For Whom Did Christ Die?

For Whom did Christ Die?

            It’s a loaded question, especially at a Reformed college. There seem to be as many different spins on the topic as there are people who want to talk about it. For myself, there is significantly less trouble in addressing the problem as I have the studies of many great people to look back upon as I look for an answer. This does not completely eradicate my confusion, however, as I still must find the answer in Scripture for myself. The studies of people past and present do not promise to hold the answer, and any answer not grounded in Scripture is nothing I wish to pin my opinion on.

            The third point of the TULIP (and the point I struggle with the most, I might add) is Limited Atonement, which effectively addresses the issue at hand. But according several people whom I look up to and also according to my own studies, there is a still deeper question lurking behind the first. It is this: “What did Christ actually achieve on the cross for those whom He died for?” The studies of Rev. John Piper lead me in this direction and continue to influence my thoughts on this subject.

            You see, what we are seeking to understand here is more than a simple question of doctrine. We are exploring the very meaning of the word atonement, and what it meant for Christ to die. Our definition must change with our answer to the question. If we say that Christ died for all men in the same way, you must then believe that Christ’s death did not indeed save anybody as not all men are saved. His death must therefore have merely opened the gates to salvation and made men “savable.” He hasn’t purchased the grace that brings men to faith – they must now bring themselves to faith.

            However, a flip to the other side of the coin changed things just as drastically. I spent a significant amount of time trying to put this into words before stumbling across a quote by Rev. Piper which I believe must be shared. “In other words the death of Christ was necessary to vindicate the righteousness of God in justifying the ungodly by faith. It would be unrighteous to forgive sinners as though their sin were insignificant, when in fact it is an infinite insult against the value of God's glory. Therefore Jesus bears the curse, which was due to our sin, so that we can be justified and the righteousness of God can be vindicated.”

            Therein is Limited Atonement, and also therein we find the title of “Limited” to be not as apt a description as mayhaps it ought to be. If we choose to wrongly translate Christ’s death as for all men (as much as saying that makes me cringe internally), it is we who change the atonement to one that is limited. By doing so, we take away the saving grace of salvation from hardness of heart and inability to see and understand the truth.

It seems so simple to look at it this way. But then, as the great writers of the past have said, the plot thickens.  1 Timothy 4:10 says the He (Jesus Christ) is a “. . . Savior to all men, especially to those who believe.” Having read this, I found myself back in confusion, which is not a very nice place to be. But a savior does not always imply salvation, but sometimes only mercy. And according to Romans 2.4, every breath taken by an unbeliever is an act of mercy in which God chooses to pass over the sins committed and withhold His terrible justice.

            Something special I gathered from this study is a deeper sense of gratitude. God chose me for reasons I cannot fathom, and made me His own. I have been bought with a price, set apart for a special calling, and I have been made perfect in Him.

The Warriors of Old

" ²² Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

 ²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, ²⁷ so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.^[a] 28 In the same wayhusbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, ³⁰ because we are members of his body. ³¹“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” ³²This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. ³³ However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband." Ephesians 5: 21-33

          I think what bothers me the most right now is the lack of Godly male leadership or even Biblically “manly” men, and the fact that the blame for this to a large degree rests with my gender. I know this seems to be a small concern in proportion some of the others I listed, but as it relates to the body of Christ, this is a very grave concern. God created man as the head for a reason, and, needless to say, a body with only a partial head is not very useful. I am very aware that my views are not the same as those of many others. My intention is not to step on toes or shake my finger under anyone’s nose, because I am a guilty as anyone else. But this issue is a serious one to me.

          Without solid male leadership, my church would not have made it through some of the rough times it has encountered. I watched the men take charge, the women support and the Body as a whole act, and marveled at it. Then a troubling thought began to gnaw at a corner of my mind. This is how it is supposed to be, I realized, not something to be amazed by. So I went back in my mind and tried to figure out why this wasn’t the case. It was with a sickening feeling in my stomach that I realized that part of the blame rested with me. Now, I am not blaming all of it on either gender or even on our time period. I do think we have some claim to it, but its roots reach way back into our history. This is a subject I have often pondered and occasionally discussed, always finding it to be a tender subject with unbelievers. But within the walls of Kuyper, I find proof that there are indeed the kind of leaders, both men and women, that our world needs.

