Chapter 3
If Jesus Died for Everyone, Then Everyone Deserves to Hear About It
Condensed Edition
For whom did Jesus die?
It sounds like a seminary exam question. In one sense, it is. But the answer has consequences far beyond the classroom. If Christ died only for a chosen few, then the billions who never heard the gospel were never meant to hear it. Their exclusion was built into the plan from the start. But if Christ died for every human being who has ever drawn breath, then a serious question follows. How does that finished work reach the woman in a first-century Chinese village? How does it reach the infant who lived only hours? How does it reach the Alzheimer's patient who can no longer recall her own name?
This book's answer is the moment-of-death encounter. And the case for that encounter begins here, with the scope of the atonement. If the price has already been paid for everyone, the only question left is delivery. The atonement is the foundation. The encounter is what rests on top of it.
In Chapter 2 we saw that God desires the salvation of every person. That desire is not a vague wish. It flows from who God is: love itself, in his very nature. But desire alone is not enough. God did not merely want to save the world. He acted. He sent his Son. And the scope of that act is the subject of this chapter.
The question of the atonement's scope has divided Christians for centuries. The Remonstrants, responding to the Synod of Dort in 1610, stated it plainly in their second article: "Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, died for all men and for every man, so that he has obtained for them all, by his death on the cross, redemption and the forgiveness of sins." They grounded this directly in John 3:16 and 1 John 2:2.30 I think they were right. The texts we are about to examine point consistently in the same direction.
The New Testament speaks about the scope of Christ's death with striking consistency. Text after text uses the widest possible language. No one can read these passages honestly and come away thinking God intended the cross for a select group. Let me walk through the central passages, one by one.
Start with the verse every child in Sunday school memorizes. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son." The word "world" translates the Greek kosmos. In John's Gospel, that word is not warm or neutral. It refers to the rebellious human order that rejects God. John 1:10 says the world did not recognize its maker. John 15:18–19 says the world hates Christ and his followers.1 Robin Parry makes the point clearly: the God of John 3:16 loves his enemies, not a pre-approved circle of friends.2
Verse 17 clinches the scope. God sent his Son "not to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." The word "world" appears in both clauses. It means the same thing in both. The saving scope is exactly as wide as the not-condemning scope. If "world" in the condemnation clause means all people, then "world" in the saving clause means all people too.3
John's first epistle is even more direct. Christ "is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." The Greek term is hilasmos, the sacrifice that turns away wrath and restores relationship.4 John draws a deliberate contrast: not just "ours" (the believing community) but "the whole world" beyond it.
Andrew Hronich makes a simple but powerful observation. The word "world" appears roughly twenty-eight times in 1 John. In every one of those uses, it means either the whole created order or the world of the unsaved. It never means "the elect."5 To read "the whole world" in 2:2 as secretly meaning "the elect among the Gentiles" demands that John use the word in a way he never uses it anywhere else in the same letter. The burden of proof falls heavily on anyone who claims this one verse is the exception.
Why "World" Means "World"
The word kosmos appears roughly twenty-eight times in 1 John. It never means "the elect." In every instance it means either the whole created order or the unsaved world outside the church. To read 1 John 2:2 as meaning only a subset of humanity requires John to use the word differently from how he uses it everywhere else in the same letter. The simplest reading is the best one: "the whole world" means the whole world.
James Beilby adds a clinching text from outside John's writings. In 2 Peter 2:1, Peter warns of false teachers "denying the Master who bought them." The Greek verb is agorazō, marketplace purchase language, the vocabulary of redemption. Peter applies it to people he explicitly identifies as heretics headed for destruction. If even the false teachers were "bought" by Christ, the purchase was not limited to the saved.6
Paul writes, "One died for all" (heis hyper pantōn apethanen). He says it twice in two verses, as if making sure no one misses it. Then in verse 19 he adds: "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ."7
A careful distinction matters here. George Hurd draws a line between objective reconciliation and subjective reception. At the cross, God accomplished reconciliation for the whole world. This is an objective, finished fact. But each person must receive that reconciliation by faith. That is the subjective side.8 Think of it like a hostage rescue. The ransom is paid for every hostage, whether or not each one walks out the door. The payment is complete. The freedom is real. But each hostage must accept the liberation that has been won for them.
