Chapter 11
1 John 2:1–2; 4:14; John 1:29
John could have stopped. He had already written the comfort his readers needed. Christ "is the propitiation for our sins." That sentence, by itself, would have been enough to assure a small, troubled church. Their sins were covered. Their Advocate had paid the price. But John did not stop. He picked up his pen and added seven more words. Those words change everything: "and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world."1
Why the deliberate widening? What did John want us to be sure of? I have turned that question over in my mind for years. If the scope of Christ's saving work ended with the believing community, John had no reason to add those words. He could have closed the sentence at "our sins" and moved on. Instead, he reached past his readers and past every circle anyone could draw around them, all the way to the edge of the world. Not for ours only. Also for the whole world.
Here is the verse in full:
"My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." (1 John 2:1–2, ESV)
This is one of the clearest statements in the New Testament about how far the cross reaches. The word for "propitiation" (Greek hilasmos, "the sacrifice that turns away wrath and removes sin") is joined to the phrase "the whole world" (Greek holou tou kosmou).2 The sacrifice is not limited to believers. It covers the sins of the whole world. The question this chapter asks is simple: Does the propitiation actually reach as far as John says it does? And if it does, what happens to the world whose sin has been taken away?
The hope this book defends says yes. The Lamb of God really does take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The Father really did send the Son as the Savior of the world (1 John 4:14). And the propitiation for the whole world is not a gesture that mostly fails. It is the ground on which every person, in the end, is brought to saving faith in Christ.
To feel the force of 1 John 2:2, we need to read it inside the letter John was writing. First John is a pastoral letter. John wrote it to a small community shaken by false teachers who had recently left the group (1 John 2:19). These teachers denied that Jesus had come in the flesh (4:2–3). They also claimed a special knowledge of God while ignoring the basic command to love one another (2:4; 4:20).3 John's readers were rattled. They were unsure of themselves. They needed to know that their faith was real and that their sins were truly forgiven.
That is the setting in which John wrote 2:1–2. He was giving his "little children" assurance. He did not want them to sin, but if they did, they had an advocate (Greek paraklētos, "one called alongside to help"). That advocate is Jesus Christ the righteous. And the basis of His advocacy is not a feeling or a wish. It is a finished sacrifice: He is the propitiation (hilasmos) for our sins.4
Now here is what I find so striking. John was writing to comfort a specific group of believers about their own sins. He had every reason to keep the scope narrow. "He is the propitiation for our sins" would have been a perfectly complete sentence for his purpose. But right in the middle of a pastoral reassurance, John widened the lens. He added, "and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world."
The Deliberate Widening
John's phrase "not for ours only but also for the whole world" is not an accident of style. The Greek construction uses two markers of contrast: "not only" and "but also." This is a deliberate move. John is telling his readers: the sacrifice that covers your sins is bigger than you. It reaches to the whole ordered world (kosmos).5
The word hilasmos appears only twice in the New Testament, both times in 1 John (2:2 and 4:10).6 In 4:10, John writes: "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." The related verb hilaskomai ("to propitiate, to make atonement") appears in the Septuagint for the Day of Atonement sacrifices. There the blood of the offering covers sin and restores the relationship between God and His people.7 In the Old Testament background, this is not an abstract idea. It is the act of removing the offense that stands between a holy God and His people.
So when John says Jesus is the hilasmos for the sins of the whole world, the weight of the word matters. This is the sacrifice that removes sin. And John says it removes the sin of the whole world. Not just of believers. Not just of Israel. Not just of those who heard the gospel in this life. The whole world.
John himself reinforces this elsewhere. In 1 John 4:14 he writes: "And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world." Same author, same letter, same scope. Christ is the propitiation for the whole world, and the Father sent Him as the Savior of the world.8
The first thing to notice is the vocabulary John chose. Let me walk through the key terms.
The word "propitiation" (Greek hilasmos) is a sacrifice word. In the Greek Old Testament, the related hilastērion is the "mercy seat." This was the golden lid on the ark of the covenant. The high priest sprinkled blood on it during the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:14–15).9 Paul uses that same word in Romans 3:25. He says God put Christ forward as the hilastērion, the mercy seat, the place where wrath meets blood and sin is covered. So when John calls Jesus the hilasmos, he is not speaking loosely. He is saying: Jesus is the sacrifice that actually removes sin and turns away the wrath that sin provokes.
Now look at the scope phrase. John does not say "for many." He does not say "for the elect." He says "for the sins of the whole world" (peri holou tou kosmou). The word "whole" (Greek holos, "entire, complete") is added to "world" (kosmos). This is not a vague gesture. The addition of holos to kosmos strengthens the scope: the entire world, the complete world, the world without remainder.10
David Bentley Hart draws attention to the precision of the Greek. John writes that Christ "is atonement for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the whole cosmos" (peri holou tou kosmou).11 The word kosmos in John's writings is never a synonym for "the elect." John consistently sets the believing community apart from the world, as we will see. So the scope of this sacrifice is as wide as John says it is.
