Three voices to close with — a confession, and two reformers — each setting out from a different angle what Christ’s death secured.

We have traced a great many categories across these articles: victory and obedience, sacrifice and substitution, satisfaction, propitiation, redemption, reconciliation. It’s worth ending not with another category but with three attempts to say the whole thing at once.

‘What is ours becomes his, and what is his becomes ours.’

The Double Achievement

The Westminster Confession of Faith sets out with precision the double achievement of Christ’s mediatorial death: both the satisfaction of divine justice and the securing of an eternal inheritance for all the Father has given him.

‘The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience, and sacrifice of himself, which he, through the eternal Spirit, once offered up unto God, has fully satisfied the justice of his Father; and purchased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him.’¹The Westminster Confession of Faith, 8.5; Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 199, slightly amended.

Note the ‘not only … but.’ Reconciliation alone would be extraordinary — enmity ended, peace made. The Confession insists there’s more: an inheritance, purchased and permanent.

What Luther Called It

Martin Luther, with characteristic power and verve, unfolds the logic of what he calls the ‘joyful exchange’ — the transfer of all that is ours to Christ, and all that is his to us. And he draws from it a practical counsel for the soul under temptation:

‘Through the death of Christ we are blessed, that is, justified and made alive. As long as sin, death and the curse remain in us, sin damns us, death kills us and the curse curses us; but when these things are transferred to Christ, what is ours becomes his, and what is his becomes ours. Let us learn, therefore, in every temptation, to transfer sin, death, the curse and all the evils that oppress us from ourselves to Christ, and on the other hand to transfer righteousness, life and blessing from him to us. For he does in fact bear all our evils, because God the Father, as Isaiah says, “has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”’²Luther, Lectures on Galatians, LW 26:292. See Robert Kolb, ‘Martin Luther,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 613-22.

That last move is worth catching, because it turns doctrine into practice.

Luther doesn’t leave the exchange as a completed transaction to be admired. He makes it something to do — ‘in every temptation.’ When sin accuses, when death frightens, when the curse presses: transfer it. Move it off yourself and onto Christ, who has already borne it. Then move his righteousness, life and blessing back onto yourself.

Not because you’re pretending. Because it’s true, and has been since the cross.

Calvin’s Inventory

Finally, John Calvin, in one of the most celebrated passages in the Institutes, surveys the entire sweep of Christ’s person and work and shows that every blessing the soul could seek is located in him alone:

‘We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ [Acts 4:12]. … If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is “of him” … If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in his dominion [lordship]; if purity, in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in his birth. For by his birth he was made like us in all respects [Heb 2:17] that he might learn to feel our pain [cf. Heb 5:2]. … If we seek redemption, it lies in his passion; if acquittal, in his condemnation; if remission of the curse, in his cross [Gal 3:13]; if satisfaction, in his sacrifice; if purification, in his blood; if reconciliation, in his descent into hell; if mortification of the flesh, in his tomb; if newness of life, in his resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in his entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in his Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.’³Calvin, Institutes 2.16.19; Battles ed., 527-28.

One Fountain

Read Calvin’s list slowly and you notice its structure. Each item pairs a human need with a specific moment in Christ’s career.

Purity — his conception. Gentleness — his birth. Redemption — his passion. Acquittal — his condemnation. Remission of the curse — his cross. Newness of life — his resurrection. Inheritance — his ascension.

Nothing is left over, and nothing is sourced elsewhere. The whole of what a person needs is distributed across the whole of what Christ did.

Which is where all the categories we’ve traced — victory, obedience, sacrifice, substitution, satisfaction, propitiation, redemption, reconciliation — finally converge. They aren’t competing theories of the atonement, to be ranked and chosen between. They’re the many facets of a single achievement, each answering a different aspect of a single, catastrophic human problem.

‘Let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.’

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• 1
  The Westminster Confession of Faith, 8.5; Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 199, slightly amended. ↩︎
• 2
  Luther, Lectures on Galatians, LW 26:292. See Robert Kolb, ‘Martin Luther,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 613-22. ↩︎
• 3
  Calvin, Institutes 2.16.19; Battles ed., 527-28. ↩︎