have Jesus not interceding for the world but for the men whom God gave Him out of the world. Again you have to qualify and Jesus Himself there makes that qualification.
In verse 15 of John 17, He prays for His own and says, “I ask that You not take them out of the world, but keep them from the evil one.” And there He understands the world as this human enterprise with all its sin. In verse 16 He says, “They’re not of the world.” Verse 18, “You sent Me into the world and I sent them into the world. But I don’t pray for the world, I just pray for those You’ve given Me out of the world.” Jesus even knew there were qualifications on the use of the word world, just general, beyond Israel, across all races and languages. The world is always qualified, never is there an occasion when we can dogmatically say it means every human being whoever lived.
In fact, in John 12, I can’t resist this, just thought of it, John 12:19. The Pharisees were getting more and more concerned about Jesus so in John 12:19 it says, “The Pharisees therefore said to one another, ‘You see that you’re not doing any good. Look the world has gone after Him.’” Well what do you think they meant by that? Every human being that ever lived? No, it’s always qualified. In Luke 9:25 Jesus says, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world,” well that’s qualified, no man is going to own the whole world.
So we simply in the context understand that the term world is to get us beyond the provincialism the narrowness and the racism of Judaism to get us to the extent of the atonement stretching across this earth in all times and all nations. Paul in Romans 11:15 says that the rejection of Israel has brought about the reconciliation of the world. And again, Paul doesn’t believe for a moment that that means that every single person whoever lived will be reconciled to God. What he means is that Israel’s rejection being set aside, the church is grafted in and the church is made up of Jew and Gentile. The Jews had a hard time with this. That’s why the Apostles had to sort of shock them with the fact that the Lord was doing a work among the Gentiles. You remember the book of Acts? While Peter was still speaking in Acts 10, the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius, Gentiles, and all the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. Well that was part of that same provincialism. And the gospel was never intended to be limited to Israel. The same is in the fifteenth chapter of Acts verses 6 and following. Verse 7, we can pick it up. “Peter stood and said, ‘Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe and God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.” It’s a hard pill for the Jews to swallow, that the gospel stretched outside Judaism to humanity from every tongue and tribe and people and nation.
So we look at the term world and we always qualify it. There’s another passage, two more that need our brief attention. I’m just going to comment briefly. First John 2, 1 John 2, “Jesus Christ the righteous,” verse 1, verse 2, “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for those of the whole world.” What is that saying? That He is a propitiation not only for our sins, again this is very Jewish in its context. But for the whole world. It’s making the same point that John made over and over and over again, the same point that they made in the book of Acts, the same point that Paul makes in Romans 11. That the gospel is not limited to the Jews. Propitiation, by the way, is a very strong word, hilasmos in the Greek. And propitiation means the actual satisfying of God’s just wrath. It’s not a potential, it’s an actual word. It..it...it could be translated placated, or satisfied. He Himself is the satisfaction, He is the placation, He propitiates God, satisfies God, placates God’s anger for our sins. But not just ours, as the inside people, but the whole world. That is to say there is no other propitiation for people in any other nation than the one who is the propitiation for us. If this meant that He was actually a satisfaction for every person who ever lived, then the word is way too strong to mean anything potential. It would have to mean actual because it’s a satisfaction, God was satisfied with the sacrifice on their behalf. Nothing is left out. And Jesus’ death, dear one, was a satisfaction. He was the sacrificial lamb on the ultimate day of atonement whose blood sprinkled before God was a true satisfaction. Propitiation is too strong a word to mean something potential because propitiation means it turns God’s wrath away forever. And not just for us but for any Gentile or anyone else who believes.
And in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and I’m just going to cover this one because I know if I don’t you’ll come up and ask me about them, 2 Corinthians 5:19. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” And again you say, “Well okay, reconciling the world. People always know...didn’t He reconcile the whole world?” Well what do you mean by the world? It always has to be qualified otherwise you end up, as I said, a universalist and then what do you do with everybody that’s being sent to hell? God is reconciling the world to Himself. And what does it mean? Listen to this, “Not counting their trespasses against them.” That’s not a potential anything, that’s an actual. God is reconciling, God is not making reconciliation possible, God is not removing a barrier to reconciliation, God is not giving, you know, the eight-tenths of the deal and telling the sinner to take the next two steps. He is reconciling to Himself in Christ, that is in the death of Christ, the world not counting their trespasses against them. And let me tell you, my friend, not having your trespasses counted against you means that He bore your transgression in full and you are under no condemnation. And that is not a potential salvation, that is an actual salvation. Whoever the world is here, it is the ones who no longer have their trespasses counted against them. It is those who are, verse 17, new creatures in Christ. It is those in verse 21 for whom He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. Whose behalf? Those who were reconciled to God that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. There’s no such thing in the Bible as a potential atonement. It simply means that there are no racial limits, there are no ethnic limits. These passages regarding the world are all qualified. It’s just humanity, the human world, this realm, not every single individual who ever lives. You know, that has been sold to us through the years. Christ did not pay in full, He did not reconcile, He did not satisfy God fully so that God no longer counts trespasses against every human being in the world. If that were true that is an actual salvation and there can be no hell cause there can’t be any punishment. That’s...then God would be...what?..not just but...what?...unjust.
Well you say, “Well the Bible says all, the Bible says all.” I know it says all, yeah it says all. Want to look at some “alls”? Romans 5, let’s look at some alls. Just give me a few more minutes and we’ll get there, I only have about 45 passages here. We can cut it off anywhere and we’ll get it some other time. But Romans 5:18, “So then,” this is another passage important, “So then through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men.” That one transgression was Adam, right? And that did effect everybody. “Even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.” Well if you’re not careful there, if you drive the parallel in the wrong direction, you’re going to come out with this, “Well everybody was affected by Adam’s sin and became sinners, therefore everybody is affected by Christ’s righteous work and becomes righteous.” The problem with that is that’s not true.
There’s only one illustration being made here. It’s simply this. The argument is coming up, Paul is talking about the impact of the work of Christ, how that the work of Christ is the redeeming work of all who believe. And the question that comes up in the mind of the reader is going to be, “How can one man’s act have such a great effect? How can the act of one man have such massive implications?” And so he simply makes the parallel. “Look, by one man’s sin, everybody died. Everybody who died died. And by one man’s righteousness, everybody who became righteous became righteous.” He even changes his terminology in verse 19 where he says, “Just to make sure we don’t think the ‘all’ is inclusive, as through the one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of one, many will be made righteous.” And I think he puts that in there just to back us off the wrong understanding of verse 18 which would make everybody saved and he...whoa, that’s not what I’m trying to say, let’s use the word many so we don’t get mixed up here. We’re just trying to illustrate the point that one man’s work, one man’s deed effects all who proceed from that one man. So that is all only in the appropriate sense, qualified again in the context.
Go to chapter 8 of Romans verse 32. Here’s all again. “He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all.” Who’s the all here? Christ was delivered up for us all. Now some people will say, “Well He was delivered up for everybody in the whole world.” That’s not...is that who he’s talking about here? Is that Paul’s us?
Well let’s go back to verse 31, just back up one. “If God is for us, who is against us?” Now who is the us there? Everybody in the whole world, is God for everybody in the whole world? We have to qualify us. Well who is the us that God is for? I’ll tell you who it is, verse 29, “Whoever He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, whoever He predestined, verse 30, He called, whoever He called He justified, whoever He justified, these He also glorified and if God is for us, who can be against us.” It’s the us of those who were predestined and called and justified and glorified. To put it another way, verse 33, “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect?” It is the elect, we are the us all.
Second Corinthians chapter 5...2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 14, and here’s language very much like Romans 5, just so you can compare it, 2 Corinthians 5, we were there in the little few verses down, I want to go back to 14 and 15, “The love of Christ controls us having concluded that one died for all, therefore all died. And He died for all that they who live shall no longer live for themselves but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” Now the all is qualified. Now just follow this carefully. The love of Christ controls us, having concluded that one died for all. People say, “Oh, He died for all, He died for the whole world, every single person in the whole world. He died for them all?” No. He died for all, therefore all died. The all He died for died. What is that? Well when you came to Christ, do you remember you died, is that not true? “I am crucified...what?...with Christ.” In Him you die. So He died for all therefore all died. He died for the all who died in Him. Verse 15, He died for all and who are the all? They who live. He died for those who died and live in Him. It was for them that He died and arose again, end of verse 15, on their behalf...on their behalf.
You could look at the word many, if we had time, it has some interesting usages and you will find a number of references to the word many. We already saw one in Romans 6 saying that the Lord died not for all, but for many. And that’s another way to get to the same point, all meaning all in the broad sense across the world, many meaning less than everyone. In Hebrews 9, “Christ also having been offered once to bear the sins of many.” Wow, offered to bear the sins of many. The many and the all are interchangeable in Romans 6, and here it’s the many. To bear the sins of many. You don’t want to do too much with these words other than to understand in the context how they are always qualified.
Listen to Matthew 20:28, “The Son of Man didn’t come to be served, but to serve and give His life a ransom for many...for many.” Who are the many? All who would believe. He actually was a ransom. He actually was a satisfaction. He actually provided an expiation. He actually achieved an atonement for those who would believe. To put it in the angelic language, it goes like this, the angel says, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, and she will bear a Son and you shall call His name Jesus...listen...for it is He who will save...who?...His people from their sins.” The Bible teaches nowhere a potential salvation. He saves His people from their sins. That’s what He will do when He comes, it will be a real salvation for His people. John 10:11, “I am the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep and I know My own sheep. I am the Good Shepherd, I know My own, My own know Me. I lay down My life for the sheep.”
In chapter 11 of John’s gospel and verse 50, “It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation should not perish,” so says Caiaphas. “Now this he did not say on his own initiative but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation...listen to this...and not for the nation only but that He might also gather together into one the children of God who were scattered abroad.” Wow, what a statement! Get that? Jesus died, Jesus died not just for Jews, but to gather into one body the children of God scattered all over the world. That’s who He died for.
In Ephesians chapter 5, just a couple more. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved...what?...the church and gave Himself up for her that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory.” He paid the price for His bride, His church. He redeemed her. It wasn’t a redemption of nobody in particular, it was a redemption of His own redeemed church. It was a particular redemption. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. He predestined us. In Him we have redemption, Ephesians 1:7. We have the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace which he lavished on us. We are, I love this, verse 14 of Ephesians 1, “God’s own possession.” It says the redemption of God’s own possession, a people of His own possession. Titus 2:13, “We look for the blessed hope, and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ...I love this...who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us and purify for Himself a people for His own possession.” And who was that people? The people whom God chose before the foundation of the world and gave to the Son as His bride. Peter says, “He bore our sins in His own body,” 1 Peter 2:24. Peter says, “Christ died for sin once for all, the just for the unjust in order that He might bring us to God.” He didn’t die to potentially bring people to God, He died to bring us to God. He died to satisfy God. He died to redeem the holy seed, the holy offspring.
One other text, that’s it. One other one, because I know you’ll ask me. Hebrews 10:29, it’s a clarification really. Hebrews 10:29, “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who will trample underfoot the Son of God and regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which He was sanctified.” Some people say, “Well wait a minute, that says right there that some people who are going to be punished, some people who trample underfoot the Son of God and regard as unclean the very blood of His covenant are said to be sanctified.”
Can I help you with that verse? Take out your little pen and put just a little line above the “h” that turns it into a capital H. It’s not talking about sinners being sanctified, it’s talking about Christ by which He was sanctified, trampling underfoot the Son of God and regarding as unclean the blood of the covenant by which He was set apart as the covenant sacrifice.”
