Good
morning! Today, we will have a time of
communion where we take the bread and the cup and remember our Lord Jesus. But, before we do, we are going to continue
in our current series, Sound Doctrine.
We have a very fitting subject for today as we continue to talk about
Jesus our Savior. We are going to talk
about the Atonement. It is through the
Atonement that we are reconciled to God, so it is a pretty cool thing and a
very big deal and one of the main things to reflect on when we take communion. We don’t have so much time today, so let’s
pray and jump right in to the topic.
Lord Jesus,
we thank You that you came and lived a sinless life, that You sacrificed Yourself
and allowed Yourself to be killed on the cross to pay the penalty for our
sins. Please help us right now to
reflect on the amazing work that You accomplished to make things right between
us and God. Teach us we pray. Amen.
Do you ever
see words differently or pronounce them differently. Have you ever heard someone make up a
pronunciation for an unfamiliar word on the spot? Maybe, you’ve done it yourself. Determined is one that often gets pronounced
funny. Instead of saying de-termined,
someone may say deter-mined.
Somewhere
along the line, I started looking at the word atonement and saying it as at-one-ment. In preparation for this message, I decided to
look at the word origin and believe it or not, that’s pretty much how the word
atonement came about. The first known
usage is the noun form rather than the verb atone. So, atonement means an action taken to
reconcile two parties. An atonement enables
the two previously separated persons to be one again. It repairs a damage that happened before.
The specific
definition that we can use in the context of Biblical atonement is, “The
atonement is the work Christ did in his life and death to earn our
salvation.”
This
definition may be a bit broader than what you sometimes hear used. Atonement may be used to refer to Jesus dying
and paying for our sins on the cross.
However, as we’ll see in a minute, saving benefits come also from Jesus’
life. So, it is included in the
definition as well. In His life and His
death, Jesus set things right between people, who believe in Him, and God.
What caused
the atonement? Why did God find it
necessary for Jesus to suffer and die?
Two facets of God’s character come into play. First, is the love of God (John 3:16) and second
His Righteousness, or His requirement for Justice (Romans 3:25). We can see that plainly in a couple of
verses.
For God so loved the world that He gave his
one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have
eternal life. John 3:16
God presented Him as a sacrifice of
atonement, through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice,
because in His forbearance He had left the sins committed beforehand
unpunished. Romans 3:25
I think we mostly
get the love part, but understanding justice may be a challenge. God’s justice is a part of his holiness. It means He can’t just change the rules and
dismiss sin without punishment. Habakkuk
1:13 says that God is too holy to look on evil.
He can’t tolerate evil or sin forever without addressing it. It would be inconsistent for God to disregard
our sin. The corruption of sin would
still be there.
There is
another word you hear from time to time which is used also in Scripture when we
talk about Jesus’ sacrifice. Have you
heard the word propitiation? It is not
used in the NIV, but it can be found three or four times in other familiar
versions, including this verse, Romans 3:25.
(For example, the KJV, NAS, and ESV use this word, propitiation.) Propitiation means a sacrifice that bears
God’s wrath so that God becomes propitious or favorably disposed toward us.
By sending a
sacrifice, God proved that He is righteous, that He acts in accordance to His
character and His own Law. (Romans 3:26)
He did it to demonstrate his justice at the
present time, so as to be just and the One who justifies those who have faith
in Jesus. Romans 3:26
So, was this
act of God presenting Jesus as a sacrifice truly necessary? Was it possible that there is another way?
It might be
helpful to first ask, was it necessary for God to save any people at all? We already talked about the fact that God did
not spare the angels when they sinned. This was pointed out in the message “A Little
Higher Than Us” back on Nov 1st (II Peter 2:4). So in this sense,
atonement was not necessary. God didn’t
have to save anybody.
But we also
looked at John 3:16 and touched on the love of God. So, once God decided to save (some) people,
then Scripture makes it clear that there was no other way to do this than through
the death of His Son. In Matthew 26:39,
when Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed, “… if it be
possible, let this cup pass …” Since Jesus always prayed and acted according to
the will of the Father, there must not have been another way. Also, Jesus explained on the Emmaus road in
Luke 24:27, “… was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things?” He went on to explain this to the disciples using
the Old Testament Scriptures. (See also
Hebrews 2:17, 10:4 and 9:23, 9:25-26.)
There was no other way for God to save us than for Christ to die in our
place.
Let’s go on
to look at the nature of the Atonement.
We’ll take it in two parts.
