Everyone, when one believes, believes Christ paid for one's sins.
Exactly.
It's personal.
Again, whether or not He did that for everyone else doesn't matter to the person who hears the Gospel and believes it...
Only that He died for
them;
At least that is all that
I cared about at the time.
Wasn't that how it happened for you?
No one today can before one's regeneration know to believe Christ paid for one's sins without a general redemption.
For one to believe that Christ paid for
their sins, in no way depends upon what they will later learn...
Whether or not He did it for
everyone, or that He gave Himself
for His sheep alone, and makes intercession for
them at the right hand of the Father.
For example,
What I later learned through much study and understanding of His word, was that He neither gave Himself for the "goats", neither does He care for them...
They are not His sheep.
They are cursed...the kingdom was not prepared for them from the foundation of the world ( Matthew 25:31-46 ), neither is there any place for them in the kingdom of God ( Revelation 21:7-8 ).
To illustrate this,
I look at John 17 ( and many other things He had to say in many places, including what He had His apostles write to the churches ), and the fact that He did
not pray for the world, but for those whom God the Father had given to Him
out of the world ( Isaiah 8:18, Hebrews 2:13, John 17:2 ).
As Ephesians 2:10 says, only believers ( those who believe
from the heart and confess with the mouth, Romans 10:8-10 ) are His workmanship,
created in Christ Jesus.
That is why He will tell those He never knew,
that He
never knew them ( Matthew 7:21-23 ).
His attention and purpose were never towards those who would never believe, as they were not and are not His sheep that He came to seek and to save.