The NXR Podcast - May 20, 2022


QUESTIONS - If Jesus Died For Everyone, Why Do Many Still Go To Hell？


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

138.82219

Word count

2,197

Sentence count

128


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, real quick, before we get started,
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00:00:17.560 Thanks.
00:00:21.980 Hi, this is Pastor Joel with Right Response Ministries
00:00:24.280 and you're listening to another episode
00:00:25.720 of our show called Questions.
00:00:27.420 Today's question is as follows.
00:00:29.100 If Jesus died for everyone, why do so many still go to hell? If Jesus died for everyone,
00:00:36.860 why do so many still go to hell? To flesh the question out a bit more, I've written the following,
00:00:43.900 if the death of Jesus is not a mere example of sacrificial love, but actual atonement,
00:00:51.360 that is the finished payment for sin, and if Jesus died for each and every individual,
00:00:57.560 then why do so many people go to eternal suffering in hell? It would appear as though
00:01:05.020 these individuals, those who go to hell, their sins are being paid for twice, once by Jesus
00:01:13.200 on the cross, and then once by they themselves in an eternity in hell. Let's look at 1 John 2,
00:01:22.580 verse 2. First John chapter 2 verse 2 says this, he is the propitiation for our sins and not only
00:01:32.280 ours, but also for the sins of the whole world. He being Christ Jesus. He, Jesus Christ, is the
00:01:42.700 propitiation. And that's the key word. We'll come back there in just a moment. He is the propitiation
00:01:48.280 for our sins, but not our sins only, but the sins of the whole world. Well, one question we need to
00:01:55.980 ask is, who is the R? O-U-R. Who's the R in this context? Well, John is speaking of himself
00:02:05.680 and those that he is writing to. I would argue that the R in the context of 1 John 2, 2 is Jews,
00:02:14.580 our sins. Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. Me and you, fellow Jews, believing Jews,
00:02:25.360 Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, but not only ours, but the sins of the whole world,
00:02:30.880 meaning universalism. No, I would say globalism, not universalism, meaning that Jesus is the
00:02:37.580 propitiation for each and every individual who has and who will ever live, but rather Jesus is
00:02:44.540 the propitiation for the whole world, meaning every tribe, tongue, and language. Meaning not
00:02:51.960 that Jesus paid for the sins of every single individual person, but Jesus has purchased by
00:02:59.160 his blood as a propitiation. He has purchased some, those who will believe, from every single
00:03:08.220 nation, meaning Jesus is not just the payment for sins of the Jews, praise God, but Jesus also
00:03:17.180 is the payment for sins for the Gentiles, the whole world, for Israel, Brazil, for China,
00:03:28.320 for the U.S. of A. Jesus has died for his elect people who are scattered all over the face of
00:03:38.580 the earth from among every tribe, tongue, and nation. Now, let's come back to that word
00:03:43.700 propitiation. The word propitiation is only used a couple of times in all the New Testament,
00:03:49.780 and here we find one case. It actually has pagan roots. It is not, in terms of origin,
00:03:56.900 a Christian word. Now, it is a Christian word because the apostles made it a Christian word,
00:04:02.120 and rightfully so. It's a great word. But originally, it has pagan roots. A propitiation
00:04:06.680 would be a pleasing sacrifice, a satiating sacrifice offered by one party to some kind
00:04:15.900 of deity, some kind of God, in order to subside their wrath, satisfy their anger.
00:04:23.700 So it's used from very primitive and pagan, you know, false religions where there was a God who
00:04:34.740 was always on edge, a God who he could just blow up in a moment with anger, a fragile God,
00:04:43.580 not like our God, who's the same yesterday, today, and forever, who does get angry,
00:04:48.380 but he is slow to anger. The pagan gods, they were fragile. They were emotional. They would
00:04:59.560 go back and forth. They were mutable, changing. And so what the people would do in many pagan
00:05:05.700 cult religions is they would make some kind of sacrifice to satiate, subside the wrath
00:05:13.460 of the gods. Sometimes they would make human sacrifices, like the sacrifices of children to
00:05:20.680 Molech. And that's where the word propitiation comes from. A propitiation is a sacrifice
