Stone VII - Redemption: Grace

As we establish an altar of remembrance, we are half way through laying the 12 Stones of the testimony of God. We have heard the stories of Creation and The Fall and understand that we are made in the image of God, but because of the effects of sin in our lives, we are in desperate need of being reconciled to God. We left off our discussion of the Consequences of Sin with a brief look at the hope of Redemption from the book of Romans. Redemption is the idea of salvation used to express deliverance from sin. We will look at the hope of Redemption in the three parts that make up the oldest, most basic and fundamental statement of Christian belief that salvation comes by Grace alone, through Faith alone, in Christ alone.
After Paul explains in Romans 1:18-3:20 that no one will ever be able to make himself righteous before God, he goes on to explain in verse 23-26 that “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” God’s Grace means His unmerited favor, or the giving of what we need that we do not deserve.
Since we are in desperate need of reconciliation to God and we are spiritually dead in our sin and unable to do any spiritual good, or unable to please God, the only way that we can ever be saved is for God to provide salvation for us by grace, totally apart from our work. Paul explains in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Grace is clearly put in contrast to works (or merit) as the way God chose to reconcile us to himself.
Why did God chose to do this, and why would He chose to do it this way?

I. Definition of Atonement
Atonement is said to be the process of forgiving or pardoning a transgression. Jewish Atonement; was accomplished through rituals performed by a high priest on the holiest day of the Jewish year: Day of Atonement, which looked forward to the Messiah. Grace Atonement; refers to the forgiving or pardoning of sin through the death of Jesus Christ by crucifixion which made possible the reconciliation between God and creation. From this point forward, when we talk about the atonement, we will intend the work Christ did in His life and death to earn our salvation.

II. The Cause of the Atonement
We saw last week that God’s righteousness is the primary cause for the consequences of sin, but we may ask what is the ultimate cause of God’s offer of salvation by grace, through faith, in the atonement of Christ? To find this we must trace the question back to something in the nature and character of God. Here, Scripture points to two things: the love and justice of God.


A. God’s Love - The love of God as a cause of the atonement is seen in the most famous passage in the Bible, John 3:16 say, “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 was motivated by His own love for His creation, namely His great love for the crowning glory of that creation, man. He was so motivated by that love that He presented His Son as a way of atonement for man.

B. God’s Justice - The justice of God also serves as a cause of the atonement because it required that God find a way for the just consequences for our sins to be paid. This is the aspect that Paul focuses on in verse 25, “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”
Paul uses the word propitiation to explain how God could show justice toward our sin and unmerited favor towards us. We will talk more about it in a moment, but for now we can see that both love and justice serve as ultimate cause of the atonement. They work in perfect, unified harmony together as equal parts of God’s character, and both are equally important.

III. The Necessity of the Atonement
Was there any other way for God to save human beings than sending his Son to die in our place?
Before we answer that question, we need to be sure and be clear about something. When we talk about the necessity of the atonement, we mean the necessity of it in the cause of redemption, not the necessity of redemption itself. It was not necessary for God to save any people at all. Just as we talked about in creation, that it was not necessary for God to create mankind in the first place, it is not necessary that God save mankind. When we fully appreciate that “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;” in 2 Peter 2:4, we realize that God could also have chosen, with perfect justice, to have left us in our sins awaiting final judgment. He could have chosen to save no one, and in this sense the atonement is not absolutely necessary.

However, once God, in his love, chose to save some human beings to be returned to his image, we quickly see by the testimony of Scripture that there was no other way for God to do this other than the sacrifice of his Son. Therefore, the atonement was absolutely necessary as a consequence of God’s decision to save some human beings.


A. In Gethsemane - In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prays, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will," in Matthew 26:39. This prayer more than implies that it was not possible for Jesus to avoid the death on the cross and still accomplish his purpose.


B. In the Resurrection - After the resurrection Jesus makes it clear to the disciples on the Emmaus road, when he says in Luke 24:25-26, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?"


