Atonement

Introduction

J. I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1993), 134: "Atonement means making amends, blotting out the offense, and giving satisfaction for wrong done; thus reconciling to oneself the alienated other and restoring the disrupted relationship."

John M. Frame, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2013), 901: "Jesus’ atoning sacrifice fulfills the OT sacrifices of bulls, goats, lambs, doves, flour, wine, and oil. In the OT, God used those sacrifices to teach the people what Jesus was later going to do. So we can learn from those sacrifices about the meaning of Jesus’ atonement."

Penalty

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood. I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life" (Lev 17:11).

"whom God sent to be an atoning sacrifice through faith in his blood, for a demonstration of his righteousness through the passing over of prior sins, in God’s forbearance; to demonstrate his righteousness at this present time, that he might himself be just and the justifier of him who has faith in Jesus" (Rom 3:25-26).

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 6:23).

Jeremy Treat, The Atonement: An Introduction, Short Studies in Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023), 49: "God is a good King who loves his creation and is, therefore, opposed to that which violates its goodness. Because of his love (not in spite of it), God responds to sin... God’s response to sin, therefore, is judgment (2 Cor. 5:10), punishment (2 Thess. 1:9), wrath (John 3:36), a curse (Deut. 11:28), exile (2 Kings 17:6–7), and ultimately death (Rom. 6:23). This is the penalty of sin."

Rory Shiner, In My Place Condemned He Stood: Penal Substitutionary Atonement: "What is the just punishment for our rebellion against God? The Bible’s answer is death. God gave us life. To take his gift and reject the giver is treason. It is a capital offence. 'The wages of sin is death' as Paul says in Romans 6... The truth that Christ in his death took the penalty for my sins is something that fills out hearts even as it exercises our minds."

Louis Berkhoff, Systematic Theology, 3.4, The Nature of the Atonement: "There are several passages in Scripture which speak of our sins as being 'laid upon' Christ, and of His 'bearing' sin or iniquity, Isa. 53:6,12; John 1:29; II Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13; Heb. 9:28; I Pet. 2:24. On the basis of Scripture we can, therefore, say that our sins are imputed [or credited] to Christ. This does not mean that our sinfulness was transferred to Him — something that is in itself utterly impossible — but that the guilt of our sin was imputed [or reckoned] to Him."

Righteousness

"But to him who doesn’t work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. Even as David also pronounces blessing on the man to whom God counts righteousness apart from works" (Rom 4:5-6).

"Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we will be saved from God’s wrath through him" (Rom 5:9).

"and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith" (Philippians 3:9).

Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 2nd. Ed., (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 631: "His preceptive [in law obeying] and his penal [in taking our penalty] obedience, then, particularly as the latter came to expression in his cross work, is the ground of God's justification of sinners (see Rom. 5:9), by which divine act they are pardoned (because their sins were charged to Christ who obediently bore the law's sanctions against them) and accepted as righteous in God's sight (because Christ's preceptive obedience or perfect righteousness is imputed to them through faith)."

Two Key Verses

"For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree'..." (Galatians 3:13).

John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), 143, 148: "It is clear from Old Testament usage that to 'bear sin' means... specifically to endure its penal consequences, to undergo its penalty... The sinless one was 'made sin for us,' which must mean that he bore the penalty of our sin instead of us, and he redeemed us from the law’s curse by 'becoming a curse for us,' which must mean that the curse of the law lying upon us for our disobedience was transferred to him, so that he bore it instead of us."

Penal Substitutionary Atonement

"Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God..." (1 Peter 3:18).

Greg R. Allison, The Holy Spirit’s Crucial Role in Penal Substitutionary Atonement:

1. The atonement is grounded in the holiness of God who, being perfectly holy, hates and punishes sin.

2. A penalty for sin must be paid.

3. People cannot pay the penalty for their sins and live; rather, the penalty is death.

4. Only God can pay the penalty for sin, but he must partake of human nature to pay for human beings.

5. By his death, the God-man, Jesus Christ, atoned for human sin.

6. The atonement had to be accomplished in this way (“penal substitution theory”).

Greg R. Allison, The Holy Spirit’s Crucial Role in Penal Substitutionary Atonement: "Because God is triune, the work of the second person is never separated from the work of the first and third persons... So also here, the three persons acted indivisibly in the divine work of atonement... [T]he incarnate Son underwent his act of penal substitutionary atonement, upheld to the end by the Holy Spirit... Jesus 'through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God.' [Heb 9:14]"

Cosmic Impact

David Schrock, The Cross in Colossians: Cosmic Reconciliation through Penal Substitution and Christus Victor: "Christ died to atone for the sins of his 'chosen ones' (Col 3:9 [sic 12]), that is, his people, and in keeping with CV, his death defeated his enemies and put them to open shame. In other words, through a theological reading of Colossians 1:15-2:15... together PSA and CV are the twin means by which Christ’s death brings peace to the cosmos (Col 1:20)."

