Limited AtonementThe Father and Son’s Eternal Purpose
Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.
If you're here tonight, that means you probably fall into one of two camps. Either you're a Calvinist or lean Calvinistic, and so you're here to cheer for the home team. Or you lean Arminian, and you are here to pick a fight with the speaker. I also want to also clarify a very often confused point about the Arminian side. People often use the term Arminian. I am married to an Armenian who happens to be a Calvinist also, but she is not Arminian. So don't confuse the terms Arminian and Armenian. But before I actually get into the meat of my message tonight, those terms Calvinist and Arminian, we think we know those words mean, we get confused sometimes.
So I wanted to give just a real quick primer on what those terms actually mean. And to help us with that primer, I turn to that Christian news source that I trust the most, the Babylon B, for information here. So here's their definition of the two terms. First for definitions, Calvinism is a theological framework that centers around God's sovereign choice and salvation. The points of Calvinism include total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints, and being a condescending jerk. Arminianism. Arminianism. Theology that focuses on man's free will to choose or reject God.
The five points are kind of sort of depravity, election, but not really. Everybody gets some atonement, grace that looks pretty cool, but you have to say no if you, which you can say no if you want to, and better hang on to that salvation pretty tightly. As far as the origins of where these two views come from, Calvinism, originally discovered in a remote California forest by a pipe-smoking lumberjack, Calvinism was first codified in a book form by John Piper in 1986 in his classic Desiring God. Piper was said to have yelled eureka and hugged his Jonathan Edwards plush doll in joy upon discovering the beauty of the doctrines of grace.
Arminianism comes, it grew out of the backwoods of the Appalachia in the 1950s, where the Holy Ghost is active. Preachers wear suits, church signs are hand-painted, and snakes are handled. As far as who follows these particular lines of theological thought, on the Calvinism side, we have anyone who's named John, that really annoying guy on your Facebook feed, and the Apostle Paul. And over on the Arminian side, they have, of course, Jacobus Arminius, John Wesley, Billy Graham, and even Satan. As far as prominent works that you can go read, Calvinism, they have that lawn-winded Facebook rant, your Calvinist friend goes on almost every week. We have Final Destination 3 and the Book of Romans. For the Arminians, They have Back to the Future, The Matrix, and Chick Tracks.
Now how do you spot one of these two kinds of people when you're out on the road? For the Calvinism, here's what you look for. Look for long, flowing beards, flannel t-shirts, and empty bottles of craft brew strewn all around their location. The Calvinists can also be identified by the smug sense of superiority he carries about in his person. If you want to identify the Arminian, look for an expression of concern on their face as they desperately try not to lose their salvation today. Calvary Chapel summer camp t-shirts, acoustic guitars, and rainbow sandals are also key indicators. So there you have it. We hope this has helped you make an informed decision on which of these theological systems to choose or is it which of these theological systems chose you.
So there you have it. All right, now to get serious. Tonight, in case you didn't read the bulletin, I have the pleasure of tackling the doctrine of limited atonement. And in case you didn't know, that's the L in the acronym TULIP, which is often used to summarize the five core doctrines of Calvinism. If you ask someone who you think may have Calvinistic leanings, if they're a Calvinist, they'll usually say something like, Do you mean a four or a five point Calvinist? If they say they're a five point Calvinist, that means they believe in all parts of the tulip, all five major points. If they say they're a four or they might even say, well, I'm a four and a half pointer, that usually means that they have some reservation regarding limited atonement.
This particular doctrine is the one that really trips people up, especially if they have Calvinistic leanings. That's something about this doctrine that really sticks in our craw. In preparing for this message, I read, as Sean mentioned this morning, I read most of the 312 pages in John Owen's book, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ. It's Old English, point, sub-point, sub-point, sub-point, sub-point, sub-point. Literally sentences that go on for four pages. I finally found that the only way I could effectively read it was I had to get on my treadmill and I had to basically preach his book out loud on my treadmill so I could get the gist of what he was saying, trying to follow it.
It's not for the faint of heart. In his book, Owens goes into great detail discussing what Christ accomplished on the cross and to whom Christ's work applies. And then I also read large sections of this book as well from Heaven He Came and Saw Her. I got this at the T4G conference a few years ago. about a 600 page volume. And it's a collection of about 20 numerous essays being contributed by about 20 different authors on this particular topic. So I would recommend that book to you also. That one you can kind of use more like a lookup dictionary to get particular points of interest. But it does a very good job really diving deep into this issue.
And then finally, just because I thought it would be a good idea, I actually went back to the Bible. And I combed through the scriptures. I literally reread, not through the entire New Testament, highlighting and categorizing scriptures that I thought applied to this topic, trying to put them. What is God's purpose? Heaven and hell? And what is that all about? How do people come to Christ? And everywhere, I just had to hold about 10 different categories that I went through just trying to sort my thinking. So needless Just to say, I have been on information overload for several months as I've been trying to assimilate all of this information.
