Calvinism and the Sins that Christ did NOT Atone For

by Antonio da Rosa

I was responding to a comment on a thread on my other blog tonight when it struck me.

To the Traditionalist, there is a list of sins, that if someone commits them, then there is no way that person can be a truly regenerate person.

The list may vary from Calvinist to Calvinist, but there is one sin, inparticular, that would make it on all of their lists:

Apostasy

All Calvinists would say that any body who apostasizes from the faith cannot be a truly born-again person and will end up in the Lake of Fire.

Think about this for a moment.

Since, in the estimation of the Traditionalist, only the elect will be saved, when we add into the equation the Perseverance of the Saints, we are faced with an interesting thought:

There is a list of sins that Jesus in no way could have practically propitiated the Father for, died for.

Since Christ died only for the elect, and the elect cannot apostasize, Jesus could not have died for the sin of apostasy. He did not die for the sin of apostasy, because no elect person can apostasize and stay saved!

The Traditionalist says that Christ's death is an actual satisfaction for all the elect's sins. If the elect can't apostasize, then Christ didn't die for the sin of apostasy!

It is in this way that the Traditionalist has put his qualifiers on Christ's blood. Not only have they limited the extent of Christ's death only to the elect, but they must necessarily limit the breadth of that death to exclude the list of sins, specifically that of apostasy.

They may say, well Christ died for all the elect's sins but the elect can't apostasize.

If Christ died for sin as a whole and in general, then apostasy would have to be included in it. Apostasy is a sin! Therefore Christ must have propitiated the Father concerning the specific sin of apostasy.

Yet the Traditionalist will say that apostasy negates the faith that the apostate once held, therefore is a deal-breaker. The only way they can guard from the charge that the apostate lost his salvation is to say that he had a merely spurious faith. This, too, is a man made doctrine.

The bottom line is that if Christ died for sin (period), apostasy would have to be included in that scheme, and therefore, Jesus would have had to die for apostasy in the elect!

If Jesus died for the sin of apostasy, why would such a sin negate someone's eternal standing before God? If Jesus died for all sins, then the only logical answer from the Traditionalist would have to be that Jesus did not die for the sin of apostasy. For if Jesus died for all sin, apostasy being a specific under that banner, and the believer gone apostate WOULD STILL BE UNDER THE BLOOD of CHRIST!

If a believer commits apostasy, and Jesus died for all sin (apostasy being one), then Jesus' death propitiated completely for that sin of apostasy, and the apostate is still under the blood of Christ and still has the declaration of justification (although he will be under the chastening and discipline of the Lord as well!)

But in the Traditionalist religion, which is substantially less realistic than the Bible itself, Christ's death cannot atone for the sin of apostasy. It is a deal breaker, and the one who once believed but now apostasized has lost his salvation (how else are we supposed to look at it?).

Your thoughts?

Antonio da Rosa