I just can't look at the cross and see Jesus at the very end of the cross looking up and saying, it is started. It's not what he said, is it? Was the death of Christ a full and complete payment to God satisfying his just wrath for some particular chosen people, or was it a potential for nobody? Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
It's probably the most well known verse in the New Testament. You've likely seen it on signs, at sporting events, posters hung over highways, stitched on hats and T shirts. Of course, the verse I'm talking about is John 3 16, For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son. The question is, what does Scripture mean when it says Christ died for the world? John MacArthur answers that question today on Grace to You, showing you who has benefited and who will benefit from Christ's death on the cross.
It's part of his study titled The Doctrines of Grace.
So now here's John with today's lesson. Certainly, the doctrine of the extent of the atonement is one of those doctrines that takes us way beyond where we will be comfortable to go. It stretches our minds to the breaking point. It takes our theology out to the perimeter of our tolerances. And in the end, it leaves us with some incomprehensible realities, and that's as it should be.
Since we are finite and he is infinite. There should be a vast distinction between what we can know and what God does know. But there are ways in which we can Go to the edge of our comprehension and to the edge of biblical revelation to understand the greatness and the glory of the work of redemption. Let's begin by sort of working our way up to discussing the extent of the atonement. Jesus came into the world, he said, to seek and to save those who are lost.
Luke 19:10. He came to seek and to save those who are lost. He was on. A recovery mission. He came into this world to rescue sinners, sinners who were alive then, who had lived already, and would live in the future.
His redemptive work on the cross reached back and reached forward and reached. out to those in his own generation. In order for God to save sinners. There had to be a sacrifice that paid the penalty for their sins. Jesus, who is God.
Came into the world, took on human form. to offer himself as that sacrifice. an unimaginable condescension, an undeserved Act. On the cross Jesus died. Not under the wrath of men, really, but under the wrath of God.
Not by the plans of the Romans and the Jews, but by the determined plan of God predestined before the world began. And he bore the wrath of God, and he bore separation from God. For sinners, for all the sinners who would ever believe. And while it was a sacrifice for Christ to do this, it was a satisfying sacrifice. That was why he came.
to offer that sacrifice. to purchase God's chosen people. to purchase his own bride. In the New Testament, Tells us in 1 Timothy 1:15 that the Lord Jesus came into this world to save sinners. Paul said that.
That's his own testimony. The Lord came into the world to save sinners. That's the great enterprise. God is an evangelist. God is a Savior.
Christ, then, God manifests, does a saving work. He came into the world to save sinners. And all those that he saves, he then mandates to carry on this work. We are told to pray for the salvation of all people, 1 Timothy 2. We are told to set a godly example.
and to live our lives as shining lights.
so that men can see the power of Christ in us and be drawn to him. We are told if we're going to name the name of Christ, we ought to be like him. We are told to proclaim the gospel and never to be ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it's the power of God to salvation. But we are told to proclaim it to the Jew and to the Greek as well. And it is a legitimate offer.
And a real offer, and every sinner on the planet is accountable for the response to that offer. Every man has a stewardship. That God has given him. It may be a stewardship of the law written in his heart and a stewardship of his rational mind looking at the creation around him and being led to the knowledge of God. And if he follows the path as he should, in obedience to that stewardship that God has given him, he'll find the truth will open to him.
Every man is accountable, and no man has an excuse. And so we are mandated to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, but we know this. Not everybody will repent and not everybody will believe. We know that. That has always been true.
Always. There are innumerable souls, even now, that have left this earth and are already out of the presence of God forever. In eternal torment. That fact is inescapable. And they're going there every day that we live.
By the thousands they Die. There is an eternal hell. And it will be continually filled with sinners. Until redemptive history is over. Sinners who Ignored.
Conscience, sinners who ignored the law written in their hearts, sinners who ignored. that which was known of God that was placed in them. Sinners who ignored the truth when they heard it, the scripture when they read it. The gospel when it was preached to them. Sinners who rejected the grace and goodness of God.
Sinners who refused to repent. And they all end up in hell, and if they were given the choice. While in hell, to choose differently. They wouldn't do it. They showed no interest in God then, they will have no interest in Him now.
