‘The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance: so that two whole and perfect Natures, that is to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one Christ, very God, and very Man; who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for the actual sins of men.’¹The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, 2; Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 115.

Orientation – Humiliation and Exaltation: The Two States of Christ

A useful and influential way of approaching the work of Christ was given particular prominence by Lutheran orthodoxy.²This section is, with developments, extracted from Thompson and Doyle, ‘Work of Christ: Traditional Approaches,’ 7-9. Its first major explanation was Martin Chemnitz’s The Two Natures of Christ (1578). In this work the doctrine of the two states of Christ, his humiliation and exaltation, were in some sense parallel to the two natures of Christ, truly God and truly man.

It is in fact an attempt to do justice to the testimony of Scripture concerning the historical progress of Christ’s life from humiliation to exaltation. A key text in this regard is Philippians 2:1-11. It assumes a pre-existent glory which is voluntarily surrendered by Christ only to be replaced at the end of the movement with ‘the name above all names’. (Other texts which indicate this movement from humiliation to exaltation include Mark 10:33-34; Luke 24:26; John 12:23-32; Acts 2:30-36. An Old Testament anticipation is found in Isaiah 53).³An excellent discussion through the range of Christ’s humiliation and exaltation is Crowe, The Lord Jesus Christ, 253-83. See also, Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Disputation 27, ‘On Christ in His State of Humiliation;’ Boer and Faber eds., 305-316.

The Humiliation

The humiliation is usually said to include four aspects:

1. The Incarnation

This equates to the Philippian expression ‘taking the form of a servant’ (2:7) which accents the voluntary surrender of Christ’s heavenly splendour (cf. Rom 8:3; 2 Cor 8:9; Hebrews 2:9). The basic New Testament statement is found in John 1:14: ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’ It also includes his life-long obedience which is often explained as his voluntary submission to the law of God (Gal 4:4). This is not meant to suggest that he ceased to be God, rather that he took to himself all the conditions of humanity, yet, as Paul makes clear, without sin (2 Cor 5:21; Heb 4:15).

2. Suffering

The critical expression here is that in his humanity he took on the very nature of a servant, and as a servant, ‘he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross’ (Phil 2:8) That is, Jesus took on a state of undergoing pain, distress and hardship, suffering, for us. This This suffering culminates in his trial and subsequent death but includes his life-long experience of such things as weariness (John 4:6), thirst (John 4:7), hunger (Matt 4:2), and grief (John 11:35). All this was in accordance with Old Testament expectations (e.g. Isa 53:3) and gave him opportunity to express his obedience to the will of his Father (Heb 5:8).

3. Death

‘He became obedient unto death, even death on a cross’ (Phil 2:8) This climax of Christ’s obedience and suffering is expressed in the cry of dereliction from the cross (Matthew 27:46). It was not simply his sharing of the agony of human death which caused him so to cry out, but the bearing of the curse on behalf of those he came to save (Gal 3:13-14; 2 Cor 5:21).

4. Burial

While there is no equivalent in the Philippian passage, the full sharing of human death in the act of burial was part of the apostolic proclamation (1 Corinthians 15:4). There is a further indication of the extent of his humiliation in the fact that it was a borrowed tomb (Matthew 27:59-60). Some presentations of this scheme add at this point the descent into hell based on Psalm 16:10; Ephesians 4:8-10; 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 Peter 3:18-20; and 4:4-6.

The Exaltation

Parallel to the humiliation, the exaltation of Christ is said to have four aspects:

1. The Resurrection

This great ‘event’ marks the transition from the state of humiliation to the state of exaltation. It is the undoing of death, the seal on the atonement completed at the cross. There is a continuity between the crucified body and the resurrected body which is indicated by the empty tomb and the nature of the appearances (Luke 24:39), yet there is equally an obvious transformation that prepares the way for his return to the Father (John 20:17, 19).

2. The Ascension

The return to heaven is represented in Luke and Acts as a bodily ascension (Luke 24:50-53; Acts 1:6-11). Jesus did not shed his body as if to somehow undo the union of divine human natures, rather he retains his humanity (1 Timothy 2:5). It is this ascension which makes possible his pouring out of the Spirit of God (John 16:7; Acts 2:33).

3. The Session

Scripture speaks of Christ’s activity beyond the ascension. ‘He is seated at the right hand of the Father’ (Acts 2:33; Hebrews 1:3; Ephesians 1:20-22) in fulfilment of the Old Testament promise (Psalm 110:1). This ‘seating’ connotes the completion of Christ’s work and his authority to exercise the rule of God (Daniel 7:13-14). The writer to the Hebrews speaks of the continuous intercession of Christ on behalf of the saints (Hebrews 7:25; Romans 8:34). The term applied to this is ‘session’, indicating a formal time when a ruling authority meets and acts to conduct its business.

