Arminianism reduces the cross to a mere wish — a gift laid before all men with only a wish that somebody will avail themselves of it. Where is the power of the cross? It is in the hands of man, and not in the hands of a sovereign God! Rather, we must tell all men that God sent His Son to bear the sins of His people so that those who repent and believe might have everlasting life.
If they do this, then they will come to the fuller realization that God has not only chosen them, but Christ had them their very names in mind when He died on the cross. Once a person is a believer, he will both understand and believe in the love of God for His people cf.
Blog post content is taken from Rev. It is posted with the gracious permission of the author. Sioux Falls, SD Program Description and Requirements Distance Learning. Just as God desires mankind to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect Matt. I see the consistent way of reconciling these two revelations of God in the doctrine of limited atonement, that Christ died for the elect, whom the Father gave Him, and at the same time God offers the gift of salvation to all, and even commands all people to repent Acts A second objection is that Christians are unable to evangelize effectively if the doctrine of limited atonement is true.
One may ask, how can we go to every person and tell them the good news that Christ died for them if Christ only died for the elect? I would begin by saying nowhere in the New Testament do we see the Apostles teach or display this kind of evangelism. Instead, the biblical model is to state that Christ died for sins , and the way to partake in his atoning death is to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, which involves repentance and faith.
This is why we never see many of the great evangelists throughout church history Charles Spurgeon, George Whitefield, William Carey, Jonathan Edwards, etc. The fruits of their ministries show that effective and biblical evangelism does not require the need to tell all people Jesus died for them specifically, but that they can be reconciled to God through repentance and faith.
Finally, another common objection to limited atonement is the citation of Bible verses that seem to imply Jesus died in the place of all people on the cross.
It does not make sense to believe that Christ died for the sins of everyone, and some still go to hell to pay for their sins a second time.
We can consistently see these passages correlate with the passages like in John 6, 10, 17, Rom. The implications of limited atonement for our lives are profound and comforting. Unlike some of the concerns and objections raised by our brothers and sisters who may disagree with this view, limited atonement guarantees our salvation. It is assuring to know that not one drop of blood from Christ on the cross was ineffective; he fully finished the work on the cross and satisfied the full wrath of God for our sins.
If you are in Christ, all of your sins, past, present, and future have been paid for in full and you are no longer an enemy of God. The perfectly finished work of Christ shows us our salvation is secure, and we can never lose it. Every time the gospel is proclaimed and shared, God is planting seeds and doing work in His people. The word of God will never come back void Is. This truth is what spurred William Carrey, the father of modern missions, to go to India to advance the gospel and the Kingdom of God.
We can rest in the fact that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation Rom. Instead of being a doctrine that limits or diminishes the atonement and the gospel of Jesus Christ, limited atonement reveals the revelation of God that Jesus accomplished perfectly that which he came to do—to purchase for his own a people of God, and redeem and reconcile them to Himself! They cannot be separated. The common notion that Jesus died and is now passively waiting for people to accept Him is false.
This means that if Christ died for every person in the world He must also intercede for every person in the world. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given me, for they are Yours Holy Father, keep through your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are.
I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word If Jesus had indeed died for everyone in the world and was endeavoring to save all mankind, would He not then pray for everyone in the world to be saved?
Yet He prays only for those chosen by the Father, those whom the Father gives to the Son. He is daily watched, and thought for, and provided for with unfailing care, by One whose eye never slumbers and never sleeps. They never perish, because He never ceases to pray for them, and His prayer must prevail.
They stand and persevere to the end, not because of their own strength and goodness, but because Jesus intercedes for them. Second, Christ died for all but refuses to intercede for all. Third, Jesus died only for the elect, and thus prays only for the elect. This is the only option that is scriptural and makes any sense.
The apostle Paul clearly held to the third view. It is God who justifies If number 3 is true, then all men still have the guilt of some sins to answer for. This would mean that all men will go to hell, for it only takes the guilt of one sin to merit eternal damnation. If one holds to option 2, that Christ died for all of the sins of some men, then one believes that only some men i. The non-elect are passed by and perish.
Arminianism, or inconsistent universalism, holds to position number 1, that Christ died for all the sins of all men. If this position is true, then why are not all men freed from the punishment of all their sins. They are guilty of unbelief. If unbelief is not a sin, then why should anyone by punished for it? If unbelief is a sin, then Christ was punished for it in His death. If Christ paid for this sin as all others, then why must this sin stop anyone from entering heaven more than any of the other sins e.
Furthermore, if Christ did not die for the sin of unbelief, then one cannot say that He died for all the sins of all men. The Arminian cannot escape from the horns of this theological dilemma. The Two Options Given the fact that the Bible explicitly teaches that many people will go to hell, one is basically left with two options as to why; first, one can believe that God never really intended to save all men, that He of His own good pleasure decided to save only some.
In other words, God is simply unwilling to save all men. The other option is that God really wants to save all men, but He does not have the power to do so. God is unable to save all men. Universalistic Presuppositions The Bible teaches that God has ordained all things that come to pass, that He controls all events.
God is absolutely sovereign. In order to understand Arminian theology, one must examine their presuppositions. The whole system of universalism grows out of a few assumptions, none of which are based on the word of God. The first presupposition is that God had to voluntarily limit His own sovereign power in order for men to have a genuine free will.
A second presupposition is that God cannot command man to do something that he does not have the ability to carry out. The Bible teaches that God can accomplish whatever He desires. God is God. He cannot be thwarted by finite sinful man. Psalm Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it.
No one can restrain His hand. Proverbs God controls the human heart. He can harden it or He can open it to receive the gospel.
