Marvel at God’s love, marvel at Jesus’ redeeming sacrifice, marvel at the Holy Spirit’s sovereign regenerating work. Believer, take this to heart and cherish it: Jesus died specifically for you on the cross. Your salvation is purchased, paid for. Live like it’s so.

Did Jesus die for everybody? This question seems rather simple on the surface, but if you peel back a layer of Scripture you’ll find it’s a pretty complex question. Theologians debate, friends argue, and the layperson doesn’t even know it’s a question.
So, did He die for everybody? The short answer is No. And, in my opinion, the Bible is pretty clear on that. There is a plethora of passages to visit, but let’s focus on the over-arching theme that makes this question easier to understand: substitutionary atonement.
Jesus was our substitute, in life and death (2 Corinthians 5:21). And by our, I mean, Christians. And because He was—and is—our substitute means He didn’t purchase a theoretical salvation on the cross, but salvation itself. In other words, Jesus didn’t die to simply make salvation possible, but died in place of real names.
He had the names of His elect, His church, in mind when He died on the cross—for He is our substitute. He lived in our place; He died in our place. Jesus’ death was a substitutionary death—that is central to the gospel!
With this glorious truth in mind—and if we are focused on the text of Scripture and not any biases—it doesn’t require a big leap to conclude that Jesus only died on the cross for those He was the substitute for—the church.
Think about it. If Jesus was the substitute for every single person, then everybody would be saved.
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Through Geddie’s example of starting “missions societies” in each of the presbytery churches in Nova Scotia, coupled with the conviction that the local church could and should take responsibility for world missions, the church became dramatically more involved and effective in praying, sending, going, and giving. 

John Geddie (1815–1872), a Scottish-born Canadian Presbyterian pastor and missionary, became known as “the father of Presbyterian missions in the South Seas.” For twenty-four years, he and his wife, Charlotte, faithfully proclaimed Christ, translated the Scriptures, and planted churches in the New Hebrides islands (now Vanuatu).
When John lay gravely ill as a newborn, his parents promised the Lord that they would devote him to missions if He would spare John’s life. Though they never told him of their vow, reading missionary publications became a consistent part of his upbringing after they immigrated to Pictou, Novia Scotia, in 1816.
Young John was raised in the traditional Scottish Presbyterian way of instruction in Bible and catechism. Though the Geddie children possessed “friendly dispositions,” John was described as having a “very determined spirit, approaching it might be said to obstinacy. If you crossed his disposition, it was not easy to conquer him.” The Lord utilized this persistence to sustain him and his family in the difficult calling that lay ahead.
In 1834, at age nineteen, Geddie professed faith in Christ, and his lifelong acquaintance with missionary stories matured into a passion for foreign missions. During his theological studies, he experienced a protracted period of poor health during which he, like his parents, vowed that if the Lord would restore him to full health, he would take the message of salvation to foreign lands. The Lord answered that prayer. He was licensed by the Presbytery of Pictou in 1837, ordained in 1838, married in 1839, and with the full financial and spiritual support of the Prince Edward Island Presbytery, John and Charlotte Geddie set sail for New Caledonia in the South Pacific on January 31, 1847.
On October 17, 1847, they arrived in Samoa, to the surprise of the missionary leadership in the area who knew nothing of their coming. The Geddies immediately learned that their intended destination of New Caledonia was considered too dangerous for missionary work. During their months in Samoa, the New Hebrides were chosen as the new target island group (situated just east of New Caledonia), with the Geddies selecting Aneiteum (the southernmost island of this chain) as their new home. After eighteen months in travel, the Geddies finally arrived at their permanent missions destination on July 31, 1848.
Soon they discovered the depths of the depravity of the people to whom they were sent. Women were considered the slave of the husband (in fact, the words “wife,” “servant,” and “slave” were interchangeable). Hard labor was the responsibility of the wife, and the suicide rate was high. Baby girls were on occasion put to death. When a husband died, the wife was immediately strangled so that her spirit would accompany her husband’s spirit to “the land of darkness.”
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Arbitrary government is where men rule without accountability as to personnel and standard. Pretty straight forward. If people have no “choice or allowance,” meaning active selection or passive confirmation, and where men judge on a whim—with will but without reason—there is arbitrary government. God alone has no accountability beyond himself. Winthrop maintained that Massachusetts in 1644 was no home to usurpation of God’s singular prerogative.

John Winthrop was governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony for twelve years between 1630 and 1648 and was either deputy governor or assistant the rest of the time. At the time of his Arbitrary Government Described and the Government of Massachusetts Vindicated from that Aspersion, he was deputy governor. What we see in Winthrop’s Vindication is a standard by which all governments may be judged. The occasion for the public defense on behalf of the administration of which Winthrop was a part will become clear below but ultimately need not detain us. In a nutshell, the government had been charged with ruling and administering according to whim. Winthrop obviously took issue with that “aspersion.”
Arbitrary government is where men rule without accountability as to personnel and standard. Pretty straight forward. If people have no “choice or allowance,” meaning active selection or passive confirmation, and where men judge on a whim—with will but without reason—there is arbitrary government. God alone has no accountability beyond himself. Winthrop maintained that Massachusetts in 1644 was no home to usurpation of God’s singular prerogative.
Winthrop makes his case with appeal to a true transference or delegation of sovereignty, the right to authority, viz., royal grant. Then there was no other possible basis for Englishmen, and it is worth noting that the inherent, so to speak, authority of the colonies turned states over a hundred years later was predicated on the same basis, at least for the preexistent communities—the later state additions were a different story.
Imbedded in the royal patent or charter of Massachusetts Bay is the structure of colonial governance: the governor and a deputy governor as well as eighteen assistants (the executive and its board), and then the company (freemen or stakeholders, so to speak). The board of assistants was one house of the legislature as well as the highest judicial court. The governor was the president of the board but not an assistant simultaneously, and also functioned as a magistrate in the court. But as Herbert Osgood (The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century) discerned, “the governor had no status apart from the board and the legislature… and therefore was bound by the action of the board…. the system of government in the corporate colony was one in which the weight of the governor among the assistants, as elsewhere, depended much on his personality.” This was only partially true. For as Winthrop had declared in 1632, the patent had to be read in light of common law precedent. Therefore, the governor possessed the powers typically associated with that position. This granted the governor some discretion not afforded to the assistants qua assistants, albeit the highest level of discretion was enjoyed by the governors and assistants as the executive branch.
During the first five years or so of the colony’s governance, the assistants played an outsized role, one later diminished. And they were empowered, as a sort of law enforcement agency, to issues warrants, summonses, and attachments. The board itself issues land grants, wage rates, and the like also. After 1634-1635, with the expansion of freemanship beyond the initial class, the assistants were relegated to more administrative and judicial considerations. And yet, the magistrates (assistants) maintained a negative vote (veto power) in the legislature.
Returning to Winthrop’s text, it is the former body, the governor and assistants, that has authority and the latter, the freemen, that has liberty, says Winthrop. Freeman has the liberty to elect and to counsel the state. This is not a merely passive liberty but of active selection and input. Hence, consent to and participation in lawmaking in the General Assembly via four General Courts annually. Not to mention annual elections of the governor, deputy, and assistants. Therefore, the government, in its foundations, was hardly arbitrary. True authority established it, and true participation was present in its operations. So too are the duties of each part of government explicitly handed down in the charter. None of this had been altered either by the incumbent administration.
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