A Ransom for Everyone

Paul moves from defining the mediator’s person to describing his work. This brings us, as any discussion about salvation must bring us, to the cross of Calvary. There Jesus Christ “gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Tim. 2:6). This is where Paul’s argument has been leading all along. The church prays for everyone because there is one God for everyone—a God who wants everyone to be saved—and because there is one mediator for everyone—a mediator who gave himself as a ransom.

The fact that Jesus “gave himself” speaks to the sacrificial nature of his death on the cross. His crucifixion was a voluntary offering, a willing sacrifice. No one took his life from him; he laid it down of his own accord (John 10:18).

The fact that Christ did this for others speaks to the substitutionary nature of his death. Jesus died in our place. His blood was the atonement for our sins. This doctrine of the substitutionary atonement has largely been forgotten in the contemporary church. George Lindbeck, a Lutheran theologian who teaches at Yale, complains that “even those who regard themselves as faithful conservers of the trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy of the ancient creeds have largely abandoned traditional Western atonement language, and with it, talk of salvation through Christ’s death on the cross has weakened.” Yet the substitutionary nature of Christ’s death is clearly taught here and everywhere else in the Scriptures.

The work of Christ on the cross is further described as a “ransom.” This rich biblical term refers to the release of a captive by the payment of a price. When Jesus died on the cross, he was making an exchange for sin. It was not a price paid to the devil (as some of the early church fathers taught), but a payment made to satisfy the justice of God. The reason Christ could pay the price for our sins is the reason already mentioned: he is the mediator. He had to be God as well as man in order to pay the ransom. This was perhaps best explained by Anselm of Canterbury, who said that salvation “could not have been done unless man paid what was owing to God for sin. But the debt was so great that, while man alone owed it, only God could pay it, so that the same person must be both man and God. Thus it was necessary for God to take manhood into the unity of his person, so that he who in his own nature ought to pay and could not should be in a person who could.” This is what Jesus did when he died on the cross: he paid the price that only man could owe and only God could pay.

Jesus made this payment in a timely fashion. This seems to be the point of Paul’s next phrase: “the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Tim. 2:6). The Revised English Bible puts it like this: “revealing God’s purpose at God’s good time.” At just the right time (see Rom. 5:6–8; Gal. 4:4), Jesus died on the cross to demonstrate the love of God for the sinful world.

The various aspects of ransom are helpfully summarized in a sermon by Charles Spurgeon:

When a prisoner has been taken captive, and has been made a slave … it has been usual, before he could be set free, that a ransom price should be paid down. Now … by the fall of Adam … we were by the irreproachable judgment of God given up to the vengeance of the law; we were given into the hands of justice; justice claimed us to be his bond slaves forever, unless we could pay a ransom, whereby our souls could be redeemed.… We were … “bankrupt debtors”; … all we had was sold … and we could by no means find a ransom; it was just then that Christ stepped in … and, … in the stead of all believers, paid the ransom price, that we might in that hour be delivered from the curse of the law and the vengeance of God, and go our way clean, free, justified by his blood.

When Paul speaks of Christ as a ransom for all men, yet another theological difficulty is raised. This verse seems to teach a universal atonement, which is the Arminian position: Christ died for each and every soul who ever lived. The difficulty is that other Scripture passages teach a more definite atonement. This is one of the “Five Points of Calvinism,” the “L” in “TULIP.” The “L” stands for “limited atonement,” which is perhaps better expressed as “definite atonement.” It means that when Jesus paid for our sins he knew what he was paying for, and for whom, and he actually paid for it. He did not die simply to make salvation possible, but to make salvation actual for those whom the Father had given him (see Matt. 1:21; John 10:11, 14–15; 17:9; Eph. 5:25).

The question is this: when the Bible says Christ died for “all men,” does it mean that he atoned for the sins of each and every human being who ever lived? The answer is “no.” To understand this, it helps to know that “all” does not always mean “each and every single one.” Sometimes “all” means “all kinds.” For example, in his account of the last week of Jesus’ earthly ministry, Luke tells us that “in the morning all the people came to him in the temple to hear him” (Luke 21:38). Does this mean that each and every inhabitant of Jerusalem heard Jesus every morning at the temple, including the tens of thousands of pilgrims who were there for Passover? Rather obviously, the word “all” is being used in a looser sense to refer to people in general.

That seems to be the way “all” is used in 1 Timothy 2. The phrase appears not only in verse 4 (“who desires all people to be saved”) and verse 6 (“a ransom for all”), but also in verse 1 (“prayers for all people”). In the case of verse 1, the Scripture does not command every Christian to pray, name by name, for every individual in the entire world. This would be a practical impossibility. Rather, Christians are to pray for all kinds of people.

This also helps explain what Paul meant when he said that God wants “all men” to be saved. According to Calvin, “the apostle’s meaning here is simply that no nation of the earth and no rank of society is excluded from salvation, since God wills to offer the gospel to all without exception.” (This is the “better solution” promised earlier; see p. 65.)

In the same way, Jesus paid a ransom for all kinds of people. He does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, ethnicity, or economic status. As Hendriksen helpfully explains, he did not die “one by one for every member of the entire human race, past, present and future, including Judas and the antichrist.” Rather, Christ died for “all men regardless of social, national and racial distinctions.” Whatever neighborhood you come from, Christ is the Savior for you.

Calling Jesus a ransom for all men is something like calling your local physician the town doctor. In a small town, he is the only doctor there is. When you see him on the street, you say, “There goes our doctor.” This does not necessarily mean that we are presently going to him for treatment. Whether or not he turns out to be our doctor depends on whether or not we get sick, and whether we are willing to go to him when we do. But he is still the town doctor.

Jesus is like the town doctor. He is the Savior of the world. He is accessible to everyone. He has promised to save anyone who comes to him in faith and repentance. But the fact that his death is a ransom does not mean that our own sins have been paid for. Whether we go to him for salvation or not depends on whether or not we realize that we need to be saved, and whether we are willing to go to him when we do. But whether we go to him or not, he is still the Savior of the world, “who gave himself as a ransom for all.”

Once it is understood that “all” means “all kinds” rather than “each and every,” we can reconcile what Paul said to Timothy with what Jesus said to his disciples: “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Paul is not saying anything more than Jesus said. A ransom for many is a ransom for all when “all” means “all kinds.”

 Ryken, P. G. (2007). 1 Timothy. (R. D. Phillips, D. M. Doriani, & P. G. Ryken, Eds.) (pp. 67–71). Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing.