This is part 10 of my Actual Good News series of articles on the topic of biblical soteriology (the study of salvation).
Please note that I’m including many of my scriptural references in the links (which are are the underlined words throughout the article), and they also link to studies with extended details that I couldn’t fit into the article, so please be sure to click all the supporting links in order to get the full picture, as well as all the Scripture references.
Very important: Please be sure you’ve read all of the previous parts of this series — or are at least familiar with everything in them — before reading this article. If you don’t, parts of this article will make no sense, and you will likely remain unconvinced without knowing the details in those articles.
While we now know from what we learned in the previous articles in this series that no humans are going to suffer consciously in any of the biblical “hells” as a form of judgement (at least not for any longer than it takes to die a second time in the lake of fire, presuming one doesn’t die before being cast into that particular “hell”), even though none of the passages we looked at in those articles prove that anyone will remain dead in the lake of fire without end, none of them prove that the people who do end up there will ever be resurrected from it either, much less that they’ll then experience the salvation Paul primarily wrote about — meaning being quickened (aka being made immortal) and sinless — which brings up the question of why I’ve hinted that this will be the case more than once already in previous articles. Well, the answer to that question is found all throughout Paul’s epistles (and, I should add for those who already understand that this will indeed be the case, only in Paul’s epistles), where he taught that everyone will indeed eventually experience that particular form of salvation. Remember, as we learned in the first article of this series, one of the biggest causes of misinterpretations of Scripture regarding salvation is a lack of understanding of the fact that there are different types of salvation referred to in Scripture, and this doesn’t only apply to the difference between the types of salvation connected with the Gospel of the Circumcision vs Paul’s Gospel, but it also applies to the fact that there are different types, or perhaps we could say levels, of salvation within Paul’s Gospel itself. As you’ll learn while reading this article, there have to be two types of salvation within Paul’s Gospel, because he both taught that everyone will be saved and also that everyone won’t be saved when discussing his Gospel, which means that there has to be a general salvation which everyone experiences as well as a special level of salvation connected with his Gospel which only a relative few will experience, in order for Scripture to not contradict itself (and it’s very important that you pay close attention to the wording of a specific verse to determine which of those types of salvation Paul is referring to in it, or else you will walk away extremely confused). Of course, I’m sure you’re wondering what those passages are, so I’m going to go over a number of them now, beginning with Paul’s Gospel itself, which teaches us this (and that’s really all the proof one should need). In fact, not only does the “Christ died for our sins” element of his Gospel teach this, 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 also tells us that someone who believes in never-ending punishment can’t actually be a member of the body of Christ, because they don’t believe that sin has been dealt with, once and for all, through Christ’s death for our sins (even if perhaps only proleptically at present, meaning the penalty for sin is now guaranteed to be eliminated in the future for anyone for whose sins Christ died), and hence hasn’t truly believed Paul’s Gospel (if anyone believes that a person can be punished without end because of their sins, they haven’t understood what it means that “Christ died for our sins,” and you can’t truly believe something if you don’t actually understand its meaning). On top of that, though, it also means that someone who thinks a person can only be saved by choosing to believe (and/or choosing to do) something specific isn’t in the body of Christ either, because it isn’t our belief (or any of our actions) that ultimately saves us, but rather it’s simply Christ’s death for our sins, along with His subsequent burial and resurrection on the third day, that saves us (just in case it isn’t obvious, I’m specifically talking about the general sort of salvation which applies to everyone when I discuss verses 3 and 4 of 1 Corinthians 15, and not to the special “eternal life” type of salvation, meaning “age-pertaining life,” that Paul wrote about in verses 1 and 2, which, as we learned in Part 3 of this series, refers to life during the two future ages, and which only a relative few — those who actually do understand what Paul’s Gospel means and truly believe it — will get to enjoy; when it comes to this passage, it’s important to keep in mind that both types of salvation are being discussed in those four verses, and also to remind you to read the first 9 parts of this series before proceeding any farther if you aren’t already intimately familiar with all of the facts that we’ve discussed in this article so far). To insist that one has to choose to believe something specific in order to experience the general salvation which results from what he said happened in verses 3 and 4 is putting the cart before the horse, since faith, or belief, in what Christ accomplished is the cart bringing us into the special “eternal life” form of salvation written about in verses 1 and 2 (known as membership in the body of Christ, which involves getting quickened earlier than everyone else, among other special rewards and “inheritances,” or “allotments” — and which, again, is a form of salvation that not everyone will experience), while the general salvation of all humanity because of Christ’s death for our sins, burial, and resurrection on the third day, is the horse.
I should say, while “the salvation of all humanity” isn’t, strictly speaking, Paul’s Gospel itself — since Paul’s Gospel is technically just those combined elements that he said he taught the Corinthians (Christ’s death for our sins, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day) — because the salvation of all humanity is the end result of Christ’s death for our sins, His burial, and His resurrection on the third day, it means that the salvation of all humanity because of what Christ accomplished is this Gospel’s main point. And so, while there are other details about his Gospel which also need to be understood in order to be considered a member of the body of Christ (such as what it means that “He was buried,” as we already discussed in a previous article in this series), it can legitimately be said that “the salvation of all humanity because of what Christ accomplished” is essentially Paul’s Gospel, even if it’s not technically Paul’s Gospel (again, of course, referring to the general salvation that everyone eventually experiences, meaning being made immortal and sinless, and not the special “eternal life” sort of salvation which only the body of Christ will get to enjoy in heaven, or even the other “eternal life” sort of salvation, which the Israel of God will enjoy in the kingdom of heaven for 1,000 years).
Despite all this, it’s been stated by many people that 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 was talking only about those in the Corinthian church who believed Paul’s Gospel (or at least only about people who believed Paul’s Gospel in general), and that it didn’t include the rest of humanity anywhere in its words, and, in fact, that the “for our sins” part of this Gospel was only referring to the sins of those specific Corinthians who believed that the words in Paul’s Gospel are true (or at least only referring to the sins of those who believe his Gospel in general). And while it is true that this part of the chapter was about what the Corinthian believers specifically believed, what they specifically believed wouldn’t actually make any sense if “our sins” wasn’t referring to the sins of all humanity.
I mean, aside from the fact that he didn’t tell them something along the lines of, “Christ can have died for the sins of you Corinthians specifically, but only if you happen to believe that He died for your sins, making it so that He did die for your sins, even though He didn’t actually die for your sins at all if you don’t believe He did” (which would have to be the case if this passage was only about the sins of the Corinthian believers rather than the sins of all humanity), why would he have called this the good news (Gospel) he brought to them if it wasn’t already news which is good for his audience at the time he spoke it to them in person, before they even believed it? (This is why it’s called good news/a Gospel to begin with: because it’s good news whether someone believes it or not, or even hears it or not — it couldn’t be called good news if it’s something that has to be believed in order to avoid a never-ending punishment, especially never-ending torture, since it could then only be called potential good news, or Paul’s Potential Gospel.) The statement that “Christ died for our sins” would have to already be good news to anyone Paul told this fact to before he even spoke the words to them if he wanted to be able to call it a Gospel in the first place, and not just news which can be good, but only if they happened to hear it and then also believe it’s true, somehow turning it into good news for them (although not really particularly good news, since, statistically speaking, they were still pretty much guaranteed to lose most of their loved ones to never-ending punishment in the end, if modern Christians are correct).
I should also say, this is where the Calvinists are at least partly correct (or at least those Calvinists who don’t say unscriptural and illogical things such as, “Christ’s death for our sins was sufficient to save all, but efficient to save only the elect,” because if something must be added to His sacrifice in order for someone to be saved — even something as simple as having to choose to believe the right thing — then His death for our sins was, by definition, INsufficient on its own to save anyone). The consistent Calvinists at least understand that, if we can’t do anything at all to save ourselves, it can only be Christ’s death for our sins (along with His subsequent burial and resurrection) that saves us, which means that anyone whose sins Christ died for has to be considered to be saved from at least some perspective (referring to their general salvation from a proleptic perspective, and not to the special “eternal life” type of salvation, of course), because otherwise His death for our sins accomplished absolutely nothing for anyone prior to someone hearing about His death for our sins and then choosing to believe that His death for our sins accomplished something for them too, thus making them their own (at least partial) saviours by turning Christ’s ineffectual action (which, by definition, is what His death for our sins would be if it didn’t have any effect on them on its own) into an action which — only after our contribution (such as the act of choosing to believe the right thing) — actually had an effect on them after all.
Where these Calvinists go wrong is in forgetting that the words Paul specifically said he spoke to the Corinthians when he first evangelized to them in person were not “Christ died for your sins” (or even “Christ died for the sins of the elect,” which is what most Calvinists basically believe he meant). Instead, he wrote that the words of good news he told them in person were: “Christ died for our sins.” If he only meant that Christ died for the sins of the Corinthians and himself specifically, it would mean He didn’t also die for the sins of anyone else, including the believers in Rome or Galatia or anywhere else for that matter (and that He didn’t die for your sins either). But let’s say that he just meant “the sins of the elect,” or even “the sins of believers in general” (to make this point clear to those who aren’t Calvinists as well), when he said “our sins.” Well, since it’s not like believing that Christ died for our sins could then make it a fact that he died for their sins specifically, but only after believing it (since He only died once), this means He had to have at least died for the sins of anyone in Corinth hearing this proclamation of good news before Paul spoke those words to any of them. And so, unless every single Corinthian Paul spoke to believed his words, if Christ’s death for our sins (along with His burial and resurrection, of course) is the only thing that saves us (which it is, since anything we had to add to that in order to be saved would mean we helped save ourselves), it would mean that Paul was lying to anyone who didn’t believe that Christ died for our sins when he spoke those words to them, because that statement would have to include everyone hearing him say those words rather than just the listeners who also believed those words were true (since it would mean that Christ didn’t actually die for their sins after all, considering the fact that anyone whose sins Christ died for has to be saved — again, referring only to our general salvation here, and not to the special salvation of believers). Not only that, it would mean we were also lying anytime we explained that the good news includes the fact that Christ died for our sins, at least if anyone who heard us didn’t believe it either (unless, perhaps, what one actually has to believe in order to be saved is that Jesus died only for the sins of Paul and the Corinthians he spoke to — and that everyone in Corinth he preached his Gospel to got saved — and not that he actually died for you or anyone else, but then we’d have to ask what the basis of our own salvation really was in the first place if it wasn’t Christ’s death for our sins too). Now yes, the statement that “Christ died for your sins” is technically true, no matter who we say it to, because they’d still be included in the “all humanity” that gets saved by Christ’s death for our sins. But regardless of how true the statement is, it isn’t the Gospel message, so if you’re evangelizing, please be careful to share the actual Gospel message that one has to believe in order to be able to be said to have joined the body of Christ, which includes the good news that Christ died for our(all humanity’s) sins.
Because yes, Christ’s death for our sins actually had to apply to all humanity (and hence guarantee the general salvation of all humanity), as Paul also made clear when he expanded on all this later in the same chapter by writing that just as “in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Many Christians assume that Paul was simply referring to being resurrected here (based on the fact that the main point of this chapter is the resurrection of the dead), but we know that everyone who Paul said will be “made alive” includes those who will never die, such as the members of the body of Christ who will still be living at the time they’re caught up together in the air to meet the Lord when He comes for His body, not to mention the members of the Israel of God who will still be alive at the Second Coming and who will remain alive — thanks to the tree of life — until the time they’re finally also made immortal, so being “made alive” (translated from a future-tense variation of ζῳοποιέω/“dzo-op-oy-eh’-o” in the KJV, which is the same Greek word that “quickened” is translated from — and which, yes, literally just means “to give life,” but which is almost exclusively used figuratively in the Bible to refer to being made immortal) obviously can’t simply be referring to resurrection (which is an entirely different word, translated from the Greek word ἀνάστασις/“an-as’-tas-is” instead) because not everyone Paul said will be “made alive” will actually die and be resurrected (yes, that the dead will be physically resurrected was Paul’s main point in this chapter, but he used his Gospel to prove this point, and in doing so ended up covering details that went far beyond just resurrection, including elements that apply to those who won’t be resurrected — because they’ll never actually drop dead — as well).
And since the “in Adam” half of the verse is about the end result of his sin as it applies to everyone (and not just those people who will actually literally die), it stands to reason that, “even so,” the “in Christ” part is about the end result of His death for our sins as it applies to every one of us as well, which can only be the quickening of our mortal bodies (since, as Paul explains later in the very same chapter, being made immortal is what we’re looking forward to as far as our salvation goes, and that being made immortal is how the death Adam brought us all is ultimately defeated, which also means that any human who is made immortal will then be experiencing the final stage of their own salvation as it pertains to Paul’s Gospel). That, combined with the fact that not everyone will end up as a corpse prior to being “made alive” — confirming that the “for as in Adam all die” part of the verse can only be referring to being made mortal, meaning being in a state of slowly dying because of what Adam did — tells us Paul was simply explaining that, for as in Adam all are dying (mortal), even so in Christ shall all be quickened (made immortal). The Present Active Indicative tense in the original Greek of the verb translated as “die” in this verse in the KJV also makes this clear, I should add, making “in Adam all die” in the KJV a figurative translation of a Greek phrase which literally means “in Adam all are dying” (meaning all are in a state of mortality and are slowly dying).
