I believe that even though the atonement is universal in extent, still not everyone gets saved as humans have a free-will and they can choose to believe on Jesus as Savior for their sins or not to believe! But Jesus gives to everyone the same opportunity to be saved! According to Dr. Jack W. Hayford “Man reflects God’s likeness in the sense that He possesses a free will and has the capacity of self-determination. Again there is a vast difference between Man’s capacity to make His own private choices and his ability to fulfill exactly what he wants to do…God can make choices and He can do exactly what He chooses to do. We can make choices but Man is limited in his capacity to fulfill what he chooses to do.”1 So, in other words, if Man chooses to turn his back on God when the opportunities for salvation present themselves, he will never be like God because all that there is for him at the end is hell, something which probably he never believed would be his end because of his choice! So Jesus atonement is for all the world if they choose to receive it! God created Man knowing that He Himself would be the ‘perfect Lamb’ and knowing that He was preparing an inheritance for those who believed, so that they would become joint-heirs with Christ forever.
NOTES
1Jack W. Hayford, Grounds for Living, (Tonbridge: Sovereign World, 2001), 34-57.
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