Week 6 - Limited Atonement (Part 1)

that of all the father gave to me, I should lose nothing.

Not even one of them, but raise them up on the last day. And the Greek is a little funny there, but I do think this is best translated not as raise it up, but raise them up. To be consistent with the verse 37, where you see it's not that the father's just giving things to Jesus, he's giving him a people, all of whom will come to him. And so Jesus is saying on the last day, that is judgment day, I am going to raise up every last one of them. They're not going to be condemned and thrown into hell, but they will be lifted up to be accepted before God. And who are these that Jesus says were given to him by the Father? Well, it's the elect. As we just studied unconditional election, they're those that the Father chose from before the foundation of the world. And what Jesus is emphasizing here is that the Father gave this people to him and sent him into the world with the mission of saving them. And that he is going to ensure that not a single one will be lost. Okay, so again, the argument here is Jesus' mission wasn't just to come and make salvation possible for some nebulous group, but it was to make salvation actual, to actually save every one of those his father gave to him. Now jump ahead to John chapter 10. And here Jesus is talking about how he is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. Verse 14, Jesus says,

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the father knows me and I know the father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.

So Jesus is the shepherd. He has his own. He has his own flock, his own sheep, and he lays down his life for the sheep. Well, okay, who exactly are these sheep? Well, if you keep reading, look down at verse 16. He says,

and I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

Okay, so there's this fold. I think that's Jesus' disciples. And then there's other sheep, not of this fold, which I think probably especially refers to Gentiles. And Jesus is saying, you know, they're going to believe the gospel and they're going to be gathered in and all be part of this one flock, his one church. But then as you keep reading, jumping down to verse 24, notice that Jesus talks about others who aren't of his sheep. So in verse 24, some of the Jews challenged Jesus saying,

Well, if you're the Christ, tell us plainly.

And Jesus answers,

I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me. But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.

Okay, so we've already seen Jesus says, I lay down my life for the sheep. And now here he makes clear, not everyone is a sheep. And then what makes this even more striking is the causal language. Because you might start to think, well, maybe what Jesus means is we become a sheep when we believe. And so he's just saying, well, I laid down my life for sheep. I laid down my life for those who choose to believe. But notice what he says here is not, but you are not among my sheep because you don't believe. It's the other way around. Verse 26,

you do not believe because you are not of my sheep.

So even before someone believes or not, there's what's true about them. Are they his sheep or not? Jesus is saying here, you don't believe because you are not one of the ones my father gave me from before the foundation of the world. Or to put it bluntly, Jesus is saying, look, you're demanding I tell you plainly if I'm the Christ, but you won't listen to me. I already told you and you won't listen because I'm not your shepherd. I wasn't sent here for you. That's why you don't recognize my voice. That's what he's telling these unbelieving Jews. But then listen to how he positively describes his mission for his sheep in the ensuing verses. So he tells them you're not of my sheep and then verse 27 he says,

my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand.

Okay, so again, did Jesus come to make salvation possible for some nebulous group of people? Or did he come to actually secure the salvation of his sheep? A definite group of people that he knows by name and who were given to him by his father. I think John 10 makes that clear. And he came for them to guarantee their salvation from beginning to end so that no one could ever snatch them out of his hand. Well then, just one more passage to look at. Jump ahead to John chapter 17. And listen here to how Jesus talks about the work his father sent him to accomplish and then how he prays for his people. So picking up in verse one,

when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, The hour has come. Glorify your son that the son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him."

Okay, so there's that, those whom you have given him language again. Then jump down in verse six.

I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours. And you gave them to me, and they have kept your word."

And then verse 9,

I am praying for them. I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me. that they may be one, even as we are one.

Now, there's so much here we're skipping. There's so much even in what we've read to delve into. But I just want you to ask again the key question we keep coming back to here. Does it sound like Jesus here is describing his mission and his purpose in coming to try to make salvation possible for everybody? Or does it sound like he came to make salvation certain for some that there's specific people that he came to save? I mean, he says here,

I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me.

