Sufficient for All, Efficient for Believers?
I certainly agree that the death of Jesus Christ is the only and entirely complete judicial satisfaction for the sins of anyone. But this satisfaction was never intended to be enough for the sins of the non-elect. It’s not enough to talk about the guaranteed success of the atonement for the elect, because we need to talk about the justice of the atonement and to do that we need to talk about God’s imputation of the sins of the elect to Christ.
It might sound rhetorically neat to say that Christ’s death is enough for the non-elect, but until somebody can tell me what Christ’s death did for the non-elect, all you have is deceptive language.
I Peter 1:18–“knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you 21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.”
The Bible uses “commercial” language to talk about the blood of Christ being precious. One death once for all time is the only death Christ had to die for those whose sins were imputed to Him. God’s justice demanded the death of Christ because certain specific sins had been charged to Him by God the Trinity. This is not to say that Christ would have had to die twice if there had been more elect.
The old formula from Lombard was used in the political compromise of the Synod of Dordt, “sufficient for all, efficient for the elect”. In our day many who think themselves more prudent than God don’t want to talk about the word “elect” so instead they say— sufficient for all, efficient for the believer.
What we really need to see is not only the extent of the atonement but its nature. You can’t understand the nature of the atonement without knowing about its extent. But you can know about the extent and still not know about the justice of the atonement. What do people mean by “sufficient for the elect”?
If we don’t understand how Christ’s death is enough for the elect, denying that Christ’s death works for the non-elect will not explain the gospel. Why did Christ need to die for the elect?
The regeneration of the elect does not satisfy God’s justice. Nor is it the Holy Spirit’s application of benefits from Christ’s death which appeases God’s wrath. God’s wrath has already been appeased or not, and justification is what happens when the elect are legally joined to that death. There is no “union” which is more “real” than this legal counting. The legal counting is based on the elect being eternally united to Christ by election and by Christ’s real death for their sins alone.
We need to talk about Christ being “made sin” (II Cor 5:21) by the imputation of all the sins of the elect, and not only about Christ being made a “sin-offering”. The atonement has commercial and legal merit, not only because Christ can and does do things by measure (healing some but not others) but also because the Bible speaks about being bought by blood from the accusations of the law..
One good discussion in print on this is by Tom Nettles in By His Grace and For His glory and his chapter on “Christ Died for our Sins, According to the Scriptures.” Nettles questions the formula (sufficient/ efficient) used by Dordt while at the same time being honest about the history of its use.
Nettles quotes Andrew Fuller: “We could say that a certain number of Christ’s acts of obedience becomes ours as that certain number of sins becomes his. In the former case his one undivided obedience affords a ground of justification to any number of believers; in the latter, his one atonement is sufficient for the pardon of any number of sins or sinners.
Nettles explains that Fuller “misconceives the biblical relation of imputation. Justification should not be considered as analogous to atonement but rather to the imputation of Adam’s sin”.
I encourage you to read more of Nettles. Error one: the tradition leading from Edwards to Andrew Fuller tends to identify regeneration and effectual calling as the “real union” and then it tends to identify this “application” with the atonement itself. What many Calvinists mean by definite atonement is that the “real union” makes the atonement definite. Thus they make the Spirit’s work to be the real difference instead of Christ’s death. These same folks tend to question the traditional tulip. See for example the new book by Todd Billings on “union”
Nettles: “A second error is subtle in nature and involves a shift in the understanding of the sacrificial death. Although Jesus’ death is spoken of as passive obedience–and though the concepts of reconciliation and propitiation are defined as activities accomplished in the Father’s setting forth God the Son–when the sufficiency of the death of Christ arises, the emphasis shifts from the Son’s passive obedience to what he actively accomplished by his infinite divine nature.”
Nettles quotes John Dagg and Abraham Booth against the “sufficient” general view of the atonement. Booth’s Divine Justice Essential to the Divine Character, book 3:60
“While cheerfully admitting the sufficiency of Immanuel’s death to have redeemed all mankind, had all the sins of the whole human species been equally imputed to Him, we cannot perceive any solid reason to conclude that his propitiatory sufferings are sufficient for the expiation of sins which he did not bear, or for the redemption of sinners whom he did not represent. For the substitution of Christ, and the imputation of sin to him, are essential to the scriptural doctrine of redemption by our adorable Jesus…
And from Dagg’s Manual of Theology, p330: “Some have maintained that, if the atonement of Christ is not general, no sinner can be under obligation to believe in Christ, until he is assured that he is one of the elect. This implies that no sinner is bound to believe what God says, unless he knows that God designs to save him.”