C. In the New Testament -
1. In verse 26 of our passage for today, Paul makes clear that if God were to remain righteous and still save people, he had to send Christ to suffer the consequences for sins: “It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
2. Hebrews makes it abundantly clear when it says, “he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people,” in 4:17, and “it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these,” in 9:23, when talking about how “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” There was no other way to save us than for Christ to die in our place.

IV. The Nature of the Atonement
What is the nature of this atonement? We will consider two aspects of Christ’s work.

First, that he obeyed the requirements of the law in our place and was perfectly obedient to the will of the Father as our representative.
Second, that he took the penalty due for our sins and as a result died for our sins.
It is important, before we start, to notice that in both of these aspects the primary emphasis of Christ’s work of redemption is not on us, but on God the Father. Jesus obeyed the law of the Father in our place, and also paid the penalty for our disobedience that the Father demanded.

A. Obedience - Christ’s obedience for us gains righteousness for us. If Christ had only secured forgiveness for us, we still would not merit heaven. Our guilt would be removed, but we would only be returned to the position of Adam in the Garden again, only to eventually fail. We would still not be righteous before God.
For this reason, Christ had to live a life of perfect obedience to God in order to earn righteousness for us. He had to obey the law his whole life on our behalf so that the positive merits of his perfect obedience could be accounted to us. Paul says in Philippians 3:9 that his goal is that he may be found in Christ, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”
It is not neutrality that Paul seeks, but a positive moral righteousness. He knows it can not come from within himself and that is why he proclaims in 1 Corinthians 1:30 that Christ has been made “our righteousness,” and that by his obedience we have been “made righteous,” in Romans 5:19. We ought to ask ourselves whose lifelong record of obedience we would rather rely on for our standing before God, our own, or that of Christ?


B. Suffering - Christ’s suffering for us pays the penalty of sin for us.
In addition to obeying the law perfectly on our behalf, Christ took on himself the necessary suffering to pay the penalty for our sins. Christ lived a life of suffering in that he walked in a fallen world, he suffered tremendously during the temptation in the wilderness, in growing to maturity as Hebrews 5: 8 says, “he learned obedience through what he suffered.” He suffered the intense opposition of the Jewish leaders, and he surely suffered grief at the death of his earthly father and of his close friend Lazarus. Isaiah would predict the coming of the Messiah by saying he would be “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Christ suffered on the cross as the climax to all his suffering on earth. The testimony of Scripture reveals at least four different aspects of the pain of the cross.


1. The physical pain and death - Death by crucifixion was one of the most horrible forms of execution ever devised by man. We do not need to sensationalize it by going into great detail. We need only to know that the beatings and torture and blood-letting and suffocation were our suffering that he bore in our place.


2. The pain of bearing sin - More awful than any physical pain was the psychological pain of bearing the guilt of our sin. We know the anguish we feel when we know we have sinned. The weight of sin is heavy on our hearts and the taste is bitter in our mouths. The more we grow in our faith the more painful & repulsive that sense should be. Now multiply that by infinity and place it on the heart and mind of a perfectly holy Son who lived only to honor his Father. What he had hated most was poured out fully upon him.
Scripture says repeatedly that our sins were put on Christ. Isaiah 53 says, “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” And that “he bore the sins of many.” Paul declares that God made Christ “to be sin” and that he became “a curse for us.” Hebrews 9:28 says that Christ was “offered once to bear the sins of many.” 1 Peter 2:24 says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.”


3. The pain of abandonment - The physical and psychological pain were aggravated by the fact that Jesus faced this pain alone. “All the disciples forsook him and fled,” in Matthew 26:56.
We must ask ourselves, who will stand with us on that last day. Will it be our earthly friends that we have lived so hard to impress, or will it be Christ himself who suffered in our place? Far worse than the desertion of earthly friends was the fact that Jesus was deprived the one thing he had never bee without, the perfect fellowship of his Father. He shows the anguish of having the deepest joy of his heart removed for our sake when he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus bore our sins on the cross. He was abandoned by us and his heavenly Father. He faced the weight of the guilt of trillions of sins alone.


