Did Jesus die for everybody? Or only for "the elect," that is, a special group that God has chosen shall be saved? Has He consigned all others to be lost?
One of the celebrated "five points of Calvinism" is called "Limited Atonement," the idea being that Christ offered His blood as an atonement only for a limited group of people--the lucky "elect."
If the idea is true, it leaves me wondering if I am one of the lucky few! And that can trigger all kinds of depression, endless worry. Or if I can be sure that I am one of the lucky few, then it leads toward monstrous arrogance. Why can I assume that the Lord has chosen me to eternal salvation and consigned my neighbor next door to eternal damnation? He may be as good a person as I am!
Careful scholarship brings forth massive evidence now from Calvin's writings that he did NOT believe in "limited atonement." He believed that Christ died for all men. That's Good News indeed.
But the same careful scholarship finds that Calvin believed that only the sacrifice at the cross was for all men, but His intercession at the throne of His Father is "limited" to "the elect." In other words, Calvin believed that all that Christ accomplished at His cross does no one any good unless Christ intercedes for him--and that is what is "limited" only to those special "elect." Salvation is still due to a special, pre-ordained, arbitrary divine "election."
Calvin was a wonderful man and did enormous good. But he lived too early in the history of the world to realize how Paul says that Christ GAVE the "free gift" of "much more abounding grace" and "justification" to "all men" (Rom. 5:15-18, 20). His "much more abounding grace" is as unlimited as His atonement! As surely as God gave "the birthright" to Esau, so surely He gave the GIFT of salvation to "all men," in Himself. He gave Himself for the world and to the world. But along with that "gift," He gave the power of choice; and therefore no one will at last be lost who has not chosen to resist, reject, "despise," and has "sold" the precious "birthright" that was GIVEN to him (Gen. 25:33, 34; Heb. 12:16, 17; Rev. 22:17). "Whosoever will may come." Those who "will not" won't want to enter the New Jerusalem.
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: September 14, 2004.Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
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