Only.me80 #4: Calvinists know the truth, but deny it

[Click here for part 1 and part 2 and part 3 of this series based on a comment from a Calvinist reader called Only.me80.  I've got more parts of this series than I thought, so I'm going to publish a few of them a little quicker than I normally do.]

In part 3, I talked about how Calvinists twist "all men/the world" verses to make them fit their "God intends to save only some people" theology, interpreting "all men/the world" as "all kinds of men; people from all nations; the elect from all over the world" - even though a commonsense reading of "all men/the world" would be "all people of the world" when it comes to verses about God loving the world, wanting all men to be saved, and Jesus dying for the world.

It's bad enough that they do this, but do you know what's most amazing and alarming about it?

It's that Calvinists are not ignorant of the truth, of the commonsense understanding of the Bible/gospel, but it's that they know it, but deny it.  They can state it clearly, but then they claim it's impossible.

Example: In this 8-minute clip of John MacArthur talking about a limited atonement, he says this: "I don't think it's a good solution to diminish the nature of the atonement and have Jesus dying for everybody.  If you say that He paid in full the penalty for all the sins of all the world, then what is anybody doing in hell?  That's double jeopardy.  That doesn't work.  So people don't want to say that, so they say He died a potentially saving death.  In that sense, He died for nobody in particular and everybody in general, and the sinner who is depraved is the one who activates the potential atonement.  Well, that's impossible."

So MacArthur quotes the actual truth.  He knows the actual truth - that Jesus died for all people, that all people have the potential to believe and be saved, and that we decide whether to accept or reject His sacrifice for us - but then he refuses to believe it, calling it "impossible."

Why?  Because it doesn't fit within his Calvinist framework.  It doesn't fit with Calvinism's unbiblical idea that "total depravity" means "total inability," that "totally depraved" sinners are unable to believe in Jesus, unable to activate a potential atonement... which, therefore, must mean (in Calvinism) that there is no potential atonement, that Jesus didn't die for all people, that He only died for some, and that God chooses who believes and causes them to believe.  (Building error upon error.  How Calvinism was built!)

And (ooh, this is interesting) notice that MacArthur slips when he reveals that he knows that "the world" commonsensely means "all individual people": "If you say that He paid in full the penalty for all the sins of all the world, then what is anybody doing in hell?"  

He's naturally using "the world" here as "all individual people," claiming that we can't say that Jesus died for all people of the world because there are people in hell. 

So here MacArthur uses "the world" as "all individual people," but elsewhere (see the sermon below) he denies this commonsense definition of "the world," claiming that it can't mean all individual people, just mankind in general or all kinds of people from all over the world.  Ha! 

[Only Calvinists think that if someone is in hell it's because Jesus didn't die for them.  And this is because of the unbiblical Calvinist presupposition that "total depravity" means that people don't have the free-will to make our own decisions, which means we can't choose to reject the offer of salvation, which means that if Calvi-god loves you and Calvi-Jesus died to give you eternal life then you will inevitably be saved.  And if you're not saved, then it must be that Calvi-god didn't love you, Calvi-Jesus didn't die for you, and eternal life was never truly offered to you because Calvi-god predestined you to hell.  And so because Calvinists hold these wrong foundational beliefs, when we non-Calvinists say that Jesus died for everyone, they accuse us of universalism, of saying that everyone will go to heaven, because they assume that everyone whom Jesus died for must go to heaven, that the offer of salvation cannot be rejected.  Error upon error upon error.]

In For whom did Christ die?, MacArthur says that "the world" doesn't mean all individual people in verses like John 1:29 ("Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world"), John 3:16-17 ("For God so loved the world... [God sent Jesus] to save the world through him"), and 1 John 2:2 ("He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world"). 

According to MacArthur (and Calvinists), "the world" only really means something like "general humanity" in these verses.  Calvi-Jesus only died for humanity, for mankind in general (more specifically, the Calv-elect from all nations), for "every tongue, tribe, nation," but not for all individual people.  

Calvi-Jesus is, as MacArthur says, "humanity's only Savior... the only source of salvation the world will ever know," but he's not a Savior for every individual person.  Calvi-Jesus did not die for all people, did not take away everyone's sins, and does not offer life to all people.

[Sidenote: Even if it was true that "the world" only means "humanity" in those verses, it still doesn't change the fact that the whole and consistent message we get in Scripture - when read in a commonsense way - is that God wants all people to be saved, even wicked people:

"[God is] not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9, KJV.  It says right here that God is not willing for people to perish but that He wants everyone to repent.  And so how can Calvinists claim that whatever God wills always happens and that God wills many people to go to hell?)

