#812 Only You
December 04, 2022Dr. Craig,
I have heard it said that God loves us so much that “Jesus would have died for you even if you had been the only one that needed to be saved.” Is this true? And can we confidently say what God would do under different circumstances? I have trouble knowing what I would do under different circumstances, let alone knowing what another person, such as God, would do.
Mateo
United States
Dr. craig’s response
A
I sympathize, Mateo, with your quandary about knowing how you would act under different circumstances! Fortunately, in God’s case He has certain essential attributes that help guide our speculations. One of these is His love. Paul says, “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2.20). Notice how personal this is. Christ did not merely love humanity or the Church and give himself for it, but he loved me and gave himself for me as an individual. What a wonderful, heart-warming truth this is!
Now, given God’s love for you as an individual, doesn’t it stand to reason that Christ would give himself for you even if you were the only human person alive? After all, if you were the only person, God wouldn’t and couldn’t love you any less! The same love that motivated Him to die for you and for countless other individuals as individuals would still motivate Him.
Of course, if we get technical, if you were the only human being, or even the only lost human being, then God couldn’t send Christ to die on the cross, since that was an act carried out by other sinful men. But this is mere hairsplitting: the point of your question is to ask if God loves you so much that He would find some way to save you from your sin, even at terrible cost to Himself. I think the answer is, Yes!
- William Lane Craig