[CCWoody]

I will not venture to affirm, but I do suggest that the devils in hell are not capable of so great a stretch of criminality as is involved in the rejection of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Here lies the highest love. The incarnate God bleeds to death to save men, and men hate God so much that they will not even have him as he dies to save them. They will not be reconciled to their Creator, though he stoops from his loftiness to the depths of woe in the person of his Son on their behalf. This is depravity indeed, and desperateness of rebellion. God grant you may not be guilty of it.

[Mat_Helm]

Dieing He destroyed our death. Rising He restored our life. Lord Jesus come in glory!

[Dakota gal in Seattle]

Christ died for me. That is all I need.

[White Mountain]

I thought I would note for the record that we have passed two chronological milestones this Groundhog Day, in the AM and again in the PM, one of which, 2/2/2 2:22:22, comes only once a century. The other, just two minutes before, 2/2/2002 2:20:02, will never come again.

[streetpreacher]

See this article ( http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/742654/posts?page=2 ) by Piper from World, "Faith Alone". He alludes to the passage in Romans 4:5, "To the one who does not work but trusts Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness". I thought it tied in nicely with Spurgeon's theme of Christ dying for the ungodly.

I'm still looking at Calvinism, not sure about Limited Atonement. But if Christ "died for the ungodly" and also "justifies the ungodly", then who are the "ungodly" that Christ died for... the elect? Or else wouldn't all of the ungodly be justified = universalism?

- A former (until recently) unconverted Arminian

[Mockingbird For Short]

...and He died for all, that they who live should not longer live for themselves but for Him who died and rose again for their behalf.2 Cor. 5:15

I am a small part of the "all" so I can say with assurance that He died for me, bless Him. I spent at least 10 years of my life trying to make sense of certain Calvinistic doctrines including limited atonement, but sense and rationality would not fit into these doctrines well, so I left them to focus on Christ Himself and those things which Paul referred to as "the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ." However, I'm sure that some day it will all be understood... and Christians will stop discussing and arguing about it and simply rejoice over it.