And again, I stand before you recognizing that this is a really tough, tough doctrine to even explain, to argue to both sides. If you've been around Christiandom for any length of time, you've gotten into this debate somewhere along the way in one of your Bible studies. The term limited atonement itself is a bit unfortunate because of some of the misunderstanding those words themselves can cause. Some hear the term limited and they think that we're saying that Christ's work was limited in its ability or its power to save men. Somehow that Christ was not strong enough in his sacrifice to affect the salvation of any and all.
That is not what the word limited means here. To try and get around some of this confusing terminology or some of the baggage associated with it, there are groups that prefer the term particular redemption is another way of saying the same doctrine, which I think it's more at the core of what the doctrine itself is declaring, a particular group of people that God set out to redeem and in fact will redeem. So before we go any further, we need to take a moment and define terms. We need to ask what is meant by atonement and what is meant then when we say limited. The English word atonement is actually a word that we made up.
It's not derived from any other language. We actually took the pieces at one meant, glued it together, and that's atonement. And that was the attempt to get at the gist of what the word means. At one, two parties who are now at one with each other. It conveys the essential meaning. Atonement occurs when two parties who were at odds with each other are reconciled. Implied in the definition is the understanding that both sides are at peace with the other. Atonement is not achieved if one side is still at odds with the other. Now this is an important point because it challenges those who hold that Christ's death provided unlimited atonement for all, but that it isn't actualized until a person accepts it.
And that would be typically the Arminian viewpoint, is that Christ, he made atonement for all the sins of the world, but it's not actualized, it's not in effect until a person actually receives Christ. But that flies in the face of what the word atonement itself even means. To believe an unlimited atonement requires you to believe that Christ only made atonement possible and that his work on the cross is effectual only if a man closes the deal. As you can imagine, there's no small number of opinions among theologians regarding the atonement and exactly what it means. You have the governmental view. You have the moral influence view.
You have penal substitution view. You have the ransom view and the satisfaction view. I mean, if you really wanted to dive deep into this stuff, you could explore all of those. And I don't have time tonight to try to explore each and every one of those and their relative merits or lack thereof. Suffice it to say that most of the reformers settled on the penal substitution view, which holds that Christ, by his own sacrificial choice, was punished, there's the penal, In the place of sinners, there is a substitution, thus satisfying the demands of justice so God can justly forgive the sins of sinners. This act of Christ then propitiates the Father, it placates or it satisfies His wrath, and we are thereby declared not guilty and are reconciled with Him.
So that's briefly what we're talking about when we use the term atonement. Now when we use the word limited, the limited part is where we actually get into much of the bigger debating and fighting among Christians. It's a debate that's been waging for centuries over how is it, or is it limited, in what way is it limited. This part of the debate deals with who is covered by the Atonement and how or when are they covered. We're going to be diving into more of that and explaining that. But when we say limited, we are saying that Christ's work on the cross was effectual and only for a certain set of people. It did not make salvation possible for all peoples.
But in fact, it was targeted by the purpose of the Father. Now that we have a basic definition of the terms, I want to point out some of the presuppositions we tend to bring to this conversation. As I was reading this and reading different authors and I was reading opposing views, It really struck me that there's a lot of presuppositions that people bring to the table in these discussions. And you have to try to get those identified and out on the table so you understand where people are coming from. I have presuppositions, you have presuppositions, we all do, so it's helpful if you can understand them.
But some of these presuppositions, for example, is when you first bump into doctrines like election and limited atonement, there's usually a knee-jerk reaction against them. We don't like the idea of someone else determining our future, including God. We want to believe that we have freedom of will to make our own choices. I'll sometimes hear people say things like, well, my God would never dot, dot, dot. Perhaps you've heard people say things like that. That statement and others like it exposes a big problem we have as we approach this topic. The problem is that we don't understand truly what is meant by terms like good and love.
