"THOU SHALT SURELY DIE!" (PART 5)

 

 

The carnal mind can only receive a distorted understanding of the Scriptures, a Satanic version, the only version which supports the Satanic lie that man would not spiritually die. There is no spiritual life if there is no unity with God. There would be no reason for any separation from God if man had not committed sin. Seeing that all men have sinned, in Adam, unity with God has been broken and no man has ever been able to restore that unity in and of himself for he has became dead in sin and dead to God. No spiritual death without sin, so naturally with sin came spiritual death. Sin brings with it death, separation and alienation. Do and live, disobey and die, and die man did. Arminianism teaches that a man must do, or he will die. The Scriptures, however, teach that man cannot do, for he is already dead! When you see the words you must do... read you're not dead. You must do totally disregards the fact that by nature man is spiritually dead to God and needs to be made alive, born again, made a new creature in Christ. You must do is only in accord with the reasoning that is natural to a man's carnal, dead to the things of God mind, and rules all religion with an iron fist, but is shown to be a nonsense when confronted by the Word of God which says you CANNOT do because you are dead. Perhaps the single most compelling piece of evidence of a man's spiritual death meaning an eternal separation from God is seen in the fact that no man, by nature, has any desire for the True God. There is no spiritual life if there is no desire for God. And the word of God says "...there is none that seeketh after God" (Rom. 3:11). The word seeketh here means "to seek out for one's self; to beg for; to crave; to demand; search for; require". No man by nature begs for the true God; no man who craves the true God; no man who demands the true God; no man who searches for the true God and no man dead to God requires the True God. There is nothing left in natural man which craves the True God and there is no other explanation for this other than the biblical fact that man, by nature, is completely dead to God. Notice how the Word of God does not say that none are religious, that there are none that, in their ignorance, seek after and crave the false gods which this world's religions offer. But it does state—and in so doing illustrates or describes the spiritually dead state of man—that there is no man, by nature, who seeks after, or, wants, the True God.

 

People confuse religious desire, prevalent in most, with a desire for the True God. But this cannot be for Scripture says man is "...without God..." (Eph. 2:12) which in turn is clearly evidenced in Romans 3 where we see that no man has a desire for the true God, and so, has no hope in this world. To be without God means, in essence, that you are also without desire for the true God, "godless, destitute of God". A Godless man has no life toward God. You cannot desire the True God unless God has made you alive unto Him. Unless God has come to a man, that man remains without any hope, for he is without God. To desire the true God would mean one had a proper understanding and recognition of Who He is, and if one has a proper understanding of Who the true God is it would mean that God has revealed Himself to you and given you life to believe. Before any of this takes place none know Him, none can seek Him and none can believe in Him. You cannot be in a more hopeless state than when you are without, and ignorant of, what you are dead to. If there did remain some unity with God after the Fall, even the slightest hint that any man still had some desire for the true God, then what occurred, spiritually, in the Garden could not be referred to as death. If there remained some connection between man and God then there remained some spiritual life, and, therefore, Satan would have been partially true in his claim that man would not surely die and, of greater significance, God would have partially lied. Since this cannot be, to believe and then try and defend Satan’s lie to Eve is to attempt to stop the wind or to change a leopard's spots. It is an utterly fruitless and superfluous exercise engaged in only by the lost. Though there are literally billions who believe that man is not spiritually dead, along with its sister doctrine of free will, the principle of safety in numbers just does not apply, for error can never be justified or become truth by sheer weight of numbers nor by popular and universally accepted opinion. People often say 'It's all in the way you look at things'. The problem with this approach is that the Truth of God is not in accord with how people look at things or think. The carnal mind is enmity with God and cannot receive the things of God, including His Truth, for such things are discerned spiritually (see Rom. 8:7; 1 Cor. 2:14). Those who hold to the lie of non spiritual death simply do not realise where the anti-grace principle of this teaching comes from or where this lie leads to. Hopefully, after reading and comparing the Scriptures presented in this book with all of Scripture, they will have a clear understanding of the big picture.

