So we have, then, only to convince sinners to receive the salvation that has already been fully purchased for them at the cross. Since Christ died for everyone, everyone can believe and should believe and must believe if they’ll only will to believe. And in a contemporary concept, we work on the sinner’s will, believing that the sinner has both the responsibility and the ability to activate a saving faith on his own and believe.
So the people in hell had the same atonement as the people in heaven. The difference was the people in heaven activated their will to accept that atonement; the people in hell did not. Jesus died for, paid for in full the sins of the damned, paid the penalty of divine justice for them - just as He did for the redeemed - is a very strange notion. And the sinner, then, determines whether that universally potential death is applied to him or not.
This view would say Christ died to make salvation possible, not actual. He died to make it possible. The sinner, then, makes the choice. He didn’t really purchase salvation for anyone, He actually died on the cross and in some way removed a barrier to make salvation a potential. You will not find such language anywhere in the New Testament or the Old.
According to Scripture, sinners are dead - dead in trespasses and sin, separated from the life of God. They are blind. They are perishing. They’re in a state of perishing eternally. They are double blind because the god of this world has blinded their minds. In their natural state, they cannot understand the things of God - they are foolishness to them. Or to borrow the language of Romans 3, there is none who seeks after God, there is no fear of God before their eyes. This, then, affirms another doctrine that the church has always established as true and that is the sinner’s total inability.
The Bible is clear that all are dead in trespasses and sins. That the heart of man is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. That all its imaginations are only evil continually. The mind is dark, the soul is dark, the heart is full of wicked corruption. The sinner, on his own, can’t do anything.
John 1:12, “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God, even to those who believe on His name, who were born not of blood” - it didn’t come from a human source - “nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” If you were given the authority to become a child of God, if you were born into the family of God, it wasn’t because you activated human will. “For by grace you are saved, through faith - that not of yourselves.”
1 Cor 1:30: “By His doing, you are in Christ Jesus.”
Let me show you who Christ died for. Christ die for His sheep as we learn in John 10.
Now, since the sinner cannot will to believe on his own, since he can only believe if God enables him to believe, and since God enables to believe those whom He has chosen, it should be clear that the provision of sacrifice that Christ provided on the cross would be on behalf of those who would believe because they were given life because they were chosen. For those who would believe who are the chosen and the called of God, to whom God regenerates, gives life, the atonement was designed to apply. Someone will say, “Wait a minute. You believe in a limited atonement?” Yes, I do believe in a limited atonement and so do you.
The atonement must not be understood as some general potential atonement or Jesus should have said instead of “It is finished,” “It is begun” - or “I hope this works out for a lot of folks.” Those who say the atonement is unlimited don’t mean that - they can’t mean that. They know the atonement is limited, they know that God limited it to those who believed, and sinners further limit it by not believing.
Hell is not going to be full of people Christ died for, redeemed, reconciled with God, was judged for, paid the debt in full. The debt is paid in full, therefore there no longer is any debt and one cannot end up in hell something Christ already paid for, and was judged for. So if Christ was already judged for all your sins and paid in full, how can you end up in hell? You can't. Something all of you failed to address. Because you can't. No matter how many verses you post. No one will go to Heaven by their own effort, by their own deeds. Our deeds cannot repay even the smallest sin. It's 100% Christ. Stop trying to add anything to it, because then you are rejecting God's perfect sacrifice.