00:05:28.440 that is successful, that succeeds in satiating the wrath of God. And that's what Jesus is.
00:05:39.340 Now, the difference in the case of Christian doctrine and the way that Christians use the
00:05:45.420 word propitiation, the difference is this. Number one, our God doesn't fly off the handle.
00:05:50.980 Our God is not overly emotional. Our God is immutable. Malachi says this,
00:05:58.280 Behold, I am the Lord, I changeth not, so that you, the sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
00:06:04.500 that we're not consumed in a moment by the fierce wrath of God that comes out of nowhere because we
00:06:12.160 suddenly misstepped because why because God is immutable he is unchanging behold I changeth
00:06:18.900 not God is not a man that he should change his mind so the immutability of God is one difference
00:06:26.940 but another difference is this in all of these pagan religions the party that would put forth
00:06:33.580 the propitiation, the sacrifice that satiates the wrath of a God, the party that put forth
00:06:40.400 the propitiation that would be responsible for supplying this propitiation would be men,
00:06:46.880 people, the offenders, the transgressors, the ones who angered the gods. But in the gospel
00:06:54.540 of Jesus Christ is God himself who puts forward a propitiation to appease his own wrath. God is
00:07:05.000 angry, but not in a moment, not a haphazard anger, but a slow burning white hot wrath that is
00:07:14.140 righteous and just and deserved. And this God who is righteously angry, justly angry at
00:07:23.980 mankind, because of our gross sin against him, this God who is angry satisfies his own wrath
00:07:33.160 by putting forward the propitiation himself. And what is the propitiation? God the Father
00:07:39.380 puts forward the propitiation, and God the Son is the propitiation. That's the gospel.
00:07:48.220 It completely contrasts with any pagan false religion. And this word propitiation is precisely
00:07:57.480 what is used in 1 John 2. Now that we have the context, the meaning of the word, we should
00:08:06.060 understand that a propitiation is a sacrifice that succeeds in satiating the wrath of God.
00:08:15.820 So now, with that definition in mind, think of 1 John 2, verse 2.
00:08:22.760 He, being Jesus, is a propitiation, that is, the sacrifice put forward by God to God that
00:08:32.180 succeeds in satisfying fully the wrath of God.
00:08:37.460 Jesus is that.
00:08:38.740 He is that propitiation, the succeeding sacrifice, the sufficient payment, the atonement that
00:08:47.480 ultimately covers the penalty and satisfies God and his justice and subsides his wrath.
00:08:58.100 That's what Jesus is, a propitiation for our sins and the sins of the whole world.
00:09:04.000 If the whole world in this context meant universalism, each and every individual,
00:09:09.920 then no one could go to hell. Why? Because Jesus is a propitiation. He is the pleasing sacrifice
00:09:20.200 that succeeds in satisfying the justice of God and subsiding the wrath of God. If Jesus,
00:09:27.620 as this propitiation was put forward by God the Father to God the Father on behalf of each and
00:09:35.120 every individual, then God's wrath for all sinners would be satisfied. Now, some might object at this
00:09:43.320 point and say, well, okay, yeah, Jesus died for everyone's sins, and he paid and atoned for
00:09:50.760 everyone's sin, but you still have to receive that gift. My question would be this. If you choose to
00:09:55.760 reject the payment, the atonement that Jesus provides, is that a sin? And if that is a sin,
00:10:03.280 your choice to reject the propitiation of Christ, well, was Christ a propitiation for the sin of
00:10:08.940 rejecting his propitiation? And you might say, well, no. Well, then logically, what you're
00:10:14.520 ultimately saying at this point is that the only sin anyone ever goes to hell for is the sin of
00:10:18.960 rejecting Christ. But the Bible teaches in Revelation and elsewhere that cowards go to hell.
00:10:25.760 that adulterers go to hell, that blasphemers go to hell, and that sins in an ethereal sense are
00:10:32.340 not what are going to be punished in hell. The sin of perversion will not be punished in hell.
00:10:36.600 Perverts will be punished in hell. It's not the sin of murder that will be punished in hell. It
00:10:41.860 will be murderers punished in hell. And it's not just going to be a bunch of people being punished
