The idea from which the reference to “the many” arises, however, is a very different one: Christ did not die for a few but for many, for a large multitude. He gives his life as a ransom for many; he sheds his blood for many; he will make many righteous. It is not a handful but many who by one man’s obedience will be made righteous [Rom. 5:19]. Scripture is not afraid that too many people will be saved. Therefore, based on that same consideration, it says that God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked and that he wants all humans to repent and be saved, that Christ is the expiation of and has given his life for the world, and that the gospel must be preached to all creatures. But when universalists deduce from this that the atonement is completely universal, they run afoul of both Scripture and reality, for the two seem to vie with each other in teaching that not all but only many learn of the gospel and attain genuine repentance. In all these passages, therefore, we are encountering not “the will of God’s good pleasure,” which is unknown to us and neither can nor may be the rule for our conduct, nor an “antecedent will,” which is anterior to the decision of our will and oriented to it, but the “revealed will,” which tells us by what standard we are to conduct ourselves in the new covenant. It gives us the right and lays on us the duty to bring the gospel to all people without exception. For the universal offer of grace we need no other ground than this clearly revealed will of God. We no more need to know specifically for whom Christ died than we need to know specifically who has been ordained to eternal life. The calling indeed rests on a particular basis, for it belongs to and proceeds from the covenant, but it is addressed—in keeping with God’s revealed will and with the inherently all-sufficient value of Christ’s sacrifice—also to those who are outside the covenant in order that they too may be incorporated into that covenant and in faith itself receive the evidence of their election.
In the second place, Scripture implies that the sacrifice and intercession of Christ, hence also the acquisition and application of salvation, are inseparably connected. The sacrifice is the basis for Christ’s intercession; the scope of the latter, accordingly, is as extensive as that of the former. Limborch therefore recognizes that “the intercession is not an act distinct from the sacrifice in and of itself insofar as it [the intercession] is accomplished in heaven.” If then the intercession is particular, as it is (John 17:9, 24; Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25; 1 John 2:1–2), so is the sacrifice. Limborch, opposing this position, indeed cites Luke 23:34, but Jesus prays here not for the salvation of his enemies but only for the nonimputation of the appalling crime that they, in their ignorance, were committing when they crucified the Messiah. There is similarly an inseparable connection between the acquisition and the application of salvation. All the benefits of the covenant of grace are linked (Rom. 8:28–34) and find their ground in the death of Christ (Rom. 5:8–11). Atonement in Christ carries with it salvation and blessedness. For Christ is the head and believers are his body, a body that receives its growth from him (Eph. 4:16; Col. 2:19). He is the cornerstone, and we are the building (Eph. 2:20–21). He is the firstborn, and we are his brothers (Rom. 8:29). Believers, accordingly, have objectively died, been crucified, buried, raised, and seated in the heavens with and in him. That is, the church is not an accidental and arbitrary aggregate of individuals that can just as easily be smaller or larger, but forms with him an organic whole that is included in him as the second Adam, just as the whole of humankind arises from the first Adam. The application of salvation must therefore extend just as far as its acquisition. The application is comprehended in it and is its necessary development.
This, for that matter, is true in the nature of the case. If Jesus is truly the Savior, he must also really save his people, not potentially but really and in fact, completely and eternally. And this, actually, constitutes the core of the difference between the proponents and the opponents of particular satisfaction (atonement).
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 3: Sin and Salvation in Christ, trans. John Bolt and John Vriend (Baker Academic, 2006), 466.
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