Objection 1. What everyone is bound to believe must be true, and it is the duty of all men to believe; therefore Christ must have died for all men.

Answer 1. Suppose we grant this position, would not the doctrine of discriminating love be thereby destroyed? Would it not be poor comfort for a distressed soul to believe that Christ died for it, no more than for Judas and all the damned in hell?

2. They to whom the Gospel never came, they who have never heard of the death of Christ, are not bound to believe that Christ died for them. What God reveals is true; but God nowhere reveals that it is His intention that Judas shall believe, or that all shall believe.

3. All have not the Gospel preached to them; and many to whom it is preached only hear the sound of it with the outward ear: they come and go in an attendance thereon as the door upon its hinges, in a way of mere formality. They are not impressed with a sight and sense of their state as sinners. They are not weary and heavy laden because of sin. The proclamation by the gospel trumpet of redemption for sin through Christ's blood is not a joyful sound to them; they know not their need of it. Evangelical repentance is the gift of free grace; faith is the gift of God. What is God's, as a gift to bestow, cannot be man's duty to perform as a condition of salvation. Those who are invited to look to Christ, to come to Him for salvation, are very minutely described: they are the weary and heavy laden with sin, the penitent, the hungry and thirsty soul, etc., etc.; these are the characters invited to come to and believe in Christ, and not all men (Mt 11:28; Isa 55:1; Mr 2:17).

Objection 2. The words "all" and "every," often used in Scripture, must be taken universally.

Answer 1. "All" and "every" must not be taken for a universal affirmative collectively, and for every man individually, in the common quoted scriptures; but distributively, as in Mt 9:35, where we are told that Christ went about healing every sickness and every disease among the people: that is, any and every kind of disease, for Christ healed not every disease individually. Also in Col 1:28, where "every" is taken distributively three times over, and must be restricted to those to whom Paul preached.

2. "All" in 1Ti 2:4, cannot be taken for every man individually, since it is not the will of God that all men in this large sense should be saved: for it is His will that some men should be damned, and that very justly, for their sins and transgressions. Unto some men it will be said, "Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." If God willeth all men to be saved, then all men will be saved, for "He (God) doeth according to His will in the army of Heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth" (Da 4:35). God faileth not, He cannot be disappointed in His own will, for He worketh all things after the counsel of it. Again, in Heb 2:9, Jesus is said to "taste death for every [man];" it is in the very next verse restricted to "sons brought to glory," and in Heb 2:11, to "sanctified" ones. 1Ti 2:6 ("who gave Himself a ransom for all") is rendered in the parallel text in Tit 2:14, "who gave Himself for us." Now, who are the persons called "us" in this text? Are they not particularized as "redeemed from all iniquity, purified and made a peculiar people?" For "all" of this description Christ gave Himself a ransom, and for none else.

The prophet David saith, "All men are liars;" take the word strictly, and he must be a liar that saith so.

Objection 3. In Joh 3:16, and in 1Jo 2:2, it is declared that God gave Christ for the "world," and for the sins of the "whole world;" which must be taken literally.

Answer 1. The word "world" is of various significations. A decree went out that "all the world should be taxed" (Lu 2:1), that is, the Roman empire and such countries in subjection thereto. The faith of the church of Rome was "spoken of throughout the whole world" (Ro 1:8), that is, throughout all the churches, and among all the saints in the world. When the Pharisees said to Christ, "Behold, the world is gone after Him" (Joh 12:19), by reference we find that they meant "much people" who went out of Jerusalem to meet Jesus, crying, "Hosanna" (Joh 12:12,13). The Pharisees themselves, who so said, they were not gone after Christ; therefore the whole world was not gone, they themselves not being gone. So Joh 3:16: "God so loved the world" cannot be understood of the world in a strict sense, for so birds, beasts, fishes, and all inanimate things are comprehended, which cannot have everlasting life; nor can it be the world of men, but as God is the Preserver of both man and beast (Ps 31:6). There is God's love to creatures, His love to men, and His love to good men. God's love was the cause of His sending Christ, and the word "whosoever" (in the verse) restrains this love of God to some and not to others. It must therefore be properly God's love to good men, the third love; not such as He found good, but such as He made so.

