There are some in grace circles who believe that the payment for all sin was accepted and applied to all at Calvary, which means that unbelievers are going to hell with their sins paid for and forgiven. The reason they’re going to hell is unimputed righteousness because of their unbelief.
I once did a deep dive arguing against this position in another article here, but I want to revisit this topic to make a few additional points.
We discussed on a podcast not long ago a saint who holds the view of universal forgiveness and had recently talked about the word “receive” in Acts 26:18. In this passage, Paul is recounting what the Lord told him on the road to Damascus when he got saved and how He would send Paul unto the Gentiles “…that they MAY RECEIVE FORGIVENESS of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”
This individual argued that in Acts 26:18 receiving forgiveness means you’re merely acknowledging something God has already given you, as if to say, “Yes, I accept the fact that God had already forgiven all my sins at Calvary.”
I think it’s important for saints to know that there is not one dictionary that defines receive as acknowledging something you’ve already been given. That definition does not exist. You can it look up in Webster’s 1828, Webster’s 1913, OED excerpts, American Heritage, Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, Collins, etc., and there is not one standard dictionary that defines the word receive as merely acknowledging something you already possess.
Look at Webster’s 1828, which is my favorite dictionary. Consider all 18 definitions. Never once does Webster tell us that to receive is to acknowledge something you already have in your possession.
Plus, Webster twice uses obtain to define receive. To receive something is to obtain something, to come into possession of something.
Obtain and receive are synonymous words. The idea is that to receive something means you’re coming into possession of something. To receive something is to obtain something. That’s what the word means. If you go to etymonline and look up receive, which goes back to the 1300’s, this word has ALWAYS meant to obtain something. Or to welcome someone or something.
This was the common understanding of receive when the translators gave us the King James Version. We have this same understanding even today.
Biblical Examples of “Receive”
Let’s look at a couple of other examples of “receive” in the (so-called) NT.
Consider Acts 2:38. “Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” Same Greek word at Acts 26:18.
Does Peter mean receive in the sense of acknowledging something they already possessed? Does he mean, if you repent and be baptized, well, then you’ll be able to acknowledge that you’ve ALWAYS had the gift of the Holy Ghost? That’d be ridiculous, wouldn’t it? That’s not what the word means. He means receive in the same sense as every definition of that word. He means you’re not going to possess the gift of the Holy Ghost UNLESS you repent and be baptized. They will obtain the promised gift IF they come to God with faith and obedience. God required them to have faith and be water baptized BEFORE they RECEIVED the Holy Ghost. This is the same sense in Acts 26:18. You have to come to God with faith in His Son and His death, burial, and resurrection as a complete substitutionary atoning work BEFORE you can RECEIVE forgiveness of sins.
How about Galatians 3:2? “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” Again, same Greek word at Acts 26:18.
Paul isn’t asking here, “Did you acknowledge that the Spirit was already given to you before you got saved?” He’s asking HOW did they come to obtain the Spirit. “How did the Spirit come to dwell inside of you? Was it by obeying the law? Or by the hearing of faith?” They accepted the gospel by faith and THEN they received the Spirit. They came into possession of the Holy Spirit inside of them after they got saved.
Acts 26:18
Let’s come back to Acts 26:18. Again, Paul is recounting what the Lord told him on the road to Damascus after his conversion. The Lord says in vs. 17, he’s going to send Paul unto the Gentiles, and then in vs. 18, He says, “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”
Notice something here. The Gentiles receive TWO things in this verse. There is only one verb —and that’s receive. That one verb governs two blessings:
1. forgiveness of sins
2. inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t use one verb for forgiveness and a different verb for inheritance. The Spirit intentionally uses the same verb for both. The Gentiles receive TWO things in this verse. They do not ONLY receive forgiveness of sins in this verse. They also receive - what? - the inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. They receive both forgiveness of sins AND the same inheritance all the saints receive.
Do you see the problem with their interpretation?
There is only one verb here – receive. So what is true about forgiveness of sins is also true about the inheritance to the saints. If you’re going to argue that receive in this verse only means to acknowledge something they’ve already been given by God, then you’re saying that new converts are also acknowledging that they’ve ALSO received the same INHERITANCE as all the other saints. This is what the grammatical structure demands.
I mean, are we supposed to interpret the same verb two different ways in the same sentence? That’d be a bit difficult to swallow. If “receive forgiveness” means “acknowledge you already had forgiveness,” then consistency demands that “receive the inheritance” means “acknowledge you already had the inheritance.”
And if unbelievers already have the saints’ inheritance – that’s universalism.
Plus, the verse says: “...inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.” That’s a qualifying phrase. The inheritance isn’t something already possessed by unbelievers. It’s the inheritance among those sanctified by faith. So the verse itself limits the inheritance to believers, which means that receive in this verse cannot in any conceivable way mean that Gentiles are acknowledging what they’ve already been given.
Notice also that the Lord says “that they MAY receive.” If they had already received forgiveness of all their sins, the Lord would’ve never said “MAY.” What does this mean? This means that obtaining forgiveness of sins and obtaining the inheritance is conditional. He is talking about an intended outcome that is dependent upon a condition being met. What is that condition? The Lord tells us in the verse – “by faith that is in me.”
There is a big difference between an offered gift and a received gift. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross provides the universal basis for everyone’s forgiveness but Acts 26:18 makes it perfectly clear that the actual obtaining of that forgiveness (”may receive”) is conditioned upon that person’s faith in Christ and what He accomplished at Calvary.
In Acts 26:18, the Gentiles receive two things - forgiveness of sins AND the saints’ inheritance. What is true about receiving forgiveness of sins is also true about receiving the inheritance for the saints.
If you are going to accept their interpretation of receive in this verse, then you’re saying that all the unbelievers of the world are already forgiven of all their sins AND they have already been given the inheritance only meant for the saints.
That view is not universal forgiveness. That view is universal salvation.
Their argument about what receive means in this passage is nothing less than a universalist argument. If the lost, unregenerate Gentiles already possess:
1. total forgiveness of sins, AND
2. the inheritance belonging to the saints...
...then salvation is no longer you being delivered from eternal death to receiving eternal life. Receive according to their view is nothing more than an intellectual acknowledgement of the doctrine of universalism, because you are already in possession of forgiveness of sins AND you are already in possession of the saints’ inheritance. That is straight up Universal Salvation (Universalism).
So if those who believe universal forgiveness is right, if the moment you get saved, you’re just acknowledging that your sins were already forgiven AND you were already given the inheritance meant for all the saints then you are by default endorsing the heresy of universalism.
There is no explaining away the simplicity of Acts 26:18. You have the divine mission given by God to Paul to open the eyes of the Gentiles, to turn them from darkness to light, to turn them from the power of Satan unto God, and then you have the divine result. What is that result?
That they MAY RECEIVE forgiveness of sins AND the inheritance among the saints.
In English, in the Greek, in every dictionary, in the etymology of the word going back to the 1300s, receive is an active appropriation, or obtaining, or taking hold of something bestowed by a giver. You do not “receive” a gift by acknowledging that the gift is already in your pocket. You “receive” that gift the moment that gift was given to you, the moment you reached out and accepted that gift.