Revelation For who has resisted His will? All the others they took in battle. For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that He might utterly destroy them, and that they might receive no mercy, but that He might destroy them, as the LORD had commanded Moses. John Luke The Lord opened her heart to heed the things spoken by Paul. Ezra ; ; Ex. Most evangelicals and fundamentalists, in their attempt to protect their unbiblical concept of free will, have dethroned God.
God is helpless, waiting to see what finite, sinful mortals will do. The Most-High is stripped of His omnipotence. The God of the popular mind is the creation of a maudlin sentimentality. The God of many a present-day pulpit is an object of pity rather than of awe-inspiring reverence. To say that God the Father has purposed the salvation of all mankind, that God the Son died and that God the Holy Spirit is now seeking to win the world to Christ; when as a matter of common observation, it is apparent that the great majority of our fellow-men are dying in sin, and passing into a hopeless eternity: is to say that God the Father is disappointed , that God the Son is dissatisfied , and that God the Holy Spirit is defeated.
It is a theological impossibility. Because God by nature is absolutely sovereign and all powerful. He cannot create a pocket of chance or pure contingency in His creation. God would have to cease to be God and deny Himself to do so. God has created all things. He controls all things that come to pass by His power, and according to His plan. There is not one atom or one creature beyond His power and control. The very reason that God knows every bit of history in advance is not just that He knows all things and is outside of time, but also because everything comes to pass according to His decree.
Nothing can occur without His ordering. On the other hand, if the determinative will of Jehovah reflects His immutable nature of Being, it can neither be obstructed nor cancelled.
Therefore, whatever comes to pass in any part of creation, at any time in history, does so because the omniscient God knew it as a possibility, willed it as a reality by His omnipotence, and established it in His divine plan or purpose. It is astounding that an argument so obviously unscriptural could be so common among churches that hold to biblical inerrancy. The Bible unequivocally teaches that all men are sinners Rom. God gave the ten commandments to Israel and demands a perfect and perpetual obedience to His moral law from all mankind in thought, word and deed.
Jesus commanded His disciples to be perfect Mt. The idea that God can only base His commands on what man can do is thoroughly unscriptural and humanistic to the core. The more a man sins, the more he becomes a slave of sin, unable to do that which is good; and the deeper he sinks into this slavery which robs him of his capacity for good, the less responsible he becomes.
If man continues to sin long enough, he will in the end be absolved of all moral responsibility. The Calvinist teaches no such doctrine. He contends that the sinner chains himself, and that he prefers his chains to the provisions of redemption which are tendered him. He forges his own chain and then hugs it.
The true doctrine is that the bread and the water of life are offered to all. None, by nature, hunger for the bread; none thirst for the water. To some God pleases to impart the hunger and the thirst which impel them to come and partake. Others he leaves under the influence of a distaste for these provisions of salvation—a distaste not implanted by him, but engendered by their own voluntary sin.
How Then Is Man Responsible? All honest students of Scripture must acknowledge that the Bible teaches that God is absolutely sovereign over His creation, including the actions of mankind. God has predestined or foreordained whatsoever comes to pass. The Bible also teaches that men are valid secondary agents and are truly responsible for their actions Ac. The reason that so many evangelicals have perverted and avoided many of these important biblical truths is their insistence on attempting to fit difficult theological concepts into a humanistic straightjacket.
The humanistic definition of human freedom, in which nothing can have an outside influence upon man, would require man to be God. Only God, who is self-existent, uncreated, undetermined, etc.
Man, however, is a creature. No person chose his parents, culture, time of birth, genetic pattern, etc. The biblical view of human freedom means first that man is not a robot or unconscious machine, but is a rational being created in the image of God. Man has rational self-determination.
He is not determined by materialistic or extrinsic physical causes. When a person chooses to do something, he does not act against his own will but freely follows his own heart. That the choice will be one thing and not another, is certain; and God, who knows and controls the exact causes of each influence, knows what the choice will be, and in a real sense determines it.
God decrees the acts of man, yet men are free and responsible for their actions. They never make an attempt to harmonize the two. This may well restrain us from assuming a contradiction here, even if we cannot reconcile both truths. It is not uncommon for important doctrines to have what are called problem texts.
Anyone familiar with cults knows how they take passages out of context and import their own meaning into them. In order to avoid the same mistake, a few principles of biblical interpretation should be considered. One important principle is that Scripture cannot contradict Scripture. Therefore, when two or more passages seem to contradict one another, the clearer passages must be used to interpret the less clear ones.
Another important principle is that the meaning of a word should be derived from the biblical text and not modern culture. Several passages in which a word is used should be studied and compared in order to understand its meaning and usage when the gospel or epistle was written. If someone ignores how a word or phrase was used in first century Greek, Roman, or Hebrew society and instead imports a twentieth century American or European meaning, he often will totally misunderstand what the Bible says.
A brief examination of these words in Scripture will prove that they do not teach that Christ died for every sinner who ever lived. It is restricted by the biblical context. The apostles obviously were not hated by every man, woman, and child throughout the world, but only by a majority of unbelievers whom they came in contact with throughout the Roman empire. This cannot mean all men or even all of the Jews, for many of the Pharisees did not regard John as a prophet. It simply means that most people among the Jews regarded John as a prophet.
This cannot mean that all the Jews scattered throughout the world knew of Paul. Nor does it even mean that every Jew within Israel knew Paul personally. Not all in the world, or even all in Judea, but many in Israel came to Jesus.
This cannot mean all men without exception, for it would mean that all men will be saved. Of course not! What is meant is that Paul would be preaching to the Jews and the Gentiles.
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