2. There is a world of believers (Re 5:9); and as manna was only for Israel, so Christ, the true manna, the Bread from Heaven, gives life to the world of believers only (Joh 6:33). Christ was believed on in the world of believers only (1Ti 3:16); the reconciled world (2Co 5:19): and "all men have not faith" (2Th 3:2). There is also the world of unbelievers. "All the world wondered after the beast. And "they worshipped the dragon" (Re 13:3,4). "The whole world lieth in wickedness" (1Jo 5:19). The believing world is a world in the world ("these are in the world," Joh 17:11); and they are taken and chosen out of the world. They are in the world, and sojourning among the inhabitants of it as strangers and pilgrims only, this not being their rest, their home; their desires being towards a better country (Heb 11:13-16). And that they are taken and chosen out of the world and given to Christ is clear from Joh 15:19: "If ye were of the world, the world would love its own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore, the world hateth you." Also from Joh 17:6,9: "I have manifested Thy Name unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the world . . . I pray for them; I pray not for the world."

"Zion's garden wall'd around, Chosen and made peculiar ground; A little spot, enclosed by grace, Out of the world's wide wilderness."

3. It is granted that God hath a respect for all mankind. "We trust," saith Paul, "in the living God, who is the Saviour," i.e., the Preserver, "of all men, especially of those that believe" (1Ti 4:10). "The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works" (Ps 145:9). "He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good; and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (Mt 5:45). All this implies not eternal preservation, but only temporal providence and preservation; for the wages of sin would have been paid at the birth of it, and the world (through confusion by sin) would have fallen about Adam's ears, had not Christ been the glorious undertaker.

All that are redeemed are redeemed by Christ; but the elect only are given to Him; they alone have an interest in Him, are redeemed by Him, and they shall be glorified with Him.

4. The word "world" is sometimes in Scripture put for Gentiles in opposition to Jews, and so it is in 1Jo 2:2. John wrote to the Jews, and ministered unto the circumcision (see Ga 2:9), and he says unto them, "Christ is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world," that is, not for the Jews only, but for the Gentiles also. The Jewish nation considered themselves as the peculiar people of God; and so they were, for to them "pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises." And Christ was a Jew, "of whom concerning the flesh Christ came" (Ro 9:4,5). The Jews were always taught to appropriate the Messiah exclusively to themselves, to the utter rejection of the Gentiles, who were called "strangers," "uncircumcised," "common," "unclean," "dogs," etc. And it was unlawful for a Jew to keep company or have any dealings with a Gentile (see Mt 10:5; Mr 7:17; Ac 10:28, and Ac 11:3). The salvation of the Gentiles is in various parts of Scripture called a "mystery," "hidden mystery;" the "mystery of Christ which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men ... that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs" (Eph 3:4-6; Col 1:27). But when this mystery was revealed and made fully known by the divine mission to Paul, who was by Christ sent to preach to the Gentiles (Ac 26:17,18), when it was declared by the vision of the unclean beasts and the Lord's consequent commission to Peter (Ac 10:9-15,20), then the contentions of the circumcision ceased (Ac 11:2,3); they found "the middle wall of partition" between Jew and Gentile was "broken down;" the latter, who before were "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise," being now "brought nigh by the blood of Christ." They glorified God saying, "Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life." Jesus Christ is not only the propitiation for the sins of us Jews, but for the Gentiles also (Eph 2:11-18).

5. The foregoing is proved from Ro 11:12, where the two words, "world" and "Gentiles," are both used as signifying one and the same thing. "If the fall of them (Jews) be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?

"It was a controversy agitated among the Jewish doctors whether, when the Messiah came, the Gentiles, the `world' should have any benefit by Him. The majority was exceeding large on the negative of the question; only some few, as old Simeon and others, knew that He should be `a light to lighten the Gentiles,' as well as `the glory of His people of Israel.' The rest concluded that the most severe judgments and dreadful calamities would befall the Gentiles; yea, that they should be cast into hell, in the room of the Israelites" (Dr. John Gill).

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