How many times have you gone
to visit a friend in the hospital, and you look at your friend who's
in horrible straits, and looks like this man or woman is dying,
and you take them by the hand, and with sincerity, you say,
if there's anything I can do, anything. And you mean, if there's
anything I can do, I'll do it, anything. And by making the statement,
you're confessing, there's nothing I can do. That's how men in religious
circles, in fundamentalist, conservative churches, Baptist churches, Presbyterian
churches, Campbellite churches, Catholic churches, any kind of
churches, that's how they portray the grace of God. The Lord God,
He wants to save you. He's ready to save you if there's
anything He can do, He will. That's not the language of this
book. The scripture declares not what God wants to do, but
what God's done. The Scripture don't present salvation
as something God wants to perform, but that which God Almighty has
performed. It's His finished work. It was
finished before the world began. Executed at Calvary and brought
home to our souls in the experience of grace in the new birth and
in the gift of faith. And anything less is not the
gospel of God's grace. Third, this theory of universal
redemption perverts the character of God. It reduces God's glorious
attributes to nothing but meaningless words. Let me see if I can illustrate
it for you. It reduces the love of God to
nothing. To nothing. I've got a six-year-old
grandson. Now let's just suppose he's down
here with me and we're out here tomorrow afternoon horsing around,
as we do when we get together, and he's just running out toward
the street, going out to the highway. He kicks his football
out there and he runs to chase it down. And I look at him and
I say, Will, son, don't go to the highway. You might get hurt.
And he just ignores me and keeps on running. And I say, Will,
please don't go to the highway. You're going to get run over,
son. And I'm just standing there hollering at him. And he ignores
me, keeps running. And, Will, son, don't go to the
highway. Lester slapped me on the head
and said, go get him. Oh, I couldn't do that. What do you mean you
can't do that? Oh, I love him too much to interfere
with his will. What stupidity. What stupidity. Love Love is commitment to the
good of its object. And love that has the power to
save, will save. And if God loves everybody, he'll
save everybody. If he doesn't save everybody,
it's because he never loved everybody. The doctrine of universal redemption.
perverts the wisdom of God, turns it into ignorance and foolishness.
Who makes plans he knows will never be carried out? Who pays
for what he knows he will never obtain? And it makes a mockery
of God's justice. More than all else in the scriptures,
the sacrifice of Christ at Calvary is presented to us as a matter
of divine righteousness, justice, and truth. More than anything
else, by mercy and truth, iniquity is purged. It is that God may
be just and the justifier of the ungodly that Christ died.
He sins because of Christ's sacrifice. I am now a just God and the Savior. But justice is a mockery. It is an utter mockery. If Christ paid the debt of my
sins and God demands that I pay it too. Payment God cannot twice
demand. First at my bleeding shirt, his
hand, and then again at mine. The notion of universal redemption
reduces the power of God to a helpless wizard arm waiting for man's
omnipotent will to revive it by an act of his mighty decision.
And it completely denies the immutability of God's mercy,
his love, and his grace. God loves everybody. God's gracious
to everybody. God's merciful to everybody.
You must recognize that. How can you preach the gospel
if you don't recognize that? Well, let me ask you something.
What happens when they go to hell? Does God still love them? Is He still merciful to them?
Is He still wanting to save them? Oh, no. No, we couldn't say that.
So in order to magnify and exalt man and his free will, you're
willing to sacrifice the character of God Almighty and declare that
the unchanging God, after all, is as mutable and fickle as you? And that's what it means. It
robs God of His glory to suggest that Christ died for those who
actually perish in their sins anyway. The Lord God Almighty
tells us that He chose us, He blessed us, He loved us, He predestinated
us, He accepted us, He redeemed us, and He forgave us, He called
us by His grace, and He preserves us by His grace, and three times
in the first 14 verses of Ephesians, He said He did it for the praise
of the glory of His grace. And if he doesn't accomplish
that which is his intent, there's no praise to him and no glory
to him because there's no grace in him that really matters. Universal
Redemption, fourthly, makes the work of Christ a futile exercise,
a waste. It makes the precious blood of
Christ nothing more than a wager, a bet, a gamble, in which God
Almighty wagered His glory and the life of His own darling Son,
His blood and His righteousness upon the will of man. If Christ died for all and all
are not saved, then that awful absurdity must follow that Christ
died in vain for some. If Christ died to save all men
and all are not saved, then it must be concluded that he failed
in his most important work, in the mission for which he came
into this world. But this is the language of the scriptures.
Behold, my servant, he shall not fail. He shall not fail. Whatever it is he came to do,
he shall not fail. And I say to any man, any church,
any denomination, any preacher, if the Christ you worship is
a failure, the Christ you worship is antichrist. He shall not fail.