The thought goes something like this. Certainly a good God would will that all men be saved or at least give them an equal fighting chance to be saved. Isn't that what a good God would do? That'd be fair, right? Give everybody an equal chance at least.
not just flat out make them be saved as the universalist would say. Rooted in this kind of thinking are human notions of what good and love mean. The scripture tells us that God is love and that only He is good. This means that we must look to Him to get our definitions of what those terms mean. And of course the only place we can really do that is to go to the scriptures and see what God is like and as we study God we begin to get a concept of what good is and what love is. But so often we bring our concepts of good and love into the conversation. As image-varers of God, we do have a notion of what is good and love is because we are made in His image. But those notions are significantly tainted by sin. We must be careful to not interpret God's actions while looking through glasses tinted with human definitions of good and love. This is especially true today where love has largely been reduced to a set of sentimental feelings and actions. I recently came across two examples of this kind of man-centric thinking. A person that I know who has fairly
recently switched over to a persuasion called Christian Universalism, this teaching holds holds that all people will be reconciled to Christ eventually, whether in this life or in the life to come. And in this example, they were talking about some homeless teenagers that they were working with who presumably did not know Christ. And they were talking about the possibility of these kids dying on the street. And then they made this statement. They said, I cannot, I will not believe in a God who would take someone like that from the frying pan into the fire, meaning hell. In their concept of a good and a loving God, there's no way he would take a kid who was through his no fault of his own, was on the streets, and there's no way a good God could possibly take a person like that who didn't know Christ and take him from the frying pan of the streets into the fires of hell.
And that opinion was totally based on their own feeling. It was sentimentalism speaking. It wasn't based on God as revealed in the Bible. I'm not even arguing right now, does that represent God's attitude or not? But just his position was coming from his presuppositions. How he feels about it in no way alters the reality of God's purpose just because we don't like it. The same person said on a blog that belief in eternal hell, because the Christian Universalists do not believe in an eternal hell. He said, believe in an eternal hell makes God out to be worse than ISIS. Now statements like this are simply appeals to human concepts of fairness, love, and goodness.
It is dangerous ground to evaluate God's actions based on our definitions of love and fair play. The second example I came across was while reading another book I didn't mention earlier. This one was called The Inescapable Love of God, and Thomas Talbot, and he is writing, arguing for Christian universalism. I got interested in this topic because I've got some good friends that are now getting into this movement, and I just wanted to study it, mainly for the purpose of trying to refute it. Sorry, I've been reading it. But in this book, Talbot is tackling the difficult passages, and he's tackling the one where the Bible says, God says Jacob, I have love, but Esau I have hated.
So he's trying to explain that one away. And the author, he's no dummy. He's a tenured professor of philosophy and he's highly trained in logic. But he really lost me on one of his points. He first stated that if someone was to truly love him, that they of necessity then must love his daughter because he really loved his daughter. And of course, the way, if I really loved him and had his best interests at heart, then I would therefore love what he loves." That was his point. And from that he then said this, he said, and similarly, for Jacob, who finally came to love his brother Esau and to see in his brother's own forgiveness a reflection of God, God could not both love or will the best for Jacob and literally hate or refuse to will the best for Esau.
The whole thing is a logical impossibility, and it's an impossibility that lies at the heart of Augustinian theology. Now, I don't know if you follow all that or not, but somehow in his logical brain, it was inconceivable that God could say, I love Jacob, and Jacob loves Esau, but I don't love Esau. He saw that as a logical impossibility. Well, where do you get that as an impossibility, except for your conceptions of what love must be like. Why it would be a logical impossibility escapes me. It seems that the author is using his own interpretation of love to evaluate God's love in this case. I say all this simply to make the point that as we encounter hard doctrines we need to be aware of any biases or presuppositions we have that might taint how we read scriptures.
And that a warning applies to me, you and the people that we disagree with theologically. All of us have those presuppositions at play. Another reason the doctrine of limited atonement grates on us is because it doesn't seem fair. Why would Jesus sacrifice on the cross only atone for some sins but not others? That's not fair. The best response I have for that fairness argument is that I'm glad God's not fair. Fair would mean that we're all in hell game over. At the core of this argument, I believe is a failure to understand how much our sin is an affront to a holy God and exactly what we deserve because of it. Well, in this debate, then there are three main positions.
First, you have the position that Christ atoned for some called the elect, and those for whom he died will be saved. This would be the limited atonement position. Second, Christ's death atoned for all, but only some will be saved. Man must accept Christ's work on the cross by faith to make it effectual for him. This is the classic Arminian position. Arminians believe in what's called previous grace or enabling grace. That is that God gave all men just a little itty-bitty amount of grace, just enough to have a spiritual awareness that when they heard a good deal being offered, they could intelligently decide to accept or reject the offer.
Not full grace, but just a little bit of grace to where they can at least recognize the gospel message and then make a decision if they wanted to accept it or reject it. The third position, Christ's death, a tone for all and all will be saved. This is the Christian Universalist position. This is not to be confused with general universalism which says all paths lead to God. Christian universalism holds to salvation only through Christ, but they believe all will eventually come to Christ either in this life or sometime after death. At the core of their thinking is that the essence of God is love, and thus every act that God does, be it saving, judging, punishing, exercising, wrath, all of it is always driven by his love.
