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NASB | Romans 5:6 ¶ For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Romans 5:6 ¶ While we were still helpless [powerless to provide for our salvation], at the right time Christ died [as a substitute] for the ungodly. |
Subject: Christ dying only for elect? |
Bible Note: The problem here is that you are taking it as axiomatic that unregenerate man in any way has the ability to "choose God," that he is morally free to do so. Please show us in Scripture where it declares that man's will is free in this regard. Therefore, you seem to be interpreting Scripture in any way possible to protect this idea that man is free to choose, which I hold to be refuted soundly by Romans 3:10-18 and John 6 and Romans 9. Christ died not to OFFER payment of sins to all men, but to become sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), to die in our place (Galatians 2:20). Nowhere in the Bible do we see that he is a "hypothetical redeemer" or a "propitiation in theory." Your entire re-hashing of Norman Geisler does nothing but say that Jesus' death on the cross was incomplete in some fashion. Either Christ atoned for MY sin on the cross, undergoing the just wrath of God for MY sin, or he did not. It is not up to me to decide 2,000 years later whose sin Christ paid for. That is so undermining to the very biblical notion of God's freedom and sovereignty, and only exists to support the very unbiblical notion of man's unlimited moral freedom and sovereignty concerning salvation. Try to look at these Scriptures without the assumption that humans are morally capable of choosing to follow Christ (whether unaided or merely "wooed" by the Holy Spirit), and see if the freedom of man's will can be exegeted from the Bible. It is God who chooses, the Son who dies for those who are chosen, and the Holy Spirit who regenerates the chosen and causes them to believe in the Son who died in their place. The unsaved are completely left out of the salvation scenario. The unsaved are not chosen by God, and therefore they will justly suffer for all eternity for their own sins, since Christ did not pay for them on the cross. Any other scenario breaks down when carried to its logical conclusion. We end up with either universalism, an impotent God, or the penalty for sin being paid for by Christ AND the unbeliever. --Joe! |