Christ in Our Place

I don't believe for one moment that Christ died for all the ungodly. I don't believe that.

You know why? Because I'm not a universalist. The Bible doesn't teach that everybody goes to heaven. Only believers go to heaven. Can Christ die for a person's sin and that person still go to hell?

When it comes to the question, for whom did Christ die, there is much debate among Christians. Yet the Bible is very clear, as you'll learn today, on the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Concluding our short series in Romans, we're ending by jumping ahead to chapter 5 of Romans to hear the good news of what Christ did for those who trust in Him. And as this is the final sermon in the series, it's also the final time you can request Dr. Sproul's line-by-line commentary on Romans when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.

This offer does end today and won't be repeated next week, so respond before midnight. If you've never asked the question, for whom did Christ die, or you believe that Christ died merely to make salvation possible for everyone, then I encourage you to stay with us as R.C. Sproul helps us see the powerful and effective work of Christ as He laid down His life for His sheep.

Here's Dr. Sproul. Now Paul turns his attention to the atonement of Christ and what it has provoked in our salvation. So let's look at it beginning in verse 6, for when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. Now at this point, Paul discusses the when of our atonement. At what point in history the redemption of the people of God was accomplished, and he speaks of the when of this accomplishment in two ways. The first point is the when with respect to us. At what point in our personal history did Christ offer Himself on the cross? And the first thing that the Apostle tells us is that it was when we were still without strength.

Now let's comment on that before we look at the temporal aspect of the atonement, but in the first instance he stresses that Christ dies for the ungodly while they are still in a state of being without strength. One of the cardinal doctrines of biblical Christianity has to do with original sin and its impact on our spiritual strength. Virtually every church there is confesses some doctrine of original sin, but where the debate rages historically is over the degree of that corruption. To what extent have we fallen from our original righteousness? Augustine waged this battle in antiquity against the heretic Pelagius who denied the fall altogether, but the cardinal point that Augustine taught was that the ravages of sin are so great, they penetrate so deeply within our souls that we are left in a state of spiritual death.

And what that spiritual death means that even though we are still alive biologically, even though we have faculties that remain intact, we still have a brain, we have a mind, we have affections, and we have a will, we have a capacity for making choices and all of that, but nevertheless our humanity has been so damaged by the fall that our moral state by nature is one that Augustine described as a state of moral inability. We have the volitional power to choose what we want in any circumstances, but sin is so deep that we no longer have any desire for God or any want to for the gospel or for Christ. And unless God the Holy Spirit empowers the word of preaching, unless God the Holy Spirit empowers the outreach of evangelism, no one will ever come to Christ. That's the point that Jesus made in the sixth chapter of John when He said, no man can come to Me unless it is given to him by the Father.

And so Paul again is teaching this same principle. He's saying that Christ died for the ungodly while we were still without strength, and the strength that He has in view here is clearly spiritual strength. We have no strength in and of ourselves to affect our own salvation. And so God didn't wait for us to exercise our wills, to incline ourselves to Him, to repent of our sins, to make ourselves in such a state that it would be appropriate for Him to provide a sacrifice or an atonement for us. No, while we were still in this state that Paul later in his letter to Ephesians describes as spiritual death, while we were dead in sin and trespasses, Christ died.

But that's the when with respect to our human condition, the when with respect to history. He says in the next clause, for when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. We read in the Bible every Christmas that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled when Quirinius was governor of Syria. That's an integral part of the Christmas narrative of Luke chapter 2. But what we're getting there in that announcement is that Christ came into this world in real time, in real history. Salvation is an activity that God performs in history. And throughout the whole Old Testament, all that we read in the activity of God in ministering to His people, to creating a nation for Himself out of Israel, giving them the law, giving them the prophets, ministering to them through their entire sojourn through the pages of the Old Testament, all that time God was preparing history for that moment that would be so right that it was just the time for Christ to come.

That is He came in due time. And so Paul tells us that when we were still without strength in due time, that is in the time that God sovereignly appointed, Christ died for the ungodly. But instantly as Paul remembers the death of Christ, he always, always when he mentions the death of Christ, speaks of its purpose. Paul does not see the death of Christ as a tragedy in the history of the annals of human affairs. He doesn't see this as the great destruction of an innocent man by a corrupt clergy and corrupt political body in Jerusalem. No, he says there's a reason why he died in due time. There was a purpose of his death, not simply to demonstrate the love of God or display some kind of moral influence into the universe, but he died for the ungodly.