And for the purpose of bringing his creation to, the end goal of his creation would all be brought gladly under submission under his authority someday. And so they really believe that if there is a hell after this life, it's not eternal, and that even those people, some of them will even go so far as to say Satan will eventually see the light and come back to Christ. And I'm not going to really deep dive on that particular one, but just threw it out there because it is part of the discussion. So the debate, what are we debating? So then, who Christ died for and who is ultimately saved are the main points of disagreement.
If we can answer that, who Christ died for and who is ultimately saved, if we can answer that right now, we can all turn in our tulips and our daisies and we can go live happily ever after. In theological terms, the debate turns on two questions. What is the extent of the atonement? Who is it for? And the efficacy of the atonement. Who is ultimately saved and what role does man play in salvation? Each of these positions on atonement can point to church history for support for their views. Calvinists and Universalists can point to early church history for support, while the Arminian view seems to go back only about 500 years.
The Calvinists, we will point to men like Augustine, Lombard, Aquinas, and some others. The Arminian view seems to have its origin around the early 1600s. A brief history there. In 1610, followers of Jacobus, I'm assuming it's Jacobus Arminius, gathered and crafted five articles. They called them the five articles of Ermonstrans. These were in response to their concerns that the Dutch Reformed Church was getting too cozy with Calvin's teachings. And so they wrote these five articles kind of refuting this a little bit. And in Article 2 specifically, they challenged the doctrine of limited atonement. This is what they wrote in part, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, died for all men and for every man, so that he has obtained for them all by his death on the cross, redemption and the forgiveness of sins.
Now that statement by itself would make you think these guys are universalists, but they do go on in that article to say that, But this is only effective or effectual if man actually receives it and believes it by faith. This view then, they threw down this dare, they threw down these five articles of remonstrance. The Dutch Reformed Church got together again at the Synod of Dort and they said, Fui on you, that's bad teaching, we don't believe that. So it was rejected by the Dutch Reformed Church at that time. The Christian Universalists, they point to Clements of Alexandria, Origen, and Gregory of, is it Nisa? Or Nisa?
Nisa? They would argue that this view was prominent among the church fathers prior to Augustine, in that it was political motivations that caused some church fathers to reject it. They suggest that the doctrine of eternal hell was invented as a means to keep the people in check. These guys were all part of the Catholic system at that time, and they just thought, we need something like an eternal hell, what a great way to scare the people and make them stay in line. And so they argue that Augustine and his followers just bought into that system for political reasons to try to maintain control and power. That's what they believe, why they believe I don't know.
So what's at stake? I run into people in this discussion saying, hey, we're going to end up in heaven, and so why even waste breath on this thing? Why does the doctrine matter? Would we say unlimited atonement and Christian universalism are minor or major heresies? Or are they heresies at all? All agree, all these positions agree, that salvation comes by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone. Isn't that good enough? And why quibble over the details of the atonement? I think it's important to keep debating this doctrine because it goes to the nature and character of God. If God wills all men to be saved, but not all are saved, What does that say about the sovereignty of God?
When someone says if eternal hell is real, then God's like Isis, that's an assault on the character of God. If limited atonement is false, then we are likewise understating the extent of God's love for men. Now, do I think those who hold these opposing views are evil and not saved? No. Do I think these opposing views warp a proper understanding of an appreciation of the gospel? Yes. Do I think any of these positions are airtight and leave no room for questioning? No. I think good, honest men can still debate these things and discuss them, and they probably will until Christ returns and the Calvinists are vindicated.
No, no, just kidding. In discussing limited atonement, all I suggest is that we act like good Bereans and search the scriptures diligently to see what is so. I believe the preponderance of biblical evidence supports the doctrines of limited and I'll try and show you why I think so although we don't have time to try to take the six hundred pages I have read and dump it all on you. Now as I thought about this doctrine and trying to figure out is there one silver bullet I could come up with? If one thing if I could prove from scripture would settle the debate I think it has to do with answering the question what was the father's purpose sending the Son. If we could find a verse that simply said, God sent Jesus to die only for some people and not for others, end of discussion. We wouldn't have to talk about this anymore. But we don't have one killer verse that we can go to. I do believe, though, that we can look to Scripture and piece together enough Biblical evidence to strongly suggest for whom did the father send the son to die on a cross?
So now then, with that all said, let's survey some of the texts that apply and see if we can begin to answer the question of God's purpose. So that's what we're trying to do right now, is can we get a feel for God's purpose? To begin, let's go to the end of the Bible. Revelations five, nine through 10, those of you who want on track can go ahead, and I'm gonna be moving kinda quickly, but Revelations 5, 9 through 10. What we have there is that John has recorded a vision of what he saw when he was caught up into the heavens. And the scene there is where Jesus is about to open the scroll with seven seals. And as he takes the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders start singing.
