particularly if you count all
the Sundays we didn't meet, on the subject of problematic scriptures.
And by problematic scriptures, we mean those scriptures that
are brought up by those who deny the grace of God, and they think
that these scriptures disprove what we have been teaching about
the grace of God. Now, hopefully, we'll finish
up this series I mean, there are many more scriptures
that people will bring up, but the issues that we've covered
in the four, five, six scriptures that we've looked at pretty much
show the pattern of scriptural misuse that is employed to try
to deny some aspect of the grace of God. But before we look at
the scriptures, let's ask the Lord for help. Our Lord Jesus,
we thank you for your goodness to us. We thank you for what
you did for us in the days of your flesh on the earth. And
we thank you for what you do for us even now, as you daily
make intercession for us. Intercede on our behalf this
morning, Lord. Be our advocate before the Father
that our sins not appear in the presence of God, the judge of
all. In the name of Christ, we pray. Amen. Now, let's just read verse 2
of 1 John, chapter 2. He is the atoning sacrifice for
our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the
whole world. Now, this was the first verse
of Scripture that I heard brought up as a denial of some aspect
of the grace of God. In particular, that doctrine
that, I don't like the name that men have given to it, but it's
known by the doctrine or by the name limited atonement. But the
scriptures do not so much declare the limitations of the atonement.
They tell us that the atonement is completely successful. And
that's true because a thing is not an atonement until it's successful. It's just a sacrifice until it
succeeds. Then it can be called an atonement. But the reason that this is the
first verse that was brought up in objection to some aspect
of the fundamentals of the grace of God, the first one I ever
heard, is because it happened the very first time I heard those
specific doctrines, which we addressed in this series. And
it was my first year of Bible school, and in the winter quarter,
in systematic theology, we were studying soteriology, which means
the doctrine of salvation. And as was customary for me,
my mind was wandering everywhere, except on what the professor
was saying. But in that little fog that I
live in, the word Calvinism came in. I'd never heard of it before.
And somebody was asking him, asking the professor about Calvinism. So he said, well, the Calvinists
believe, and he went down You know, the TULIP acronym, Total
Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible
Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. And, of course, this
was a free will school. So free will that if you go to
their website now and look to apply, it says, if you believe
in limited atonement, you'll probably be happier somewhere
else. And that's true. A person, one of the people in
the class, raised their hand on the subject of limited atonement.
He says, well, what do they say about 1 John 2, 2? And quoting
it as the King James does, he is the propitiation, not for
our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world. And the professor,
who should have known better than to give this answer, he
just smiled and a little bit of a, in a snarky way, said,
well, Calvinists believe that that just means the world of
the elect. And now, at the time, I wouldn't have known how to
answer his answer. And in all reality, I wrestled
with the doctrine of limit atonement for two or three years before
I became what you consider very comfortable with it. But my problem was not that I
thought that there would be any unrighteousness with God if he
decided to save only some and sent his son to die only for
some. I always had the opinion that God is allowed to do whatever
he wants to do. So I wasn't wrestling with that.
There was nothing about this, well, that would be unfair, nothing
like that. It's just that there were scriptures like this, and
I didn't know what to do with them. But the rest of the system
of that, you know, that doctrinal system fit so well together,
it seems they all stand or fall together. And so I just kind
of put it on the back burner. and thought I hope I'll get some
more light on this. And really, the error or the
difficulty with me was not in the extent of the atonement,
it's what atonement means in the first place. And once you
establish what atonement is, then you cannot take any other
consistent position than the atoning work of Jesus Christ
was only for those whom God chose before the foundation of the
world. And that's specifically because an atonement or a sacrifice
cannot be called an atonement unless it actually has atoned.
