Who Did Jesus Die For?
If Jesus death hasn’t paid for anybody’s sin then his death was ultimately pointless. He is a failed saviour who was unable to save any of his people. When he said ‘it is finished’ on the cross, he may as well have said ‘I am finished’. Fortunately, the Bible tells us clearly enough that Jesus’ death has actually redeemed a people. Revelation 5:9-10 says Jesus’ blood has actually ransomed people from every tribe, tongue and nation. 1 John 2:2 tells us that Jesus’ death has actually paid for the sins of the whole world. ‘Whole world’ cannot mean every single person in the world regardless of repentance or belief in Jesus, not least as John himself has ruled that out. John’s usual use of ‘world’ tends to mean something like ‘all kinds of people’, Jews and every kind of Gentile.
Of all the Five Points of Calvinism, none cause quite as much upset as Limited Atonement. It’s not the most helpfully named thing, which is aimed at saying the scope of the atonement is limited to the elect rather than all people in general, but it sounds like its saying its effects are limited which is why some prefer Particular Redemption or Definite Atonement. The doctrine is ultimately driving at the idea that Jesus died for particular people, as opposed to all people in general (particular redemption), and that the people Jesus intends to save are actually saved by his death on the cross (definite atonement) rather than just potentially saved by his death and then only actually saved upon their belief.
The issue concerning Limited Atonement is brought into sharp focus when we ask two simple questions: (1) did Jesus’ death actually pay for anybody’s sin; and, (2) did Jesus death actually save anyone? There are only three possible answers to these questions:
- Jesus’ death paid for everybody’s sin and therefore saves everyone
- Jesus’ death paid for nobody’s sin and therefore saves no one
- Jesus’ death paid for particular people’s sin and therefore saves those particular people
Those who affirm option one fall for the heterodox doctrine of universalism. If Jesus has paid for everybody’s sin, God has nothing to hold against anybody; there is no further price to be paid and there is no condemnation for anybody. History’s greatest wrong’uns are all heading straight for Heaven on such a view. But the fact is, Jesus did not speak about the ‘outer darkness’ on the basis that nobody is going there. Matthew 8:11-12 fairly clearly rules out any possibility that everyone is saved and there are many other bible passages that make the matter clear. Jesus death did not pay for everybody’s sin and evidently all are not saved.
Option 2 is not a great deal better. If Jesus death hasn’t paid for anybody’s sin then his death was ultimately pointless. He is a failed saviour who was unable to save any of his people. When he said ‘it is finished’ on the cross, he may as well have said ‘I am finished’. Fortunately, the Bible tells us clearly enough that Jesus’ death has actually redeemed a people. Revelation 5:9-10 says Jesus’ blood has actually ransomed people from every tribe, tongue and nation. 1 John 2:2 tells us that Jesus’ death has actually paid for the sins of the whole world. Unless we want to fall back onto option one and argue everybody is saved, ‘whole world’ cannot mean every single person in the world regardless of repentance or belief in Jesus, not least as John himself has ruled that out.
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The Gateway Drug To Post-Christian Paganism
Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Monday, April 22, 2024
This points to their value in today’s debates. One of the striking lacunae on both the right and left wings of the Christian political spectrum is the general absence of any reference to the transcendence of God and the supernatural nature of the church. Immanent concerns rule the day. The pundits on both sides seem more concerned with making sure that no criticism goes unmocked, and no critic’s character goes unsmeared than with relativizing the affairs of this world in the light of eternity.I recently revisited a book that I had not read for many years: Robert P. Ericksen’s Theologians Under Hitler. It is a study of how three intellectuals, Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus, and Emanuel Hirsch—scholars of the Old Testament, Luther, and Kierkegaard, respectively—came to support Hitler in 1933 and ultimately be identified with an evil ideology that cost millions of lives, both in the death camps and in the war that German expansionism precipitated.
It is a troubling book because, while Hirsch was always a nasty anti-Semite and remained so after the Third Reich collapsed, Kittel and Althaus started as what we might call orthodox, patriotic conservatives. The story of their corruption by Nazi ideology is a sad and disturbing one. Like Michael Corleone in The Godfather, they succumbed step by step; each step they took made sense to them, given the exigencies of the time, but the end result was catastrophic. There was a logical line from voting for Hitler to, at a minimum, standing silently by as Nazi behavior became more outrageous and systematically murderous. While I was working on Luther for my PhD, I was particularly dismayed to discover the attitude of Althaus. He was one of my scholarly heroes. How could he have been so wrong?