Well, somebody could throw in a verse like 2 Peter 2:1 and say, “Wait a minute, it says of those people there who were apostate that they denied the Master who bought them.” Sure, there’s a sarcasm there, they claimed to be true believers. They claimed to be true teachers. They infiltrated the church as false teachers and Paul maybe in a mocking way says, “You now have denied the Master who bought you.” We know the Master didn’t pay the price for damnable heretics.
So how do we summarize this? The death of Christ was a real, true actual satisfaction of divine justice. It was a true payment and a true atonement in full, actually not potentially, paid to God by Christ on behalf of all who would ever believe because they were chosen and redeemed by the power of God. The death of Christ was indefinite, particular, specific and actual on behalf of God’s chosen people, limited in extent by the sovereign purposes of God, but unlimited in effect, for all for whom it was rendered it is fully in force, or will be in each individual life. It is the work of God. It is the work of Christ who accomplished redemption, not to make redemption possible to then be finally accomplished by the sinner. Christ procured salvation for all whom God would call and justify. Sinners do not limit the atonement, God does. Jesus did actually take the penalty in full for all who would ever believe.
What does that mean to you? Well for one, you ought to rejoice because the price was paid in full for you. You don’t have to activate it. You’re a trophy of God’s divine grace. Secondly, go out and evangelize the lost with joy knowing that there’s a holy seed out there for Christ has already paid the price for their sins and it’s our joy and our privilege to be our instruments to reach them.
Father, thank You for our time tonight and may we rejoice in every sense in the greatness of our salvation, in Christ’s name. Amen.
by Dr. John MacArthur, Jr.
Those of you who have been with us know we are tackling some of the more challenging and profound and difficult doctrines in the Scripture. And I trust we’re having a wonderful time digging deeply into God’s precious truth.
Last Sunday night we began to look at the subject, “For whom did Christ die?” Or, “The Nature of the Atonement.” Or as I chose to call it, “The Doctrine of Actual Atonement.” And I want to go back to that. If you weren’t here last week, it really would be helpful for you to get the tape or the CD, whatever is best for you, and to listen to what I said and pair it up with what we’re going to say tonight because you’re going to get just a very abbreviated review of that important foundation.
These doctrines challenge us. They challenge us because even when we understand them the best we can from a biblical viewpoint, there is still a lot left over. There is still the inscrutable reality of the incomprehensible mind of God. And there are always going to be things that just don’t quite resolve completely to us. Every doctrinal symphony is in some ways an unfinished symphony. Every major doctrine of the Scripture ends in an unresolved chord because we in our finite minds cannot in the end fully grasp the infinity of God’s mind. But we do the best we can and we leave the rest to Him. And so in the end we entrust to Him what we do not understand and embrace with all our hearts what we do.
Certainly the doctrine of the extent of the atonement is one of those doctrines that takes us way beyond where we will be comfortable to go. It stretches our minds to the breaking point. It takes our theology out to the perimeter of our tolerances. And in the end it leaves us with some incomprehensible realities and that’s as it should be. Since we are finite and He is infinite, there should be a vast distinction between what we can know and what God does know. But there are ways in which we can go to the edge of our comprehension and to the edge of biblical revelation to understand the greatness and the glory of the work of redemption.
Let’s begin tonight by sort of working our way up to discussing the extent of the atonement. Jesus came into the world, He said, to seek and to save those who are lost, Luke 19:10. He came to seek and to save those who are lost. He was on a recovery mission. He came into this world to rescue sinners, sinners who were alive then who had lived already and would live in the future. His redemptive work on the cross reached back and reached forward and reached out to those in His own generation.
The coming of the Lord Jesus was the most perfect revelation of the eternal God ever. God was never so clearly manifest as He was in Jesus. The nature of God, the character of God, the purpose of God, the will of God was seen in Jesus. And so we conclude that God is by nature a Savior. The Apostle Paul loves to call Him, God our Savior. He is by nature a Savior and so Jesus comes into the world to seek and to save that which was lost to fulfill that part of God’s nature which reaches out to redeem sinners. In order for God to save sinners, there had to be a sacrifice that paid the penalty for their sins. Jesus who is God came into the world, took on human form to offer Himself as that sacrifice, an unimaginable condescension, an undeserved act. On the cross Jesus died not under the wrath of men, really, but under the wrath of God. Not by the plans of the Romans and the Jews, but by the determined plan of God, predestined before the world began. And He bore the wrath of God and He bore separation from God for sinners, for all the sinners who would ever believe. And while it was a sacrifice for Christ to do this, it was a satisfying sacrifice. It was why He came to offer that sacrifice, to purchase God’s chosen people, to purchase His own bride.
Turn in your Bible to Isaiah 53, this is a good place to start as we look at this sacrifice of Christ. Isaiah 53, and verse 4, this is the classic Old Testament section of Scripture which deals with the substitutionary death of Jesus in which He dies in the place of sinners. And Isaiah is inspired to write of His death in these words, starting in verse 4, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried. Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted.” That is to say that He was literally punished by God for our sins. Verse 5, “He was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted yet He did not open His mouth like a lamb that is led to slaughter.”
I want you to go back for a minute to verse 4. “Our griefs, our sorrows.” Verse 5, “Our transgressions, our iniquities, our well-being.” “All of us,” verse 6 , “each of us, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.” Our, our, our, our, us, us, us, and the question comes, who is this? Whose sins did He bear? Whose transgressions? For whose iniquities was He crushed? For whose healings was He scourged? Whose iniquity was placed on Him?
Go down to verse 10. “The Lord was pleased to crush Him.” It’s an amazing statement. Because God is by nature a Savior and He finds His own satisfaction in saving sinners which means He is pleased to have His Son be the sacrifice that saves them. “The Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief if He would render Himself as a guilt offering.” “He will see His offspring.” In other words, He is being crushed, He is being put to grief, He is being given as a guilt offering in the confidence that He will see His seed, His offspring. Verse 11 says, “As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied.” God was pleased and Christ was satisfied because out of it would come His offspring, His seed.
And then verse 11 says, the end of the verse, “My servant,” meaning Messiah, “will justify the many and He will bear their iniquities.” And at the end of verse 12, “He Himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors.” And the question is, “Who are the 'ours' and the 'us’s' and the many?” It must be the offspring. Must be those that are the seed born out of that sacrifice because that is what pleased God and that is what satisfied Christ.
In the New Testament, it tells us in 1 Timothy 1:15 that the Lord Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Paul said that, that’s his own testimony, “The Lord came into the world to save sinners.” That’s the great enterprise. God is an evangelist. God is a Savior. Christ then, God manifest, does a saving work. He came into the world to save sinners. And all those that He saves He then mandates to carry on this work. And according to the great commission, we are to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. We are to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I’ve commanded you and lo, I am with you always. We are ambassadors for Christ, begging people to be reconciled to God. We have been redeemed to be caught up in this great evangelistic enterprise. In Acts 1:8 as Jesus leaves this world, His final words, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria, even to the remotest part of the earth.” That’s the last thing Jesus said on earth. “My Father is a Savior, I am a Savior and you are to pick up the glorious gospel of salvation and take it to the ends of the earth.”
That’s why we’re here. Everything else is secondary, everything else is tertiary in the church. Everything else in a sense is less important. And I don’t want anything to ever diminish that. That’s why when you’ve been teaching on the doctrine of sovereign election and you’ve been teaching on the doctrine of absolute inability and unwillingness and you’re teaching on the doctrine of the extent of the atonement, it is still absolutely consistent to follow all that up with four nights of evangelism on four Sundays because this is our mandate, this is why the church is here. We will worship better in heaven. We will serve the Lord better in heaven. We’ll love each other better in heaven. In fact, we’ll do all of that perfectly. But one thing we won’t do in heaven is evangelize the lost. They won’t be there. And God who weeps through the eyes of Jeremiah, and Jesus who weeps through His own eyes over the lost in Jerusalem, calls on us to weep over the impenitent and to go forth bearing precious seed with tears. God weeps over the impenitent. God weeps over the unbelieving. He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. And He offers a legitimate and genuine call to sinners across the face of the world, both from the pages of Scripture and out of the mouths of all of the believers who go and take the message, a legitimate call to come and believe and be saved. That evangelistic mandate defines why the church is in the world. It’s why we’re here, to preach the gospel of salvation and reconciliation and forgiveness and heaven to the whole world. We are to beg people to come to salvation. And as I noted in Psalm 126:5, “We are to go forth with tears, bearing the precious seed of saving truth and reaping the harvest of faith with rejoicing.” It was Jesus who said, “Come to Me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, I’ll give you rest.”
We are told to pray for the salvation of all people, 1 Timothy 2. We are told to set a godly example and to live our lives as shining lights so that men can see the power of Christ in us and be drawn to Him. We are told if we’re going to name the name of Christ we ought to be like Him. We are told to proclaim the gospel and never to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it’s the power of God to salvation. We are told to proclaim it to the Jew and to the Greek as well. And it is a legitimate offer, and a real offer. And every sinner on the planet is accountable for the response to that offer. And as we saw in our study this morning, every man has a stewardship that God has given him. It may be a stewardship of a law written in his heart, and a stewardship of his rational mind looking at the creation around him and being led to the knowledge of God. And if he follows the path as he should in obedience to that stewardship that God has given him, he will find the truth will open to him. Every man is accountable and no man has an excuse. And so we are mandated to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. But we know this, not everybody will repent and not everybody will believe, we know that. That has always been true, always.
There are numerable souls even now that have left this earth and are already out of the presence of God forever in eternal torment. That fact is inescapable. And they’re going there every day that we live by the thousands, they die. There is an eternal hell and it will be continually filled with sinners until redemptive history is over, sinners who ignored conscience, sinners who ignored the Law written in their hearts, sinners who ignored that which was known of God that was placed in them, sinners who ignored the truth when they heard it, the Scripture when they read it, the gospel when it was preached to them, sinners who rejected the grace and goodness of God, sinners who refused to repent. And they all end up in hell and if they were given the choice while in hell to choose differently, they wouldn’t do it. They showed no interest in God then, they will have no interest in Him now.
So we are called to a worldwide task and sinners are accountable for how they respond to the message at whatever level they receive it. Now as I will point out in the sermon next Sunday morning, there are degrees of punishment in hell. Not everyone’s punishment will be equally severe in hell. That will depend upon how much truth you had, truth is dangerous. The more you have, the more culpable you are, the greater your guilt, the greater your punishment.
We shouldn’t be surprised at this. Go back to Isaiah 6 while you’re in Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 6 and here’s a call of God on the prophet Isaiah. And in verse 8, the Lord asks a question and the question is this, “Who shall I send and who shall go for us?” The people of God are in serious trouble. They are in grave danger. The prior chapter, chapter 5, lays out the sins that were characteristic of God’s people and judgment is coming, severe and deadly judgment is coming. It’s described at the end of the fifth chapter. And God needs a messenger to warn, a messenger to call the people to repentance before the judgment comes. And the question is asked, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” Meaning the Trinity. And Isaiah responds, “Here am I, send me. I will go.” This, of course, should be the response of every believer. “Who am I going to send to this world plummeting into judgment?” “I’ll go.”