First, Christ’s obedience for us: how He obeyed perfectly in our place. Second, Christ’s sufferings for us: how He took our penalty. In both these aspects, the primary emphasis
and influence is not on us but on the Father.
It most definitely applies to us and affects our eternity, but what
Atonement is about is meeting God’s righteous requirements, the requirements of
His holiness.
In His
perfect obedience, Jesus fulfilled the “covenant of works” of the Garden of
Eden. Jesus did what Adam and Eve failed
to do. What do I mean by “covenant of
works”? In the Garden, God told Adam and
Eve what to do, they had a binding agreement with Him. In particular, don’t eat the fruit of the
knowledge of good and evil. However,
they failed. Their failure was then
imputed or transferred on to all of us.
We cannot fulfill a covenant of works any more than Adam and Eve
could. (Romans 7:10, 10:5, Galatians
3:12, Romans 6:23, I Peter 2:22, Romans 5:18-19)
Consequently, just as the result of one
trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of
righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the
one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one
man the many will be made righteous.
Romans 5:18-19
We are only freed
from the covenant of works as we believe in the virtue of Christ’s work and are
included in the new covenant (new testament), the covenant of grace.
In order to
fulfill the covenant of works, “Jesus had to live a life of perfect obedience
to God in order to earn righteousness for us.
He had to obey the law for his whole life on our behalf so that the
positive merits of his perfect obedience would be counted for us.” --(Wayne
Grudem, Systematic Theology)
We do not
just need “moral neutrality” or a clean slate with sins forgiven. We need a positive moral righteousness. And that can never come from us. It must come through faith in Christ. (Philippians 3:9, I Corinthians 1:30, Romans
5:19)
… not having a righteousness of my own that
comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ … Philippians 3:9
Whose record
of obedience would you rather rely on for your standing before God, Jesus or
your own? I caught this radio spot on
the way home yesterday evening. It is
humorous but really captures the idea I’ve been trying to highlight here. http://needhim.org/radio_spot/1000-points/
Let’s
consider the second aspect of the nature of the Atonement. In a broad sense, Jesus bore the penalty of
paying for our sins in the suffering throughout His life on earth including the
way He died. His sufferings, of course,
culminated in His death on the cross.
(Temptation in the wilderness, Matthew 4:1-11; suffered in growing to
maturity, Hebrews 5:8; suffered in opposition, Hebrews 12:3-4; suffered and
experienced grief at the death of his earthly father as well as Lazarus, John
11:35; He was “a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.” Isaiah 53:3)
Ultimately,
Jesus suffered the pain of the cross. Even
as the reality drew near, Jesus expressed the agony to the disciples, “My soul
is very sorrowful, even to death.” (Matthew 26:38) Let’s look at four aspects of pain that Jesus
suffered there:
1. Physical
pain and death. Much has been written
and spoken of about the horrors of execution by crucifixion. I will not recount those here. It was horrendously bad.
2. The pain
of bearing sin. There was deep
psychological pain in bearing the guilt for our sin. We have a taste of this guilt when we realize
as believers that we have sinned. There
is a weight on us as well as a feeling of bitter separation from what is right
and good. As we grow in maturity and
holiness, this feeling becomes more intense.
Jesus was
perfectly holy. He hated sin with every
fiber of his being. The thought of evil
contradicted everything in His character.
And then, all that He hated most was poured out fully upon Him. (Isaiah 53:6, John 1:29, II Corinthians 5:21,
Galatians 3:13, Hebrews 9:29, I Peter 2:24)
God transferred or imputed our sins to Jesus like Adam’s sins were are
transferred to us. (Romans 5:12)
3. The pain
of abandonment. Jesus faced the physical
pain and the mental/emotional anguish alone.
All the disciples forsook Him and fled. (Matthew 26:56) We, too, have a faint analogy in our own
experience. We have likely all tasted
the ache of rejection whether by a close friend, a parent or child, or wife or
husband. In almost all those cases though,
there is a sense that we could have done something differently and often, we
too are in some measure at fault. This
was not so for Jesus. (John 13:1)
Jesus was
also separated from the Father at the cross, saying there “My God, my God why
have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).
Jesus was abandoned by the Father who is too pure to look on evil. (Habakkuk 1:13) He felt the weight of the guilt of the sins
of millions alone.
4. The pain
of bearing the wrath of God. God did not
simply forgive sin and forget about the punishment due for the generations
which came and lived before Jesus. He
had forgiven sins and at the same time stored up His righteous anger against
those sins. At the cross, all that
stored-up wrath was unleashed and 100% of it fell upon God’s own Son. Wrath for sins committed up to that time and the
wrath for the sins not yet committed.