So we are called to a worldwide task. And sinners are accountable for how they respond to the message. At whatever level they receive it. There are degrees of punishment in hell. Not everyone's punishment will be equally severe in hell.
That will depend upon how much truth you had. Truth is dangerous. The more you have, The more culpable you are, The greater your guilt. greater your punishment. Isaiah chapter 6.
And here is a call of God on the prophet Isaiah. And in verse 8. The Lord Asks a question. And the question is: this: Whom shall I send and who will go for us? Um people of God.
are in serious trouble. They are in grave danger. The prior chapter, chapter five, lays out the sins that were characteristic of God's people. And judgment is coming, severe and deadly judgment is coming. It's described at the end of the fifth chapter.
And God needs a messenger to warn. A messenger to call the people to repentance before the judgment comes. And the question is asked: whom shall I send and who will go for us, meaning the Trinity? And Isaiah responds: Here am I, send me, I will go. This, of course, should be the response of every believer.
Who am I going to send to this world plummeting into judgment? I'll go. And then the most bizarre statement. And the Lord said, Go and tell this people. You go tell them.
Tell them about judgment. And tell them about grace and forgiveness and mercy as well. Tell them to turn from their sin. You go, you tell them. And then it says, Keep on listening but don't perceive, keep on looking, but don't understand.
Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull, their eyes dim, lest they see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, return and be healed. What that is saying, and by the way, that passage is repeatedly quoted in the New Testament. Because it's the defining passage on the obstinacy of an unbelieving society. in particular Israel. Know this, he says to Isaiah.
They're going to listen but not understand. They're going to see but not comprehend. They're going to be insensitive, dull of hearing, dim of sight. They won't get it. They won't return.
They won't repent. They won't be healed.
So know this. When you go. I read somewhere a little note that said There is a massive turning to Christ in the world today, really. Where is that? Hi-I-I must be missing something.
And he asked the right question in verse 11. I said, Lord, how long? I mean, why should I do that very long? How long do I do that? Like a couple of weeks, maybe?
Just keep doing it until the cities are devastated and have no inhabitants, and houses have no people, and the land is desolate. And the Lord has removed everybody far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. Just do it till the place is devastated. Do it till there's nobody left to do it to. Just keep preaching.
Say, well, wait a minute. This seems fruitless, no? Verse 13 is the key. There will be a tenth portion in it. This is one of the very most tangled Hebrew constructions of any passage in the Old Testament.
I'm not going to try to unscramble it for you. Simply to say, the Lord says there's a tenth. This is what we call the doctrine of the remnant. There's a tenth. There's a a stump And at the end of verse 13, there is a holy seed.
That is that stump. There's a group, there's a remnant, there's a holy seed. It's that same seed that the Messiah saw in Isaiah 53, and he could see his seed, and his soul was satisfied. Do you think God has some mystery about who's going to be saved. Of course not.
He knows. He knows it will be few. He knows it will be a remnant. He knows it will be only a portion. A holy seed.
The word holy means set apart.
So we go. Like Isaiah went. And we go to the world and we go with the gospel. And we know that most will not believe. And we could be very discouraged and say, How long do I do that?
And the Lord says, Just keep doing it because there is out there a seed already designated as holy. They're already, in the purposes of God, set apart. For God. They are the elect. Uh uh Who upon hearing the gospel will repent.
and will believe. You remember thirteen forty eight. When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. As many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. There is a remnant.
There is of people. Appointed to eternal life. In Acts 18, the Lord came to Paul in a vision. Do not be afraid any longer. The Lord said, Go on speaking.
Do not be silent. I'm with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you. Listen to this, for I have many people in this city. They weren't converted yet. They weren't converted yet.
You go there. And you preach. Because I have many of the holy seed already there. They're just waiting to hear.
So who will believe? Who will believe? Who will believe our report? Isaiah says. Who will be saved at the preaching of the gospel?
All men are accountable, and the offer is legitimate, but who will be saved? And this launches us into our look at the doctrine of actual atonement, or definite atonement, or specific atonement, or peculiar or particular atonement, as it's all been called.