And then the most bizarre statement. “And the Lord said, ‘Go and tell this people, you go tell them, go and tell them about judgment, and tell them about grace and forgiveness and mercy as well. Tell them to turn from their sin. You go, you tell them.’” And then it says, “Keep on listening but don’t proceed, keep on looking but don’t understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, return and be healed.” What that is saying, and by the way, that passage is repeatedly quoted in the New Testament because it’s the defining passage on the obstinacy of an unbelieving society, in particular Israel. Know this, He says to Isaiah, they’re going to listen but not understand, they’re going to see but not comprehend, they’re going to be insensitive, dull of hearing, dim of sight. They won’t get it. They won’t return. They won’t repent. They won’t be healed. So know this, when you go.
I read somewhere, just yesterday, a little note that said, “There is a massive turning to Christ in the world today.” Really? Where is that? I...I must be missing something.
And they asked the right question in verse 11. He said, “Lord, how long? I mean, why should I do that very long? How long should I do that, like a couple of weeks maybe?” No, just keep doing it till the cities are devastated and have no inhabitants and houses have no people and the land is desolate and the Lord has removed everybody far away and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. Just do it till the place is devastated. Do it till there’s nobody left to do it to, just keep preaching... You say, “Wait a minute. This seems fruitless.” No. Verse 13 is the key. “There will be a tenth portion in it.” This is one of the very most tangled Hebrew constructions of any passage in the Old Testament, I’m not going to try to unscramble it for you. Simply to say, the Lord says there’s a tenth, this is what we call the doctrine of the remnant, there’s a tenth. There’s a stump. And at the end of verse 13, “There is a holy seed that is that stump.” There’s a ...there’s a group, there’s a remnant, there’s a seed. It’s that same seed that the Messiah saw in Isaiah 53 and He could see His seed and His soul was satisfied. Do you think God has some mystery about who’s going to be saved? Of course not. He knows. He knows it will be few. He knows it will be a remnant. He knows it will be only a portion, a holy seed. The word “holy” means set apart.
So we go, as Isaiah went. We go to the world and we go with the gospel and we know that most will not believe. And we could be very discouraged and say, “How long do I do that?” And the Lord says, “Just keep doing it because there is out there a seed already designated as holy.” They’re already in the purposes of God set apart for God. They are the elect who upon hearing the gospel will repent and will believe.
You remember Acts 13:48, “When the Gentiles heard this they began rejoicing and glorifying the Word of the Lord and as many as had been appointed to eternal life, believed.” As many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. There is a remnant. There is a people appointed to eternal life.
In Acts 18 the Lord came to Paul in a vision. “Do not be afraid any longer,” the Lord said, “Go on speaking, do not be silent. I am with you and no man will attack you in order to harm you.” Listen to this, “For I have many people in this city.” They weren’t converted yet. They weren’t converted yet. You go there, you preach as I have many of the holy seed already there. They’re just waiting to hear.
So who will believe? Who will believe? Who will believe our report? Isaiah says. Who will be saved at the preaching of the gospel? All men are accountable and the offer is legitimate but who will be saved? And this launches us into our look at the doctrine of actual atonement or definite atonement or specific atonement or peculiar or particular atonement as it’s all been called. Now we already know this, when we ask the question...who will believe and be saved? We just finished talking about the doctrine of absolute inability and unwillingness, sometimes called the doctrine of total depravity. And that doctrine says no sinner, and this is taught in the Bible, no sinner on his own can or will seek God, right? No sinner on his own will pursue the truth, will pursue righteousness, will come to reconciliation and salvation. He will not because he cannot. His condition as being dead in sin makes that impossible. And so the only ones who can come are those to whom God gives life and light and understanding and repentance and faith. And we also learned from the study before that that those to whom God gives that are those whom He has chosen to give that to. God chooses whom He will save and God saves whom He has chosen.
Clearly then salvation is all of God. It’s His holy seed. It’s His holy offspring in the language of Isaiah 53. It’s His people he has already identified. Now, their salvation is not apart from their will, but it is in harmony with their will when their will is altered by the power of God. So that raises the question then...for whom did Christ die? For whom did He die? And we said last time, I’ll just quickly review, most people in the church think that He died for everyone potentially and no one actually, right? He just died for everybody potentially, it’s sort of out there, and you can pick it up if you want it or you don’t, it’s not going to be applicable to you. So He died for everybody potentially, and no one actually. Therefore the actualizing of the atonement depends upon the sinner deciding to actualize the atoning work of Jesus Christ on his own behalf. And if the sinner never believes, if he chooses never to receive Christ, then the death of Christ for Him remains an unrealized potential. So those who believe that, believe...now listen carefully...that the atonement of Christ is limited in its effect, okay? It’s limited in its effect, they like to say they do not believe in a limited atonement, they believe in an unlimited atonement. That’s not true. They believe in an atonement that is limited in its power, that is limited in its effect, that is limited in its impact to the will of the sinner. That’s a very limited atonement. They believe that it is unlimited in its extent, that it extends to the whole of the human race, but it is very limited in its effect.
What the Bible teaches is just the opposite. It is limited in its extent to those whom God chooses and saves. And for them it is unlimited in its effect, in its power. It is then not a potential salvation for all, it is an actual salvation for the many. Who is our, and our, and us, and us, and the many, and the many for whom He died, for whom He actually bore sin’s judgment? It is the holy seed. It is the holy offspring. It is the chosen of the Father. It is the bride of the Son. See, this changes everything. If you believe there’s this sort of hanging sort of a potential atonement floating around the world and you just have to convince sinners to pick it up to take advantage of it, then evangelism takes on a completely different approach. It all becomes working on the will of the sinner to get him to actualize this only potential atonement. And if they don’t do it, they’re going to end up in hell. And as I told you last time, it’s going to sound bizarre to say it again, but hell is full of people for whom Jesus did exactly the same thing that He did for the people in heaven. Is that bizarre? Hell is full of people for whom Jesus died, for whom He paid some penalty. He did the same thing for the people in hell that He did for the people in heaven, the only difference is the people in heaven were motivated to turn a potential into an actual.
And you have to ask yourself the question...who gets the credit for that one? Right? It doesn’t sound like the way to glorify God. See, that’s the idea that Jesus’ atonement is unlimited in its extent but very limited in its effect. In fact, it isn’t enough to save you. Is that amazing? Jesus dying on the cross, paying the penalty for your sin under that theology isn’t enough to save you. You’ve got to do something to complete it which sounds to me like salvation by works. But how is the sinner going to do that when he’s absolutely unable to do that and unwilling to do that? Dead in trespasses and sin, blinded by Satan, so we know not everybody’s going to be saved. The atonement is limited in its extent and the question is, who limited it? Who limited it? God.
I know that’s sometimes hard to take. But He did. There is hell and most people who live in this world end up there. That’s how it is. The real hard doctrine is the doctrine of eternal punishment. If there were no hell, we wouldn’t even need to debate these other issues, they’d be academic. But it’s God who decides who He’s going to save and who chose them before the foundation of the world.
I just can’t look at the cross and see Jesus at the very end of the cross looking up and saying, “It is started.” What? “It is potential.” That’s not what He said, is it? Was the death of Christ a full and complete payment to God satisfying His just wrath for some particular chosen people? Or was it a potential for nobody? An actual for nobody, a potential for everybody.
Let’s look at the Scripture and see how to understand that. We only have a little bit of time. This is going to be a survey kind of look. We have to...we have to look at some terms. Okay, world...let’s take world. Everybody comes and says, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, what about the world, what about the world?” Let me help you with that, okay? It’s going to be like those old sword drills, Bible drills that you had when you were a kid, you’ve got to move fast with me. We’ve heard the world mentioned, when we hear the word world we think the world means everybody who ever lived. That’s not biblical. John 1:9, “There was the true light which coming into the world enlightens every man.” What does that mean? Coming into the world, what does that mean? Does that mean He came to every human being on the face of the earth? No, it just means He came in to the human realm. He was in the world. He was in the human realm. “And the world was made through Him, and the world didn’t know Him.” World is just a term for humanity, the created world. He was in the world, God in human flesh. There’s nothing about every single individual on the planet being necessarily involved in that word, just the created order, just humanity.
So here you see the word world, immediately has to be qualified. John 1:29, “The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and he said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of...what?...the world.’” Now wait a minute, we have to qualify that immediately, don’t we? If He took away the sin of the world, what? Everybody would be...what?...saved. They’d all have their sin taken away. So immediately we have to qualify the word world. And how do you qualify it? “He came into this human realm, He came into this created order, He came to humanity to take away sin.” And in the future, of course, it will be removed completely in the New Heaven and the New Earth.
But you will notice that this is clearly limited. He didn’t come to take away the sin of everybody. Go back to verse 11, “He came to His own and those who were His own did not receive Him...verse 12...but as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God even to those who believe in His name.” So taking away the sin of the world is then qualified by whoever believed in Him. They were the only ones who had the right to be forgiven and become children of God. So world is just a generic term meaning humanity, the created order. And it has to be qualified.
In John chapter 3, again verse 16, “God so loved the world,” and that’s something we’re going to talk about in January, the love of God and how far and how wide and how high and how deep is it. God so loved the world. What does that mean? Humanity. “He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life, for God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world but that the world should be saved through Him.” Well immediately you know the world has to be qualified. If you don’t qualify it, we’re all going to come out universalists here, with everybody being saved. And we know that can’t be true because the Bible is so clear on judgment.
In John chapter 4, all it means in John 3 is He loved humanity, He loved mankind. He loved people from all tribes and tongues and nations. He loved and in a very general sense, the sense of common grace and the offer of the gospel and compassion He shows love to the world. But His saving love for the world is limited to those in the world, the realm of humanity who believe. “God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes.”
John 4:42, again it’s the same thing. It says, “It’s no longer because of what you said that we believe for we have heard for ourselves and know that this one is indeed the Savior of the world.” It doesn’t say He’s the potential Savior of the world, He is the Savior of the world. He is the Savior of the world unqualified so therefore the world has to be qualified, you can’t qualify the word Savior. He is the...well, potential Savior. You’re trying to protect the universal concept of world and you wind up limiting the Savior. It really points out the picture, doesn’t it? Either you’re going to limit the effect of the saving work of Christ, or you’re going to limit the extent of it, one of the two. He is the Savior of the world in this sense, He’s the only Savior this world will ever have. He’s the only Savior the human race will ever know. The world has no other Savior. And what’s really important to note in all the way through the gospel of John, whenever you read this, “the Savior of the world,” “God so loved the world,” “He was in the world,” etc., keep in mind that John is addressing an environment of Jewish anti-Gentile racism. And the idea that the Messiah is for the world was a foreign idea, no pun intended, it was a revolutionary idea.
In John 6:33, again the same emphasis, “The bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world.” To the world...what part of the world? Verse 35, “He who comes to Me shall not hunger, he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” You’re going to have life if you come and you believe from whatever nation on this planet. He’s the Savior of the world, 1 John 4:14 says the same thing in the sense that it’s not limited to the Jews. But it is limited. It’s limited always to those who believe. John 6:33 we just read, and John 6:51 follows it up, “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he shall live forever. And the bread also that I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh.” He gives His life for the world, but who in the world? It says in the same verse, “Whoever eats the bread will live forever.” It’s always qualified by believing, by believing. You see it again, it’s all through the gospel of John. John chapter 12 verse 47 and 48, again always needing to be qualified, “If anyone hears My saying though he keep them, I do judge him, I didn’t come to judge the world but to save the world.” Obviously this does not mean that He’s going to save every human being whoever lives, it does mean that He is going to extend His salvation without regard for race or color or sex across this planet, humanity in general.