4. The pain of bearing the wrath of God - More difficult than all of the other suffering of Christ was the separation from God he experienced as he bore the wrath of God upon himself.
In Romans 1:16-18 Paul says that he is not ashamed of the gospel, “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” He says that it is the power of God because, “in it the righteousness of God is revealed.” However, what makes the gospel message urgent is that Paul says, “the wrath of God is (already) revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”
God hates sin, and when Jesus bore the guilt of our sin alone, God poured out on Jesus the fury of that wrath. As we said earlier, verse 25 tells us that God put Christ forward as a propitiation for our sins. That word means; a sacrifice that bears the wrath of God to the end and in so doing changes God’s wrath toward us into favor.
God did this to show that in His righteousness He is both just and the justifier. He could not simply forgive and forget. In his divine forbearance, he seemed to have passed over former sins, but he had actually stored up his wrath. But on the cross, all of that stored up wrath was unleashed.
Many non-evangelical theologians have objected to this idea that Jesus bore the wrath of God against sin. Their basic assumption is, “since God is a God of love, it would be inconsistent with his character to show wrath against human beings whom he created and for whom he is a loving Father.” That is a great argument. It is just wholly inconsistent with Scripture.
Leon Morris writes in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, “The whole of the argument of the opening part of Romans is that all men, Gentiles and Jews alike, are sinners, and that they come under the wrath and condemnation of God.” (p.888) The New Testament refers to the wrath of God toward man over 30 times, and Hebrews 2:17, and 1 John 2:2 & 4:10 all refer to Jesus’ death as propitiation. This is important for us because it is the heart of the doctrine of the atonement. Without it, there can be no Redemption! It means that there is an eternal, unchangeable requirement in the holiness and justice of God that sin be paid for. Before the atonement could ever have an effect on us, it had to have an effect on God and his relation to the sinners he planned to redeem. His hurt and righteous anger regarding our sin had to be satisfied.

Apart for this central truth, the death of Christ can not be adequately understood, and if it be not understood, how can it be passed down from generation to generation. We will see the resulting errors in just a second, but for now we must be sure we understand how this propitious death of Christ works.


C. Penal Substitution Atonement
This view of the Christ’s death is called the “Penal Substitution Theory of Atonement.”
1. Christ’s death was penal in that He bore the penalty for our sins when he died.
2. Christ’s death was substitution in that He was a substitute for us when he died.
It is sometimes called the Theory of Vicarious Atonement, because a vicar is someone who stands in the place of another or represents them. Thus, Christ’s death was vicarious because he stood in our place, as our representative, and took the penalty we deserve. This has been the orthodox view, or established doctrine, of the atonement throughout church history.
However, there have been others.


D. Other Views of the Atonement -
In contrast to Penal Substitution, several other views have been advocated at various times in the history of the church. I would like to quickly present the main four because they are not all crazy. In fact they are good arguments, that some people here unwittingly believe, that simply do not comply with the testimony of Scripture. Thus, we need to be keenly aware of them, that they do not come into our homes and deceive our children.

1. The Ransom to Satan Theory - This theory was first held by Origen (185-254 AD).
According to this view, the ransom Christ paid to redeem us was paid to Satan, in whose kingdom all people were by virtue of sin. It thinks of Satan rather than God as the one who required payment to be made for sin. It views Satan as having power to demand a ransom from God. It implies that we as sinners owe Satan a wage or penalty for sin.

The only problem is that it has no direct confirmation in Scripture. Scripture clearly sets God’s justice as the cause for the need for payment with respect to sin. Scripture portrays Satan as one who has been cast down from heaven and subject to God’s authority, not as one who has any right to demand anything form God. Nowhere does Scripture say that we as sinners owe anything to Satan. This theory fails to deal with all the text we have covered regarding Christ death as a propitiation for us.


2. The Moral Influence Theory - This theory was first held by Peter Abelard (1079-1142).
According to this view, God did not require the payment of a penalty for sin, but that Christ’s death was simply a way in which God showed how much he loved human beings by identifying with their sufferings, even to the point of death. Therefore, Christ death is a great teaching example that demonstrates God’s love and draws from us a grateful response, so that in loving him we are forgiven.
The great difficulty is that it is contrary to so many passages of Scripture that speak of Christ dying for sin, bearing our sin, or dying as a propitiation. More importantly, it robs the atonement of its objective character, because it holds that it had no effect on God himself! Finally, it has no way of dealing with our guilt. You must deny original sin in order to hold this view.


