Bob Wilkin
Executive Director
Grace Evangelical Society
I. INTRODUCTION
The doctrine of salvation, also known as soteriology—from the Greek word for salvation, sōtēria—typically is divided into five to ten major categories, including the Person of Christ, the work of Christ, eternal security, the terms of salvation, election, sanctification, and perseverance.
All treatments of soteriology begin with a discussion of the role of Christ in salvation.
Lewis Sperry Chafer, the founder and first president of DTS, has five sections in his volume on soteriology, and the first section is entitled, “The Savior.”1 That section takes up 154 of the 396 pages, or nearly 40%.
Bible.org suggests three sections: the nature of the atonement, the extent of the atonement, and the process of salvation (election, regeneration, conversion, union with Christ, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, glorification).2 The first two of those sections concern the role of Christ in salvation.
In Thiessen’s systematic theology, his first two sections (of ten) on soteriology, after an introductory discussion, are on the Person of Christ and the work of Christ.3
The Bible certainly centers on Christ, the Messiah, especially in its discussion of soteriology. For example, in John’s Gospel, the only evangelistic book in the Bible (see John 20:30-31), the Lord Jesus repeatedly said that whoever believes in Him will not perish but has everlasting life (e.g., John 3:16; 5:24; 6:35, 37; 11:26). Jesus Himself is the One who guarantees everlasting life to all who believe in Him for it.
In Galatians, in Paul’s defense of his gospel, he begins by talking about the grace of Christ and the gospel of Christ (Gal 1:6-9). Three times in Gal 2:16 Paul says that justification is by faith in Jesus Christ and not by the works of the law.
In Rom 3:21–4:25, Paul’s exposition on justification by faith alone, he repeatedly says that it is through faith in Jesus Christ that one is justified before God.
As we consider this vital topic, let us begin with a brief word about the words save and salvation.
II. A BRIEF WORD ON SAVE AND SALVATION
The Biblical doctrine of salvation concerns every way in which the Bible says that God saves people. This includes salvation from eternal condemnation, healing from illness, saving from deadly storms, delivering someone from his enemies, and delivering people from the deadly consequences of walking in the darkness. The doctrine of salvation is not exclusively the doctrine whereby God gives people everlasting life.
In the OT, 100% of the references to salvation and deliverance refer to deliverance of individuals and nations in this life.4 In the NT, 70% of the references to salvation and deliverance refer to deliverance in this life.5 Only in the NT do we find the words save and salvation used in reference to regeneration, and then only rarely.6
However, for the purpose of this article, we will discuss specifically one type of salvation, salvation from eternal condemnation. What is Christ’s role in people’s being saved from eternal condemnation?
III. THE PERSON OF CHRIST IS ESSENTIAL TO SALVATION
Some like to speak of the three aspects of Christ that are central to our salvation: His Person, His provision, and His promise.7
We will begin by considering the importance of the Person of Christ in our salvation.
There could be no salvation for sinful humans unless God provided a perfect Savior. Nothing less than perfection would do.
The OT sacrificial system required unblemished sacrifices. The OT sacrifices pointed to the coming Messiah: “And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God…” (Heb 10:11-12).
The OT priests stood. They offered sacrifices repeatedly. Christ offered one sacrifice for sins. Never to be repeated. Then He sat down.
The reason why Jesus’ one sacrifice was sufficient was because of His Person. He was the sinless sacrifice that all the OT sacrifices pointed to (“a shadow of the good things to come,” Heb 10:1).
Paul said, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21).
There could be no perfect Savior unless God Himself became a man, which He did.
The Lord Jesus is God (John 1:1). He has all the attributes of God: He is eternal, holy, righteous, good, just, loving, omnipotent, omniscient, and impeccable.