4. The Return in Glory

The complete manifestation of the glory of Christ will occur at his return when every knee will bow (Philippians 2:10-11). His return will bring both judgement and final salvation for those who belong to him (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10; 4:13 – 5:11; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12).

Important in discussion of this two-fold scheme is the nature of the connection between the state of humiliation and the state of exaltation. Is it simply sequential? Or is there some kind of inner necessity in the movement, as perhaps indicated by Luke 24:26 and Acts 2:24? Or is it a causal connection: because Christ underwent the humiliation he was exalted by the Father (Philippians 2:9; Hebrews 2:9). If we affirm all three, we must safeguard the love of Christ as the motive for his work, as opposed to any suggestion of self-interest (Mark 10:45; Luke 19:10; John 10:11-18).

As a postscript, it is worth noting that this whole scheme was later expanded by the Lutheran theologian Matthaus Haffenreffer in his Loci Theologici (1603) to encompass three states:  Christ’s humiliation (his life and death); his glorification (that state between his resurrection and ascension); and his majesty (the state he has since the ascension).

The Cross of Christ: The Centre and Sum of His Saving Work

The four written Gospels all portray Jesus Christ as the world’s true Saviour, Lord, and King by telling his story, strangely yet most significantly, as centred upon his suffering and death. We certainly do not understand him until we appreciate the crucifixion. Everything Christ is to us is built upon, and concentrated in, his cross; all that he was on earth, and all that he now is in heaven, was put into what happened there.

To understand him aright, we must follow the guidance of Scripture itself. As Calvin counsels, ‘none will ever learn what Christ is, or the purpose of his actions and sufferings, save by the guiding and teaching of the Scriptures. So far, then, as each of us desires to advance in the knowledge of Christ we shall need to meditate industriously and continually on Scripture.’⁴Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 1-10, trans. Parker, 54.

Yet Scripture’s own account of Christ’s saving work is many-sided, and there is no single answer to the question of why Jesus died. Consideration of all the Biblical categories and images is vital. No one way of looking at the cross or, indeed, Jesus’ entire life, tells the whole story.⁵Morris, Atonement; passim; Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2015), passim. Robert White’s summary of Calvin’s own approach illustrates this range and breadth well:

‘In explaining the significance of the cross, Calvin does not go beyond biblical categories of thought. Why did Christ die? He died … to show the gravity of man’s sin and God’s abhorrence of it. He gave his life as a ransom, to deliver transgressors from the guilt and power of sin and to relieve them of the curse which the law pronounced on them. His blood was shed as a sacrificial offering, perfect and complete, to atone for sin, and by the washing of the Holy Spirit to sanctify the sinner. He died in our stead, the just for the unjust, that we might be counted righteous in God’s sight and fully reconciled to him. He died to demonstrate God’s love and pity for the lost, and to destroy the works of the devil.’⁶Robert White, ‘Introduction,’ to John Calvin, Crucified and Risen: Sermons on the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, trans. Robert White (Banner of Truth Trust, 2019), xv.

Michael Gorman broadens this point still further, that Christ’s saving work cannot be confined to the cross alone, still less to any single category such as substitution or sacrifice:

‘Christ does not do his work alone: the Father and the Spirit work in and through him. Nor can Christ’s work be separated from his person. Christ’s work is astonishingly multifaceted. It is not encapsulated by one single idea, such as substitution or sacrifice. It takes the length and breadth of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, to perform his work. Christ’s work does not only refer to his death but to everything he does. Jesus’ work includes mediating creation and new creation. He inaugurates God’s rule. He welcomes the poor and vulnerable into the kingdom. He forgives, delivers from sin, and conquers evil, Satan, and death. He brings God’s peace, God’s shalom. He offers himself as a sacrifice for sin. He creates the community of the new covenant. Jesus’ ultimate work is to reign as Lord.’⁷Michael J. Gorman, ‘The Work of Christ in the New Testament,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Christology, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford University Press, 2015); online version. See also John Webster, ‘The Place of Christology in Systematic Theology,’ in the same volume.

A Many-Sided Atonement

Having recognized how many-sided Scripture’s own testimony to the cross is, we may now draw those threads together into a preliminary overview of the atonement’s principal aspects.⁸Refer to Adam J. Johnson, ‘Atonement: The Shape and State of the Doctrine,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 1-18.

The term ‘aspect’ is preferred to ‘model,’ since the latter suggests personal choice and, by its nature, tends toward the self-contained and thus the exclusion of other important features of the Biblical presentation. ‘Aspect,’ by contrast, indicates that the reality under examination admits of no simple or exhaustive description in a single term: it is polyvalent – having many different functions, forms, or facts – and each aspect inherently makes room for the others. The term also invites integration at a level beyond that of the terms themselves.