Now, when we were going through this particular point of the
fundamentals of the grace of God, I pointed out that the work
of Jesus Christ is generally spoken of in the New Testament
under two different words, redemption and atonement. And his death
was both a redemption and an atonement, but redemption and
atonement address sin in different ways. Redemption sees sin as
a crime against the law for which a price must be paid to be set
free. And it presents Jesus Christ
as having paid the price that redeems us from the bondage of
the law. But atonement perceives sin as
a personal offense against God, an affront to God. In other words,
he's not just some dispassionate judge who sees that what we do
is wrong according to law and renders a sentence, but he has
no personal involvement in the offense. You see, when we sin
against God, we're not just sinning against the judge as the judge,
we're sinning against his person. David, when he confessed his
sin in Psalm 51, he said, against you and you alone have I sinned
and done this evil in your sight. Now, atonement is a price that
is paid. In order to put away wrath, or
another way to describe it, it's a payment of reconciliation.
For instance, you offend someone, and whether or not you meant
to, you don't want the offense to
go on. It's broken a relationship that you want to fix. And so
you go to them and you say, what can I do? to put away your anger
and you and me be friends again. If they say, well, what you did
cost me $2,000 in car repairs. $2,000 to go a long way in fixing
this. OK. That's an atonement, a propitiation. You pay the money. And then the
offense is gone. It's not a propitiation. It's
not an atonement unless it actually fixes the relationship. And it
says Jesus Christ is a propitiation. He is a sacrifice of atonement.
That means that for whomever that atonement was made, God
has no anger or wrath toward that person because it could
not be called an atonement. unless it put away the wrath
of God. Now, logically then, we could conclude
that it couldn't be that Jesus Christ died for everybody, that
he was the atoning sacrifice for every individual in the world,
because if that were the case, God would not be angry with anyone.
There would not be any wrath on anyone. Therefore, no one
would be sent to hell. However, how do we get past this
idea? The whole world. Now, we've dealt
some with what the word world means. When we think of world,
we tend to think, you know, everybody in it. But the word world, cosmos,
in the Greek New Testament, its essential meaning is order or
arrangement. And it is translated twice to
refer to how women should dress themselves or adorn themselves. It's translated adorn. In other
words, both the Apostle Peter and then Paul says that women
should arrange their appearance. Paul's saying it should be modest,
meaning not something that makes a woman stand out, not with gaudy
apparel or anything like that. that just fit in. And so really
what he's meaning is appropriate, a proper arrangement. And Peter
says, let the adornment of godly women not be the outer adornment,
but the inner adornment, meaning a proper arrangement. Godly women, he's saying to them,
don't waste a whole lot of time on trying to look pretty on the
outside by arranging your hair and, you know, clothes and all
this to stand out, you know, you think it makes you stand
out and be prettier than the average one. He said, arrange
what's on the inside. Well, that's more important.
So you see, there the world is used and it has nothing to do
with the earth, the universe, or the people in it. It's about
a proper arrangement. Now, that word got used to describe
groups or things that have been arranged. Now, our English word
world is sometimes used that way. We might talk about, well,
there was a show when I was a kid and it's about the only sports
show I'd watch because they always had the unusual sports. On Saturday,
the wide, wide world of sports. Well, it wasn't the sports of
every individual in the world. It was talking about that world
or that arrangement of athletic competition in the world, you
know, on the earth. You know, people say, well, you
know, the world of banking or the world of this or that. And
it's just talking about a particular kind of group. Rarely ever does
the scriptures use this word to indicate everybody, every
individual in the world. Sometimes it means universe.
Sometimes it means the world simply as a planet. Sometimes
it means just the known world. But it gets a little more difficult
when the word whole is added to it. It's kind of easy to dismiss
those scriptures that say, you know, when we did, for God so
loved the world. It's only got the word world in it. We deal
with what that means. But now John has added the word
whole, which seems that he's wanting to emphasize it's everybody.
Well, that's not the case either. And all I want to do is show
you a few other scriptures where this same phrase is used, and
it cannot possibly mean everybody in the world. 1 John 5, verse
19. Now, this may be the best of
them because this is the same book written by the same man
and the same phrase. So we see how John uses it. 1
John chapter 5, verse 19. We know that we are
children of God and that the whole world is under the control
of the evil one. Now that doesn't make any sense
if you mean every individual in the world because he has already
exempted believers from that group and we're in the world. So obviously when he says the
whole world at this point he means the whole world of unbelievers.
