What is limited atonement?

Limited Atonement!

We will select for our first consideration author Pink's teaching of a limited atonement; that is, that Christ died on the cross for certain ones whom God in His sovereignty chose in a past eternity, but in no way for any others. To prove that he taught this, we quote a few excerpts from his book:

Therefore, according to Mr. Pink, Christ came and died for "a few" of fallen men. Truly his ideas of the atonement are limited. He also seeks to bolster his "limited atonement" doctrine by misuse of portions of Isaiah 53 as he attempts to prove that the Father in a past eternity made certain promises to the Son in respect to the limited number for whom He would die. We say at the outset, these ideas are the work of the finite mind trying to confine the infinite within its own exceedingly "limited" apprehension. Who has been able to comprehend the extent of the heavens that declare the glory of God in creation? or who shall rightly declare the moral glory of God in redemption? Shall mortal man limit the excelling glory of God in the work of the atonement? - that inestimable work that has glorified God in His very nature, character, and all His attributes. The Apostle Paul speaks of God's ways being "past finding out," but this writer seems to feel that he has found them out. Another has said about trying to comprehend God by the mind: "He would not be God if human understanding could measure Him."

This is admittedly a paradox: it seems to be contradictory, but is not. Believers have often had great difficulty with this matter. Some have seen one side so clearly that they deny the other side, or take away its real significance in an effort to make the two fit to their satisfaction. But both are fully true, and not to be tampered with. Some will say that only God's divine choice is to be considered, and therefore that God gave His Son only for the elect. Thus they preach a limited atonement, available to the elect alone and to no others. On the other hand, some insist that salvation depends entirely on the choice of individuals, saying that Christ bore the sins of all, and the one determining factor in their salvation is their own will in either accepting or rejecting the salvation of God. They insist that God leaves this choice entirely to the "free will" of the individual.

For whom then a substitute? For the world as such? No: that would be universalism. For the elect as such, a definite number of people marked by this election? Again, no: that would be a strictly limited atonement, which would give no basis for a universal offer of salvation, and would not allow of Christ a "propitiation for the sins of the whole world."

It is clear, then, we cannot speak of the world in this connection. A substitute for the world the Lord could not be, or universalism would be the simple necessity, and there could be no judgment for a single soul. But this is terrible error, and not the truth in any wise; and error which is now deceiving thousands. What have we on the other hand? "Substitution," is the thought of many, "for the elect." This is, of course, limited atonement. It is not possible to make it unite really with propitiation in any real sense for the world. You may say it is sufficient for the whole world. In itself it may be of value enough, but available it is not. Could one coming upon this warrant plead the value of that which in its design was absolutely for a limited number, of which he was not one, — Christ being really the Representative of so many millions and no others? If you say they will not come, it may be very true they will not; but you cannot say the work is done for all, if it be not so; and the blood of propitiation is the blood of substitution — of an offering offered for so many.

Unspeakably solemn is it to consider that the holy and beloved Son of God, Himself knowing no sin, yet as "made sin for us," entered into that awful darkness, and was tried by the fire of God's wrath against it. So indeed it was. He was the Substitute under our penalty, and endured the penalty. Ours it was of course, not His; but He endured it, and endured it as the necessity of holiness, to set His people free.

But there is a point here it is important to guard, and which, guarded, will go far to preserve us from some excesses which people have gone into with regard to substitution. We must not confound the Lord's standing in our place to take for us our dreadful due, with any calculation, essentially lowering as it is to the very righteousness which it is meant to uphold, of so much suffering for so much sin. In the day of final award it is indeed said that "the dead" are "judged out of the things which are written in the books, according to their works" (Rev. 20:13), and this it is, no doubt, that has been carried back as a principle to the day of atonement. It has been argued that if our iniquities were laid upon Him, — if He bare our sins in His body, then these must all have been counted up and weighed, and He must have suffered so much for each one. In this case it is plain we have just so many sins absolutely provided for, and no others. It is a limited atonement of the most rigid kind, and of which it would be impossible to use the language of the apostle, "A propitiation, not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). For if the sins of the whole world had been after this manner provided for, no one could be lost, or judged again for what in Him had received its judgment. And this is very far from the truth of Scripture.

One last objection remains A limited atonement is the inevitable outcome of the doctrine that sin was punished on the cross. Whose sin?

