Alan Gross
Well-Known Member
Reference points from SIMMONS- THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT
(a) It cannot be argued that God was under obligation to provide redemption for all men without exception, for such an argument would exclude grace from the atonement. Grace means not only unmerited favor, but also favor that is not owed. Grace and obligation are mutually exclusive.
Furthermore, if God was obligated to provide redemption for every son of Adam, He would be obligated likewise to give to each one the ability to receive that redemption by faith.
This God has not done, as we have shown in the previous chapter on election.*
"Redemption, as well as creation, must also be a purely sovereign determination of the divine will. This is required by the necessities of the case, as well as plainly declared in Scripture. No doctrine of redemption that in any way casts
the slightest shadow over the high mountain of Divine Sovereignty can be tolerated for a moment.
All theologies that in any manner teach or imply there was any obligation upon God to do this or that for fallen, rebellious subjects of law, are unscriptural, unreasonable, if not blasphemous" (Armour, Atonement and Law, p. 20).
(b) Furthermore it was not necessary for God to provide a general atonement to make men responsible for rejecting Christ. Men reject Christ not because of a lack of atonement for them, but because they love darkness rather than light (John 3:19), because they will not have Him to reign over them (Luke 19:14).
(c) Nor was it necessary that Christ die for the whole Adamic race in order to make God's general call sincere. It is the notion of some that God's general call requires men to believe that Christ died for them. This is not true. The twenty-eight chapters of Acts, "though replete with information about apostolic dealing with souls, record no precedent whatever for that now popular address to the unconverted- Christ died for you" (Sanger, The Redeemed). "All men are called on in Scripture to believe the gospel, but there is no instance in Scripture in which men are called upon to believe that Christ died for them" (Carson, The Doctrine of the Atonement and Other Treatises, P. 146).
The following illustration from "The Blood of Jesus," by William Reid, p. 37, also shows the compatibility of a limited atonement and the general invitations of the gospel. After describing passengers boarding a train at Aberdeen Station of the North-Eastern Railway, he says:
"Nor did I see any one refusing to enter because the car provided for only a limited number to proceed by that train. There might be eighty thousand inhabitants in and around the city, but still there was not one who talked of it as absurd to provide accommodations for only about twenty persons, for practically it was found to be sufficient.
"God, in His infinite wisdom, has made provision of a similar kind for our lost world. He has provided a train of grace to carry as many of its inhabitants to Heaven, the great metropolis of the universe, as are willing to avail themselves of the gracious provisions.
Suppose God had waited until the end before sending Christ to die, (as He could have done just as easily as He waited four thousand years after sin entered the world before sending Christ), and had then sent Him to die for all that had believed. It would then have been manifest that a limited atonement offers no hindrance to the salvation of any man that does not already exist because of the perversity of man's nature. Surely it is clear to every thinking person that the occurrence of Christ's death two thousand years ago does not change the case; for He died for all who shall ever believe, these having been known to God from eternity as fully as they shall be in the end.
We have intimated that God is as much under obligation to remove man's spiritual inability to come to Christ as He is to provide an atonement for Him. In other words, man's perversity of nature makes his salvation as impossible from a human standpoint as does the absence of an atonement.
But some may take exception to this by saying that whereas man's perversity of nature creates a moral impossibility, the lack of atonement furnishes a natural impossibility. We reply that this is correct; but the moral impossibility is primary and is absolute. Therefore the natural impossibility can furnish no added hindrance.
(d) Neither is a general atonement necessary to the manifestation of God's love. The provision of an ineffective atonement would reveal nothing but a blind, futile love. Is this the kind of love God's love is? Nay, verily, God's love is intelligent, purposeful, sovereign, effective. God's redemptive love is wholly grounded within Himself, and does not proceed at all because the objects of it are lovely, nor because they deserve anything good at His hands. Therefore, it is wholly subject to His sovereign will (Deut. 10:15; Rom. 9:13). It is His immanent, peculiar, gracious delight in bestowing His favor upon chosen objects.
(e) Finally a universal atonement is not necessary for the maintenance of evangelistic zeal and a missionary spirit. It is freely admitted that there have been those who held to a limited atonement whose evangelistic zeal was far from what it should have been. However the fault was not in that doctrine, but in their failure to see and believe other truths. In the case of many, including the noble Waldenses and Albigenses, as well as Spurgeon and many others of great note, overflowing evangelistic zeal and a stout belief in a limited atonement have dwelt side by side in the most glorious harmony. In fact, belief in a limited atonement, for reasons that we can not here take space to discus, should make men more evangelistic than belief in a general atonement, while keeping them back from hurtful excesses.
*Throughout this chapter we assume the truth of unconditional election as set forth in the preceding chapter. We would not waste time trying to prove the truth as to a limited atonement to an Arminian.