Of course, most Christians assume that one can’t be “in Christ” without first having made a conscious decision of some sort to end up there, leading them to also assume that only those who choose to be “in Christ” (or only those who are elected by God to be “in Christ,” if said Christian is a Calvinist) can be made alive/quickened (and hence be saved), and they then read that assumption into this verse when trying to interpret it. But aside from what we’ve already covered about the meaning of Paul’s Gospel (which should be enough, in and of itself, to prove that everyone has already been guaranteed general salvation, and can, in fact, already be said to have been saved from at least a proleptic perspective), if you read it carefully you’ll notice that not only does it not actually say one has to make a choice to end up “in Christ” in that verse, it isn’t even talking about being “in Christ” from a positional perspective to begin with. (The reason most Christians conclude that one has to choose to be included in the “in Christ” part of this verse is generally because they’re assuming the sort of salvation Paul was writing about here is either the special “eternal life” sort of salvation he also taught about that involves membership in the body of Christ — and which isn’t a form of salvation everyone will experience — or the “eternal life” type of salvation Jesus spoke about during His earthly ministry which involves membership in the Israel of God — which is a type of salvation where one does have to do something specific if they want to experience it, and which is also not a form of salvation that everyone will experience, although whether one does end up experiencing that sort of salvation is just as predetermined from an absolute perspective as the special salvation of those in the body of Christ is — not realizing that Paul was writing about an entirely different sort of salvation here.) If that’s what Paul had been getting at, he would have written, “for as all in Adam die, even so shall all in Christ be made alive.” Thankfully, that’s not what he actually wrote at all. Instead, the way he carefully worded it (“for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive”) lets us know that Paul was using a parallelism there to tell us that everyone affected by the action of the first Adam is, “even so,” also equally affected by the action of the last Adam (referring to Christ Jesus, who is also compared to the first man by being called “the second man” in the same chapter), and completely outside of their own desire or will. The slight difference in wording might not seem important to most Christians (and those who don’t want to accept the possibility of the salvation of all humanity will automatically insist it doesn’t matter, without even taking the time to think about it), but it makes all the difference in the world when you realize that God didn’t simply inspire Paul to just throw words onto the page haphazardly, but rather that He made sure Paul laid the words out the way He did in order to make certain it’s clear that, just as nobody had any say in experiencing the effects of the first Adam’s action (mortality and, in most cases, physical death, aside from the relatively few people who will experience their quickening without having died), even so they also have no say in experiencing the effects of the last Adam’s action (eventual immortality) either. Basically, the order of the words God chose for Paul to use tells us that “in Adam” and “in Christ” simply mean “because of what Adam did” and “because of what Christ did,” and are not positional terms at all in this passage, but are rather causal terms.
The fact that Paul wasn’t referring to being “in Adam” or “in Christ” from a positional perspective there is also backed up by what he wrote in Romans 5. Of course (even if most Christians don’t realize this fact, never having thought it over particularly carefully, although this really is the only way their soteriology could possible work based on the way our brains work), in addition to assuming our salvation is (at least partly) based on possessing a certain attribute that others don’t have which allows us to fulfill a required action we have to do for ourselves in order to be saved (such as having enough natural wisdom and/or intelligence and/or humility and/or righteousness to be able to make a choice to believe the specific thing that ultimately saves us, for example, or at least having the natural ability and desire to build up that required wisdom and/or intelligence and/or humility and/or righteousness so one can make that specific choice), rather than our (general) salvation being based 100% on Christ’s death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection (with no action taken on our part at all in order to contribute to our salvation, since us having to accomplish anything at all to ensure our own salvation — even if it was just managing to repent, meaning managing to choose to change our minds and believe the right thing — would be salvation based at least in part upon something we had to do ourselves, which would ultimately be salvation by works), most Christians also assume that the blame for our mortality, death, and sinfulness falls on each of us as individuals rather than on Adam as well, but that’s not what Paul taught at all. You see, in addition to what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:22 about how we “all die” (meaning how we’re all mortal) “in Adam” (meaning because of what Adam did), over in Romans 5:12, Paul not only confirmed that the specific thing Adam did to bring his descendants mortality and death was his (Adam’s) own sin, but he also went on to explain that the reason we ourselves now sin is because of that mortality we inherited from Adam, when he wrote in that verse: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”
This is one of the most misunderstood passages in Scripture, and most Christians have assumed “for that” in this verse means “because,” and hence have interpreted the last two parts of this verse to mean “and so death passed upon all men because all have sinned” in order to preserve their doctrine that we’re ultimately to blame for our own mortality and death (and many Bible versions have even mistranslated this verse to say as much). But, aside from the fact that this would render the verse literally nonsensical (I can’t see any way that the phrase “and so death passed upon all men because all have sinned” can legitimately follow “wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,” and still make any sort of sense at all, at least not based on any rules of grammar, not to mention logic, that I’m aware of), if we die because we sin, the first part of the verse would be entirely superfluous, and might as well be cut out of the verse altogether, since that part of the passage would tell us basically nothing about why we sin, making it entirely irrelevant (not to mention that it would also turn the words “and so” in the verse into a lie: the words “and so” are connecting the clause in the second half of the sentence to the part of the sentence that came before it, which means that what was written in the first part of the verse has to be the reason for the clause that comes after those words, yet there’s no actual connection made between Adam’s sin and our death and sin in the verse if that clause actually means “because all have sinned,” since that places the responsibility on us rather than on Adam, contrary to what the words “and so” are telling us, as well as contrary to what Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 15:22 — which is that human mortality and death exist because of Adam — and Romans 5:12 can’t contradict any other part of Scripture).
And so, if we break it all down we can see that A) Adam sinned (“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world”), B) his sin brought him mortality leading to eventual death (“and death by sin”), C) because of this, his mortality passed down to his descendants (“and so death passed upon all men”) — and for those who haven’t figured it out yet, similar to the way the word “die” is used in 1 Corinthians 15:22, the word “death” is obviously being used as metonymy for “mortality” in this verse as well, since not everyone will literally drop dead before Jesus returns, as we already discussed — and D) for that reason, meaning because of that mortality, all of us descendants of Adam have also sinned (“for that all have sinned”), giving us a nice unbroken sequence of causes and effects (and giving a purpose to the word “that” in the verse, confirming that Paul literally meant “for that [reason] all have sinned”). But if we were to instead interpret the last two parts of the verse as simply meaning “and so death passed upon all men because all have sinned” we’ve suddenly lost the whole narrative, since this doesn’t tell us why all have sinned the way the literal reading of this verse does, nor does it explain why Paul included the first half of the verse to begin with. “That all have sinned” because “death passed upon all men” answers that question, but reversing the order (making sin the cause and mortality — or even literal death — the effect rather than mortality the cause and sin the effect) just makes a mess of the whole thing, leaving us with the question of why we sin, which was a part of what Paul was trying to explain in the first place with this verse (and as for why mortality leads to sin, it’s simply because, while we can have the strength to avoid sinning some of the time, being mortal makes us too weak to avoid giving in to sin all of the time). In fact, if our sin actually was the cause, the verse should have actually been written as: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin… but wait… that really doesn’t matter at all, now that I think about it, since death actually passed upon all men because all the rest of us have sinned, and this had nothing to do with that one man, despite what I told the Corinthians in my epistle to them, so why did I even mentioned him here?”
And for those of you who are thinking “Original Sin” might be the answer to that question, aside from the fact that “Original Sin” isn’t a term found anywhere in Scripture, it isn’t a concept found anywhere in Scripture either. In fact, the basis for this strange doctrine is a misinterpretation of the very verse we’ve just been looking at, but I don’t see anything in this verse which says we’ve inherited a “sin nature” from Adam (which is yet another term you won’t find anywhere in Scripture, but which many Christians are forced to read into it in order to hold on to certain unscriptural doctrines they don’t want to let go of), or even that guilt for Adam’s sin has somehow been imputed upon us as well for some reason, as those who believe this doctrine claim is the case. Yes, being mortal causes humans to become corrupt and sinful very quickly, but the claims of those who believe in “Original Sin” can’t actually be found in the Bible without heavily reading one’s assumptions into this verse, and to do so would be pure eisegesis. Some people do attempt to use passages such as Psalm 58:3 and Psalm 51:5 to defend their doctrine of “Original Sin” as well, I should say, but the first verse is talking specifically about “the wicked” (who are differentiated from “the righteous” a few verses later in the same Psalm, telling us this isn’t talking about all humans, but is instead about those who are particularly bad; besides we know that newborn babies can’t literally speak lies as soon as they’re born, as the psalmist said they do, because they can’t speak at all yet, so we know he’s employing hyperbole there, meaning the verse can’t be taken as literally meaning all humans start off wicked, but rather that the wicked begin their destructive path at a very young age), and there are so many possible interpretations of the second verse which don’t turn Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:22 into a nonsensical lie, as would be the case if “Original Sin” were a valid concept, that it’s utterly foolish to even consider it as a defence of the doctrine. For example, it could simply be more poetic hyperbole (which is a figure of speech David was known to employ in this book, unless you believe his tears could literally create a whole swimming pool on his furniture), it could be using “in iniquity” and “in sin” as metonymy (which is a figure of speech used all the time in the Bible, as should be obvious by now if you’ve read all the previous articles in this series) for “in a world full of sin,” or it could even be referring to the possibility that he was born as a result of his mother having an affair similar to the one he’s believed to be confessing he had with Bathsheba in this very Psalm (and which is what many people think the verse means, believing that the way he recorded his past treatment by others in Psalm 69:4, 7-8, 11-12, and 20-21 indicates this as well — and yes, I’m aware that these were prophetically referring to Jesus, but they had a double-fulfillment, with the first fulfillment being what happened to David, even if only from a hyperbolic perspective in some cases), and these are just three possible interpretations (there are others I didn’t get into here, which you can dig into for yourself if you’re so inclined), so the concept of “Original Sin” really is a nonstarter.
And so, I maintain that the KJV actually got this correct, and that we should simply stick with what it actually says here and interpret it accordingly, in the sense that Paul meant “and so death passed upon all men, [and] for that [reason] all have sinned” (or, if someone really can’t handle this verse without the word “because” in it for some reason, they still have to recognize the implied but unwritten words in there as well, making it mean: “because [of that death/mortality] all have sinned”), as this is the only interpretation which gives us answers to both the question of why we sin (while also explaining why Paul said, “the sting of death is sin,” since the word “death” has to be metonymy for “mortality” in 1 Corinthians 15:56), as well as the question of why we’re mortal and die (answers which don’t end up contradicting 1 Corinthians 15:22 the way the more common translations and interpretations of this verse in Romans do, I might add), keeping the blame for our mortality, death, and sinfulness squarely on the shoulders of the “one man” Paul meant for us to understand it belongs on: Adam. (At least from a relative perspective, even if God was ultimately the one behind it all from an absolute perspective.)
And so, contrary to what pretty much all Christians have been taught, we ourselves don’t die because we sin. In fact, Adam and Eve were the only humans who died because they sinned — or, rather, began to die/became mortal because they sinned. Yes, that’s what God’s warning to Adam, which is rendered figuratively in the KJV as, “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” meant. Remember, the expression “thou shalt surely die” was used in both Genesis 2:17 and in 1 Kings 2:36-46 in the KJV, and yet, based on the amount of time it would take to travel from Jerusalem to Gath and back (even on horseback, presuming my calculations are correct, although I challenge you to confirm this for yourself), there’s no way that Shimei actually died physically the day he crossed the brook Kidron, as Solomon seems to have warned him that he would in 1 Kings. And he certainly didn’t “die spiritually” that day either, as most Christians mistakenly assume the translation of “surely die” in the KJV means (an assumption they make because they recognize that this is obviously a figurative translation, based on the fact that Adam didn’t physically drop dead on the day he sinned), which confirms that the popular “spiritual death” idea is a complete misunderstanding of the term “surely die” in the KJV. As far as Shimei goes, it just meant that he could consider his days to be numbered as of the day he crossed the forbidden brook, because he essentially signed his own death sentence by doing so. And as far as Adam and Eve go, it basically meant the exact same thing, that they could consider their days to be numbered as of the day they sinned as well, just with a longer period of time before their eventual death sentence “played out.” Simply put, Genesis 2:17 is just telling us that, to die, they began dying — meaning they gained mortality leading to eventual physical death — on the day they ate the forbidden fruit (which makes sense considering the fact that the Hebrew phrase מוֹת תָּמוּת/“mooth ta’-mooth,” translated as “thou shalt surely die” in both passages in the KJV, literally means “to die thou shalt be dying”; this also tells us that “to die” can’t possibly be a reference to being punished in the lake of fire, by the way, because Adam didn’t end up in that location the day he sinned either, so becoming mortal remains the best interpretation of this warning).