Look at chapter 14 verse 22, this is just another illustration of how you always have to qualify the world. Judas in John 14:22, “Judas, not Iscariot, said, ‘Lord, what then has happened that You’re going to disclose Yourself to us and not the world?’” What do you think Judas meant by that? What did he mean that You’re going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world? He certainly didn’t mean every human being on the planet. The wider world, the wider realm of humanity outside this narrow group, the general public, it means there. And Jesus even understood His own limitations on the word world. Look at John 17, very important, John 17, Jesus is praying and He prays for, verse 6, the men You gave Me out of the world. The men You gave Me out of the world I pray for them, they were Thine, they were and Thou gavest them to Me and they’ve kept Thy Word. And then go down to verse 9, “I ask on their behalf, I do not ask on behalf of the world.” There you have Jesus not interceding for the world but for the men whom God gave Him out of the world. Again you have to qualify and Jesus Himself there makes that qualification.
In verse 15 of John 17, He prays for His own and says, “I ask that You not take them out of the world, but keep them from the evil one.” And there He understands the world as this human enterprise with all its sin. In verse 16 He says, “They’re not of the world.” Verse 18, “You sent Me into the world and I sent them into the world. But I don’t pray for the world, I just pray for those You’ve given Me out of the world.” Jesus even knew there were qualifications on the use of the word world, just general, beyond Israel, across all races and languages. The world is always qualified, never is there an occasion when we can dogmatically say it means every human being whoever lived.
In fact, in John 12, I can’t resist this, just thought of it, John 12:19. The Pharisees were getting more and more concerned about Jesus so in John 12:19 it says, “The Pharisees therefore said to one another, ‘You see that you’re not doing any good. Look the world has gone after Him.’” Well what do you think they meant by that? Every human being that ever lived? No, it’s always qualified. In Luke 9:25 Jesus says, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world,” well that’s qualified, no man is going to own the whole world.
So we simply in the context understand that the term world is to get us beyond the provincialism the narrowness and the racism of Judaism to get us to the extent of the atonement stretching across this earth in all times and all nations. Paul in Romans 11:15 says that the rejection of Israel has brought about the reconciliation of the world. And again, Paul doesn’t believe for a moment that that means that every single person whoever lived will be reconciled to God. What he means is that Israel’s rejection being set aside, the church is grafted in and the church is made up of Jew and Gentile. The Jews had a hard time with this. That’s why the Apostles had to sort of shock them with the fact that the Lord was doing a work among the Gentiles. You remember the book of Acts? While Peter was still speaking in Acts 10, the Holy Spirit fell on Cornelius, Gentiles, and all the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. Well that was part of that same provincialism. And the gospel was never intended to be limited to Israel. The same is in the fifteenth chapter of Acts verses 6 and following. Verse 7, we can pick it up. “Peter stood and said, ‘Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe and God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.” It’s a hard pill for the Jews to swallow, that the gospel stretched outside Judaism to humanity from every tongue and tribe and people and nation.
So we look at the term world and we always qualify it. There’s another passage, two more that need our brief attention. I’m just going to comment briefly. First John 2, 1 John 2, “Jesus Christ the righteous,” verse 1, verse 2, “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for those of the whole world.” What is that saying? That He is a propitiation not only for our sins, again this is very Jewish in its context. But for the whole world. It’s making the same point that John made over and over and over again, the same point that they made in the book of Acts, the same point that Paul makes in Romans 11. That the gospel is not limited to the Jews. Propitiation, by the way, is a very strong word, hilasmos in the Greek. And propitiation means the actual satisfying of God’s just wrath. It’s not a potential, it’s an actual word. It..it...it could be translated placated, or satisfied. He Himself is the satisfaction, He is the placation, He propitiates God, satisfies God, placates God’s anger for our sins. But not just ours, as the inside people, but the whole world. That is to say there is no other propitiation for people in any other nation than the one who is the propitiation for us. If this meant that He was actually a satisfaction for every person who ever lived, then the word is way too strong to mean anything potential. It would have to mean actual because it’s a satisfaction, God was satisfied with the sacrifice on their behalf. Nothing is left out. And Jesus’ death, dear one, was a satisfaction. He was the sacrificial lamb on the ultimate day of atonement whose blood sprinkled before God was a true satisfaction. Propitiation is too strong a word to mean something potential because propitiation means it turns God’s wrath away forever. And not just for us but for any Gentile or anyone else who believes.
And in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and I’m just going to cover this one because I know if I don’t you’ll come up and ask me about them, 2 Corinthians 5:19. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” And again you say, “Well okay, reconciling the world. People always know...didn’t He reconcile the whole world?” Well what do you mean by the world? It always has to be qualified otherwise you end up, as I said, a universalist and then what do you do with everybody that’s being sent to hell? God is reconciling the world to Himself. And what does it mean? Listen to this, “Not counting their trespasses against them.” That’s not a potential anything, that’s an actual. God is reconciling, God is not making reconciliation possible, God is not removing a barrier to reconciliation, God is not giving, you know, the eight-tenths of the deal and telling the sinner to take the next two steps. He is reconciling to Himself in Christ, that is in the death of Christ, the world not counting their trespasses against them. And let me tell you, my friend, not having your trespasses counted against you means that He bore your transgression in full and you are under no condemnation. And that is not a potential salvation, that is an actual salvation. Whoever the world is here, it is the ones who no longer have their trespasses counted against them. It is those who are, verse 17, new creatures in Christ. It is those in verse 21 for whom He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. Whose behalf? Those who were reconciled to God that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. There’s no such thing in the Bible as a potential atonement. It simply means that there are no racial limits, there are no ethnic limits. These passages regarding the world are all qualified. It’s just humanity, the human world, this realm, not every single individual who ever lives. You know, that has been sold to us through the years. Christ did not pay in full, He did not reconcile, He did not satisfy God fully so that God no longer counts trespasses against every human being in the world. If that were true that is an actual salvation and there can be no hell cause there can’t be any punishment. That’s...then God would be...what?..not just but...what?...unjust.
Well you say, “Well the Bible says all, the Bible says all.” I know it says all, yeah it says all. Want to look at some “alls”? Romans 5, let’s look at some alls. Just give me a few more minutes and we’ll get there, I only have about 45 passages here. We can cut it off anywhere and we’ll get it some other time. But Romans 5:18, “So then,” this is another passage important, “So then through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men.” That one transgression was Adam, right? And that did effect everybody. “Even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.” Well if you’re not careful there, if you drive the parallel in the wrong direction, you’re going to come out with this, “Well everybody was affected by Adam’s sin and became sinners, therefore everybody is affected by Christ’s righteous work and becomes righteous.” The problem with that is that’s not true.
There’s only one illustration being made here. It’s simply this. The argument is coming up, Paul is talking about the impact of the work of Christ, how that the work of Christ is the redeeming work of all who believe. And the question that comes up in the mind of the reader is going to be, “How can one man’s act have such a great effect? How can the act of one man have such massive implications?” And so he simply makes the parallel. “Look, by one man’s sin, everybody died. Everybody who died died. And by one man’s righteousness, everybody who became righteous became righteous.” He even changes his terminology in verse 19 where he says, “Just to make sure we don’t think the ‘all’ is inclusive, as through the one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of one, many will be made righteous.” And I think he puts that in there just to back us off the wrong understanding of verse 18 which would make everybody saved and he...whoa, that’s not what I’m trying to say, let’s use the word many so we don’t get mixed up here. We’re just trying to illustrate the point that one man’s work, one man’s deed effects all who proceed from that one man. So that is all only in the appropriate sense, qualified again in the context.
Go to chapter 8 of Romans verse 32. Here’s all again. “He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all.” Who’s the all here? Christ was delivered up for us all. Now some people will say, “Well He was delivered up for everybody in the whole world.” That’s not...is that who he’s talking about here? Is that Paul’s us?
Well let’s go back to verse 31, just back up one. “If God is for us, who is against us?” Now who is the us there? Everybody in the whole world, is God for everybody in the whole world? We have to qualify us. Well who is the us that God is for? I’ll tell you who it is, verse 29, “Whoever He predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, whoever He predestined, verse 30, He called, whoever He called He justified, whoever He justified, these He also glorified and if God is for us, who can be against us.” It’s the us of those who were predestined and called and justified and glorified. To put it another way, verse 33, “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect?” It is the elect, we are the us all.
Second Corinthians chapter 5...2 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 14, and here’s language very much like Romans 5, just so you can compare it, 2 Corinthians 5, we were there in the little few verses down, I want to go back to 14 and 15, “The love of Christ controls us having concluded that one died for all, therefore all died. And He died for all that they who live shall no longer live for themselves but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.” Now the all is qualified. Now just follow this carefully. The love of Christ controls us, having concluded that one died for all. People say, “Oh, He died for all, He died for the whole world, every single person in the whole world. He died for them all?” No. He died for all, therefore all died. The all He died for died. What is that? Well when you came to Christ, do you remember you died, is that not true? “I am crucified...what?...with Christ.” In Him you die. So He died for all therefore all died. He died for the all who died in Him. Verse 15, He died for all and who are the all? They who live. He died for those who died and live in Him. It was for them that He died and arose again, end of verse 15, on their behalf...on their behalf.
You could look at the word many, if we had time, it has some interesting usages and you will find a number of references to the word many. We already saw one in Romans 6 saying that the Lord died not for all, but for many. And that’s another way to get to the same point, all meaning all in the broad sense across the world, many meaning less than everyone. In Hebrews 9, “Christ also having been offered once to bear the sins of many.” Wow, offered to bear the sins of many. The many and the all are interchangeable in Romans 6, and here it’s the many. To bear the sins of many. You don’t want to do too much with these words other than to understand in the context how they are always qualified.
Listen to Matthew 20:28, “The Son of Man didn’t come to be served, but to serve and give His life a ransom for many...for many.” Who are the many? All who would believe. He actually was a ransom. He actually was a satisfaction. He actually provided an expiation. He actually achieved an atonement for those who would believe. To put it in the angelic language, it goes like this, the angel says, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, and she will bear a Son and you shall call His name Jesus...listen...for it is He who will save...who?...His people from their sins.” The Bible teaches nowhere a potential salvation. He saves His people from their sins. That’s what He will do when He comes, it will be a real salvation for His people. John 10:11, “I am the Good Shepherd, the Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep and I know My own sheep. I am the Good Shepherd, I know My own, My own know Me. I lay down My life for the sheep.”
In chapter 11 of John’s gospel and verse 50, “It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people and that the whole nation should not perish,” so says Caiaphas. “Now this he did not say on his own initiative but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation...listen to this...and not for the nation only but that He might also gather together into one the children of God who were scattered abroad.” Wow, what a statement! Get that? Jesus died, Jesus died not just for Jews, but to gather into one body the children of God scattered all over the world. That’s who He died for.
In Ephesians chapter 5, just a couple more. “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved...what?...the church and gave Himself up for her that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory.” He paid the price for His bride, His church. He redeemed her. It wasn’t a redemption of nobody in particular, it was a redemption of His own redeemed church. It was a particular redemption. He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. He predestined us. In Him we have redemption, Ephesians 1:7. We have the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace which he lavished on us. We are, I love this, verse 14 of Ephesians 1, “God’s own possession.” It says the redemption of God’s own possession, a people of His own possession. Titus 2:13, “We look for the blessed hope, and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ...I love this...who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us and purify for Himself a people for His own possession.” And who was that people? The people whom God chose before the foundation of the world and gave to the Son as His bride. Peter says, “He bore our sins in His own body,” 1 Peter 2:24. Peter says, “Christ died for sin once for all, the just for the unjust in order that He might bring us to God.” He didn’t die to potentially bring people to God, He died to bring us to God. He died to satisfy God. He died to redeem the holy seed, the holy offspring.