Plain Words
Propitiation (Greek hilasmos): A sacrifice that removes sin and turns away God's just anger against it. Think of it as the payment that settles the debt. Kosmos ("world"): The whole created order of humanity. In John's writings, it usually means the human world as distinct from those who already believe. Holos ("whole"): Complete, entire, without remainder.
Context matters. Remember, John's purpose in this letter is assurance. He wants his readers to know that their sins are forgiven, that they belong to God, and that the false teachers who left were wrong. So why, in a letter about assurance for believers, would John suddenly widen the scope to include the whole world?
I think the answer lies in what assurance actually requires. If the sacrifice of Christ only covers my sins because I happened to hear the gospel and respond in time, then my assurance rests on the accident of my circumstances. But if the sacrifice covers the sins of the whole world, then my assurance rests on the nature and scope of Christ's work itself. The ground beneath me is solid not because I got lucky but because the Lamb's sacrifice is big enough for everyone.
John widens the scope to comfort, not to create a false hope that everyone is already saved without knowing it. He widens the scope to show the size of the sacrifice. The propitiation is not a narrow remedy for a narrow group. It is a cosmic remedy for a cosmic problem.12 And if the remedy truly matches the disease in scope, then the larger hope follows: what the sacrifice covers, the Savior will, in the end, bring home.
George Sidney Hurd puts the logic plainly:
"But is it possible for Him to be called the Savior of all without actually saving all? What would we think of someone who called himself a lifeguard but only managed to save ten percent of those needing to be rescued?" George Sidney Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, ch. 1, "The Savior of the Whole World"
The question is not whether Jesus has the title "Savior of the world." Everyone agrees He does. The question is whether the title means what it says. If Jesus is the Savior of the world, does He save the world? Or is the title an overstatement, a courtesy name for someone who tried but mostly failed?13
One of the most important questions in this chapter is what John means by "the world" (kosmos). Some interpreters, especially in the Reformed tradition, argue that "world" in 1 John 2:2 means "people from every nation" or "the elect scattered throughout the world," not every individual person. I want to take that reading seriously, because it is the main way the text is kept from supporting the larger hope. But I also want to show why I think it fails.
Throughout John's Gospel and letters, the word kosmos is set in contrast with believers. The world is precisely the group that does not yet believe. Jesus says to His disciples: "If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (John 15:19).14 The disciples are not the world. They are chosen out of the world. The world is the larger group from which the believing community has been drawn.
This same contrast runs through 1 John. In 1 John 5:19, John writes: "We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." Obviously John is not saying the elect lie in the power of the evil one. He is drawing a line between "we" (the believers) and "the whole world" (everyone else).15
Andrew Hronich drives this point home with a piece of evidence that is hard to get around. He counts every occurrence of "world" in 1 John: twenty-eight times. Of those twenty-eight, twenty-six are used either in a comprehensive sense (for example, 2:17; 3:17; 4:1, 9) or to refer specifically to the world of the unsaved (for example, 2:15–16; 3:1, 13; 5:19). Not once does John use "world" to mean "the elect." Hronich concludes that it is "extremely doubtful" that 2:2 and 4:14 suddenly switch to that meaning.37
Hurd presses this point directly against the limited-atonement reading:
"If the authors of Scripture wanted to refer to the elect, 'world' would have been the least apt word to describe them. The elect in Scripture are seen to be distinct from the world, not synonymous with it." George Sidney Hurd, The Universal Solution, ch. 3
This is exactly right. In 2:2, "ours" refers to the believing community. "The whole world" refers to everyone else. The "not only ... but also" construction demands two distinct groups. If "the world" meant "the rest of the elect," the widening would be meaningless. John would be saying, "Not only for us elect, but also for the rest of us elect." That is not a widening at all.16
The Samaritans Got It Right
In John 4:42, the Samaritans at the well declare: "We know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world." These are not theologians parsing a system. They are outsiders who just met Jesus and recognized something enormous: He is not the Savior of Israel only. He is the Savior of the whole world. Hurd asks the right question: Are we to believe the Samaritans rejoiced because they realized Jesus was "the Savior of the world of the elect"?17 No. They recognized the scope of His mission as plainly as the words allow.
The whole-canon evidence runs in the same direction. John the Baptist does not say, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the elect." He says: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).18 The verb "takes away" (Greek airōn, a present participle) is active and ongoing. The Lamb is taking away the world's sin, not merely offering to take it away. And the scope is "the world," the same kosmos that John sets apart from believers.
Then there is John 3:16–17. Jesus says that God "so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." And then He adds: "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." The purpose of the sending is stated twice: not to condemn the world but to save it.19 If the world is not saved, the mission has not reached its stated goal.
Here is where the theological argument gets sharp. For centuries, a standard formula has been used to handle texts like 1 John 2:2. The formula says: Christ's sacrifice is "sufficient for all, efficient only for the elect." In other words, the cross has enough power to save everyone, but it only actually saves those who believe.20
I want to be fair to this formula. It is trying to affirm two things at once: the infinite value of the cross and the necessity of faith. Both are biblical concerns, and I share them. But I think the formula, when pressed, strains under the weight of what John actually says.