Explore posts in the same categories: atonement, imputationTags: Abraham Booth, Andrew Fuller, Dagg, Todd Billings, union with Christ
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For the Elect Alone 
November 9, 2013 at 4:23 pm
hough Andrew Fuller affirmed a particular atonement in a certain sense– in that the atonement will procure faith for only the elect–he is not willing to say that Christ was only the propitiation for the elect alone. Instead of telling that plain truth, that Christ either already died for a sinner or already did not, Andrew Fuller wanted to say that Christ died for all sinners in some sense. This universal sense advocated by Andrew Fuller has to do with the nature of propitiation. He denies that Christ in the past propitiated the Trinity for the sins of any specific person. Rather, Andrew Fuller teaches that Christ died to make an offer of propitiation to every sinner.
According to Andrew Fuller, what’s important is the “covenantal design and intent” of what Christ did, that there could be propitiation now if the Holy Spirit were to cause a sinner to accept the offer of propitiation and thus join themselves to Christ through faith .
Fuller asserted an universal conditional sufficiency in Christ’s death for all sinners. It is an old and subtle doctrine, but Andrew Fuller was a very subtle man, much like John Wesley, using words like “imputation” in ways meant to mislead those who had a different meaning for the words.
What does Andrew Fuller accomplish by shifting from what Christ DID back then over there to who Christ Is and what He “Can” do here and now if the Spirit helps a sinner to take up the “offer”?
Andrew Fuller changes the meaning of the propitiatory death of Christ. With the Arminians, he makes the propitiation to be dependent on the sinner having faith. The subtle “hybrid” part though is that (with the Calvinists) Andrew Fuller also makes the having faith be dependent on what God obtained by means of Christ’s death.
Andrew Fuller ends up putting the emphasis on grace as opposed to justice. God is sovereign now to give faith to elect sinners because of Christ’s death. The idea that God has already been JUSTLY propitiated for a sinner (or not) is no longer in the picture. Andrew Fuller’s notion of “sovereign grace” is opposing the gospel of God being justified in justifying the ungodly. He is opposing justice in the name of grace.
Two comments. First, even though Fullerites want to say that the only way to be consistent in teaching a definite propitiation (what Christ WAS as laying down his life) is to teach an eternal justification, where the elect only subjectively find out that they were always justified, I do not (and Abraham Booth did not) teach that any unbeliever is justified.
All the justified elect are people who believe the gospel. Belief in the gospel is an immediate consequence (not a condition) of God’s imputation of Christ’s death to the elect (not of God’s imputation of the elect’s sins to Christ).
“Through faith” in Romans 3:25 does not mean “conditioned on faith”. Faith for the elect is what justice demands AFTER righteousness is imputed to them. I do not say it “their right” but it is Christ’s right because of what Christ WAS AND DID. Once sins were imputed to Christ, then Christ died by the law because of these sins, and now Christ is free and justified before the law.
So I can and do say to any unbeliever, unless you believe the gospel, you are not yet justified. But I also say to those unbelievers: your believing is not something you can or will do unless Christ died for you, and you will never know if Christ did until you believe the gospel.
Second comment. Look at what Andrew Fuller is saying with his distinction between what Christ is as opposed to what Christ was. Fuller is teaching that God is governmentally sovereign and therefore God can do whatever God wants to do now with what Christ did then.
If so, why did Christ die? To make it possible? So that propitiation “might” happen? To ask such questions leads to another question. If God is so sovereignly superior to justice in His government, why did Christ need to die at all? If the meaning and effectiveness of the propitiation was only to be assigned later, is that meaning a matter of justice or only arbitrary?
Romans 5:11 “We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the atonement.”
Galatians 4:5-6 –”to redeem those who were under the law, so that we would receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
Edwards and Andrew Fuller use the concept of “covenantal union” to say that the atonement which really matters is the application of Christ’s death. They deny that the “union” is legal. They insist that the legal is “based on the union”. The logic leads to the “atonement” not being what Christ did to satisfy the law, but instead the application of “the covenantal intent”.
It’s one thing to say that Christ’s death will be effective, and another to say WHY Christ’s death must be effective. Christ’s death saves not only because of God’s sovereign will but also because of God’s justice.