If it be answered, That of the whole human race, then universalism emerges, for God cannot in justice punish sin twice. It must be, then, that the sins of the elect only were punished. Hence, at the bottom, this system rests on the tenet of a particular, in distinction from a universal, atonement." (p. 130.)

And the writer goes on to inveigh against the "Jesuitical cunning" of those he is attacking in not confessing their Calvinistic tendencies, closing with a report of a conversation with Mr. Darby, in which he answers a question upon election, in the frankest and most outspoken way possible! But the truth is, the Plymouth Brethren in general do not believe in "limited atonement" in the sense in which this is usually understood. They accept Christ's being a propitiation for the whole world, in the ordinary acceptation of "world;" and in ten years of study our author should have discovered this. Nay, in another place he does give us some inkling of the truth. "They make a distinction," he says, "between the death of Christ for all, and the blood of Christ shed only for those who are through faith sprinkled and cleansed thereby. By this means God saves believers, and presents an 'aspect of mercy' toward all mankind." (p. 59.)

Verse 15. "And that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again." The effective limitation of the atonement to the predestinated heirs of grace is plainly involved in this statement. It is nowhere said that because Christ died for all, all are alive, though it is a positive declaration of the gospel that as in Adam, all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive; the last Adam has his offspring like the first. But the last Adam is also the Great Shepherd of the sheep, who holds His flock not by the title which belongs to Him as the Creator of mankind, but as the Father's special gift, and in the bond of the everlasting covenant of life (John 10:26-29; Heb. 13:20) and peace which He has sealed with His own blood. Who then are the living that are contemplated in this verse? They only who believe unto life everlasting on their crucified Redeemer (1 Tim. 1:16), and because they so believe are taught to reckon themselves already dead to sin, and alive to God in Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:11). The just lives by his faith. The words now before us show the special aim and purpose of the death-seeking love of Jesus. The dying Lord beheld the prospect of His spoil (Titus 2:14; Heb. 12:2). To be loved by the living He first set His love upon the dead, even to the voluntary taking of their place. Jesus would have the love of His own as His especial joy, and to win it He so wrought and suffered for their sakes, as to tie them in a willing and eternal bondage to Himself.

The fact is that this type is only a particular witness to the great principle of Scripture, dogmatically laid down in the clearest terms of the New Testament. Take the distinction between "redemption" (Eph. 1:7) and "purchase" (2 Peter 2:1): the true key, which opens the Calvinistic and Arminian dilemma. For they both confound the two truths, so that each is partially right, and partially wrong. The Lord by His death "bought" all creation, and every man of course, "false teachers" and all. It is at their everlasting peril that they deny His rights and rise up against their Sovereign Master. But none are "redeemed" save those who have through faith in His blood the forgiveness of their trespasses. Hence the Calvinist is as right in holding particular redemption, as the Arminian in maintaining universal purchase. But they are both in error when they fail to distinguish purchase and redemption. By His death on the cross the Lord added to His creator rights, and made every creature His by that infinite purchase. All are His, and not their own, as the believer only and fully acknowledges. But redemption delivers from Satan and sins: and this is nowhere the portion save by faith.

The Lord Jesus had to die, and He ‘became obedient unto (that is, as far as) death, even the death of the cross' (Phil. 2:8). The obedience of Christ took Him to Calvary where He went under the judgment and wrath of God on account of sins and undertook the work of atonement, laying down His life, with all the value of the atonement in His blood. There is provision for all in the blood of Christ. He ‘gave himself a ransom for all' (1 Tim. 2:6); ‘he died for all' (2 Cor. 5:15). There is no such thing as a limited atonement only for ‘the elect' in Scripture, although it is true that the only persons who get the benefit are believers.

It is also alluded to in 1 John 2:2 and 1 John 4:10. And here a point of great importance stands clearly out, viz. that Christ's sacrifice viewed as a propitiation covers not only the believer's sins, but also the whole world.

In connection with this care is needed, for it is very easy here to speak unscripturally. Nowhere are we authorized by Scripture to speak of Christ dying for the sins of everybody in the sense that He was everybody's substitute. On the other hand, we are nowhere authorised to limit the bearing of His sacrifice viewed as propitiation. In this connection its scope is nothing less than the whole world.