Everyone believes in some form of limited atonement. To put it simply, most of us Christians tend to believe the standard view of how God saved us.
- Jesus came to die for our sins as our substitute, thus providing a way in which we can be reconciled with God.
- All of us must individually accept this free gift from God.
- Those who accept it are declared righteous and will be in heaven.
- Those who reject the gift will remain unrighteous and will be in hell.
Thus,
our view of the atonement is that, it is unlimited in scope but limited by our free choice. Every human can be saved but not everyone will be saved because we still need to exercise faith to accept the gift, thus we rule out the concept of universal salvation.
Those who believe in the concept of limited atonement, however, believes that Jesus only died for a limited group that was chosen by God the Father, before the foundation of the world. This is called the elected group and they believe that only this group of people can respond to the preaching and accept Jesus as their savior.
If you are not part of the elected group, you have no ability to respond to the message. This is known as the concept of total depravity. Seen from this perspective,
the idea of limited atonement has the view that atonement is unlimited in the sense that the grace is irresistible to the elect, but limited in its scope as it applies only to the elected group