Gospel Prism

Many Christians do not think too much of the phrase ‘limited atonement’ (or particular redemption). But if a person were to stop and think, “Did Christ die for the church or for everyone?� I believe most would have a strong view on the subject. Many do believe that Christ died for everyone. And in one respect, this is the case. Christ died for all people without any prejudice as to whom such persons are (i.e. ethnicity or age or gender). But did Christ die for those who would trust in Him (i.e. the elect or His Church) or did He die for the whole world without distinction of whether a person trusts in Christ? Also, what does the Bible teach, since I will be assuming this is a question for those who trust in the full veracity of the Bible? And if Christ did die for everyone to believe, then what are the implications of such a statement? Much is at stake in this quest for biblical answers. While many well-intentioned Evangelicals try to push limited atonement under the rug as nothing more than a divisive theological idea, this should not happen. Limited atonement speaks of God’s great salvation (Hebrews 2:3). Either a person should be enraged by such teaching or embracing this doctrine, but it cannot be simply neglected or deemed insignificant.

Thus, to begin with, the phrase ‘limited atonement’ has its own bias. There is a tendency to view this doctrine from a negative perspective. The very word ‘limited’ has this connotation. However, the Bible never depicts limited atonement in this way. J. I. Packer notes this in his ‘Introduction’ to John Owen’s The Death of Death when he writes:

Calvinism has no interest in negatives, as such; when Calvinists fight, they fight for positive evangelical values. The negative cast of the ‘five points’ is misleading chiefly with regard to the third (limited atonement, or particular redemption), which is often read with stress on the adjective and taken as indicating that Calvinists have a special interest in confining the limits of divine mercy. But in fact the purpose of this phraseology, as we shall see, is to safeguard the central affirmation of the gospel - that Christ is a redeemer who really does redeem. Similarly, the denials of an election that is conditional and of grace that is resistible are intended to safeguard the positive truth that it is God who saves. The real negations are those of Arminianism, which denies that election, redemption and calling are saving acts of God. Calvinism negates these negations order to assert the positive content of the gospel, for the positive purpose of strengthening faith and building up the church.

Thus I would like to use the phrase ‘effective atonement’ rather than ‘limited atonement’ in that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, His death was completely effective in saving those He would save. His death successfully brought to the Father every person He had called to Himself. Moreover, if Christ’s death was ineffective or unlimited, then there would be men and women whom Jesus died for who He was unable to bring to Himself. Thus this question arises, “Are there saved persons who do not believe in Christ?�

Most Christians I know would answer, “No,� to such a question, regardless of whether a person believed in ‘effective atonement’ or not. They would argue that faith is still required of all who are saved, and therefore, even though Christ died for all, faith is still a pre-requisite to salvation. But we need to stop here and truly assess whether this is a true idea from Scripture. The Bible continually addresses the idea that Jesus died for the church (Ephesians 5:25-27), His Bride. According to John 10:11, Jesus laid down His life for His (particular) sheep. Paul tells us in Romans 8:33 that no one can accuse the elect of anything. And then of course, there is this telling text in John 6:37-39: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. 38For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. 39And 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.� It would be very difficult to read this text any other way than how it sounds. Jesus prays for those whom the Father has given Him in John 17:9. This is only a small sampling of texts that support an effective atonement perspective of salvation.

Also, the implications of faith being the condition on a person’s salvation rather than Christ’s effective atonement are tantamount to a subtle works-based righteousness and in the end not faith at all. Since the work of salvation is dependent no longer solely on Christ, but also on the will and assent of the person, then human beings contribute, even if it is 1%, to the work of salvation. If a car is perfectly in working order, and yet, there is no person to turn the key, it would be non-sensical to think that the car moves on its own when it cannot move without that key being turned. So too if Christ is the car that can bring the person to the Father, and yet the human being is the key operator, who really is in control of driving that car to the Father? The human being is in control and Christ is simply at the beck and call of our wills. This seems contradictory to everything that Scripture teaches us about a Sovereign God whose ways are far above our ways (Isaiah 55:9).

Furthermore, if Christ’s work of atonement was ultimately ineffective to save those who would eventually reject Him, why should they be punished for their sins? In such a scenario, either Christ’s death was powerless at some level to save people, or it was effective and therefore all sinners would be freed from their sin, regardless of their trust in Christ (universal atonement). Why should a person be in hell in light of this powerful redemptive work? Wouldn’t that mean that a person is being punished for sins that are cleansed by the blood of Christ? Wouldn’t that be a far greater injustice than Christ dying for His particular Church?