It is an interesting thought experiment to wonder how Christians today might have voted in Germany in the early 1930s. Hindsight grants great privileges. It not only gives us all 20/20 vision, but also exempts us from the difficult moral trade-offs and compromises that all voting booths contain in a manner unavailable to those at the time. We should not be so certain that we would have necessarily acted as we might like to imagine. It was a world where it seemed that either the Nazis or the Communists must triumph and where the full evil of both was as yet not fully visible. But even as we can acknowledge these difficulties, it is important to note that there were still theologians who did see the problem in 1933 and who refused to strike a deal with the devils on either side of the political spectrum.
The most famous example is that of the Barmen Declaration of 1934, signed by, among others, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth. What is disappointing about that document in retrospect is its failure to address the Nazis’ anti-Semitism, something Barth later regretted. But there was an earlier and better document that is today all but forgotten: the Bethel Confession of 1933, which Bonhoeffer had composed along with another Lutheran, Hermann Sasse…The Bethel Confession has recently been reprinted and is well worth study and reflection.
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You’re Fearfully and Wonderfully De-trans
If you’re detrans, you won’t be healed unless you believe in Christ and repent. Regret isn’t repentance. Regret won’t give you hope, repentance will. When the Bible says Jesus’ wounds have healed Christians, it’s talking about spiritual healing. It means our souls have been born again or made spiritually alive.
Some people have been celebrating their LGBT sins for an entire month. Others, however, will regret their LGBT sins for their entire lives.
One of these regretful LGBT people is a detrans girl named Clyde Fallon. In a Reddit group for detrans people, she said:
“I’m a 17 year old girl with a flat chest, a deep voice, a visible Adam’s apple and some facial hair … I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m mad, I’m depressed, I’m hurt. I am grieving I feel remorse. I can’t deal with all this pain. I lost my breasts … There’s no reason for me to continue to live … Will I ever [b]e happy again? Please tell me it is possible … I can’t deal with all this. I want a Time Machine so badly … I want my body back so badly. Pls give me hope.”
There are over 48,000 members in that Reddit group, and they all have similar stories of shame and despair.
The Bible says pride leads to destruction. That is true for all LGBT people, especially transgender youth, whose bodies have been destroyed by puberty blockers, and breast and genital mutilations. LGBT pride leads to destruction.
However, if you’re detrans, I want you to know there’s hope. You’ve destroyed parts of your body, but you haven’t destroyed who you are. Doctors can change your body and voice, but they haven’t changed the most important thing about you.
Your doctor changed your appearance, but they didn’t change your identity. You’re the same person your mother held in her hands the day you were born. And you’re the same person your creator knitted together in your mother’s womb.
In Psalm 139:13-16, King David said:
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
You are fearfully and wonderfully made by God. You are God’s idea. You are God’s design. You are God’s wonderful work.
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Faith for Hard Days
If people like me are to be ambitious for the things of God, we need to be rescued from shortsightedness. Like Lalani, we need to learn to see beyond the fire that burns a thatch roof, beyond the botched sermon or that member’s meeting that didn’t go so well. Too many of us are wearing blinders that have narrowed our gaze.
Have you ever come across a story that walloped you right between the eyes? This one, reported by Tim Stafford in Christianity Today, did it for me.
Lalani Jayasinghe lived in the southernmost part of Sri Lanka in a simple home with no plumbing. A widow of twelve years, Lalani had few earthly reasons to be joyful and content. But she was a Christian and an active member of her local church.
A few years ago, Lalani was chosen to represent her church for a meeting in the capital city of Colombo to discuss the current challenges Sri Lankan Christians were facing with persecution. Lalani had personal experience with persecution. While at home with her son one day, her husband was brutally killed by local monks hostile to followers of Jesus.
Lalani took the all-day trip to Colombo for the meeting where many churches were gathering for updates, prayer, and support. They wanted to strategize on how to respond to the violence they were facing.
Stafford tells her response:
When asked how things were with her church, she replied, “Wonderful! Praise the Lord!” Later she gave a more detailed report, telling how the local opposition had that week organized a protest march against her church, and then burned the thatch roof.
Stunned by this news, someone in the meeting asked why she said that everything was wonderful. “Obviously,” she answered enthusiastically, “since the thatch is gone, God must intend to give us a metal roof!”
Tim Stafford, “The Joy of Suffering in Sri Lanka,” Christianity Today (October 2003), vol. 47, no. 10.
So let me see if I have this straight: Lalani is a victim of violent persecution. She’s already experienced tremendous personal loss, then local mobs burn the roof off her church. Yet her response is praise.
Honestly, I don’t think I would have come within a mental mile of her interpretation of that event. If a hurricane rips the roof off my house tonight, I’ll be thinking of insurance, not roof upgrades. But Lalani had her eyes set on something higher.
Why don’t I see life that way? Why don’t I look at ministry problems like this? What’s the big difference between Lalani and me? I think it comes down to one dream-shaping, risk-taking, resilience-inspiring, life-transforming word: Faith.
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