NICHOLS: This is helpful for me to think about, because in many ways the context
and maybe this is true for some of you, came initially to Christianity, not necessarily
within Reformed context, and it strikes me that, like what sort of sealed this in my
thinking is Christ’s — is the pronouncement, “It is finished.”
And that is, I think, the thing we have to reckon with here.
Either Christ accomplished redemption on the cross and secured it, or if He simply provided
it and made it available, then that requires us to add something to what Christ did on
the cross for salvation to be effective.
And that was enough in my mind to answer this question.
THOMAS: I’ve always found for me, the doctrine of limited atonement or particular
redemption, Augustus Toplady, his double justice argument for me was so convincing.
“Just as God cannot twice demand, once at my bleeding surety’s hand and then again
at mine.”
What Toplady is saying is that if Jesus has endured the wrath that my sins deserve and
endured that wrath to the full, that God has meted out justice upon His Son in my room
as my substitute, He cannot demand that of me again on Judgment Day.
If Jesus died in that sense for everybody, then those who are unbelievers, who are punished
on the Day of Judgment, that sin is being punished twice.
It was punished once in Jesus, and now it’s being punished again in the sinner’s life,
which is double jeopardy.
HAMILTON: Undergirding the work of Christ is the holy concurrence of the Triune God
in the work of Christ.
What the Father has purposed, the Son has accomplished, and the Spirit applies.
And if you posit anything else, then you’re looking to posit some kind of disjunction
in the Holy Trinity.
You’re saying that the Father sent the Son to save everyone, the Son died in order to
save everyone, but the Holy Spirit chooses not save everyone.
At the very heart of the work of Christ is this glorious, holy concert between Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit in perfecting the work of Christ, perfecting it in terms of the eternal
counsel to save, perfecting it in the accomplished work of Christ on the cross, and perfecting
it in the application by the Holy Spirit to all of those given by the Father to the Son,
and that’s the glory and beauty and symmetry of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPROUL: I think it’s important to understand that the question really has to do with the
eternal design of God with respect to His plan of salvation.
Did God plan, from all eternity, to save each and every human person in this world?
Well, if He did sovereignly, eternally plan to save each and every person in this world,
then QED, every person in this world is saved.
But the New Testament screams to the contrary that not everybody is saved.
Well, did God fail in His ultimate design, in His plan for salvation?
Again, going back to what we’re saying is all that He did was to have an idea that He
would provide a possibility of redemption and then step back, wring His hands, pace
up and down and hope somebody might avail themselves of it?
But in the final analysis left it to our wills to, to make the final decision and have a
doctrine of the atonement where theoretically possible that no one would be saved?
But God did more than just make it possible for salvation; He made it certain.
He had a plan, eternal plan to save and if for no other reason than for the glory of
His Son.
The only explanation I can give for being included in the kingdom of God is that we
are the gifts that the Father gives to the Son that He may see the travail of His soul
and be satisfied.
But I think the big problem that we’re dealing with all of this is that we wrestle every
single day with a concept of human strength and freedom that is utterly unbiblical.
It has been inculcated from kindergarten on in the Western world through humanism that
really denies a fatal fall into sin.
The idea of freedom means that I have the equal power to incline myself to the left
or to the right.
I have no predilection.
I’m not dead in sin.
I’m not in bondage to sin.
But if it’s really true that I’m dead in sin and in bondage to sin, then the only
way I’ll ever be rescued from sin is that if God takes the initiative and brings me
safely home.