“For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord.  Repent and live!” (Ezekiel 18:32)

"Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live..." (Ezekiel 33:11) 

"Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?" (Romans 2:4, talking to wicked, resistant people)   

It is a very deceptive, two-faced, untrustworthy, self-opposing god who commands people to repent and believe even though he first created them to be unable to repent and believe, only able to sin and reject him, because he predestined them to hell.  

And it is a very unjust god who punishes people for doing what he created/predestined them to do, what they could not resist doing.  (Calvi-people are unable to want to/choose to do anything other than what Calvi-god predestined them to want to choose.  They did not get to choose the desires Calvi-god built into their natures, and they cannot resist obeying the desires Calvi-god built into their natures.  They must obey them, doing exactly what Calvi-god preprogrammed them to want to do - and yet he will punish them for obeying the desires he gave them.  "Oh, but don't worry," says the Calvinist, "it's all okay and just and good.  We just can't understand how because it's a 'mystery.'"  Hogwash!)

But thank God that it's only Calvi-god who does this, not the God of the Bible.  

"This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of truth.  For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men..."  (1 Timothy 2:3-5)

“God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each of us," (Acts 17:27)

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…" (Joshua 24:15)]

[If you read verses like these and immediately feel the need to run to Grudem, MacArthur, Sproul, your Calvinist pastor, etc., to try to figure out what these verses mean - how "all/whosoever" can supposedly mean "some," and how "choose" can supposedly mean "we don't really choose but God chooses for us" - then that should be a red flag to you that something's wrong with how you're approaching/studying Scripture, that you're using a particular lens to read the Bible, trying to make it fit a previously-held viewpoint, and handing your sense-making over to someone else.]

Let's look a lot closer at what MacArthur preaches in his sermon For whom did Christ die?.  Notice again how he states the biblical truth but then claims that it's wrong because it doesn't fit in his Calvinist framework.  I'm going to share a lot of his sermon because there's a lot to address, expose, and dismantle/correct.  And it's important to see how Calvinists reel you from one of their bad beliefs to the next.  [The next post in this series will be a follow-up to this one, and then the post after that will have a bunch of my footnotes about this sermon.  They'll be marked like this in the sermon below: *1, *2, *3..., but they'll be explained two posts from now.  It's just too long to put it all in one.]

And notice how these Calvinist errors always go back to Calvinism's bad definition of "total depravity/spiritual death."  Calvinists essentially define this as "unable to believe on our own," which means that Calvi-god must pre-chose who will believe and cause them to believe, that no one else can or will believe because Calvi-god didn't choose them or give them faith (he predestined them to hell for his glory), and that Calvi-Jesus died only for those chosen to believe.  Everything gets twisted to fit Calvinism's unbiblical idea that "total depravity/spiritual death is total inability," that there's no free-will.  

(Another foundational error that everything gets twisted for is their unbiblical idea that sovereignty must mean that God ordains, decrees, preplans, causes, controls, orchestrates everything that happens, even sin and evil and unbelief, or else He's not God.  Two huge foundational Calvinist errors: Their doctrine of total depravity and doctrine of sovereignty.  Leading to errors all down the line.)

(I changed the punctuation a bit to make it easier to read.)  "Now, the question might at first seem an easy one: For whom did Christ die?  Most people, I’m confident, in churches would quickly answer, 'Well, He died for everyone.'  Most people in the church believed that on the cross, Jesus paid the debt for the sins of everyone because He loves everyone unconditionally and wants everyone to be saved.  That is not what the church has historically believed [because of Calvinism's influence over the centuries], but that is what the present version of the superficial church believes(*1)... [that] since Christ died for everyone, everyone can believe and should believe and must believe if they’ll only will to believe... [that] the sinner has both the responsibility and the ability to activate a saving faith on his own and believe.  That is the popular idea, and that means that hell is full of people whose salvation was purchased by the death and resurrection of Christ... So the people in hell had the same atonement as the people in heaven.  The difference was the people in heaven activated their will to accept that atonement; the people in hell did not.  

Now, if that sounds strange to you, it is, it is.  That Jesus died for/paid for in full the sins of the damned, paid the penalty of divine justice for them just as He did for the redeemed, is a very strange notion [only according to Calvinists].  And the sinner, then, determines whether that universally potential death is applied to him or not.  This view would say Christ died to make salvation possible, not actual... [that] the sinner, then, makes the choice... [that Jesus] didn’t really purchase salvation for anyone...[but just] removed a barrier to make salvation a potential.  You will not find such language anywhere in the New Testament or the Old.  [Well then, what are all those "whosoever" and "if anyone" and "choose for yourself" verses about?]

