The apostle Paul is recognized as the chief witness to the nature and operation of Christian salvation. In course of exposition, Paul makes several statements about salvation's inclusivity of “all men.” We list these forthwith, emphasizing the word “all” as it appears:

I Tim. 2:1 First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, 2 for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. 3 This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, 4 who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time….4:10 For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.

Tit. 2:11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,…

Rom. 5:18 So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.


II Cor. 5:14 For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; 15 and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

These verses lie at the heart of the Universalist claim that God will determinedly “save” every man out of the Lake of Fire after ages to come. Universalists hold the word “all,” on its own strength alone, to be Paul's compelling proof that salvation is unthwartably effectual without exception across all three cosmological domains to all future time. Accordingly, God's “desire” to save all men (I Tim. 2:4) is forcibly treated as an absolute determination so as to align with the deterministic emphasis assigned to the word “all.”

Yet thoughtful reading of these very statements shows that the scope and tense of Paul’s witness utterly contradicts the Universalistic reading of them. Let’s examine then Paul’s actual thought flow:

1.     Paul opens his exhortation to Timothy by urging that prayer be made  for all men whom God “desires” or “wills” to save. In so exhorting, Paul is indicating that prayer is an operative force of partnership necessary to God's purpose to bring about the salvation of  all men. 


The critical but entirely overlooked truth behind this exhortation is that kingdom prayer as ordered by the Lord Jesus and carried out by the apostles is ever only made by the living, for the living; and only within Christ's stated vision for the establishing of God's will which is limited to the realms only of earth and heaven (see the Lord’s Prayer and review the subpoint under Part II, Point 7). The netherworld is completely excluded from the universal kingdom prayer mandate of the Lord, and Paul’s order of prayer is built only and entirely on that mandate. No prayer for the dead, as it would be indispensably necessary to operative partnership in saving the netherworld, is exhorted anywhere at anytime in any scripture.


So too we see here now that the objects of Paul's prayer (i.e., kings and all who are in authority) are all living. If Paul intended to tell Timothy that prayer must be made for all men because God determinedly wills to save the damned out of the Lake of Fire, he would have had to be exhorting Timothy to pray, not just for all the presently living, but also for all the already deceased and future damned. Yet he does no such thing! His prayers are only for the living. Indeed, had Paul's scope of prayer for the saving of all men embraced the damned, the record of his ministry would be absolutely saturated with prayers for the damned, past and future! They aren't.


Therefore, on the sole basis of the terrestrially limited scope of the New Testament kingdom prayer mandate governing Paul's vision, the Universalist slant on Paul’s exhortation regarding any imagined divine purpose to save all mankind out of the Lake of Fire is revealed to be a humanisticly manufactured falsity.

2.     Paul’s qualified use of the word “all” to refer selectively to “all who are in authority” demonstrates that Paul’s use of the word “all” cannot be force interpreted to have a non-exceptional meaning wherever he uses it. He specifically qualifies his first reference to “all men” (I Tim 2:1) by saying he is talking about “kings” and “all who are in authority.” That is, he is identifying all societal classes, ranks and stations of life—here specifically, the class of government officials. “All men” in Paul’s immediate idea then is “men of all walks” whom God wishes to save. 


Whether the meaning of “all” here is universal or not however is only an issue if Paul was actually saying that God is unthwartably determined to effectually save all men. But as is about to be seen, when we examine Paul's definition of salvation itself, it is not merely interpretively impossible for God to determinedly “save” all men, but it is already factually impossible.

3.     Paul’s complete thought flow (including that of the Book of Hebrews) teaches that salvation is obtained only prior to death and operates only preventatively of the judgment and “the wrath to come”  (Rom. 5:9; I Cor. 1:18; 11:32;15:17-18; II Cor. 7:10; Php. 1:28; I Th. 1:10; 2:16; 5:9; II Th. 2:10; II Tim. 2:10→12; {Heb. 2:2-3,14-15; 11:28,31}. Please review Part III, Point 36.). This means that salvation can only occur prior to entrance to hell and the Lake of Fire. This proves that it is factually impossible for Paul to have told Timothy that God will determinedly save all men, because men were already perished in hell when he wrote this and sentencing to the Lake of Fire is still determined to occur.


For God to have determinedly willed to save all men based on Paul's judgment-preventative definition of salvation, it would have meant that no one could have ever gone to hell, no one could be there now, and there could be no future judgment and sentencing to the Lake of Fire for anyone. “All men” would have had to have been effectually saved and will have been effectually saved before descending to hell in death and before suffering God's judgment after death. Thus the Universalist assertion that Paul is speaking of God's unthwartable determination to save all men is rendered an absurdity. He already did not save men from entrance to hell, and He will not save men from entrance into the Lake of Fire. Entrance to these places is past the meaning of salvation.   


All of this is to really expose that the Universalist idea of “salvation” is not the apostolic one of judgment prevention, but of a “post-perishing” transmutative recreation out of annihilation. It is a re-engineered definition of salvation. This sleight-of-hand swap-out behind Universalism's meaning of “salvation” lies at the root of its heretical assertions. Like as a magician draws attention to one hand so as to hide in plain sight what he does with the other, the Universalist uber-focus on the word “all” distracts from the subtle trick wherein, without noticing, they have re-crafted salvation to apply to a post-perishing event outside all apostolic definition. Once the trick is revealed, argument over the meaning of “all” is rendered a moot nonsensity.


