“Then let it be known to you, men, brothers, that through this One remission of sin is announced to you. And everyone believing in this One is justified from all things which you could not be justified by the Law of Moses” (Acts 13:38-39).
Those who believe that Jesus Christ died for everyone without exception (“universal atonement advocates”) DENY that remission of sin is through this One. For whoever’s effort makes the ultimate difference between remission and condemnation (non-remission), it is THAT person through whom remission ultimately comes. Thus, the universal atonement advocates must vainly attempt to be justified through the Law of Moses since, to them, Christ’s fulfillment of the Law’s strict penal and preceptive demands was NOT sufficient in and of itself to demand, ensure, and secure the salvation of ALL whom He represented in His efficacious life, death, resurrection, ascension, and intercession. Since they are dead-set on supplementing the efficacious work of Jesus Christ with their own efforts, then they are necessarily debtors to keep the whole law (see Galatians 5:2-4).
Charles Hodge demonstrating that he and the like-minded Augustinians are woefully and abysmally ignorant of the righteous, holy, strict, severe, and inexorable penal-preceptive demands of God’s law, and are therefore debtors to keep it in its entirety (Romans 10:1:5; Galatians 3:10-14, 5:2-4).
“Admitting, however, that the Augustinian doctrine that Christ died specially for his own people does account for the general offer of the gospel, how can it be reconciled with those passages which, in one form or another, teach that He died for all men? In answer to this question, it may be remarked in the first place that Augustinians do not deny that Christ died for all men. What they deny is that He died equally, and with the same design, for all men. He died for all, that He might arrest the immediate execution of the penalty of the law upon the whole of our apostate race; that He might secure for men the innumerable blessings attending their state on earth, which, in one important sense, is a state of probation; and that He might lay the foundation for the offer of pardon and reconciliation with God, on condition of faith and repentance” (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, p. 558; underlining mine).
Agrammatos 