One other text, that’s it. One other one, because I know you’ll ask me. Hebrews 10:29, it’s a clarification really. Hebrews 10:29, “How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who will trample underfoot the Son of God and regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which He was sanctified.” Some people say, “Well wait a minute, that says right there that some people who are going to be punished, some people who trample underfoot the Son of God and regard as unclean the very blood of His covenant are said to be sanctified.”
Can I help you with that verse? Take out your little pen and put just a little line above the “h” that turns it into a capital H. It’s not talking about sinners being sanctified, it’s talking about Christ by which He was sanctified, trampling underfoot the Son of God and regarding as unclean the blood of the covenant by which He was set apart as the covenant sacrifice.”
Well, somebody could throw in a verse like 2 Peter 2:1 and say, “Wait a minute, it says of those people there who were apostate that they denied the Master who bought them.” Sure, there’s a sarcasm there, they claimed to be true believers. They claimed to be true teachers. They infiltrated the church as false teachers and Paul maybe in a mocking way says, “You now have denied the Master who bought you.” We know the Master didn’t pay the price for damnable heretics.
So how do we summarize this? The death of Christ was a real, true actual satisfaction of divine justice. It was a true payment and a true atonement in full, actually not potentially, paid to God by Christ on behalf of all who would ever believe because they were chosen and redeemed by the power of God. The death of Christ was indefinite, particular, specific and actual on behalf of God’s chosen people, limited in extent by the sovereign purposes of God, but unlimited in effect, for all for whom it was rendered it is fully in force, or will be in each individual life. It is the work of God. It is the work of Christ who accomplished redemption, not to make redemption possible to then be finally accomplished by the sinner. Christ procured salvation for all whom God would call and justify. Sinners do not limit the atonement, God does. Jesus did actually take the penalty in full for all who would ever believe.
What does that mean to you? Well for one, you ought to rejoice because the price was paid in full for you. You don’t have to activate it. You’re a trophy of God’s divine grace. Secondly, go out and evangelize the lost with joy knowing that there’s a holy seed out there for Christ has already paid the price for their sins and it’s our joy and our privilege to be our instruments to reach them.
Father, thank You for our time tonight and may we rejoice in every sense in the greatness of our salvation, in Christ’s name. Amen.
The Doctrine of Actual Atonement, Part 1
by Dr. John MacArthur, Jr.
Well, how many of you have always wanted to go to seminary? You’re about to go tonight. I’m going to challenge your thinking a little bit as we talk about this issue of the question, “For whom did Christ die?” We have been looking over the last number of weeks at some very important doctrines, the doctrine of perseverance, or the preservation of the saints; the doctrine of sovereign election in salvation. We have looked at the doctrine of total or absolute inability, that is the depravity of the sinner which renders it impossible for him to respond to the gospel. And tonight I want to talk to you about what I’ve chosen to call, trying to give it a more accurate name, the doctrine of actual atonement...the doctrine of actual atonement.
Now you need to understand that these doctrines that we’re talking about are at the very heart and soul of our theology. They are the very doctrines that were dealt with in the great Reformation and rescued out of the darkness of Roman Catholicism. Now it may seem obvious to most Christians for whom Christ died, but it is because we tend to take things at a rather superficial level and not think about them deeply, and thus we miss the very essence of some of these glorious truths that we need to dig a little more deeply. And I’m going to try to do that tonight and obviously the preliminaries took a long time and rightly so, those were wonderful testimonies and a great time of singing. So I’m sure this is going to spill over to next week, so please, I’m going to leave you hanging a little bit tonight and I know many of you are going to rush me afterwards with all your questions of things I didn’t cover. But if you’ll hold it until next Sunday night, we’ll...we’ll get there.
Let’s begin in a simple way, and I hope this is clear to you. You know, as I tell young preachers, it’s...it’s very easy to be hard to understand, that’s really easy. All you have to do is not know what you’re talking about, nobody else will either. And somebody might say, “Well it was too deep,” but it might have been only an illusion that it was too deep, it was just that he didn’t understand it so how could you. It’s hard to be clear. To be clear you have to really understand the subject and work hard to get it to an understandable way, and understandable format. And that’s what I’ve tried to do and I hope it’s clear to you.
But let’s start with some simple things. If I ask the average Christian for whom did Christ die? The traditional answer would be, “Everybody...everybody, Christ died for the whole world, He died for all sinners.” And most people then in the church believe, and I’m sure many people outside the true church, many people associated with Christianity, believe that on the cross Jesus paid the debt of sin for everyone because He loves everyone and He wants everyone to be saved.” That’s pretty much the common evangelical view. Jesus died for everybody, He paid the price for the sins of everybody. And all we have to do is tell sinners that He loves them so much that He paid the price and He wants them to be saved and all they have to do is respond.
Now if that is true, then on the cross Jesus accomplished a potential salvation...not an actual one. That is, sinners have all had their sins atoned for potentially and it’s not actual until they activate it by their faith. So, what we need to do is to tell sinners that they need to pick up the salvation that’s already been purchased for them. Since Christ died for everybody, everybody therefore can be saved, it’s just a matter of them coming to receive that salvation. And so, our responsibility is to convince people to come and take the salvation that’s been provided for them, to convince them to come and accept the gift. This is so deep in the fabric of evangelical theology that the most popular book on the church currently, The Purpose Driven Church, in it the author says, quote, “I can lead anyone to Christ if I find the key to that person’s heart.” The assumption is that if you can just figure out the technique of getting to some emotional point, you can win anybody on the planet to Christ because, after all, He’s died for all of them. That’s the popular idea. And I know many of you are thinking, “Well...well it seems to me that that’s what I’ve always believed in, that’s what I’ve been taught.” Well we may be taking you some places you’ve never gone before, but that’s good. That’s the popular idea.
The fallout of that would be like this. Hell is full of people for whom Christ died. I’ll say it another way. Hell is full of people whose sins were paid for in full on the cross. That’s a little more disturbing when you say it like that, isn’t it? Another way to say it would be that the Lake of Fire which burns forever with fire and brimstone is filled with eternally damned people whose sins Christ fully atoned for on the cross. God’s wrath was satisfied by Christ’s atonement on behalf of those people who will forever stay in hell.
Now by the way, heaven will also be populated by the souls of those for whom Christ died. So Christ did exactly the same thing for the occupants of hell as He did for the occupants of heaven. That makes the question a little more disturbing. The only difference is the people in heaven accepted the gift, the people in hell rejected it. That’s pretty much the traditional evangelical view. But it just sound strange when you start to kind of pick it apart a little bit, doesn’t it? That Jesus died and paid in full the penalty for the sins of the damned and died and paid in full the penalty for the sins of the glorified, that Jesus did the same thing for the occupants of hell that He did for the occupants of heaven and the only difference hinges on the sinner’s choice? That is to say the death of Jesus Christ then is not an actual atonement, it is only a potential atonement. He really did not purchase salvation for anyone in particular. He only removed some kind of barrier to make it possible for sinners to choose to be saved.
So the message then, the typical evangelical message, is to sinners, “God loves you so much He sent His Son who paid in full the penalty for your sins and won’t you respond to that love and not disappoint God and accept the gift and let Him save you since He already paid in full the price for your sins?” The final decision is up to the sinner.
And it kind of carries the notion that God loves you so much, you’re so special, He gave His Son and He paid in full the penalty for your sins and that’s suppose to move you emotionally to love Him back and accept this gift. And so you kind of work the sinner and kind of manipulate the sinner in that direction trying to find a psychological point, a felt-need point, play the right organ music, sing the right invitation hymn. You know, grease the slide and get him moving in the direction of making the choice.
Now you’ve got a problem here, folks. We’ve got a big problem. We saw in our last study that no sinner on his own can make that choice, right? This is the doctrine of absolute inability. He can’t make it. He cannot make that choice. All people...all people are sinners and all sinners are dead in their trespasses and sins. All of them are alienated from the life of God. All do only evil continually. All are unwilling and unable to understand, to repent and to believe, all have darkened minds, blinded by sin and Satan, all have hearts that are full of evil, all are wicked, desperately wicked. All desire only the will of their father who is Satan, all of them are unable to seek God, they are all trapped in absolute inability and unwillingness.
So how then can the sinner make the choice? I don’t care what felt need you might find. I don’t care what you might think you see, quote/unquote, in his heart that will let you lead anyone to Christ, I don’t care how many invitation verses you sing or how much organ music or mood music you play to try to induce some kind of response, the sinner on his own cannot understand, cannot repent, and cannot believe. Remember what we saw in John 1? To as many as believed He gave the authority, the right to become children of God but not by the will of man or the will of the flesh. Ephesians 2:8 and 9, “By grace are you saved through faith but that not of yourselves.” It is through Him that you are in Christ, 1 Corinthians 1:30, salvation is from God. We saw that. He has to give life to the dead. He has to give sight to the blind. He has to give hearing to the deaf. He has to give understanding to the ignorant. He has to give repentance to those who love sin. He has to give faith to those who can’t believe. He has to move the heart to seek Him who otherwise would not. So that all the elements that caused the sinner to come to Christ are God-ordained and God-induced.
And as we have learned, the doctrine of absolute inability means that people will only be saved if God saves them, and therefore salvation is based upon the decree of God, the sovereign doctrine of election. No one could be saved unless God saved him and God saves those whom He chooses to save. You cannot expect the sinner on his own, no matter how he’s emotionally prodded or psychologically prodded, no matter how he’s threatened, no matter what you say to him, on his own you cannot expect him to quote/unquote decide for Christ. Those who will come to Christ are those whom the Father draws and the Father gives to the Son because He’s chosen to do so.
Now with that in mind, looking back at those doctrines, the doctrine of election, the doctrine of absolute inability, we can ask the question again...for whom did Christ die? Did He die a death that is a potential salvation for everyone and therefore on the largest part it was useless? Or did He die a death that is an actual atonement, not a potential one? For those who would believe because God calls them and God grants them repentance and faith, because God in eternity past chose them?
Well the only answer to the question that makes any real sense is that Jesus Christ died and paid in full the penalty for the sins of all who would ever believe so that His atonement is an actual atonement and not a potential one that can be disregarded. If Jesus actually paid in full the penalty for your sins, you’re not going to go to hell, that would be double jeopardy.
Now someone is going to say, “Well wait a minute. That sounds like limited atonement.” You say the word “limited atonement” and people’s antennas go up because we’re used to that kind of evangelical idea that Jesus paid the sins in full, paid the price for the sins in full of everybody. But that is fraud with so many obvious problems. But that’s what the evangelical church believes and that’s why it uses manipulation to move people emotionally and according to felt needs and by what other means it might come up with, believing that the penalty is paid in full for everybody so that most of the people that Jesus died for are in hell. Then what in the world kind of atonement did He provide for them?
And so you say, “You must believe the atonement is limited.” Of course, so do you. You say, “I believe in an unlimited atonement.” Well then you must be a universalist. A universalist believes that everybody’s going to heaven, there is no hell. Everybody is going to heaven. And that’s consistent. If you believe that Jesus paid in full the penalty for all the sins of all the people who ever lived, then you have to be a universalist. But we know better than that. We know the atonement is limited. We know not everybody is going to heaven. To be a universalist you have to ignore Scripture. So let’s...let me give you just a handful of points, okay? Let’s see how far we go.
