The Other 14 Passages

 

1Timothy 3:16

1. This is a four statement summary of Christ’s humiliation and exaltation (a sing. subject with four 3rd sing. verbs).
2. In support of UOJ the subject of the second statement is asserted to include Jesus and those he substituted for. This interpretation is, in effect, another example of changing a pronoun (!) and would require that the 2nd verb form be made plural OR in the succeeding phrases all would ascend into heaven.
3. In the acts of Christ’s exaltation he is triumphing but he is not substituting for all people. 

1 Timothy 4:10 

1. That God “is the Savior of all men” does not assert that he already has saved all men. It stipulates that he has done everything necessary to save every human being. However, he has also stipulated that those who do not accept his salvation in faith are not saved.
2.  Paul indicates this fact by adding “(Savior), especially of those who believe.” I suggest that the sense is “(Savior), specifically of those who believe.”

Luke 23:43

1. When Jesus prayed on the cross, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they have done,” it is a request that God apply the Gospel promises (he who believes is saved) even to those who committed these grievous sins against the Son of God. It is not an arbitrary declaration of forgiveness on unbelievers. (Jesus always prayed in full accord with God’s will. Cp. the prayer in Gethsemane.)

John 1:29

1. The main verb is a present imperative; and the participle (‘taking away’) is also present. The ‘taking away’ follows the general principles of the Gospel, e.g. “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.”
2. This is a gnomic statement (i.e. subject = God; verb = present tense) which expresses “what God does do,” not what God did do!  Cp. “God loves a cheerful giver.”

Romans 4:4-5 and 5:6

1. This is another gnomic statement. Through the preaching of the Gospel God does save godless sinners. If he didn’t do that, no one could or would be saved. Every believer was at some time a lost and condemned sinner.

1 John 2:2

1. The “satisfactory payment” (i.e. the redemption) is applied by John first to believers and then to the world of sinners. Clearly it is legitimate to apply what is true for all (“He died for all”) to any group within the “all” (believers, Michiganders, members of WELS, us). 

Col 2:13-14

1. WELS ESSAY: “But when Paul speaks of forgiveness he ties it not to the personal regeneration or quickening that a believer has experienced but to the once-for-all act of Jesus on the cross, by which he canceled the condemnation of the law for all mankind, ‘nailing it to the cross.’ Here Scripture identifies forgiveness with the cross, not with faith.”  
2. This argument is based on the English punctuation, not on the structure of the Greek sentence. In Greek the “forgiving,” the “canceling,” and the “nailing” are all grammatically related to the main clause which is “God made (the Colossians) alive in Christ.” So the blessings apply to believers, not to “all.”

Colossians 1:19-22

1. Issue: In support of UOJ the aorist infinitive ἀποκαταλλάξαι (“to reconcile”) is parsed as an accomplished fact. 
2. MV: “God was pleased;” Aor. inf. expresses purpose or intention, NOT accomplished fact – the Aor. points forward to a discrete act (i.e. the Aktionsart of the Aor.)  This idiomatic use of the aorist occurs an average of two times per chapter throughout the entire NT.

Col 1:13-14 & Eph 1:7

1. “… in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins …” is parsed as an appositive – thus making redemption and forgiveness synonymous.
2. I suggest that this is asyndeton, merely placing two items in a series together without a conjunction. A quick review of the two chapters shows that the words seem to be having difficulty in keeping up with St. Paul’s thoughts. There are other asyndeta in these chapters (e.g. relative clauses). 
3. Redemption and forgiveness are closely related but they are not interchangeable, as an appositive would suggest.

Heb 9:12 & 10:10

1. These two verses clearly present redemption. However, in my full presentation I include an article in which the term “objective justification” in applied to these verses.  Apparently that is a way in which pastors are deflecting the meaning of the term “objective justification” from the meaning that some emphatically assert, i.e., the actual forgiveness of unbelievers, i.e., the forgiveness of everyone.