Understanding this also helps explain why Jesus was able to avoid sinning, as well as why we’ll stop sinning once we’re made immortal. Basically, Romans 5:12 also tells us that mortality is passed down from our human fathers, not our mothers, since it’s Adam who is blamed for our mortality in that verse rather than Eve (who not only also sinned, but sinned before Adam did), as well as tells us that anyone with a mortal, human father will sin (presuming one doesn’t die as a baby before they have an opportunity to sin). This is why Jesus had to be born to a virgin, because He would have been guaranteed to sin at some point if He’d had a mortal, human father. Of course, traditional Christians will say that the reason Jesus didn’t sin is because He’s God, and that only God in the flesh could avoid sinning so He could be the perfect sacrifice for sin, but what they’re telling us when they say that, even if they don’t realize it, is that we humans could then never be free of sin, not even after our resurrection, since we aren’t going to become God, so that couldn’t possibly be the reason (of course, if you’ve read the previous parts of this series, you now know how impossible this explanation is anyway). Instead, the reason is because, not having a mortal father, He was in a state that was neither mortal nor immortal (it’s not a term found in Scripture, but because it’s useful to have a label for this, I personally refer to existing in this state as being “semi-mortal,” for lack of a better term that I’m aware of — although if you’ve read this article before, you might remember me using the term “amortal” instead, but I’ve since decided that “semi-mortal” makes more sense and have updated it accordingly), which means that, while He wasn’t yet immortal, which means being entirely incapable of dying — as we’ll also be when we’re quickened, just like He is now — the fact that He didn’t have a human father meant that He could die but that He wasn’t slowly dying the way we mortals are either, and not having mortality coursing through His veins, but rather having the Spirit without measure, meant He was strong enough to avoid giving into temptation to sin (this combination of “semi-mortality” and having the Spirit without measure also kept Him alive, even on the cross, until He was ready to die and willingly gave up His life). This means that Adam — who, like Jesus, and like Eve, also had to have been in a “semi-mortal” state in order to be able to become mortal after sinning (and no, Adam and Eve couldn’t have been immortal prior to their sin, because “immortal” means “incapable of ever dying”) — theoretically could have also avoided sinning if the circumstances had worked out that way, although he didn’t have the Spirit without measure like Jesus did, and ultimately gave in to temptation, leading to the mortality and sin that all of us now get to experience as well, thanks to being his descendants.
That Adam is ultimately responsible for our condemnation to mortality, death, and sinfulness is also backed up a few lines later in Romans 5 as well, in verses 18–19, where Paul told us that, just as judgement to condemnation came upon all men because of the offence and disobedience of one, and not because of their own offences or disobedience, righteousness and justification of life will also come upon all men because of the obedience of one, and not because of their own obedience — which would have to include obedience towards any commands to do anything specific in order to experience (general) salvation, including commands to choose to repent and/or to believe anything specific — telling us that only two people are responsible for our current and future states, the first Adam and the last Adam, and that we’re just along for the ride.
You see, when Paul wrote, “Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous,” he was using another set of parallelisms there, something he seemed to love using to prove this particular point in various epistles, where the “all” and the “many” in the second part of each sentence has to consist of no less than the exact same number of people who fall under the “all” and “many” in the first part of the sentences, or else the parallelisms would fall apart, as would his entire point itself. And for those who are wondering why Paul wrote “many” rather than “all” in verses 15 and 19 of this chapter, there are at least two reasons (there could be more, but I’m going to give you the most important reasons). First, verse 15 had to use “many” because not everyone will physically drop dead, as we already discussed. And second, Jesus was technically affected by Adam’s sin to a certain extent as well, in that He too was condemned to die (even if voluntarily) because of Adam’s action, since He had to die for the sins we now commit because we’re mortal thanks to Adam if He wanted to save us (which is why He could be included in the “all” of verse 18). But since He Himself never sinned, verse 19 couldn’t say “all” became sinners, which is why Paul instead wrote that “many were made sinners,” meaning every human other than Jesus. And again, being a parallelism, all the people who “were made sinners” because of “one man’s disobedience” will also have to “be made righteous” because of “the obedience of one,” or else the parallelism wouldn’t work (and please re-read that carefully: Paul said that it’s because of “the obedience of one,” and not because of their own obedience to choose to repent and/or believe the right thing, that they’re ultimately “made righteous,” even though, yes, those who do happen to believe Paul’s Gospel will get to enjoy that righteousness before everyone else, but it’s still all due to the obedience of one and not due to their own obedience).
But for those who still really want to blame our condemnation to mortality and death on our own sins rather than ultimately blaming it on the first Adam’s sin, I’d be curious to know what they believe the condemnation that came upon all men because of the offence and disobedience of one/Adam actually even is, exactly, not to mention why Paul included the part about “wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin“ in verse 12, and also why he claimed that “in Adam all die” in 1 Corinthians 15:22.
Of course, most Christians like to insist that one has to first choose to receive the free gift to be included in the second half of these parallelisms (completely ignoring the fact that this is not how parallelisms work), based on the inclusion of the word “receive” in verse 17, but Paul didn’t actually say anything about receiving the gift being a choice in that verse at all (although, if it was a choice, then receiving the “abundance of grace” mentioned in that verse would also have to be a choice). The idea that receiving the free gift is a choice is an assumption that one has to read into the verse, since it just isn’t there in the text (you won’t find the words “choice” or “choose” anywhere in the chapter), and receiving something isn’t necessarily something one chooses anyway, as evidenced by how Paul told us that, on five separate occasions, he received thirty-nine stripes. Since he would have experienced those lashes whether he first purposefully chose to receive them or not (at no point are we told that he said to his assailants, “Please whip me”; and had he instead said, “I refuse to receive these stripes,” they still would have whipped him anyway), it’s time to reconsider the idea that “receiving the free gift” is something one chooses rather than simply experiences apart from anything they have to choose to do, because, aside from the fact that this would make salvation something they gained through their own obedience rather than because of the obedience of one/Christ (thus contradicting Paul’s entire point, which is that only the first Adam and the last Adam are responsible for anything that happens to us when it comes to both our condemnation and our salvation, at least as far as our general salvation goes, which is the type of salvation Paul was writing about in Romans 5), having to choose to receive it would also be something one had to accomplish in order to be saved, which by definition would make it a work one had to do in order to be saved, and the most difficult work one could ever do at that, based on how difficult most people find it to “choose to receive the gift” and “get saved” (at least as far as the traditional Christian understanding of what salvation is goes, although it’s true that their understanding is completely wrong). And so, rather than being offered money as a gift in order to pay off one’s debts, and having the option to either accept it or reject it (which is an analogy many Christians like to use when discussing salvation), it’s actually more like having money deposited directly into one’s bank account — enough to pay all their debts — and having automatic payments to those they owe money to set up entirely without their knowledge (with evangelism being about telling people the good news that the money is there and that their debts will all be paid with that money, whether or not they happen to believe it, or “choose to receive it,” because their bank accounts have already received it).
The reason most Christians insist that receiving the free gift has to be a choice (aside from simply never having considered the possibility that it might not be) is because they just don’t want to accept that condemnation and salvation could possibly be something we ultimately have no say in, which is why they also insist that we’re entirely responsible for our own condemnation to mortality and death (and its resulting sinfulness) as well, contrary to what Paul wrote (all the while often also contradictorily placing the guilt for Adam’s sin on us at the same time as blaming us, in order to preserve the doctrine of “Original Sin,” which is a doctrine that really only exists in order to be able to claim that everyone deserves to be punished in “hell” without end simply by virtue of being born, and is a doctrine which literally makes no sense at all when you take the time to actually think about it, since there’s just no legitimate way for someone who didn’t commit a particular sin to then be considered guilty of committing that sin just because an ancestor of theirs committed it; and one shouldn’t conflate the “condemnation” Paul wrote about in that passage with “guilt” anyway, because the type of “condemnation” in that verse is just the consequence of Adam’s sin that we all experience, meaning the mortality we inherited from him, which also leads to all of us then committing sins as well, and not to us somehow magically being guilty of eating the forbidden fruit ourselves, even though we didn’t actually eat it at all — which is backed up by the fact that the word “condemnation” there is translated from κατάκριμα/“kat-ak’-ree-mah” in the original Greek, which simply refers to a negative sentence and not specifically to a guilty verdict, and is a word which could also be used to say that one has been “condemned” to die of a terminal illness due to no fault of their own, which is actually pretty close to what the “condemnation” in this passage is referring to). You see, if our condemnation to mortality and its resulting sinfulness is based entirely on the action of one (Adam), as Paul said it was, then our salvation to immortality and sinlessness would have to be based entirely upon the action of one as well (the last Adam), as Paul also said it is, rather than based (at least in part) upon a wise decision we ourselves make to receive the free gift, and the pride of most Christians just won’t allow them to accept that as a possibility (because, although they’ll deny it — even to themselves — most of them, at least on a subconscious level, really want to be able to take the credit for having made the wise decision to “get saved,” based on the fact that they definitely want those who don’t make the same wise choice they believe they made to be responsible for not getting saved, based on the tragically large number of Christians who have asked me things along the lines of, “Are you saying that unbelievers will get the same reward as me? Even though they didn’t choose to accept Christ like I did?”, thus telling us they believe they earned, and even deserve, salvation because they were smart enough to choose to receive it, unlike all those sinners who aren’t smart enough to make the same good choice they did and hence don’t also deserve it the way they do).
I should quickly add, some will point out that 1 Corinthians 15:1-2 also talks about “receiving” the Gospel Paul preached unto them, and that the salvation referred to in that passage seems like it could possibly be said to be conditional, at least if we take the passage on its own without considering the rest of Scripture. But even if we interpreted the passage as Paul referring to receiving salvation rather than simply receiving (or hearing) the message he preached unto them, based on what we’ve already covered (not to mention still have yet to cover), it could only be talking about receiving the special form of salvation which involves joining the body of Christ after hearing his Gospel there (a form of salvation that not everyone receives), and not the completed salvation (being guaranteed future immortality and sinlessness) which is discussed in the next two verses after those, and really throughout the rest of the chapter (as well as which is discussed in Romans 5). So even if someone did have to choose to “receive” this special form of salvation, it doesn’t also mean that anyone has to choose to receive the general form of salvation Christ won for all of us through His death for our sins, burial, and resurrection on the third day. And so, it’s time to recognize that the idea of the salvation Paul primarily wrote about (at least the general type of salvation) being based at all upon something people have to do for themselves — even if what they have to do for themselves is something as supposedly simple as having to choose to believe the right thing — rather than being based entirely upon what one/Christ did for us, is really something one must read into the text based on one’s preconceived idea that this salvation depends at least partly (even if just 1%) on us and our wise decision to believe and/or do something specific rather than depends 100% on what one/Christ did.
That said, we actually do have to recognize that this applies to the special type of salvation Paul wrote about too, which means it’s time to stop ignoring the truth about predestination as well, since what we’ve now learned (both about “free will” in the previous article, and also about salvation in this one) proves that predestination must be true, but also that it’s not the horrific concept Calvinism makes it out to be. You see, if everyone will experience the salvation known as being made immortal and sinless, as Paul said we all will, yet at the same time only certain people are chosen, or elected, for salvation, as he also said, then not only does this means that predestination has to be true (since God is only choosing certain people for a certain type of salvation), but also that the type of salvation he meant we’re chosen for can only be the special “eternal life” type of salvation that not everyone gets to enjoy, which means it can be said that predestination is actually more about when someone experiences salvation, not about if they get to experience it, since everyone will eventually experience immortality and sinlessness. Basically, while some people are chosen by God to receive a special, early experience of salvation — meaning they’ll be quickened and made sinless before everyone else, along with receiving various other benefits such as getting to go to heaven, and likely even ruling and reigning with Christ — Paul is teaching in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 that everyone will eventually experience the salvation that involves being quickened and made sinless, even if perhaps not until after they’ve been resurrected from their second death at the end of the ages.
Of course, as we already discussed in the last article, many people really dislike the idea of predestination (especially as it pertains to salvation). But the fact of the matter is that, even if “free will” weren’t the unscriptural and unscientific impossibility we’ve now learned it is, the existence of “free will” is completely irrelevant when it comes to salvation anyway, because whether “free will” actually could exist or not, Paul not only still places the responsibility for both our condemnation and our eventual general salvation on two men, and on two men alone, rather than on each individual human who will ever have lived, he also places the responsibility for whether or not we experience the special “eternal life” type of salvation on one Person alone as well: God, through His choice of whom He’ll give the gift of faith to.
