Of all the several passages declaring God’s love and redemption for the entire human race, the Apostle John speaks so clearly to the issue, both in his gospel and his first epistle near the end of the New Testament. In 1st John, chapter 2, unmistakable language is used in his saying that Christ is the “propitiation,” or satisfaction, “for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” For our sins and not ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world? We do not know, when John refers to “our sins,” whether he was speaking of his Jewish brethren or in reference to all who were believers at that time. But, no matter. Whichever it might have been does not change his next remark which states, “and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Any attempt to reduce “the whole world” to mean some element less than the whole world is an inexcusable and faulty exegesis of the text that one should be embarrassed to put forth. No one has the right to handle any text of Scripture in such a way as to make it support one’s system of theology. Rather, our theology is supposed to be derived from a clear meaning of the text, and few texts are clearer than this, “and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
Again, we must deny the idea of universal salvation that some would read into this. The text is not teaching that the whole world is or will be saved, as is the central tenant of Universalism. It is teaching, rather, that provision was made for the whole world through the reconciliation by Christ “whereby God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,” as in 2nd Corinthians 5. This act of Christ’s death reconciling the world was as great and complete in its scope as was the degree of separation caused by the sin of Adam. In the 1st John 2 text, John may have been referring to his readers and himself when he said, “Christ is the propitiation for our sins,” or He may have been referring to the nation of Israel in saying “our sins.” Whichever really makes no difference as He goes on to say, “and not ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” This designation simply leaves no room for dispute or ambiguity.
How many worlds other than ours do we know? Any attempt to interpret the world other than the world’s inhabitants cannot be seriously entertained. We would again assert that Christ, as the last Adam, was able to accomplish a redemption for humanity to the equal extent that Adam’s sin produced the Fall and alienation from God. The very idea that the death of Christ somehow was not adequate to cancel the ruination caused by Satan and Adam is irresponsible and textually unthinkable. An honest, simple, and straightforward look at the text that treats it all as prose ought to be treated readily reveals that it simply means what it seems to mean and says what it seems to say.
CC 10-15
Published by