Did Christ die only for those who will be saved?

The short answer Settled

No. He died for the whole world. He is the propitiation for believers' sins and for the sins of the whole world. He gave Himself a ransom for all and tasted death for everyone. That does not mean everyone is saved: the one who does not believe is condemned already.

The whole world

John writes to believers, "My little children," and tells them, "we have an Advocate with the Father" (1 John 2:1). Then he says of Christ: "He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world" (1 John 2:2). "Ours" are the believers John is writing to. "The whole world" reaches past them.

John uses the same words later in the same letter, and there they plainly do not mean believers: "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one" (1 John 5:19).

John the Baptist said it on the day he pointed Jesus out: "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).

All, and everyone

Paul asks for prayer "for all men" (1 Timothy 2:1), because God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4). Then he says of Christ, "who gave Himself a ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:6). Nothing in the passage narrows the all of the ransom from the all men of the prayer.

Hebrews says it with one word: Jesus, "by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone" (Hebrews 2:9).

Bought, and still lost

Peter warns of false teachers "who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction" (2 Peter 2:1). Of the same men he says that for them "is reserved the blackness of darkness forever" (2 Peter 2:17). The Lord bought them, and they are lost. So He did not die only for those who will be saved.

For the world, received by believing

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). God sent Him "that the world through Him might be saved" (John 3:17). Then the next verse divides that same world in two: "He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already" (John 3:18).

Christ died for the whole world, and what His death provides is received by believing in Him. A lifeboat sent for every passenger on a sinking ship was sent for each of them, including the ones who refuse to climb in. How a person receives it is the next question.

The usual objection

Many Christians hold that Christ died only for those God chose to save. They reason that His death actually paid for the sins of everyone it was for. If it paid for the sins of someone who is then punished in the lake of fire, those sins would be punished twice, or His death would have failed for that person. On this view world and all mean people of every nation and kind, not every person. They point to the verses where He lays down His life "for the sheep" (John 10:15) and gave Himself "for her," the church (Ephesians 5:25).

Scripture says the very thing this reasoning says cannot happen: the Lord bought false teachers for whom "the blackness of darkness forever" is reserved. Nor can "the whole world" mean only the chosen of every nation, since John sets it beside believers as more than them, and uses it again for the world that lies under the wicked one. The verses about the sheep and the church are true, but none of them says He died for them alone. Paul wrote that Christ "loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20), and no one takes that to mean for Paul alone.

The words behind it