But he doesn't say unbelievers because the context bears out
what he's talking about. And so right there. An example
from the same man that whole world does not necessarily, in
fact, almost never means every individual in the world. Now,
look at Revelation chapter 3. This is one of the Lord's letters
to the seven churches of Asia. And in verse 10 of Revelation
chapter three, he says, since you have kept my command to endure
patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is
going to come upon the whole world to test those that live
on the earth. And so he says there's a great
hour of trial coming upon the whole world to test them. And
yet, he exempts the faithful believers as described in the
letter to Philadelphia. The point being that when this
time comes, even though the whole world will be tried and tested,
believers won't. So obviously, whole world doesn't
mean everybody in it. Now look at Matthew chapter 24,
14. In Matthew 24, verses 14, It says, and this gospel of the
kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to
all nations, and then the end will come. Now, if you put the
common definition that detractors from grace want to use, you'd
have to say that the gospel's going to be preached to every
individual in the world. And we simply know that that
is not the case. But it has been preached to people
from all over the world, which is what is being meant here. And that's why in the book of
Revelation, as it kind of describes the end, it says, and people
from every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation. See, if you'll read the New Testament
from the perspective of a Jew, And they had been brought up
to think God only liked Jews. That was just their conceit.
Even the believing among them did not understand that once
Messiah came and accomplished the gospel, that this thing was
going to explode. And so it was a big surprise
to them. Therefore, the way they expressed it was this. This gospel
is not going to just stay in Israel. It's going out to the
whole world, to every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation. All right, now Romans 1, verse
8, something that even more profoundly shows us this aspect. Romans 1, verse 8. Not only might the phrase whole
world just mean people from every part of the world, it can also
mean just a very narrowly described part of the world. First, now
this is Romans 1.8, first I thank my God through Jesus Christ for
all of you because your faith is being reported all over the
world." Really now? It says all over the world in
our translation, technically it says being reported in the
whole world. Did everybody in the world know
about the faith of the Roman Christians? I don't think anybody
in China knew about it. I'm quite sure nobody in North
America or South America knew about him. I'm pretty sure Paul
didn't even know about North America and South America at
this point. What he meant was the world we're
familiar with. Probably, he meant essentially the Roman world.
the Roman Empire. And so whole world can mean just
the world of our existence. There's others that we could
use. In Colossians 1.6 it says in the same way the gospel is
bearing fruit and growing throughout all the world. Well again we
could say it's not grown in North America. And then in Acts 11 chapter 28
it says, one of them, meaning one of the prophets, named Agabus,
stood up and through the spirit predicted that a severe famine
would spread over the whole world. Now our translation puts it this
way. Famine would spread over the entire Roman world. Now,
that's what the phrase means, though I would not I think they
need to put a little note and say what they mean by whole world
is the whole Roman Empire because you just don't add words willy-nilly
but they were giving the meaning of what Agabus said but what
he said simply was it would spread over the entire the whole world
and yet really it was just confined to a portion of the world so
when it says he is the propitiation not only for our sins, but also for the sins of the
whole world. He doesn't mean everybody in
the whole world. He means people from all over
the world. And indeed, that's how it's working
out. You know, here we are 2,000 years later. I do not know of
any region of the world that has not been reached at some
point with the gospel. Now, I want to turn to one more
scripture, Acts chapter 10, verse 34, and it actually is an attempt to, once again,
make everything that God wills and does to be universally applied
to every individual. In this case, though, they use
this primarily to deny unconditional election. Now, in Acts chapter
11, Verse 28, Peter is at the house of Cornelius, and Cornelius
is a Gentile. Now it's important that we understand
that aspect of this story, because see the main point of this story
is that the gospel is not just for Jews, it's for Gentiles too. Peter had received a vision.