“… to bear
the guilt of millions of sins even for a moment would cause the greatest
anguish of soul. To face the deep and
furious wrath of an infinite God even for an instant would cause the most
profound fear. But Jesus’ suffering was
not over in a minute – or two – or ten.
When would it end? Could there be
yet more weight of sin? Yet more wrath
of God? Hour after hour it went on – the
dark weight of sin and the deep wrath of God poured over Jesus in wave after
wave. Jesus at last cried out, “My God,
my God why have you forsaken me?” Why
must this suffering go on so long? Oh
God, my God, will you ever bring it to an end?”
“Then at
last Jesus knew his suffering was nearing completion. He knew he had consciously borne all the wrath
of the Father against our sins, for God’s anger had abated and the awful
heaviness of sin was being removed. He
knew that all that remained was to yield up His Spirit to His heavenly Father
and die. With a shout of victory Jesus
cried out, “It is finished.” (John 19:30) Then with a loud voice he once more
cried out, “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 10:17-18) And then He voluntarily gave up the life that
no one could take from him (John 10:17-18), and He died. As Isaiah had predicted, “He poured out His
soul to death” and “bore the sins of many” (Isaiah 53:12). God the Father saw “the fruit of the travail
of His soul” and was “satisfied” (Isaiah 53:11).” --(Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology)
Christ paid
the full penalty for our sins on our behalf, “Therefore, there is now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
The limit of Christ’s suffering (“It is finished.”) show that He bore
the full measure of God’s wrath against sin and there was no penalty left to
pay. His suffering was a sufficient
payment for our sins. (Hebrews 9:25-28)
The
atonement is a complex event that has several effects on us. Let’s look at four of the major ones. Each one has to do with needs that we have as
sinners:
1. We
deserve to die as the penalty for sin.
2. We
deserve to bear God’s wrath against sin.
3. We are
separated from God by our sins.
4. We are in
bondage to sin and to the kingdom of Satan.
(I John 5:19)
Christ’s
death meets these four needs by:
1. Sacrifice. He died in our place. (Hebrews 9:26)
2. Propitiation. He bore God’s wrath for our sins. (I John 4:10)
3. Reconciliation. He overcame the separation caused by our
sins. (II Corinthians 5:18-19)
4. Redemption. He rescued us out of bondage. (Mark 10:45, Hebrews 2:15, Colossians 1:13,
Romans 6:11, 14)
And that is
where I must end. The atonement is a
beautiful and wonderful thing. Last
week, we talked about the incarnation.
It is the beginning. The
atonement is the fulfillment of what it started. Let’s continue now in the covenant of grace
as we reflect on Colossians 1:10-14:
… joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who
has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of
light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into
the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of
sins. Colossians 1:10-14
Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus,
You do all things well. You came to save
us. You lived a perfect sinless life so
that You could become the perfect spotless sacrifice. You endured all things because You are
love. We reflect on Your rescue of us
now as we prepare our hearts to take communion.
Thank You for all that You have done for us. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Bonus
material not covered in the spoken message due to time constraints:
Regarding
Covenants:
Earlier, I
mentioned the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. The covenant of works lasted until chapter 3
of Genesis, almost two pages out of nearly 900 in my Bible. So, the other 893 pages are about God working
out the amazing plan of redemption in history.
The covenant of grace is called that because it is entirely based on
God’s grace or His unmerited favor toward those He redeems. The parties to the covenant of grace are God
and the people he will redeem with Christ filling the role of mediator (Hebrews
8:6, 9:15, 12:24). Jesus fulfills the
conditions of the covenant for us and in this way reconciles us to God (atones
for our sin). There was no mediator in
the covenant of works.
The
condition of the covenant of grace is faith.
Faith in the work of Christ the redeemer. (Romans 1:17, 5:1) This faith in the Messiah
was also applicable in the Old Testament (Romans 4:1-15). The beginning condition of the covenant of
grace is always faith. The continuing
condition is obedience to God’s commands (James 2:17). If our faith is genuine, it will produce
obedience. (I John 2:4-6)
The promise
of blessing in the covenant of grace is the promise of eternal life with
God. (Genesis 17:7, Jeremiah 31:33,
Jeremiah 32:38-40, Ezekiel 34:30-31, 36:28, 37:26-27, II Corinthians 6:16,
17-18, I Peter 2:9-10, Hebrews 8:10, Revelation 21:3)
The sign of
the beginning of a covenant of grace relationship is baptism. The sign of continuing in the covenant of
grace is participation in the Lord’s Supper.
