Did you know there’s a controversy?

Doctrines of Grace (Calvinism)
Atonement, The
Audio Links

• 1 John: For Whom Did Christ Die? 16 of 82
  Pastor Jeff Pollard • 58 min.
  1 John 2:1-2

This is definitely one of the better messages that I’ve heard on the subject of Particular Redemption.

As Pastor Pollard points out in this message, there are only four ways in which to view the atonement.

1) Jesus died for some of the sins of all people.

2) Jesus died for some of the sins of some people.

3) Jesus died for all of the sins of all people.

4) Jesus died for all of the sins of some people.

The first two of these views can be immediately rejected for if Jesus did not die for all sins, then no one could be saved at all for we can not atone for our own sins.

The third view is by far the most common in the church today, but if it is true that Jesus died for all of the sins of all men, then why would anyone be sent to Hell? The common answer to this question is this: “People don’t go to Hell because of their sin; they go to Hell because they reject Jesus Christ.”

But there are two problems with this answer: 1) You’ve created a god who sends people to Hell for something that isn’t even a sin according to your own words. And 2) The Bible is unmistakably clear, rejecting Jesus Christ is called unbelief and unbelief is a sin. And if Jesus died for all of the sins of all men, then He died for the sin of unbelief also and that leads us right back to our question; if Jesus died for all of the sins of all men, then why would anyone be sent to Hell?

At this point it is commonly answered that “Jesus died for all sins except unbelief.” But this leaves us in another conundrum: if Jesus did not for unbelief, how can any of us ever be saved? For before we believed we were all in the state of unbelief.

The third view of the atonement, the common one in our own day, is a logical impossibility and is never taught to us in Scripture. While God does do things that are certainly beyond our ability to fully comprehend, He does not do things that are contrary to one another such as send a person to Hell for their sins when their sins have been entirely erased and forgiven.

The widespread and almost overwhelming acceptance of view number three is a testimony to the confusion of modern evangelicalism, and the scary thing is that this confusion surrounds a subject that lies at the very heart of the gospel; the atonement.