All the sins of all men?

Posted by Kenneth

The following argument has not been sufficiently and consistently answered since it was first posed by John Owen over 300 years ago.

"The Father imposed His wrath due unto, and the Son underwent punishment for, either:

1) All the sins of all men.

2) All the sins of some men, or

3) Some of the sins of all men.

In which case it may be said:

That if the last be true, all men have some sins to answer for, and so, none are saved.
That if the second be true, then Christ, in their stead suffered for all the sins of all the elect in the whole world, and this is the truth.

But if the first be the case, why are not all men free from the punishment due unto their sins? You answer, "Because of unbelief." I ask, "Is this unbelief a sin, or is it not? If it is, then Christ suffered the punishment due unto it, or He did not. If He did, why must that hinder them more than their other sins for which He died? If He did not, He did not die for all their sins!"

- John Owen(The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, Book 3, Ch. 3)

Meaningless words!

Posted by Kenneth

This Sign has vague unbiblical language. Virtually meaningless to the people driving by.


This sign has vague 17th century biblical language. Virtually meaningless to those driving by.

Without understanding, or understanding the wrong thing, the Gospel message is NOT preached. Some might say that on the second sign are the words of Jesus, so therefore it is a good sign. Jesus spoke in Aramaic, why? Because the listeners understood Aramaic! 17th century English is a pretty far cry from the English that we speak today. Let us be careful with our words when we speak of the Good News. I believe that God is absolutely sovereign in saving people by the preaching of the Gospel, but that doesn't mean we should treat it as a spell that we cast on a crowd or an individual ..."abra cadabra". The New Testament is full of commands to reason, persuade, and preach an intelligible Gospel (Acts 18:4,19:8, 2 Corinthians 5:11). Let depravity (Ephesians 4:18) be the cause of a lack of understanding, not our communication of the Gospel. And as we preach let us also pray with thanksgiving that we have understanding(1 John 5:20).