Lecture 6: For Whom Did Christ Die? Calling and Regeneration

The lecture, section by section

1. The new problem substitution created

   The question, for whom did Christ die, only bites because of the view the course just adopted. On the governmental theory a token payment can stand for anyone; nothing was exactly anyone’s. But if Christ bore exact, personal sins, then either he bore everyone’s, or he bore his people’s. Two positions have divided the church’s Protestant wing: limited atonement, that Christ died only for the sins of the elect, which its friends prefer to call particular redemption, since the point is not a limit but an accomplishment; and unlimited or universal atonement, that Christ died for the sins of all people, the view of Arminians and of some Reformed Protestants, including, the teachers note, most of the faculty of Dallas Theological Seminary.

2. The case for particular redemption

   The defense unfolds in steps the class itself helps build. First, the logic of payment: if Christ paid for everyone’s sins, everyone’s sins are paid for, and paid-for sins with wrath satisfied is the very definition of salvation; the position proves too much or it proves universalism. Second, the intentionality of the texts: this is the Father’s will, that of all he has given me I lose nothing; he will save his people from their sins; the church of God purchased with his own blood; Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her; and in the upper room, I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those you have given me. Third, the shape of the whole order of salvation: election, calling, justification, and glorification are all particular and all accomplish their purpose; why would the atonement alone go broad and fall short of its aim? The substitution is personal, who loved me and gave himself for me, and a God who knowingly paid for the sins of people he had not elected would be punishing the same sins twice, double jeopardy, and unjust to send to hell those whose debt was paid.

3. The case for unlimited atonement

   The other side concedes the logic is formidable and answers with texts. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but for the whole world, 1 John 2. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, 2 Corinthians 5. Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, John 1. One mediator, who gave himself as a ransom for all, 1 Timothy 2. By the grace of God he tasted death for everyone, Hebrews 2. And hardest of all, 2 Peter 2: false teachers denying the Master who bought them, the purchase word used of Christians applied to men headed for destruction. John 3:16 grounds the sending itself in love for the world. The limited side must read world as all peoples rather than every individual, and the unlimited side asks by what right. The teachers pause over Barth’s universalism as the road these texts tempt some to take, a nice thought, Patton admits, that the understanding of sin and the rest of Scripture close off.

4. Patton’s four and three quarters

   Patton then does something rare in a theology class: he shows his work without finishing it. He cannot say Christ paid for everybody’s sins, because paid-for sins mean salvation and he will not redefine salvation. But he can say Christ died for all people potentially, and he reaches for the old formula, sufficient for all, efficient only for the elect, while admitting he likes it better some days than others. His resting place is a distinction: for whom did Christ die? All people. Whose sins did Christ pay for? Only the elect. The class’s airplane illustration helps: the ticket may be bought, but not until you board is the ride actually taken. Faith itself has no redeeming value; it is not the payment but the response to a payment, the first evidence that God has opened a heart. And 2 Peter 2 remains, he confesses, his hardest text. He calls himself a four-and-three-quarters Calvinist, and means the fraction seriously: wherever you land, he tells the class, you fall within the evangelical tradition, and what you are really discovering is how little any of us know.

5. The two calls

   From the atonement accomplished, the course turns to its application: God’s first personal step into a life. Can we say no to the gospel? Two callings must be distinguished. The general call is God’s message going out to all, elect and non-elect, through the preaching of the gospel, through creation, through conscience, all of it common grace, and it is a serious call, a real summons to repent. The effectual call is the Holy Spirit’s call going out through that same gospel to the elect, and it accomplishes what it announces. The Spirit does not work apart from the preached word; Romans 10 asks how they will believe without hearing. There is no second, private gospel; the effectual call rides inside the general one.

6. Why two calls at all

   Dyke presses the class to remember why the distinction exists: original sin. If people are truly dead in sin, unable to choose righteousness, then hearing alone cannot explain believing; the same sermon falls on two hearers and one believes. Something beyond the hearing must make the difference, and the difference is the Spirit’s effectual work. The doctrine is not an invention of Calvin; it is the shape the doctrine of sin forces on the doctrine of grace.

7. The effectual call in the texts

   Romans 8:29 and 30 again, now read for the call: those he predestined he called, and those he called he justified, not some of those he called. The chain has no leaks; every called one is justified, so this call cannot be the general call, which many refuse. Matthew 22:14 supplies the other side: many are called, few are chosen, the invitation of the banquet going wide while the chosen are drawn from within it. John 6 speaks with the same certainty: all the Father gives will come; no one can come unless the Father draws him, a word used elsewhere of hauling in nets; no one can come unless it is granted. Irresistible grace, the I of the acronym, is defined against its caricature: not God dragging the unwilling, but God opening the heart of the dead so that, seeing Christ truly, they cannot help but come, compelled from within by what they now see. Nobody, once wakened, says no thank you.

8. What it means to be born again

   The next term the world wears smooth: born again. Patton’s friend, the convert who hates jargon, demands it be retired; the class instead fills it. Death in Scripture is always separation, never extinction; the day Adam ate he died, separated from God while his body went on. Regeneration is God awakening that dead spirit, reestablishing the relationship that died in the garden and restoring the ability to respond to him. Nicodemus heard it first: unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom, and that includes everyone in every age; Old Testament saints were regenerated too, or they could not have entered the kingdom. Born of water and the Spirit, on Patton’s reading of the parallel with flesh and spirit, means the natural birth and the spiritual one, not baptism.

9. Regeneration precedes faith

   Now the question the assigned paper posed: was I born again before I believed? Monergistic regeneration says new birth is God’s act alone; synergistic says God and man cooperate. Patton argues the monergistic case. John 1: born not of the will of man, but of God. Ephesians 2: you were dead, and God made you alive; dead people do not contribute to their resurrections. As a baby does not cry before it is born, so no one cries out in faith before being born again; faith is the first breath of the new life, the first evidence, not the cause. 1 Peter 1: God caused us to be born again, through a seed imperishable. And decisively, 1 Corinthians 2:14: the natural man cannot accept the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him; if he cannot accept the things of the Spirit, he cannot accept the most spiritual thing of all, the gospel, until God changes him. The one who never seeks God will not, unchanged, seek him.

10. Lydia, and the comfort of monergism

    Acts 16 gives the doctrine a face: Lydia, a worshiper of God, listening to Paul by the river, and the Lord opened her heart to respond to what was said. Already religious, already listening, and still the opening had to come from outside her. A student notes she was a God-fearer already; Patton grants it and holds the point: until God opened, she could not respond. Regeneration is not resisted or accepted; it is the sovereign act that ends resistance, and there is no progressive regeneration, though there may be a progressive calling as God arranges a life toward the moment. The session closes on why the doctrine comforts rather than threatens: monergistic regeneration leaves nothing for us, and that is its glory. Every part of your salvation, from election to the opening of your own heart, was God’s doing, and the God who began it is not experimenting; he will perfect it to the day of Christ Jesus. Even the one thing that felt like yours, the believing, was the gift of a heart he had already made alive.

1. Patton lands at four and three quarters and tells the class that wherever they land, they fall within the evangelical tradition. What do you make of a teacher counting himself in fractions? Where does honest unresolvedness end and evasion begin, and which is this?

2. Think back over your conversion with Lydia’s story open. Who was preaching, who arranged your hearing, and what would you say the Lord opened? Thank God this week for the specific pieces of your own effectual call, including the people he used.

3. If faith is the first breath of the new life rather than its cause, how should that change the way you pray for someone who has heard the gospel many times and remains unmoved? What exactly are you asking God to do?