The problem is with the word "propitiation." A propitiation is not an offer. It is a completed sacrifice. When the high priest sprinkled blood on the mercy seat, the sin of the people was covered. The verb is past tense: the wrath was turned, the sin was removed, the relationship was restored. Now John says that this propitiation has been made "for the sins of the whole world." Not offered to the whole world. Not made available to the whole world. Made for the sins of the whole world.21
If the sins of the whole world have been propitiated, then what stands between the sinner and God? The sin has been dealt with. The wrath has been turned. The debt has been paid. Hurd captures the weight of this when he ties 1 John 2:2 to John 19:30:
Paid in Full
Gerry Beauchemin connects the dots between Christ's last words and John's commentary on them: Christ said "It is finished" (John 19:30), which means "paid in full." Then John, the very disciple who stood at the cross, writes: "He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world" (1 John 2:2). The sins of the whole world have been paid in full.22
Now, I agree with the tradition that no one experiences salvation apart from faith. This book has said so from the start (Chapter 1). No one is saved without personally trusting Christ. But the question is not whether faith is required. It is whether the sacrifice that covers all sin will, in the end, bring all sinners to faith. I believe it will. And that is exactly what makes 1 John 2:2 a hope text rather than a riddle.
Kenneth Keathley, writing from a Molinist perspective, makes the point that the Bible presents the atonement with a real distinction between provision and application. Christ's death provided atonement for every person. Its application comes through faith. Keathley calls this "singular redemption": a particular redemption that is universal in scope.23 I think Keathley is right about the distinction. Where I go further is in the conclusion. If God wills all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4) and has provided atonement for all (1 John 2:2), and if His purposes cannot be thwarted (Chapter 12), then the application will, in the end, reach as far as the provision.
So what does the propitiation for the whole world actually mean for the larger hope? Let me draw the threads together.
First, the sacrifice is real. This is not a God who waves sin away or pretends it never happened. Christ bore the wrath. He paid the price. The propitiation cost the blood of the cross. The hope this book defends is anchored in that blood, not floating above it.
Second, the scope is the whole world. John says so. John the Baptist says so. The Samaritans say so. The Father sent the Son as Savior of the world. The Lamb takes away the sin of the world. The propitiation covers the sins of the whole world. Every time John uses the word "world" in these texts, he means the same thing: humanity, the whole of it, including those who do not yet believe.24
Third, the sacrifice actually does what the verbs say. The Lamb "takes away" the sin. The propitiation "is" for those sins, not "might be" or "is offered as." The grammar is indicative, not subjunctive. The work is done.
Now, if the sacrifice is real, its scope is the whole world, and its verbs are accomplished rather than conditional, then the natural conclusion follows. The whole world will, in the end, receive the benefit of that sacrifice. Not automatically. Not apart from faith. But through the faithful, patient, relentless work of a God who has already paid the full price and who will not rest until every soul He paid for comes home.
Hurd puts it this way:
"If Christ is the propitiation, not only for us as the elect of this age, but also for the whole world, as John states, then we cannot reasonably insist that the atonement is limited. If He is the Savior of the world, taking away the sins of the world, then the salvation of the whole world was procured at the cross and not just that of a few elect." George Sidney Hurd, The Universal Solution, ch. 3
Hurd quickly adds the point that protects this claim from presumption: "No one has ever, nor ever will, experience salvation, reconciliation, justification, sanctification and glorification apart from repentance and faith in the finished work of the cross."25 The propitiation is not a bypass around faith. It is the ground on which faith is built. But the ground is big enough for everyone.
The reading I have just laid out is not mine alone. It stands in a long and growing line.
George Sidney Hurd, across three books, has argued that 1 John 2:2 is one of the clearest witnesses to a universal atonement in the New Testament. In The Triumph of Mercy, he lists the Johannine "world" texts side by side and asks whether a Savior who fails to save most of the world deserves the title. In The Universal Solution, he shows that the Calvinist attempt to read "world" as "the world of the elect" collapses under John's own usage. And in A Defense of Biblical Universalism, he answers De Young's treatment of these texts by pressing the "not only ... but also" construction: the contrast demands two groups, not one group described twice.26
Hunter Coates, in Grace Abounds, reads the Johannine texts as part of a unified biblical witness: the gift of salvation will be embraced by all, every knee will bow, and all will be reconciled to the Son. The theme, Coates writes, "is fluent throughout: Universal salvation."27 I appreciate Coates's willingness to treat these texts as a connected whole rather than isolated proof texts.