 

Again, man did not immediately die physically after he sinned but he did immediately become a mortal creature, and so began the irreversible process of corruption, the dissolution, decay and eventual death of his now perishable body. The use of the word ‘die’ as the consequence of man’s disobedience insists upon this. To die is to be separated. It is a separation from life. It is a complete cessation of life. Death, be it physical or spiritual, denotes an irreconcilable, irretrievable and irreversible detachment. The cord is broken, the bridge is destroyed, the road is impassable and all power has been cut off. There are no degrees, no stages and no types, or variations of death. Death is not a variable, or changeable, thing. Dead is dead. As one man put it, “How many kinds of dead are there?” Just as no man who dies physically can of his own ability return from the dead, for he has not either the will or means to, so too, no man in his spiritually dead state can do anything to alter his condition nor can any other man restore him from his lost state. Such a reconstruction is beyond the knowledge, or ability of the spiritually dead. No reconstruction, no regeneration is necessary according to the Arminian. He asserts that the cord is not broken, the bridge has not been destroyed, the road is not impassable and man still has the power to come to God by his own free will decision. As Lazarus was physically dead, so too, man is dead in sin. The word dead as used in Ephesians 2:1 when referring to man being dead in sin means to be lifeless, deceased, destitute of life, inanimate. It is used metaphorically of being spiritually dead. In stating that Lazarus is dead in John 11:14, the Lord Jesus was saying that Lazarus was physically dead, that he was deceased. Though the words used for dead in the original Greek are different in these two verses of Scripture the meaning is quite clear: LIFELESSNESS! Thus it is proper to use the account of Lazarus in John as a metaphorical account of man's natural state of spiritual death and how he is made alive. The Apostle John's Gospel is often referred to as the spiritual Gospel. Lazarus did not come to Christ for he was dead to Christ. Lazarus did not call on Christ for he was dead to Christ. Christ came to Lazarus and made him alive! Christ did not at any time tell Lazarus what he could do to rise from the dead but did what only Christ could do: He simply commanded Lazarus to rise. What else could have resulted from this command but Lazarus rising from the dead. What else could have resulted from God’s commanding that there be light, than there being light? (Gen. 1:3). Lazarus could have done nothing to raise himself, to loose himself from his graveclothes let alone will to do so. Only by the Word and Will of God was life restored in Lazarus. Here we see an emblematic picture of spiritually dead man who can do nothing without Christ and His quickening power. Spiritually dead man can do nothing without the will of God to command life. With Christ's command to rise came the rising of a dead man. It is no different in the case of a spiritually dead man being made alive by God. "Being separated from the life of God is actually another term for being 'dead in trespasses and sins' (Eph. 2:1-4). When we die physically, our bodies are separated from our souls; when we are dead spiritually, we are separated from the life of God". Christ said: "...let the dead bury their dead" (Matt. 8:22). "...however strange and odd such a phrase may sound in the ears of some, of one dead man's burying another, it was easily understood by a Jew; with whom it is common to say, (tmk bwvx ajwxh) , 'that a sinner is counted as dead, and that ungodly persons, even while they are alive, (Mytm Nyywrq) , are 'called dead'. And in this sense is the word used, in the former part of this phrase; and Christ's meaning is, let such who are dead in trespasses and sins, and to all that is spiritually good, bury those who are dead in a natural or corporeal sense."

