Since Christ’s atoning sacrifice is entirely sufficient to forgive all the sins of all people and since Christ will surely redeem the entire cosmos, this question is a necessary one to ask: Are all people, just as they were lost in Adam, saved through Christ?

The short answer is no.

The slightly longer answer is only those who are elected by God and united to Christ by faith. Notice the two parts to that answer. First, only those who are elected by God will be saved, that is, those whom God has chosen to save. Many Christians today bristle at the doctrine of election, but the Scriptures do not. Both Jesus and the Apostles blatantly call God’s people the elect or chosen. Ephesians 1:4 specifies that God made this choice “before the foundation of the world.” As Romans 9 displays, such a teaching is an undoubtedly bitter pill for our finite and worldly minds to swallow, but as Ephesians 1-3 displays, once accepted it becomes a foundation of great comfort and blessing for Christians.

Second, only those united to Christ by faith will be saved. Indeed, faith in Christ is the great mark upon the forehead of God’s elect, but as we will see in Question 35, even saving faith itself is a gift from God. This is how Jesus is able to say with confidence: “All that the Father give me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast not” (John 6:37). This should give us tremendous security because if we come to Christ by faith, then we show ourselves to among those whom the Father has given to His beloved Son. Or to use the language of Psalm 110:3, all who “offer themselves freely” to God show themselves to be a part of the people of God. All to whom God gives the gift of faith will, by their faith, come to Christ and be united to Him.

But, some may ask, is that not an injustice on God’s part, to condemn all humanity in Adam but not to redeem all of humanity in Christ? As Job learned, we are never in a position to pass judgment upon God. Most fundamentally, we must approach such a question knowing that we are “but dust and ashes” and that God is “the Judge of all the earth” who will do what is just (Genesis 18:25, 27). All who perish apart from Christ will receive a just and holy judgment from God; there will be no injustice from God. Indeed, Question 20 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism covers this same subject yet does so from another angle:

Q. Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?

A. God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer.

With a proper understanding of the goodness, beauty, and holiness of God and of the wickedness and filth of our sin, we begin to see that asking, Why didn’t God save everyone?, is a foundationally broken question. The real question is: Why did God save anyone at all?

Yet we should notice that the second part of this answer notes that God is merciful even to those who are not united to Christ by faith. Although only God’s elect are given the gift of saving faith, all men everywhere experience the mercy of God’s common grace, which is shown twofold.

First, by His common grace, God restrains the effect of sin. The sovereign providence of God over the wickedness of both Jew and Gentiles was a source of great comfort to the early church, which they confessed as they prayed about those enemies, saying that they were “to do whatever your hand and you plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:28). That ought to be our ultimate comfort as well. By God’s providence, He will restrain and even use evil for the final good of His people. But while we wait for that final good to be made known on the last day, we should take comfort that God is constantly restraining evil through the ordinary means of each person’s conscience, societal expectations, and civil authorities.

Second, by His common grace, God also enables works of culture for human well-being. This is why Christians do not need to reject and avoid services and arts that are not done or made by Christians. Each day we eat food produced by, drive cars and use buildings built by, and use utilities sustained by non-Christians. We can listen to beautiful music and read beautiful words from those who are not united to Christ by faith. And by God’s common grace, all of it contributes to human well-being here on earth.

All of this ought to make us marvel at the mercy of God who showers our thankless and idolatrous world with His grace.