Andrew Hronich, in Once Loved Always Loved, comes at the question from the angle of limited atonement. If one denies that Christ died for every person, Hronich argues, one also denies that Christ fulfilled the law's demand to love one's neighbor as oneself. The second greatest commandment applies to all people without exception, and Christ claimed to have fulfilled the entire law (Matthew 5:17–18). A limited atonement therefore "disqualif[ies] Jesus as the perfect atoning sacrifice." Against Arthur Pink's claim that "our" in 1 John 2:2 means "Jewish believers," Hronich points out that 1 John was composed when the church already consisted largely of Gentile converts. And as we saw above, the twenty-eight uses of "world" in 1 John make the "elect" reading all but impossible.38
David Bentley Hart, in That All Shall Be Saved, lists 1 John 2:2 among the texts that plainly teach universal salvation. Hart renders it: Christ "is atonement for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the whole cosmos." He argues that the word kosmos in John is never a synonym for a subset of humanity. The accumulation of "all" and "world" texts across the New Testament, Hart says, forms a case that is hard to answer with anything less than the larger hope.28
Kirk MacGregor, from a Molinist angle, observes that 1 John 2:1–2 claims "the divine intent of Jesus' death was not merely to make atonement for the sins of believers but also to make atonement for the sins of every non-believer." He adds that this intent "would be evacuated of any substance if God did not also will for every non-believer to avail themselves of Christ's atonement."29 MacGregor's point is important: a universal atonement paired with a universal saving will points toward a universal result.
On the other side, Kenneth Keathley makes an important observation. Keathley is a non-universalist Baptist who holds to unlimited atonement. He notes that advocates of limited atonement must read 1 John 2:2 in an extremely strained way: "Christ is the propitiation for our [the elects'] sins, and not only for ours, but also for all the elect people in the world."30 Keathley is not arguing for universalism. But his observation matters: the limited-atonement reading of 1 John 2:2 forces the text to say something it clearly does not say. Even scholars who reject my conclusion agree that the scope of the atonement in this verse is unlimited.
Robin Parry, in The Evangelical Universalist, makes an observation about John's Gospel that bears directly on our text. Parry notes that "world" in John is not a neutral term. It is loaded. It refers to the sinful, rebellious human world that rejects God. And that is the very world God loves and sent His Son to save. Parry writes:
"In John's Gospel 'world' (kosmos) is not simply a neutral term but a loaded word that refers to the sinful and rebellious human world that rejects God. The world that God loves and sent his Son for (3:16) is the world that hates and rejects him." Robin Parry [Gregory MacDonald], The Evangelical Universalist, 3rd ed. (Cascade, 2012), p. 108
Parry goes on to note that Jesus dies to save all: not just His followers but also the whole world (John 3:16; cf. 1 John 2:2). The point is cumulative. The "world" in John's writings is always the world outside the believing community. It is the group that does not yet know Christ. So when John says the propitiation is "for the sins of the whole world," he is using the word the same way he always does.31
Arminians, Calvinists, and the Scope of the Cross
Here is what I find striking: Arminians, Calvinists, and universalists all agree that the cross has infinite value. Arminians and universalists agree that its provision is for all. The only question is whether the provision reaches everyone in the end. Hurd observes that both Arminians and Calvinists share one assumption the universalist does not: that salvation can only happen in this brief lifetime. Remove that assumption, and the unlimited atonement the Arminians rightly defend leads naturally to the universal conclusion.32
One more voice deserves mention. Michael McClymond, in The Devil's Redemption, argues that universalism across its history recurrently "eclipses grace." In his introduction, McClymond writes that the effort to extend grace to all "has repeatedly ended up compromising or even eliminating the notion of grace." What looks like "all grace," he says, turns out to be "no grace" when salvation becomes automatic or a matter of metaphysical necessity rather than a free divine gift.32b This is a serious charge, and I want to answer it here rather than wave it away. The propitiation of 1 John 2:2 is the answer to the eclipse-of-grace worry. The cross is real, costly, and bloody. The sin of the world was not waved away. It was paid for. If this is "eclipsing grace," then Paul eclipsed it too when he said the gift of God in Christ is "much more" than the trespass (Romans 5:15). A universalism that anchors itself in the cross does not eclipse grace. It magnifies it. The full answer to McClymond's charge is given in Chapter 29.
The strongest limiting reading of 1 John 2:2 comes from the Reformed tradition and is pressed by James De Young in Exposing Universalism. De Young treats 1 John 2:2 among the cluster of "all" and "whole" texts in chapter 9, arguing that "it is clear from the context that not 'all' are saved or ransomed until faith is exercised." He extends this argument in his discussion of the wider context of 1 John 1:5 through 2:2, where he turns the very letter that contains the propitiation text into a weapon against the universalist reading.33
De Young reads 1 John 1:5 through 2:2 as a warning against exactly the kind of claim universalists make. The three "if we say" clauses (1:6, 8, 10) name three false claims about sin. "There is no clearer text in the Bible, I think, that shows the seriousness of what it means to deny the full reality of sin." He concludes: without a true acknowledgment of sin, the propitiation of 2:2 cannot be received. "This is what UR [universal reconciliation] is and does."33b James B. De Young, Exposing Universalism, Epilogue
I want to take this argument seriously, because De Young is right about something important. Sin is real. Its denial is dangerous. And the propitiation of 1 John 2:2 only makes sense if there is real sin that needs to be propitiated. This book has never denied that. What De Young misses is that the universalism this book defends does not deny the reality of sin. It insists on it. The cross is necessary precisely because sin is real. The propitiation is needed because the wrath is real. The larger hope is not that sin does not matter. It is that the propitiation for sin reaches the whole world.