Impeccability means that Jesus was incapable of sinning both in His deity and in His perfect humanity and in His united Person. He not only did not sin. He could not sin. Many insist that He had to be able to sin in order for Him to be tempted (Heb 4:15). Charles Hodge is representative of the view of many,
If He was a true man, He must have been capable of sinning. That He did not sin under the greatest provocations; that when He was reviled, He blessed; when He suffered He threatened not; that He was dumb as a sheep before its shearers, is held up to us as an example. Temptation implies the possibility of sin. If from the constitution of his person it was impossible for Christ to sin, then his temptation was unreal and without effect and He cannot sympathize with his people.8
Hodges takes the opposite position, that Jesus could not sin:
Though unlike them He was without sin (cf. 7:26; 2 Cor. 5:21; 1 John 3:5), never responding wrongly to any of His temptations (nor could He, being God), yet as a man He could feel their reality (much as an immovable boulder can bear the brunt of a raging sea) and thus He is able to sympathize (sympathēsai, lit., “to feel or suffer with”) with their and our weaknesses. It may indeed be argued, and has been, that only One who fully resists temptation can know the extent of its force. Thus, the sinless One has a greater capacity for compassion than any sinner could have for a fellow sinner.9
Likewise, R. Carlton Wynne wrote at the Desiring God website: “Taking humanity to himself meant assuming a true human nature—with its creaturely mind, affections, body, and will—but one that, in perfect harmony with his deity, could seek nothing but wholehearted delight in the Father’s purposes (cf. John 6:38).”10
The following titles of Christ found in the NT show the importance of His Person in our salvation: the way, the truth, the life, the faithful High Priest, the Seed of the woman, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Holy One, the One who knew no sin, the Alpha and the Omega, and the Savior of the world.
People do not need to understand everything about the Person of Christ in order to have everlasting life.11 What they need to understand is that He is fully capable of giving everlasting life to all who believe in Him for it.
IV. THE WORK OF CHRIST IS ESSENTIAL TO SALVATION
Concerning that middle element, the provision of Christ, I prefer to refer to the work of Christ because His work was broader than His death on the cross for our sins.
His work includes His incarnation (John 3:16), His sinless life (2 Cor 5:21), the miracles He did (John 20:30), the teaching He gave (the Gospel of John), the suffering He underwent (Isaiah 53; 1 Pet 3:18), His death on the cross for our sins (John 3:14-15), His burial in a rich man’s tomb (Isa 53:9; Matt 27:57-60), His three days in Hades (Matt 12:40; Luke 23:43), His bodily resurrection on the third day (1 Cor 15:18-19), His post-resurrection appearances (1 Cor 15:5-8), and His ascension into heaven (Acts 1:9-11). All of that was essential for our salvation.
Jesus’ last words on the cross before He committed His spirit to the Father were “It is finished” (John 19:30). All throughout His ministry, He had spoken about the importance of His finishing the work the Father gave Him to do (John 4:34; 5:36; 17:4; 19:30). His whole life and ministry were pointed toward Calvary. But all that led up to the cross were also essential works of Christ for our salvation. Commenting on Heb 10:11-12, Bruce writes:
The Aaronic priests never sat down in the sanctuary; they remained standing throughout the whole performance of their sacred duties. In this our author sees a token of the fact that their sacred duties were never done, that their sacrifices had always to be repeated. In v. 1 the repetition of the ritual of the Day of Atonement “year by year” was mentioned; here, as in 7:27, the reference is to those sacrifices which were offered “day by day.” But whether the repetition was annual or daily, the main point is that repetition was necessary; not one of these sacrifices could remove sin or cleanse the conscience with permanent effect. The completion of one sacrifice meant only that a similar one would have to be offered in due course, and so on indefinitely; it was in keeping with this that the priests of the old order never sat down in the presence of God when a sacrifice had been presented to him.
But it was equally in keeping with the perfection of Christ’s sacrifice of himself that, when he had presented it to God, he sat down. No further sacrificial service can be required of the priest who appeared on earth in the fulness of time to put away sin and sanctify his people once for all. A seated priest is the guarantee of a finished work and an accepted sacrifice. The heavenly high priest has indeed a continual ministry to discharge on his people’s behalf at the Father’s right hand; but that is the ministry of intercession on the basis of the sacrifice presented and accepted once for all; it is not the constant or repeated offering of his sacrifice.12
Many point to Rom 5:10 to suggest that we are not saved by the death of Christ, but by His life. There Paul says, “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” But Paul is speaking about sanctification, about being saved from God’s wrath in this life (cf. Rom 1:18-32).13
In Eph 2:8-9, Paul uses a perfect tense to express the idea that regeneration is a past event with an abiding result: “by grace you have been saved through faith…” By contrast, in Rom 5:10, Paul uses a future tense: we shall be saved by His life. Hodges has shown that all the uses of sōzō and sōtēria in Romans refer to deliverance from the wrath of God in this life. Never in Romans do those words refer to regeneration.