Now we already know this. When we ask the question, who will believe and be saved? We just finished talking about the doctrine of absolute inability and unwillingness.
sometimes called the doctrine of total depravity. And that doctrine says no sinner, and this is taught in the Bible: no sinner on his own can or will seek God, right? No sinner on his own will pursue the truth, will pursue righteousness, will come to reconciliation and salvation. He will not because he cannot. His condition as being dead in sin makes that impossible.
And so the only ones who can come are those to whom God gives life and light and understanding and repentance and faith. And we also learned from the study before that that those to whom God gives that are those whom He has chosen. to give that to. God chooses whom he will save. And God saves whom he has chosen.
Clearly, then, salvation is all of God. It's his holy seed. It's his holy offspring in the language of Isaiah 53. It's His people He already has identified. Their salvation is not apart from their will, but it is in harmony with their will when their will is altered by the power of God.
So that raises the question then. For whom did Christ die? For whom did he die? Most people in the church think that he died for everyone potentially and no one actually, right? He just died for everybody potentially.
It's sort of out there, and you can pick it up if you want it, or if you don't, it's not going to be applicable to you.
So he died for everybody potentially, and no one actually. Therefore The actualizing of the atonement depends upon the sinner deciding to actualize The atoning work of Jesus Christ. on his own behalf. And if the sinner never believes, if he chooses never to receive Christ, Then the death of Christ for him remains An unrealized potential.
So those who believe that Believe, listen carefully. That the atonement of Christ is limited in its effect.
Okay. It's limited in its effect. They like to say they do not believe in a limited atonement, they believe in an unlimited atonement. That's not true. They believe in an atonement that is limited in its power.
That is limited in its effect, that is limited in its impact to the will of the sinner. That's a very limited atonement. They believe that it is unlimited in its extent. That it extends to the whole of the human race, but it is very limited in its effect. What the Bible teaches is just the opposite.
It is limited in its extent. To those whom God chooses. and saves And for them, it is unlimited in its effect. in its power. It is then not a potential salvation for all, it is an actual salvation.
For the many. Food. Is our and our and us and us and the many and the many? For whom he died, for whom he actually bore sin's judgment. It is the holy seed.
It is the holy offspring. It is the chosen of the Father. It is the bride of the Son. See, this changes everything. If you believe that there's this sort of hanging, a sort of potential atonement.
floating around the world and you just have to convince sinners to Pick it up. To um Take advantage of it. Then evangelism takes on a completely different approach. It all becomes Working on the will of the sinner to get him to actualize this only potential atonement. And you have to ask yourself who gets the credit for that one, right?
Doesn't sound like the way to glorify God. See, that's the idea that Jesus' atonement is unlimited in its extent, but very limited in its effect. In fact, it isn't enough to save you. Is that amazing? Jesus dying on the cross, paying the penalty for your sin under that theology, isn't enough to save you.
You've got to do something to complete it, which sounds to me like salvation by works. But how is the sinner going to do that when he's absolutely unable to do that and unwilling to do that? Dead in trespasses and sin, blinded by Satan.
So we know not everybody's going to be saved. The atonement is limited in its extent. And the question is, who limited it? Who limited it? God I know that's sometimes hard to take.
But he did. There is hell and Most people who live in this world End up there. That's how it is. The real hard doctrine is the doctrine of eternal punishment. If there were no hell, we wouldn't even need to debate these other issues.
They'd be academic. But it's God who decides whom he will save and who chose them before the foundation. of the world. I just can't look at the cross and see Jesus at the very end of the cross looking up and saying, It is. Started.
Yeah. It is potential That's not what he said, is it? Was the death of Christ a full and complete payment to God, satisfying his just wrath for some particular? chosen people or was it and A potential For nobody An actual for nobody, a potential for everybody. Let's look at the scripture and see how to understand that.
We have to look at some terms.
Okay, world. Let's take world. Everybody comes and says, wait a minute, wait a minute. What about the world? What about the world?
Let me help you with that, okay? It's going to be like those old sword drill, Bible drills you had when you were a kid. You got to move fast. With me. We've heard the world Mentioned when we hear the word world, we think the world means everybody who ever lived.