3. The Example Theory - This theory was taught by Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) and his followers called the Socinians. This view also claims that God did not require the payment of a penalty for sin, but that Christ’s death simply provides us with an example of how we should trust and obey God perfectly, even if it leads to a horrible death. Instead of teaching us how much God loves us, like the moral influence theory, this theory teaches us how we should live - how to have our best life now. Support for this view can be found in 1 Peter 2:21, “For this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
The problem is that while it is true that Christ is an example for us even in his death, this is not the complete explanation of the atonement. It fails to account for the many Scriptures that focus on Christ’s death as a payment for sins. More importantly, the theory ends up arguing that a man can save himself by following Christ’s example and by trusting and obeying God just as Christ did. It fails to show how guilt can be removed, and therefore, must be rejected.


4. The Governmental Theory - This theory was first taught by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645).
This theory holds that God did not have to require payment for sin, but since he is omnipotent, he could have set aside that requirement and simply forgiven sins without payment of a penalty. Christ’s death was nothing more than God’s demonstration that his law had been broken, and that a penalty would have to be paid whenever his laws were broken. Christ did not actually pay any penalty for anyone, but suffered only to show that a penalty had to be paid.

Well, glory halleluiah - that accomplishes nothing! The only problem with this final theory is that it commits all of the same mistakes of all of the other theories. It makes no payment, makes no atonement, it robs the objective nature of Christ’s work, it gives us no forgiveness of sin, and steals all of the value from Christ’s sacrifice. It absolutely underestimates the absolute nature of God’s justice and love!

They all try to do away with the need for the payment of a penalty for sin. They will accept Christ as a moral influence or example, but never as a substitute and sacrificial atonement. These developed from 185 to 1645 AD, they represent a progressive attempt to remove Christ from the center of redemption, and have not gone away! We need to be aware of modern teachers who try this same thing.

V. Redemption - The Result of the Atonement
What is the result of the atonement? There are four consequences for sin and four satisfactions for those consequences made by the atonement. Let’s look at them as a way of review. Christ lived a perfect, sinless life and died a horrific, sinner’s death in order to “save his people from their sins” according to Matthew 1:21.
A. We deserve to die as the penalty for sin. He paid the penalty we deserved to pay for our sin in his sacrifice.
B. We deserve to bear God’s wrath against sin. He bore the wrath we deserved to bear as our propitiation.
C. We are separated from God by our sins. He overcame the separation our sin caused between us and God by his reconciliation.
D. We are in bondage to sin. He freed us from the bondage caused by sin through his redemption.
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.” What a great salvation!
It is all about Grace and that display of grace is generational. That is why Paul says in Ephesians, “by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
What a Savior! “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”
For this reason we bow before you, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant us to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in our inner being, so that Christ may dwell in our hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.


Take These Stones Home
Stone VII - Redemption: Grace

Read John 3:16 and Romans 3:23-26 to your children.
Share with them the Definition of Atonement that we learned this week:
Atonement; the process of forgiving or pardoning a transgression. The work Christ did in his life and death to earn our salvation.
Talk with children about how God's love motivated him to save us.
Talk with Children about how God's justice made it necessary for God to send Jesus to pay for our sins.

Share with Children that Christ’s obedience to God was very important for us to be saved.
Point out that Jesus was obedient to his Father because he loved him.
Jesus tells us that if we love God we must obey him also, just as he did.
Tell children that we should be like Jesus and obey God and our parents out of love.

Share with children that Christ's suffering was very important for us to be saved.
Point out that Jesus also suffered in order to pay for our sin.
Jesus shows us that sometimes we must sacrifice in order to accomplish God's plan.
Tell children that we should be like Jesus and be willing to suffer for what is right.

Share with Children about how Jesus paid for our sins by taking our place on the cross.
Children need to understand that we deserved to be on the cross and that Jesus did not.
Talk with children about what it means to be a substitute.