# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1928_S30
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30 Proceedings of the thirty-first convention

words Heb. 9:28: "So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." "The
sins of many," not: the sins of all. But let us look at these passages quite
without bias. What is said is that Jesus gives his life for many. Does
Scripture say thereby that he does not give it for all? That does not lie in the
words. "Many" is not used here in contrast to "all" but in contrast to "few."
Christ goes into death, not for one, not for few, but for many; that is the
sense. That the host of those for whom he suffers and dies is great is to be
emphasized. We say of a pastor, for example: In his life he has comforted many
penitents [confessants]. Do we mean to say thereby that he has not comforted
all the penitents who were entrusted to him? Surely not, but only that the
number of his penitents was great. The cited passages adduced by the Calvinists
therefore lack all probative force for their doctrine.

The truly crushing weight of the Scripture passages on the universal character
of the work of Jesus many Calvinists try to escape by saying: Yes, the death of
Christ has taken place for all, but it is not effective for all. They want to
distinguish between the sufficientia and the efficacia of the death of Christ.
Christ's work, they say, is indeed sufficient for all, but only for the elect is
it an effective death. In this way, as Quenstedt rightly reproaches them, they
play with terms (ludunt terminis), they want to carry on both shoulders, to
maintain the Calvinist doctrine of the validity of the death of Jesus for the
elect alone and yet at the same time also to accept the Scripture passages on
the universality of the reconciliation. The distinction they make has absolutely
no basis in Scripture. As far as the reconciliation is concerned, it is
exactly as perfect, as sufficient, as effective, as powerful for those who are
lost as for the elect. Christ has satisfied God's righteousness completely with
respect to all men, whether they are believers or unbelievers, elect or those
who plunge themselves into ruin. There is no degree here, no gradation, no more
or less. Jesus bore and atoned for the sins of Saul and of Judas just as well
as those of David and of Peter. Let us by no means rob the poor troubled sinner
of the divine comfort of Scripture by the assertion: Yes, Christ has indeed
borne your sins, but whether in an effective way, that we do not know.

My brethren, it is a glorious doctrine that we may draw together from Scripture
here, the doctrine of the universal validity of the sacrifice of Jesus. It
supplies us with a firm, objective ground of hope, that is, a ground that is
not at all dependent on our own position, our own conduct or feeling. God is
reconciled: so it resounds into the world. That is simply a fact. That holds
for the people who live in the time of the New Testament, but just as much for
those who walked on earth before Christ's birth. It holds for poor and rich,
high and low, pious and godless, believers and unbelievers, the blessed in
heaven and the damned in hell. Forgiveness is there; nothing in heaven or on
earth can shake that; to it we can point all the tempted, all poor sinners, and
there they find comfort for their tormented heart.

Yes, reconciliation has taken place for all. But unfortunately not all men are
saved. That does not come from the fact, as we have now seen sufficiently, that
the work of reconciliation, the reconciliation obtained by Christ,