He says, Father, you've given me authority over all flesh to do what? To give eternal life to all whom you have given me. He's come to accomplish salvation. for those his father gave to him. And what Jesus is basically doing here is praying for the application of his atoning sacrifice to those it was intended for. That's why we call this his high priestly prayer. A priest would go to the temple and offer a sacrifice and make intercession on behalf of the people before God. And Jesus here knows that he's about to go to the cross. He's about to offer himself as the sacrifice. He's the priest that lays down his own life for his people. And now here he's praying that God would apply all the benefits of that sacrifice and his salvific work to the people he's laying down his life for. praying that they would be one, praying that they would be kept, praying that ultimately they would be with him and behold his glory in the presence of the Father forever. And the point is, this shows us why we can't disconnect the work of the atonement from the application. I mean, for one, as I mentioned earlier, You know, if we say, well, Jesus comes and he just dies generally, but then it's the Spirit who comes and sort of regenerates selectively. Okay, you've now created tension or put at odds the work of the Son and the work of the Spirit, and that's its own struggle. But here it's showing us that you're even adding a division in the work of Christ himself, that his priestly work. offering himself as the atoning sacrifice, if you say, well, that's sort of general, what about his work of interceding? What about the people that Jesus is specifically interceding for and praying for as our great high priest? How do you divide that? And so all of this, I think, is showing us clearly Jesus came to fully secure the salvation of the elect. That's what his atoning work was designed to accomplish. And, of course, in this just brief time looking through the Gospel of John, I hope you can see that here. Now, there are some difficult passages for the limited atonement view, and I want to look at those next time. I also want to address the connection between limited atonement and penal substitution, because I think it's really helpful to see sort of how those are connected as well. But for tonight, I just wanted to at least offer, you know, where do we see this in the Bible? How do we build a more positive case for limited atonement? And I hope that's been helpful for you. And I want to pause and open up questions about what I've covered so far, just about limited atonement and what we see in the Gospel of John. And then I want to spend the time we have left talking about a little bit of application. So any questions about what we've just covered? Yeah. There's also a need not just for Jesus to have died for us, but also for us to put our faith in him, right? And there are some who do put their faith in him and some who do not. Wouldn't you say, I guess, does, is it Jesus' death for us that caused it to be left to put their faith in him? Yeah, I mean, I think the crux of it is just to see that there's the father who's sort of primary in election, the son comes, the father sends the son into the world who comes to accomplish Now, of course, there's an outworking of that, which normally, theologically, we kind of use the word accomplished to talk about what Christ is doing, and then application to talk about what the Spirit is doing. But it's the Son who comes, and by His atoning work, He is fully securing. He is accomplishing everything that needs to be accomplished to procure, to guarantee, in the sense of earn and ensure. that the people he's laying down his life for will be saved. And then that is necessarily applied, the father and the son then send the spirit to apply that work of Christ in our life. So it's the work of the spirit that brings us to faith, who regenerates our heart and causes us to then respond with repentance and faith and receive the gospel. So, yeah, your question, I mean, the hypothetical, I think I would just say, well, that's an impossibility, that those could truly be divided. I mean... Well, I think it's because what Jesus' death is accomplishing is it's, you know, we're alienated from God because of sin. You know, Jesus is the one who provides the satisfaction, who makes the atonement, who propitiates God against us, which ensures that now that relationship can be restored. And so the spirit comes to actually kind of bring that to pass. It's almost like the debt has been paid. And yes, there's an outworking of that in time where we ourselves are actually renewed and transformed, and there's this whole plan of salvation. And clearly, you know, God for his own glory is not just saving us in abstraction from our own response of faith. He wants us to recognize what he's done, glorify him for that. be inwardly transformed as this gift of salvation is worked out. So it's not that Christ accomplishes it in the sense of Him dying on the cross has already changed us. Clearly, that hasn't happened yet, but He's paid for it. He's ensured that that must happen as a result, which the Spirit is the one who must. actually do that in our life. Is that helpful? I might need to give more, or if you have... Right. Right. Yeah. What was that? Yeah, so Justin was pointing out justification is not eternal. There are some that would want to argue for this view of eternal justification. There's a lot of reasons that's wrong. We don't actually receive justification until we have put place our faith in Christ. Yeah, that's an important distinction. Yeah, I think that's helpful. I think there's also a sense in which, you know, it's paid, but it's not truly credited to us until there's faith. You know, faith is the moment that this union with Christ is sort of solidified in the sense that now my sin is forgiven and gone and his righteousness is mine. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, so certainly when we get ahead to irresistible grace, we'll kind of talk about this more. I mean, I don't know how to explain it more than what I was just saying with, yeah, the work of the Spirit, He is going to apply in the sense of giving us regeneration, those for whom the Son died. Yeah. There's a real danger in dividing the Trinity, if we begin talking about this the wrong way, that the intent of the Father, Jesus says in John 10 and 30,