Although the gospel teaches that God only imputed the sins of the elect to Christ, the gospel does not teach that all the elect were justified as soon as Christ bore those sins. Romans 6 explains how the elect must come into legal union with Christ’s death. Until the elect are “placed into” that death, they remain under the wrath of God.
But folks like Andrew Fuller use “union” talk to change the meaning of the atonement and accuse the rest with thinking there is no need for faith. If the substitution for sins has already been made, they say, then all for whom it was made should logically already be justified. If the righteousness has already been obtained, then all for whom it was earned should logically already be justified by it.
There is no justification apart from faith. Faith in the gospel is NOT a mere recognition that we were already justified. But those who follow Andrew Fuller tend to deny any distinction between the atonement and the legal application of the atonement.
At the end of the day, these folks locate the efficacy of the atonement not in Christ’s propitiation itself but only in the efficacy of regeneration and faith to “covenantally unite” people with that propitiation. Though they may formally agree to some “legal aspect” to “union”, for all practical purposes they ignore or deny the reality that God already imputed the sins of only the elect to Christ.
In this way, the followers of Andrew Fuller make way for the idea of some “universal sufficiency” in Christ’s propitiation. And when it turns out that this ‘sufficiency” is not enough to save the non-elect, they answer: “well, you can’t say that there’s double jeopardy until after a person has been married to Christ by faith. Then, and only then, they say, could you say that a person was dying for the same sins twice.”
The followers of Andrew Fuller teach universal sufficiency and an offer (to everybody I guess who is not already dead) . They claim that we can teach everybody that “Christ is dead for you” without that meaning that Christ has died for your sins, because according to Andrew Fuller, Christ’s death for sinners is not the same thing legally as Christ’s death to pay for the specific sins of sinners. God did not really impute specific sins, according to Fuller, Edwards and the New England Theology.
December 2, 2013 at 8:33 pm
David Allen, Whosoever Will, 2010, p 83—Redemption understood as literal payment makes the atonement secure its own application.”
Andrew Fuller–”if the specificity of the atonement be placed in the atonement itself, and not in the sovereign will of God, it must have proceeded on the principle of PECUNIARY satisfactions. In commercial payments, the payment is equal to the amount of the debt, and being so, it is not of sufficient value for more than those who are actually liberated by it.
letter to Ryland #3, 2:708
For Andrew Fuller, Christ’s death is specific only because of God’s sovereignty not because of God’s justice, and not because of the nature of the atonement.. Fuller makes a distinction between the nature of the atonement and its design and application.
But unless we believe in eternal justification, don’t we all make a distinction between the atonement and its legal application? Yes, there is a time gap, but the question remains about the imputation of specific sins to Christ and the nature of the justice of Christ’s death at the cross.
btw, Dabney is no better than Andrew Fuller on this point. Dabney claims: “Satisfaction was Christ’s indivisible act, and infinite vicarious merit, the whole in its unity, without numerical division, subtraction or exhaustion. ,,The expiation is single and complete, and in itself considered, has no more relation to one man’s sins than another….Only as it is applied in effectual calling, does the expiation become personal and receive a limitation.” Systematic , p 528
April 20, 2014 at 6:43 pm
Every conditionalist I know would agree that faith is not the cause of salvation. But, if the death of Jesus is sufficient to save the non-elect, then saving faith cannot be a result of Christ’s death. And when that is so, you are left with an evangelism in which union with “Christ” (the false one who died for everybody) because of faith becomes everything.
April 20, 2014 at 6:44 pm
D A Carson, The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God, Crossway, 76—-”If one holds that the Atonement is sufficient for all and effective for the elect, both sets of texts and concerns are accommodated.
June 23, 2014 at 1:41 am
Are the non-elect responsible to repent and believe the Gospel given that no atonement has been made for them? You have done a fine job through many articles and postings in convincing me that the ‘sufficient for all, efficient for the elect’ (Lombardian formula) view of the death of Christ is flawed and you have convinced me, beyond doubt. that Christ’s death is sufficient and efficient for the elect alone! However, in the light of this do we command the non-elect to repent and believe?
June 23, 2014 at 11:49 am
I am not a “hardshell”. I think the gospel is instrumental and necessary in salvation, indeed, it is the “power of God unto salvation”. God does not save anybody apart from the gospel. I teach the duty of every sinner to believe the gospel. Every sinner is to be taught the gospel, and without any qualification or preparation or hesitation about it.
