If Getting Out Depends on Your Accepting It, Then Your Giving Jesus Your Life is More Important than Jesus Being Put in the Ocean of Wrath

One idea common to the coalition of Arminians and the “confessional Reformed” is that God is holy and that propitiation is needed. God is offering Jesus as the expiation of the sins of both Israelites and
Egyptians. You don’t need to work. All you need to do is make the exchange: throw Jesus into the ocean of wrath, and you too can be transferred into His Kingdom.

The common false gospel is that Jesus the mediator at the cross made it possible for anybody to be saved from hell. Therefore, hell is a result of human actions and of the human failure to accept God’s offer.

Though the coalition gives a certain priority to the “man in the middle”, it says nothing about individual election. Its solution is that a specific sinner’s faith “lets” what God did at the cross work for that specific sinner. No works righteousness is required, no quality faith is necessary, because there is nothing to do BUT…”to give Jesus your life”, which of course means that faith alone is never alone.

Even though it becomes clear in the false gospel that what Christ did for you won’t save you if you don’t believe, what is not so clear is exactly what the Christ the redeemer did. Were the specific sins of the elect transferred to Christ, so that Christ already bore them?

Well, no we can’t talk about that, because that would mean talking about election, and even though “we” are all Christians here (but maybe there’s somebody who has not yet accepted), we don’t talk about individual Israelites being chosen or individual Egyptians not being chosen.

Whatever it was that Christ did, the common false gospel assumes that Christ did it for every sinner, even for those sinners who perish. What Christ did becomes a necessary but not sufficient condition, because God does not forgive sin without first showing God’s anger at our lack of perfection.

But if God’s purpose is simply to make the forgiveness of sin possible, if God’s purpose is to make a general statement about the need for punishment of imperfection, what has become of substitution? In a general atonement which plans for the possibility of all sinners being saved, Christ can be the most important person on the team, doing what is necessary to win, but this false Christ can never do anything without the rest of the team.

Because Christ being God and being put in the ocean of wrath means infinite possibilities and opportunities. You too can be on his team, even if you just try it, if you with all your doubts just join us in our story. And then we will say to the Egyptians: our God loves you also, and the only reason that you are not equally saved along with us is you yourselves. Christ’s death is not the difference.

The false Christ of the false gospel still depends on a moment’s decision from sinners to let Christ’s death save them.

Explore posts in the same categories: arminians, atonement

Tags: gospel coalition, Tim Keller

You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.