While Rom 5:10 does not prove the point, it is true that no one could be saved by faith in Christ if Christ had sinned. His had to be an unblemished sacrifice (2 Cor 5:21: Heb 10:1-14). That is, He not only had to have died on the cross for our sins and risen from the dead, but He also had to have lived a sinless life.
It would be accurate to say that we are saved both by the life of Christ and by the death of Christ. His death on the cross was only effective because of His sinless life.
V. THE PROMISE OF CHRIST IS ESSENTIAL TO SALVATION
Not only did Jesus need to be the right Person and do the right works, but He also had to make the right promise. Without the promise of everlasting life, no one could be saved.
He stated the promise in verses such as John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47; 11:26; Rev 22:17.
In the NT this promise is called “the promise of life” (2 Tim 1:1; see also Gal 3:21; Titus 1:2) or “the word of life” (Acts 5:20; Phil 2:16; see also 1 John 1:1).
The promise is found in the OT as well, starting in Gen 3:15 and continuing in Gen 15:6. The Lord Jesus said the OT proclaimed that those who believe in Him have everlasting life (John 5:39-40). Hebrews 11 gives many examples of OT people who believed in Jesus for their eternal destiny. For example, Abraham “waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb 11:10). He knew he would one day be raised and would see the New Jerusalem. The Lord Jesus said, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day” (John 8:56).
Moses “esteem[ed] the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasure in Egypt, for he looked to the reward” (Heb 11:26). Only one who knew he would be in the coming kingdom could look forward to eternal rewards.
Some have suggested that one need not believe the promise of Christ in order to be born again. They suggest that faith in Christ’s Person and work is sufficient.
Morrison, for example, writes, “John 9:35-41 provides strong evidence that to believe in Christ is not to merely accept the proposition that Jesus gives eternal life but rather has as its object the Man Himself.”14 His statement may seem to imply that one must believe in the promise of everlasting life as well as the Person of Christ (“not to merely accept the proposition that Jesus gives eternal life…”). However, he goes on to say, “One may infer, of course, from the rest of John’s Gospel (e.g., John 6:47) that this man therefore had eternal life, but the fact remains that it is not clear that this man is at any point asked to believe a promise. Instead, he is asked to believe in a person.”15
Similarly, commenting on Paul’s sermon in Antioch, as recorded in Acts 13, Stegall says,
This passage does not tell us that “everlasting life” was necessarily even part of “the things spoken by Paul” (v. 45) that constituted “the Word of God” (v. 44) in his evangelistic message “on the next Sabbath” (v. 44). Though the Galatians clearly heard about “everlasting life,” it was only at the conclusion of Paul’s evangelism on the second Sabbath and only after they had already rejected the gospel (“the Word of God”) in verse 44.16
Others, however, recognize that belief in Christ’s promise is essential in order to be born again. In his book, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright, John Piper has a section which asks the question, “We Are Not Justified by Belief in Justification?”17 He quotes Wright as saying, “We are not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith. We are justified by faith by believing the gospel itself—in other words, that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead.”18 Piper continues,
This sounds right. Of course, we are not saved by doctrine. We are saved by Christ. But it is misleading because it leaves the meaning of “believing in the gospel” undefined. Believing in the gospel for what? Prosperity? Healing? A new job?…we will have to announce why this death and resurrection are good news for them (italics his).
Similarly, Hodges writes,
I now realize that no one is saved by praying a prayer. They are saved when they understand God’s offer of eternal life through Jesus and believe it. That’s when people are saved. And that’s the only time when people are saved. All of the excess baggage that we bring into our encounter with unsaved sinners is just that, excess baggage!19
VI. FIVE MAJOR VIEWS ON THE ATONEMENT
There are many views concerning why Jesus died on the cross for our sins. I will briefly outline five major ones.
Moral influence theory. Jesus’ death on the cross and His entire life are an example for us on how to live so that we might gain everlasting life. This is a form of works salvation.