Now you at this point may include yourself in that category or not. It's easy to come to the conclusion that if you are in the category of the ungodly that Christ therefore died for you, not so fast. It's true that Christ died for the ungodly, no question about that, because all of us for whom Christ died are numbered among the ungodly. But again one of the most volatile controversies that abides in every generation among Christians is the question, did Christ die for all the ungodly? I don't believe for one moment that Christ died for all the ungodly. I don't believe that.

You know why? Because I'm not a universalist. The Bible doesn't teach that everybody goes to heaven. Only believers go to heaven. Only those who belong to Christ. And every believer that has ever been saved was at one time completely ungodly. And so Christ certainly died for the ungodly in the sense that He died for those who came to faith in Him. But again the controversy is did Christ die for everybody? We know that everybody is ungodly, that Christ died for the ungodly, and the conclusion many make is therefore He died for everybody. Well think about it, dear friends.

Two things you have to think about deeply. Did Christ's atonement satisfy the righteousness of God for all the sins of every person? And again the majority report is that Christ died for everybody, died on a cross for everybody, paid the price of sin for everybody. Well if everybody's sins are paid for, who's in hell? Can Christ die for a person's sin and that person still go to hell? Or is His death not sufficient to satisfy the demands of God's law?

Do we have this idea that in order to satisfy the righteousness of God, two things have to happen. Christ has to die, and we have to repent and come to Him, because obviously His death wouldn't cover every sin because the sin of unbelief would be excluded. But if you really believe that Christ died for all the sins of all of the people and His atonement was effective, then you would have to come to the conclusion that He died for everybody equally and that everybody's in heaven.

But the Bible gives precious reason for anybody to believe that, doesn't it? And again the Bible doesn't teach that Christ died to make salvation possible. Christ died for His sheep. He laid down His life for His sheep, and when He did that there was never a doubt in heaven that all for whom He died had their sins covered, and all for whom He died would spend eternity in heaven. Remember how Jesus talked about this to His disciples. He says, all whom the Father has given to Me come to Me, and He dies for those whom the Father has given to Him. Now the idea of limited atonement deals with the question of God's design.

What God intended? Did God intend to save a remnant of the world, and He sent His Son to die for His sheep, to die for those people to ensure their salvation? That's what limited atonement means. It means definite atonement. That is that the atonement of Christ was not just to make things possible because in that theory it is theoretically possible that Christ could have died and He would never see the travail of His soul and be satisfied. If the efficacy of Christ's death depends on you or depends on me, Christ would have no, no fruit from His death. But while we were without strength, while we were impotent, while we were powerless in our souls to incline ourselves to the things of God, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

And if that's the ungodly in general, then let's look just a little bit later in the text. For Paul goes on, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. Now here Paul uses two different words. One is translated righteous, the other is translated good.

Paul again, let's read it again. He says scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet for adventure maybe perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. Calvin believed there was no distinction here between the righteous person and a good person that basically was a hendiotist, two different words referring to the same thing. Luther, on the other hand, was convinced that Paul was making a distinction, and the theologians who take that tack that Paul was differing between a righteous man and a good man, though a good man would necessarily also have to be a righteous man. The idea here is that righteous is somewhat formal, and a righteous person can be somebody who obeys the law, does what is right, and his behavior provokes a certain measure of respect.

Paul says we can respect people that we think are morally upright, but it's rare that anybody's going to die, lay down their lives just because they respect somebody's moral character. When we talk about a good person, now we're speaking about more than their moral activity, more than their conformity to principles of righteousness, but rather there's an effective idea involved here that a good person is the kind of person that produces a certain love and concern from us. We say, oh, he's a good fellow. That means he's a nice guy. He's a kind person.

He's the kind of kind person that we would be willing to go the extra mile to reciprocate his affection and his kindness to us. And so Paul is saying it's rare that anybody's going to die for a righteous man, maybe for somebody they really love or somebody that they really appreciate, somebody that has rendered certain personal kindnesses to you. You may be inclined even in your paganist to jump on a hand grenade for that person. But Paul says in the case of the atonement, it wasn't that Jesus is dying for righteous people, and He's not dying for good people. He's dying for godless people. I mean it's rare that we ever come to a full conviction of our helplessness and of our wickedness.

All the power of our psychology is at work every minute to suppress full admission of our guilt and of our hopelessness. But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Notice the shift in language here from the generic ungodly to the specific for us while we were in this state of sin. God so set forth His love for us that Christ died for us. Now what does Paul mean? Does he mean for us men, for us sinners, again going back that Christ died for everybody, but again and again and again in Paul's epistles he speaks of the specific work of grace that Christ does for the believer.

And when he talks about us, he's talking about those of us who are in Christ Jesus for the Christian. Now what about the love of God? God demonstrates His lone love toward us.

