Are the "Non-Elect" Really "Lost"?

Jesus confessed that He had come to earth "to seek out and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10 NRSV, emphasis added). Who are "the lost"? This question is suspect for at least one main reason: "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23 NRSV). The "lost," then, would presumably comprise all sinners who have or ever will have been born. But is this a logical deduction from a system such as Calvinism? 

Because of Calvinism's presupposition that God has unconditionally elected only some unto faith and salvation, this hermeneutic obligates proponents of the system to interpret some passages in a narrow sense, perhaps more narrow than those texts will allow. 

For example, Christ was prophesied as Savior: "for he will save his people from their sins" (Matt. 1:21, emphasis added). Who are "his people"? For Calvin, the only logical and viable answer is the Church -- those whom God has allegedly unconditionally elected.¹ However, this presupposition, if carried out logically and consistently, will pose numerous problems. 

John explains that Christ came to His own people, and His own people did not receive Him (cf. John 1:11). If Jesus' "people" comprise those whom God has unconditionally elected unto faith and salvation, then, according to John, the unconditionally elect did not receive Christ. But if Calvinists confess that at John 1:11 the referent is the Jewish people, but at Matthew 1:21 the referent is "the unconditionally elect," then how are we to know when and when not to make such implications?

The truth of the matter is that Christ's "people," at both passages, referred to the Jewish people: He came to them and they did not receive Him. Compare a small sampling in the following:

• "the chief priests and scribes of the people" (Matt. 2:4 NRSV)
• "a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel" (Matt. 2:6 NRSV) 
• "He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God" (Luke 1:16 NRSV)
• "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because he has come to help and has redeemed his people" (Luke 1:68 NET)
• "unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe" (John 4:48 NASB, with 1 Cor. 1:22)
• "I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!" (Rom. 11:1 NRSV, emphasis added; cf. Rom. 9:3; 11:2, 14)

While not all references to "people" refer to the Jewish people in particular (cf. John 12:32; 1 Cor. 5:9, 10; 2 Cor. 4:15; Gal. 6:10), the only way to substantiate any claim that certain references to "His people" refer to the unconditionally elect is to impose such a claim on the scriptures themselves. (The same principle would hold true regarding the word "world" or "whole world": the words cannot refer to "the world of the unconditionally elect" without causing numerous interpretative problems.)

The text of Matthew 1:21 is prophetic for Israel. The Christ was sent by the God of Israel as their Deliverer, their Savior, their Lord. Jesus will "save His people," and the immediate referent is the Jewish people, not the Gentiles, nor some unconditionally elect group.

The Jewish people had "lost their way," so to state, in their relationship with God. One can certainly refer to them as "lost." The parable of the Prodigal Son demonstrates this reality: Israel, the son of God, was "lost and is found" . . . was "dead and has come to life" through union with Christ (cf. Luke 15:24, 32). Jesus came "to seek out and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10), and "the lost" includes all Jewish people.

But "the lost" also refers to the Gentiles. The Greek word for "lost" refers to being away from, being cut off entirely, being destroyed, cancelled out or removed: figuratively lost by experiencing a miserable end (link). The apostle affirms the lostness of the Gentiles by referring to them as being without Christ, alienated from the citizenship of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (Eph. 2:12). Hence the Gentiles, apart from union with Christ, are just as lost as the Jews.

Gentile believers are "grafted in" to the Jewish Tree of Salvation, if you will, by the grace of God through faith in Christ. Gentiles are like a wild shoot, not of the original branches of the Jewish Tree of Salvation, who have been granted the privilege to take part in God's offer of salvation by grace through faith in Christ Jesus (Rom. 11:17, 20, 22, 30). In Christ, the two peoples -- Jews and Gentiles -- have been united (Eph. 2:14, 15, 16). Jesus came to preach peace to the Gentiles, those who were "far off," and to the Jewish people, those who were "near" (Eph. 2:17).  

In Calvinism, logically speaking, what can be said of the non-elect -- those whom God has not unconditionally chosen for faith and salvation? If Christ has come to "seek out and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10), and God sent Christ only to die for the unconditionally elect, then, logically, or rather, consistently, the non-elect are not really lost. Christ will only die for and rescue "the lost." If the non-elect are those for whom Christ did not die, having had no interest in rescuing them by grace through faith, then they must not be lost. After all, one only seeks to find that which has been lost; one only saves whatever needs saving. 