The order and structure of exposition is not hard and fast, but in the New Testament we may observe a number of recurring descriptions of the scope and depth of Christ’s atoning work in his death and resurrection—aspects identified and expounded throughout the history of Biblical interpretation.⁹Thanks are due to Robert C. Doyle for elaboration here. See also, Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity, 271. Such aspects may be initially identified as follows:

1. Satisfaction of God’s justice (penal substitution, Gal 3:13; Heb 10:1-10)
2. Solidarity of Christ, in his incarnation, with the race of Adam, and our union with Christ by faith (Rom 5:12–21; 6:5–11)¹⁰On this particular point (2), see Ivor J. Davidson, ‘Atonement and Incarnation,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 35-56.
3. Enlightenment – to reveal God to humanity (John 1:1–13; 1 Cor 1:18–2:5)
4. Cleansing for worship – to provide a great high priest for humanity (Heb 4:14; 1 John 1:9)
5. Conflict and victory – to defeat demonic power (Col 2:13–15; 1 John 3:8)
6. The example and paradigm for Christian living – a template of abundant human life (Mark 8:34–38).¹¹On this particular point (6), see Adam Kotsko, ‘Exemplarism,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 485-88.

These aspects have long been held together – and are rarely held apart – in the church’s better preaching and teaching.¹²Among a multitude of sermon examples that could be cited, see Leon Morris, The Story of the Cross: A Devotional Study of St. Matthew, Chapters 26-28 (Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, 1957; and Timothy Keller, Kings Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (Hodder and Stoughton, 2013). For a sample of technical studies of approaches to the atonement (of varying orthodoxy) see the following essays in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement (T & T Clark, 2017): Stephen B. Chapman, ‘God’s Reconciling Work: Atonement in the Old Testament’; Oliver D. Crisp, ‘Methodological Issues in Approaching the Atonement’; Joel B. Green, ‘Theologies of Atonement in the New Testament’; Adam J. Johnson, ‘Atonement: The Shape and State of the Doctrine’; Andrew Root, ‘ Ministry.’

A Crucified Messiah and King

Jesus’ Sufferings

‘It was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out his love for us, so that he made haste to help us and to appear among us. It is we who were the cause of his taking human form, and for our salvation that in his great love that he was both born and manifested a human body.’¹³See Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 4; CSMV ed., 29. See Thomas Weinandy, ‘Athanasius’s Incarnational Soteriology,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 135-154.

Athanasius here draws a direct line from incarnation to suffering: to be born, to take on a full human life, body and soul, in this world – of sin, death, and wrath – was already to enter the arena of pain. Jesus’ death, then, was not an isolated event but the outcome and apex of a lifetime’s suffering—he was born into it; pain and suffering attended and afflicted him from the manger to the cross. He was, like us, subject to innumerable calamities, challenges, and needs, including, ‘hunger, thirst, cold, and other infirmities of our nature.’¹⁴Calvin, Institutes, 2.13.1; Battles ed., 475.  ‘Born in the likeness of men,’ he entered a life in which earthly humiliation, danger, difficulty, and distress was integral to his experience from the outset; and yet his obedience proceeded willingly and freely through its course ‘in the form of a servant,’ offering and giving  humble service, until, in Paul’s phrase, it reached ‘the point of death, even death on a cross’ (Phil 2:6-8).¹⁵The following paragraphs are guided by Derek W. H. Thomas’ class on ‘The Sufferings of Jesus,’ available here https:www.monergism.com/school-theology-mp3-series. Also, see Mark Jones, Knowing Christ, 117-126.

This was no sudden or arbitrary sequence, but the pattern that the prophets had beforehand traced and foretold: ‘A worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people.’ (Psa 22:6). ‘He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief … as one from whom men hide their face … we esteemed him not (Isa 53:3). His astonishing descent from ‘equality with God’ to abject, agonizing rejection and humility, however, received it proper reward and endpoint: absolute power, acclamation, and dominion. ‘Therefore, God has highly exalted him  and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father’ (Phil 2:9-11).

The distinction between Christ’s active and passive obedience is of some use—it marks a real difference between what he deliberately chose and what was inflicted upon him. Generally, active obedience refers to Christ’s fulfilment of God’s law, whilst passive obedience refers to his passion and death. Yet it can mislead if pressed too far, since Christ’s whole experience of suffering and death was never passive in any straightforward sense. It must be insisted that in his death Christ was supremely active, laying down his life freely, of his own accord, rather than having it merely taken from him.¹⁶John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 20-24.