          Solid Christian leaders equipped with a heart for people and the message of Christ will be what changes our world. Both genders have a part in this. I do not claim “a woman’s only role is at home, supporting her husband and raising the children.” No! I am not of the school of thought that says women should grow up to be good Christian girls, marry a good Christian man and, to put it crudely, “breed like a rodent.” I, for one, fully intend to pursue the mission field. But I do hold that it is the role of a man to preach and teach, especially when it comes to men.

          I spent a year traveling with a singing gospel team. Of the twenty-five people who made up the team, thirteen were young men. Our director saw to it that both genders “acted what God made them to be.” As a girl, I was to let the guys lift my heavy things for me, hold the door for me, pick up my microphone for me. Small things, but believe me, they count! You feel respected and loved, once you learn to submit to the gentlemanly treatment. And to the men, we asked them to let us minister to them in the best way we knew how: food! But it went deeper than that – these guys had become our brothers and we did everything we could to show them that we loved them as such. Hot cocoa when they came in from working on a cold day, sweet tea when it was hot. Something as small as doing the dishes for them when we knew they were tired only served to foster their respect for us.

          What can we as women do to help men feel like the leaders they are and were created to be? I hold true that it really is mostly about the little things; waiting for them to hold the door, letting them help you with your chair, giving up the load you’re carrying if they try to help you. And thanking them for each act of kindness when it’s given. And it's not all about letting them do things for you -- show them you care through what you do. Sometimes, it's making them a sandwich (Oh, am I gonna catch heat for that one!), sometimes it's doing their dishes, sometimes it's just being willing to stand down and let them do their job. God made our men to be leaders and hardwired them to be protectors – the helping hand they offer is a response to more than just Mama’s lessons on common courtesy.

Deserving of a whole body eye roll.

A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption.
One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named “Ahmal.”
The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him “Juan.”
Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother.
Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes
she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds,
They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.”

Darling

The manager of a large office asked a new employee to come into his office. "What is your name?," was the first thing the manager asked.
"John," the new guy replied. The manager scowled. "Look, I don't know what kind of a namby-pamby place you worked at before, but I don't call anyone by their first name! It breeds familiarity and that leads to a breakdown in authority," he said. "I refer to my employees by their last name only - Smith, Jones, Baker - that's all. Now that we got that straight, what is your last name?" The new guy sighed and said, "Darling. My name is John Darling." The manager said, "Okay, John, the next thing I want to tell you..."




The funny thing is, I met a guy named Schmuck while signing people up for paintball. I made me show me his ID before I'd sign him up. And then felt really bad for making fun of him, since I thought he'd make it up. After he'd left, my only thought was. . . Good luck getting married, dude!

Canadians. . .

An Alberta cowboy was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture
when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.
The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and
YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly
how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?"
The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his
peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"
The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects It
to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the
Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an
exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that
scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens
the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image
processing facility in Hamburg , Germany.
Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has
been processed and the data stored.
He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel
Spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes,
receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech,
Miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and Says,
"You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."
"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says the Cowboy.
He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as
the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.
Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what
your business is, will you give me back my calf?"
The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?"
"You're a member of parliament for the Canadian Government", says the cowboy.
"Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"
"No guessing required." answered the cowboy.
"You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for
an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me
how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about
cows...this is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog."

Are Morals Relative?

^“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”

Proverbs 14:12, (NIV)

            “Controversial: adj. con·tro·ver·sial/ˌkäntrəˈvərSHəl/ Giving rise or likely to give rise to public disagreement.  syn. Debatable, contentious.” Having established the definition, I think it is now acceptable to most to label the writings of Ruth Benedict on relative morality as controversial. (As is almost anything said by Barak Obama, or on limited atonement, or global warming, or “aggressive interrogation,” etcetera, etcetera. Enough said.)

