Dear Friends of “Dial Daily Bread,”
Who is Jesus? The Eleven disciples were still not too sure when the despised Samaritans were ahead of them in understanding: they confessed, triumphantly, “He is the Savior of the world”! (John 4:42).
But how could they say that when it is so obvious that still even today, 2000 years later, the majority of earth’s inhabitants on planet earth do not recognize Him as their Savior?
The answer is in Romans 5:15-18. In a judicial, not literal, sense Christ saved “all men.”
By His sacrifice on the cross, Jesus made it possible for the Father to treat every man as though he had not sinned, to send His rain and His sun on both the righteous and the wicked alike (Matt. 5:45). Christ bore in His own body, in His soul, the guilt of the whole world: “He poured out His soul unto death” (Isa. 53:12), like you turn a bottle upside down to drain out every drop. That is why Paul says in Philippians 2:5-8 that He “emptied Himself” for us (vs. 7, New American Standard Bible). He died our second death.
But this truth is not the heresy of Universalism; although Christ on His cross died for the sins of the whole world, in no way does that mean that He will force “every man” to enter into the New Jerusalem. Because God IS agape, He gives everyone freedom to choose.
Fast forward to Revelation 20 to the story of the Great White Throne, verses 12-14. As the books of record are opened, every one will see clearly what is the extent of his sin, how he has crucified “afresh” the Lord of glory and put Him to an open shame (cf. Heb. 6:6). Each will see himself at last to be the “Esau” of the Old Testament, how he has sold his birthright, which he had, for a mess of pottage (cf. Gen. 25:34). Each will prefer the Lake of Fire to the pain of looking into the face of the Savior.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: August 2, 2008.
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