Effectiveness

Jarvis Williams, For Whom Did Christ Die?: "In the book of Romans, the apostle Paul teaches that Jesus’s death actually achieved the benefits of salvation for those for whom he died. Paul does not present Jesus’s death as hypothetically accomplishing the salvation of all people without exception, but as actually accomplishing salvation for all for whom he died."

Roger Nicole, The Case For Definite Atonement: "Particular redemption is an inevitable implicate of a recognition of the penal substitutionary nature of the atonement... If we do hold that Christ died substitutionally for all mankind bearing the divine penalty for the sins of all men, it would appear that at the day of judgment there will remain nothing to be punished, and consequently all men should be saved."

Verses

Sacrifice

"For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place." (1 Cor 5:7).

"who doesn’t need, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices daily, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. For he did this once for all, when he offered up himself." (Heb 7:27).

"so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him." (Heb 9:28).

"we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." (Heb 10:10).

"but he, when he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God" (Heb 10:12).

"For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified." (Heb 10:14).

Body

"you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you would be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might produce fruit to God" (Rom 7:4).

Douglas J. Moo, The Letter to the Romans. 2nd ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 443: "A few interpreters have thought... believers are put to death to the law by belonging to the church, the body of Christ. Others suggest that Paul may be connoting the solidarity of believers with Christ in his death. But Paul has laid no groundwork in Romans for this application; he must be referring to the physical body of Christ, put to death on the cross for us."

"he has reconciled [you] in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without defect and blameless before him" (Col 1:22).

"we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Heb 10:7).

"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness. You were healed by his wounds" (1 Pet 2:24).

Blood

"Take heed, therefore, to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the assembly of the Lord and God which he purchased with his own blood" (Acts 20:28).

Darrell L. Bock, Acts, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 630: "The picture is like what Abraham had been willing to do with Isaac (Gen. 22), only here God does carry out the offering so that others can benefit from the sacrifice ('purchased' in Isa. 43:21; Ps. 74:2). Thus the acquiring of the church had as its basis a substitution of God's own for those God would bring to eternal life."

A. M. Stibbs, The Meaning of the Word 'Blood' In Scripture, (London: Tyndale, 1948): "To speak, therefore, of Christ's shed blood is to acknowledge the amazing fact that He, the sinless Son of God, actually as Man died the kind of death which only sinners ought to die. All our references to 'Christ's blood' ought therefore to involve the significant recollection that His human life in this world came to an end by the violent rending of His flesh; and that, as though He Himself were a sinner, He died the sinner's kind of death (i.e., a blood-shedding death); and it is because He died the kind of death that sinners ought to die, that sinners can by faith in Him and Him crucified be saved from sin and all its dire consequences."

"being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God sent to be an atoning sacrifice through faith in his blood, for a demonstration of his righteousness through the passing over of prior sins, in God’s forbearance" (Rom 3:24-25).

Douglas J. Moo, The Letter to the Romans. 2nd ed., NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 250-251: "In Paul's day, 'redemption' often referred to a transaction whereby prisoners of war, condemned criminals, and (especially) slaves were able to purchase their freedom... Paul is... presenting Christ's death as a 'ransom,' a 'payment' that takes the place of that penalty for sins 'owed' by all people to God."

"Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we will be saved from God’s wrath through him" (Rom 5:9).

"In him we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace" (Eph 1:7).

"you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off are made near in the blood of Christ." (Eph 2:12-13).

"For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in him, and through him to reconcile all things to himself by him, whether things on the earth or things in the heavens, having made peace through the blood of his cross." (Col 1:19-20).

"But Christ having come as a high priest... through his own blood, entered in once for all into the Holy Place, having obtained eternal redemption." (Heb 9:11-12).

"how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" (Heb 9:14).

"that you may obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood" (1 Pet 1:2).

"knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things like silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your fathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish or spot, the blood of Christ" (1 Pet 1:18-19).

"But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, cleanses us from all sin" (1 Jn 1:7).

"Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth... who loves us, and washed us from our sins by his blood" (Rev 1:4-5).

"They sang a new song, saying, 'You are worthy to take the book and to open its seals, for you were killed, and bought us for God with your blood out of every tribe, language, people, and nation, and made us kings and priests to our God; and we will reign on the earth.'" (Rev 5:9-10).

Cross

"and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross, having killed the hostility through it" (Eph 2:16).

"and through him to reconcile all things to himself by him, whether things on the earth or things in the heavens, having made peace through the blood of his cross" (Col 1:20).

"He made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us. He has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross. Having stripped the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it" (Col 2:13-15).

Death

"unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit" (Jn 12:24).

"For while we were yet weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom 5:6).

"But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom 5:8).

"For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his life" (Rom 5:10).

"Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor 15:3).

"He died for all, that those who live should no longer live to themselves, but to him who for their sakes died and rose again" (2 Cor 5:15).

"You, being in past times alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil deeds, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without defect and blameless before him" (Col 1:21-22)

"For God didn’t appoint us to wrath, but to the obtaining of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him" (1 Thes 5:9).

"But we see him who has been made a little lower than the angels, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for everyone" (Heb 2:9).

"Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Heb 2:14-15).

"For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, since a death has occurred for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, that those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance" (Heb 9:15).