            This being established, Benedict makes some very astute observations about culture and normality in her essay “Morality is Relative.” In striving to grasp a more comprehensive understanding of this work, I attempted to summarize the key points of this essay without regard to my personal beliefs. They are as follows:

·         “Normal” is nothing more than what is acceptable to the society or culture in which one dwells. And, vice versa, “Abnormal” is defined by what the surrounding culture finds to be distasteful or unacceptable.

·         “Every society, beginning with some slight inclination in one direction or another, carries its preference farther and farther, integrating itself more and more completely upon its chosen basis and discarding those types of behavior that are uncongenial.”

·         What may be acceptable or even expected in one culture might not be so in another, but the imposition of the beliefs of one culture upon another does not make either “right.”

·         “No one culture can possibly utilize in its more the whole potential range of human behavior.” Furthermore, no one culture is more “right” than another, except mayhaps in their own eyes.

·         Morality is actively defined and made up by the beliefs and actions of the culture, and as is different between the cultures as the normalcies each holds to be true.

·         “The vast majority of individuals in any group are shaped to the fashion of that culture.” In other words, we are putty in the hands of the culture we have shaped for ourselves. To carry this thought further, the culture will continue to change – growing stronger as the material it consists of grows stronger – thereby causing stronger changes in its occupants.

·         Morality is nothing more than actions and habits that are approved by the society in which they occur, and is only applicable to the society it occurs in.

Benedict’s work shows marks of great thought, intelligence and depth, but also contains errors born out of an ignorance of true spiritual things. Her theory that “what is normal is moral” is an interesting one, and certainly logical from an atheistic point of view – this is to say that once God is “taken from the mix,” moral relativism is all that is left to us. For without God, we have no reliable definition of what is right and wrong, only our own inner “compass” to guide us.

Is morality relative? No. Why? Quite simply because God is absolute, and God alone is the definition of all that is truly “good.” Left to ourselves, to determine what is “good” by the culture’s standards, we progress in a downward spiral (which, true, may not be viewed as a bad thing) that leads us further into what only results in depression, unhappiness and a God-hole that aches to be filled. I can attest to all three of these symptoms from personal testimony and experience.

But there are problems with her theories of moral relativity outside of religion as well. The reasoning can easily become defective as one set of opinions battles against another, only to become yet another case of “might makes right” in the end. Suppose one man’s values say that abusing children is completely acceptable, perhaps even worth of praise. What do we do with that man? He is condemned, locked away, a social outcast at the very least! We force him to live by our values – who stands right here?

She theorizes that morals differ from people group to people group with the culture, thereby concluding that morals must be relative. But what truly differs from culture to culture are the values found within that people group. What they value, what they cherish in their heart determines how they live. Adolph Hitler and his Nazis believed devoutly that Jews had no right to live and only the Aryan race should have power or even the right to life.  Where are they now? America, among other nations, stepped in and forcibly put a stop to their actions. We forced our morals on them, saving countless lives in the process. Those lives did not matter to the Nazis, their values were elsewhere. According to their morality, they were in the right. Where now does Benedict’s theory fit in? The Jews believed themselves to have a right to live, the Nazis disagreed and acted upon their beliefs, whereupon the Americans forcibly contended against the cultural beliefs of the Germans. Who was truly right?

These aren’t the easiest arguments to nail down, and they do have their flaws. Without a belief if the One God, there is no absolute way to prove relative morality to be false^.* The Bible is the key to unlocking this falsehood, and the window through which we need to see our world.

I have to wonder if Solomon struggled with the issues behind the topic of relativity before shouting in despair, “Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” I was tempted to do just that as I attempted to reason with the philosophy of moral relativism outside the Word of God. In an attempt to better understand the topic, I went to a power higher than me and lower than God: my dad. I asked him if morality was relative, and I think his quipped answer is a lighthearted note to leave this discussion on. “No, honey,” he said. “And some of your relatives aren’t very moral.”

*In the words of the slightly crazy Cameron Versluis, ”See what I did there? I made a funny.” No absolute way to prove relativism false?.