If the non-elect are not lost, then what is their status? In Calvinism, the non-elect are not savable, they are not loved by God in any redeeming sense, nor were they ever conceived of by God as objects of His grace. Therefore, when the apostle Paul teaches that God was in Christ reconciling "the world" to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19), "the world" is required a referent to "the unconditionally elect," an interpretation not given in any one of our Lexicons, no, not one.² 

I argue in this manner from a logical perspective because of the implications of being lost. Since every single individual in "the world," who has ever been or ever will be born, is a sinner then every single individual is lost in sin. As a matter of fact, BDAG, in the 7b offering for meaning of "the world," kósmos, states, "the world, and everything that belongs to it, appears as that which is hostile to God, i.e. lost in sin, wholly at odds with anything divine, ruined and depraved" (emphasis added).³ Therefore, the world, meaning every single sinner who exists in the world, is lost in sin.

If Christ Jesus came into the world to "seek out and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10), and every individual who has ever been or ever will be born is lost, then Christ has come as Savior to all people without distinction (1 Tim. 4:10). This biblical teaching is affirmed by all Classical Arminians and Wesleyans.

If Christ Jesus came into the world to "seek out and to save the lost," which in Calvinism refers to the unconditionally elect, then the non-elect are not lost. Whatever category one wants to place them in, "the lost" is not an option, for Christ came only to seek and to save the unconditionally elect: i..e, the lost.

Yes, we all know that Calvinism lays claim in naming all persons as sinners and lost. But noting Calvinism's many inconsistencies with regard to Christ's accomplished work and mission in the world through the ministry of the Holy Spirit cannot be ignored. Either Christ, like His Father, wants all to be saved (John 1:4, 7, 9; 12:32; 1 Tim. 2:4; 4:10), because all are lost, or only the alleged unconditionally elect are lost, placing the alleged "non-elect" in a completely other category entirely. 

The truth of the matter is that "God was pleased to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching" (1 Cor. 1:21 NET, emphases added). Scripture nowhere asserts that God was pleased to save an alleged unconditionally elect group (the notion is not even implied in all of Scripture). What pleased God was to save anyone who would by grace trust in His Son Christ Jesus.

We trust the reason being that God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4), as Scripture explicitly and undeniably affirms; because He is not pleased with anyone perishing everlastingly (cf. Ezekiel 18:23; 33:11), and certainly not by a mere decree, which would be illogical and gratuitously inconsistent of His constant, uniform, and coherent nature. 

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¹ While Calvin admits that "the whole human race is devoted to destruction" and is lost in sin, he also admits: "He shall save his people from their sins. The first truth taught us by these words is, that those whom Christ is sent to save are in themselves lost. But he is expressly called the Savior of the Church" (link). Calvin and Calvinists need to be corrected here. Yes, God through Christ is the Savior of His Church; but Christ is also explicitly named "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29), and "the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe" (1 Tim. 4:10 NRSV). The consistent Calvinistic tendency to restrict the offer of salvation to an alleged "unconditionally elect" is predicated upon a hermeneutic; it is logical within its own system, but inconsistent and errant from all opposing presuppositions. Hence when words and phrases such as "world, "whole world," and "all people" are read, with regard to the extent of the atonement, such must be restrictively interpreted and referred to "the unconditionally elect." This problem is emphasized in the following footnote and in the tenor of the post itself.    

² Terry Miethe comments: "Again, this is an important assertion. The question is Where does the burden of proof lie? Douty mentions the following works: Trench's Synonyms of the New Testament, Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, Vincent's Word Studies in the New Testament, Robinson's A Greek and English Lexicon of the New Testament, Thayer's A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Souter's Pocket Lexicon of the Greek New Testament, Berry's Interlinear Greek-English New Testament, Arndt-Gingrich's A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Abbott-Smith's Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Tasker's New Bible Dictionary, Everett F. Harrison in Baker's Dictionary of Theology, and John D. Davis in his Dictionary of the Bible (both Harrison and Davis list John 3:16 as referring to mankind, though both are Presbyterians)." Not one of these works, including the premier Greek-English lexicon, BDAG, lists "the world of the unconditionally elect" as a definition for the phrase "the world." See Terry L. Miethe, "The Universal Power of the Atonement," in The Grace of God and the Will of Man, ed. Clark Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany Publishers, 1995), 77.

³ A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, third edition (BDAG), revised and edited by Frederick William Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 562.