Lord’s Day Quote: John Owen

If the death and oblation of Jesus Christ (as a sacrifice to his Father) doth sanctify all them for whom it was a sacrifice; doth purge away their sin; redeem them from wrath, curse, and guilt; work for them peace and reconciliation with God; procure for them life and immortality; bearing their iniquities and healing all their diseases; – then died he only for those that are in the event sanctified, purged, redeemed, justified, freed from wrath and death, quickened, saved, etc.; but that all are not thus sanctified, freed, etc., it is most apparent: and, therefore, they cannot be said to be the proper object of the death of Christ.  The supposal was confirmed before; the inference is plain from Scripture and experience, and the whole argument (if I mistake not) solid)…

And though perhaps the word many itself be not sufficient to restrain the object of Christ’s death unto some, in opposition to all, because many is sometimes placed absolutely for all, as Rom 5:19, yet these manybeing described in other places to be such as it is most certain all are not, so it Christ, John 10:15; the “children of God that were scattered abroad,” chap 21:52; those whom our Savior calleth “brethren,” Heb 2:11 “the children that God gave him,” which were “partakers of flesh and blood,” verses 13, 14; and frequently, “those who were given unto him of his Father,” John 17:2, 6, 9, 11, who should certainly be preserved; the “sheep” whereof he was the “Shepherd, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,” Heb 13:20; his “elect,” Rom 8:33; and his “people,” Matt 1:21; farther explained to be his “visited and redeemed people, Luke 1:68; even the people which he “foreknew,” Rom 11:2; even such a people as he is said to have had at Corinth before their conversion; his people by election, Acts 18:10; the people that he “suffered for without the gate, that he might sanctify them,” Heb 13:12; his “church, which he redeemed by his own blood,” Acts 20:28, which “he loved and gave himself for” Eph 5:25; the “many whose sins he took away, Heb 9:28, with whom he made a covenant, Dan 9:27.  Those many being thus described, and set forth with such qualifications as by no means are common to all, but proper only to the elect, do most evidently appear to be all and only those that are chosen of God to obtain eternal life through the offering and blood-shedding of Jesus Christ.  Many things are here excepted with much confidence and clamour, that may easily be removed.  And so you see the end of the death of Christ, as it is set out in the Scriptures.

John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ.