Jesus Christ died on the cross for sinners. But what affect did His atonement have? That is, did His death make salvation possible for all sinners, or certain for some?
The question we want to ask in this article is: For which sinners did Christ die? Since not all sinners are saved from God's wrath, did He merely die to make salvation possible for all, or did He die to make salvation certain for some?
I was recently speaking in Boston, when a man introduced himself as a “Christmas Calvinist.” I gave him a puzzled look because I'd never heard that expression before. I said, “What do you mean ‘a Christmas Calvinist’?” He said, “Noel.” Immediately, I knew what he meant; he was obviously making reference to the historic acrostic that seeks to summarize the distinctives of Reformed theology: TULIP. And, of course, the “L” in TULIP represents the so-called concept of Limited Atonement. So my friend in Boston was telling me that he believed everything else about the reformed faith, but he wasn't going to accept the doctrine of limited atonement. And that's why he called himself a “Christmas Calvinist”—No “L.” He also went on to say that he called himself a “four-point Calvinist.” You hear this language all the time—people calling themselves “four-pointers.” What they mean by that is that they affirm the “T,” the “U,” the “I,” and the “P.” Again, when you hear someone call himself a four-point Calvinist, it usually means that he rejects this doctrine that we're going to be dealing with in this article. Sometimes, you also hear people say that they are “Cal-minians,” meaning that they have a little bit of Calvinism and a little bit of Arminianism and they borrow from both. I always say to these people, “You know what we call Cal-minians, don't you? We call them Arminians.” We could also call four-point Calvinists “No Point Calvinists” in the final analysis.
There's a lot of confusion about what is meant by the concept of “limited atonement,” and sometimes this acrostic gets in the way of our understanding because words are squeezed to fit into the five letters. And historically reformed theology doesn’t really like the term “limited atonement.” They prefer words like definite atonement as distinguished from indefinite atonement.
The question is not about the value of the atonement of Christ. Certainly, reformed theology agrees that the value of the sacrifice that Christ offered the Father was perfect—that He couldn’t have done any more than He did in fact do to affect the redemption of mankind. It's not as though He only supplied 50 percent of what was necessary to satisfy the justice of God and then leaves us to supply the rest, or anything of that sort. No, the sacrifice that Christ made was “once and for all.” Now many times, I hear people—even reformed people—characterize the doctrine of definite atonement in these terms. They use this particular phrase that maybe you have heard before: That the atonement in Christ is sufficient for all; efficient for some—meaning that the atonement is limited in it's efficiency only to a certain group of people. But it is sufficient at the same time to cover all of the sins of the whole world. So that you can rest assured that if any person puts his trust in Christ, he, indeed, will receive the full benefits and the full efficacy of the atonement because it is sufficient for everyone.
No! That's not what we’re talking about here. Because this is basically a point that is in full agreement between Reformed people and non-Reformed people. All that this says is that the atonement is not applied efficiently to all people. So all that this does is to define the difference between particularism and universalism.
Universalism is the theory that Jesus not only died sufficiently for all of the sins of all people, but the affect of the atonement was, in fact, to redeem everybody so that everyone in the universe is saved. So universalism teaches that all people are saved, and they are saved because of the universal application or efficacy of the atonement of Christ. Universalism is, at least in Evangelical circles, an extremely minute viewpoint. In fact, I would say that if a person identifies himself as a universalist that would disqualify him from even being an Evangelical. You may find tendencies in Evangelicalism toward universalism.
But, for those who believe that there is a hell, and that there are people there—if there is one person in hell—then we can't be universalists, because universalism teaches that God saves everybody. “Particularism says, no, only some are saved—not all.”
Though there is strong agreement here within Evangelicalism about particularism, namely that the efficacy or the efficiency—the affect—of the cross is only applied to some and not all. And that, though there is an agreement on particularism, and though everybody agrees that it's sufficient for everybody, the question really comes down to: Why are only some saved? And how does that particular salvation relate to the work of Christ on the cross?
There are different ways of approaching this. Some people say that Jesus comes and secures potential salvation for everybody. That the intent of God in sending Christ into the world was to make it possible for every human being to be saved. But, in a sense, we have hypothetical universalism here, whereby it's possibly theoretically (not likely, but possible) that all human beings would be saved because all human beings have the opportunity to be saved because Christ was sent to save everybody. Christ came to die for everybody's sins to make it possible for every human being to be saved. And “whosoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” So that salvation is designed from all eternity in potential and conditional terms. That is, it's theoretically possible for all people to be saved because all people have the benefit of the cross in front of them. The potential is there for all, but it's conditional. The thing that determines whether the atonement works for you or doesn’t work for you (whether it is efficient or non-efficient for you) is your response in faith. The cross is only effective for those who believe in it. Because, unless you believe in Christ, all of His work, all of His dying, all of His living will be of no avail to you. So that the atonement itself is not an absolute atonement—it’s a conditional atonement. Jesus is saying, “Father, here is my sacrifice; apply it to those who meet the conditions.” Because, in and of itself, the actual atonement that Christ makes does not satisfy the justice of God for everybody's sins.
Now—why not? If the atonement, in fact, in and of itself, satisfies all the requirements of God's justice, then if God sent somebody to hell, He would be, in a sense, judging them twice. Because, if His justice has already been satisfied, and His righteousness has already been fulfilled, and the people’s sins are already paid for, how can they be punished. How can God punish a person whose sins have already been paid for?