Number one, the atonement is limited. And by atonement I mean the sacrifice of Christ by which He paid the penalty for sin. The atonement is limited. Now let’s look at this at just some obvious passages. Matthew 10...Matthew chapter 10 and I’m not going to wait for you, so you might want to write these down. Matthew 10:28, we’ve got to go, verse 28, gird up your loins, here we go, Matthew 10:28, “Do not fear...do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” That’s also quoted in Luke 12 as we’ve been learning. There is a hell and God is going to send people there. That tells me the atonement is limited. There is a hell and God is going to send people there.
In Mark chapter 9, and these are just samples that tell us that the atonement is certainly limited. In Mark 9 verse 43, “If your hand causes you stumble, cut it off. It’s better for you to enter the life crippled than having your two hands to go into hell into the unquenchable fire.” And some texts says, “where the worm doesn’t die and the fire is not quenched.” Again, another reference to hell. Verse 48 again repeats verse 47 and 48, “If your eye causes you to stumble, cast it out, better to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than having two eyes to be cast into hell where the worm doesn’t die and the fire is not quenched.” You come, as I noted, to the gospel of Luke chapter 12, you have the same statement as in Matthew 10:28, but go to the gospel of John and I just want to take you sort of briefly to this gospel and a few glimpses of the obvious reality of the atonement being limited.
It is limited. Chapter 8 makes it very clear. Chapter 8 verse 12, “I am the light of the world,” Jesus said, “he who follows Me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.” Here’s a condition. You have to follow Christ. It is limited then to those who follow Christ. You find over in verse 24 a similar saying. “I say therefore to you, that you shall die in your sins for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins.” There is a hell and people are going there. In fact, Matthew 7 says, “Many are going there.” And the only way to avoid going there, the only way to avoid dying in your sins, that is dying without a sacrifice for your sins, the only way to avoid that is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
How could Jesus say you could die in your sins if their sins had been paid for? They had not been paid for if they died without believing in Him. And there are other parts of John, if you go back to chapter 3, “God did not send His Son,” verse 17, “to judge the world but that the world should be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged, but he who does not believe has been judged already because he’s not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” There is a hell and people go there who don’t believe in Jesus Christ. And then there are so many other places where you can see this very same emphasis made. I don’t want to burden you with an endless list of them, but there are perhaps a couple of others maybe to think about. Matthew 22:13, “The king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness, in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” A further description of horrific punishment and judgment. Chapter 25 verse 30, “Cast the worthless slave into outer darkness in the place where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And then in a Pauline letter, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, it talks about the coming of the Lord Jesus from heaven. Second Thessalonians 1:7, “With His mighty angels and flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God, to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus and these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power.”
So the Bible promises there is a hell. The only way to avoid it is to not die in your sins. And to not die in your sins, you have to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you don’t, you’re going to pay the penalty of eternal destruction. That proves that the atonement is limited. It does not apply universally. God did not intend to save everyone. He is God. He could have intended to save everyone. He could have saved everyone. He would have if that had been His intention. The atonement is limited.
Now we all have to accept that or be universalists. We know not everyone is going to heaven. In fact, it is a little flock, it is the few which if we were to hold on to this sort of evangelical idea means that the vast majority of people for whom Christ died and paid in full the penalty for their sins are going to go to hell. And that’s just something very difficult to believe. So we do believe in a limited atonement. It is limited to those who believe.
How is it limited? That’s the second point. Number one, is the atonement limited? Answer; yes. Number two, how is it limited? Well first of all, it’s limited because not everybody is saved, only those who repent and believe. That’s how it’s limited. Only those who believe in Christ and confess Him as Lord are saved. Only those have their sins atoned for. It is limited to those who believe. That’s how it’s limited, okay? Very important that you grasp that. We’ll come back to that.
Now here comes the key question. To whom is it limited? By whom? We know it’s limited. We know how it’s limited, it’s limited to those who believe. It is only applicable to those who believe, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you’ll be saved.” Now by whom is it limited? And the popular view would say this, “The atonement of Jesus is unlimited but sinners limit its application.” And we’re back to what we said before. It is a potential atonement, the actuality of which is limited by the sinner. Now we have to believe then that God has provided a sacrifice for sins in His Son that in and of itself is not sufficient. In and of itself is not actual. In and of itself is not real because the sinner can neutralize it. I don’t mind believing God can limit the atonement, God does limit the atonement. But listen carefully to me. He limits the atonement as to its extent. You have to believe that because He didn’t choose everybody and not everybody’s going to heaven. And that’s in the divine mind and that’s the decree of God and that’s the purpose of God and you have to come to grips with that.
I don’t have any problem at all saying the atonement is limited. I don’t have any problem at all saying how it’s limited, it’s limited to those who believe. And I have no problem saying and those who believe are those whom God grants faith and therefore the atonement is limited because God limited it. I’m much more comfortable with that than that sinners can limit the atonement that Christ has provided, or that the atonement that Christ has provided is wasted on the vast majority of people. If you say that God provided an atonement which is only potential, which only removes the barriers so that the sinner can be saved if he chooses to be, you know what you’ve done? You have said that God not only limited the atonement as to its extent, and you have to believe that, but He limited it as to its effect. Okay?
In other words, if you believe in an unlimited atonement, and you think you’re one of those magnanimous people who believed Jesus died for everyone. Then by saying the atonement is unlimited as to extent, you have also said it is limited as to effect. It covers everybody but not potently. It covers everybody but not powerfully. A little while ago you sang a hymn, “Jesus...what?...paid it all,” you believe that? Well, potentially. Did He pay it all potentially or actually? Did He actually bear in His body your sins on the cross or only potentially? If you decide that He did. If you’re going to say that the extent of the atonement is unlimited, then the effect of the atonement is limited. If you’re going to say that the extent of the atonement is limited, then you’re going to say the effect of the atonement is unlimited. For those to whom it extends, it has no limits. So when you say you believe in a limited atonement or unlimited atonement...I believe in a limited atonement as to its extent. It is limited to those who believe who are those who are called, who are those who are chosen. But I believe it is unlimited as to its effect. For those to whom it is granted, it is a full atonement. Jesus did pay it all.
So, you know, these people who...who want to say, “Well, you know, we believe the atonement is unlimited.” You say, “Wait a minute. You mean Jesus died for everybody in the whole world?” Yes. “Well you may think it’s unlimited to its extent, but you have just confessed that it’s limited as to its real effect because people are going to go to hell even though He died for them. What kind of an atonement is that? Even people who say, “We believe it’s unlimited,” don’t believe that. They don’t mean that. They know God limited it to those who believe and they believe that sinners limit it by making wrong choices. And then they believe there’s some limits in the very atonement itself so that it really doesn’t do the work of atonement, it just makes it possible for the sinner to activate it.
You know, you look at the Bible and it’s pretty clear. The hymn writer got it right and that hymn is a pretty simple hymn, and I don’t know what was in his mind when he wrote it but when he wrote, “Jesus paid it all,” he meant that. What He did on the cross was not a partial atonement. What He did was not a potential atonement. It was not some kind of virtual atonement. It was a real actual atonement. It was limited in its extent to those who would believe who are the called and the chosen. But it was unlimited in its effect. For them it was a full and complete atonement. There is no such thing as an atonement by Jesus Christ on the cross that is less than a true and actual atonement. There is no such thing as some kind of potential atonement, some kind of half-way atonement. There’s no such thing as Jesus paying in full for your sins and then you paying in full for your sins forever in hell. That diminishes the work of Christ, that mocks the work of Christ.
What are you saying? Your saying Jesus only partially activated this and it’s up to the sinner to fully activate it? If Christ paid the sins of everybody and everybody doesn’t go to heaven, then whatever He paid wasn’t the full price. So we’ve got to change our hymn and say, “Jesus paid half, the rest is up to you.” That would be a good line. “Jesus paid the first half, the rest is up to you.” I just can’t bring myself to believe that hell is full of millions of people whose sins were paid for in full by Christ on the cross. I cannot see the Father fully punishing the Son on the cross for the sins of people who will then be punished for those sins forever in hell. What is the point? What Christ did on the cross was a true and full and complete atonement for the sins of all who would believe and since no one can believe unless God grants them faith, it is the sins of those whom the Father has chosen to call to Himself.
You hear people say, “Well, you know, when you say the atonement is limited, people don’t feel very special.” Well, I’ll tell you what. I don’t feel very special if you say to me, “Christ died for you, He loves you just like He died for the millions in hell.” That doesn’t make me feel very special. That’s kind of a hard way to do evangelism. Christ died on the cross for your sins and all the people in hell, too. That’s not special. That’s anything but special. You mean to tell me He paid for my sins and I’m paying for them forever? Then I’ll tell you, whatever His payment was, it was bogus. You see, it’s not biblical to limit the atonement as to its power. It’s not biblical to limit the atonement as to its effectiveness. It’s not biblical to limit the atonement as to its accomplishment. If He paid in full the penalty for your sins, you will receive that salvation. The atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross has to be in perfect harmony with the eternal decree. It is not biblical to limit the atonement by making it potential and not actual. It is not biblical to limit the atonement by the will of the unwilling and unable sinner. The atonement is limited by God to the elect. But it is unlimited as to its effect, for them it is a full and complete atonement.
Now the sum of it comes down to this. Is the death of Christ a work that potentially saves willing sinners or is it a work that actually provides salvation for unwilling sinners who by God’s sovereign grace will be made willing? The only possible answer is that God provided a sacrifice in His Son, a true payment in full for the sins of all who would ever believe and all who would ever believe will believe because the Father will draw them and He will grant them repentance and faith and regeneration. Jesus’ death then is to be understood as a full satisfaction to God’s holy justice on behalf of all whom God will save.
I didn’t invent this, this doctrine goes way back, back to the Reformation, back to John Owen, and even back to Charles Spurgeon. Listen to what Spurgeon said, “We are often told that we limit the atonement of Christ because we say that Christ has not made a satisfaction for all men or all men would be saved. Now our reply to this is that on the other hand our opponent’s limited. We do not. The Arminians say Christ died for all men. Ask them what they mean by that. Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of all men? They say no, certainly not. Or we ask them the next question, did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of any person in particular? They say no. They’re obliged to say that if they’re consistent. They say no. Christ has died that any man may be saved if...and then follow certain conditions of salvation.”
“Now who is it that limits the salvation of Christ? Why you, you say that Christ did not die so as infallibly to secure the salvation of anybody. We beg your pardon. When you say we limit Christ’s death, we say, ‘No, my dear sir, it is you that do that.’ We say Christ so died that He infallibly secured the salvation of a multitude that no man can number who through Christ’s death not only may be saved but will be saved and cannot by any possibility run the hazzard of being anything but saved. You are welcome to your atonement,” said Spurgeon. “You may keep it. We will never renounce ours for the sake of it.”
The atonement is an actual atonement, not a potential one. It is a real atonement, not simply a barrier removed. And it is in behalf of all who would ever believe and since the sinner is unable and unwilling to believe apart from divine intervention and regeneration, it comes then down to the power of God based upon the decree of God.
Now, are you with me? I have listed here about fifty passages of Scripture, 5-0. And this is really the rich part of this. I just kind of set it up tonight and I’m going to leave it there because if I get into this, we’ll be here till the Rapture of the church, I’m afraid. So you understand the issue and how to think it through reasonably and logically and fully. And next Sunday night, I want to take you down into the depths of what the Scripture has to say to support this marvelous view of an atonement that God has by His own sovereignty limited to those who believe but an atonement which in itself is unlimited to all for whom it is provided, salvation will be given in its fullness.
