If you missed the first part of this series, where I begin exploring the exegetical case for Jesus’s universal atonement, check it out here: Did Jesus Really Die for the Whole World? I argue that 1 John 2:2 teaches that Jesus was the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice, not only for the sins of believers, but also for the ‘whole world,’ the unbelieving world.
The Gentile Escape Hatch
Perhaps the most common response to this interpretation is to say that John is not suggesting a universal scope to Jesus’s atonement, but rather that he is teaching the inclusion of believing Gentiles into the body of believers.1 For example, A.W. Pink writes, “When John says, ‘He is the propitiation for our sins’ he can only mean for the sins of Jewish believers….When John added, ‘And not for ours only, but also for the whole world’ he signified that Christ was the propitiation for the sins of Gentile believers too…”2 No doubt there was some Jewish-Gentile tension in the early Church. Still, this response is lackluster for several reasons.
The primary weakness is that there is little to no internal evidence that John is speaking to issues of racism or discrimination from the Jewish and/or Gentile audience he is addressing. The letter of 1 John is written to counter false ideas about Christ, to explain how to discern genuine teachers, and to prove the centrality of love in the Christian faith. Unlike a letter like Galatians, for example, there is little about the friction seen between some believing Jews and Gentiles. In Galatians, Paul continuously teaches that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile (Galatians 3:28; c.f. Colossians 3:11). 1 John makes no such claim, as that is not one of the letter’s primary concerns. Thus, there is no reason to introduce this idea, somewhat arbitrarily, in 1 John 2:2.
Furthermore, it is likely that the audience to whom John is writing was not primarily Jewish, which would have been the typical suspects of prejudice against Gentiles (c.f. Matthew 3:9; Galatians 2:11-21). Daniel Wallace explains, “The audience was almost certainly made up mainly of Gentiles” due to the Gentile-focused heresies addressed by John (Antinomianism, Docetism, etc.) and due to the final admonition against idols (5:21), “an admonition which has great relevance for Gentile Christians, almost none for Jewish Christians.”3 But if this is the case, then the limited atonement advocate has little to no support for his alternative reading of 1 John 2:2, as the audience is Gentile, and hardly would need to be reminded that God died for the rest of the Gentile world; they already know that Christ died for them!
The Universalism Boogeyman
Another response says that a universal atonement leads to the unbiblical notion of Universalism—that all are saved—and so must be discounted (a reductio ad absurdum). If the atonement is provided for all, then all are saved, so the response goes. The objection, however, confuses and conflates atonement provided and atonement applied, a distinction that even most limited-atonement advocates acknowledge. Jesus’s sacrifice was made and genuinely provided for all, but effective and only applied for the faithful, the elect.
William Shedd—himself a Calvinist—explains, “Atonement in and by itself, separate from faith, saves no soul…It is only when the death of Christ has been actually confided in as atonement, that it is completely ‘set forth’ as God’s propitiation for sin…..It is not the making of this atonement, but the trusting in it, that saves the sinner.”4 Norman Douty—also a Calvinist—writes, “Without these acts [repentance and belief], even the elect are only potentially the recipients of these benefits.” Until then, “all of Christ’s saving work is theirs only potentially… His death has only provided these benefits for them; the application of them is contingent on their repentance and faith.”5
Recall that even the elect were at one time enemies of God (Romans 5:10; Colossians 1:21) and children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3), and thus did not have the atoning benefits applied. Even atonement for the elect alone is not automatically applied.6 Robert Lightner correctly notes, “The Bible does not teach that Christ’s death saves apart from faith. The accomplishments of the cross must be appropriated by those who would be saved and until such a time as faith is exercised the elect are just as lost as the nonelect.”7 He continues, “The cross does not apply its own benefits… No elect person was saved at the time of Christ’s dying. All men, including the elect, live some part of their lives in open rebellion to God, thus demonstrating that the finished accomplishments of Calvary must be applied by faith to reach an individual before any saving value comes to that individual.”8 If the Cross alone saves, without or prior to faith, then the regenerating, convicting, enlightening work of the Spirit is superfluous, and the necessity and centrality of faith is removed, which is a biblically untenable conclusion.9
The Bible is clear that without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6) and he has chosen to “save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21) through the atoning work of Christ (Romans 3:25). Thus, to affirm with the biblical data that Christ is the propitiation and atoning sacrifice for all is not to say he is the Savior of all. Only to those who believe are the atoning benefits applied.
Provided ≠ Applied
Other objections are found from apologists like James White. He begins by correctly noting, “And John’s writings would be studied to see how he uses the phrase ‘the whole world’ and what other phrases/descriptions could be paralleled with it.”10 Strangely, instead of surveying how John uses the word in the same epistle, White turns to a different book, Revelation, which has a different genre, a different audience, a different context, and possibly a different author.11 He cites Revelation 5:9-10, which speaks of Christ purchasing (ἠγόρασας) persons from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. White takes this to mean that Christ purchased and atoned only for those individuals. Of course, this simply is a non sequitur—to say that Christ purchased (or atoned for) certain persons does not suggest that he did not purchase (or atone) for others. Paul says that Christ “loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20). Obviously, it does not follow that Christ only died and loved Paul. It is a narrowing down for emphasis, here and elsewhere.12 A restricted statement does not invalidate a universal one. To suggest otherwise would fall prey to the negative inference fallacy.
