Sermonette for Saturday
And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:2
The Calvinists won’t admit it, but they have a difficult time with today’s text. They hate it because it destroys their damnable heresy that Christ died only for the sins of those who God has chosen to be saved (limited atonement). So they twist the text, claiming that what it is really saying is that He is the propitiation for the sins of everybody in the whole world who God has chosen to save. That is not what the text says; that is adding to the Word of God, and there is a terrible judgment for that (Revelation 22:18). The Calvinists do the same with other Scriptures, such as John 3:16, where they claim the reference to God so loving the world refers to God including Gentiles as well as Jews among those whom He has chosen to save. Again, they are adding words that are not in the text, perverting the plain, clear text as inspired by God. The Calvinists reason that if Christ died for all, they all must be saved. But the Bible never says that Christ’s death saves everybody. For example, in John 3:16, it clearly states that Christ’s death saves ‘whosoever believeth’. When the Philippian jailor asked about being saved, Paul and Silas did not tell him that he was already saved, but that he would be if he believed (Acts 16:31). And he did. And he was. We must be careful that we read what the Bible says, if we are to be delivered from such error as Calvinism.
A key word in our text is ‘whole’. The original Greek word is holos, and its meaning is simple: all, or entire, or complete. Nowhere in this word is there any space for an exception or a notwithstanding clause. It is a simple adjective whose simple meaning makes it clear that Christ’s atoning work on the cross was not limited or restricted in any way. God makes no limits on Christ’s atoning work; the only limits are those imposed by those who will not believe. Revelation 20:15 reminds us that nobody will be in the lake of fire because of their sins; they will be there because they are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Christ has already borne the judgment for sins by being the infinite propitiation for those sins.
Scripture has three great pillars of salvation, pillars to be found from cover to cover in the book. Calvinism denies the pillar of man’s ruin by denying that all sinners are lost. Calvinism denies the second pillar of God’s remedy by making that remedy less than infinite. Calvinists deny the third pillar of man’s responsibility by insisting that Christ died only for the elect, who have no choice in their salvation. What does the Bible say? – Jim MacIntosh