John Piper gives a great illustration as to what does happen on the cross. He writes:

So, we go back to the problem: in what sense did Christ taste death for their sins? If they are still guilty for their sins and still suffer punishment for their sins, what happened on the cross for their sins? Perhaps someone would use an analogy. You might say, Christ purchased their ticket to heaven, and offered it to them freely, but they refused to take it, and that is why they went to hell. And you would be partly right: Christ does offer his forgiveness freely to all, and any who receives it as the treasure it is will be saved by the death of Jesus. But the problem with the analogy is that the purchase of the ticket to heaven is, in reality, the canceling of sins. But what we have seen is that those who refuse the ticket are punished for their sins, not just for refusing the ticket. And so what meaning does it have to say that their sins were canceled? Their sins are going to bring them to destruction and keep them from heaven; so their sins were not really canceled in the cross, and therefore the ticket was not purchased.

The ticket for heaven which Jesus obtained for me by his blood is the wiping out of all my sins, covering them, bearing them in his own body, so that they can never bring me to ruin—can never be brought up against me again—never. That’s what happened when he died for me. Hebrews 10:14 says, “By one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” Perfected before God for all time, by the offering his life! That’s what it means that he died for me. Hebrews 9:28 says, “Christ also, [was] offered once to bear the sins of many.” He bore my sins. He really bore them (See Isaiah 53:4-6). He really suffered for them. They cannot and they will not fall on my head in judgment.

If you say to me then, that at the cross Christ only accomplished for me what he accomplished for those who will suffer hell for their sins, then you strip the death of Jesus of its actual effective accomplishment on my behalf, and leave me with what?—An atonement that has lost its precious assuring power that my sins were really covered and the curse was really lifted and the wrath of God was really removed. That’s a high price to pay in order to say that Christ tasted death for everyone in the same way.

This is the terrible reality of an atonement when it is ineffective, Christ’s death becomes a frail and weak offer, as if He were only standing on the sidelines pinned to that cross pleading with people to look and believe, while runners in this rat race whizzed by with nothing more than a mere shrug of the shoulders.

How can Christians claim to love the power of the finished work of Christ and cherish grace and the cross and yet believe that that work is limited by a person’s assent? Those who believe in ‘limited atonement’ or ‘particular redemption’ or ‘effective atonement’ do not limit the work of Christ at all. Instead, they believe in the full power of the atonement to save all that Christ’s death was intended to save. It is the person who believes that atonement is for those who reject Christ that actually limit the atonement’s power. Charles Spurgeon puts this so well when he says:

The Arminians say, ‘Christ died for all men.’ Ask them what they mean by it. Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of all men? They say, ‘No, certainly not.’ We ask them the next question: Did Christ die so as to secure the salvation of any man in particular? They answer ‘No.’ They are obliged to admit this, if they are 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 death 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 it.’ 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 are saved, must be saved and cannot by any possibility run the hazard of being anything but saved. You are welcome to your atonement; you may keep it. We will never renounce ours for the sake of it.

J. I. Packer concurs:

And when we come to preach the gospel, our false preconceptions make us say just the opposite of what we intend. We want (rightly) to proclaim Christ as Savior; yet we end up saying that Christ, having made salvation possible, has left us to become our own saviors. It comes about in this way. We want to magnify the saving grace of God and the saving power of Christ. So we declare that God’s redeeming love expends to everyone, and that Christ has died to save everyone, and we proclaim that the glory of divine mercy is to be measured by these facts. And then, in order to avoid universalism, we have to depreciate all that we were previously extolling, and to explain that, after all, nothing that God and Christ have done can save us unless we add something to it; the decisive factor which actually saves us is our own believing. What we say comes to this - that Christ saves us with our help; and what that means, when one thinks it out, is this - that we save ourselves with Christ’s help. This is a hollow anticlimax. But if we start by affirming that God has a saving love for all, and Christ died a saving death for all, and yet balk at becoming universalists, there is nothing else that we can say. And let us be clear on what we have done when we have put the matter in this fashion. We have not exalted grace and the cross; we have limited the atonement far more drastically than Calvinism does, for whereas Calvinism asserts that Christ’s death, as such, saves all whom it was meant to save, we have denied that Christ’s death, as such, is sufficient to save any of them. We have flattered impenitent sinners by assuring them that it is in their power to repent and believe, though God cannot make them do it. Perhaps we have also trivialized faith to make this assurance plausible (’it’s very simple - just open your heart to the Lord . . .’). Certainly, we have effectively denied God’s sovereignty, and undermined the basic conviction of true religion - that man is always in God’s hands. In truth, we have lost a great deal. And it is, perhaps, no wonder that our preaching begets so little reverence and humility, and our professed converts are so self-confident and so deficient in self-knowledge and in the good works which Scripture regards as the fruit of true repentance. [Italics mine]