And this is what they sing. Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And you have made them a kingdom and priest to our God and they shall reign on the earth. Let me key in on the phrase, by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. Notice it doesn't say Jesus ransomed all. He ransomed from, implying that not all were ransomed. Also note, he ransomed a completed act, not a potential act, dependent on human response. Mark 10, 45. For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Again, we're trying to ferret out God's purpose and sending the Son. You put those last two passages together, and we see that Jesus came to give his life as a ransom for many from among every tribe, language, people, and nation. We keep seeing this theme of God ransoming men from among the nations, Luke 24, 45 through 47. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them, thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." So we see this plan was to spread the gospel starting in Jerusalem and then moving on out to different nations.
John 6, 37 through 40 gets more specific. "'All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." all that the Father gives me will come to me. How does that comport with free will?
Does it say will come to me if they are willing? Again man has no part in the deciding the matter. John 6, 63 through 65, it is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help at all, the words that I have spoken to you are spirit in life. But there are some of you who do not believe, for Jesus from the beginning knew who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him. And he said, this is why I told you that no man can come to me unless it's granted to him by the Father. And then I want you to listen to an excerpt from Jesus High Priestly Prayer in John 17 6 to 26. I'm only going to read parts of it. If you're following along you'll notice I'll skip. But starting in verse six, I have manifested your name to the people who you gave me out of the world. I mean, listen carefully. We say I've manifested your name to the people you gave me out of the world, yours they were, and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom
you have given me for they are yours. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word that they may all be one just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me." Skipping a little bit, "'Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Isn't it interesting that Jesus says we were the fathers, and the father gave us to Jesus? When were we the fathers? How can someone have been the fathers if they are going to reject him in the future?
Notice also that there are some people Jesus prays for and some that he does not pray for. He is not praying for the world. But wait a minute, John 3 16, for God so loved the world. What's up with that? How can God so love the world, but then Jesus specifically says that he's not praying for the world. Didn't Jesus come to do the will of the Father? Notice in all of these passages that there is no hint of any contingency on man's agreeing to God's terms before being saved. The fact that we were the fathers strongly implies that our salvation was a settled fact before we were even born. Consider Matthew 26, 27-28.
And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, �Drink of it, all of you, for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins.� Does this forgiveness of sins take effect when Christ died on the cross? Or when an individual acknowledges that sacrifice on their behalf? This passage does not imply the potential of sins forgiven. It declares the fact of sins forgiven. Romans 5, 10-11 makes it clear when and how our reconciliation with God occurs. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by his life.
More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation." Notice the timing in the verse. While we were enemies of God, we were reconciled. What? While we were enemies, we were reconciled. What was the event that caused this? Our acceptance of the gospel? No. It was when the Son died on the cross. It was at that moment in time that the eternal intention of the Father regarding us was actualized. We are not a part of the transaction that brings about our reconciliation with God. Another consideration is what it means to say we were reconciled. To be reconciled means both parties are restored to each other relationally.
A pair can't be declared reconciled if one of them refuses to accept the terms of the reconciliation. It makes no sense to say we were reconciled at the cross if reconciliation is dependent on the sinner's approval. We could go on, but I think that's a pretty good sample that supports the claim that the Father has a select number of persons who will be saved and that the Son's work on the cross atones only for the sins of those persons. If Christ atoned for the sins of all men, then the will of God is thwarted and that's not possible." Well, you may have noticed that I conveniently skipped over certain texts where words like all and whole world are used. Some of you are just going, hey, not fair. You skip the hard verses. In the time remaining, I'd like to tackle some of those passages and show that even they, I believe, are perfectly consistent with the doctrine of limited atonement.
As we dive into these texts, I'd like to comment that we need to be careful when we run into terms like all or whole world. We've all, no pun intended, have satin sermons where the preacher reads the word all in the text, then he stops, he looks at the congregation, he says, and what does all mean? And he waits until everybody in unison says, all. I would like to suggest the next time some preacher does that, you say, it depends. Okay. The The point is, you can almost never tell the meaning of words like all without some surrounding context. For example, if I see a sign posted at the local car dealership that says, take a test drive today, all are welcome.
Who's included in the all? Are babies included? Of course not. It's understood that the all applies to those that have a driver's license. This is a common interpretive technique we use regularly in our communication. We consider the context. For some reason, many approach reading the Bible differently. They read the word all or whole world and assume those terms must be all-inclusive without considering the context. And one reason we do that is because we bring to the table, we bring to the Bible study what I think love and good mean. Well, ah, good God wouldn't let everybody have a chance. So that's the way I'm going to want to read the word all.
