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

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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 0.97

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 0.66

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, 0.80

00:02:14.580 our sins. Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. Me and you, fellow Jews, believing Jews, 0.94

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 0.65

00:03:17.180 is the payment for sins for the Gentiles, the whole world, for Israel, Brazil, for China, 0.90

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 0.91

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 0.99

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 0.79

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 0.96

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 0.96

00:11:21.100 miracles were performed in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented long ago. So there are 1.00

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. 0.98

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. 0.99

00:12:16.880 Cowards will go to the lake of fire. 0.98

00:12:20.360 So people in hell are ultimately suffering under God's just wrath for their sin, and 0.97

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 0.76

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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The NXR Podcast - May 20, 2022

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

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