This distinction frames the question this whole book is asking. Must subjective reception happen while a person is alive and conscious? Or can the offer extend into the act of dying? The universal scope of the atonement says the price is paid for everyone. The moment-of-death encounter says the offer reaches everyone.
Paul calls Christ "the one mediator between God and mankind, who gave himself as a ransom for all people" (1 Tim 2:5–6). The Greek is antilytron hyper pantōn, a ransom paid on behalf of all, not some. This follows directly from verses 3–4, where Paul says God "wants all people to be saved." The universal salvific will we explored in Chapter 2 finds its instrument here: God wants all saved, so Christ pays the ransom for all.9
Hebrews 2:9 adds its own voice. Jesus was made lower than the angels "so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone." The phrase is hyper pantos, for every single person, without exception. Hronich, drawing on the commentator Philip Hughes, notes that "taste" here does not mean a sip. It means to experience something to the fullest. Christ drained the cup of death completely. And he did it for everyone.10
Paul calls God "the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe" (1 Tim 4:10). The Greek word malista means "especially," not "only." God is the Savior of all; he is especially the Savior of believers. But the first clause does not shrink to the size of the second.11
Millard Erickson, a mainstream evangelical theologian, calls this verse the single strongest text in favor of unlimited atonement.12 I. Howard Marshall explains that the qualification is not meant to deny that Christ is Savior of all. It highlights the necessity of belief. The atonement is given to all; only those who believe receive its benefit in this life.13 And that word "in this life" is exactly what opens the door for the moment-of-death encounter. If the atonement covers everyone but only faith activates it, the question becomes: when is the last possible moment for that faith?
Titus 2:11 rounds out the picture: "The grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people." Not to some. Not to a predetermined list. To all.
The Argument in One Sentence
If Christ's atonement covers every human being, and the texts say it does, then a model that lets billions die without ever encountering that atonement is a model in which the atonement is made in vain for most of humanity. The moment-of-death encounter is how the universal price meets every universal soul.
Fairness requires hearing the other view. In the Reformed tradition, the doctrine of limited atonement (sometimes called "particular redemption") holds that Christ's death was sufficient for all but intended only for the elect. The logic runs like this: if Christ actually paid the penalty for a person's sins, that person cannot be punished again for the same sins. A double payment would be unjust. So if Christ died for everyone, everyone must be saved. Since not everyone is saved, Christ must not have died for everyone.14
Defenders of this view point to texts that describe Christ's love in particular terms. "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11). Christ came "to save his people from their sins" (Matt 1:21). He "loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Eph 5:25).15
I want to take this position seriously. The people who hold it love Scripture and are trying to honor what they find there. But I think it fails on three counts.
Beilby identifies three strategies that defenders of limited atonement use to handle the universal-sounding texts. Each one breaks down under examination.16
The first strategy says that "all" means "all kinds of people." Jews and Gentiles. Rich and poor. Slave and free. Not every individual. Parry responds with a simple observation. This reading only works if the context supplies a cue pointing toward categories rather than individuals. In texts like John 12:32 ("I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself"), no such cue exists. Without it, "all people" means all people, period.17
The second strategy admits the language sounds universal but insists the intent is only formal. Christ's death could have applied to all if God had decided to save all. In reality, the saving intent was limited. But this reading crumbles against 1 John 2:2 and 2 Peter 2:1. Both texts deliberately expand the scope beyond the circle of believers. John says the propitiation covers the whole world's sins. Peter says even the false teachers were bought. These texts were written precisely to prevent the narrowing that the second strategy attempts.18
The third strategy tries to redefine "Savior" in 1 Timothy 4:10 as "patron" or "benefactor." On this view, God is the patron of all in a common-grace sense, but Savior in a saving sense only of the elect. Hurd rightly objects. You cannot empty the word "Savior" of its saving content and still claim you are reading the text honestly.19
Common Objection: The Limited Atonement Problem
Objection: If Christ paid for everyone's sins, then everyone must be saved. Otherwise God is punishing the same sin twice, once on Christ and once on the sinner. That would be unjust.
