Does God Want All People to be Saved?

This post is not going to make me popular with, oh I don’t know, maybe 90% of Christians. We Calvinists are in the minority among the faithful, but we are a confident and determined lot. I’m grateful, however, that God will not require a theology test to get into heaven, which brings up the most important thing in this discussion. We are not saved because of the rightness of our beliefs, but because we put our trust in Christ, that we look to him alone for our salvation. And on that day, whenever it is, we won’t be obsessing about theological niceties, but looking in hope to our Savior, all of us, every Christian from every tradition of every theological permutation. As Jesus assured us in John 3:

¹⁴ Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, ¹⁵ that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

Look up and trust in him is all that’s required.

Now hopefully that I have some of that 90% open to what I’ll say, let’s discuss whether God does in fact want all people to be saved. I don’t think about this much, but as I was reading through I Timothy 2, Paul got me thinking about it again

³ This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, ⁴ who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. ⁵ For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, ⁶ who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

Reading this passage, I’m reminded that Paul doesn’t always mean each and every one when he uses the word all. The non-Calvinists insists he does. See, they say, God obviously wants all people, each person who has ever existed, to be saved, therefore all, every person, should have the possibility of being saved. Clearly not all are saved. No orthodox Christian believes in universalism, that everyone will in the end be saved.

The reason all meaning each and every person never made sense to me once I learned about Reformed theology, is that if a ransom takes place there must be an exchange or it cannot be considered a ransom. One thing must be given for another. If it is, an exchange will have taken place, Christ’s righteousness for the sinner’s sin. If Christ ransomed all people, each and every one, died for them, then all people, each and every one, must be saved, and universalism is true. But it isn’t true because we know some people will end up in hell. So, Paul either means Christ made salvation possible for all people, which makes the word ransom meaningless, or he must mean all people Christ ransomed will be saved.

And lest you think I’m just hanging everything on one verse, to the concept of ransom in the idea of Jesus purchasing people by his blood, there are a number of verses referencing the concept of exchange. The first verse that comes to my mind when I’m thinking about this is Revelation 5:9:

And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.

You go to the store, pick up a bottle of wine, go to the clerk and hand her some money. You get the wine, the store gets the money, and a purchase and exchange has taken place. Another verse that comes to mind is Mark 10:45:

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The word ransom is used again by the writer to the Hebrews in chapter 9:

¹⁵ For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

Notice how he specifically connects those who are called as the ones who are ransomed. The same concept is used by Paul in a different context in I Corinthians 6 and 7. In chapter 6 he’s discussing sexual immorality and the body, then says:

¹⁹ Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰ you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

In chapter 7 he is discussing slavery and how we are ultimately Christ’s slave, then he says:

²³ You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of human beings.

Add I’ll add one more when Paul is bidding farewell to the Ephesian elders who he’ll never see again as he’s on his way to Rome (Acts 20):

²⁸ Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.

All of these verses supporting the idea of Christ’s death actually saving people, not just making their salvation possible, are confirmed when Jesus is given his name by an angel before he is born. Speaking to Joseph in a dream he says (Matthew 1):

²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

And there is a footnote in some of our Bibles saying, “Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, which means the Lord saves.” Jesus came to specifically to save his people, not make salvation possible for all people. It wasn’t the people’s choice that makes them his, but God’s choice. We have this confirmed in John 6 when Jesus says:

³⁷ All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

Our Alienation from God
This is a hard pill for many Christians to swallow, but biblically it’s undeniable. In order to believe the Arminian position, that God makes salvation possible for all and only those who decide to trust Jesus are saved, all these verses, and many more, have to be explained away. I’ll never forget the night I heard this Calvinist or Reformed perspective the first time and thinking, this is upside down from how I’ve believed in Christianity for over five years. Then I went home and at the suggestion of my mentor to be read Ephesians 2, a chapter I’m sure I’d read many times before. All I could think was, how had I missed this? Here are the first 10 verses:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, ² in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. ³ All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. ⁴ But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

I noticed that all of the initiative is God’s. I didn’t believe because I decided to believe, I believed because God raised me spiritually from the dead. We can go to a cemetery, the old fashioned kind with headstones and grave markers, and preach the gospel with the eloquence of Whitfield, Moody, and Billy Graham combined, and not one of those people are capable of responding in faith—they’re dead! For Paul’s dead isn’t like Westley in The Prince’s Bride, mostly dead; it’s all dead, spiritually. In Colossians 2 Paul says the same thing:

¹³ When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ.