Now, the problem with this is glaring.  Here’s the problem: According to Scripture, sinners are dead - dead in trespasses and sin, separated from the life of God... This, then, affirms another doctrine that the [Calvinist] church has always established as true and that is the sinner’s total inability.  The Bible is clear that all are dead in trespasses and sins.  [Yes, and spiritual death means "separated from God because of sin, unable to save ourselves."  It does not mean "unable to believe," which is a purely-Calvinist concept.]

... The doctrine of man’s inability necessitates the doctrine of God’s divine invasion... He must give repentance, He must give faith, He must totally transform the sinner.  [Biblically, He transforms us after we believe, in response to our belief, our faith in Jesus - not to make us believe in Jesus or to give us faith, as Calvinists think.  Very different!]... And He does it to those whom He has chosen.(*2)  

Now, since the sinner cannot will to believe on his own(*3), since he can only believe if God enables him to believe, and since God enables to believe those whom He has chosen, it should be clear that the provision of sacrifice that Christ provided on the cross would be on behalf of those who would believe because they were given life because they were chosen.(*4)  [Oh, just say it already, JMac: "Calvi-Jesus died only for the Calv-elect, and too bad for the rest of you!"]

... We know the atonement is limited because not everybody believes.  People die without believing in Christ.  They die rejecting the gospel... The atonement does not apply to everyone. [Just because people reject the atonement - Jesus's payment for their sin - doesn't mean their sin wasn't paid for.  Biblically, Jesus died for all... and so the atonement is not limited by God to certain people, but it's limited by us when we refuse to accept it.  We limit it; God doesn't.  The exact opposite of what Calvinism teaches.](*5)

... Who limits it?  The popular idea is that sinners limit the atonement because it’s a universally available atonement, limited only by sinners.  But [in Calvinism] there’s a sense in which God limits it because God limits it to those who believe, and nobody can believe unless He gives them faith.  So what the New Testament really teaches [according to Calvinists] is that God has limited the atonement by His sovereign election and sovereign grace.(*6)  [And Calvinists have unbiblical definitions of both election and sovereign, resulting in their unbiblical ideas of who God offers grace to and how we get it.]

[Now see how MacArthur shames those who disagree with him, making us sound like bad Christians:] ... if you say Christ died on the cross for the whole world [once again he slips here, naturally using "the whole world" as "all people," even though he denies that commonsense definition later] and most of the whole world goes to hell, then whatever that atonement was, it was very limited in its power and limited in its effectiveness.  So those who limit the atonement most are those who believe in an unlimited atonement because they have now redefined the atonement to make it some kind of limited potential thing rather than a real atonement.(*7)  

... It’s not at all biblical to think along these lines [well, sure, if Calvinism is your measuring stick for truth].  We must agree that the atonement is limited... It is limited to those who believe, and that limitation is established by God and not by man since man can’t believe on his own.

... What does 'world' mean?  What does 'all' mean?... But to be sure, when it talks about Him being the Savior of the world and taking away the sin of the world, we know one thing: It does not mean every person who ever lived or there would be no hell, there would be no judgment, and there would be no warnings about those.  [Notice that he's using human logic, philosophical Calvinist reasoning - not God's Word - to reach his conclusion here.  (So tell me again, Calvinist, how Calvinism is "Sola Scriptura"!😒)  And only in Calvinism does the fact that there are people in hell mean that Jesus didn't die for them, that God doesn't love them, and that He wanted them in hell so He never truly offered them real forgiveness/salvation that can be accepted.]

... 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.'... Does it mean He literally removed the sin of every person who ever lived?  Of course not because [various verses] say that when Jesus comes, He is going to pour out retribution on most of the world - all of the world of unbelievers - having rescued His own. [Just because He will punish those who reject Him doesn't mean they never had the ability or opportunity to believe in Him and be saved.]

You have to qualify 'world.'  Yes, 'the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,' but if you go back in chapter 1 to verse 11, it says, 'He came to His own, and those that were His own didn’t receive Him.'  Well, He didn’t take their sins away.  'But as many as received Him, He gave them the right to become the children of God.'(*8)

So in what sense is He the Savior of the world?  In the sense that there is no other Savior in the world.  There is only one Savior.  'World' taken in the sense of humanity here.  He is humanity’s only Savior... God has a love for humanity.  [Anything but all individual people, huh?  So very eager to keep people out of heaven, to hoard God's love/grace, Jesus's sacrifice, and salvation all for themselves!] (*9)

[Throughout this part of the sermon, MacArthur repeatedly accuses those of us who believe that Jesus died for all people of being "universalists."  But, as I said, this is based on Calvinism's wrong idea that if Jesus died for you then you must be saved because we don't have the free-will to reject Him.  So when we non-Calvinists say that Jesus died for all, Calvinists incorrectly hear us saying that all people will be saved.  The error is theirs, not ours.] (*10) 

So the term 'world' is always to be qualified [true, but Calvinists often qualify it wrong to make it fit their Calvinist framework, reading it through the lens of Calvinism], and you can't just say because He's the Savor of the world that that means that He has provided an actual atonement for the whole world [Oh, yes I can!  And notice that he again slips and uses "the whole world" as "all individual people".  You see, they know!] or you're going to have to end up as a universalist with everybody in heaven. [Oh, no I'm not!  Because that's only the case if you hold to Calvinism's unbiblical presuppositions, which I don't.]  