De Young's argument has two parts. The first says that "the whole world" does not mean every individual. It means "people from every nation" or "the elect scattered throughout the world." On this reading, John is telling his readers that the propitiation extends not just to them but to Gentile believers everywhere. The scope is ethnic and geographic, not individual.
I have already given the main answer above, but let me press it once more. John's own usage rules this out. In 1 John 5:19, "the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." The same phrase (Greek holos ho kosmos) refers to the unbelieving world. John is not saying the elect lie in the power of the evil one. He is saying that everyone outside the church does. So when the same author uses the same phrase two chapters earlier, the meaning is the same: the world outside the church.34
"World" Means "the Elect Everywhere"?
This reading asks us to believe that John used "the whole world" to mean "the elect in all nations." But consider what happens to John 3:16 under this reading: "God so loved the world of the elect that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish." If the world already is the elect, who is the subgroup "whoever believes"? As Hurd asks: if "the world" equals "believers," then the sentence collapses into nonsense.35 Jesus Himself distinguishes His disciples from the world in John 15:19: "I chose you out of the world." The world is the larger group. The elect are the smaller group called out of it.
The second part of De Young's limiting reading says that propitiation is only applied to those who believe. He argues from the broader context of 1 Timothy that "faith is assumed throughout 1 Timothy, in every chapter, as the basis for the readers' place and standing before God." And he applies the same logic to 1 John: the propitiation is there for those who confess their sins (1 John 1:9), and without faith, Christ's death cannot be "appropriated as a ransom."33c Christ's sacrifice is sufficient for all but efficient only for those who exercise faith. Therefore, the universal scope of the propitiation is merely potential, not actual.
A variation of this reading treats "the whole world" as a statement of ethnic breadth rather than individual reach: Christ died for all kinds of people, "all without distinction" rather than "all without exception." D. A. Carson applies this reading to 1 John 2:2. He argues that it means God died "for blacks as well as whites, women as well as men, for the educated as well as the ignorant, for Arabs as well as for Jews." Stephen Jonathan, in Grace Beyond the Grave, notes that this reading, while "plausible" at first glance, faces a serious problem. "All without distinction" is not what the text says. John wrote "the whole world," not "every tribe." And the context of 1 John makes the individual reading far more natural than the ethnic one.39
I grant the premise: faith is the means of application. This book has never said otherwise. No one receives the benefit of the cross apart from personal trust in Christ (Chapter 1). But the premise does not reach the conclusion the critic draws. To say that application comes through faith is not to say that most of the world will never come to faith. The argument of this book is that God will bring every person to saving faith, in His time, by His wisdom, through every means at His disposal. He will do so in this life and, for those who have not yet believed, beyond it (Chapter 12; Chapter 24).
Think of it this way. A wealthy benefactor pays the tuition for every student in a university. The only condition is that each student must walk into the registrar's office and accept the gift. We would not call the gift "merely potential" because nobody has yet walked in. The gift is real. The payment is made. The only question is whether each student will eventually come and accept it. Now imagine that the benefactor also happens to be a perfectly loving Father who knows each student by name. He will knock on every door until the last one opens. The question answers itself.36
A third objection sometimes raised is that 1 John 2:2 only tells us about the provision of the atonement, not about its results. The cross has unlimited scope, but that does not mean everyone is saved.
Here is where I think the verb matters. John does not say that Jesus is the "potential propitiation" for the sins of the whole world. He says Jesus "is" (estin, present tense) the propitiation. The sin of the world has been dealt with. The wrath has been turned. The price has been paid. If the sin of the world has truly been removed by the Lamb of God (John 1:29), then the only barrier left is the sinner's own willingness to receive what has already been won for them. And that is a barrier that the God of all mercy, armed with all knowledge and all patience and all love, will not leave standing forever.
Here is what we have seen. John says that Jesus is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. He says the Father sent the Son as Savior of the world. The Baptist says the Lamb takes away the sin of the world. Jesus Himself says He came not to condemn the world but to save it.
The scope could not be clearer. The sacrifice is real, costly, and bloody. And the scope is the whole world, meaning all of humanity, including those who do not yet believe. Join this to the hope texts we have already seen: the two Adams (Chapter 4), God all in all (Chapter 5), the reconciliation of all things (Chapter 6), every knee bowing (Chapter 7), the drawing of all (Chapter 8), the Savior of all (Chapter 9), and mercy on all (Chapter 10). The picture becomes very hard to deny. The cross is not the limit of the hope. It is the hope's foundation.
The Hope Rests on the Cross, Not Apart from It
The universalism this book defends is anchored in the blood of Christ. The propitiation is real: Christ bore the wrath of a holy God against sin. He did not simply sympathize with sinners. He paid their debt. Any universalism that skips the cross, that treats sin as unreal, or that says God simply forgives without cost, is not the hope of 1 John 2:2. That verse puts the cross at the center and then widens the scope to the whole world. The hope is that the sacrifice reaches as far as it says it does, not that the sacrifice is unnecessary. This is the line between biblical universalism and the sentimental counterfeit (Appendix B).
The cumulative case keeps growing. The texts keep saying the same thing in different ways. The cross is for all. The sacrifice covers all. The Savior saves the world. And I believe these texts mean what they say.