Response: This argument confuses the scope of the atonement with the mechanism of its application. Christ's death is objectively sufficient for all. It becomes subjectively effective for each person through faith. No double payment occurs because the atonement is a gift freely offered, not a transaction automatically applied. As Jerry Walls and Joseph Dongell argue, a "free offer" of salvation that was never actually provided for the person hearing it is no offer at all. It is a performance of generosity with nothing behind it.20
One more observation deserves attention. The particular-language texts ("his people," "the sheep," "the church") establish that Christ loves the church. They do not establish that he loves only the church. Marshall makes this point with a personal analogy from Paul himself. In Galatians 2:20, Paul writes that Christ "loved me and gave himself for me." No one reads that as meaning Christ died only for Paul. The particular does not cancel the universal. It is included within it.21
I believe the exegetical case for unlimited atonement is strong. It is not built on one or two debatable passages. It rests on a broad, consistent pattern of New Testament language that uses the widest possible scope at every turn. When the New Testament writers wanted to describe the reach of the cross, they chose words like "all," "everyone," "the world," and "the whole world." They did this repeatedly, across multiple authors, genres, and decades. The burden of proof falls on anyone who says all these texts secretly mean something narrower.
Beilby connects this exegetical observation to the atonement's logic. If Scripture teaches that God desires all to be saved (1 Tim 2:4), and if God's desires are transitive (as one would expect for an omniscient, omnipotent being), then God's intent in sending his Son was universal. The scope of the atonement flows directly from the scope of God's love. And if God intended the atonement to cover every person, no human choice can frustrate that intent. People may refuse the gift once offered, but nothing can stop God from making the offer universal in scope.31
Here is where the argument turns toward this book's central claim. If the atonement truly covers every human being, what happens to those who never get the chance to respond to it?
Consider the scope of the problem. Roughly half of all the human beings who have ever lived died as infants or young children, before they could understand any message at all. Billions more lived and died in places and times where the name of Jesus was never spoken. Millions more heard a version of the gospel so distorted by abuse, hypocrisy, or cultural baggage that it bore little resemblance to the real thing. Beilby calls this last group the "pseudoevangelized," and their number may be far larger than most Christians realize.22
If the atonement is universal but the chance to receive it is confined to a narrow window of conscious life, then God provided a remedy that most of humanity could never access. That window depends entirely on accidents of birth, geography, and cognitive ability. It is as if a doctor developed a cure for a fatal disease, then locked it in a vault that only certain patients could reach. The cure exists. It works. But it does not reach the dying.23
The Dying Encounter Model matches the offer to the atonement. Both are universal. Neither is wasted. Neither is unjustly withheld. If Christ died for every person, then every person deserves to meet the One who died for them. That meeting, fully conscious, fully informed, fully free, and subjectively extended by the time-dilation reported in near-death experiences, is what this book proposes happens at the moment of death.24
The Bridge Argument
Universal atonement implies universal encounter. If the price of redemption was paid for every soul, the offer of redemption must reach every soul. The cross is the foundation; the moment-of-death encounter is the delivery system. Without it, the atonement's universality becomes an abstraction: a payment made but never delivered, a ransom paid for captives who are never told they are free.
Traditional theology draws a familiar line here. Christ's death is sufficient for all (potential) but efficient only for those who believe (actual). I have no quarrel with that distinction in itself. The problem is with an unbiblical restriction that gets smuggled in alongside it: the assumption that belief must happen before advanced physical death, or it does not count.25
Where does this restriction come from? Two texts are usually cited. Hebrews 9:27 says, "It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment." The parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 seems to portray an unbridgeable chasm between the saved and the lost. But as we will see in Chapter 23 and Chapter 24, neither text actually says what it is usually made to say. Hebrews 9:27 teaches that death is followed by judgment. It does not teach that the moment of death is a blank wall with nothing in it. Luke 16 is a parable about the finality of the rich man's refusal, not a blueprint of the afterlife's architecture.26
Once the artificial restriction is removed, the potential-vs.-actual distinction works cleanly with the encounter. The atonement remains potentially available to all. It is applied to each person who responds in faith. That response may come during conscious life. It may also come in the moment-of-death encounter, when the dying person meets the risen Christ, sees the truth face to face, and decides with full knowledge and full freedom.27
A reasonable person might wonder at this point: if Christ died for everyone and everyone meets Christ at death, doesn't everyone get saved? The answer is no. Universal atonement plus a universal encounter does not equal automatic salvation. The atonement guarantees a universal offer. It does not guarantee universal acceptance.