Now I want to add hastily to that, people say, “Well how do you know whether Christ died for you?” The answer is, “That whosoever will may come, and if you come and believe in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, then the death of Christ was for you.” And don’t hold back, come to Christ. You know, there was a preacher in London when I was over there doing that conference and he pulled me aside and he said, “Do you actually encourage people to come to Christ?” And I said, “Yeah!.” He said, “I find it so hard, I’m so restrained in my spirit.” That’s where your theology has plugged up in the wrong place. Look, we don’t know who it is, other than those who have already come. We don’t know who’s out there to complete those for whom Christ paid a full atonement, so we plead with sinners. And I said to him, “Paul said we beg you in Christ-stead.” Paul said, “I could wish myself accursed for my own people Israel that they would come to know the Savior, the Messiah.” We plead with sinners. We take the gospel to the ends of the earth and we leave the secret things to the Lord but we follow the responsibility to call sinners to faith, knowing that those who come will have had a full atonement provided for them. And we’re here to talk to you about that in our prayer room.
Father, thanks for a great day and the glory of our faith and our salvation coming more and more clear to us in those things we’ve learned today. And we bless Your name and thank You. Amen.
Well, how many of you have always wanted to go to seminary? You’re about to go tonight. I’m going to challenge your thinking a little bit as we talk about this issue of the question, “For whom did Christ die?” We have been looking over the last number of weeks at some very important doctrines, the doctrine of perseverance, or the preservation of the saints; the doctrine of sovereign election in salvation. We have looked at the doctrine of total or absolute inability, that is the depravity of the sinner which renders it impossible for him to respond to the gospel. And tonight I want to talk to you about what I’ve chosen to call, trying to give it a more accurate name, the doctrine of actual atonement...the doctrine of actual atonement.
Now you need to understand that these doctrines that we’re talking about are at the very heart and soul of our theology. They are the very doctrines that were dealt with in the great Reformation and rescued out of the darkness of Roman Catholicism. Now it may seem obvious to most Christians for whom Christ died, but it is because we tend to take things at a rather superficial level and not think about them deeply, and thus we miss the very essence of some of these glorious truths that we need to dig a little more deeply. And I’m going to try to do that tonight and obviously the preliminaries took a long time and rightly so, those were wonderful testimonies and a great time of singing. So I’m sure this is going to spill over to next week, so please, I’m going to leave you hanging a little bit tonight and I know many of you are going to rush me afterwards with all your questions of things I didn’t cover. But if you’ll hold it until next Sunday night, we’ll...we’ll get there.
Let’s begin in a simple way, and I hope this is clear to you. You know, as I tell young preachers, it’s...it’s very easy to be hard to understand, that’s really easy. All you have to do is not know what you’re talking about, nobody else will either. And somebody might say, “Well it was too deep,” but it might have been only an illusion that it was too deep, it was just that he didn’t understand it so how could you. It’s hard to be clear. To be clear you have to really understand the subject and work hard to get it to an understandable way, and understandable format. And that’s what I’ve tried to do and I hope it’s clear to you.
But let’s start with some simple things. If I ask the average Christian for whom did Christ die? The traditional answer would be, “Everybody...everybody, Christ died for the whole world, He died for all sinners.” And most people then in the church believe, and I’m sure many people outside the true church, many people associated with Christianity, believe that on the cross Jesus paid the debt of sin for everyone because He loves everyone and He wants everyone to be saved.” That’s pretty much the common evangelical view. Jesus died for everybody, He paid the price for the sins of everybody. And all we have to do is tell sinners that He loves them so much that He paid the price and He wants them to be saved and all they have to do is respond.
Now if that is true, then on the cross Jesus accomplished a potential salvation...not an actual one. That is, sinners have all had their sins atoned for potentially and it’s not actual until they activate it by their faith. So, what we need to do is to tell sinners that they need to pick up the salvation that’s already been purchased for them. Since Christ died for everybody, everybody therefore can be saved, it’s just a matter of them coming to receive that salvation. And so, our responsibility is to convince people to come and take the salvation that’s been provided for them, to convince them to come and accept the gift. This is so deep in the fabric of evangelical theology that the most popular book on the church currently, The Purpose Driven Church, in it the author says, quote, “I can lead anyone to Christ if I find the key to that person’s heart.” The assumption is that if you can just figure out the technique of getting to some emotional point, you can win anybody on the planet to Christ because, after all, He’s died for all of them. That’s the popular idea. And I know many of you are thinking, “Well...well it seems to me that that’s what I’ve always believed in, that’s what I’ve been taught.” Well we may be taking you some places you’ve never gone before, but that’s good. That’s the popular idea.
The fallout of that would be like this. Hell is full of people for whom Christ died. I’ll say it another way. Hell is full of people whose sins were paid for in full on the cross. That’s a little more disturbing when you say it like that, isn’t it? Another way to say it would be that the Lake of Fire which burns forever with fire and brimstone is filled with eternally damned people whose sins Christ fully atoned for on the cross. God’s wrath was satisfied by Christ’s atonement on behalf of those people who will forever stay in hell.
Now by the way, heaven will also be populated by the souls of those for whom Christ died. So Christ did exactly the same thing for the occupants of hell as He did for the occupants of heaven. That makes the question a little more disturbing. The only difference is the people in heaven accepted the gift, the people in hell rejected it. That’s pretty much the traditional evangelical view. But it just sound strange when you start to kind of pick it apart a little bit, doesn’t it? That Jesus died and paid in full the penalty for the sins of the damned and died and paid in full the penalty for the sins of the glorified, that Jesus did the same thing for the occupants of hell that He did for the occupants of heaven and the only difference hinges on the sinner’s choice? That is to say the death of Jesus Christ then is not an actual atonement, it is only a potential atonement. He really did not purchase salvation for anyone in particular. He only removed some kind of barrier to make it possible for sinners to choose to be saved.
So the message then, the typical evangelical message, is to sinners, “God loves you so much He sent His Son who paid in full the penalty for your sins and won’t you respond to that love and not disappoint God and accept the gift and let Him save you since He already paid in full the price for your sins?” The final decision is up to the sinner.
And it kind of carries the notion that God loves you so much, you’re so special, He gave His Son and He paid in full the penalty for your sins and that’s suppose to move you emotionally to love Him back and accept this gift. And so you kind of work the sinner and kind of manipulate the sinner in that direction trying to find a psychological point, a felt-need point, play the right organ music, sing the right invitation hymn. You know, grease the slide and get him moving in the direction of making the choice.
Now you’ve got a problem here, folks. We’ve got a big problem. We saw in our last study that no sinner on his own can make that choice, right? This is the doctrine of absolute inability. He can’t make it. He cannot make that choice. All people...all people are sinners and all sinners are dead in their trespasses and sins. All of them are alienated from the life of God. All do only evil continually. All are unwilling and unable to understand, to repent and to believe, all have darkened minds, blinded by sin and Satan, all have hearts that are full of evil, all are wicked, desperately wicked. All desire only the will of their father who is Satan, all of them are unable to seek God, they are all trapped in absolute inability and unwillingness.
So how then can the sinner make the choice? I don’t care what felt need you might find. I don’t care what you might think you see, quote/unquote, in his heart that will let you lead anyone to Christ, I don’t care how many invitation verses you sing or how much organ music or mood music you play to try to induce some kind of response, the sinner on his own cannot understand, cannot repent, and cannot believe. Remember what we saw in John 1? To as many as believed He gave the authority, the right to become children of God but not by the will of man or the will of the flesh. Ephesians 2:8 and 9, “By grace are you saved through faith but that not of yourselves.” It is through Him that you are in Christ, 1 Corinthians 1:30, salvation is from God. We saw that. He has to give life to the dead. He has to give sight to the blind. He has to give hearing to the deaf. He has to give understanding to the ignorant. He has to give repentance to those who love sin. He has to give faith to those who can’t believe. He has to move the heart to seek Him who otherwise would not. So that all the elements that caused the sinner to come to Christ are God-ordained and God-induced.
And as we have learned, the doctrine of absolute inability means that people will only be saved if God saves them, and therefore salvation is based upon the decree of God, the sovereign doctrine of election. No one could be saved unless God saved him and God saves those whom He chooses to save. You cannot expect the sinner on his own, no matter how he’s emotionally prodded or psychologically prodded, no matter how he’s threatened, no matter what you say to him, on his own you cannot expect him to quote/unquote decide for Christ. Those who will come to Christ are those whom the Father draws and the Father gives to the Son because He’s chosen to do so.
Now with that in mind, looking back at those doctrines, the doctrine of election, the doctrine of absolute inability, we can ask the question again...for whom did Christ die? Did He die a death that is a potential salvation for everyone and therefore on the largest part it was useless? Or did He die a death that is an actual atonement, not a potential one? For those who would believe because God calls them and God grants them repentance and faith, because God in eternity past chose them?
Well the only answer to the question that makes any real sense is that Jesus Christ died and paid in full the penalty for the sins of all who would ever believe so that His atonement is an actual atonement and not a potential one that can be disregarded. If Jesus actually paid in full the penalty for your sins, you’re not going to go to hell, that would be double jeopardy.
Now someone is going to say, “Well wait a minute. That sounds like limited atonement.” You say the word “limited atonement” and people’s antennas go up because we’re used to that kind of evangelical idea that Jesus paid the sins in full, paid the price for the sins in full of everybody. But that is fraud with so many obvious problems. But that’s what the evangelical church believes and that’s why it uses manipulation to move people emotionally and according to felt needs and by what other means it might come up with, believing that the penalty is paid in full for everybody so that most of the people that Jesus died for are in hell. Then what in the world kind of atonement did He provide for them?
And so you say, “You must believe the atonement is limited.” Of course, so do you. You say, “I believe in an unlimited atonement.” Well then you must be a universalist. A universalist believes that everybody’s going to heaven, there is no hell. Everybody is going to heaven. And that’s consistent. If you believe that Jesus paid in full the penalty for all the sins of all the people who ever lived, then you have to be a universalist. But we know better than that. We know the atonement is limited. We know not everybody is going to heaven. To be a universalist you have to ignore Scripture. So let’s...let me give you just a handful of points, okay? Let’s see how far we go.
Number one, the atonement is limited. And by atonement I mean the sacrifice of Christ by which He paid the penalty for sin. The atonement is limited. Now let’s look at this at just some obvious passages. Matthew 10...Matthew chapter 10 and I’m not going to wait for you, so you might want to write these down. Matthew 10:28, we’ve got to go, verse 28, gird up your loins, here we go, Matthew 10:28, “Do not fear...do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul, but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” That’s also quoted in Luke 12 as we’ve been learning. There is a hell and God is going to send people there. That tells me the atonement is limited. There is a hell and God is going to send people there.
In Mark chapter 9, and these are just samples that tell us that the atonement is certainly limited. In Mark 9 verse 43, “If your hand causes you stumble, cut it off. It’s better for you to enter the life crippled than having your two hands to go into hell into the unquenchable fire.” And some texts says, “where the worm doesn’t die and the fire is not quenched.” Again, another reference to hell. Verse 48 again repeats verse 47 and 48, “If your eye causes you to stumble, cast it out, better to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than having two eyes to be cast into hell where the worm doesn’t die and the fire is not quenched.” You come, as I noted, to the gospel of Luke chapter 12, you have the same statement as in Matthew 10:28, but go to the gospel of John and I just want to take you sort of briefly to this gospel and a few glimpses of the obvious reality of the atonement being limited.