And for those who disagree with the idea that even our special salvation is based on the decision of one rather than on our own decisions, think about it carefully, because the “gift” in Ephesians 2:8-9 can’t really be referring to the salvation and grace part of the passage, considering the fact that A) nobody can save themselves, meaning make themselves immortal or sinless, and B) the definition of grace is “unmerited favour,” and so the fact that they’re both gifts goes without saying. This tells us that the gift Paul mentioned here has to be the faith (since nobody could ever think the salvation or grace are “of yourselves”), which means that faith has to be something God deals out a certain measure of to each person chosen for membership in the body of Christ rather than something that we build up on our own, just as Paul said it is, and also has to be something we received apart from any action or choice of our own, since otherwise we could then glory either in producing our own faith or in having chosen to accept to receive an offer of faith, neither of which Paul would consider to be possible for anyone he wrote to, because the type of salvation he taught the nations about, in both its general form and its special form, is 100% apart from anything we do ourselves, but is always based solely on the action and decision of one: Christ and God respectively (at least from a relative perspective, even if God was technically behind Christ’s decision from an absolute perspective as well).
But even if the idea that receiving the special “eternal life” type of salvation was a choice didn’t contradict what Paul wrote, the whole point of the parallelisms in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 is to make it clear that one/Christ has at least the exact same level of effect on humanity that one/Adam had, meaning Christ’s action changes the exact same number of people that fall into the categories of “all” or “many” that Adam’s action did, apart from any choice or choices we make ourselves. So even if it weren’t true that only those to whom God has given the faith to believe this good news will get to enjoy the special salvation which involves being made immortal and sinless earlier than everyone else, and that we had to instead choose to be included in the body of Christ, we still know that everyone will eventually experience immortality and sinlessness anyway. Besides, if Christ’s action doesn’t change the exact same number of people that Adam’s action did, it means that Adam’s failure was ultimately more efficacious than Christ’s victory was, making Adam and his sin far more powerful than Christ and His death for our sins, considering the fact that none of us had to choose to allow Adam’s sin to make us mortal the way most Christians think we have to choose to allow Christ’s death for our sins to make us immortal.
If you’re still finding any of this hard to accept, though, Paul’s parallelism in 1 Corinthians 15:22 can also be expressed mathematically: “For as in a, x die, even so in z, shall x be made alive.” The way parallelisms work means that the set (or variable, if you prefer) known as “x” has to consist of the exact same group (or number) of people in both clauses (with “a” and “z” being two different reasons for their two respective states at two different periods of time) rather than referring to two separate groups of people who have to choose between Adam and Christ. In fact, since this is a parallelism, and because we know that nobody specifically made a conscious choice to “choose Adam” (I don’t recall ever thinking to myself, “I accept Adam as my condemner” before becoming mortal, which would have to be the case if we, “even so,” need to choose to “accept Jesus as our Saviour” in order to be made immortal; and if our condemnation happens without our conscious decision to “accept Adam,” then, “even so,” our general salvation would also have to happen without our conscious decision to “accept Christ,” since this is a parallelism), or to die “in Adam,” but rather we were all simply born mortal (remember, our condemnation to mortality, death, and sinfulness was entirely because of one/Adam, and not because of anything we ourselves did, or else newborn babies who haven’t sinned yet would never die, and those who believe that a fetus receives its spirit from God while still in the womb would then have to also concede that it would be impossible to perform an abortion once a pregnancy had reached that point), this also means that, “even so,” nobody can choose to be “in Christ” either (if this verse meant that it’s up to us to specifically choose to be “in Christ,” it would mean that it was up to us to specifically choose to be “in Adam” first, which we already know isn’t the case, since we’re all born mortal; and if these were positional sorts of states, and we could unknowingly end up “in Adam” by committing an act we didn’t realize placed us there, it would also mean that, “even so,” the only way to end up “in Christ” would have to also be by unknowingly committing an act we didn’t realize placed us there either). This verse is simply telling us that “all” (“x”) are mortal/dying “through Adam/because of what Adam did” (“in a”) rather than because of any choice of our own, and that the same “all” (“x,” again) will also eventually be become immortal (be made alive) “through Christ/because of what Christ did” (“in z”) rather than because of any choice of our own. And the same applies to when Paul uses the words “all” and “many” in his parallelisms in Romans 5 as well (go ahead and put an x in place of the words “all” and “many,” or perhaps an “x” and a “y” in their respective places, in the verses in Romans 5 to see for yourself). With this in mind, the only way 1 Corinthians 15:22 could possibly mean that only some people will be quickened is if the verse said, “For as in Adam only some die, even so in Christ shall only some be made alive,” or if it perhaps said, “For as in Adam all die, unevenly so in Christ shall only some be made alive” (the words “even so” in the verse basically mean “in the same way,” or “equally so,” telling us that the variable x has to be the same number of people on both sides of the words “even so”).
Unfortunately, due to a combination of the fact that most people misunderstand the various passages in Scripture about judgement, “hell,” and the lake of fire, especially the ones that include warnings by Jesus (which are indeed serious warnings, but they don’t mean anything even close to what most people have assumed they mean) — and are misinterpreting these and other Pauline passages about salvation in light of their misunderstandings of those judgement passages rather than interpreting those particular passages in light of these and other Pauline passages about salvation (because they don’t realize that the salvation Jesus spoke about during His earthly ministry was an entirely different sort of salvation from the one Paul was writing about here, as we learned in the first article of this series, they mistakenly assume that, since not everyone experiences that sort of salvation, not everyone will experience the type of salvation that Paul was writing about here either) — along with the fact that this verse says “in” (“in Adam” and “in Christ”) rather than “through” or “because of” (which is what the word “in” is talking about here), most Christians read these passages and come away with extremely confused interpretations. Since one can only be “in” one of two people at a time, positionally-speaking, this causes them to miss the fact that the word “all” is the exact same group of people in both clauses (referring to “all of humanity”). To be fair, “in” obviously can mean “inside” something, positionally-speaking (from either a literal or a figurative perspective, depending on the context), but it can also mean “through [the action of]” or “because of” something or someone, and that’s clearly what Paul was getting at in this parallelism.
However, let’s pretend to forget all of the above, and assume for a moment that this passage actually is referring to being “in Christ” from a positional perspective rather than referring to our immortality being because of what Christ accomplished. Does that change anything at all about the end result I concluded it would culminate in (all humans eventually experiencing salvation by being quickened)? Not even slightly. To put it simply, because this is a parallelism, we’d then be forced to read it as meaning: just as every human begins dying by being “in Adam,” even so every human will end up made alive by being “in Christ.” So even if you interpret “in” positionally here, being a parallelism would force this verse to then mean that every single person will be “in” both of those two people, figuratively speaking, just at two different points of time in each of our lives. That said, when you consider the fact that the context of the chapter was resurrection and immortality, it’s pretty clear that Paul was literally telling us in this parallelism that even though “because of what Adam did all humans are mortal, even so because of what Christ did all humans will be quickened” (and to be quickened means to experience the last stage of salvation, finally enjoying one’s immortality, and hence sinlessness).
For anyone who might somehow still be skeptical, however, hypothetically speaking, if Paul was trying to explain in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 that, because of what Adam did, every single human has been condemned to mortality and sinfulness, yet, equally so, because of what Christ did, every single human is guaranteed to eventually enjoy immortality and sinlessness, I’d like you to tell me what he would have needed to have written differently in those chapters in order to convince you that this is what he meant.
All that being said, while Paul tells us in verse 22 of 1 Corinthians 15 that everyone who experiences mortality because of what Adam did will eventually experience immortality because of what Christ did, he also tells us that there’s a specific sequential order when it comes to each mortal human being made fully alive beyond the reach of death (meaning that humanity won’t all be quickened at the exact same time), with the first order mentioned being “Christ the firstfruits,” and the second order being “they that are Christ’s at his coming” (there’s a third order mentioned in the passage too, but we’ll get to that after we consider the first two orders). Now, there is some debate as to exactly who is included in each of the first two orders, with some people believing that the first order refers only to Jesus and that the second order includes everyone who will be quickened around the time of His Second Coming, while others believe that the first order refers to the body of Christ (since being a part of Christ’s body means we can all legitimately be called “Christ,” or “anointed” — which is what the Greek word Χριστός/“khris-tos’” that “Christ” is translated from means — even if we’re not all “Christ Jesus” Himself) and that the second order is only those in the Israel of God who are quickened after He returns. And while this isn’t something I’m dogmatic about, I’m personally inclined to interpret the first order as being the whole body of Christ (at the time Christ comes for His body, although with this order of quickenings not actually including the Head of the body Himself, since otherwise verse 22 would also seem to mean that at some point in the future “in Christ shall Christ be made alive,” which seems to be contradicted by Peter, who wrote that Christ was already quickened — past tense — by the Holy Spirit, not that He will be quickened/“made alive” — future tense, which is the tense verse 22 uses — by His own power, as though He isn’t already immortal now), including those dead members who will be resurrected, as well as the members of the body of Christ who are still living, finally experiencing their immortality at that time (the dead members of the body of Christ will be resurrected first, after which they and the remaining living members of the body of Christ will be “made alive”/made immortal as we meet the Lord in the air), and who will no longer sin from then on (because they’ll no longer be mortal). This event will be God withdrawing His ambassadors from earth (as one does prior to declaring war) before the Tribulation begins, who then go on to fulfill their purpose in Christ in heavenly places.
With that in mind, I personally interpret the second order — “they that are Christ’s at his coming” — as referring to those made immortal at the time of the resurrection of the just, 75 days after the Tribulation has concluded (people such as “Old Testament” saints, for example, at least from the point of Abraham onwards — including Elijah, with this being the time he’s quickened — as well as those who died following the teachings that Jesus and His disciples gave). I should say, for a long time I assumed that everyone who gets to enjoy the sort of salvation Jesus spoke about, both dead and living, will be made immortal at this point, but I’ve since concluded that only those who were dead and who will be resurrected some time after the Second Coming will be made immortal at this time, and that everyone else who gets to enjoy “everlasting life” while living in the kingdom of heaven in Israel will simply remain alive in a “semi-mortal” state (at least to begin with) thanks to partaking of the fruit and the leaves of the tree of life on a monthly basis, and won’t be made truly immortal until the final order of quickenings is completed much later. As for why I’ve come to this conclusion, I’ll just quickly say that if the reward for “overcoming” by some of those during the Tribulation will be to partake of the tree of life, and if one needs to continuously consume its products in order to remain healthy and alive, as Revelation 22:2 seems to imply, yet the quickening of the resurrected dead happens instantaneously and is irreversible, as is demonstrated by those in the body of Christ when they’re caught up in the air to meet the Lord (not to mention based on the definition of “immortality”), it seems that there must two different methods of remaining alive on this earth and the New Earth (quickening as the first method, and partaking of the tree of life on a regular basis as the second). That said, as I already mentioned, some like to group the body of Christ in with this order as well, and believe it applies to everyone who experiences the salvation that Jesus spoke about, as well as those who experience the salvation that Paul wrote about — even if some are quickened three-and-a-half to seven or more years apart from each other — and believe the first order is just speaking of Jesus Himself. However, as I already explained, to do so really doesn’t make any sense to me, considering the tense of “made alive” in verse 22, so placing the body of Christ in the first order rather than the second seems to make the most sense, and even more-so if I’m correct that only the resurrected dead members of those in the Israel of God will be quickened at the end of the Tribulation, which it would seem has to be the case for the reason I already explained, as well as because there wouldn’t be anyone left to fulfill the prophecies of righteous Israelites not only growing old but also having children in the kingdom of heaven and on the New Earth if every member of the Israel of God were quickened shortly after Jesus returns, as I’ve also previously mentioned (and the fact that all the living members of the body of Christ will be quickened when they’re caught up together to meet the Lord in the air, as well as the fact that the dead in Christ are resurrected before those who are still living when they go to meet the Him in the air, yet those who are raised from the dead at the resurrection of the just are still dead until at least 75 days after the Tribulation ends, is also more evidence that the body of Christ is not the Israel of God, and that our respective quickenings take place at different times, which also confirms that one should not conflate our being caught up to meet Christ in the air with the Second Coming). But regardless of whether the body of Christ is included in the first order or in the second order, there are still a lot of people who won’t have been “made alive”/made immortal yet during that second order, including the rest of the members of the Israel of God who aren’t quickened at the resurrection of the just but are still alive thanks to the fruit of the tree of life (not only 1,000 years later when the kingdom of heaven on earth draws to an end, but for the duration of the final age on the New Earth as well, however long that’s going to last), not to mention everyone else who didn’t get to enjoy “everlasting life” when Jesus returns. And so the question arises, if all humanity is going to be “made alive” because of Christ, yet each in their own order (which Paul told us is going to be the case), when will this happen for everyone who isn’t included in those first two orders? Well, if everyone will be “made alive” in their own order, there must be at least one more order after that one for the rest of humanity to be included in, and the very next verse tells us there indeed is.