 

People who say that there remains ANYTHING of a spiritual connection, or union, between man and God, after spiritual death was incurred by Adam and Eve, are deluded at best and spiritually insane at worst. The origin of the lie that man is not utterly spiritually dead to God does not find its beginning with Pelagius or Arminius or any other man or ism. It is nothing but a Satanic lie and its origin is easily traced back to the heart of the Devil who is the father of lies. This whole 'controversy' about spiritual death and free will and, as we shall see later, and of Christ's death for all as opposed to His death for those given Him by the Father, has not been and is not a battle between isms, or even a struggle amongst Christians, but a matter of God and Satan: the Spirit of Truth and the spirit of error: the Truth of God and the lie of Satan. The protagonists of both Arminianism and Calvinism seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that they, in some way, own the truth. That the truth is with either one or the other or that both have a share in what the truth of God is. That they command what the rest of us are to believe. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is  not a matter of 'We are all saved but have different opinions, different beliefs concerning what God has done in salvation', for then a man could be saved in believing in any number of differing gospels and not in God's one and only Gospel. What we believe defines the one we believe in which, in turn, shows whether we are saved or not, whether we are the children of God or children of His Wrath. DIRECTLY OPPOSING BELIEFS CANNOT BOTH BE RIGHT, AND, THEREFORE, CANNOT BOTH BE EXPRESSING THE SAME GOSPEL AND DEFINING THE SAME GOD. God's Gospel is the only Gospel by which He saves for it is His only power unto salvation (see Rom. 1:16,17). Any other gospel is a false gospel for it differs with what God's Gospel declares and so has no power to save. If all false gospels have no power to save then all those who believe in them have no right to call themselves Christian. To follow false doctrine about the True God is to be guilty of mistaken identity! No false gospel identifies the true God. False doctrine can only take you on the broad road that leads to destruction. It is taught by blind guides and believed in by their equally blind followers and if both should continue on that path, they will all fall into the ditch (see Matt. 15:14). The spiritually dead state of mankind empowers false gospels to deceive the world into thinking it has the truth and is free. The Word of God states that the whole world lies in wickedness, blinded to the fact it stands deceived and that none can ever leave the confines of a false gospel’s lies until they receive the love of God’s Truth and are made free by the Lord Jesus Christ. Belief in such gospels simply reveals a man's lost and spiritually dead state. This is clearly demonstrated in the apostle Paul's words to the Galatians: "But though we, or an angel from Heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed" (Gal. 1:8; cf. 2 Cor. 4:3). Therefore, those who believe in God's Gospel are of God for they believe in His Truth and are saved. Scripture speaks of "...the hope of the Gospel..." (Col. 1:23), from this we learn that there is absolutely no hope whatsoever in a false gospel. Hope is found only in the Gospel of God ALONE and if one does not abide in, believe in the doctrines of God's Gospel, but in a different gospel, then one simply does not have hope. Godly Hope is eternally resident in the only Gospel of God (see Col. 1:5,6). Those who believe not the doctrines of Christ contained within His Gospel are simply not of God for they believe not His Truth and so cannot have hope and be in a saved state. It is nothing short of that, and it will never be any different.

 

The true believer calls himself Christian, and accepts no man-made label. The defenders and promoters of those who call themselves Arminian and Calvinist promote teachings which are, by and large, not what the Scriptures teach. Most who profess the name of Christ are spiritually dead people who sincerely believe they are Christian, but who do not believe the doctrines of the Gospel. They do not abide in them nor do they judge saved and lost by them (see 2 Jn. 9). Clearly, they are not people who have been given saving Faith from God for their faith is in gospels other than God's Gospel. Whilst believing their gospel is God's Gospel, they hold to the untenable position that one is saved who believes in what they themselves call another gospel. They do not believe the Gospel of Christ as testified to by God in the Scriptures (see 1 Jn. 5:9-11). They are led and deceived by the spirit of error masquerading as the Spirit of Truth. They label and mock true Christians because God's people insist, as the Scriptures do, that none who believe not the Gospel of God can possibly be in a saved state (see Mk. 16:16; Gal. 1:8,9). Most Calvinists say they have no problems with the doctrines of the Gospel of the grace of God and yet the majority claim that those who do not abide in those doctrines, in fact, who abide in diametrically opposing doctrines, are nonetheless saved. Along with Spurgeon, they rightly declare the Arminian gospel another gospel, and yet claim that those who believe it are no less saved than those who believe in God's true and only Gospel. Like the person who truly believes the answer to 2 + 2 = 4 does not believe that any other answer to that particular equation could possibly be, and therefore is not, right, the true believer not only believes that God's Gospel is the only one that is the power of God unto salvation but also that NO OTHER gospel is and therefore belief, trust, in no other gospel can save. Tell Calvinists what the doctrines of the Gospel are and most would agree with you. But then inform them that none are, or were, saved prior to, or without, believing those doctrines and you will be met with a furore of protest, and be labelled a hyper-Calvinist.

