Love's Final Victory / Ultimate Universal Salvation on the Basis of Scripture and Reason

by Horatio

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Instant, we say? Yes; for "we are reconciled to God by the death of His Son," He was "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," so God is reconciled now; and not only that, but from all eternity.

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And universal? Yes; for he "tasted death for every man." So every sinner is forgiven by virtue of Christ's Atonement. The benefit of that Atonement extends to the worst man of our race.

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But are not faith and penitence necessary? Yes, they are necessary to final salvation; but if they are necessary to forgiveness, then there was no necessity for Atonement. It is Atonement alone which procures pardon; and as Atonement was for the whole race, so forgiveness is for the whole race also.

To be sure it is written that "we are justified by faith," But surely, we are not to understand those words literally or rigidly. For could faith of itself really justify us? Could it really pay the debt we owe? It is "the gift of God." Is it not therefore wholly without merit? Is not its function, rather, to bring us into the consciousness of justification? I do not see how it could do more than that.

But if we want to know the ground of justification, must we not look for it in the death of Christ? It is written that we are "freely justified by his blood." Is not that really the ground? And inasmuch as Christ is "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," the merit of his death goes back to the first, as well as extends to the last, sinner of our race. When the matter is viewed in this light, does it not seem a moral necessity that all sin is already forgiven?

But it may be pleaded that God is "angry with sinners every day;" that "tribulation and wrath" are ordained for "every soul of man that doeth evil;" and so on. How, then, can divine anger, tribulation, and wrath rest upon a person that is forgiven?

Simply because God's very nature is opposed to sin in every form; and he must visit sin with wrath and tribulation, though it be forgiven. In fact, it is because sin is forgiven, and that thus the basis of salvation is laid, that God is so painstaking to make the most and the best of us.