A Lutheran writer has argued from 1 John 5:10-11 that all men were justified in Christ, and that faith only receives what is already true of every person. This is called objective justification. The argument is well constructed, but the text does not support it, neither logically nor exegetically. Jeremy Bamgbabe writes:
Objective justification simply teaches that, in a real sense, all of humanity was justified in Christ, for Christ bore the sins of all humans, whether they be believers or not (as per 1 John 2:2). Faith then, for us, simply entails subjectively receiving what is already true concerning our persons in Christ. Conversely, unbelief does not merely reject what Christ did for sinners in the abstract, but rejects what Christ graciously did for that particular person, which is what makes the sin of unbelief so aggravating.
For biblical support, consider 1 John 5:10–11, and consider the grammar closely:
> “Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. Whoever does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son. And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”
> —1 John 5:10–11 (ESV)
Now, notice what the Apostle John says makes an unbeliever a liar. He says the liar is the one who “has not believed in the testimony that God has borne concerning his Son.” Now, let him who has eyes to see read what is immediately said afterward 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞. It is that “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”
Notice that the testimony that is disbelieved is not that “a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law,” even though we certainly believe that it is by faith—and faith alone—that a man can be accepted by God. Rather, the unbeliever rejects what God has **already given** him in Christ, which is eternal life. The “us” in the passage cannot be restricted to believers only, for that would make the aggravating nature of unbelief herein described to consist in not believing that Christ has given **other** people eternal life—an opinion I have seen no Protestant divine ever express.1
Start with the logic. Stated in full, the argument runs like this:
John says that whoever does not believe God’s testimony concerning his Son is guilty of making God a liar.
The content of that testimony is that “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”
The argument must therefore assume that unbelief is culpable only if the testimony rejected includes the unbeliever among those to whom the life was given.
Therefore “us” includes every such unbeliever.
Premises 1 and 2 come from the text. Premise 3 does not, and the conclusion depends entirely on it. In formal terms, let N be the class of unbelievers, U the group designated by “us,” and T the testimony that God gave eternal life to U and that this life is in his Son. The text tells us that every member of N rejects T. The conclusion requires that N is included in U. Nothing in the text establishes that relation, so the argument needs a separate premise to supply it, and premise 3 is that premise. With it, the argument is valid, which means everything rests on whether premise 3 is true. Rejecting a proposition does not, in general, place the rejecter inside the group it describes. A man who denies that God delivered Israel from Egypt is not thereby an Israelite, and a man who denies that God gave the Spirit to the apostles is not thereby an apostle.
John’s own usage shows that premise 3 cannot stand as a general principle. He has already shown that culpable unbelief does not require the denied proposition to contain a statement about the denier. In 1 John 2:22, “the liar” is the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. The proposition denied concerns Christ, not the denier’s personal saving status, and John still calls him a liar. A Lutheran might retreat and limit premise 3 to gospel promises, but that limit would have to be argued from the text, and 5:10-11 cannot supply it without assuming the very thing in question. John’s ground for condemnation elsewhere is the same: the unbeliever is condemned “because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18). Unbelief is culpable because God’s witness concerning his Son is true and God commands belief, not because the unbeliever was first counted among the recipients.
The distinction that matters is between two claims. The first is that God testifies that eternal life is found in his Son and has been given to his people in him. The second is that God testifies to each unbeliever, “I have already given you eternal life and justified you in Christ.” The Lutheran argument needs the second. Verse 11 gives the first. The argument slides from “the unbeliever rejects what God says about Christ” to “the unbeliever rejects what God says about him,” and the pronoun does not make that move for it.
Now the Greek. “Gave” in verse 11 is an aorist indicative, and “us” is a first person plural dative pronoun. In this letter John repeatedly distinguishes “we” from “the world”: “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (5:19; see also 3:1 and 4:5-6). John also uses the verb “give” with this pronoun for gifts that do not belong to everyone: “by the Spirit whom he has given us” (3:24, the same aorist form as in 5:11) and “he has given us of his Spirit” (4:13, where John uses the perfect). The tense differs, but the pattern is the same. God gave us the Spirit, and the world cannot receive him (John 14:17). Anyone who reads “us” as every man in 5:11 needs to explain why it means that here and not in those verses.
The next clause matters most. “This life is in his Son” puts the life in the Son, tied to him and possessed through him. John does not leave the meaning to inference, since verse 12 explains it: “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.” The verb “has” is present tense in both halves, and the second half is a plain denial. John does not divide people into those who have life objectively and those who have it subjectively. He divides those who have the Son from those who do not, and says who has life on that basis. The proposed reading requires verse 11 to say God has already given eternal life to the unbeliever personally, and then verse 12 says the unbeliever does not have it! A Lutheran may answer that verse 11 speaks of life provided in Christ and verse 12 of life received, and that this is their distinction under other names. But that response no longer proves the original claim. It distinguishes between life provided in Christ and life actually possessed by the believer, a distinction Reformed theology also makes, and it does not establish that every individual has already been justified. It also drops the claim that the unbeliever rejects life already given to him. Verse 13 names the audience: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” If every person already had eternal life in Christ, it is hard to see why John would limit this assurance to “you who believe.”
The wider doctrine has problems too. Objective justification has to explain how a man can be justified in Christ and still die condemned, when John’s Gospel says of the one who does not obey the Son that “the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36). Paul’s chain has no place for someone justified but not glorified: “those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:30). This does not answer every Lutheran distinction, but it puts strain on the word. If a person can be justified and still remain under wrath and condemnation, the word is being used in a sense that needs to be defended from Paul’s legal usage. Westminster says God decreed to justify the elect, and Christ died and rose for them, “nevertheless, they are not justified, until the Holy Spirit doth, in due time, actually apply Christ unto them” (WCF 11.4).
Nor does 1 John 2:2 supply the missing step. John says that Christ is the propitiation “not for our sins only but also for the sins of the whole world.” That language certainly broadens the scope beyond John and his immediate believing community, but it does not follow that “the whole world” means every individual without exception. John uses a strikingly similar construction in John 11:51-52, where Christ dies “not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.” The contrast there is not between some individuals and every individual, but between one covenantal or ethnic sphere and the scattered people of God beyond it. At minimum, then, 1 John 2:2 cannot simply be assumed to teach universal propitiation for every single individual. And even if one granted that reading for the sake of argument, universal propitiation still would not by itself establish the universal forensic justification of every individual. That would require an additional argument.
We agree with our Lutheran brothers that the gospel is to be preached to every creature, that the command to believe binds every hearer, and that unbelief is a serious sin against God’s true word. We do not need to say that the unbeliever already possesses eternal life in order to explain why unbelief is culpable. John’s own formulation is simpler: life is in the Son, the one who has the Son has life, and the one who does not have the Son does not have life.
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