Is Christ The Saviour Of All Men? Series

The problem again to me is obvious. The Christian cannot be right and the atheist right at the same time. Either God exists or He does not. God’s existence is not determined by whether a person believes He does or not.

If someone tells me that they do not believe that I exist I do not cease to exist based on their believe. The believe system, or lack there of, of the UU is not only faulty, but illogical.

The name Unitarian itself points to a belief in god. Not the God of the Bible mind you. Unitarianism historically has denied the triune nature of the God of Scripture. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. A Unitarian believe states that there is no Trinity. Unitarianism is the belief in the single personality of God, in other words Jesus was not God, and niether is the Holy Spirit.

There are other unitarian groups. JW would be one that comes to mind. While historically unitarianism was a heresy of Christianity it had its roots in the Christian faith. Because of the liberal nature of the movement they have, as is the case in Oneonta, moved far to the left of anything resembling Christianity.

I promise we are going to get back to verse. The second word of the Unitarian Universalism is the one we are going to apply to our verse. As far as the Unitarian Universalism goes they would define universalism as the believe that everyone will receive salvation in whatever form their “path of truth” leads them to.

There are however what some would call "Christian Universalism" this would be a believe that all of mankind will ultimately be saved through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Faith itself is not necessary for salvation. It makes the claim that God’s attributes of love, sovereignty, justice, etc., require that all people be saved and that there is no eternal punishment. Salvation is not from hell, but from sin.

It is this "Christian Universalism" that we are dealing with today, because the folks that hold to this would look to passage such as 1 Tim. 4:10 in support of their view.

There argument would be as follows, when 1 Tim. 4:10 states that “God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe.” Paul is teaching that God is in fact the Saviour of all men and therefore all men must be saved. In order to be a Saviour you must save.

So these folks look to 1 Tim. 4:10 and a couple of other select passage and make the argument that God is going to save everyone. Faith in Christ is not a prerequisite for eternal life, everybody wins. As I stated part the argument is based on the fact that God is love, and if God is love He would not, nor could He actually send anybody to hell.

I should make mention, that just as with the other views we will be dealing with not all who call themselves Christian Universalists would hold to all this. There are different degrees of Christian Universalism. In fact many folks are semi-Universalists in that they believe that pretty much everybody goes to heaven, hell is reserved that who are really bad, like Hitler or Stalin.

So then is this what Paul means? Is the Holy Spirit saying in 1 Tim 4:10 that all mankind will be saved regardless of their faith in Christ? Is the atoning work of Christ on the Cross applied to all mankind regardless of faith?