Can my words be any plainer?
Imagine a pastor in the pulpit, looking down at Bob in the pew and saying, "Bob, Jesus Christ died for you."
If Jesus did in fact die for Bob, then Bob will be saved in the time appointed by God.
If Jesus did not in fact die for Bob, then Bob will not be saved...ever.
So the pastor making this statement is either a liar half the time or a wonderful prophet half the time. In other words, he is guessing by making such a definitive statement.
Now, how can the pastor make such a statement specifically to Bob unless the pastor has infallible knowledge of the will of God concerning Bob?
Yet, there is no doubt that these sort of things are actually stated from pulpits today. It is because of a lack of understanding of what the atonement of Jesus Christ actually accomplished. It was not a potential atonement, but an actual atonement. God's wrath was not potentially propitiated, but actually propitiated. For whom? Those that believe, the believing ones. Not for those that do not believe. If Jesus' sacrifice was for all mankind, then all mankind will be saved. Obviously, all are not saved, so that sacrifice cannot possibly be for all mankind. If Jesus' sacrifice truly propitiated the wrath of God for all mankind, then those in Hell are being unjustly punished, for their debts owed have been fully paid by Jesus' sacrifice. This is manifest nonsense.
The scope of the atonement of Jesus encompasses all who have, are, or will believe upon Him. Was the atonement capable of saving all of mankind? Indeed. But the issue here is not the value of the atonement, but its actual scope, as the nicely worded statement below indicates:
I cannot make these things more plain. If you have an actual follow up question, make it plain and concise. I will try to answer it.
AMR
I have a follow up question (a few, actually), if I may take your statement to [MENTION=16283]Sonnet[/MENTION] as generally applicable (like common grace, I suppose). What does it mean to be saved? What are we saved from? If the answer is
death, then resurrection is what we would look for to determine if Bob was saved, correct? (If the answer is
sin, I'll get to that below).)
Shall we discuss further what we are saved from? Adam and Eve were promised death if they disobeyed and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Because of their sin, all mankind is under the same sentence (discussions about why can be left to other threads). If Adam's sin is to be applied universally, we would expect all men to die. If Jesus' death is to be applied universally, then what would we expect regarding everybody that dies?
That they would be resurrected.
Are they?
Yes, all will be resurrected, except, perhaps, for a limited number (the beast and his prophet, for two--not sure if there are others--but they don't experience the first death either). Revelation talks about 2 resurrections. Which seem to include all people in one or the other. Thus, if Bob is part of either group, he will be resurrected, thus, Jesus' sacrifice applies to Bob, as well as all people, and Bob's pastor can rest easy.
Despite this, many people will not experience the same end result. The difference appears to be whether they believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. This, of course suggests a different meaning of "saved"--a different thing we are saved from, which thing is called "second death".
Why is it that we are threatened with a second death, when the penalty (wages) of sin is death (singular)? And why is the one thing that stands between us and the second death merely (if I can use that word so lightly on such a deep and somber subject) a belief in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Is it possible that Jesus' death is universally applied, but rejection of Jesus' Lordship (belief in Him to a point <gasp> that we are actually willing to do what He says) is a second category of sin? One that results in a second death that is much more grievous than the first?
What does such an hypothesis do for our discussion?
1. It allows for the universal statements of good news/gospel to all men to be true! Jesus really did die for "whosoever" and "the world".
2. It still requires belief for the eternal part
3. It explains why everyone is "saved" (resurrected), despite not all being "saved" (living with God for eternity).
4. It disassociates the horror of eternal punishment from temporal sins: eternal punishment is for rejecting the infinite goodness of Jesus' sacrifice--not just his death on the cross, but His eternal subjection of Himself to being in a form of one of His creations.
It doesn't explain very well (sorry) that some people are chosen to be saved from all eternity based on some unknowable reason in God's mind.
Derf