Shultz:

There are three statements in the Pastoral Epistles that describe the atonement as being for all people. The first of these is 1 Timothy 2:3-6, which states, “This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time.” In the context of 1 Timothy 2:1-8, Paul¹⁰⁹ is encouraging prayer for all people (v. 1), including kings and those in authority (v. 2), because such prayer is good and pleasing to God our Savior (v. 3),¹¹⁰ who desires all people to be saved (v. 4).¹¹¹ The reasons that God desires for all people to be saved are because he is the one and only God, and because Jesus Christ is the one and only Mediator between God and humanity (v. 5).¹¹² Jesus is the one who was a ransom for all (v. 6), and the one whom Paul was appointed to preach to the Gentiles (v. 7). Therefore Paul desires that all people pray everywhere without wrath or dissension (v. 8).

The primary interpretive issue in this passage that impacts the debate over the extent of the atonement is the meaning of “all” in verses 4 and 6. Advocates of particular redemption argue that “all men” refers to “all sorts of men,” or “all kinds of men”; essentially this passage is stating that God’s desire and Christ’s ransom encompass not only the Jews, but Gentiles as well.¹¹³ On the other hand, advocates of unlimited atonement assert that “all men” means “all people”; God’s desire and Christ’s ransom are for all people without exception.¹¹⁴ In defense of the first option, appeal is often made to 1 Timothy 2:1-2, where Paul encourages prayers for all people, and then mentions specifically two groups of people, kings and those in authority.¹¹⁵ First Timothy 2:2 is understood as clarifying what Paul meant in 1 Timothy 2:1.¹¹⁶ Steven Baugh offers three additional arguments for this interpretation.¹¹⁷ First, the mention of one God and one Mediator (v. 5) echoes Deuteronomy 6:4, and demonstrates that God’s salvation is not only for the Jews but for the Gentiles as well.¹¹⁸ Second, the phrase “in his own time” emphasizes the eschatological nature of Christ’s ransom as reaching out to all peoples.¹¹⁹ Third, in Titus 1:1-3 Paul proclaims that his commission to preach to the Gentiles is confirmation of God’s purpose to include Gentiles in salvation through Christ, and this proclamation explains Paul’s zeal in defending his apostolic calling in verse 7.¹²⁰

The second option, that “all men” refers to “all people” and not to “all kinds of people,” seems preferable, however, for four reasons. First, it correctly understands 1 Timothy 2:1 as instructing believers to pray for all human beings, and not various classes of human beings.¹²¹ Second, it makes better sense of Paul’s argument regarding one God and one Mediator. God is the only God and Christ is the only Mediator, and therefore God is the God of all and Christ is the Mediator for all.¹²² These statements are true of all people without exception.¹²³ Third, the focus of Paul’s reasoning in this passage is that Christ is the ransom for all.¹²⁴ Most commentators understand verse 6 as going back to the thought of Mark 10:45,¹²⁵ which emphasizes the immeasurable greatness of Christ’s ransom.¹²⁶ The fourth reason, and perhaps the most decisive one, is that this meaning harmonizes with Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 4:10, which states “For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.” This statement is similar to the one in 1 Timothy 2:3-4, and it is extremely difficult to understand “all men” as “all sorts of men” in this verse; it seems clearly to refer to all people without exception.¹²⁷ First Timothy 2:3-6 states that Christ’s atonement is for all people without exception because God desires the salvation of the all people without exception.

Shultz, Gary L. “A Biblical and Theological Defense of a Multi-Intentioned View of the Atonement” (Ph.D diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2008) 131-136. [Bold original, italics original; footnotes and values original; and underlining mine.].

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Calvin:

Sermons:

1) See here, I pray you, the election of God, whereby he putts such difference between the lineage of Abraham and all the rest of the world, that he made the same lineage his church of purpose, that the signs of his favor and of his covenant should remain there, and that his name should be called upon there, so as he offered the promises of salvation to them that descended of the same race and lineage… Lo, here, I say, a general election that belonged to all the children of Abraham,

. …Now then, God’s general election which extended to the whole people was not sufficient, but it behooved every man to be partaker of it in his own peculiar behalf. And how was that to be done? By faith. …Lo, here, the double election of God. The one extendeth to the whole people, because circumcision was given indifferently to all, both small and great, and the promises likewise were common. But yet for all that, God was fain to add a second grace, by touching the hearts of his chosen, namely of such as he listed to reserve to himself, and those came unto him, and he made them to receive the benefit that was offered them. Calvin, Sermons on Deuteronomy, Sermon 72, Deuteronomy. 10:15-17, p., 439. 69

2) Because many people have no regard for God and are in this world like wild animals, without hope of salvation and without godliness, Peter in particular, wishing to bring the Jews to our Lord Jesus Christ, capitalizes on the fact that they belong to a house God chose and elected from among all others because they were descended from the lineage of Jacob. And since our Lord called himself the God of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob, he also called the Jews into his fellowship and tried to establish them among the number of his children and heirs. That is why Peter reminded them of their lineage, so they might know that the Messiah’s salvation, promised in the law, was for them. Yet he tells them that in vain do they boast of belonging to that lineage if they do not receive the benefit offered to them. John Calvin, Sermons on Acts of the Apostles, (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2008), 13.