Well That's not biblical. John 1:9, there was the true light which coming into the world enlightens every man. What does that mean? coming into the world. What does that mean?
Does that mean he came to every human being on the face of the earth? No, it just means he came into the human realm. He was in the world. He was in the human realm. And the world was made through him, and the world didn't know him.
World is just a term for humanity or the created world. He was in the world. God in human flesh. There's nothing about every single individual. on the planet being necessarily involved in that word.
Just the created order, just humanity.
So here you see the word world immediately has to be qualified. John 1.29.
Next day he saw Jesus coming to him, and he said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of what?
Now wait a minute, we have to qualify that immediately, don't we? If he took away the sin of the world, what? Everybody would be what? Saved, they'd all have their sin taken away.
So immediately we have to qualify the word world. And how do you qualify it? He came into this human realm, he came into this created order, he came to humanity to take away sin. And in the future Of course, it will be removed completely. In the new heaven and the new earth.
But you will notice that this is clearly limited. He didn't come to take away the sin of everybody. Go back to verse 11. He came to his own, and those who were his own did not receive him. Verse 12, but as many as received him to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name.
So taking away the sin of the world is then qualified by whoever believed in him. They were the only ones who had the right. To be forgiven and become children of God.
So, world is just a generic term meaning humanity, the created order. And has to be qualified. In John chapter 3. Again, verse 16: God so loved the world. What does that mean?
Humanity. He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him.
Well, immediately, you know, the world has to be qualified. If you don't qualify it, we're all going to come out universalists here. With everybody being saved. We know that can't be true. Because the Bible is so clear on Judgment.
In John chapter 4. All it means in John 3 is he loved humanity. He loved mankind. He loved people from all tribes and tongues and nations. He loved, and in a very general sense, the sense of common grace and the offer of the gospel and compassion, he shows love to the world.
But his saving love for the world is limited to Those in the world, the realm of humanity. who believe God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes John 4:42, again, it's the same thing. It says it's no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this one is indeed the Savior of the world. It doesn't say he's the potential savior of the world. He is the savior of the world.
He is the savior of the world, unqualified so. Therefore, the world has to be qualified. You can't qualify the word savior. He is the well potential Savior. You're trying to protect The universal concept of world, and you wind up limiting the Savior.
It really points out the picture, doesn't it? Either you're going to limit the effect of the saving work of Christ, or you're going to limit the extent of it, one of the two. He is the Savior of the world in this sense. He's the only Savior this world will ever have. He's the only savior the human race will ever know.
The world has no other Savior. And what's really important to note, and all the way through the Gospel of John. Whenever you read this, the Savior of the world, God so loved the world, he was in the world. etcetera. Keep in mind that John is addressing An environment of Jewish anti-Gentile racism.
And the idea that the Messiah was for the world. was a foreign idea. No pun intended. It was a revolutionary idea. In John 6, 33.
Again, the same emphasis. The bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven and gives life to the world. To the world. What part of the world? Verse 35: He who comes to me shall not hunger.
He who believes in me shall never thirst. You're gonna have life if you come and you believe from whatever nation on this planet. He's the Savior of the world. 1 John 4:14 says the same thing, in the sense that it's not limited to the Jews. But it is limited.
It's limited always to those who believe. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. John's current study is called The Doctrines of Grace.
Well, friend, what John said today about the extent of Christ's sacrificial atoning work, frankly, it might seem to contradict some Bible passages that say Christ died a substitutionary death for all men. To help you reconcile those passages and see how they all fit together, I encourage you to get a copy of John's new book called The Doctrines of Grace. It answers foundational questions about God's love and forgiveness of sinners like you and me. To order the brand new hardcover book called The Doctrines of Grace, contact us today. You can call us at 800-55 GRACE.
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All of those messages are available for you to download in both MP3 and transcript format free of charge. You can also tap into a wide range of other free Bible study tools including daily devotionals, study guides for John's radio series, and video of the Grace TU television program. You'll find all of that and more at our website, Yeah, yeah. Go there often. Again, it's gty.org.
Now for the entire Grace to U staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow, John continues his in-depth look at Christ's Atonement. It's a study that deserves your full attention.
So be here for that. It's another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on grace to you.