I want to close with a picture. Imagine a person, far from God, carrying a weight of sin they cannot lift. They do not know that someone has already paid their debt. They have never heard, or they heard and turned away. But the debt is paid. The propitiation is made. The Lamb has taken their sin away. Now imagine the God who paid that price. He is not sitting in heaven waiting for the sinner to stumble in. He is seeking. He is knocking. He has all of eternity and all of love and all of wisdom. And the price is already paid.
That is the hope of 1 John 2:2. Not that sin does not matter. Not that faith is unnecessary. But that the propitiation for the whole world will, in the end, bring the whole world home. This is the character of the God we meet in these texts. And the character of God is the strongest argument of all (Chapter 2; Chapter 30).
↑ 1. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).
↑ 2. The Greek text reads: kai autos hilasmos estin peri tōn hamartiōn hēmōn, ou peri tōn hēmeterōn de monon alla kai peri holou tou kosmou. The word hilasmos (ἱλασμός) denotes a sacrifice that removes sin and turns away the divine wrath provoked by it. See BDAG, s.v. hilasmos.
↑ 3. The false teachers are usually identified as proto-Gnostics or Docetists who denied the reality of the incarnation. See Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, Anchor Bible 30 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982), ch. 1. Hurd notes that John's nine "by this we know" tests were directed against these false teachers, not as general criteria for judging fellow believers. George Sidney Hurd, The Universal Solution, ch. 5.
↑ 4. The word paraklētos (παράκλητος) is used in John 14:16, 26; 15:26; and 16:7 for the Holy Spirit, and in 1 John 2:1 for Christ. In a legal context it carries the sense of "defense attorney" or "advocate." See BDAG, s.v. paraklētos.
↑ 5. The double contrast marker (ou ... monon alla kai, "not only ... but also") is a standard Greek construction for expanding scope. John uses it here to ensure the reader does not limit the propitiation to the believing community. See Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), on adversative and additive conjunctions.
↑ 6. The noun hilasmos (ἱλασμός) appears in the New Testament only at 1 John 2:2 and 4:10. The related noun hilastērion (ἱλαστήριον, "mercy seat" or "place of propitiation") appears in Romans 3:25 and Hebrews 9:5. The verb hilaskomai (ἱλάσκομαι, "to propitiate, to make atonement") appears in Luke 18:13 and Hebrews 2:17.
↑ 7. See Leviticus 16:14–16; the LXX uses exilaskomai (ἐξιλάσκομαι) and hilastērion (ἱλαστήριον) for the Day of Atonement ritual. The concept is that the blood of the sacrifice covers the sin of the people and restores them to right standing before a holy God.
↑ 8. The phrase "Savior of the world" (sōtēra tou kosmou) in 1 John 4:14 echoes John 4:42, where the Samaritans use the same phrase. In both cases the scope is explicitly universal: the kosmos, not a subset of it.
↑ 9. The hilastērion (mercy seat) was the gold lid on the ark of the covenant, the place where God's presence dwelt between the cherubim. On the Day of Atonement the high priest sprinkled blood on the mercy seat to atone for the sins of Israel (Lev 16:14–16). Paul's use of hilastērion in Romans 3:25 says that Christ is the new mercy seat, the place where God's wrath meets sacrificial blood and sin is dealt with once for all.
↑ 10. The adjective holos (ὅλος, "whole, entire, complete") modifying kosmos rules out any partial reading. John does not say peri tou kosmou ("for the world") but peri holou tou kosmou ("for the whole world"), adding holos to reinforce the completeness of the scope.
↑ 11. David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). Hart lists 1 John 2:2 among the New Testament texts whose "plain sense" teaches the salvation of all. His rendering of the Greek, given in his own translation of the New Testament, reads: "And he is atonement for our sins, and not only for ours, but for the whole cosmos." See also Hart, The New Testament: A Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), ad loc.
↑ 12. The pastoral purpose of the widening is important. John is not adding a theoretical footnote. He is assuring his readers that the sacrifice they trust in is not small, local, or fragile. It is world-sized. Their comfort rests not on their own strength but on the vastness of Christ's atoning work.
↑ 13. George Sidney Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy: The Reconciliation of All through Jesus Christ, 2nd ed. (2018), ch. 1, "The Savior of the Whole World."
↑ 14. John 15:19 (ESV). The contrast here is stark: the disciples are "not of the world" because Jesus "chose [them] out of the world." The kosmos is the larger group; believers are the smaller group drawn from it.
↑ 15. 1 John 5:19 (ESV). The phrase ho kosmos holos ("the whole world") here uses the same adjective holos as in 2:2. In both cases the scope is universal: the world that is not the believing community.
↑ 16. George Sidney Hurd, The Universal Solution: Presenting Biblical Universalism as the Solution to the Debate between Calvinists and Arminians (2016), ch. 3. Hurd's argument runs: John always contrasts the elect with the world; therefore "world" in 1 John 2:2 cannot mean "the elect." See also the observation that 1 John 5:19 uses the same phrase to describe those who are not believers.
