WHAT IS THE ATONEMENT? Prior to Jesus’ birth, an angel told his earthly father, Joseph, that he was to name the baby in Mary’s womb Jesus, “for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). Jesus did save his people from their sins—both through the life he lived and through the death he died. The work Jesus did in living and dying to earn our salvation is sometimes referred to as the atonement. The Cause of the Atonement Scripture is clear: Christ came to earn our salvation because of God’s faithful love (or mercy) and justice. God’s love is affirmed in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God’s justice is affirmed when Paul writes that God put forward Jesus “as a propitiation” (Rom. 3:25), that is, a sacrifice that bears God’s wrath so that God looks favorably toward us. Paul says this was done “to show God’s righteousness” and also “so that he might be just” (Rom. 3:25–26). In other words, the sins God “passed over” or didn’t punish before Christ came to earth had to be punished somehow if God was to “be just.” Therefore, someone had to take the punishment for those sins, and that someone was Jesus. In Jesus’ life and death, we find a full expression of God’s justice (sin is punished) and faithful love (God gave his own Son to bear the punishment). The Nature of the Atonement And yet, if Christ had only offered himself as a sacrifice, thereby earning us forgiveness of sins, we would only have access to a partial salvation. Although our guilt would be removed, we would be like Adam and Eve when they were first created: guilt-free but capable of sin and having no lifelong record of obedience. And in order to enter into fellowship with God, we would need to live a life of perfect obedience. Therefore, Christ had to live a life of perfect obedience to God so that the positive merits of that obedience could be counted for us. This is what Paul means when he says, “by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). And this is why Paul does not count on his own righteousness, but instead counts on “that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil. 3:9). Christ, through the sinless life he lived, became “our righteousness” (1 Cor. 1:30). Jesus also lived a life of suffering. He was, in the words of Isaiah, “despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). He suffered when he was assaulted by Satan’s attacks and temptations in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–11). He “endured from sinners” tremendous “hostility against himself” (Heb. 12:3). He was tremendously grieved at the death of his close friend Lazarus (John 11:35). It was through these and other sufferings that “he learned obedience” (though he never once disobeyed) and “became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Heb. 5:8–9). As Jesus drew closer to his death, his sufferings increased. He told his disciples something of the agony he was experiencing when he said, “My soul is sorrowful, even to death” (Matt. 26:38). When Jesus was crucified, he suffered one of the most horrible forms of death ever devised by man. While he did not necessarily suffer more pain than any human being has ever suffered, the pain he experienced was immense. When crucified, Christ was forced to endure a slow death by suffocation, brought on by the weight of his own body. He was stretched out and fastened by nails to the cross. His arms supported most of the weight of his body. His chest cavity was pulled upward and outward, making it difficult to exhale and then draw in a fresh breath. To breathe, he had to push up with his legs, putting all the weight on the nails through his feet, and pull up on the nails through his hands, sending fiery pain through the nerves of his arms and legs. His back, already whipped raw, scraped against the rough, splinter-filled wooden cross with each breath he took. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the spiritual pain. Jesus never sinned. Jesus hated sin. Yet Jesus voluntarily took upon himself all the sins of those who one day would be saved. “He bore the sins of many” (Isa. 53:12). That which he hated with his whole being was poured out upon him. As Peter tells us, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). “For our sake,” God made Christ “to be sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus became “a curse for us” to redeem us “from the curse of the law” (Gal. 3:13). And Jesus faced this all alone. “All the disciples left him and fled” (Matt. 26:56). God, his Father, abandoned him. Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46) because at that time, he was cut off from the sweet fellowship with his heavenly Father that had been the unfailing source of inward strength and the element of greatest joy in a life filled with sorrow. And at the height of his suffering, he was very much alone.Even more difficult than the physical pain, mental anguish, and complete abandonment was the pain of bearing the full wrath of God upon himself. As Jesus bore the guilt of our sins, God unleashed all wrath and punishment for our sins upon his own Son. Jesus became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin that God had patiently stored up since the beginning of the world. Christ necessarily and willingly bore the full punishment for our sin on the cross. And so through his death, God’s justice was met. Christ “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26). The Result of the Atonement Christ lived a perfect, sinless life and died a horrific, sinner’s death in order to “save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). He paid the penalty we deserved to pay for our sin. He bore the wrath we deserved to bear. He overcame the separation our sin caused between God and us. He freed us from the bondage caused by sin. Because of Christ’s work on our behalf, God can “deliver us from the domain of darkness” and transfer “us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col. 1:13). What a great salvation!
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 16:50:00 +0000