Maybe Jesus Didn't Die For You. Poof! No Assurance.

Limited Atonement. Particular Redemption. Effectual Atonement. Definite Atonement. All of these are terms for the Reformed doctrine that Christ died only for the elect. That is to say, there are many people in history, nay most people in history, that the Christ did not die for.

Well, at least in Reformed Theology this is the case. It's a cute little theory based on logical deductions as well as some Scriptures. Yet it doesn't tell the whole story and doesn't do justice to the whole of the biblical data. At the end of the day, it ends up being another half truth. Reformed Theology is great for half truths. They affirm predestination to salvation. Great! That's clearly in Scripture. But then they turn around and say that God predestines people to hell. Not so great. That's not in Scripture. They affirm that Christ died for the world. Great! That's in Scripture. Then they affirm that world doesn't mean everyone. It just means that Christ died for the world in general, from which He will save all His elect by dying for them. But not for the others. Not so great. That's not in Scripture. They affirm that God and God alone saves and keeps us to final perseverance and salvation. Great! That's in Scripture. Then they turn around and say that everyone ever in a state of grace will never fall away and will infallibly persevere. And the rest were never saved to begin with, whether they reject Christ outright or give up their profession. Not so great. That's not in Scripture.

Anyhow, limited atonement is a doctrine that absolutely slaughters a person's assurance of salvation. I know, I was a Calvinist for years. This is typically where the Calvinist plays the intellectual card and says that I didn't really understand limited atonement. That's the problem, I understood it too well.

First of all, since Christ may or may not have died for you, looking to the cross for assurance is a fool's errand. After all, you might be deceived into thinking you're a Christian but you really aren't. I've had many Calvinists say that if God damns them to perdition, well, it will be for His glory, and they'll just have to revel in the glory of God from hell. I'm like, OK dude, what a comforting through.

Second, limited atonement forces a person to look inwardly for their assurance of salvation. If Christ may or may not have died for you, then the only way to know this is by looking to your own faith to see if it is really true faith, and looking to your obedience to see if you really love God.

But here is the rub. On our best days, we still do not have perfect faith, much less perfect obedience. We are fickle, us humans. We're subjective. We have emotions and we run the emotional roller coaster. We're not the same person (metaphorically speaking) from day to day. Looking to ourselves to see if we are really saved is really just not a good idea. We're ultimately going to fall in one of two directions. First, we're going to be led to despair because we realize that our faith nor our obedience to Christ is that great. We have our ups and our downs. If we ask the question "What does Christ demand?" Well, we must answer that He demands perfection from us. Hence He died and rose for us. But if that dying and rising is only for certain people...

Second, we might fall into the pride category. We think we are doing so well that we're definitely saved, because we obey Christ so well and stuff.

The point is, if limited atonement is true (thank God it's not), then the only place we can possibly look for assurance of salvation is in ourselves, to see if we're really truly believers.

Thankfully, this half truth of the atonement given to us by Reformed Theology is just that; a half truth.

The truth, thankfully, lies in the objectivity of Christ's work given to us. He died and rose for everyone universally. (Here comes the "that makes Christ a failure!" argument from the Calvinist, or some other silly thing.) He also gives us infallible *and objective* promises rooted in Himself in the here and now, to spare us from the constant navel gazing that limited atonement brings in its wake.

Ironically, Reformed Theology sort of ends up in the same place on the topic of assurance as other expressions of Christianity that affirm free will or justification by works. (Such as Arminianism or Roman Catholicism)

He baptizes us. That's His work to us and is objective. We are baptized in the Name of the Triune God for the remission of our sins. He gives us His Word. He also gives us His true Body and Blood in the Lord's Supper. That also is objective. It's Christ giving us Himself. It's grace.

So where do we look for assurance? Jesus Christ on the cross, given to us in Word and Sacrament. Not to ourselves, for that will just kill us. We are simul iustus et peccator, after all.

+Grace and Peace+