Of course, most people who read this chapter assume “they that are Christ’s at his coming” in verse 23 is the final order of people to be quickened (if they even realize that Paul was talking about quickening at all), but Paul actually spoke of that third and final order made up of the rest of humanity which we now know also need to eventually be “made alive” when he wrote “then cometh the end” in verse 24. Now, this technically could be said to have a double fulfillment of sorts, since the end of the ages is almost certainly when this final quickening occurs (and is something that the body of Christ has already attained in spirit, if not only proleptically, and will have also attained physically at their own quickening, long before the actual final age ends), and this has caused most people to misunderstand Paul’s statement there as meaning that he’d moved on from the topic of resurrection and immortality and had now begun discussing the end of the world (or the end of the ages, as others assume) in this verse instead. But Paul hadn’t even hinted at any such topics in this chapter so far, yet had just mentioned an order of different groups of people to be “made alive,” made up of every mortal human who will have ever lived, as stated in the verse immediately prior to this one (in verse 23 when he wrote, “but every man in his own order,” which was referring to all the men who are mortal because of Adam being made immortal by Christ — as he said would happen in verse 22 — in their own order), so there’s absolutely zero basis that I can think of for interpreting this verse as meaning anything other than Paul telling his readers that “then comes the end of the quickenings of all the orders of men to be ‘made alive’” (which tells us that the final group of men from the “every man in his own order” of groups made up of all men who are mortal will finally be made immortal at that time) and then going on to explain when in the future the end of the quickening of all humanity will occur, which will be at the time “when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power.” I don’t believe anyone would disagree with me that when Paul wrote, “when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God,” he was explaining when whatever “then cometh the end” happens to mean takes place. And if the end of the world or ages were going to occur immediately after “they that are Christ’s at his coming” are quickened, it might make sense to assume that’s what Paul was referring to there. But as I already mentioned, we know that there will be at least 1,000 years separating the period of time when that particular order of people will be quickened and the time our current world ends and is replaced by the New Earth (and, as those who understand the Doctrine of the Ages — more often referred to by believers as the Doctrine of the Eons — are aware, there are two whole ages, likely made up of thousands of years or more, between that quickening and the end of the ages), so a new topic about the end of the world or the end of the ages doesn’t really fit in those words at all because neither of those things are going to come to an end immediately (or even any time soon) after “they that are Christ’s at his coming” are “made alive.” Meanwhile, the end of the sequence of people being quickened in a specific order fits there perfectly, since the order of those quickenings is what he’d just been writing about. In fact, if he meant the end of the world or the end of the ages, he would have then been leaving out that final order of “every man in his own order” of all men who are dying from the sequential order of quickenings he’d just started writing about (including the members of the Israel of God who weren’t quickened after Jesus returns and who would then miss out on being made immortal if this wasn’t talking about the final group of people to be quickened), so it really makes no sense at all for him to have gone from discussing that topic (the specific order of all the groups of people who are mortal and dead because of Adam being “made alive” because of Christ) to suddenly discussing an entirely new topic altogether in this verse — never having even suggested that he was referring to that new topic (Christ’s triumph over other rulers and turning the kingdom over to God, or even the end of the ages or of the world) anywhere else in the chapter up until this point — and then to return to discussing his original topic of resurrection and quickening again as he does just a few verses later. Since it wasn’t the point of the chapter to begin with, there would have been no reason for Paul to have even mentioned Christ delivering the kingdom up to God, to putting down all rule and authority and power, and to the end of Christ’s reign over the kingdom (as he discusses in the next few verses after this one) in this chapter at all other than to explain when that final order of “every man in his own order” to be “made alive” that he’d just been discussing actually is going to be “made alive,” by letting his readers know that this final quickening would, in fact, not only be the end of the quickenings he’d been writing about in the two verses prior to it, but also that it would be the very last thing Christ does before giving up His reign and turning the kingdom over to God (and, in fact, that this final quickening would be how death is finally destroyed, as he said it would be a couple verses later).
Now, a lot of Christians simply assume that the reference to the destruction of death in verse 26 is just talking about the salvation of “they that are Christ’s at His coming” in verse 23 (they have to, because of their assumption that not everyone will experience the salvation Paul was writing about here). But aside from the fact that death somehow being said to be destroyed by that group of people being quickened (or being saved in whatever way they assume this means) when Christ returns would mean that nobody after Christ’s return (including anyone born during the thousand-year kingdom in Israel and on the New Earth, as well as those in the Israel of God who aren’t quickened at the Second Coming) could possibly ever be quickened either (because the final salvation via the destruction of death would then have already been said to have taken place when Christ returned, since, if their salvation was figuratively referred to as the “destruction of death,” there wouldn’t be any “death” left to “destroy” for anyone else to get saved by it happening again afterwards, seeing as it would have already been “destroyed” in the past at that point, whatever the “destruction of death” might actually even mean if that were the case), this also isn’t possible because verses 24 and 25 tell us that His sentient enemies are subjected, and that death is then destroyed, at a point in time after “they that are Christ’s at His coming” have been “made alive,” and not than that His sentient enemies are subjected and that death is destroyed by that particular group of people being “made alive.” Remember, death is the last enemy to be defeated, yet there will still be more death and sentient enemies continuing to exist long after the quickening of “they that are Christ’s at His coming,” since, aside from any death which will occur on earth during the thousand years itself, there’s not only going to be a final (even if somewhat short and one-sided) battle between God and those who consider Him to be their enemy a thousand years after the quickening of “they that are Christ’s at His coming” which will involve the death of all those enemies who will rise up against Israel in that attack, we’re also told in Isaiah 65 that people will continue to die on the New Earth for a certain period of time as well (when Isaiah wrote, “There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed”), long after “they that are Christ’s at His coming” have been quickened. And for those who are thinking that Revelation 21:1–8 means there won’t be any death on the New Earth at any time, while that is one possible interpretation of the passage, at least if we interpreted that passage on its own, there are also various other possible interpretations of these verses in Revelation which don’t contradict what Isaiah wrote, including the idea that it means only those who get to reside within the walls of the New Jerusalem won’t ever drop dead (or suffer in any way) anymore, not to mention the possibility that Revelation 21:4 could be separated from the first three verses of the chapter by the “Mountain Peaks” of prophecy that we discussed in a previous article in this series, setting verse 4 at the end of the ages, with verses 1 through 3 being set at the beginning of the New Earth, long before the final age draws to an end. Now, some people do claim that this passage isn’t talking about what takes place on the New Earth at all (and some also say the same thing about the events mentioned after the reference to it a chapter later as well), but rather that it’s actually talking about what will take place during the thousand-year kingdom of heaven on this earth. The thing is, these are quite literally the only two references to the New Earth in the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures, so any Israelites who read these two passages between the time that book was written and 2 Peter was written would be looking for details about this New Earth that Isaiah had just revealed to them for the first time, and I see no reason to believe they’d read it as saying, “There’s going to be a New Earth, but never mind that, here are some details about what’s going to happen before it’s even created, and we won’t tell you anything at all about that New Earth again anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.” Still, even if Isaiah hadn’t told us that certain people were going to die on the New Earth, the fact that some people will still be mortal (or at least semi-mortal), not to mention the fact that some people will have died a second time in the lake of fire and that their dead bodies will be displayed there for everyone to look upon at that time, also proves that death continues to exist and remain an enemy for at least a certain period of time on the New Earth, because death can’t be considered to have been truly destroyed as long as A) anyone remains dead, and/or B) anyone is still in a state of slowly dying (as mortals are), or is even capable of dying (as semi-mortals still are until they’re quickened), meaning death won’t actually be destroyed until “the end” group of “every man in his own order” of groups is finally “made alive” and there aren’t any humans left who are not yet immortal (and remember, immortality for humans is always connected with salvation in Scripture, thus proving once again that everyone has to eventually experience the sort of salvation that Paul primarily taught about).
Of course, some Christians instead assume the references to death in these verses are talking about the mythical “spiritual death” that most Christians believe in (and which some of them mistakenly assume the death in verse 22 is talking about as well, although if it was, then Jesus definitely couldn’t be included in the “firstfruits” reference, unless you believe He also “died spiritually,” whatever that means, “in Adam”; although, if He did, He would have then only been “made alive” spiritually “in Himself” as well, and wouldn’t have been physically resurrected), but if this part of the chapter is just talking about a so-called “spiritual death” rather than physical mortality, and is only talking about certain people being given some sort of “spiritual life” (or “going to heaven” after they die, which we now know isn’t even a scriptural concept, since only the living can enjoy life in outer space, as we learned is what going to heaven means in an earlier article in this series), the same problem that applies to those who think the destruction of death is simply referring to the salvation of “they that are Christ’s at His coming” would have to apply here as well, because the end of “death” doesn’t occur until after both “they that are Christ’s at His coming” are saved and all the rest of Christ’s enemies have been subjected as well, since it’s the final enemy to be defeated. (Although, if there were such a thing as “spiritual death,” this would mean that eventually everyone else will also become “spiritually alive” when Christ subjects His enemies and destroys death, since if “death” in this chapter was simply a reference to the so-called “spiritual death” so many believe in, there couldn’t be any “spiritual death” left once Christ destroys it, long after “they that are Christ’s at His coming” have been “made alive,” which means that everyone left who is still “spiritually dead” at that time will become “spiritually alive” when death is destroyed as well, especially based on the fact that verse 22 is a parallelism.)
So, unless someone has a better explanation of what these verses are referring to (one which doesn’t contradict the rest of Scripture, and so far one hasn’t been forthcoming when I’ve asked), it would seem that the point of verses 24 through 26 definitely has to be about the final order of people to be “made alive,” meaning the rest of the “all” who die because of Adam who haven’t been “made alive” because of Christ yet (including both those who are currently dead at that time, meaning those whose bodies will have been burned up in the lake of fire at the Great White Throne Judgement, as well as those who happen to die on the New Earth prior to the destruction of death, and also including those who are still living, thanks to having partaken of the fruit and the leaves of the tree of life to keep from dying, but haven’t been quickened yet, referring to those whose names were written in the book of life but who hadn’t already been quickened previously — with Enoch likely being included among this group, presuming he and other righteous men who existed prior to Abraham weren’t resurrected with Abraham in the second order of quickenings — along with any of their descendants who also have access to the tree, not to mention any other mortal humans who might be living on the New Earth as well but who have not been given access to the tree at that time, of course), finally quickened after the last age is completed and Jesus’ reign over the kingdom comes to an end because He’s placed all enemies (including death) under His feet (which ultimately just means that He’ll no longer have any enemies at that time: in some cases, such as in the case of death, because they’ve been destroyed altogether and no longer even exist, but in other cases because they’ll then be at peace with Him and God, as I’ll soon prove from another letter of Paul’s) and has turned all rulership (including rulership over Himself) over to His Father, and God is finally “All in all” (yes, in all, not just in a lucky few; if Paul had not pointed out that the “all” he was writing about doesn’t include God, people could then turn around and say that “all” doesn’t literally mean “all” because it obviously couldn’t include God, so it could then also exclude people who die as non-believers as well if it doesn’t actually mean “all,” but because Paul does point out that God isn’t included in the “all” but doesn’t mention anyone else as being excluded from the group, we know that everyone other than God is included in the “all,” even those who die as non-believers — and for those who like to argue that “all” in this verse can’t actually mean everyone because of what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 12:6, what I just wrote about “all” including everyone other than God tells us that it has to be referring to all sentient creatures other than God in chapter 15 regardless, although there’s no good reason to assume that the “all” in chapter 12 isn’t talking about everyone anyway, and based on what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty, it almost certainly is).
This all means, by the way, that being “made alive” in verse 22 can’t simply be a reference to joining the body of Christ or the Israel of God or to some other relative form of salvation one experiences at the time one believes one of the Gospels, as some assume, because being “made alive” happens only three times, and in a very specific order (and this is also why Enoch and Elijah can’t have been living in heaven all this time, as I mentioned in a previous article in this series, because, in order to live there, they’d have to have been “made alive” prior to the specific order of three sets of quickenings when that happens to everyone, although also because heaven is meant for the body of Christ, not for the Israel of God — which is the church that Elijah would be a member of — whose destiny is instead the kingdom of heaven).
This also means that people who use passages which tell us Jesus will reign “for ever” in order to prove that “everlasting punishment” will also never end because those passages use the same words too are actually basing their argument on an obvious misunderstanding, since Paul is clear that His reign won’t be never-ending, but rather will only last until He’s defeated the final enemy, and stops reigning after doing so. This also demonstrates just how few people are aware that A) nearly all of the passages that are translated as saying “eternal,” “everlasting,” “for ever,” or “never” in the popular, and less literal, versions of the Bible such as the KJV have to be interpreted qualitatively and figuratively rather than quantitatively and literally, based on this fact, as well as that B) everyone will eventually be quickened/“made alive,” which Paul knew because he saw much farther into the future than John did in the prophecies he recorded in the book generally called Revelation (John basically only saw into the beginning of the New Earth, when death is a much less powerful force than it is now, but still exists, since, at the very least, there will still be people dead in the lake of fire at that time, whereas Paul saw a much later point of time, at the end of the ages, when death is finally destroyed altogether, and nobody can be left dead at all if there isn’t any death left — which there couldn’t be if it’s been destroyed).
