---
title: 'Machen on the Comfort of Limited Atonement'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2025-12-22
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2025-machen-on-the-comfort-of-limited-atonement
---

# Machen on the Comfort of Limited Atonement

“People say that Calvinism is a dour, hard creed. How broad and comforting, they say, is the doctrine of a universal atonement, the doctrine that Christ died equally for all men there upon the cross! How narrow and harsh, they say, is this Calvinistic doctrine—one of the ‘five points’ of Calvinism—this doctrine of the ‘limited atonement,’ this doctrine that Christ died for the elect of God in a sense in which he did not die for the unsaved!

But do you know, my friends, it is surprising that men say that. It is surprising that they regard the doctrine of a universal atonement as being a comforting doctrine. In reality it is a very gloomy doctrine indeed. Ah, if it were only a doctrine of a universal salvation, instead of a doctrine of a universal atonement, then it would no doubt be a very comforting doctrine; then no doubt it would conform wonderfully well to what we in our puny wisdom might have thought the course of the world should have been. But a universal atonement without a universal salvation is a cold, gloomy doctrine indeed. To say that Christ died for all men alike and that then not all men are saved, to say that Christ died for humanity simply in the mass, and that the choice of those who out of that mass are saved depends upon the greater receptivity of some as compared with others—that is a doctrine that takes from the gospel much of its sweetness and much of its joy. From the cold universalism of that Arminian creed we turn ever again with a new thankfulness to the warm and tender individualism of our Reformed faith, which we believe to be in accord with God’s holy Word. Thank God we can say, every one, as we contemplate Christ upon the cross, not just: ‘He died for the mass of humanity, and how glad I am that I am amid that mass,’ but: ‘He loved me and gave himself for me; my name was written from all eternity upon his heart, and when he hung and suffered there on the cross, he thought of me, even me, as one for whom in his grace he was willing to die.’” — [**J. Gresham Machen**](/authors/j-gresham-machen), *Constraining Love* (1936)