God's Universal Gospel

When the apostle John wrote that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life,”[1] he meant us to take from that statement what the plain and normal meaning of the words taught; God has a special love that embraced the entire world.  High Calvinists, on the other hand, re-interpret this plain yet profound statement to mean something quite different.  They still hold on to Jn.3:16, would not give a thought to denying that Gospel statement, and would quote it occasionally.  “But,” they aver, “God did not love the world as the plain meaning would suggest; what He loved was ‘the elect world.’”  Are these interpretations identical?  No.  The Johannine statement is clearly universal, but the high orthodox re-interpretation of John is restricted.  On what grounds?  Not on biblical grounds but on purely dogmatic grounds.  The Procrustean bed syndrome is clearly at work in this method of interpretation of Scriptural data. 

Or take John the Baptist’s exclamation, also in John’s Gospel, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”[2]  Now, normal interpretative practice would conclude that what Christ, the Lamb of God, did on the Cross had a most significant reference to “the sin of the world” - He took “the sin of the world” “away.”  He dealt decisively with it, the benefits of which become ours when we trust in Christ as our Lord and Saviour.[3]  But there are those who re-interpret the data differently.  They still hold that Christ died “to take away the sin of the world,” but, they opine, this does not mean what it says; it means rather that what He did was for Jews and Gentiles, which is how they understand the term ‘world.’  They also go further and add that that paradigm entails or even demands particularity.  Now it is possible to argue that the inclusive phrase ‘Jews and Gentiles’ takes in the entire world of humanity.  However, the high orthodox use this to refer to particular ‘Jews and Gentiles,’ thus importing restrictive canons of interpretation to arrive at such an unnatural and stretched meaning. 

Paul’s statement in Romans that “Christ died for the ungodly.”[4]  Linking this text with another which states that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”[5] a phrase that is almost impossible to mis-interpret.  If “all have sinned,” all must by definition be “ungodly.”  So if “Christ died for the ungodly,” the straightforward way of understanding this is that since “all” are “ungodly,” “Christ died for all.”[6]  This is the Pauline approach to this subject.  But the re-interpreters of Scripture make this mean that He died for those who know themselves to be ungodly.  He died only for those who feel their guilt and who feel that they are ungodly.  True, these are the only ones who will seek a remedy for their sinfulness, but that remedy is available purely because Christ had died for all.   Whether a sinner feels his guilt or not does not detract from the fact that Christ died for all. 

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[1]    Jn.3:16.

[2]    Jn.1:29.

[3]    This caveat prevents anyone drawing the unbiblical conclusion that because Jn.1:29 is factually and

       theologically true, salvation is therefore universal – all will in the end be saved.  Jn 3:16 also safeguards

       against the extraction of such an unwarranted, and spiritually dangerous, conclusion.

[4]    Rom.5:6.

[5]    Rom.3:23.

[6]    2 Cor.5:15 reinforces this conclusion.