 

Though the Calvinist believes that man is spiritually dead by nature as a result of the Fall, and, because of that death, does not in fact have a free will to choose God and His Christ, whom the Calvinist insists did not die for all but for the elect, he curiously holds to the myth that Christ's death was 'efficient for some but sufficient for all'. Whilst for many this is merely a case of unfortunate phraseology, it is no less than a direct attack upon the Gospel doctrine that Christ's death was for those whom the Father had given Him, and so could only have been sufficient for those whom the Son laid down His life. To place no limitation upon the sufficiency of Christ's death but to limit its efficiency, is simply a man-made doctrine which does nothing but attempt to appease those who claim that Christ's death was for all and its efficiency limited to those who accept what He has done. Of course, Christ's death would not only have been sufficient, but also efficient if He had died for all, for you cannot have an efficient atonement unless it is sufficient to save all for whom it was made. Any argument against this is Scripturally baseless, to say the least, and has the consistency of a dry cracker, for Christ's sacrificial death, as with that of His shadow, the high priest of the Old Testament, was only made on the behalf of God's chosen ones. The essence of Atonement is that such a sacrificial and substitutionary death has forever linked the sacrifice with those for whom it was made who are the eternal beneficiaries of its effectiveness. It is what was done and not what potentially could have been done which the serious student of Bible doctrine should concern himself with. Christ's death was never a scattershot sacrifice, it was not a general sacrifice made for and offered to all of humanity, and, therefore, conditioned on an individual’s free will choice to ‘accept it’, but a specific sacrifice made for all those whom the High Priest was directed to make by God Himself. The fact that by His death Christ has/will save ALL those for whom He died by taking their place and suffering their punishment, that is, for all whom He became a curse for, shows that if Jesus had died for all then surely all would have been saved. Christ is the Savior of His people and not the potential Savior of anyone (see Isa. 53). The utterly needless doctrine that says Christ’s death was sufficient for all but efficient for some, makes absolutely no Scriptural sense whatsoever, it is simply a doctrinal phrase used by those who have no courage to say what exactly Christ did on the cross which was to become a curse for those whom the Father had given Him, having their sins charged to Him and His Righteousness imputed to them. It is a carnal doctrine  which “…primarily…seems to be an attempt to soften the impact of the doctrine of limited atonement on the natural mind”. Anyway one looks at such a doctrine, and whatever motivated such a phrase, it all literally bleeds carnality!

 

Contrary to those who believe Christ died for all and therefore all will be saved, the Word of God teaches that Christ did not lay down His life for the sheep and the goats, but exclusively for the sheep, His people, those whom God has chosen to save according to His will. The Good Shepherd does not search for His goats, for He has none. The Good Shepherd is only the Shepherd of the sheep, His sheep, which are all the sheep that there are.  Just as the wheat will be gathered into the Father's barn and the tares thrown into the fire, so too, the sheep will be separated from the goats (see Matt. 13 & Matt. 25). Only the Lord's sheep hear His voice and all those whom the Father has given to Christ WILL come to Him. "...I lay down My life for the sheep, and other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring and they shall hear My voice..." (Jn. 10:15,16). "All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me..." (Jn. 6:37; cf. Heb. 2:13). According to the Lord Jesus there is no need for free will, for all that the Father has elected and given to His Son WILL come. GOD'S CHOICE OF THEM AND CHRIST'S DYING FOR THEM ASSURES THIS! IT IS GOD'S CHOICE AND CHRIST'S DEATH THAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE and ensures that all those whom God has chosen by His will, and given to His Son to die for and obtain salvation, will be saved. Nothing is left to chance or to a man's will, or his potential to will himself saved. Salvation, who will be saved, is no guessing game for God. It is not a wait, hope and see situation for Him.  Salvation is not an offer, but a promise to all those that believe. To all those whom the Father has chosen and entrusted to His Son. There is no choice for, or offer of, salvation as long as the above three verses, and many other Scriptures, are part of God's Word.