This leads to some bad interpretations and is what has greatly fueled the debate on limited atonement. Add to this the problem our own biases of what we assume a good or a loving God is like. And you can see how easy it is for us to end up with interpretations that miss the mark of what the author is trying to communicate. Consider John 1.10 as an example where we can get into this interpretive problem. Tell me what world means. He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. We talking about a round ball out there in space? Are we talking about a group of people? What are we talking about?
We use world three times in that sentence and we have at least two different definitions. We would probably agree as we read the sense of the verse. Three times the word world appears. Should we interpret the word world the same in each occasion in that verse? We need to know context to know how to interpret these verses. Another example is Romans 1.8, where Paul says, first, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. Was the Roman believers testimony really proclaimed in all the world? Did the Chinese hear about the Romans? Probably not. So what does all mean?
Clearly we cannot decide what words like all and world mean without considering the context surrounding their usage. And then there's one more observation I want to make before we look at the difficult text. Most of the New Testament was written before Jerusalem fell in 70 AD. The lion's share of scripture of New Testament was established. The apostles were constantly confronting the Jews' nationalistic pride and disdain for non-Jews. For millennia, the Jews had been taught that they and only they were God's chosen people. They didn't understand what God meant when he told Abraham in Genesis 22.18 that through his descendants all the nations would be blessed.
We now know this was referring to the fact that salvation was going to come to all nations and not just the Jews. The Apostle Peter himself had trouble grasping this. Recall how God had to use a vision while he was visiting Cornelius to help him understand this principle. It wasn't easy for Peter to come to terms with the Revelation. Acts 21 tells the story of Paul visiting James and other teachers in Jerusalem to give a report on his ministry to the Gentiles. And while he's there, the local Jews get irritated at Paul's message that he's preaching, and they incite a riot. And the Roman guard comes, and they have to break up the riot, and they grab Paul, and they're going to haul him off to jail, but he says, hey, time out.
Can I have a moment? I'd like to speak to the crowd. So they get the crowd to settle down, and Paul gets up on the platform and starts speaking. And he's proceeding then to share his testimony of how he got saved. The crowd's kind of eating it up, just listening carefully as Paul's going along. And then Paul gets to this line. He says, you know, Jesus had knocked me off my high horse and said, go for I will send you far away to the Gentiles. At this point, the Jews said, now we get it. No, it's not what happened. At this point, they absolutely lost it. They ripped off their robes and they started throwing dust in the air.
Can you imagine that? I mean, rip your clothes up and throwing, I mean, look at a bunch of monkeys or something in a frenzy, throwing dirt in the air. And they're saying, away was such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live. This is the mindset the apostles had to constantly combat as they wrote their letters to predominantly Jewish readers. Even Paul seems to have had some question about his calling. In Galatians 2, he describes how he went to Jerusalem some 17 years after his conversion to report to the church leaders.
He wrote, And I set before them, though privately, before those who seemed influential, meaning the church leaders, the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles in order to make sure that I was not running or had run in vain. I mean, 17 years later Paul's like, you know, this gospel to the Gentiles is still not that popular. I better double check with the chiefs back in Jerusalem. The point of all of this is to remind us of the historical climate at the time most of the New Testament was written. Very important, that interpretive principle about all in world and then understanding the historical context in which these authors wrote the words they wrote.
Jews did not like Gentiles. They did not like the message that the gospel was for more than just the Jews. So with these grammatical and historical points made, we can now tackle some of these difficult texts. John 3, 16 and 17. All right, who's been thinking of themselves? When's he going to hit John 3, 16? Somebody has been thinking that. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him." I'll concede that if that was the only fragment of Scripture that we had available to us, you could easily argue that it is God's intention to offer salvation to all men.
But is that what these verses are saying? We know that Jesus came to do the will of the Father because he told us so. Therefore, Jesus would not pray in any way other than what is in accordance with the Father's will. I made this point earlier, but I want to restate it just to drive it home. John 17, 6-25 captures all of Jesus, large portions of his high priestly prayer. And I'm not going to read it all right now for sake of time. But even in that prayer, Jesus uses the word world 16 times. It seems like a good place to try and get a better handle on God's thoughts about the world. I mean, if Jesus is going to pray about the world 16 times, it seems like a reasonable place to go for understanding world.
So in John 3, 16 through 17, two bullet points we have so far. God so loved the world that he sent his son. And secondly, the sun came so that the world might be saved. Would you agree? That's kind of what we gleaned out of John 3, 16, and 17. From this passage, the Arminians would argue God has made a sincere offer of salvation to all. The Universalists would argue God's going to save all. But does this understanding of John 3, 16, and 17 jive with Jesus' prayer in John 17? So without reading the whole passage again, let me just pull out bullet points in his prayer. The Father gave the Son some out of the world.