It is limited. Chapter 8 makes it very clear. Chapter 8 verse 12, “I am the light of the world,” Jesus said, “he who follows Me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.” Here’s a condition. You have to follow Christ. It is limited then to those who follow Christ. You find over in verse 24 a similar saying. “I say therefore to you, that you shall die in your sins for unless you believe that I am He, you shall die in your sins.” There is a hell and people are going there. In fact, Matthew 7 says, “Many are going there.” And the only way to avoid going there, the only way to avoid dying in your sins, that is dying without a sacrifice for your sins, the only way to avoid that is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
How could Jesus say you could die in your sins if their sins had been paid for? They had not been paid for if they died without believing in Him. And there are other parts of John, if you go back to chapter 3, “God did not send His Son,” verse 17, “to judge the world but that the world should be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged, but he who does not believe has been judged already because he’s not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” There is a hell and people go there who don’t believe in Jesus Christ. And then there are so many other places where you can see this very same emphasis made. I don’t want to burden you with an endless list of them, but there are perhaps a couple of others maybe to think about. Matthew 22:13, “The king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness, in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’” A further description of horrific punishment and judgment. Chapter 25 verse 30, “Cast the worthless slave into outer darkness in the place where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” And then in a Pauline letter, 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, it talks about the coming of the Lord Jesus from heaven. Second Thessalonians 1:7, “With His mighty angels and flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God, to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus and these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power.”
So the Bible promises there is a hell. The only way to avoid it is to not die in your sins. And to not die in your sins, you have to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you don’t, you’re going to pay the penalty of eternal destruction. That proves that the atonement is limited. It does not apply universally. God did not intend to save everyone. He is God. He could have intended to save everyone. He could have saved everyone. He would have if that had been His intention. The atonement is limited.
Now we all have to accept that or be universalists. We know not everyone is going to heaven. In fact, it is a little flock, it is the few which if we were to hold on to this sort of evangelical idea means that the vast majority of people for whom Christ died and paid in full the penalty for their sins are going to go to hell. And that’s just something very difficult to believe. So we do believe in a limited atonement. It is limited to those who believe.
How is it limited? That’s the second point. Number one, is the atonement limited? Answer; yes. Number two, how is it limited? Well first of all, it’s limited because not everybody is saved, only those who repent and believe. That’s how it’s limited. Only those who believe in Christ and confess Him as Lord are saved. Only those have their sins atoned for. It is limited to those who believe. That’s how it’s limited, okay? Very important that you grasp that. We’ll come back to that.
Now here comes the key question. To whom is it limited? By whom? We know it’s limited. We know how it’s limited, it’s limited to those who believe. It is only applicable to those who believe, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you’ll be saved.” Now by whom is it limited? And the popular view would say this, “The atonement of Jesus is unlimited but sinners limit its application.” And we’re back to what we said before. It is a potential atonement, the actuality of which is limited by the sinner. Now we have to believe then that God has provided a sacrifice for sins in His Son that in and of itself is not sufficient. In and of itself is not actual. In and of itself is not real because the sinner can neutralize it. I don’t mind believing God can limit the atonement, God does limit the atonement. But listen carefully to me. He limits the atonement as to its extent. You have to believe that because He didn’t choose everybody and not everybody’s going to heaven. And that’s in the divine mind and that’s the decree of God and that’s the purpose of God and you have to come to grips with that.
I don’t have any problem at all saying the atonement is limited. I don’t have any problem at all saying how it’s limited, it’s limited to those who believe. And I have no problem saying and those who believe are those whom God grants faith and therefore the atonement is limited because God limited it. I’m much more comfortable with that than that sinners can limit the atonement that Christ has provided, or that the atonement that Christ has provided is wasted on the vast majority of people. If you say that God provided an atonement which is only potential, which only removes the barriers so that the sinner can be saved if he chooses to be, you know what you’ve done? You have said that God not only limited the atonement as to its extent, and you have to believe that, but He limited it as to its effect. Okay?
In other words, if you believe in an unlimited atonement, and you think you’re one of those magnanimous people who believed Jesus died for everyone. Then by saying the atonement is unlimited as to extent, you have also said it is limited as to effect. It covers everybody but not potently. It covers everybody but not powerfully. A little while ago you sang a hymn, “Jesus...what?...paid it all,” you believe that? Well, potentially. Did He pay it all potentially or actually? Did He actually bear in His body your sins on the cross or only potentially? If you decide that He did. If you’re going to say that the extent of the atonement is unlimited, then the effect of the atonement is limited. If you’re going to say that the extent of the atonement is limited, then you’re going to say the effect of the atonement is unlimited. For those to whom it extends, it has no limits. So when you say you believe in a limited atonement or unlimited atonement...I believe in a limited atonement as to its extent. It is limited to those who believe who are those who are called, who are those who are chosen. But I believe it is unlimited as to its effect. For those to whom it is granted, it is a full atonement. Jesus did pay it all.
So, you know, these people who...who want to say, “Well, you know, we believe the atonement is unlimited.” You say, “Wait a minute. You mean Jesus died for everybody in the whole world?” Yes. “Well you may think it’s unlimited to its extent, but you have just confessed that it’s limited as to its real effect because people are going to go to hell even though He died for them. What kind of an atonement is that? Even people who say, “We believe it’s unlimited,” don’t believe that. They don’t mean that. They know God limited it to those who believe and they believe that sinners limit it by making wrong choices. And then they believe there’s some limits in the very atonement itself so that it really doesn’t do the work of atonement, it just makes it possible for the sinner to activate it.
You know, you look at the Bible and it’s pretty clear. The hymn writer got it right and that hymn is a pretty simple hymn, and I don’t know what was in his mind when he wrote it but when he wrote, “Jesus paid it all,” he meant that. What He did on the cross was not a partial atonement. What He did was not a potential atonement. It was not some kind of virtual atonement. It was a real actual atonement. It was limited in its extent to those who would believe who are the called and the chosen. But it was unlimited in its effect. For them it was a full and complete atonement. There is no such thing as an atonement by Jesus Christ on the cross that is less than a true and actual atonement. There is no such thing as some kind of potential atonement, some kind of half-way atonement. There’s no such thing as Jesus paying in full for your sins and then you paying in full for your sins forever in hell. That diminishes the work of Christ, that mocks the work of Christ.
What are you saying? Your saying Jesus only partially activated this and it’s up to the sinner to fully activate it? If Christ paid the sins of everybody and everybody doesn’t go to heaven, then whatever He paid wasn’t the full price. So we’ve got to change our hymn and say, “Jesus paid half, the rest is up to you.” That would be a good line. “Jesus paid the first half, the rest is up to you.” I just can’t bring myself to believe that hell is full of millions of people whose sins were paid for in full by Christ on the cross. I cannot see the Father fully punishing the Son on the cross for the sins of people who will then be punished for those sins forever in hell. What is the point? What Christ did on the cross was a true and full and complete atonement for the sins of all who would believe and since no one can believe unless God grants them faith, it is the sins of those whom the Father has chosen to call to Himself.
You hear people say, “Well, you know, when you say the atonement is limited, people don’t feel very special.” Well, I’ll tell you what. I don’t feel very special if you say to me, “Christ died for you, He loves you just like He died for the millions in hell.” That doesn’t make me feel very special. That’s kind of a hard way to do evangelism. Christ died on the cross for your sins and all the people in hell, too. That’s not special. That’s anything but special. You mean to tell me He paid for my sins and I’m paying for them forever? Then I’ll tell you, whatever His payment was, it was bogus. You see, it’s not biblical to limit the atonement as to its power. It’s not biblical to limit the atonement as to its effectiveness. It’s not biblical to limit the atonement as to its accomplishment. If He paid in full the penalty for your sins, you will receive that salvation. The atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross has to be in perfect harmony with the eternal decree. It is not biblical to limit the atonement by making it potential and not actual. It is not biblical to limit the atonement by the will of the unwilling and unable sinner. The atonement is limited by God to the elect. But it is unlimited as to its effect, for them it is a full and complete atonement.
Now the sum of it comes down to this. Is the death of Christ a work that potentially saves willing sinners or is it a work that actually provides salvation for unwilling sinners who by God’s sovereign grace will be made willing? The only possible answer is that God provided a sacrifice in His Son, a true payment in full for the sins of all who would ever believe and all who would ever believe will believe because the Father will draw them and He will grant them repentance and faith and regeneration. Jesus’ death then is to be understood as a full satisfaction to God’s holy justice on behalf of all whom God will save.
I didn’t invent this, this doctrine goes way back, back to the Reformation, back to John Owen, and even back to Charles Spurgeon. Listen to what Spurgeon said, “We are often told that we limit the atonement of Christ because we say that Christ has not made a satisfaction for all men or all men would be saved. Now our reply to this is that on the other hand our opponent’s limited. We do not. The Arminians say Christ died for all men. Ask them what they mean by that. Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of all men? They say no, certainly not. Or we ask them the next question, did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of any person in particular? They say no. They’re obliged to say that if they’re consistent. They say no. Christ has died that any man may be saved if...and then follow certain conditions of salvation.”
“Now who is it that limits the salvation of Christ? Why you, you say that Christ did not die so as infallibly to secure the salvation of anybody. We beg your pardon. When you say we limit Christ’s death, we say, ‘No, my dear sir, it is you that do that.’ We say Christ so died that He infallibly secured the salvation of a multitude that no man can number who through Christ’s death not only may be saved but will be saved and cannot by any possibility run the hazzard of being anything but saved. You are welcome to your atonement,” said Spurgeon. “You may keep it. We will never renounce ours for the sake of it.”
The atonement is an actual atonement, not a potential one. It is a real atonement, not simply a barrier removed. And it is in behalf of all who would ever believe and since the sinner is unable and unwilling to believe apart from divine intervention and regeneration, it comes then down to the power of God based upon the decree of God.
Now, are you with me? I have listed here about fifty passages of Scripture, 5-0. And this is really the rich part of this. I just kind of set it up tonight and I’m going to leave it there because if I get into this, we’ll be here till the Rapture of the church, I’m afraid. So you understand the issue and how to think it through reasonably and logically and fully. And next Sunday night, I want to take you down into the depths of what the Scripture has to say to support this marvelous view of an atonement that God has by His own sovereignty limited to those who believe but an atonement which in itself is unlimited to all for whom it is provided, salvation will be given in its fullness.
Now I want to add hastily to that, people say, “Well how do you know whether Christ died for you?” The answer is, “That whosoever will may come, and if you come and believe in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, then the death of Christ was for you.” And don’t hold back, come to Christ. You know, there was a preacher in London when I was over there doing that conference and he pulled me aside and he said, “Do you actually encourage people to come to Christ?” And I said, “Yeah!.” He said, “I find it so hard, I’m so restrained in my spirit.” That’s where your theology has plugged up in the wrong place. Look, we don’t know who it is, other than those who have already come. We don’t know who’s out there to complete those for whom Christ paid a full atonement, so we plead with sinners. And I said to him, “Paul said we beg you in Christ-stead.” Paul said, “I could wish myself accursed for my own people Israel that they would come to know the Savior, the Messiah.” We plead with sinners. We take the gospel to the ends of the earth and we leave the secret things to the Lord but we follow the responsibility to call sinners to faith, knowing that those who come will have had a full atonement provided for them. And we’re here to talk to you about that in our prayer room.
Father, thanks for a great day and the glory of our faith and our salvation coming more and more clear to us in those things we’ve learned today. And we bless Your name and thank You. Amen.
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