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S i d e b a r
IS THE ATONEMENT LIMITED—AND ARE YOU OUT OF LUCK?
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This Rock
Volume 4, Number 7
 July 1993 
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TO show that on one level Christ's intention
in going to the cross was to save those in the Church, James White
quotes verses that state Christ died for the Church (John 10:11, 15,
15:13, Eph. 5:25). But this does not exclude Christ from having other
intentions on other levels. Scripture teaches that God desires all
men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4-6) and that Christ died for all men (2
Cor. 5:15, 2 Pet. 3:9, 1 John 2:2).
There are two levels of intention on which God is working. On one
God intended Christ's death to be efficacious only for the
elect (otherwise we would have to say that God intended all
men to be saved, including Judas), but on another he intends it to
be sufficient for everyone. These two themes come together
when Paul says, "[T]he living God . . . is the Savior of all
men, but especially of those who believe" (1 Tim. 4:10). God
is the Savior of all men in the sense he made salvation hypothetically
possible for all, but he is the Savior of those who believe in a special
and superior manner since only they have salvation made efficacious
for them.
To quote Ludwig Ott, "Although [Christ] is 'the Redeemer of the
World' (John 4:42), the 'Savior of all men' (1 Tim. 4:10), he is still
'especially' the 'Savior of the faithful' (1 Tim. 4:10), who compose
the Church, which he 'has purchased with his own blood' (Acts 20:28)"
(Ott, 294).
James White manages to hold his version of limited atonement only
by ignoring half the biblical evidence. When one looks at it all,
one discovers God intended the atonement to be efficient for
a limited number of men but sufficient for an unlimited number.
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