I and the Father are one.

And there's a danger of, if we change, if we save the saving intent of the Father and the Son and the Spirit aren't the same, Yeah. Yeah. Good. All right. One more question. Yep. Yeah, good point. Did you want me to respond more? Yeah, that's helpful. All right, one more. Yeah. So Let me respond to that offline just because there's a lot we have to get into like talking through the whole parable and kind of some more detail. But yeah, good question. In the interest of time, I do want to move ahead and kind of conclude by at least landing on some clear application. So there's a lot that we can wrestle with as we try to understand this doctrine. But for today, I just want to close with what I think is one of the sweetest applications of this doctrine of limited atonement for us as believers. I think a lot of times we jump to thinking, you know, what does this mean for evangelism? What does this mean for the non-elect? But for today, I just want to focus on what does this mean for you and I as believers in Christ? And I want you to think about the way that limited atonement offers assurance and personalizes Christ's work on the cross to you. Think about the fact that when Jesus died on the cross, he wasn't just dying for sort of people out there in general. He was intending to offer himself for a definite group of people, which includes you. Like, all this talk about those whom the Father gave me from, you know, these people chosen from the foundation of the world, like, that's you. You are one of his sheep for whom he laid down his life. You're known to the shepherd by name. When Jesus came into the world with the mission of saving each and every one of those his father gave him, that includes you. That's why he's a shepherd who would be willing to leave the 99 behind to come and find just one, to come and find you, to make sure that nothing can snatch you out of his hand. His mission was to come and raise up every single one of those his father gave him, that not even one would be lost. I mean, think about that. That means when you think about him going to the cross, I mean, he would have been willing to go to the cross even if it was only you. I mean, every one of his sheep was his mission to save. His mission wouldn't have been accomplished if even one of his sheep, one of those his father gave him, was lost. And he was willing to go to whatever length to do whatever it took to save each and every one of them. He went to the cross for you. Nothing can come in the way of him saving you. That's why he prays for you. If you look ahead to John 17, 20, he says, you know,

I don't ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.

Even as Jesus' disciples are right there before him, we too were on his heart. And this is why when you think about your salvation and maybe you waver in your faith, you wonder, you know, am I going to make it? Well, you can look back to the cross, not just as something that made your salvation possible, but where your salvation was won, where it was fully achieved and accomplished, and know if Christ died for me, I can't be lost. He has already secured my salvation. I mean, what wonderful assurance. I mean, what a wonderful way to see how personal, how deep God's love for each and every one of us as his elect really is. Limited atonement helps us to see that more clearly. So I pray that that will be an encouragement to your soul as you continue to meditate on this, and Lord willing, we will pick this up next week. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time to think about Christ and his work on the cross. Lord, I pray that even as we grasp to understand things that in their full depths are beyond our ability to fully comprehend. I pray, Lord, that you would grant to us just greater confidence and joy in what we can know about the work of Christ, that we would see your love, that we would see your faithfulness, that we will see your great purpose to save, and that that would encourage us, that that would fill us and cause us to live more faithfully now. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.