The hardshells teach that some “anonymous Christians” are born justified and never hear the gospel. That is a million miles from my position. It is also the opposite from that which is taught by Engelsma and the folks in the Protestant Reformed church.
The basic question is never about who should hear the gospel. The concern is –what is the gospel. God shall justly save all for whom Christ died, and not one of the elect will be lost because we use the word election.
Abraham Booth, Glad Tidings
p 247 “Now the question is: Do the Scriptures lead us to conclude that the mind and the conscience are brought into the new state by an immediate divine energy, without the medium of either the law or the gospel? I think not. It is written: by the law is the knowledge of sin.
p 249 “For an ‘awakened sinner’ to be persuaded that regeneration is effected without the instrumentality of divine truth, is to give an injurious direction to his prayers and expectations.”
June 23, 2014 at 11:50 am
Since regeneration is without means, hardhsells argue, then it has no temporal connection whatsoever with repentance and belief of the gospel. Thus, they believe that a person can go for a period of hours, days, weeks, or even years between being regenerated (saved, born again) and being converted (repenting, believing the gospel). They believe that a regenerate person can go for hours, days, weeks, or even years being ignorant of the only basis of salvation that is revealed in the gospel and even being openly hostile to the gospel. They say that this glorifies God’s sovereignty in salvation. They say that to believe that conversion is an immediate and inevitable fruit of regeneration is to believe that God cannot save someone without the means of the gospel, thus denying God’s sovereignty.
However, to say that God does or does not do things in a certain way is not a denial of God’s sovereignty; in fact, it establishes the truth of God’s sovereignty. God, the sovereign Creator and Controller of the universe, has revealed to us in His Word how He glorifies Himself in the salvation of sinners.
God will not “save” a sinner and then “leave him” (actually cause him to be) in unbelief even for a second, because this does not glorify Him. When God saves someone, He i glorifies Himself in the heart of that person by causing that person to repent of his dead works and fruit unto death and to believe the true gospel of salvation conditioned on the atoning blood and imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ alone, giving all the glory to God for his salvation. Not only will he not be an atheist; he will not even be an Arminian.
The Hardshells say that this “limits God.” But it does no such thing. It acknowledges that God glorifies Himself in the hearts of His people as He says in His Word. It is actually the hardshells who are limiting God by saying that He is unable or unwilling to cause His people to believe in Him and give Him all the glory in their salvation at the time He regenerates them.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is [the] power of God to salvation to everyone believing, both to Jew first, and to Greek; for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; even as it has been written, But the just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:16-17). Hardshells do not believe that the gospel is the power of God to salvation to everyone believing.
“Brothers, truly my heart’s pleasure and supplication to God on behalf of Israel is for [it] to be saved. For I testify to them that they have zeal to God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to the righteousness of God. For Christ [is] the end of Law for righteousness to everyone that believes” (Rom. 10:1-4).
Hardshells do not believe that all who are ignorant of the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, who are seeking to establish their own righteousness, and who do not submit to the righteousness of God, are unregenerate.
January 4, 2015 at 4:47 pm
http://www.cprf.co.uk/uncommongraceresources.htm#.VKluFvnF_Do
February 4, 2015 at 4:32 am
One book worth buying from Crossway is Precious Blood: The Atoning
Work of Christ, especially the chapter by Carl
Trueman on “Post-Reformation Developments in the Doctrine of the
Atonement.”, p196
“Socinius says if Trueman’s sin have been punished on the cross, it is not mercy for God to forgive Trueman but justice. But Grotius says, if the punishment on the cross is merey an equivalent of Trueman’s sins, then it is still possible to build mercy into the equation…If
Trueman’s sins are not imputed to Christ, then it’s possible that Christ’s righteousness is not imputed to Trueman. That fits well with an Arminian view of justification, but I can assure you that Trueman has a problem with it.”
I don’t propose to address the theology of Edwards and the New England
theology or Andrew Fuller which claimed him as its father. But to answer why gospel coalition folks associate with Driscoll who denies definite atonement. John Piper teaches particular atonement, but in claiming to believe everything Arminians believe about the atonement (and more-died to purchased extra for the elect), John Piper leaves room for a governmental view. It’s one thing to say that Jesus was punished for sins. It’s quite another to say that God imputed the sins (not simply punishment) of the elect to Christ. It’s very difficult to find that in Piper. After all, he’s an evangelical. Piper believes everything Billy Graham and Rick Warren believe. And More. No antithesis.