And since many Christians often make a similar mistake when they try to insist that, “If ‘eternal damnation’ isn’t actually never-ending, then ‘eternal life’ would have to come to an end as well and we’d eventually die,” or even, “if hell eventually ends, then heaven would have to eventually end too,” I’m forced to point out that they really aren’t thinking things through when they make these assertions, since we’ve already determined from what we learned in Part 3 of this series that these type of words in the KJV generally have to be interpreted qualitatively rather than quantitatively (or figuratively rather than literally), so we have to assume they aren’t talking about how long one lives (or even how long one is punished) so much as about the form or quality of the life and judgements they experience will be (and, in fact, most Christians already interpret this term qualitatively and figuratively anyway, as we learned in Part 4 of this series). Besides, we already know that the current heaven will eventually cease to exist anyway, or else it couldn’t be replaced with by a New Heaven. And so, just because one’s time experiencing “eternal damnation” will come to an end, it doesn’t stand to reason that anyone enjoying “eternal life” in the future will eventually die (or lose their salvation), because it isn’t verses about “eternal life” that promise us lives which never end in the first place, but rather it’s verses about our impending immortality which tell us we’ll never die (at least after our quickening), as I’ve pointed out at various times throughout this series. So, when people are eventually resurrected from their second death in the lake of fire to be “made alive”/quickened (which they’ll have to be in order for it to be able to be said that death has truly been destroyed, since as long as death continues to hold anyone prisoner, death hasn’t actually been defeated or destroyed at all, but rather continues to be an enemy), members of the body of Christ will have reached the end of their “eternal life” (or “eonian/age-pertaining life”) at that time as well, but we’ll still remain alive because we’ll already have been made immortal long before that. Basically, when someone reaches the end of the figurative “for ever” or “everlasting/eternal life,” that particular aspect of their salvation (the special sort of salvation that only a few will ever get to enjoy) will be over, but they’ll still remain alive because they’ll have bodies that can’t die (or, if they’re among those who get to enjoy “everlasting life” in Israel, or perhaps even on the New Earth, but haven’t been made immortal yet, they’ll finally be given immortality, along with everyone else).
But in case anybody is somehow still skeptical about the salvation of all humanity after reading all that, Paul confirmed it beyond any shadow of a doubt when he wrote in 1 Timothy 2:3–6 that Christ Jesus gave himself a ransom for all. You see, when a ransom is fully paid, all those who are held captive are set free, unless the one paying the ransom has been lied to (and there’s nothing in this passage which qualifies the “all” as referring only to believers, so to insist it only includes them is to once again read one’s assumptions into the text, especially in light of the fact that Paul began the chapter talking about all men alive, including all those in authority at the time, and also said in verse 4 that all mankind is included in those whom God wills to salvation, and there’s nothing in the text to indicate he’d suddenly begun referring only to believers immediately after that, but instead wrote that Christ Jesus gave Himself a ransom for the same “all” he’d been talking about already, telling his readers that every human who will have ever lived has been ransomed, even though they won’t all experience their salvation at the same time).
To break it down:
1. Anyone Christ “gave Himself a ransom for” will be ransomed.
2. If someone is ransomed as a result of Christ’s death, they will be saved.
3. The “all” that Christ “gave Himself a ransom for” includes all mankind.
4. All mankind will be saved.
Please don’t confuse this as meaning that Christ died in our place, receiving the penalty for our sins so we wouldn’t have to receive said penalty for our sins ourselves, though, as many Christians believe He did (so long as we choose to believe He did so, they’d also claim). Of course, even if the idea that Christ paid the price for our sins in our place was a scriptural concept, it makes no sense that we would have to choose to believe He paid the price for our sins in our place in order for Him to have actually paid the price for our sins in our place (He either did or He didn’t, and our belief couldn’t change the fact either way), because if those who didn’t choose to believe it then had to pay the price themselves, it would mean God was double-charging, which would be quite dishonest of Him (not to mention most unfair to His Son, Who endured beatings and the pain and humiliation of the cross before entering the death state, all in order to be a ransom for all sinners in order to save them, and God isn’t going to shortchange Him of any of the sinners He suffered and died for in order to save, regardless of whether some of them might not have been born wise enough to come to believe He did so prior to their death or His return — and those who don’t believe this good news includes most Christians out there as well, by the way, since they themselves don’t believe that He ransomed “all” humanity through His death for our sins either, which means they haven’t fully understood, and hence can’t be said to have truly believed, Paul’s Gospel, and as such can’t be said to be in the body of Christ).
That said, there’s absolutely nothing written anywhere in Scripture which even implies that Jesus died “in our place,” or that He received the penalty for anyone’s sins “in their place” so they wouldn’t have to pay the price for their sins themselves. However, for those who have never really thought about this, let’s consider what it would mean if He actually did pay a penalty for our sins so that we don’t have to suffer that particular penalty ourselves. If He did, and if ending up in the lake of fire without being able to leave it was the penalty for our sins (whether consciously or otherwise), it would mean that Jesus would have to still be burning in the lake of fire (experiencing the specific punishment we deserve is what paying the penalty “in our place” means, after all). But since He never even set foot in the lake of fire to begin with (He couldn’t have, since it hasn’t even begun burning in the Valley of Hinnom yet, at least not as of the time this article was written, and He wasn’t crucified or buried in that “hell”/valley either), much less remained there for all time (which would have to be the case if that truly was the price to be paid for our sins that He paid), burning without end in the lake of fire obviously wasn’t a punishment He suffered “in our place,” which means it couldn’t possibly be the specific penalty we deserve either, at least not if He did pay the penalty we deserved “in our place.” And if the penalty He supposedly paid “in our place” was simply death instead, nobody who “got saved” would ever actually drop dead, which obviously isn’t the case (and it couldn’t simply be crucifixion that He endured “in our place” either, or else all non-believers would have to eventually be literally crucified as their punishment, but there’s definitely nothing in Scripture which even implies this to be the case). This also means the penalty couldn’t be never-ending “separation from God,” since, if it were, Jesus would also have to be separated from God at this point in time, and for all time, in order to truly “pay the penalty in our place.” And for those who want to suggest that the penalty might be “spiritual death,” whatever that’s supposed to be, it would again have to mean that A) Christ “died spiritually” for us “in our place” rather than died physically on the cross (and I’m assuming nobody actually believes He “died spiritually”), but also that B) nobody can be “spiritually dead” before they die physically if Christ paid that penalty “in our place,” yet most Christians believe we’re already “spiritually dead” prior to salvation, so there’s no way He could have “died spiritually” for us “in our place” so we don’t have to ever “die spiritually” ourselves, because we’re already in this spiritual state before we get saved (or we would be if the common Christian viewpoints of “spiritual death” and that Jesus paid the price in our place were actually true, of course).
This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a penalty for our sins, however. In fact, there is, and that penalty is indeed death (specifically, to die and remain permanently dead). It’s just that Jesus didn’t die “in our place” to receive the penalty so we don’t have to, which should be obvious considering the fact that believers continue to drop dead today (and also because He didn’t remain permanently dead, which is a part of the penalty). And while it’s true that the reason we die is simply the mortality we inherited from Adam, the sins we can’t avoid because of that mortality also make us worthy of the death most of us will experience, so any mortal humans who end up sinning (which is all of us, or at least all of us who don’t die before we’re able to sin, although everyone who does die prior to that point will presumably eventually sin as they grow up on the New Earth after they’ve been resurrected) still need to have their sin dealt with. Because, sure, God could temporarily overlook sin, and in “Old Testament” times He did indeed pass over the penalties of many sins which occurred (especially the sins of those who participated in the sacrificial system under the Mosaic law, presuming they didn’t commit “a sin unto death,” meaning a sin that had a death penalty attached to it under the law). But the blood of bulls and goats could not actually take away sins (the death of these animals couldn’t actually remove the penalty of sin, nor could it keep us from sinning again), and so if Christ had not given His life for us (and if God hadn’t known ahead of time that this was going to happen), it would have actually been unjust of God (Who judges according to truth) to pass over the penalty of their sins and treat them as if they hadn’t sinned and weren’t deserving of death, even if they did perform the required sacrifices under the law (and it would be equally unjust of Him to simply forgive us today without what Christ did as well).
Because He lived a completely sinless life and then became “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,” however, Christ became more deserving of the authority to save us sinners than we sinners remained deserving of permanent death. In fact, He was given all power (once again translated from the Greek ἐξουσία/“ex-oo-see’-ah,” which, as we learned in a previous article from this series, simply means “authority”) in heaven and in earth, and so, now, not only does Christ have the authority to save all of the sinners He died to save from the condemnation which our sins made us deserving of (that condemnation being to remain permanently in the death state after we die), as well as to quicken everyone and destroy death altogether, God is now also able to righteously forgive sins at any time (without our consent, even, if He wants to do so) because His doing so is in accord with what Christ deserves due to His obedience. And since Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 1:15 that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” and not that Christ Jesus came into the world to save only those few sinners who happened to be wise enough to decide to let Him save them, every sinner will ultimately end up saved in the end because it’s what Christ Jesus came to do and also deserves. (And I should probably also point out that the condemnation we deserve for our sins is not the same condemnation that we experience because of Adam’s sin, since that was simply condemnation to mortality leading to death, which in turn condemned us to give in to sin, whereas it’s that sin we give in to thanks to our mortality which is what makes us deserve to eventually be condemned to remain dead permanently — which means we could also say that we’ve been condemned to be condemned to be condemned, with Christ dying in order to save us from all of those forms of condemnation, along with other forms of condemnation that I don’t have the time to get into the details of right now as well, at least in the case of some people.)
So, while He didn’t die “in our place,” or pay the penalty “in our place” (since most of us still die, and since He didn’t remain dead), Christ did die in order that the penalty could be justly set aside at whatever point God decides to do so for each of us (although “every man in his own order”), at which time each of us will be justified, be resurrected (if we’ve died), and be made free from even being able to die ever again (be made immortal, in other words). That’s not all, though. Because He died for our sins, He not only condemned sin (not us — sin itself) in the flesh, but His death also put away sin, removing sin from the equation for all humanity altogether, even if perhaps only proleptically for the time being (thus making Him the antitype of the goat in the wilderness in the Mosaic law, among other things), and if sin has been put away, in some ways it can be said that it’s ultimately no longer something anyone needs to worry about at all (and in the long run, humanity as a whole definitely doesn’t have to worry about it). You see, when He went down into the tomb, it can be said that He brought sin down into the earth with Him, and when He was resurrected three days later, He returned without that sin, and so sin is no longer being held against anyone anymore (at least from an absolute perspective, even if not, perhaps, from a relative perspective), regardless of whether they believe it or not, because Christ died for our sins, which is yet more proof that everyone will experience salvation in the end, when they’re eventually made immortal and incapable of sinning any longer (although those relative few who “come unto the knowledge of the truth” now, meaning those who understand and believe what it means that Christ died for our sins, and that He was buried and rose again on the third day, get to enjoy a special form of salvation on top of the type of salvation that everyone will experience: including freedom from religion — because they know there’s nothing they have to do, or even that they could do, in order to receive the benefits of what Christ did for us, since they’re aware that having to do any act at all would be a work performed in order to earn that gift, even if that act was simply having to choose to receive the free gift that Christ already guaranteed for all of us — and also getting to experience that salvation before the rest of humanity does too, being quickened long before the majority of humanity will be, among other benefits once we’re in heaven as well).
That’s not all, though, because Paul also wrote (in Ephesians 1:13-14): “In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.” How does that prove the salvation of all? Well, if you read it in the context of the whole chapter, and are also familiar with the different types of salvation mentioned in Scripture, you’ll notice that this section of the chapter (verses 3 through 14) is primarily about the blessings that God has purposed beforehand to literally lavish upon those (“hath abounded toward us”) whom He chose to become members of the body of Christ. Simply put, this section of the chapter is all about how God has predestined certain people to experience certain blessings in Christ, blessings which not everyone will experience. This isn’t Calvinism, however, since experiencing the blessings mentioned in this chapter aren’t about the general salvation that everyone receives. It’s only those who are experiencing the special “eternal life” form of salvation Paul taught about that he was writing to in this passage, specifically the body of Christ.