of a sheet coming down from heaven containing all kinds of food,
including unclean foods. And he was told, rise and eat. And he said, no, I won't. I've
never eaten anything unclean. And then in verse That story here is in chapter
10, verse 15. The voice spoke to him a second
time. Do not call anything impure that God has made clean. Now, Peter didn't understand
yet exactly what that vision was going to be about. But he
said it happened three times. And while Peter was trying to
figure out what the vision meant, messengers from Cornelius came
to him. and asked for him. And he went with them, and he
preached the gospel to Cornelius, a Gentile. And Cornelius believed the gospel,
and he received the Holy Spirit and others around him also, and
they began to manifest those sign gifts that were part of
the apostolic age. And that confirmed to Peter that
these people had actually been saved. Because you see, up to
this point, Peter didn't know it was for Gentiles. Certainly
not that it was generally for Gentiles. And so here's what he says in
verse 28, the last sentence. But God has shown
me. Wait, that's not it. It's the
second. Well, I've written down the wrong
one. Well, yes, that's the one. Thank you very much. I don't
know why I put, oh, well, there it is. I was just looking at
the wrong line in my notes. Thank you. Then Peter began to
speak. I now realize how true it is
that God does not show favoritism, but accepts men from every nation
who fear him and do what is right. Now, if you say that God chose
people, particular individuals, whom he was going to save, eventually
someone will say, well, that makes God a respecter of persons.
And they use the phrase respecter of persons because that's the
way the King James puts it. God is no respecter of persons.
They said election makes God a respecter of persons. No, it's
exactly the opposite. Free will makes God a respecter
of persons. because he has respect to you
because of what you did and what you are. Actually, that word
that's translated respecter of persons or like in ours, showing
favoritism, whatever, it just means literally to receive the
face of. Now, here he goes on and says, He
doesn't show favoritism but accepts men from every nation. In other
words, God is not showing respect or special regard for anyone
because of the nation that they come from. He has no more regard for the
Jew than he does the Gentile because he has no regard for
either one of them as Jew or Gentile. Election takes away, that is
unconditional election, takes away every natural and fleshly
distinction among men. Either who you are, who your
parents were, where you came from, what church you go to,
none of that matters to God. He has not chosen anybody because
of anything about them. And that's what it means to not
show favoritism or to not receive the face of someone. And the
proof of it is this, look who he chose. If God was going to choose based
on that which would be maybe appealing, well, Paul says in 1 Corinthians
1, He says, you see, you're calling an election, brethren, how not
many wise, not many wealthy, not many educated, not many significant
people in the world. He chose the nobodies. Well,
if God was a respecter of persons, that's the last people he would
have chosen. We tend to be, to show partiality. God doesn't. We see someone of substance,
and I've seen this happen. It's a shameful thing, but somebody
visits, and it's known that they have some wealth. Well, treat them good. Hope they join
the church and add to the treasury, you know. I've heard preachers talk about
unsaved people. Boy, I wish God would save that
one. Boy, he could be a real help to the church. How do you
know? Nobody can be a help to the church
apart from the new birth, being given spiritual life and the
gifts that come with it. So what a man has, what a woman
has before they believe is utterly insignificant as to whether or
not God has grace toward them. He is no respecter of persons. He chose whom he wanted. And
I was about to say, for whatever reason he wanted, the only reason
he chose them is because he wanted to. That's it. You say, why did
he want to? I haven't a clue. But I know
this. It had nothing to do with what they were or who they were. So actually, this scripture,
far from denying sovereign election, is a proof of it. He saves whom
he will. And none of us has anything about
us that could attract His grace. So there was nothing for Him
to see and respect. He chose us in Christ for no
other reason than this. He wanted to. And the Lord Jesus
once prayed, He said, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, that you've hidden these things from the wise and prudent
and reveal it unto babes. For even so, it seemed good in
your sight to do so. And that's the end of it all.
Why do things happen? Seemed good to God for it to
happen. Why are some chosen and others not? Seemed like a good
idea to God. And we can't bring him into judgment
on that. He's God. And the proof or the fact that
he did it without regard to who we are or what we've done is
proof. He is no respecter of persons. There's no one out there
that we can look at and say, God wouldn't save a man like
that. Maybe we ought to say that a lot. Just challenge God a little
bit. You know, he'll say, well, just watch. You say I can't or
won't save him, watch me. All right. With that, we'll close
this series on the fundamentals of the grace of God. It's not
like nothing more could be said, but that gives the general outline
of it. Next week, we'll begin a study
of the book of Philippians. You're dismissed.