There are two things I want to say about this. I mentioned the first idea before to you, but here it comes up again in this context that we talk about the love of God in more than one way. That theology distinguishes among three distinct types of the love of God. The first aspect of the first type of divine love is that love that we call the love of benevolence. As I've told you this before, God's love of benevolence, let's take the word bene means good or well.

We have a benediction. That's a good saying, right? And benevolence, we talk about being volitional creature, volence has to do with will. And the Bible tells us that God's basic attitude towards the world, towards fallen humanity is one of good will. God is not unkind. God is not mean-spirited. But the basic posture of the Creator towards the world is one of good will, and that every person in this world experiences in one way or another the good will of God. How do we know that?

Because they're still alive. That every moment the sinner continues to exist in this world, he can only continue to exist by virtue of the good will of God, by God's forbearance, by God's patience with Him. And so in this sense, God loves everybody in the sense that His good will flows towards everyone. The second sense of divine love that we've talked about is His beneficence. And just as His benevolence refers to His good will, His love of beneficence refers to His good acts.

The Bible tells us that God's rain falls on the just and the unjust. So in the sense that all people, repentant or not, believers or not, receive certain kind acts from the hand of God. In that sense, they all experience God's love of beneficence. You've heard me say again and again how distressed I am when I hear ministers preach that God loves you unconditionally. That message is everywhere in our culture today, and what the pagan takes from that is unconditional love means that God loves me no matter what I do or what I don't do. I can depend on the love of God even if I reject Jesus Christ. I can depend on God's love even if I never repent of my sins.

That's not the biblical message at all. But when we talk about the unconditional love of God, that love that God has that never fails, we're talking about what's called His love of complacency. Now even that is a little bit difficult to grasp because the love of complacency that God has does not mean complacency in the sense in which we use the word complacent in our vocabulary today. But when we talk theologically about God's love of complacency, we're talking about God's love that He has, the delight that He takes, first of all supremely in His Son, that God's love for His Son is without measure, without qualification, that He loves His Son fully and perfectly. But beloved, the love that the Father has for His Son extends beyond His Son to those who belong to His Son so that only the believer receives God's love of complacency because of Christ, not because of anything in us, but because God gives gifts to His Son from all eternity. He loves His Son, and from all eternity He plans to give a portion of humanity to His Son that His Son might be the firstborn of many brethren. He loves His Son with this love of complacency, and He demonstrates that love of complacency for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Now the second aspect here is one that maybe is too technical to even get into, but I'll just mention it in passing. In German theology, there emerged a debate in the twentieth century about the atonement. What some of the theologians were opposed to was the classic doctrine of the atonement as the Son's satisfying the wrath of the Father. The biblical view again and again is that though the Son comes and satisfies the righteousness of God, takes the wrath of God upon Himself, that He comes because the Father sends Him.

It's the Father's idea from all eternity to which the Son gives His total agreement as well as the Spirit. This is called the covenant of redemption, that from all eternity there is one purpose and one mind in the Godhead, and it is out of the love of God that He sends His Son to take His wrath for us. That's what the church doesn't believe anymore. You see, the church believes in a God who has no wrath, but remember back in Romans 1 when we started this study and Paul introduced the gospel, and we thought that he would just go ahead and unpack the gospel, but instead the first thing he does after he announces the revelation of that righteousness of God that is by faith, he then plunges into a different revelation, the revelation of the wrath of God that is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of many, and spends a whole chapter giving us the background for salvation. If there's no wrath in God, there's no need for the gospel, folks. If there's no wrath in God, there's no need for Christ. But as long as people are not concerned about the wrath of God, they feel no need to come to Jesus. But if God is real, so is His wrath, and the biblical view of salvation is rescue from wrath, because His wrath is stored up against the day of wrath, as Paul has said. And he most certainly will demonstrate that, but he has demonstrated his love towards us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. That was R.C. Sproul, and because there is God's wrath, we thank God for the gospel.

We thank God for Christ. You're listening to the Sunday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. What you heard today was a sermon from R.C. Sproul's extensive series in Romans, and those sermons eventually became his line-by-line commentary. So if you'd like to learn more about this significant letter from the Apostle Paul, request the hardcover commentary when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, or by using the link in the podcast show notes. Suitable for devotional reading or serious Bible study, this is a resource you won't want to miss. Today is the final day to request this Romans commentary, so respond now at renewingyourmind.org before this offer ends at midnight. And remember, it won't be repeated next Sunday. Next time will be in another letter from the Apostle Paul, his letter to the Galatians. Be sure to join us next Sunday here on Renewing Your Mind.