I didn’t believe when the message was preached because I decided it was a good idea, I believed because God in Christ had already raised me spiritually from the dead. Regeneration preceded belief. By God’s sovereign power because I was one of his people from before the creation of the world, my spiritual eyes were supernaturally opened, and I believed. And it’s even worse than being dead in our sin. In our unsaved spiritual state we are enemies of God. Paul says in Romans 5:

¹⁰ For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

He confirms our natural state of spiritual rebellion in Colossians 2:

²¹ Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. ²² But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

The Greek words Paul uses for enemies leave no doubt that choosing Christ in that state of heart and mind would have been impossible. For the Greek of enemies, Strong’s says:

properly, an enemy; someone openly hostile (at enmity), animated by deep-seated hatred. 2190/exthros (“enemy”), implies irreconcilable hostility, proceeding out of a “personal” hatred bent on inflicting harm.

In a state of sin we have a deep-seated hatred of God and a personal hatred bent on inflicting harm. It’s not just that me and God we’re/ not getting along—we’re at war! There is an alienation between lost sinners and God that no amount of good news, the gospel, can overcome, unless we are by the power of God born again, and nobody chooses to be born.

God’s Initiative and the History of Redemption
We’ll notice in the history of redemption, of God saving his people from their sins, he is the one always taking the initiative. Nobody seeks God. Quite the contrary, they’re all running away until he does something remarkable to turn them back. From the very beginning that’s what rebellious sinners did. When Adam and Even disobeyed God, what did they do? They hid; they were afraid. God was now their judge, jury, and executioner because the penalty for eating from the tree was death. No wonder they were afraid.

What did God do? Took the initiative. Not only did he come looking for them, he killed an animal, the first sacrifice in human history, to clothe their nakedness and shame. Then he announced the gospel, or as the theologians call it, the protoevangelium (Gen. 3):

¹⁵ And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

The offspring or seed of the woman as we know is Christ. The plan of salvation, what we call the covenant of redemption, what already set in place prior to God even having created the world. Then after driving them out of the garden God judged the world but picked Noah and his family to make a covenant with man, that he would never again destroy the human race because of their sin.

Then it really begins, God building for himself a people he will save from their sins. Out of all the human beings on earth he picked one man, Abram, and announced that through him all nations on earth would be blessed. Then his descendants become enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, and God again takes the initiative when he picks Moses by first saving his life by allowing him to be born, then saving him again when he’s an adult. He helps the Hebrews escape slavery in Egypt, and gives them his law and a sacrificial system to enable him to forgive their sins. He guides them for 40 years through their rebellion eventually into a land he promised them, and thus begins the history of Israel.

Eventually he chooses a king, David, who will become a type of the Messiah to ultimately save his people from their sins, sending prophets for hundreds of years to predict that, and to warn the people in their rebellion. Then he sends a last prophet, John the Baptist, to prepare the way. He himself comes through a woman’s birth canal as an infant, conceived in a virgin, s what we know as the incarnation, God becoming man. He is given the name Jesus by the angel, and allows himself to be tortured and killed for the his people whom he came to save, redemption accomplished. Then rose from the dead, ascended to heaven at the right hand of God, and sent his Holy Spirit to his people to save them, redemption applied. He is doing that to this very day and will continue until he has placed all his enemies under his feet, the final enemy to be defeated is death (I Cor. 15:25).

God taking the initiative and orchestrating the entire history of redemption doesn’t mean he destroys the nature of his creatures. Our agency is never compromised in the process of salvation. We are still choosing and accountable beings who must respond, and whose choices have real consequences. How all this works, God’s sovereignty and human freedom, we have no idea. I just know it’s the clear testimony of Scripture that both are true and real. God wants all his people to be saved, and he will save them.