August 12, 2015 at 8:39 pm
http://www.the-highway.com/sufficiency.html
November 23, 2015 at 2:12 pm
the non-elect will be destroyed because Christ never died for them
Christ’s death is inadequate for the non-elect, not enough for them
and the non-elect will be destroyed for this reason
i know the infras insist no, the non-elect die only for their own, not fault of Christ’s death
but since the elect do not die for their sin, the sin of the non-elect is not the only factor
the non-election of the sinner is not conditioned on the sinner
no sin will count against as many as believe the gospel
each and every sin will count for as many as don’t believe the gospel (not only the sin of unbelief of the gospel but all sins)
but yes, it’s a sin not to believe the gospel
and all those for whom Christ died will believe the gospel, Christ having died to obtain this gift for them
so Christ’s death is not adequate to give the non-elect faith, because Christ never died for the non-elect
June 26, 2018 at 2:13 am
When preachers talk about the sufficiency of Christ’s death, they argue that since Christ is God, then His death must have been enough for everybody.
So is the sufficiency of Christ’s death real atonement?
Is the sufficiency of Christ’s death only hypothetical propitiation or did Christ’s death really take away God’s just wrath against every sinner?
So did the sufficiency of Christ’s death purchase faith for everybody?
Or was Christ’s death not ever designed to be sufficient to purchase faith for anybody?
And is faith something that God gives to sinners without needing to purchase by Christ’s death?
Does the Holy Spirit give faith to some sinners without Christ having purchased faith for anybody?
Does the Holy Spirit give faith to only some for whom Christ died?
Or is faith the one thing God does not give to anybody?
And does this mean that Christ’s death without our faith is not sufficient?
Romans 8: 32
He did not even hold back His own Son but handed Him up for us. How will He not also with Him give us everything?
I Peter 1: 19 redeemed with the precious blood of Christ….20 He was chosen before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the ages for you 21 WHO THROUGH HIM ARE BELIEVERS in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory.
2 Peter 1:1 To those who have obtained a faith of equal privilege with ours through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ.
June 26, 2018 at 2:47 am
Tim Keller–Jesus’ “body was being destroyed in the worst possible way“but that was a flea bite compared to what was happening to his soul. When he cried out that his God had forsaken him he was experiencing hell itself. . . . We learn that what he felt on the cross was far worse and deeper than all of our deserved hells put together. And this makes emotional sense when we consider the relationship he lost. . . . The longer, deeper, and more intimate the relationship, the more tortuous is any separation. But the Son’s relationship with the Father was beginningless and infinitely greater than the most intimate and passionate human relationship. When Jesus was cut off from God he went into the deepest pit and most powerful furnace, beyond all imagining”
In Keller’s treatment of atonement, Jesus experienced what no human ever could. But under penal substitution, the punishment Christ bore in our place is death. For Keller to be painting death as something far removed from human experience only serves to confuse. http://www.rethinkinghell.com/2018/05/death-or-eternal-suffering-which-one-reveals-how-much-jesus-loves-you-a-response-to-timothy-keller/
June 26, 2018 at 2:31 pm
Jesus said, you believe not, because you are not my sheep
false preachers say—you believe, but not because you are my sheep
Universal offer Calvinists teach that you can’t command sinners to believe the gospel without also telling all these sinners that Christ died for them
some Universal offer Calvinists teach that Christ died special for some sinners to purchase faith for them
but these universal offer Calvinists teach that the sufficiency of Christ’s death means that Christ actually died for all sinners
the purpose of this death for all sinners is less than clear
Do these preachers actually say to sinners—-Christ took away all your sins by His propitiatory death, but only for some of you did Christ’s death purchase faith?
no, that’s not preachable—that’s not what they ever say
Do these preachers say to sinners—even though God loved you and took away your sins, if in the future you don’t believe this to be true, then your yourself will be tormented forever for those same sins, even though Christ’s death was sufficient to avoid that possibility?
wait—that’s what Arminians preach
but what are the universal offer Calvinists preach—-if Jesus had not died for all of you, then it would have been impossible for God to judge you, so Jesus died to make it possible for God to condemn you if the Holy Spirit does not keep giving you faith (and works, the evidence of faith)
Why should I put words in their mouths?
Let them fill in the blanks.