If Christ satisfied the demands of God’s law for me, and I don’t believe in Him, how can God punish me? “Well,” you say, “it's because you didn't meet the condition.” Yes, and my failure to meet the condition is a sin—isn’t it? And if it’s a sin on my part not to have met that condition, then that sin must not have been covered at the cross. So then we’re saying that Christ’s work of satisfaction is incomplete. Now, if it is covered in the cross, then, of course, I’m going to be saved if I believe or don’t believe. So you see how complicated this gets.
I think we can find relief from the difficulties here if we go back to the issue as it was first discussed and get down to what it is really about. It’s not about the efficiency of the cross or the sufficiency of the cross. The whole question of the scope of the atonement has to do with its design. And to talk about the design of the atonement we must first identify the Designer.
Who designs the atonement in the first place? From all eternity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were in perfect agreement about creation and about redemption. And, when the Bible speaks about the plan of salvation, it talks about God's plan. God is the Planner. God is the Designer. It's God Who sends Christ into the world. The question is why did He do that? Did He do it being a God who doesn't know the end from the beginning—a God who modern theologians are saying is totally open, who's not omniscient, He has no idea what people are going to do because His knowledge is always limited by contingent choices of human beings. God says, "I'm going to send a Savior and then I'm going to pace up and down in heaven for the next seven thousand years hoping that someone will take advantage of it. But I don't really know whether anyone's going to be affected by the sacrifice of my only begotten Son." And I know that the Son, in the upper room, in His prayer, made mention of "all of those that the Father had given Him, and that "none [was] lost save Judas who was a devil from the beginning." And Jesus said, "All that the Father gives to me come to me." And so Christ is acutely conscious that as He's preparing to make this sacrifice, to do this work of redemption that He's doing it for the ones whom God has given Him. And He knows going in that it is not going to be an exercise in futility.
The problem with the hypothetical redemption concept is that Christ could die theoretically for everybody and theoretically for nobody. It would be theoretically possible that the cross would have been an exercise in futility. And that's where it forces us to think about the cross in terms of our understanding of the character of God. If God designs the atonement, if this is God's plan of redemption, then what would you expect to take place? What I would expect to take place is exactly what God designed. I believe that the efficacy of the cross is fulfilled to the exact degree that God originally intended it.
A well-known Christian leader recently said at the end of a meeting of Christian leaders, “I’m so glad that we came out on this side of this because millions of people would have been lost had we not come to this conclusion.” And I looked at him and I said, “I am glad that we came to this conclusion, and I'm sure that in the providence of God that this is going to be pleasing to God, however, had we made a mistake today, there's not one person who would have been lost because of it.” Don’t think for a minute that the ultimate design and plan of redemption that we are engaged in as earnestly as we may be and as prayerfully as we may be depends on us for its efficiency. It depends on God. This is what the issue is: In the final analysis, is salvation of man, or is salvation of the Lord?
Jesus said, “I lay down my life for my sheep.” He could still say that anybody that wants to take advantage of the cross—it's certainly offered to them. But even that is somewhat questionable because we talk about the universal offer of the gospel.... In one sense, the offer of the gospel is not universal. The affects of the atonement are not just offered to anybody, they are only offered to those who respond in faith. It’s not to say, “I'm going to give it to everybody indescriminately.” Yes, there are those conditions there. And where that relates to the doctrine of election is the question of how the conditions are met. Reformed theology would say historically that yes, you must believe to receive the benefits of the cross, but even your faith is a gift of God. And so all that Christ fulfilled—the eternal design and plan and decree of salvation—was rooted and grounded in history. And every person for whom Christ dies is saved.
The Reformed faith is saying that Jesus only died for the elect—He didn't die for everybody. That's where people get really upset. They say, “What do you mean, the Bible says He died for the world—‘not for us only but for the sins of the whole world’.” Yes, He died for the sins of people from all parts of the world, that's the way the scripture speaks of the world—the point being that He didn't just die for Jews, He died for Carthaginians and Gentiles of every kind. And He died for people of every tribe, tongue and nation. He died for all the elect. Does that mean that He didn't die for the non-elect? Yes. That's what it means. He did not die for those who, in God's eternal decree, are not the special objects of His favor of election.
This is why I say that in one sense that the “L” in TULIP is the litmus test for the rest of the points. It always boggles my mind to hear people say that they believe in total depravity but they don't believe in limited atonement. What's even more astonishing is when they say that they believe in unconditional election (meaning that God, from all eternity, without conditions—without strings, has determined, not with a view to what you will choose in the future, but that God has sovereignly chosen from all eternity the people whom He will save) and then say they don't believe in limited atonement. If you believe that election is unconditional and that it is rooted and grounded in God's sovereign mercy and grace from all eternity, then you have to see that the purpose of the cross, not the value of the cross was to satisfy the penalty for the sins of the elect. So the cross is part of God's eternal plan of redemption. And in that eternal plan, that eternal design, all whom God determined to save through the cross of Christ are saved.
That’s why it is a comforting thing to know that Christ did not die in vain. And that everything that He set out to accomplish will be accomplished by His ministry.