[CONTINUED FROM HERE]

Murray asks, “Did Christ come to make the salvation of men possible, to remove obstacles that stood in the way of salvation, and merely to make provision for salvation? Or did he come to save his people?”[Redemption: Accomplished & Applied, p. 63] Now this question has plenty of teeth in it when used against Arminians, who do not believe that God infallibly and monergistically saves whom He wills to save. They believe that who is saved and who is not is a contingent matter as far as God is concerned. He can only offer up His Son and hope for the best. But this is not the issue among predestinarians. If God is sovereign, then a work which makes provision for salvation does not in any way mean that salvation is any less certain for those whom God has determined to save.

Nor is it self-evident that “merely” making salvation possible is some sort of insult to Christ. To see this we need only change one word in Murray’s question: Did Christ come to make the justification of men possible, to remove obstacles that stood in the way of justification, and merely to make provision for justification? Or did he come to justify his people? According to Murray, Christ made justification possible; it is made actual in time by faith [Ibid, p. 128]. Yet in what sense are individuals saved before they are justified? It simply does not seem possible. Furthermore, any attempt to solve this issue by distinguishing the “objective” work from the “subjective” seems to make personal justification a mere realization of what has already taken place.