 

The sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice cannot be separated from the efficiency of it. What Christ's atoning work has accomplished can never be dissociated from its efficaciousness and, accordingly, for whom it was accomplished. In other words, Christ's sacrifice was effective for all those for whom it was accomplished. To speak of any inefficient element to Christ's atoning work is to enter into the very realms of fantasy. Scripture teaches Christ gave His life for His sheep, His Church, and none other (see Jn. 10:15 & Eph. 5:25). Couple this with the fact that He "...by His own blood...entered in once into the Holy place, HAVING OBTAINED ETERNAL REDEMPTION FOR US" (Heb. 9:12; cf. Col. 1:14), and you have a sacrifice that was efficiently sufficient and sufficiently efficient for all those for whom Christ laid down His precious life. In having obtained eternal redemption by His death for us we learn that Christ could not have died for all for this Scripture teaches that He actually obtained eternal redemption for all for whom He died. Eternal redemption is not conditioned on a man’s choice but on what Christ has done. Christ succeeded in what He set out to do and that was to obtain eternal redemption for all those He laid down His life for. The word obtained in Hebrews 9:12 “..denotes ‘to find’; in the Middle Voice, ‘to find for oneself, to procure, get, obtain’, with the suggestion of accomplishing the end which had been in view; so in Hebrews 9:12 ‘having obtained (eternal redemption)’”. Scripture tells us that Christ laid down His life for the ones He loved, His Church, to sanctify it: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it; that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word" (Eph. 5:25,26; cf. Eph. 5:29; Eph. 2:4). Christ's death was for His people, the ones God had appointed before time began to obtain salvation. The apostle Paul in addressing his first Letter to the Church of God's people in Thessalonica, places great emphasis on the fact that  "...God hath not appointed us to Wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ WHO DIED FOR US..." (1 Thess. 5:9,10). Again, Christ's death, here, as with Hebrews 9:12, evidences that all those He died for are those who will obtain salvation because God has clearly not appointed one of those for whom Christ died to receive His Wrath. Intentional or not, any denial of Christ's death for His people always attaches some level of failure to Christ's atoning work upon the Tree. What Christ has done was efficiently sufficient to blot out every sin He was sent to atone for, and, therefore, it was sufficiently efficient in obtaining eternal redemption for all those He made atonement for. That Christ's sacrifice to God was sufficient in atoning for the sins of all for whom it was offered, teaches us that all for whom it was made will be saved. Christ's substitutionary sacrifice, which is the only kind of sacrifice God ever directed His high priest to perform, including the sacrifice of His Great High Priest Jesus, was 100% effective and acceptable to God for all those whom the Father entrusted to the Son. Christ's atoning death was for a specific number of people, and He blotted out a specific number of sins, their sins. He became a curse for them. Their sins were imputed to Him and He became a curse for them. How could He have become a curse for all humanity, when only the sins of God's elect were imputed to Him? How could Christ have died for all humanity, when approximately 150,000 people enter Hell every single day? Christ's death was a Substitutionary death. He took the sins of His people and imputed His Righteousness to them. The apostle John writing to fellow believers, said: “And we know that He was manifested to take away our sins…” (1 Jn. 3:5). The blasphemous myth of sufficient for all but efficient for some cannot find any support in the Old Testament type, the high priest who made sacrifice under God's direction exclusively for the nation of Israel, all of God's people. You cannot separate what Christ did from those for whom He did it. Therefore, the whole concept of His death being sufficient for all but efficient for some is totally without any basis in Scripture. The Old Testament sacrifice offered by the high priest to God for God’s people, Israel, was a sufficient AND efficient sacrifice and acceptable to God, so how could Christ's sacrifice be any less, any different, seeing that the Old Testament high priest was a shadow, a picture, of what the Great High Priest, Jesus Christ, would do. Of course Christ's sacrifice was sufficient for all whom He was directed by God to perform it on the behalf of, and so, of course it was effective for all whom He made sacrifice for. If it was sufficient but not efficient for all for whom He died then what could possibly have caused such inefficiency? How could any part of Christ's sacrifice have failed in any way to accomplish redemption for all those for whom He died?