00:10:47.080 in hell for their rejection of Christ. They will be punished in hell chiefly for their rejection
00:10:52.340 of Christ, but also they will be punished for their individual sins on this earth besides
00:10:57.820 merely rejecting Christ.
00:10:59.700 This is why there are certain degrees of punishment.
00:11:02.560 Jesus even says, as he's pronouncing woes on certain Jewish cities, he says, woe to
00:11:07.700 you, this city and that city, because it'll be worse for you on the final day, the day
00:11:12.680 of judgment, than it was for Sodom or for Gomorrah.
00:11:16.400 Why?
00:11:16.860 Because if the miracles that have been performed in you, these Jewish cities, if those kinds
00:11:21.100 miracles were performed in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented long ago. So there are
00:11:27.300 degrees of punishment due to degrees of revelation of Christ. Because the more that Christ is revealed,
00:11:33.840 the stronger the rejection might be, the higher degree of rejection of that revelation there
00:11:39.220 might be, and therefore a greater punishment. But it is not merely the rejection, the sin of
00:11:44.540 rejecting Christ and his atonement that people ultimately are punished for in hell. It is also
00:11:51.620 all their other sins. Those in hell, we see from scripture, they are not just punished for rejecting
00:11:56.900 Jesus. They are punished for rejecting Jesus and every other breach of God's law. They are punished
00:12:04.500 for their lies. They are punished for their murder. They are punished for their adultery.
00:12:09.820 They are punished for all these things, for their theft, for their coveting, for everything
00:12:15.000 that they've done, for their cowardice.
00:12:16.880 Cowards will go to the lake of fire.
00:12:20.360 So people in hell are ultimately suffering under God's just wrath for their sin, and
00:12:27.880 not just their sin of rejecting Jesus, but the other sins they've committed as well.
00:12:32.480 Meaning what?
00:12:33.580 Those other sins that they've committed were not atoned for by Jesus.
00:12:38.840 They can't have been.
00:12:40.280 Why?
00:12:41.160 Because, catch this, I'm almost done.
00:12:44.920 The reason why Jesus cannot have died for the sins of each and every individual, knowing
00:12:50.080 that many individuals will die and go to hell, the reason why Jesus cannot have paid for
00:12:56.040 their sins is simply this, because God is just.
00:13:00.580 God is just.
00:13:01.420 And as a just judge, God cannot and will not exact double penalty for a singular crime.
00:13:12.840 He will not punish the same crime twice. It's not just. It's not fair. And God will not do it
00:13:21.940 because God is just. The wages of sin is death. Jesus died under the wrath of God at Calvary
00:13:32.540 for all who would be united to him through faith. The reason why Christians don't go to hell
00:13:40.140 and suffer eternal death is because Jesus died in our place. And if Jesus died in the place of
00:13:47.620 everyone, then ultimately, if anyone went to hell, God would be punishing that person twice,
00:13:55.120 double payment. Once, once punishing their sins in Jesus on the cross, and then twice a second time
00:14:03.760 punishing them in hell for eternity. And God is just. Each man will pay what he owes.
00:14:13.120 It's either been paid in full already by Christ, or you yourself will pay over the course of
00:14:21.800 eternity in hell. Jesus is not the propitiation of each and every individual sins. The propitiation
00:14:32.500 being the sacrifice that worked, the sufficient payment and atonement. Jesus is not the propitiation
00:14:41.740 for our sins, a.k.a. Christians, and the sins of the whole world, a.k.a. each and every individual
00:14:49.000 unbeliever. If you read the text like that, then you have to be a universalist. No one goes to hell.
00:14:56.840 Or you have to be a blasphemer who says that there is not justice with God. But if you read
00:15:02.920 the text correctly, Jesus is a propitiation. He satisfies fully the wrath of God towards sin
00:15:09.020 for our sins, but not only our sins, the whole world, and you read it as our, not Christians,
00:15:15.000 and then the whole world, each and every individual, universalism, but our sins, Jews,
00:15:20.780 and the whole world, global, the elect from among every tribe, tongue, and nation,
00:15:26.400 well then, all of a sudden, wouldn't you know it, the Bible starts to make sense.
00:15:31.700 Thanks for tuning in.
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