Free will is real, in life and in dying. Some people may look the risen Christ in the face and still say no. The encounter is genuine precisely because refusal is possible. We will examine that startling possibility in Chapter 27.28
Why This View Is Not Universalism
This book argues that every dying person receives a genuine, fully informed opportunity to say yes to Christ. It does not argue that every dying person will say yes. Offer and acceptance are different things. What happens to those who refuse is a separate question, one this book leaves deliberately open (see Chapter 29). On conditional immortality, those who refuse eventually cease to exist. On universal reconciliation, they eventually come around. On eternal conscious torment, they endure the consequences of their refusal forever. Each eschatological view is compatible with the moment-of-death encounter. The encounter is the mechanism; the final outcome is a different question.
What matters here is the consistency of God's character. A God who dies for all is a God who pursues all. A God who pays the price for every soul is a God who delivers the receipt to every soul. The universal atonement is the foundation. The universal encounter is what naturally rests on top of it.
This is why the question "for whom did Jesus die?" is not merely academic. If the answer is "everyone," then the death of Christ demands a delivery system. The traditional means of delivery, preaching, missions, the witness of the church, are real and irreplaceable. They are the ordinary instruments God uses to bring people to faith. But they have never reached everyone. They never will. Something else is needed, something that matches the scope of the cross to the scope of humanity.29
That something is Christ himself, meeting the dying at the threshold.
In the next chapter, we turn to the people for whom the delivery problem is most urgent: the billions who never heard. We will see how the universal salvific will of God, the universal scope of the atonement, and the mechanism of the dying encounter fit together into a single answer to the oldest and most painful question in Christian theology. What becomes of the unevangelized?
↑ 1. John 1:10; 15:18–19. In John’s Gospel, kosmos regularly denotes the fallen, rebellious human world that stands in opposition to God. It is this hostile world that God loves in 3:16.
↑ 2. Robin Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 13. Parry shows that the “world” God loves in John 3:16 is the God-rejecting world, not a pre-selected circle. God’s love reaches toward his enemies.
↑ 3. John 3:17. The parallel structure of this verse matters. The scope of “the world” in the saving clause must match the scope of “the world” in the non-condemning clause.
↑ 4. 1 John 2:2. The term hilasmos (propitiation or atoning sacrifice) denotes the offering that absorbs God’s wrath and restores the broken relationship. John uses it in the widest possible frame.
↑ 5. Andrew Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 36. Hronich counts approximately twenty-eight uses of kosmos in 1 John, twenty-six of which are either comprehensive or refer to the unsaved world. Not one means “the elect.”
↑ 6. James Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 89–91. See also 2 Peter 2:1. The verb agorazō is purchase language drawn from the marketplace. Peter applies it to false teachers who deny Christ.
↑ 7. 2 Corinthians 5:14–15, 19. Paul repeats the “all” twice for emphasis. Then adds the reconciliation of “the world” in verse 19.
↑ 8. George Hurd distinguishes between objective reconciliation (accomplished at the cross for all humanity) and subjective reception (personally appropriated through faith). Hurd’s hostage-rescue illustration captures the distinction well: the ransom is paid for every hostage, whether or not each one walks out the door.
↑ 9. 1 Timothy 2:5–6. The word antilytron appears only here in the New Testament. It combines anti (in exchange for) and lytron (ransom payment). The exchange was made hyper pantōn: on behalf of all.
↑ 10. Hebrews 2:9. Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 36, drawing on Philip Hughes: “taste death” (geusētai thanatou) does not mean a sip. It means to experience something fully and completely. Christ drained the full cup of death, for everyone (hyper pantos).