Furthermore, White is conflating atonement provided versus applied, as discussed above. Revelation 5:9-10 may be addressing those to whom the atonement is applied and speaks nothing of its extent. John speaks of Christ as the propitiation for all in 1 John 2:2 and the actual purchasing of faithful individuals in Revelation.13 The former is atonement provided, and the latter is its application. Moreover, just because an individual has been purchased does not mean those benefits can be revoked or that the person be destroyed (see 2 Peter 2:1). Thus, Revelation 5:9-10 in no sense disproves the teaching of 1 John 2:2 about a universal atonement.
White also brings up John 11:49-52 where the high priest Caiaphas says, “Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but in order that He might also gather together into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.” The nation referred to is all of ethnic Israel (vv. 48, 50). Israel was Jesus’s initial modus operandi; he was sent to save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21), and initially commanded his disciples not to go to the Gentiles (10:5-6) and only later called them to preach to all persons (28:18-20). John 11:49-52 teaches that Christ died for the entire nation of Israel—many of whom were still nonbelievers—with only believers benefiting from his death (1:12).
But who are the “children of God who are scattered abroad” spoken of in v. 52? These are the faithful, those who have given allegiance to King Jesus. As John 1:12 says, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” Paul says the same in Galatians 3:26 (NRSV), “for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith” (c.f. Matthew 5:9, NRSV).
Therefore, there is nothing in John 11:49-52 supporting limited atonement. Caiaphas says Jesus will die for all of ethnic Israel, not merely some elect group within Israel. Then he speaks of Jesus gathering all the faithful Jews and Gentiles, the scattered children of God, into one. This passage shows the unlimited scope of Christ’s death: all of Israel is included, and anyone can be called a child of God and gathered into the Church of Christ through faith.
Does Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer Limit the Atonement?
Scholar Robert Yarbrough begins his objection to universal atonement by noting Christ’s seeming propitiation for the whole world and writes, “Such a reference should not be surprising given John’s stress on Christ’s ministry to the world at large in the Fourth Gospel (e.g., Jn 1:9, 10, 29; 3:16, 17, 19; 4:42; 6:14, 33, 51).”14 He notes that the offer of the gospel, like the blessings in the Old Testament, is extended to all, even if not all accept it. Christ’s atonement “provides the basis throughout all human history for God the Father to extend patience and forbearance to those who merit his rejection.”15
Yarbrough cites Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer in John 17:9 and says, “If the Son does not mind specifying that he prays for only a certain group given to him by the Father, it is not hard to imagine that in the same sense his cleansing blood is applied in its fullest sense only to that group.”16 If by the “fullest sense” Yarbrough simply means atonement applied, then this is uncontroversial. But if he is suggesting Jesus’s specific prayer implies limited atonement, this is a non-sequitur. Even granting his interpretation of John 17, it does not follow that Christ’s atonement did not extend beyond this specific prayer. After all, Jesus prayed even that his enemies would be forgiven (Luke 23:34). Robert Picirilli says, concerning John 17, “…there is no a priori reason to assume that Christ could not desire the salvation of all, and plan to die for all, and yet offer intercessory prayers for those truly His.”17
Yarbrough argues there are “certain positive benefits” for the non-elect, which are provided through the atonement.18 Benefits such as common grace and the ability to preach and offer the gospel to all. Yet Yarbrough never explains how God and others can genuinely offer the gospel to others when its benefits are not truly made or available to all. How can God and others call all persons to repentance (Acts 17:30; cf. Isaiah 45:22; 2 Corinthians 5:20) when in fact there is no atonement to apply to them if they so choose?
Let John Define the Whole World
Far more accurate is Constantine Campbell on 1 John 2:2 when he writes, “This is a bold declaration of the universal scope of Christ’s propitiatory act; he faced God’s righteous wrath toward the sins of the whole world.”19 In response to the suggestion that Christ merely died for the elect’s sins, Campbell explains, “A chief difficulty for the limited-atonement reading of 2:2b is that there is nothing in the context to support it.”20 Campbell rightly says, “In John’s writings the ‘world’ normally refers to humanity in total opposition to God.”21
Colin Kruse concurs and says, “When the author says that Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for the ‘sins of the whole world,’ that includes not only our sins (i.e., the sins of believers) but the sins of the unbelieving world as well.”22 Kruse writes, “Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world because his death was sufficient to deal with the sins of the whole world, but that his sacrifice does not become effective until people believe in him.”23
Thus, none of these objections provides sufficient grounds for rejecting the straightforward reading of 1 John 2:2: Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for ‘our sins,’ that is, for believers John is speaking to, and is the propitiation for the sins of the ‘whole world,’ meaning all unbelievers, the rest of humanity, under Satanic power.
Be sure to stay tuned for the final part of this series, where I’ll unpack the biblical case for the universal and provisionary model of Christ’s atoning work that emerges across the entire biblical narrative! We can genuinely offer the good news of King Jesus to everyone because Christ truly died for everyone. This is the true gospel of reconciliation: universally provided for all and made effective through faithfulness.
__________________________________________________