Franklin Johnson summarizes the view in this way,
While the Christian world as a whole believes in a substitutionary atonement, the doctrine is rejected by a minority of devout and able men, who present instead of it what has often been called the “moral-influence theory.” According to this, the sole mission of Christ was to reveal the love of God in a way so moving as to melt the heart and induce men to forsake sin.20
Ransom to Satan. In this view, God had to pay Satan with the death of His Son in order to set people free from bondage to Satan and sin. This is another form of works salvation since the aim is moral reformation for salvation.
Ligonier ministries describes this view as follows: “One other view that has circulated in church history is that Christ’s death was a ransom paid to Satan. When Christ died, He paid a price to Satan in order to secure our release from bondage to Satan’s kingdom.”21 They go on to critique the view in this way: “The Bible does view the Atonement as a ransom paid (see Mark 10:45). But it is a ransom paid to God the Father. There is no negotiation between the Devil and the Lord for the release of the captives. Rather, we are redeemed by having Christ crush the head of the serpent after He pays the ransom to God.”22
Christus Victor. This means Christ, the Victor. In this view, Satan was not paid anything. However, similar to the previous view, Christ’s death defeated evil and set people free to live righteously. This too is another form of works salvation.
I should mention that while the three views above are way off regarding justification, they are on the right track concerning sanctification. The death of Christ does make freedom from slavery to sin a positional reality for all who believe in Jesus. It makes freedom from sin’s bondage a reality in the experience of every believer who is walking in the light and in fellowship with God.
But we are not born again by living a righteous life.
Anselm’s Satisfaction Theory. According to this view, the sinfulness of man is an injustice that must be dealt with in order to satisfy God’s justice. The death of Christ serves to satisfy God’s justice.
There are aspects of works salvation here as well, since one is not born again by believing in Jesus and thereby having God’s justice satisfied. The death of Christ makes it possible for people to live in such a way as to satisfy God’s justice. In a sense, this view sees Christ’s death as making us savable. But the condition for salvation and the nature of it were wrong.
Anselm believed that salvation began with baptism, and it was maintained by regularly partaking of the eucharist, as well as confessing one’s sins and doing acts of penance.
Penal Substitutionary Atonement. The Reformers, Calvin and Luther, developed a new theory, one that was related to Anselm’s view and was a modification of it. In this view, Jesus died in our place. The result is that humans are savable. But unlike Anselm’s view on how people were saved, this view teaches that people are saved by faith alone (though how they define faith varies greatly). Some who hold to substitutionary atonement believe that salvation cannot be lost.
The idea of substitution is found in the words for or in place of, huper and peri in Greek (“Christ died for our sins,” 1 Cor 15:3; 1 John 3:16) and ransom (“He gave His life a ransom for many,” Mark 10:45).
This last view is the view of most Evangelicals.
VII. UNLIMITED VS. LIMITED ATONEMENT (“L” IN TULIP)
An important issue in the death of Christ is whether He died for everyone (the doctrine known as unlimited atonement) or whether He died only for a select group of people (the doctrine which is called limited atonement).
Calvinists believe that Christ died only for “the elect.” Most of humanity was not chosen to have everlasting life; Christ did not die for most people.
There is a modified Calvinist view—that Christ died only for those who would one day believe that on the cross, He died in their place. In this view, one must believe not only that Christ died on the cross for our sins, but that He did so as our substitute. One who believes other views of the atonement would not be eligible for salvation. This too is limited atonement, though I have heard people swear that it is unlimited since Christ potentially died for all, even if His death actually counts only for those who believe in substitutionary atonement.
But that is exactly what limited atonement teaches: Christ potentially died for all, but He actually died only for the elect, and the elect are the only people who will be given what Calvinists call the gift of faith.
Many people wrongly think that if Christ died for all, then all would be given everlasting life. They wrongly think that the purpose of the shed blood of Christ was to save everyone for whom He died. God actually had many purposes for the shed blood of Christ.23 But none of those purposes were to save those for whom Christ died. God purposed that Christ’s blood makes everyone savable (John 1:29; 1 John 2:2). But whether anyone will be saved depends on whether he believes in Jesus for everlasting life.
The Scriptures clearly teach unlimited atonement. See John 3:16; 2 Pet 2:1; 1 John 2:2.