 

One cannot separate sufficiency from efficiency when you have a situation where something is done correctly, successfully, fully and specifically for a person or group of people. Christ’s death was for His people, the Father’s people, given (entrusted, to give over to one’s care) to Him (see Jn. 17:9), and Christ’s death ratified His Inheritance for them (see Heb. 9:15). God’s people were entrusted to Christ His Son. The Lord Jesus was entrusted with the responsibility of obtaining salvation for all those the Father gave to Him. I plan to leave my inheritance to my family. I do not make it sufficiently available to everyone, but sufficiently, efficiently and exclusively to my family. There is no injustice in such an act, in fact, it is the only perfectly honourable and right thing to do. My death will activate my will for all those I leave my inheritance to. The sacrificial death of Christ, the great High Priest, was exclusively for those whom the Father gave Him—His kinsmen: members of His chosen family—for the express purpose of atoning for their sins, so that they would all inherit salvation.  Jesus laid down His life for the Church, His people, His sheep and surely not for the goats of the world for He did not even pray for the world, so how can anyone reason within themselves, let alone attempt to convince others, that Christ's sacrifice was for everyone. Christ is the Mediator of the New Testament (covenant) “…that by means of (His) death…they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance” (Heb. 9:15). Obviously, Christ’s death was for the called and by that death, not by an individual’s ‘decision to accept what was done for him’, eternal redemption was obtained for all the Father’s people who had been given to the Son for the express purpose of gaining them eternal life. Christ’s death was for all those whom the Father had appointed to obtain salvation, and obtain it they have/will because, or, by means of Christ’s vicarious death. Hereby we see that Christ’s death was efficient for all those for whom He died and so the sufficiency of His death was restricted to those for whom He died.

 