Application

1. I am saddened most when people think that to believe in effective atonement means a limiting of evangelism. Nothing could be further from the truth. For men like George Whitefield and William Carey, the biblical basis for effective atonement drove them to evangelize and share the Gospel with all who would hear with zeal and vigor. After all, who has the mind of God who would assume that they know who this atonement specifically effects?

Effective atonement also is a sweet comfort to all missionaries (like William Carey) and evangelists that ultimately, their work will never be in vain. Their ministry and message will be used by God sovereignly to secure salvation and there is no doubt at all that this is the case. There is an encouragement here that no Arminian or ‘4-point Calvinist’ could ever have. For such a person, their hope always rests ultimately on a human decision to change their own lives in their own time. And given the fact that there is a such thing as sin which will always turn a person away from God (Romans 3:23), such a scenario seems hopeless. This is why D. A. Carson writes:

If Christ died for all people with exactly the same intent, as measured on any axis, then it is surely impossible to avoid the conclusion that the ultimate distinguishing mark between those who are saved and those who are not is their own will. That is surely ground for boasting. This argument does not charge the Arminian with no understanding of grace. After all, the Arminian believes that the cross is the ground of the Christian’s acceptance before God; the choice to believe is not in any sense the ground. Still, this view of grace surely requires the conclusion that the ultimate distinction between the believer and the unbeliever lies, finally, in the human beings themselves. That entails an understanding of grace quite different, and in my view far more limited, than the view that traces the ultimate distinction back to the purposes of God, including his purposes in the cross. The pastoral implications are many and obvious.

2. Effective atonement assures our salvation. If our atonement was based on a decision of faith, imagine how tenuous that decision would be especially during times of trial and difficulty? Human beings are notoriously capricious. If salvation was based on the human decision-making process alone (which is ultimately what a non-effective atonement view would lead to), then that salvation would also be subject to the whims of human frailty and weakness. Surely, one’s personal salvation could never be assured in this state since it is subject to a person’s fickle emotions and will. Then truly, salvation could be as easily misplaced as one’s house keys or eyeglasses. Effective atonement assures us that Christ’s death was absolutely effective and so therefore nothing can separate us (not even my own wretched sinfulness) from the love of God.

Conclusion

I just do not want to believe in a terribly unjust God and so I believe in effective atonement because to reject this biblical doctrine is to find God horribly cruel in the end. How could God punish His Son for the sins of the world and at the same time punish sinners by banishing them to eternal hell? Well, this would be the scenario if Christ’s death was ineffective to save all sinners simply because a person refused Him. Or as Mr. Spurgeon summarizes well:

Once again, if it was Christ’s intention to save all men, how deplorably has He been disappointed, for we have His own testimony that there is a lake which burns with fire and brimstone, and into that pit of woe have been cast some of the very persons who, according to the theory of universal redemption, were bought with His blood. That seems to me a conception a thousand times more repulsive than any of those consequences which are said to be associated with the Calvinistic and Christian doctrine of special and particular redemption. To think that my Savior died for men who were or are in hell, seems a supposition too horrible for me to entertain. To imagine for a moment that He was the Substitute for all the sons of men, and that God, having first punished the Substitute, afterwards punished the sinners themselves, seems to conflict with all my ideas of divine justice. That Christ should offer an atonement and satisfaction for the sins of all men, and that afterwards some of those very men should be punished for the sins for which Christ had already atoned, appears to me to be the most monstrous iniquity that could ever have been imputed to Saturn, to Janus, to the goddess of the Thugs, or to the most diabolical heathen deities. God forbid that we should ever think thus of Jehovah, the just and wise and good!