The subject of human salvation and the afterlife logically ought to be man’s most compelling issue. Why? Because life itself and its preservation is foremost to us all. The status and continuation of life beyond this life is of paramount importance, again assuming one is thinking logically. Nothing man faces, whoever he is, wherever he is, or whenever he is can compete with that issue in importance. Eternity and the afterlife has been the vital issue for every generation from time immemorial. It is bound up with the human psyche because God, who created us, put it there. Equally logical, we believe, is that God would also reveal adequate information about it, the basis for it, the appropriation of it, as well as the peace and stability that flow from it for each individual who possesses it. He has, repeatedly so. Also, in the most logical and dependable source, the Bible.
A wonderful statement by Christ is found in John 12 when Jesus was talking about His coming death only hours away. He referred to it as being “lifted up.” He would be literally lifted up while physically being affixed to a cross upon which He would die. His impending death is written all over this passage, but it was largely lost on those who heard Him. He continued by saying, “If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto Me.” In what way would all mankind be drawn unto Him? In their being reconciled to God. When Christ was on that Cross, God was reconciling the world to Himself through His sacrificial death…the “world” meaning “all mankind”.
But, what about atheists, agnostics, and even God-haters? They surely would not be drawn to Christ, and they do not want to be. No matter, they are all part of the all mankind of which Christ spoke, and He died even for them. He drew them as well when He died for the sins of all. Even the Christ-deniers were born into the world as beneficiaries of the substitutionery death of our Lord. God’s incredible love, even for them, those who hate God and His Christ, were drawn and reconciled as members of corporate humanity, that is, all the world. This made them, along with all members of humanity, savable and free to come to God through Christ if only they would. As Adam’s sin and consequences excluded no one from death, even so the death of God’s last Adam, Jesus Christ, left no one excluded from its consequences, namely, the positive aspect of the entire world being reconciled to God, according to 2nd Corinthians 5 and Romans 5. While not all who could will come to God through Christ, all could, for “all” are those of the “all men” for whom Christ died. He drew all men to Him corporately, making it possible for men to believe and be saved, reconciled individually.
CC 10-06
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