VIII. JESUS IS GOD’S GREATEST EVANGELIST
Alex MacDonald says, “Our Lord Jesus gave us the greatest example of preaching, but he also gave us the greatest example of evangelism.”24 Adrian Warnock agrees: “Jesus is the model evangelist, and we can learn from his example how to get caught up on his mission to seek and save the lost.”25 Both of those men use Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well in John 4 to prove their point. Zane Hodges’s first book, The Hungry Inherit, was devoted to that interaction as well.
Though not specifically using the expression God’s greatest evangelist, Hodges says that the message we should be proclaiming today is the message the Lord Jesus Christ gave to the woman at the well:
He wanted them [His disciples] to say “Come!” to everyone He sent them to and to broadcast far and wide the availability of His living water. That was the message of God’s Holy Spirit. That would be the message of the whole Christian church, Christ’s bride (Eph 5:25-32).26
Most evangelistic tracts and presentations are based upon a collage of verses drawn mainly from the NT epistles. Rarely do evangelistic presentations concentrate on the evangelistic ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. His evangelistic ministry has not received the attention that it deserves.
Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” He is the one who reveals God and God’s truth to us. Of special importance was His revealing God’s truth about everlasting life (John 6:68).
Zane Hodges wrote a booklet entitled, Jesus: God’s Prophet.27 He showed that all NT doctrine found in the epistles flows directly from the teachings of the Lord Jesus. That was true of the doctrine of salvation as well.
John 3:16 is still in effect today. So are the scores of verses in John’s Gospel where the Lord Jesus said that whoever believes in Him has everlasting life, will never perish, will never hunger or thirst, will never die spiritually, will never be cast out, and so forth.
Whatever the epistles teach, they do not contradict the words of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul tells us in Galatians that he received his gospel directly from the Lord Jesus. His was not some new message. His was the same message that Jesus preached.
Jesus is much more than the Savior. He is our Lord. He is our King. He is our soon-returning Judge. He is also our Teacher. He is the Light of the world. He is everlasting life.
IX. CONCLUSION
The Lord Jesus Christ is central to anyone’s gaining everlasting life. There could be no salvation apart from His incarnation, sinless life, substitutionary death, and bodily resurrection. And there could be no regeneration apart from His promise of everlasting life to all who simply believe in Him for it. For any human being to be saved requires the Person of Christ, the work of Christ, and the promise of Christ.
He is the object of saving faith. We are not saved by our works or by our faith plus our works. We are saved by believing in Jesus, the Giver, for the gift of God, that is, everlasting life (John 4:10, 14).
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1 Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, Vol. 3: Soteriology (Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 1948), 11-164.
2 Greg Herrick, “Soteriology: Salvation” at https://bible.org/seriespage/7-soteriology-salvation.
3 Henry Clarence Thiessen, Introductory Lectures in Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), 283-340.
4 Robert N. Wilkin, The Ten Most Misunderstood Words in the Bible (N.p.: Grace Evangelical Society, 2012), 36-40.
5 Ibid., 40-47.
6 See, for example, John 3:17; 5:34; 10:9; Acts 11:14; 13:26; 16:31; Eph 2:5, 8; 1 Tim 2:4; Titus 3:5.
7 Charlie Bing, “The Content of the Gospel of Salvation,” GraceNotes no. 40, available at https://www.gracelife.org/resources/gracenotes/?id=40&lang=eng. Last accessed June 29, 2022.
8 Cf. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2 (New York, NY: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 1873), 457. The book can be read online at https://www.google.com/books/edition/ Systematic_Theology/V7wim5btRzMC?hl=en&gbpv=1.
9 Zane C. Hodges, “Hebrews” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary, Vol. 2, edited by John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck (Grand Rapids, MI: Victor Books, 1985), 790, emphasis added.
10 “Could Jesus Have Sinned?” available at https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/could-jesushave-sinned. Last accessed August 24, 2022. Emphasis added. See also D. Blair Smith, “Was It Possible for Jesus to Sin?” at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/possiblejesus-sin//. Last accessed August 24, 2022.