↑ 17. Hurd, The Universal Solution, ch. 3. The rhetorical question is effective: the Samaritans recognized Jesus as "the Savior of the world" (John 4:42), not "the Savior of the world of the elect."
↑ 18. John 1:29 (ESV). The present participle airōn (αἴρων, "the one taking away") describes an ongoing action. The Lamb is actively removing the sin of the world. The verb airō can mean "to take up, take away, remove." See BDAG, s.v. airō.
↑ 19. John 3:16–17 (ESV). Verse 17 states the purpose of the incarnation in negative and positive terms: not to condemn the kosmos but to save it. The intended outcome is the salvation of the world.
↑ 20. This formula is often attributed to Peter Lombard (Sentences, III, dist. 20) or to a later scholastic summary of his thought: Christ's death is sufficiens pro omnibus, efficax pro electis ("sufficient for all, effective for the elect"). It became a standard framework in Reformed theology for affirming the infinite value of the cross while limiting its intended application. See Kenneth Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2010), ch. 7.
↑ 21. The preposition peri (περί) with the genitive in 1 John 2:2 means "concerning" or "for," indicating the object of the sacrifice. Combined with the indicative estin ("he is"), the verse states a present reality, not a hypothetical possibility: Christ is the propitiation for these sins.
↑ 22. Gerry Beauchemin, Hope Beyond Hell: The Righteous Purpose of God's Judgment (Olmito, TX: Malista Press, 2007), section "Paid in Full." Beauchemin links John 19:30 ("It is finished"), John 1:29 ("The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world"), and 1 John 2:2 as a connected witness: the cross accomplished the removal of the world's sin in full.
↑ 23. Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty, ch. 7. Keathley calls his position "singular redemption": Christ's death provided atonement for each and every individual, but the benefits are enjoyed only by those who repent and trust in the Savior. The distinction between provision and application is the key.
↑ 24. The Johannine usage of kosmos is remarkably consistent. In John 1:10, "the world did not know him"; in 7:7, "the world ... hates me"; in 14:17, "the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive"; in 15:18, "the world hates you"; in 17:9, "I am not praying for the world" (at that moment, in that prayer); in 1 John 2:15, "Do not love the world"; in 5:19, "the whole world lies in the evil one." In every case, "the world" is set against the believing community, not identified with it.
↑ 25. Hurd, The Universal Solution, ch. 3. The full sentence reads: "Obviously not all appropriated the benefits of the cross two-thousand years ago when He said, 'it is finished.' No one has ever, nor ever will, experience salvation, reconciliation, justification, sanctification and glorification apart from repentance and faith in the finished work of the cross."
↑ 26. See George Sidney Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy, ch. 1; The Universal Solution, ch. 3; and A Defense of Biblical Universalism: A Biblical Response to James B. De Young's "Exposing Universalism" (2019), ch. 2, "The Reconciliation of All."
↑ 27. Hunter Coates, Grace Abounds: A Holistic Case for Universal Salvation (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2024), part 2, "A Quasi-Pauline Universalism." Coates treats the Johannine and Pauline texts as a connected witness to the same conclusion.
↑ 28. Hart, That All Shall Be Saved. Hart's collection of "all" and "world" texts is one of the most comprehensive in the recent literature. His point is cumulative: no single verse settles the question, but the sheer number and clarity of these texts makes any non-universalist reading of the New Testament strained.
↑ 29. Kirk R. MacGregor, Molinist Philosophical and Theological Ventures (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023), section "Scriptural Data on God's Universal Salvific Will." MacGregor emphasizes that the addition of holos ("whole") to kosmos in 1 John 2:2 underscores that the divine intent of Jesus' death extends to every non-believer.
↑ 30. Kenneth Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty, ch. 7. Keathley reports Robert Lightner's observation and adds: "Lightner points out that 'whoever' is used at least 110 times in the New Testament and always with unrestricted meaning." Keathley's own conclusion is that the atonement is unlimited in provision but limited in application to believers.
↑ 31. Robin Parry [Gregory MacDonald], The Evangelical Universalist, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012), p. 108. Parry observes that John uses kosmos as a loaded term for the sinful, rebellious human world. He adds: "In this regard we observe that Jesus dies to save all: not merely his followers but also the whole nation of Israel (11:50) and the whole world (3:16; cf. 1 John 2:2)."
↑ 32. Hurd, The Universal Solution, ch. 3, "Limited Atonement Necessitated by an Erroneous Presupposition." Hurd argues that both Calvinists and Arminians share the assumption that salvation can only be received before physical death. He calls this "the erroneous presupposition" that forces both systems to limit the reach of texts like 1 John 2:2. On the postmortem-opportunity case, see Chapter 24.
↑ 32b. Michael J. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), Introduction, §0.10, "A Theological Irony: Universalism's Eclipse of Grace." McClymond writes: "The great irony of Christian universalism lies in its eclipse of grace. The effort to extend grace to all has repeatedly ended up compromising or even eliminating the notion of grace. What seems to be 'all grace' turns out on inspection to be 'no grace.'" He argues that in the "spark-of-the-divine" teaching, "salvation occurs according to nature, not according to grace. No distinct or particular work of God is required for salvation." McClymond's concern is serious and partly right: any universalism that bypasses the cross does eclipse grace. But the universalism of 1 John 2:2 is anchored in a real propitiation, a costly sacrifice. The fuller answer to this charge belongs to Chapter 6 and Chapter 29.