Let them contradict me when I show that they preach contradictions
If faith is not purchased by Christ’s death for anybody, then not even the sheep believe because they are sheep
Jesus said, you believe not, because you are not my sheep
these false preachers say—you believe, but not because you are my sheep
so what does that mean?—-you are my sheep, because you believe
your faith united you to me who died for everybody
others for whom I died could have become sheep, but they got no faith from the Holy Spirit to unite themselves to me who died for them
February 10, 2019 at 2:25 am
Warnock begins badly by asserting that “Jesus’ resurrection was not a result of our justification” (p121) because our sin was not a result of His death. If death is a result of sin, the parallel would be to say that His resurrection is a result of the justification of the elect, even if that is a future justification. On p 124, Warnock writes: “The answer is that God was displeased with the sin (imputed) that Christ was bearing but remained pleased with Jesus’ infinite goodness, which was greater than the sin.” …
This is NOT how the apostle Paul explains the requirements of justice. The sins demand not some philosophical ( non-biblical) idea of some “infinity” or “equivalent”. The sins demand death. The death of Christ was God’s justice, God’s wages for all the sins of the elect.
On p 126, Warnock writes: “The resurrection was necessary to allow the credit of Jesus’ righteousness to be shared with us, for it demonstrated that the credit was greater than the debt.”
That sounds like some version of EITHER “enough but not effective” (sufficient ut not efficient) OR the idea that Christ’s death is not enough “positive righteousness” if not combined with His law-keeping.
July 8, 2019 at 1:52 am
Arminians and “high Calvinists” both conceive of the atonement in terms of a single intent. Classic-moderate Calvinism, on the other hand, recognizes a broad and narrow intent.
When it comes to the subject of sufficiency and efficacy of the atonement are we not relating the atonement to whether it is hypothetically enough or actually enough? So it is true that Christ’s sacrifice was enough to save the whole world, to cover the sins of every person in all time and satisfy the wrath of God against all who were ever created but it was not the intent. If that were the intent then would not all be saved? It is troubling to me to hear when people say that the atonement payed for everyone’s sin but only potentially. Did Jesus accomplish salvation or did he not? Was he able to complete the work or is there still more to come?
It seems at times that the talk of sufficiency and efficacy is a way to sooth the debate more than it is to reconcile troubling Bible passages
https://www.thoughtstheological.com/horton-on-the-atonement/
July 8, 2019 at 1:55 am
quotations from Mike Horton’s essay in The Exxtent of the Atonement,, edited by Adam Johnson, Zondervan, 2019
p118—The term “limited atonement” distorts Dort’s teaching, which on the extent of the atonement repeats the traditional medivial refrain, sufficient for all
p 129–To be in Christ is an ecclesiastical matter: it is to be be in
the church. Although the reprobate are scattered among the elect in
the church, there is no way of separating the sheep from the goats
until the last judgment. Assurance of salvation THEREFORE is linked to
the PROPER use of the MEANS OF GRACE AND incorporation into the VISIBLE CHURCH. Certainty of salvation is not by oneself BUT WITH HIS CHOSEN PEOPLE
double talk–we can’t be certain who is chosen in the visible church ,
but certainly of salvation is found with “his chosen people” (and by
this Horton means “the” visible church)
132–“We declare not only generally to all but particularly to each
person that Christ’s death is sufficient to save him or her. Nobody
can say, there was no redemption for me. There is sufficient
redemption in Christ’s cross for every person in the world
p 133–“God COULD HAVE justly coindemned us all. Because the death of Christ is sufficient for everyone, no one is left out except those who refuse this gift. God is not held responsible for our refusing this grace.
January 14, 2020 at 3:38 pm
James Jordan–It is God who applies the benefits of the atonement as God sees fit. God is free to apply the full and special benefit of the atonement to some people temporarily and to others permanently. The special benefits of the atonement are “limited” in this world to those elected in THE CHURCH, and they are limited in the world to come to those elected to heaven.
James Jordan–The special (“limited”) benefits of the atonement are for those who are “in Christ.” Those who leave the Vine, who forsake the Olive Tree, cease to be “in Christ” and cease to receive the special benefits of the atonement. In the same way, many of those who received the benefit of the first Passover and were delivered from Egypt, eventually lost that benefit and died in the wilderness.
James Jordan–Only such an ECCLESIAL conception of “limited atonement” can account for passages like 2 Peter 2:1, which speaks of those who “deny the Master who bought them.” These men were “bought” the same as all other Christians, and received exactly the same thing, being put “in Christ.” The atonement was “for them” in exactly the same way it was for Peter and John. But when they denied the Lord, they lost the
special benefits of the atonement. All of this, of course, was in the plan of God.