11 Some suggest that one must believe in the deity of Christ to be born again. See, for example, Thomas L. Stegall, The Gospel of the Christ (Milwaukee, WI: Grace Gospel Press, 2009), 353-61, 540; J. B. Hixson, Getting the Gospel Wrong (N.p.: Xulon Press, 2008), 85-90. Precisely what must be believed about the deity of Christ to have everlasting life is not explained. It is hard to sustain this view in light of the fact that the apostles were born again before they believed in the deity of Christ. Belief in His deity should lead a person to believe in Him for the promise of everlasting life. Sadly, however, there are untold millions today who believe in the deity of Christ and yet who do not believe that everlasting life is a free gift received by faith alone, apart from works.
12 F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, rev. ed., (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990), 245.
13 See “Salvation by the Life of Christ” at https://activechristianity.org/what-does-it-mean-to-be-saved-by-the-life-of-christ-romans-510. Last accessed August 5, 2022. While not crystal clear, the author sees a second type of salvation in Rom 5:10: “In the first salvation we receive forgiveness for committed sins. The second salvation comes by walking in obedience to the faith, because it is written: Walk in the light while you have the light, that you may become sons of light. In the light is life, and in the light was life, and life is the light of man. Being a child of the light is the same as being a child of life.
14 Chris Morrison, “Hodges’ “Promise Only’ Gospel in Light of John 9:35-41),” 1. It is available at chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://cmmorrison.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/john-9-paper.pdf. Last accessed August 16, 2022.
15 Ibid., 14. In my commentary on John, I point to this very fact to suggest that the man born blind was already an OT believer before he discovered that Jesus is the Messiah he had already believed in for his eternal destiny: “However, unlike John 4 or the other evangelistic encounters in John’s Gospel, here Jesus never mentions everlasting life. To say the least, that is odd and should cause us to wonder why. Since we have no other evangelistic encounters in John where everlasting life is not mentioned by Jesus, it seems probable that this man is an OT believer, that is, one who previously had believed in the coming Messiah for everlasting life but who did not yet know that Jesus is the Messiah in whom he had already believed. If this is correct, it would mean that the man was already born again before he met Jesus, and that here is a Johannine example, like John the Baptist earlier (1:33, “And I did not know Him”), of an OT saint coming to believe that Jesus is the Messiah in whom he had already believed (cf. Luke 2:25-38 re. Anna and Simeon). The way he handled himself before his inquisitors sounds like a man who was an OT saint who already knew that he had eternal life by faith alone in the Messiah alone” (in “John,” The Grace New Testament Commentary, revised edition [Denton, TX: Grace Evangelical Society, 2010, 2019], 205).
16 Stegall, The Gospel of the Christ, 369.
17 John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 20.
18 Ibid.
19 Zane C. Hodges, “How to Lead People to Christ, Part 2,” JOTGES (Spring 2001): 17. The “excess baggage” of which Hodges spoke was things like asking a person to “pray a prayer, or make a decision for Christ, or do any of the many other things people often asked the unsaved to do” (p. 17).
20 Franklin Johnson, “The Atonement,” p. 1, available at https://goitrc.org/pdf/pdf_sermons/Sermon,ATONEMENT.pdf. Last accessed August 5, 2022.
21 “The Ransom Theory” (unnamed author) available at https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/ransom-theory. Last accessed August 5, 2022.
22 Ibid.
23 Bob Wilkin, “Benefits of Christ’s Blood: Restricted and Unrestricted” JOTGES (Autumn 2009): 3-10. Available online at https://faithalone.org/journal-articles/benefits-of-christsblood-restricted-and-unrestricted/.
24 “Jesus the Evangelist” at https://www.christianstudylibrary.org/article/jesus-evangelist. Last accessed August 5, 2022.
25 “Jesus the Great Evangelist: a sermon on John 4” at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/adrianwarnock/2014/02/jesus-the-great-evangelist-a-sermon-on-john-4/. Last accessed August 5, 2022.
26 Zane C. Hodges, The Hungry Inherit: Winning the Wealth of the World to Come (Corinth, TX: Grace Evangelical Society, 2016), 151, italics added.
27 It is available as a free e-book at https://faithalone.org/ebooks/jesus-gods-prophet/ and a paperback version is available at https://store.faithalone.org/shop/books/jesus-gods-prophet/.