Christ died for the sins of ALL of humanity. Every single person that ever existed. However, ONLY those who hear the Gospel and place ALL of their faith in Christ as their Savior will benefit from the Lord's sacrifice. You teach the false doctrine of Calvinism.
GM,
How exactly do the first three sentences above depart from what you think Calvinists believe?
For example, see:
https://theologyonline.com/showthre...Y-Accomplish&p=5274611&viewfull=1#post5274611
As can be seen from the above linked content, the usual sticking points revolve around what is
actual and what is
potential concerning the atonement of Our Lord.
The non-Calvinist views the atonement as
hypothetically implying each and every person in the world could be saved if they would only believe. In other words,
hypothetical universalism. Naturally—unless we are one of those odd duck
universalists thinking each and every person will actually be saved—we believers know this is not the case.
To avoid the pitfalls of implying something that is not factual, others are careful to distinguish between
hypotheticals and
actuals, such as to give God all the glory for actually accomplishing His plan of redemption.
This approach emphasizes the
efficiency of the atonement over its presumptive
sufficiency. This approach also leads us to understand why Our Lord would rightly claim that He knows exactly (particularly so) who are His sheep (John 10:14), and who are not (John 10:26), and even prayed for those that were and did not pray for those that were not (John 17:9), such that none who were given to Him by God the Father (John 6:39) were lost to Him.
Of course, at this point we could and will disagree as to what Our Lord's
knowing about "His sheep" means. Does it mean foreseen faith of particularly known persons? Does it mean particularly known persons are chosen beforehand (not based upon foreseen faith) and cannot
not disbelieve? These are matters outside the actual discussion at hand: the atonement and what was actually
accomplished (as in John 19:28-30).
AMR