Only the
Mosaic covenant is called the “old covenant” in the New Testament which is
replaced by the “new covenant”. The
covenants of Abraham and David are forerunners of the covenant of grace enabled
by Jesus. (Galatians 3:21, II
Corinthians 3:6, Hebrews 8:6-13, an eternal covenant Hebrews 13:20)
Additional
discussion of the Atonement:
Did Christ
descend into hell? I was curious if
there have ever been any teachings at CCC which would affirm this view. I only found one which kind of sort of did,
and I was the one who said it. In a
message back in 2012 about Jesus as the Good Shepherd, I said that Jesus had
been to hell and back to save us. This
was not the most rigorous statement and not made as an argument. As we’ve already discussed, Jesus took the
full penalty for our sins. In this way,
He took upon Himself our penalty which we could not pay ourselves, that which
would have landed us in hell for eternity.
But did Jesus descend into hell after he died? Did he endure further suffering there after his
death on the cross?
This phrase
“descend into hell” does not occur in the Bible. However, some churches use a version of the
Apostles’ Creed which says, “was crucified, dead and buried, he descended into
hell; the third day he rose again from the dead.”
Strangely,
this phrase “he descended into hell” was added much later to the creed which is
attributed to the apostles. There is
only one occurrence before 650 AD which is pretty clearly explained in that the
base word hades meant grave and not hell.
There was another exclusive Greek word for hell as a place of
punishment, geenna or gehenna. The
trouble comes with the fact that the Creed now also has the phrase “and buried”
in it. So there are multiple
explanations which try to validate it’s inclusion in the Creed without
contradicting Scripture.
We can take
this point as a good example of why we can feel certain that God through the
Spirit had influence over what was written down as Scripture, the Bible. Christian leaders filled with the Holy Spirit
can have trouble writing down something without it getting confusing.
There was
also a lot of discussion down through the ages whether or not Jesus descended
into hell and if so, to what purpose.
Augustine, Aquinas, Luther and Calvin all took a slightly different bent
on answering. It would take a
significant chunk of time right now to dive into this question
scripturally. I’ve attached a couple of
links to the transcript if you would like to read further. Also, I’ve included a list of passages used
to support the view. In general, these
passages do not clearly support of the descent view and have understandings
which fit better in the context of the overall passage.
http://www.ligonier.org/learn/qas/what-does-apostles-creed-mean-when-it-says-jesus-d/,
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/asktheexpert/nov15.html
Acts 2:27
seems to be more about Christ’s resurrection from the grave rather than that He
descended into hell. Compare with verse
26 and 29 which talk about David’s body remaining in the grave unlike Jesus’
body which has risen from the dead.
Romans
10:6-7 is a coupling of rhetorical questions rather than teaching about a
descent into hell. See the discussion
above about hades and geenna. In this
case, the word abyssos, or abyss, is used which is also not exclusive in
meaning hell.
Ephesians
4:8-9 talks about Jesus descending, but also uses language which is not
exclusive in talking about hell. The
contrast in this verse seems to be Jesus ascent into heaven against his descent
to earth in the incarnation to be born.
I Peter
3:18-20 is likely the most puzzling on this subject. Several potential interpretations have been
offered. The most satisfactory
explanation appears to be one proposed by Augustine but not really defended by
him. This passage likely exemplifies
that Christ preached through Noah during the time before the flood in the way
that we should allow Christ to “preach” through us by witnessing boldly today.
I Peter 4:6
seems to align better with the thought that the gospel in general was preached
to people now dead when they had been alive.
The verse makes no reference to Christ preaching.
Regarding
passages which seem to challenge the descent of Christ into hell:
Luke 23:43,
Jesus says to the thief on the cross, “Today, you will be with me in
Paradise.” The word Paradise is used in
II Corinthians 12:4 and Revelation 2:7, 22:2 and 14 to mean heaven.
John 19:30,
Jesus says, “It is finished,” which suggests His suffering was finished at that
moment. Therefore, He would not descend
into hell, but go at once to the Father’s presence.
Luke 23:46,
Jesus says, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” This suggests that Christ expected an
immediate end of his suffering and welcoming of his spirit into heaven by the
Father. (Stephen uses similar words in Acts 7:59)
Concerning
the doctrinal question of whether Christ descended into hell after he died, the
answer from several passages of Scripture seems to be no.
(This message
is supported and many examples and ideas are taken directly from Chapter 27:
The Atonement, pp. 568-607, in the book Systematic
Theology by Wayne Grudem.)
No comments:
Post a Comment