And so when Paul wrote, “after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,” he was saying that his readers had heard the word of truth, and, in what is essentially a parenthetical, explained what that word of truth they heard was: the good news (“gospel”) of their salvation. To put it simply, Paul wrote here that the good news they had heard was the good news of their already guaranteed salvation — meaning the general salvation that all humanity has been guaranteed — not the good news of how they could have salvation if only they did something specific (note that he didn’t write, “after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your potential salvation, although only if you actually believed that gospel,” but rather that they had heard the good news about the salvation which was already theirs — since it was already everyone’s, even if perhaps just proleptically at present, thanks to Christ’s death for our sins, burial, and resurrection — after which they trusted that this good news about their already guaranteed salvation was indeed true). The point here is that, because there is no included proposition in the text connected with the salvation they heard about, the good news they heard was a proclamation that they were already guaranteed salvation prior to hearing about it (as the outcome of Christ’s death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection, meaning as the outcome of the facts proclaimed in Paul’s Gospel). Simply put, Paul couldn’t tell them the good news of their salvation if it wasn’t already their salvation (at least from a proleptic, or perhaps absolute, perspective).
Of course, most people read this verse and assume that either the first part of the verse (“In whom ye also trusted”) or the last part of the verse (“in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise”) actually is a proposition about their salvation, and that their salvation wasn’t guaranteed until after they actually believed the supposed good news about how they could attain said salvation. But this is a misunderstanding due to not being aware of what the different types of salvation mentioned in Scripture are all about. All the first part of the verse is telling us is that they trusted Christ after they heard the good news of their already guaranteed general, absolute form of salvation which He’d already won for all of us (including them), and all the last part of the verse is telling us is that, after they trusted that Christ had already guaranteed that form of salvation for all of us because of what He accomplished through His death for our sins, burial, and resurrection, even before they believed it, they were then sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which means they were also given a special, relative form of salvation (“an earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession”) which doesn’t apply to all humanity the way the salvation that Christ guaranteed for all of humanity does, since not everyone is sealed by the Holy Spirit. All that is to say, Paul’s little parenthetical in Ephesians 1:13 is simply telling us that “the good news of [their and everyone’s general] salvation” was already “as good as done” for them (and for everyone) before they heard it, and after they heard about the salvation that was already guaranteed for them (because it’s guaranteed for everyone), they trusted Christ and were sealed with the Holy Spirit, and hence were also promised the special “eternal life” form of salvation which only members of the body of Christ get to enjoy (and were then awaiting that salvation guaranteed for everyone, meaning the quickening of their mortal bodies, referred to here as “the redemption of the purchased possession,” which they’ll receive when Christ comes for His body, and which everyone else will also eventually receive, although “every man in his own order,” as we already discussed). Basically, just as it is with 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, this passage talks about both forms of salvation connected with Paul’s Gospel, and just as it is when it comes to that passage, if one isn’t aware of this fact, they’ll horribly misinterpret Ephesians 1:13-14 too.
But even clearer than that example, Paul also wrote that God is “the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe” in 1 Timothy 4:10, and honestly, it doesn’t get any more clear than this, with Paul telling us that God will save absolutely everyone, even if those who believe this good news will get to experience a special level of salvation on top of that (as already discussed, including freedom from religion, as well as an earlier experience of immortality than everyone else, among other things). Every Christian out there knows the definition of the word “especially” (or “specially,” which the KJV uses here, and which ultimately also means “particularly,” not “exclusively,” and which happens to be the origin of the term “special form of salvation” that I’ve been using throughout this series), yet somehow most of them seem to forget what it means when they get to this verse. But their apparent selective memory aside, they’d still recognize that if a teacher said, “I’ve given everyone a passing grade this year, especially Lydia who got an A+,” the teacher would have meant that, while nobody else got an A+, they still all passed, since these Christians actually do know that “especially” (and even “specially”) doesn’t mean “specifically” or “only,” even if they need to pretend to themselves that it does when considering what Paul had to say here.
Likewise, if someone wrote, “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith,” the way Paul did in Galatians 6:10, they’d know that they should focus most of their positive efforts on believers (“them who are of the household of faith,” the very same people Paul was referring to when he wrote, “specially of those that believe,” in 1 Timothy 4:10), but that they should still try to do good unto everyone else (the very same “all men” that Paul said God was the Saviour of) as well, and not that we should do good only unto believers (and for those who might be wondering, yes, the Greek word translated as “especially” in Galatians is indeed the same Greek word translated as “specially” in the KJV in the verse we’ve been looking at in 1 Timothy: μάλιστα/“mal’-is-tah”). In fact, if “specially” did mean “only,” the part of the verse which tells us God is the Saviour of all men would be a lie, because it didn’t say God is “the potential Saviour of all men, but really only of those that believe” (or that God is “the Saviour available for all men, although only actually the Saviour of those that believe”), but instead plainly tells us that He actually is the Saviour of all men, and to be able to legitimately be called the saviour of someone, you have to actually save them at some point, which means that, to be able to truly be called “the Saviour of all men,” God has to actually save all men eventually. Bottom line, if even one human fails to end up experiencing salvation by the end of the ages, Paul would be just as much of a liar as that teacher would turn out to be if any of the students in Lydia’s class received a failing grade after telling them they’d all passed.
And Calvinists who insist that Paul is only claiming “God is the Saviour of all kinds or sorts of men,” and that God only wants “all sorts of men” to be saved rather than actually “will have all men to be saved,” as Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 2:3-4, A) that’s clearly not what these passages say anyway (the words “kinds” and “sorts” aren’t there in the text), and B) they’re ignoring the second part of the verse where Paul says “specially of believers” (which can’t really follow the phrase “all kinds of men” and make any sense in this case, since “specially” would then be have to be qualifying who the “all kinds of men” are, but the word “specially” simply can’t be used that way, because it means “particularly,” not “exclusively”) rather than “specifically believers,” so they’re just reading their own preconceived doctrinal bias that not everyone will experience salvation into these passages because they have no other choice if they don’t want it to contradict their theological presuppositions, just as non-Calvinist Christians who believe in never-ending punishment do in their own way as well.
All that is to say, this verse (which is yet another example of Paul referring to both the general and special forms of salvation in the same passage) once again verifies that the doctrine of salvation connected with Paul’s Gospel that he taught about throughout his epistles is indeed that every human who is affected by the curse and locked up in unbelief — not to mention in vanity (neither of which we’ve been locked up in because of any choice we made, but rather, from a relative perspective, because of a choice Adam made, and, from an absolute perspective, because God Himself chose to lock everyone up in that manner so we could eventually also be shown mercy and be delivered from the bondage of corruption, since, as we already discussed in a previous article in this series, if we’d never experienced evil we couldn’t have truly appreciated the contrasting goodness, and if we’d never experienced sin and death, we could never experience, and hence never truly appreciate, grace; immortality might not mean as much to us either, without having first experienced mortality, I should add) — will also be equally (actually, even more so) affected by the cross and made immortal, even if it doesn’t happen to everyone at the same time (with believers getting that special, earlier experience of salvation they’ve been promised, as well as potentially getting to rule and reign with Christ in the heavens during the impending ages, or perhaps getting to rule over the earth from Israel — depending on which sort of salvation they’re experiencing — figuratively referred to as “everlasting life,” or as “life eternal,” in the KJV and other less literal Bible versions).
In fact, the verses (Romans 8:18–23) around the passage which tells us that all creation (referred to in the KJV as “the creature”) has been locked up in vanity also tells us quite definitively that all humanity will indeed be saved: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” Notice that Paul said “the creature” (meaning creation, referring to all human beings — if not all biological beings who can look forward to things — and not just those who are in the body of Christ) has the earnest expectation of “the manifestation of the sons of God” (referring to our appearing with Christ when He returns), because “the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God,” and they wouldn’t be looking forward to our appearing if they weren’t going to benefit from it, which we know they will, since Paul wrote there that they shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption and will become “children of God” (not to be confused with those of us who are “the sons of God,” which is a much more esteemed position — referring to our position as joint-heirs with Christ — although we are still technically “children of God” as well, even as “sons of God” — and yes, women who join the body of Christ are included in the “sons of God” label too, just as all women are in the “all men” reference in 1 Timothy 4, which just means “all humans”). In addition, verse 23 says that it’s “not only they, but ourselves also,” which means “they” (those who aren’t in the body of Christ) and “ourselves also” (those who are in the body of Christ, referring to those “which have the firstfruits of the Spirit” — telling us that there will be others after those in the body of Christ who will also have the Spirit, based on the meaning of “firstfruits”) will all enjoy “the redemption of our body” (our quickening, in other words, which is salvation; although “every man in his own order,” of course).
However, as I’m sure you expected, I have to once again ask my usual question: If Paul was trying to explain that God indeed will save everyone eventually, but that He’ll also give believers a special salvation on top of that in the meantime, I’d like you to tell me what he would have needed to have written differently in those passages in his first epistle to Timothy and in Romans 8 in order to convince you that this is what he meant.
It’s not just salvation that all humans will experience, though; it’s also reconciliation. And while the salvation that involves being made immortal is technically only experienced by mortal beings such as humans, reconciliation will be experienced by all sentient beings in the universe who require it, as demonstrated by a passage where Paul used a similar sort of parallelism to the ones he used in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5, this time in the first chapter of his epistle to the Colossians. In fact, I don’t know how someone can read verses 15 through 20 of that chapter and not end up a believer in the reconciliation of all creatures, although it seems most people somehow miss the fact that Paul is using a type of parallelism known as an Extended Alternation here — likely because they probably aren’t familiar with Paul’s consistent use of parallelisms throughout his epistles to prove the salvation (and reconciliation) of all humanity — to tell us that the same “all” created by Him are also the same “all” that are reconciled to Him by the blood of Christ’s cross, and that this passage tells us that not only are all humans (meaning all the things created in earth, as mentioned in both verses 16 and 20) both created by and reconciled to Him, but all the creatures in heaven/outer space (as also mentioned in both of the same two verses, referring to a list of spiritual beings that overlaps with another list of creatures who are described in Ephesians 6:12 as being the spiritual wickedness in high places) are also both created by and reconciled to Him, and there would be no need to reconcile spiritual beings in heaven who weren’t first alienated, so it can only be the foolish (and sometimes sinful, or even evil) spiritual beings in the heavens who are being reconciled; and if all of them are going to be reconciled, as Paul promises they will be in that passage, we know that all the creatures on the earth will be as well, as he also says they will be in the same passage.
It’s important to keep in mind that the word “reconciliation” refers to the parties on both sides of an estrangement or conflict being at peace with one another, meaning that God is at peace with them and they’re at peace with God when this reconciliation occurs, and this wouldn’t the case if any of them were still being tormented in the lake of fire at that time, which they would have to leave right before Christ destroys death by resurrecting and quickening any dead humans still left in the lake of fire as well (thus proving that “for ever and ever” isn’t meant to be interpreted as literally meaning “without end,” even when it comes to the punishment of the spiritual beings known as the devil, the beast, and the false prophet in the lake of fire, since they’d have to be included in the “all” which are both created by and reconciled to God as well, telling us that it actually means “until the end of the ages,” or “for the duration of the final age or ages,” depending on the context of the passage in question and the plurality of the word αἰών/“ahee-ohn’” in said passage in the original Greek, with “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for the ages of the ages” [or “for the eons of the eons”] being what the part of Revelation 20:10 which talks about the duration of their torment, for example, actually means — think of the word “ever” in the KJV as often being used as metonymy for “age” or “ages,” basically — with “the ages of the ages” referring to the final two impending ages that we’ll get to enjoy before the ages finally come to an end), since Christ’s defeat of all other enemies takes place just prior to the destruction of death (and if there’s a better way to put an end to an enemy than turning that enemy into a willing servant, or even a friend, I don’t know what it would be). This is also proven by the prophecy of Philippians 2:10-11 which tells us, “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father,” because nobody can say Jesus is the Lord and truly mean it apart from the Holy Spirit leading them to do so, which means anyone who does so will possess the Holy Spirit at that time. There’s absolutely no indication in this passage that this declaration will be forced out of them the way most Christians assume it will be, especially since it’s “to the glory of God the Father,” and He’d receive far more glory from a willing confession based on the reconciliation that Paul wrote about than from a coerced concession by an enemy, so the only reason to read the idea of this confession being forced out of still-existing enemies at gunpoint (or whatever sort of threat it takes to get a presumably immortal spiritual being to assent to something they don’t want to assent to) rather than being made by friends and willing subjects who are now at peace with Him in their minds is, once again, preconceived doctrinal bias that not every human will experience salvation and that not every created being who needs it will be truly reconciled to God. But if you’re having trouble with this parallelism, replace the word “all” with the variable x again in both verses 16 and 20 of Colossians 1 — in fact, do it in all the verses from verse 16 to verse 20 — and it should become clear what it means.