↑ 33. James B. De Young, Exposing Universalism: Its Source, History, and Influence on Modern Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock / Resource Publications, 2018), ch. 9, "The Appeal to Texts with 'All' and 'Whole,'" pp. 165–90. De Young treats 1 John 2:2 among a cluster of universalist-cited texts. His governing argument across these texts is that "it is clear from the context that not 'all' are saved or ransomed until faith is exercised." He applies the same logic to Colossians 1:20, 2 Corinthians 5, Romans 5:18, and 1 Corinthians 15:22, arguing that in every case the immediate context conditions the universal language on the exercise of faith. For 1 John 2:2 specifically, he reads "the whole world" not as a statement of individual scope but of ethnic or geographic breadth.
↑ 33b. De Young, Exposing Universalism, Epilogue, "The Seriousness of Denying the Reality of Sin Against God." De Young quotes 1 John 1:5–2:2 in full and argues that the three "if we say" clauses (1:6, 8, 10) describe what universalists do: deny the full reality of sin. His conclusion is that without such acknowledgment, "there can be no fellowship with God" and no appropriation of the propitiation. The argument is carefully constructed and deserves the honest answer this chapter gives: the biblical universalism defended here does not deny the reality of sin; it insists on it.
↑ 33c. De Young, Exposing Universalism, ch. 9. De Young's argument is that the "all" texts (including 1 Tim 2:3–6; 4:10; Col 1:20; Rom 5:18; 1 Cor 15:22) must be read in their wider epistolary context, where faith is consistently presented as the condition for receiving the benefits of Christ's death. He notes that 1 Timothy contains a "two-fold emphasis on faith": one set of texts commends faith, and another warns of those who have abandoned it. He writes: "The only way that the latter warning makes any sense is that faith is absolutely required in order that God may become one's Savior, for Christ's death to be appropriated as a ransom (payment)." The same logic applies to 1 John: confession of sin (1:9) and faith in the Advocate (2:1) are the means by which the propitiation is received. This book agrees that faith is the means of reception; it disagrees only about whether all will, in the end, come to that faith.
↑ 34. The argument from internal consistency is strong. The same author, writing in the same letter, uses the same phrase (holos ho kosmos / holou tou kosmou) to describe two things: the scope of the propitiation (2:2) and the domain of the evil one (5:19). Since the latter clearly means "the whole unbelieving world," the former most naturally does too.
↑ 35. Hurd, The Universal Solution, ch. 3. Hurd observes that reading "world" as "the elect" in John 3:16 creates a logical problem: if "world" equals "the elect," then "whoever believes" is a subset of the elect, and the sentence reduces to a tautology ("God so loved the elect that whoever among the elect believes will not perish").
↑ 36. The analogy is imperfect, as all analogies are. The difference is that the divine "benefactor" has infinite patience, perfect knowledge of each person, and the ability to present the most persuasive appeal possible to each heart, without coercion. On middle knowledge and optimal grace, see Chapter 12 and Chapter 29.
↑ 37. Andrew Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved: The Logic of Apokatastasis (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2023), ch. 3, "Does God Desire All Men to Be Saved?" Hronich counts twenty-eight occurrences of "world" (kosmos) in 1 John and notes that twenty-six of them carry either a comprehensive sense or the specific sense of "the world of the unsaved." He concludes: "This makes it extremely doubtful that 2:2 and 4:14 refer only to 'the elect.' If 1 John is a catholic epistle, then it is most likely that 'our' refers to Christians in general, whereas the 'world' refers to those outside the church."
↑ 38. Hronich, Once Loved Always Loved, ch. 3. Against Arthur Pink's claim that "our" in 1 John 2:2 means "Jewish believers" (see Pink, 1 John 2:2, pamphlet), Hronich responds: "There is no reason at all to assume that 1 John is addressing partisan Jews. As one of the last New Testament epistles, 1 John was composed during a time when the church largely consisted of Gentile converts." Hronich further argues that denying the universal extent of Christ's atoning love is tantamount to denying that Christ fulfilled the law's requirement to love one's neighbor, and thus "disqualifying Jesus as the perfect atoning sacrifice."
↑ 39. Stephen Jonathan, Grace Beyond the Grave: Is Salvation Possible in the Afterlife? (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2014), pp. 99–100. Jonathan notes that D. A. Carson challenges 1 John 2:2 and related texts (1 Tim 2:3–4; 2 Pet 3:9; Titus 2:11) by arguing that they teach God's love is for "all without distinction" rather than "all without exception." Jonathan notes that advocates of wider hope theology favor unlimited atonement, "recognizing that Christ died for the whole world and not for a specific group of people." See also the discussion of atonement scope in James Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation After Death (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021), pp. 88–90, where Beilby observes that 1 John 2:2 "clearly and deliberately expand[s] the intent of the atonement beyond the circle of believers."