Verses 6 and 7. Jesus prays for those the Father gave Him. And this is John 17. Jesus prays for those the Father gave Him. Verse 9. Jesus says He is not praying for the whole world. Verse 9. Jesus prays for the Father to keep us in His name. Verse 12. Jesus says that He has not lost one except Judas, verse 12. The world hates followers of Jesus because they are not of this world. Verse 14. Jesus asked the Father to keep His followers safe in the world rather than take them out of it. Verse 15. Jesus' followers are not of this world. Verse 16. Jesus sends His followers into the world to be witnesses. Verse 18. Jesus prays for those who will believe Him because of His followers' witness.
Verse 20. Jesus prays for oneness among His followers. verses 22 and 23. Some observational questions. If the Father gave his Son so that all might be saved, why did Jesus specifically not pray for the whole world? Why does he pray only for those that the Father gave him, or will give him, as opposed to those who might believe in him someday? The tenor of this prayer clearly pits those who are of the world versus those who belong to Christ. There is no hint in this prayer that the Father's intention is to give every person an equal opportunity to respond to the gospel. This prayer seems to tilt in the opposite direction.
From this little bit of exegetical data, it seems more than likely that the world in John 3 16 cannot refer to all men without exception. The next text I want to look at is 1 Timothy 2.4 where it says, God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of God. Well Jim, if you're looking for a purpose statement, there it is. God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. There's two main arguments against this being a verse supporting universal offer of salvation. First is the word desires itself. I'm not going to dive into that discussion here other than to say that the word used here expresses the idea of wish or desire rather than determined will.
What God has determined to do, He will do. But Paul used a different word here than God's explicit will. If you want to dive into that topic more detail, I'm going to direct you to Dave's sermon that he gave back in 2012 titled Desire and Plan where he dives into the different wills of God and how that word, several different words are used in the scripture. So you can go on our website and just look up, do the sermon search, look for Dave Light and then you'll see desire and plan, and you can listen to that. The second argument, which I am going to talk about, has to do with how we should understand Paul's use of the word all here.
Does all people refer to all without exception? Remember we pointed out that we need to consider the context in which the word all is used to be able to figure out what all means. Obviously, it refers to people, but does it mean each and every person who has ever lived? If we look at the surrounding text, we read in 1 Timothy 2, 1 through 6, First of all, then I urge that supplication, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high position, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it's pleasing in the sight of our God and Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
For there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, that man, Jesus Christ, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I am telling the truth. I am not lying, a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth." Now it's interesting in that passage we just read, it's curious, all of a sudden he's throwing kings and other rulers in there. He's throwing Gentiles in there. kind of peculiar, right? Notice in verse 1 the same phrase, all people. Is he thinking of all people without exception or all kinds of people? If we continue to read verse 2 we see that he starts to list out people groups, kings, and people in high positions.
In verse 6 he says Christ was given as a ransom for all. Then in verse 7 it's as if he's saying even the Gentiles, which again he's singling out in this passage as a people group. It's not unreasonable given the context here to argue that Paul has people groups in mind when he uses the phrase all people. Some commentators suggest that Timothy was dealing with some degree of Jewish exclusivism given Paul's instructions earlier in this book. If you flip back to chapter one verses three through seven, Paul had written he'd said this, as I urged you when I was going to Macedonia remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine in order to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies which promote speculation rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.
The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons by swerving from these have wandered away into vain discussions desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.
remember from other passages we could go to again we had this problem where we had Judaizers coming into the mix and I'm still getting used to the idea of Jesus but well get circumcised and we'll call it good and there was all these kind of debates going on. This may explain why Paul felt the need to give a shout out to the Gentiles in verse 7 of chapter 2. He's still combating this anti-Gentile sentiment and we are to pray for all people, all kinds of people, not just the Jewish brothers, but everybody, even the Gentiles down here in verse 7, combined with other passages that explicitly refer to the elect, it is not unreasonable to believe that the all people here is referring to all kinds of people rather than all people without exception. Now we only have time for one more text, so I'm going to take you to John 2.2.
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate for the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Boom, slam dunk. Armenians win. Once again, we need to try and decipher what John meant by whole world. It would help if we knew who John's readers were. That would give us a starting point. But yet he doesn't identify them by name. But we do have some clues here from the text and knowing who John was. First, John himself was primarily focused on taking the gospel to the Jews, whereas Paul went to the Gentiles.