| The First Man: Adam = Condemnation [to mortality and sinfulness] of all | The Second Man: Christ = Salvation [immortality and sinlessness] of the same all |
| Therefore as… (Romans 5:18) | Even so… |
| by the offence of one [not ours] | by the righteousness of one [not ours] |
| judgement came [not in the original Greek text, but included in the KJV] upon | the free gift came [not in the original Greek text, but included in the KJV] upon |
| all men | [the same] all men |
| to condemnation | unto justification of life |
| For as… (Romans 5:19) | So… |
| by one man’s disobedience [not ours] | by the obedience of one [not ours] |
| many were made | shall [the same] many be made |
| sinners | righteous |
| For as… (1 Corinthians 15:22) | Even so… |
| in Adam [meaning because of what Adam did] | in Christ [meaning because of what Christ did] |
| all die [meaning all are born mortal] | shall all be made alive [meaning the same all will be made immortal/be saved] |
| For by Him… (Colossians 1:16) | By Him… (Colossians 1:20) |
| were all things created | to reconcile all things unto himself (having made peace through the blood of his [Christ’s] cross) |
| that are in heaven, and that are in earth [whether angelic or human] | whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven [whether human or angelic] |
Now, some try to argue that verse 21 of Colossians chapter 1 contradicts this conclusion, but that just means they aren’t reading the text very carefully, since A) it really should be obvious that the point Paul was making about the eventual reconciliation of all created beings concludes with the end of verse 20, and B) they somehow miss the fact that when Paul wrote, “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled,” in that verse, he was simply stating that his readers had already experienced reconciliation at the time he wrote the letter. But since we’re not claiming that verses 16 to 20 say everyone has currently been reconciled in their minds yet anyway, the current reconciliation of believers doesn’t preclude the future reconciliation of everyone else he promised would eventually be reconciled as well (in fact, if it did mean that, it would also mean that no humans other than those who first read this epistle some 2,000 years ago could be reconciled after that time, which would mean there’s no hope for you or me either). It’s also important to notice that it’s only in our minds that Paul says the alienation takes place prior to being reconciled, as well as to know that the alienation is entirely one-sided at this point in time, with religious humans (and foolish spiritual beings) mistakenly believing that God is still angry with them because of their wicked works, as it could be said He was from a certain (almost certainly hyperbolic) perspective prior to the crucifixion, not realizing that God is actually already at peace with everyone (in fact, from an absolute perspective, He always has been), and because of what He did through Christ, He isn’t even imputing the trespasses of the world unto them at all — remember, while evil acts will be judged at the Great White Throne, sin won’t be, because sin has already been entirely taken care of by Christ, as we learned in a previous article in this series — but is instead now asking those of us in the body of Christ to beseech the rest of the world to be reconciled to God (or, more strictly speaking, to be conciliated to God, since the Greek word translated as “reconciled” in 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 in the KJV is καταλλάσσω/“kat-al-las’-so,” which, like “conciliation,” is much more one-sided than the Greek word ἀποκαταλλάσσω/“ap-ok-at-al-las’-so” — which was also translated as “reconciled,” in Colossians 1:20-21 — is), meaning to be at peace with God in their minds because He’s already at peace with them, and to believe the good news of their already guaranteed salvation because of what Christ did (and it seems we’ll be bringing a similar sort of message of reconciliation to the alienated spiritual beings in the heavens, after Christ takes us up there to be with Him, as well, but that’s a much bigger topic than I have the time to get into here).
Some also attempt to argue that Jesus doesn’t help angels, but only helps the descendants of Abraham, based on a certain type of translation of Hebrews 2:16 which is rendered along those lines (but which is translated in the KJV as: “For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham.”), in order to argue that Colossians 1:20 can’t mean spiritual beings will be reconciled to God. But even if theirs was a good translation of the verse, it doesn’t say Jesus will never reconcile angels and other spiritual beings. Just as not every human is reconciled to God in their minds at present, this translation of the verse could also only mean that Jesus isn’t helping angels out at present (which does seem to be true). But since Colossians says they will be reconciled, we know they’ll have to be in the future, and that this verse can’t mean what they’re assuming it means (although, even if we did ignore Colossians, we’d then have to also believe that no Gentiles could be saved as well, since they aren’t descendants of Abraham).
Of course, other Christians will try to argue that, because 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 said, “he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power,” and also that “all enemies” will be put under Christ and will be subdued unto Him (with “put under,” “subdued,” and “subject” in this passage all being translated from different tenses of the exact same Greek word — ὑποτάσσω/“hoop-ot-as’-so”), not to mention that Christ “must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet,” that this must mean these enemies will be punished without end rather be reconciled to God through Christ, and so they’ll insist that Colossians 1:20 can’t include God’s enemies (be they humans or spiritual beings) when it refers to all things being reconciled to Him either. They’re once again reading their assumptions about never-ending punishment into the text, however, as is made clear by the fact that A) the passage in 1 Corinthians just doesn’t say anything about any conscious enemy being punished anyway, much less being punished without end, not to mention the fact that B) Jesus Himself is going to then be put under God and become fully subject to Him as well, and Jesus isn’t going to be punished without end when He’s subjected to God, so we have no reason to believe that any of the rest of the conscious beings falling under the category of “all things” in that passage will be punished without end when they’re subjected either, which once again verifies that God will indeed be All in all (especially since the second “all” in the phrase “all in all” is obviously including the “all enemies” in the same passage). To be clear, many of the beings referred to as enemies — human and otherwise — will be punished, as we know from other passages (although not all enemies will be punished, since even members of the body of Christ were once listed among those enemies, yet we won’t be punished; and if Paul, who was also listed among those enemies, can be reconciled to God, anyone can be), but my point is simply that this passage doesn’t actually mention punishment, much less unending punishment, so one can’t just read their assumptions about never-ending punishment into it simply because they want to.
Now yes, some will then try to argue that, because the same Greek word — καταργέω/“kat-arg-eh’-o” — is translated “put down” when Paul wrote “when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power” in verse 24 as is translated “destroyed” in verse 26, “all enemies” must then be destroyed too, but that’s reading yet another assumption into the text, because this “putting down” or “destroying” only refers to concepts (such as the rulership by beings other than Christ and God, as well as mortality/death) being put down or destroyed, and not to actual conscious beings being destroyed (since concepts obviously aren’t going to be included in the “all” that God will become “all” in; only conscious beings would be included in that “all”). So yes, while destruction can be a form of subjection, it isn’t implied by the term, because it isn’t the only form of subjection (since, again, Jesus would then have to also be destroyed when He becomes fully subject to God if that were the case), which means that it has to be outright stated that “destruction” is the form of subjection being applied to a specific being in a specific passage in order for “destruction” to apply to that being, and it definitely isn’t outright stated that any conscious beings will be destroyed in this passage (figuratively or literally), only that certain concepts will be (again, those concepts being rulership by lower beings and mortality/death). Still, others will insist that all enemies being put under His feet — which is a reference to His enemies becoming His “footstool,” as Psalm 110:1 put it — must also mean these enemies will experience never-ending punishment. But once again, we can see that there’s nothing anywhere in this passage, or in any other passages which refer to being under someone’s feet or to being a footstool for that matter, which even hints at the idea that being under His feet or being a footstool means being punished without end. So at the end of the day, rather than disproving it, these verses actually prove the eventual salvation of all humans and the eventual reconciliation of all conscious beings who require it.
And at the risk of sounding repetitive, I have to ask yet again: if Paul was trying to explain that God indeed will reconcile every being He ever created who has been alienated from God, I’d like you to tell me what he would have needed to have written differently in Colossians 1:16-20 in order to convince you that this is indeed what he meant.
In addition, I’d also like to ask you to explain what the basis of your belief that you’ve been saved (or will experience salvation) even is, presuming you believe you’ve been saved. If you can honestly say that you’ve been saved simply because Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day, it can be said that you have faith in Christ for your salvation. But if you believe you’ve been saved because you chose to believe that Christ died for your sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day, then it can really only be said that you have faith in your faith for your salvation. Because in order for salvation to be based solely on what God and Christ accomplished (meaning based 100% on Christ’s death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection), rather than based (even if only in part) on what you yourself accomplished (meaning choosing to believe in Christ’s death for our sins, and His subsequent burial and resurrection), everyone has to be saved (at least proleptically; and if something is proleptic in God’s eyes, it’s guaranteed to happen) by what God and Christ accomplished, whether anyone believes it or not, since otherwise it’s your faith that ultimately did the job of saving you, with Christ only accomplishing the first step of your salvation, but not actually completing it Himself.
All that being said, when traditional, “orthodox” Christians insist that not all humanity has been saved, or even that not all humanity will be saved, they are technically correct. However, at the same time, they’re also very wrong. And I hope it’s clear by now how this can be the case, but for anyone who somehow does still view this as a contradiction, please think carefully about everything we’ve covered so far, and also consider this question: If I pointed out that, among a group of four people, they each had a quarter, but that at the same time only one of them had a quarter, and that both statements were equally true, how could this be the case? Well, it’s actually quite simple: All four people had a piece of a pie, each an equal-sized slice of the pie that made up the whole pie when put together, but only one of these people had a 25-cent coin in their pocket. You see, as we learned from Part 1 of this series, the same word can refer to different things, and this applies to both the word “quarter” as well as the word “saved” (not to mention “salvation”). We already know that there are multiple types of salvation, and that not everyone experiences every sort of salvation. Relatively few people will experience the sort of salvation referred to under the Gospel of the Circumcision, for example, not to mention the sort of salvation connected with membership in the body of Christ, which means it shouldn’t be a surprise to hear me agree that not everyone will be saved, as long as one realizes that I’m referring to specific types of salvation which not every human is guaranteed to experience when I say that, and also realizes that everyone will experience at least one type of salvation by the end of the ages, and, in fact, that everyone has “experienced” a certain type of salvation already too (at least from a certain perspective), whether they realize it or not.
Because everyone has already been saved from both a proleptic and an absolute perspective thanks to what Christ accomplished, since God ultimately views all of us as already experiencing our salvation from a physical perspective (which could also be called an eschatological perspective, referring to the physical experience of salvation which occurs at our resurrection and/or quickening, when the mortal puts on immortality and we can finally enjoy the full salvation that we had all along thanks to Christ), since, being Almighty God, He sees everything, everywhere, all at once from His timeless perspective (and so, perhaps we could even say that all humanity has now been saved from an ontological perspective too, because salvation is not only now a guaranteed part of the human experience thanks to Christ’s death for our sins, but because it really always has been, since that was always a part of God’s plan for Christ and us to begin with). At the same time, though, only believers have been saved from a relative perspective, which could also be referred to as salvation from a noological perspective, with this sort of salvation being freedom from the power of sin by being given knowledge of the good news of our ontological salvation and truly believing it: faith, in other words (“noological” meaning “relating to the mind,” etymologically originating from the Greek word νοῦς/“nooce,” which itself is translated as “mind” and as “understanding” in the KJV). Because when someone comes to realize that God is already at peace with us, and that there’s nothing we have to do to earn the salvation that Christ already earned for us, they’re then freed from the power of sin, which is the law or religion, and one can say that they’ve been saved “noologically,” and have also been brought into membership in the body of Christ. This means it can be said that we’ve been saved, we’re being saved, and we will be saved, all at the same time, as long as we remember that there’s nothing we ourselves have to do (or even that we could do) to gain any of these salvations (although it is also true that members of the Israel of God do participate in their specific form of salvation, something I refer to as circumcision, or Israelite, salvation, which they’ll experience in the kingdom of heaven when it begins on earth in the future, and which is another equally legitimate form of salvation, as long as one doesn’t try to combine their Gospel with the Gospel I’ve been focusing on in this article, which is, of course, Paul’s Gospel; Paul says they shouldn’t try to switch between the two of them either, but rather that they should stick with the one they’re called to).
Now, those aren’t all the arguments for the salvation (and reconciliation) of all humanity. There are many more, but those should be enough to make it clear that the only way to avoid the conclusion that everyone will eventually experience both salvation and reconciliation is to insert words into Paul’s epistles that aren’t there, to redefine certain words into meaning something other than what the writers meant by them, or even to change (or simply ignore) the order of the words in some verses. But there’s just no justification for doing so, especially when we consider the fact that there’s no basis for believing in never-ending conscious torment in the lake of fire — or even in an afterlife realm while dead — as we’ve already learned. However, I know that there are still a number of common objections to the idea that everyone will eventually experience salvation which you’ve no doubt heard, or perhaps even raised yourself at some point, as well as a number of so-called “proof texts” in the Bible which you’ve no doubt been taught support the traditional doctrine of never-ending punishment in the lake of fire; and while it should be pretty clear by now to those who have been paying attention to everything we’ve covered that, when you take everything Paul wrote about salvation — as well as the differences between the various types of salvation mentioned in Scripture, not to mention the figurative meaning of certain English words related to long periods of time — into consideration, none of these arguments or supposed “proof texts” can actually support the popular assumptions most of us grew up with when it comes to this topic, we should still take a look at them regardless, so you can know how to answer them whenever they’re used to try to argue against what Scripture actually says about salvation, beginning with the objections, then moving on to the “proof texts,” and we’ll do just that in the remaining articles in this series.
Please click here for Part 11 of this series.