So if you don't want to end up as a universalist, but you want to affirm that Jesus loves the whole world, died for the whole world, then you limit the power and effectiveness of the atonement, making it only some kind of a potential thing that is activated by the will of the sinner, which is impossible because the sinner can’t activate his own will because he’s dead.  [If you start with an unbiblical foundation and toss out the right beliefs from the very beginning, then you're left with nothing but error and must go back to reinterpret everything to make it fit your errant views.]

... Again, there’s only one Savior for the world.  There’s only one gospel for the world.(*11)  God loves the world, people in general, Jew and Gentile ["just not all individual people"]... Christ didn’t ever say in the New Testament through the revelation of the Holy Spirit to the writers of the New Testament that He paid the penalty in full for everyone’s sins...(*12)  [Can you hear the manipulation, the tone of "God's Word supports my view, and everyone who disagrees with me disagrees with God"?]

... He rather provided...a full atonement, a full propitiation for those who would believe... The 'all men' that God desires to be saved are the 'all men' that God determined to save.  He determined to save whom He desired to save.(*13)    

Christ was a ransom for all who would believe, and all who would believe would believe because God would give them life.... He provided a sacrifice only for those who would put their faith in Christ.(*14)  Since man cannot do that on his own, they are the ones whom God gives life... It is not a matter of a potential atonement, it is an actual atonement on behalf of us... The called, the chosen, are the ones for whom Christ died.

... This idea of the atonement [an unlimited atonement where Jesus died for all people] has the initial appearance of being very generous, but the more closely we look at it, the less we are impressed. Does it guarantee the salvation of anybody? No. [And yet Calvinism guarantees the damnation of most people.  How is this better?]  

Does it guarantee that those for whom Christ died will have an opportunity to hear of Him and respond to Him?  No. (*15) [The unbiblical presupposition here is that Jesus only died for certain people instead of all people, that the gospel must get to those particular prechosen people in order for them to be saved, and that everyone else is non-elect and can't hear, understand, or believe the gospel.]

Does it in any way remove or even lessen the sufferings of the lost?  No. (#16)  [Does Calvinism!?!]  

In reality, this view of the atonement [unlimited atonement, for all people] doesn’t atone, [but it just] merely clears the way for God to accept those who are able to lift themselves by their own strength.  [He's obviously mocking the idea of free-will belief in Jesus, suggesting that it's like dead people lifting themselves up by their own strength.  And since it's impossible for dead bodies to do that, then it must also be impossible for people to freely believe in Jesus.  Calvinism traps people through bad analogies like these.](*17)

So in summary, as we think about this, the death of Christ was a real, true, actual satisfaction of divine justice so that the sinner for whom Christ died is really, not potentially, provided an atonement [hear the positive wording, trying to make a limited atonement sound good😖] into which that sinner will enter by the sovereign power of God at the moment when God regenerates that sinner and gives him faith.(*18)  Not apart from the sinner’s will, but in accord with the sinner’s will, activated by the power of God.(*19)

The death of Christ, then, was definite, particular, specific, and actual on behalf of God's chosen people(*20)... It was the work of God and Christ to actually accomplish redemption [for a few specific people], not just make it possible [for all people].  Christ procured salvation for all that God would call and save.  Sinners do not limit the atonement as to its extent, God does.  And God put no limit on it as to its effect.  It fully saves all who will believe.  [And in Calvinism, only the Calv-elect can and will believe.]

... It is a kind of sacrilege to diminish the power and the efficiency of the atoning work of Christ, to make it something less than it really was." [Yes, Macarthur, it is!  As I'm sure you're finding out now.]

See?  See how Calvinists are not unaware of biblical truth, but how they know it and yet deny it, resist it, and look for more and more ways to try to prove it's wrong.  

And see how much they base their unbiblical understanding of election/predestination on their unbiblical understanding of what depravity/spiritual death is.  (See "Is Calvinism's TULIP Biblical?")

[The follow-up post will be next, and then the post of footnotes.]