The reconciliation accomplished at the cross cannot be understood as the act of the Son alone, isolated from the Father and the Spirit.¹See Fred Sanders, ‘These Three Atone: Trinity and Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 19-34.

‘God himself has taken our rebellion, our filth, our punishment, our hatred and alienation, and exhausted it completely in the depths of his own most holy being.’

God Is Not Divided

‘the work of Christ cannot finally be removed from that of the other two persons of the Trinity. The New Testament reminds us that in all his work outside of himself, God is not divided. When the Son is baptised, the voice of the Father is heard and the Spirit descends as a dove (Mark 1:9-11). Jesus “lays down his own life” (John 10:11ff), “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19), and “through the eternal Spirit [Christ] offered himself without blemish to God” (Heb 9:14).’²Thompson and Doyle, ‘Work of Christ: Traditional Approaches.’ Unpublished Lecture, 1.

This reveals an extremely large and deep truth about God’s holy character.³Adapted from Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – ‘God’s Identity Holiness: The Holiness of the Holy Trinity,’ article 4 in The Holiness of God: From Threat to Fellowship; available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/gods-identity-holiness/

Here we see not a conflict within the Trinity but perfect harmony in the work of salvation. The atoning work of Christ is not something happening external to God, but falls within his life and being. The Father sends the Son (Rom 8:3); the Son offers himself up (Eph 5:2); and the Spirit enables the sacrifice (Heb 9:14).

The holiness of God is not violated by the cross but displayed and expressed in it.

On the cross, the holiness of the Trinity is displayed both in its rejection of sin — the Son bears the wrath of God in our place — and in God’s love for sinners — the Father gives up his Son, the Son gives up his life, and the Spirit enables both.

This is not three Gods working at cross-purposes, but one God working in undivided perfect unity for our salvation.

Inside God, Not Outside

Because the atonement is an act by Jesus Christ, who in his Deity is of the same being as the Father, it is also an act of all the Triune God.

Therefore, in the unbroken co-active fellowship of the three Persons in this event, we must think of the atonement as something happening within God, not at a distance outside of him.

God himself has taken our rebellion, our filth, our punishment, our hatred and alienation, and exhausted it completely in the depths of his own most holy being and action.⁴See T. F. Torrance, ‘The Atonement and the Trinity, in The Mediation of Christ (T & T Clark, 1992), 99-120. Also, Adonis Vidu, ’The Missions of the Divine Persons,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 645-50; and Daniel Castelo, ’Impassibility (Divine), in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 564-68.

The Cross Is Where That Love Is Seen

Jesus’ death certainly is presented in the New Testament as a model of behaviour to be echoed and emulated. Yet even where this is so, his exemplary suffering is inseparable from his atoning work.

In 1 Peter 2, Jesus’ suffering is held before us as an example ‘so that you might follow in his steps’ (v 21) — but that same passage grounds his example in penal substitution: ‘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’ (v 24).

The imitation of Christ is never detached from the atonement of Christ.

This notion of God’s sacrificial substitution of himself — bearing in our place the punishment our sins deserve — is the central thread around which every other truth about the cross is wrapped. ‘According to the gospel the cross of Christ is the only ground on which God forgives sins.’⁵Stott, The Cross of Christ, 87.

Assumed Even When Unstated

In the New Testament the preached gospel did not in every instance contain an explanation of the cross. Public proclamation could concentrate on Jesus’ resurrection, and occasionally on his second coming.

Nevertheless, what is assumed throughout — even where it isn’t spelled out how — is that Jesus’ death for our sins stands as the foundation of forgiveness and the great heart of what God has done to save and reconcile us.

‘Christ crucified’ (1 Cor 1:23), ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’ (1 Cor 2:2): these phrases signal not a peripheral theme but the essential substance of the apostolic gospel. The cross is the ground beneath everything else.

There is ‘a tremendously tight tie between the gospel and the cross of Christ.’⁶Carson, ‘What is the Gospel? – Revisited,’ 154 The suffering and death of Jesus ‘is the great act of God, which empowers the gospel and enables it to save. … We may call it the heart of the Gospel, even if it is not the first thing we explain.’⁷Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 147-48. Cf. Packer and Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood.

More Than the Cross, Centred on the Cross

At the same time, stated more comprehensively, the gospel encompasses far more than the cross.

It is ‘the gloriously great good news of what our triune God has graciously done in the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ to satisfy his wrath against us and secure the forgiveness of sins and perfect righteousness, for all who trust in him by faith alone.’⁸Sam Storms, ‘The Gospel,’ in ESV Systematic Theology Study Bible (Crossway, 2017), 1706.

Again: ‘God, through the perfect life, atoning death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, rescues all his people from the wrath of God into peace with God, with a promise of the full restoration of his created order forever — all to the praise of the glory of his grace.’⁹Ray Ortlund, The Gospel (Crossway, 2014), Kindle Locations 147-149. So also, ‘The gospel describes the core proclamation of the Christian faith, centred on Jesus Christ and the divine plan of redemption fulfilled in his life, death, resurrection and renewal of cre­ation’ (David Hilborn, ‘Gospel,’ NDTSH, 374).

The gospel announces ‘that God has acted for the salvation of the world in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus.’¹⁰U. Becker, ‘Gospel, Evangelize, Evangelist,’ in Colin Brown ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 2:111.

Yet it is equally the case that God’s love in the gospel is seen above all in the Father sending ‘his Son as a propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 4:10).

In the cross, that love is most fully and vividly manifest (Rom 5:6-8). God loves the world in such a way that he gave his Son — and gave him, more precisely, by lifting him up and handing him over to death by crucifixion (John 3:14-16).

The love of God is not a consequence of the atonement but its fountainhead: the prior movement and motivating impulse behind all that Christ accomplished for us on the cross.

—

• 1
  See Fred Sanders, ‘These Three Atone: Trinity and Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 19-34. ↩︎
• 2
  Thompson and Doyle, ‘Work of Christ: Traditional Approaches.’ Unpublished Lecture, 1. ↩︎
• 3
  Adapted from Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – ‘God’s Identity Holiness: The Holiness of the Holy Trinity,’ article 4 in The Holiness of God: From Threat to Fellowship; available at https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/gods-identity-holiness/ ↩︎
• 4
  See T. F. Torrance, ‘The Atonement and the Trinity, in The Mediation of Christ (T & T Clark, 1992), 99-120. Also, Adonis Vidu, ’The Missions of the Divine Persons,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 645-50; and Daniel Castelo, ’Impassibility (Divine), in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 564-68. ↩︎
• 5
  Stott, The Cross of Christ, 87. ↩︎
• 6
  Carson, ‘What is the Gospel? – Revisited,’ 154 ↩︎
• 7
  Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 147-48. Cf. Packer and Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood. ↩︎
• 8
  Sam Storms, ‘The Gospel,’ in ESV Systematic Theology Study Bible (Crossway, 2017), 1706. ↩︎
• 9
  Ray Ortlund, The Gospel (Crossway, 2014), Kindle Locations 147-149. So also, ‘The gospel describes the core proclamation of the Christian faith, centred on Jesus Christ and the divine plan of redemption fulfilled in his life, death, resurrection and renewal of cre­ation’ (David Hilborn, ‘Gospel,’ NDTSH, 374). ↩︎
• 10
  U. Becker, ‘Gospel, Evangelize, Evangelist,’ in Colin Brown ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 2:111. ↩︎