"…a testament is of force after men are dead..." (Heb. 9:17). What good would a universal sacrifice have been for those to whom it was not effective? For what conceivable purpose would a sufficient sacrifice have been for those for whom it was not efficient? It would have been a case of Christ’s having died for all but not leaving His Inheritance for all! What could possibly make a sufficient, competent, yet non-effective sacrificial death, effective? Seeing that by the shedding of blood there is remission of sins (see Heb. 9:22), what could possibly have caused Christ’s alleged death for all to be only efficient for some? Christ’s death would have had a dual purpose: obtaining eternal redemption for some and not obtaining it for others! A sacrifice for everyone but redemption only for some? By means of death eternal redemption was obtained, but not for all? But redemption was obtained and the means of obtaining it was Christ’s death, so how could it not have obtained eternal redemption for all whom Christ died for (see Heb. 9:12).  How can the right key not open the right door? Eternal redemption required the right death and Christ’s death was the only death that could, and did, obtain eternal redemption for all those whom He laid down His precious life. His atoning death DEMANDED the eternal salvation of all for whom He died! The point that all the people who believe Christ died for all the sins of all humanity are missing is the potent fact that it was Christ's DEATH which actually activated all that He did by His sin offering to God! His death ratifies the new Covenant with the chosen people of God. It is not a person's free will decision but CHRIST'S DEATH that makes the difference! "...He is the Mediator of the New Testament (covenant), that by means of death, FOR the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance" (Heb. 9:15; cf. Heb. 10:14). If Christ’s death did not obtain eternal redemption for all for whom He died then it was, in part, a miserable failure, an empty event. A valueless, vacuous and vain attempt to obtain eternal redemption for all for whom He died. A ‘good try’ but just not good enough! But the reality is that Christ did not merely make eternal redemption available by means of His death, nor something only potential, but He actually OBTAINED eternal redemption for all for whom He died. Christ went to the cross for those whom He knew, those whom He loved, and there He washed them all from all their sins by His death. Atonement was made and completed, and eternal redemption was obtained, on the cross, or, by Christ’s death. Just like God does not enable a man to get saved, but saves him outright, the death of Christ did not make anything potentially possible, for atonement, the washing away of His people’s sins and the obtaining of their eternal redemption, was actually DONE!! The work was completed and their eternal future secured. Salvation was not potentially obtained and secured for all, but was actually obtained and secured for all for whom He died. “…Unto Him that loved us, and washed us  from our sins in His own blood” (Rev. 1:5). Christ Himself said “…It is finished…” (Jn. 19:30). What needed to be done to save His people was performed and completed upon His cross. The word finished means: “to perform the last act which completes a process, to accomplish, fulfil”. Salvation is a predetermined thing for a predetermined people, God’s people, and so, its dependency is fully upon what God has done for a people who could do nothing for themselves. It is Christ's death upon which eternal redemption hinged. It simply cannot be that salvation is conditioned upon man's accepting Christ's sacrifice, for then salvation would be by works and not grace. It would also mean that Christ's sacrifice was for all and therefore He saved some by it but many more would go to Hell regardless of Christ's efforts. The fact that it is by the means of Christ's death which  guarantees eternal inheritance/redemption tears to shreds the lie that Christ died for all. The sacrifice of Christ was made for the people of God chosen by God before the foundation of the world. Scripture undeniably shows that salvation is by grace through the finished work of Christ in blotting out the sins of all those for whom He died (see Col. 2:13,14).

 

Not incidentally, the effectiveness of the Old Testament high priest's sacrifice was determined not by those who 'chose to accept it', but upon those Whom God chose to receive it! This matter was settled BEFORE the sacrifice took place. Even pagan sacrifices were always offered to the god in the hope that he would accept and be appeased by what was done on behalf of the people. The sacrifice directed by God was not conditioned on man's acceptance of it but solely upon God's acceptance of it signified by the high priest reappearing from the Holy of Holies. So too, Christ the great High Priest's sacrifice was not something made for all and its effectiveness determined by an individual's acceptance of what was done, but solely and exclusively upon the acceptance of God, signified by Christ's Resurrection from the dead. Christ's Resurrection was confirmation from God that the sacrifice performed for all His chosen ones was acceptable to Him, thereby securing the salvation of all for whom it was made. “And Aaron shall come into the tabernacle of the congregation, and shall put off the linen garments, which he put on when he went into the holy place, and shall leave them there” (Lev.16:23). “Why? To denote that his work was finished. The blessed antitype of this we see in Luke 24:12: on the resurrection morning, those who came to Christ’s empty sepulchre “beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves”, a token that He was risen from the dead, and so of atonement completed, and accepted by God.” Christ became a curse for all those for whom He died and all these ones would, in time, receive His Righteousness. The sacrifice was made to God for the people of God, and God was pleased to accept it, thus it was effective for all for whom it was made. God's acceptance of what Christ had done is proof positive that what Christ has done on the Cross was 100% sufficient AND EFFICIENT!! ALL FOR WHOM CHRIST DIED WILL BE SAVED BECAUSE HE OBTAINED ETERNAL REDEMPTION FOR ALL THOSE WHOM THE FATHER HAD APPOINTED TO SALVATION AND GIVEN TO HIM. So, either all are saved or only all for whom Christ made sacrifice on behalf of are saved. Why would any saved person even theoretically state that Christ's death was for all in any capacity! The Old Testament high priest was a shadow or type, a signifier, of what the great High Priest would do: make sacrifice for God's people. Much more on this later.