Beyond the contradicting of Universalism posed by Paul's own definition of salvation, his use of verb tenses will also contradict the Universalist belief in a one-dimensional unthwartably effectual salvation. We continue our study...   

4.     Paul’s remaining references to the salvation of all men illumine a distinction between two differing dimensions of salvation—one universally (terrestrially) provisional but subject to loss, the other limited but permanently effectual. We are speaking specifically of the following passages:

I Tim. 1:6 who gave Himself as a ransom for all,….4:10 …, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers….Tit. 2:11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men,…Rom. 5:18 So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men....II Cor. 5:14 For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; 15 and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

It is unnecessary to insist here that Paul’s meaning of “all” has exceptions as it does in I Tim. 2:1. Here we agree with Universalists. The “all without exception” meaning is intended throughout. We know this because Rom. 5:18 and II Cor. 5:14 make equal comparison of all who have sinned /died with all to whom resulted justification of life for whom Christ died. The universe of men who have sinned on the one side is the same as the universe of those to whom resulted Christ's saving justification. There are no exceptions to the first set, and so there can be none to the second set.

Thus, yes, Jesus really is the Savior of all men—without exception. The grace of God has appeared and is bringing salvation to all men— without exception. And Christ’s one righteous act of death did result in saving justification to all men—without exception. He really did die for all men—without exception.

But does this mean that God will in the future determinedly effectually rescue all men out of the netherworld? That is the Universalist deduction from these statements.

But for the same reason we cited in point 3 above, the conclusion that Paul is teaching a future effectual “salvation” out of the Lake of Fire is false. Universalism again depends on sleight-of-hand focus on the meaning of “all” to distract from the actual language Paul uses to describe salvation.  In point 3, we saw that, by Paul's definition, salvation is a pre-judgment event only. Now here, Paul's verb tenses describing salvation preclude the possibility he envisions a one-dimensional unthwartably effectual universal salvation now, much less to come.


How so?


Understand firstly, Universalists require salvation to be only unthwartably effectual and not at all provisional as to be subject to never-realized effectuality or possible irretrievable loss once obtained. (A thwartable provisional salvation, even if universally applied, kills the certainty of universal reconciliation.) Universalists therefore must then force feed the idea of salvation's unthwartable effectuality through the tube of the all-inclusiveness described here by Paul, which they then project forward to apply after the Lake of Fire.   

The problem however is that, if effectual salvation is the only dimension of salvation, if there is no separately discernible provisional dimension of salvation that can fail of permanent effectuality, then effectual salvation can be the only kind of salvation in view at any time in Paul's mind. Now then, Paul's statements here all speak to salvation as either a past completed or presently active accomplishment. Please see again the tense in these verses: Jesus is the Savior of all men. The grace of God is bringing salvation to all men. Christ’s one righteous act of death resulted in justification to all men.

So what does this mean? Under the effectual-only Universalist concept of salvation, these past completed and present tense descriptions of salvation's accomplishment inescapably tell us that all men therefore have both already been effectually justified (saved) and at the same time are being brought to effectually saving faith. In short, all men since Christ's death are already permanently and finally “saved.” And all men without exception are being effectually saved on the planet now. That is the only conclusion possible.

5.     The difference between provisional and effectual salvation in these passages is “especially” highlighted in I Tim. 4:10 where Paul distinguishes that Jesus is “the Savior of all men, especially of believers…”  The only way that Jesus can be “especially” a Savior to “some” beyond the rest of the “all” is if there is an effectual difference, meaning and application of salvation to the believers not obtained by the rest.

Think about it. If Jesus is indeed the equally effectual savior of all men, than there is nothing particularly “especial” that the believers have received that the rest have not. The distinction is meaningless. It does not really matter if one is a believer or not! All are effectually saved.

But if Jesus is but the provisional Savior of all men, yet especially of believers, then it means that only believers receive something decidedly effectual that does not apply to the rest of provisionally justified mankind. And that is the true understanding according to the thought flow of every speaker in the New Testament beginning with Jesus. Only believers are effectually saved unto life out of death, which is why gospel preaching unto faith is necessary. Consequently, as only the provisional Savior of all men, these words do nothing to advance proof of effectual universal reconciliation out of damnation.

To escape this problem, the Universalist handling of the word “especially” is to say that the believers only have a “superlative” salvation compared to the unbelievers, because the Gk. word “malista” translated “especially” is only used as a superlative everywhere else it is used. That is to say, salvation by faith is only the “best” way to salvation. But this is frankly a heretical conclusion. Either faith is the only way to effectual salvation or it is the best among other ways. Can’t be both. That is the Universalist dilemma in this verse. Universalism is unwilling to believe the apostolic testimony that distinguishes a truly universal provisional salvation from a qualified delimitedly effectual salvation that insists that enduring terrestrial faith is the only way to effectual salvation—a salvation that only delivers in advance from “the wrath to come.”

Thus from the complete background of thought behind Paul's doctrinal testimony, we have now more than ably disproved the Universalist case from nearly all the core Pauline passages on which it rests. We have instead proved that Christian Universalism is an aberrant false gospel proffering a salvation of its own definition, to be rejected by every true believer in Christ.

(For thorough treatment of the Universalist case made upon Paul's declaration in I Cor. 15:24-26, 28 that at "the end" God becomes "all in all" when He has "abolished death" as the "last enemy,"   please thoroughly review the points and rebuttals in PART 2, Points 7, 14, 16, 20-22, 25, 27, 29-30; PART 4, Point 105, subpoint 5; PART 6, Points 119, subpoint 1, and 122.)