If you remember back in Galatians 2.9, Paul had written, and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave me the right hand of fellowship into Barnabas and to Barnabas to me that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. So right there, we're told that John's emphasis of his ministry was to the Jews. Second, John intimates that his readers were knowledgeable about the law. In verse seven, he wrote to his readers, beloved, I am writing you no new commandment but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. Well, who are the you that had the old law from the beginning?
had to be Jewish people. The old commandment is the word which you have heard. Third, John warns of false teachers, seducers, and antichrists. These again would very likely have been of Jewish origin. It would appear from the textual evidence that John is probably writing to Jews. Given the Jews' dislike for Gentiles, already mentioned, it's very plausible that John is identifying with his Jewish little children and reminding them that Jesus died for not just them, but for the Gentiles as well. If he means the whole world without exception, in the verse I started with, if he means whole world, then it seems strange that a few verses later in verse 15, he'd say, do not love the world, nor do things in the world.
Would it be strange for John to say, just in the span of a page, to say Jesus is the propitiation for the whole world, but make sure you don't love the world? That would make no sense, right? As you start looking at the other texts that refer to all and whole world, you find that the surrounding text strongly supports that the writers have nations and people groups in mind rather than all without exception. Interpretations often... He has people groups in mind rather than the all without exception that many interpretations often claim. This is especially true in Romans. I lied, I said one more, but there's actually going to hint at one more.
This is especially true in Romans where Paul is building the case that membership in true Israel is based on faith and not DNA. If you know anything about Romans and you're in chapter three, chapter four, how did Abraham get his righteousness? Was it because he was circumcised? No, it's because he was a faith. Who's really a child of Abrahams? It's not the ones that are circumcised. It's the ones of faith. He's been building this case. His Jewish readers are listening and going, you're making me nervous. But they're listening. Having made his case for salvation through faith, he writes in Romans 5, 17 through 19, for if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in Christ through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, So one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. For as by one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. Paul's point here is not to quantify how many are dead in Adam and how many are alive in Christ. Just this little bit of text here, he's not trying to state a numerical quantity. What he's trying to do is to point out two types of gateways, if you will. How did people become dead? How did people become alive? That is the emphasis here. Whether Jew or one of the many non-Jews, the means of spiritual death and the means of spiritual life are the same.
Other scriptures teach us that all men, without exception, are spiritually dead. We can get that from lots of other places. So we can take that other textual evidence back to this and say, yeah, okay, the people who are dead are dead in Adam. And guess what? That does include everybody. We're not taking that from this passage. We're taking that from other texts that everybody's dead. But then he's also saying, but the people who are alive, whoever they are, all the ones who are alive get there through the gateway called Christ. All right, see, where are my notes? So again, you look at these passages, you put them in their context, and you begin to see strong evidence to indicate that the uses of all that we sometimes hear our Arminian or Universalist friends say has to mean everybody without exception.
In fact, if we're looking at it carefully and taking in again, there's so many scriptures we didn't touch upon, all the scriptures about the elect, all of that. you put the whole body together, the case for limited atonement is quite strong and even to, I would argue, is the strongest case to be made from the biblical evidence out there. I'm not going to say slam down case over, there's not some good arguments on the other side, but as I've been reading and digging into this, thinking about it, I just really can't persuade myself of another viewpoint at this point. So I've tried to briefly show that these so-called difficult texts aren't slam-dunks for the Armenians or the Universalists.
And then there are again many, many more we didn't get into. You can read, try to read Owen's book if you want, or you can read this from Heavenly Came and Sodder. That's a good resource also. But when you take the whole of scripture together, I believe the preponderance of biblical evidence supports the claim that the Father and Son's purpose was for Jesus to become a man, redeem all those chosen by the Father before time, by dying on the cross, receive those individuals from the Father, and keep them safe until they are received back into glory. All right? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, because if nothing else, we have that as a place to go for these discussions.
And I recognize it down through church history, a lot of smart people and a lot of people who really love Jesus have argued all those three positions. And while we certainly don't want to unnecessarily quibble over doctrines, we don't want to allow these doctrine differences to divide for those who are going to be in heaven, certainly. But at the same time, they are important because they do speak to your character and your nature. They tell us something about you. And while we as humans, Father, I grate against this doctrine because again, it It goes against my fleshly urge and my fleshly impulse, my own sense of good and love and fairness.
And all I can say is I am not the expert in those areas. I do not know how to fully define those and explain them. I cannot tell people exactly, perfectly what it means to say God is good and God is love. I don't say that you are. So I just pray that as people go home and they think through these things that you would just help them to sort it all out in their own hearts and minds to be able to come to their conclusions. But again, that we would first and foremost, Father, submit ourselves to Your word and to Your love to allow You to have Your way with us, to change us and shape us, mold us in any way You see fit. And again, just thanks for the opportunity we had to gather tonight. Pray for everybody as they head home, keep them safe for the youth that they have a great time in their afterglow. Just pray all this in Your Son, In Jesus' name, Amen.
