Brian-I have had similar questions like this. I have spent a lot of time reading the Bible, reading the different translations and trying to figure out how the Bible was put together. Basically, what I have discovered is it is a completley illogical religion and faith(although a part of me does believe in it). A lot of people try to explain their beliefs in christianity very abstractly or metaphorically and lately there is a lot of mixing in "spirituality" with general christian beliefs is what I have found.
Generally, from what I know there are two views on this.
Yes, Jesus died for all sin, for everyone's sin as JM said and that it is up to US to choose whether we are going to believe in him and take his offer up for him to be a sacrifice.
OR-(to me this is more logical) Jesus only died for HIS people. His people were "chosen" before the earth was created-he died for their sins.
Now, here is something I grappled with before discovering how "messily" the christian writings were put together-\
If god is loving, and all knowing, then when he created everyone, he knew some people were just going to be "made" to go to hell, I guess you could argue that somehow at the time of creation he gave us this opportunity to choose on our own, separate from him but I don't buy this because when he created us he would have known our entire psychology and where we would end up which means
there are a lot of people who basically were just created to spend eternity in hell.
how is this a kind God? well from God's point of view (which is the true one right) I guess God could say this is
The bible contradicts itself a lot, Jesus says I have a new law, Jesus also says Whoever does not follow the old laws (it is really bad or wahtever) but his new law contradicts the old law
A lot of the Bible is based on Paul's writings (the new testament) Paul NEVER knew Jesus!! He used to torture the Christians and kill them before becoming converted, after Jesus's death. Also St.Augustine's writings ahd a huge influence. It is so bizarre to me because so much of what Christian's say is not in the Bible. And the old testament also technically has two creation stories, plus Constantine supposedly burned down all these libraries with some of the original writings on Christianity when he converted, also Gnosticism I believe had a heavy influnece on the Mormon religion which is interesting.\
Then when you look at christianity not only do you have all these different translations you have orthodox, protestant, catholic, it is Very confusing!!!
After reading an interesting book on Angels, they talked about how Yawheh (or however you spell it) was actually the Devil in some of the original texts, he was the God of the material world, and somehow it got confused and people started thinking it was the God to worship. I don't know how true it was but the book was very interesting.
Speak(ing) of the Devil
In Sufi texts there is a tale that originially when God created the angels (lucifer included) that he told the angels Only bow down to me...
Well, when God created man, he asked the angels to bow down to man,
Not wanting to disobey God's original commandment, and because Lucifer loved God so much he only wanted to bow down to God, Lucifer did not bow to man.
keeping in mind God's easily provoked anger) God punished Lucifer by separating him from God for ever.
To Lucifer, this was the most horrid thing since he loved God so much, so humans became his vilest enemy since they had been the cause of his banishment, separate from God forever....