 

An argument over the correct answer to a mathematical problem is never conducted between two groups of people who are both correct, but always between two groups who are either both incorrect, or, one group of people who are correct and another who only believe they are correct. Concerning those who are of the world, who only believe they are of God, and those who actually are the true children of God, the apostle John’s first Letter, addressed to fellow believers, says: "We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth  us; he that is not of God heareth not us. HEREBY KNOW WE THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH, AND THE SPIRIT OF ERROR" (1 Jn. 4:6). Being led by God's Spirit of Truth, knowing the Truth of God, His Gospel, is to know that one is of God and not of the world. Those who are of God know and receive the love of the Truth of God and those who have not received the love of the Truth of God, who do not recognise the Truth of God, cannot therefore be of God for they are led by the spirit of error and not by God's Holy Spirit of Truth. Such people are not Christian but clearly of those that perish "...because they received not the love of the truth, THAT THEY MIGHT BE SAVED....That they all might be damned who believed not the truth..." (2 Thess. 2:10,12; cf. Heb. 10:26). If you do not love WHAT GOD CALLS HIS TRUTH you are not currently saved. To have two groups of people equally and profoundly convinced that they are right, does not in itself prove that either one is right. It is not how convinced you are but what you believe that shows whether you are of God or of the world, led by the Spirit of Truth or by the spirit of error. Christians do not argue over what the True Gospel of God is for they have been given the same Faith by the same God to believe the same Gospel. The only alternative to this is to conclude that whether one believes the only Gospel of God or another gospel which is not of God one is no less saved. Do not be deceived, only those who believe the Gospel of God will be saved, and those who do not believe it will be damned (Mk. 16:16).

 

Returning to our subject at hand, surely if death, when pertaining to the spiritual, meant anything different to what it means in the context of the physical, a different word would have been used by the Lord to describe spiritual death. If such were the case, then at the very least the word die would have been given a dual meaning. But we see in Genesis 2 that one word die with one meaning, death, was used to describe what man’s physical and spiritual condition would be should he disobey God. How can such a word as die have two different meanings when it is expressed in such a way as to convey one certain and indubitable outcome? In some vain effort to deny spiritual death Pelagius taught that original sin did not bring about man's physical death but that God had created man a mortal creature, that death was already part of man's experience. If Pelagius was right then why would God have bothered to threaten death if it already existed, and why would Satan have bothered to deny something which was already a reality? How could, and why would, God have made man a mortal creature when God says in His Word that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23)? Death is not a consequence of creation. Death came AFTER sin, and not prior to it. One can veritably see the fingerprints of Satan all over this desperate and despicable lie which teaches that physical death was not part of the punishment for sin, but had predated sin, and which seeks to deny the spiritual death of man (physical death being primarily a consequence of spiritual death) and, therefore, his complete and utter reliance upon the God of Grace and the Son of God as Savior to release him from this condition and restore union with God.

 

There are many words in the English language, homonyms and homographs, which, though sharing the same spelling, have different meanings. But in the case of the word die there is one, and only one, meaning: DEATH. How can the word die mean two separate things when it has only one definition? The original Greek word for die, diest, dieth etc., all refer to death and have no other meaning attached, or that can rightly be attached, to them. The word's meaning is foolproof. Not even a fool could mistake it, but only the deceived. Simply look at what happens to man physically and you will see what has happened to man spiritually in relation to God. One cannot escape the reality and certainty of a man's being spiritually dead to God if one seeks the Truth from the Word of God. How can the word 'die' be said to mean death in the physical sense, and yet in the same sentence suddenly come to mean sickness, wounding, or temporary rather than eternal separation from God, in the spiritual sense? What kind of monstrous semantic surgery would have to be performed on the word die in order to rearrange its features so as to present two images and not one? Black is black and white is white. Death means death and life means life.