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Vos:

There is, however, still a third sense, in which Jesus leads us to ascribe universality to the divine love. This is done not so much in explicit form as by the implications of His attitude toward sinful men in general. We must never forget that our Lord was the divine love incarnate, and that consequently what He did, no less than what He taught, is a true revelation adapted to shed light on our problem. If the Son of God was filled with tender compassion for every lost human soul, and grieved even over those whose confirmed unbelief precluded all further hope of salvation, it is plain that there must be in God something corresponding to this. In the parable of the prodigal son the father is represented as continuing to cherish a true affection for his child during the period of the latter’s estrangement. It would be hardly in accord with our Lord’s intention to press the point that the prodigal was destined to come to repentance, and that, therefore, the father’s attitude toward him portrays the attitude of God toward the elect only, and not toward every sinner as such. We certainly have a right to say that the love which God originally bears toward man as created in His image survives in the form of compassion under the reign of sin. This being so, when the sinner comes in contact with the gospel of grace, it is natural for God to desire that he should accept its offer and be saved. We must even assume that over against the sin of rejection of the gospel this love continues to assert itself, in that it evokes from the divine heart sincere sorrow over man’s unbelief. But this universal love should be always so conceived as to leave room for the fact that God, for sovereign reasons, has not chosen to bestow upon its objects that higher love which not merely desires, but purposes and works out the salvation of some. It may be difficult to realize from any analogy in our own consciousness how the former can exist without giving rise to the latter; yet we are clearly led to believe that such is the case in God. A logical impossibility certainly is not involved, and our utter ignorance regarding the motives which determine the election of grace should restrain us from forming the rash judgment that, psychologically speaking, the existence of such a love in God for the sinner and the decree of preterition with reference to that same sinner are mutually exclusive. For, let it be remembered, we are confronted with the undeniable fact that this universal love of God, however defined, does not induce Him to send the gospel of salvation to all who are its objects. If the withholding of the gospel is consistent with its truthfulness, then a fortiori the withholding of efficacious grace must be. That there are good reasons for the former is true: but undoubtedly God has also His wise and holy reasons for the latter. The Scriptures do not assert that election and preterition are arbitrary decrees to the mind of God. All they insist upon is that the motives underlying them are inscrutable to us, and have nothing whatever to do with the worthiness or unworthiness of man.

Neither this indiscriminate goodness in the sphere of nature, however, nor the collective love which embraces the world as an organism, nor the love of compassion which God retains for every lost sinner, should be confounded with that fourth and highest form of the divine affection which the Savior everywhere appropriates to the disciples. This is represented under the figure of fatherhood. Notwithstanding all that has been asserted to the contrary by a host of modern writers, an impartial examination of the facts discloses the principle that the fatherhood of God in its specific sense is realized in the kingdom, so that His fatherhood and kingship appear coextensive.

Geerhardus Vos, “The Scriptural Doctrine of the Love of God,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Richard B. Gaffin (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1980; 2001), 443–444. The article originally appeared in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review 13 (1902): 1–37. Iain H. Murray cites it in “The Cross: The Pulpit of God’s Love Part 2″ Banner of Truth 495 (December 2004), 14. The entire article by Vos is available online here.

Thanks to Tony for the find.

Shultz:

2 Corinthians 5:18-21

Second Corinthians 5:18-21 enlarges upon and completes the truths expressed in 5:14-15. Second Corinthians 5:16-17 describes two consequences of Christ’s death for those who believe (cf. 5:15). First, for believers there is now a completely different way of viewing reality (v. 16).⁸⁷ Second, anyone who is in Christ is a new creation, and a part of Christ’s new order for the universe (v. 17).⁸⁸ All of these benefits of being in Christ are from God (v. 18a),⁸⁹ as God is the one “who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18b-19). These verses state that God reconciled the world to himself through Christ, and the results of this reconciliation are the forgiveness of sins and the preaching of the cross.⁹⁰

Reconciliation is a distinctly Pauline idea,⁹¹ and most broadly it refers to God’s work in which, out of his love, he acts to bring about harmonious relations between himself and his creation.⁹² God reconciles through Jesus Christ, on the basis of the work of Christ, the atonement.⁹³ Reconciliation is primarily an objective act; it is something that God has done for humanity in the cross of Christ.⁹⁴ It is also a subjective act, however, because human beings must themselves subjectively experience the reconciliation that God has wrought in order to have fellowship with him.⁹⁵ Both the objective and the subjective senses of reconciliation are present in 2 Corinthians 5:18-21.

Second Corinthians 5:18-19 are parallel statements, in that verse 19 repeats and amplifies the thoughts of verse 18.⁹⁶ The objective work of reconciliation appears at the beginning of each verse, in that God has reconciled “us” (v. 18) or “the world” (v.19) to himself. The need for a subjective receiving of God’s reconciliation is highlighted at the end of each verse, as Paul speaks of the ministry and the message of reconciliation.⁹⁷ This ministry and message of reconciliation is clarified in verse 20, which states “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” In light of God’s reconciling act and consequent entrustment of the message of reconciliation to Paul, Paul describes himself (and others who follow after him)⁹⁸ as Christ’s ambassador. God makes his appeal through his ambassadors, and people need to believe this appeal in order to be reconciled to God; they need to subjectively experience the objective reality of God’s reconciliation in order to have a relationship with God.⁹⁹ Second Corinthians 5:21 returns to the objective idea of reconciliation and describes how God accomplished reconciliation in Christ.¹⁰⁰ The verse states, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

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