↑ 11. 1 Timothy 4:10. The word malista means “especially,” not “only.” God is the Savior of all people. He is especially the Savior of those who believe. The second clause does not negate the first.
↑ 12. Millard Erickson, Christian Theology. Erickson calls 1 Timothy 4:10 the strongest verse in favor of unlimited atonement.
↑ 13. I. Howard Marshall, “Universal Grace and Atonement.” Marshall argues that the qualification in 1 Timothy 4:10 draws attention to the necessity of faith, not a denial of universal saving intent.
↑ 14. The double-payment argument is classically associated with John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (1647). If Christ bore the punishment for a person’s sins, then it would be unjust for God to punish that person again. Therefore, if Christ died for all, all must be saved.
↑ 15. John 10:11; Matthew 1:21; Ephesians 5:25. These texts describe Christ’s love for specific groups: the sheep, his people, the church. They do not state that his love is limited to those groups alone.
↑ 16. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 89–91. Beilby identifies three Calvinist strategies for handling the universalist-sounding texts.
↑ 17. Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 13. On John 12:32, Parry notes that “all people” requires a contextual cue to be read as “all kinds of people.” No such cue exists in the immediate context.
↑ 18. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 89–91. Tom Schreiner applies a “merely phenomenological” reading to 2 Peter 2:1: it merely seemed as though Christ died for the false teachers. Beilby shows this reading cannot stand against the text’s own force.
↑ 19. Hurd critiques the “patron” reading of sōtēr in 1 Timothy 4:10. If “Savior of all people” means only “patron of all people in a common-grace sense,” the word “Savior” has been emptied of its saving content.
↑ 20. Jerry Walls and Joseph Dongell, Why I Am Not a Calvinist. Walls and Dongell argue that a “free offer” of salvation that was never actually made available to the hearer is an incoherent concept.
↑ 21. I. Howard Marshall, “Universal Grace and Atonement.” The Galatians 2:20 parallel is instructive: Paul says Christ “loved me and gave himself for me.” No one reads this as meaning Christ died only for Paul.
↑ 22. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, ch. 1. Beilby’s discussion of the “pseudoevangelized” expands the category of those who need a genuine encounter. These are people who technically heard the name of Jesus but received a version so distorted that it hardly counted as the gospel.
↑ 23. Estimates suggest that roughly half of all humans born before the modern era died before age five. See also Chapter 30 for the specific question of infant salvation.
↑ 24. The Dying Encounter Model is developed in Chapter 18. For the NDE evidence on time-dilation during the dying process, see Chapters 10 and 14.
↑ 25. The potential-vs.-actual distinction (Christ’s death sufficient for all, efficient for those who believe) is standard in both Calvinist and Arminian theology. The restriction I am questioning, that the response of faith must occur before biological death, is an additional assumption, not a biblical requirement.
↑ 26. For the detailed exegesis of Luke 16, see Chapter 23. For Hebrews 9:27, see Chapter 24.
↑ 27. The moment-of-death encounter preserves every element traditional theology values: the necessity of explicit faith in Christ, the genuineness of human freedom, and the finished work of the cross. It simply extends the window of response from “before the last heartbeat” to “within the act of dying.”
↑ 28. The question of whether refusal is rational given a face-to-face encounter with the risen Christ is addressed in Chapter 27. The question of what happens to those who refuse is addressed in Chapter 29.
↑ 29. This is not a criticism of missions or evangelism. The church’s mandate to preach the gospel remains urgent and important. But missions alone cannot bear the weight of God’s universal salvific will for the billions who die before a missionary arrives.
↑ 30. The Remonstrant Articles (1610), Article 2. The Arminian tradition has consistently held that Christ’s atoning death was unlimited in scope. See also Timothy A. Stratton, Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism, 2nd ed., ch. 1, for the connection between unlimited atonement and libertarian freedom.
↑ 31. Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity, 87–91. Beilby argues that the transitivity of God’s desire, combined with the scriptural evidence for unlimited atonement, makes universal intent the most reasonable conclusion. Human rejection may frustrate God’s desire that all be saved, but nothing stops God from making the atonement itself universal in scope.