Dimensions of Jesus’ Pain

Jesus did not simply seem to suffer and die; he genuinely suffered and died. What types of pain and suffering did Jesus experience?¹⁷Basil of Caesarea’s list of Christ’s humiliations is worth attention: ‘Homily 20: Of Humility,’ in St. Basil, Ascetical Works, trans. by M. F. Toale, D.D. Written as Homilia 20, with the Greek text referenced at PG 31, cols. 525–531.

Social suffering. Mark’s passion narrative (Mark 15) depicts derision and mockery from both religious and governing authorities, compounded by Judas’s betrayal and the disciples’ desertion and denial. This rejection is all the more poignant given that Jesus had called the Twelve precisely ‘that they might be with him’ (Mark 3:14)—a calling which shows that he did not choose isolation or solitude. He loved companionship; he loved people, and was loved by them. Yet he was rejected. He was let down, misrepresented, and disowned by family and friends alike. And above all, he was forsaken by his own Father on the cross.

Physical suffering. This climaxed in the passion itself: arrest with arms, trial, striking, spitting, mocking, beating, flogging, laceration, and finally crucifixion, concluding with a sword thrust into his side—debasing, shameful, brutal, severe, extreme, and sustained. Trauma. Torture. Bodily torment.

Mental Suffering. Christ’s suffering was not only physical but mental and spiritual, reaching into the depths of his inner life. He suffered precisely in being tempted (Heb 2:18), and the strain of that suffering finds its clearest expression in Gethsemane, where ‘in the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence’ (Heb 5:7). Here is no stoic, unmoved endurance, but a real and anguished wrestling of soul — the true cost, inwardly borne, of the obedience he rendered.

Yet Gethsemane, anguished as it was, was not the deepest point of that suffering. Echoing The Apostles’ Creed, The Thirty-Nine Articles press further still:‘As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it believed that he went down into Hell.’¹⁸The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, 3; Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 116. Here the depths are greatest. Jesus was forsaken and abandoned by God; his descent into hell, as Calvin interpreted it, was an experience undergone on the cross itself—hell understood not as a subsequent location but as the reality of God set against him, cursed by him.¹⁹Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.8-12, especially section 2.16.10; Battles ed., 512-520. For broader discussion, see Rodney Howsare, ‘Christ’s Descent into Hell,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 257-276. Also, Bray, God is Love, 592-93. Made sin for us, he was reckoned a sinner, and treated as one: his cry of dereliction is both a question and a cry of pain, as though God were dealing with him as he would deal with a sinner—and the Father did not immediately answer him. Human and angelic sin deserves nothing less than ceaseless pain, destruction, alienation, punishment, and banishment, and this, for a time, is what he bore.

And yet the Trinity was not thereby threatened, damaged, or broken. As many have argued it must be maintained, the cross did not rupture the eternal relations of Father and Son; indeed, at no point was Jesus more loveable to the Father than at the point of the cross. Each acted together with the Spirit’s help to accomplish their one unified decision.²⁰For example, Rutledge, The Crucifixion, especially Part 1, 41–200. See also,  Christopher R. J. Holmes, ‘The Atonement and the Holy Spirit,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 77-94.

The sufferings of Jesus were, at their heart, punishment—a penalty borne. Death is a penalty; the wages of sin is death. He was sinless, and yet he suffered the punishment due to sin, even unto death. In one sense this was unjust—he had done nothing to deserve it. And yet it was, at the same time, the right and the just thing: it was fitting that he should bear God’s righteous wrath. He, who as the eternal Son of the Father had taken our human nature on himself, truly God and truly man,  died the death of sinners, for sinners, for us all.

The Crucifixion

Who, then, killed him—who put him to death? Was it the Romans? The Jewish authorities? Judas? Pilate? Or was it God? For Scripture will not let us evade the final answer: God ‘did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all’ (Rom 8:32).

To understand what that giving-up entailed, we must reckon honestly with the manner of his death. Jesus’ death was not gentle, but brutal. His crucifixion was, formally, a judicial public execution – —yet that bare description scarcely conveys its horror. Crucifixion itself was the most barbaric and degrading of executions, and was surprisingly and shockingly widespread across the ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, and Carthaginian (North African) world.

It was a death penalty of extreme cruelty, kept by the Roman military-political authorities primarily for high-ranking officials and commanders, rebels, and enemies of the state; for non-Romans whose crimes were political offences against the empire; for dangerously violent criminals and those guilty of treason; and for escaped slaves. As such it functioned as a supreme deterrent, expressing unflinching retribution and satisfying ‘the primitive lust for revenge and sadistic cruelty. … At relatively small expense and to great public effect the criminal could be tortured for days in an unspeakable way.’²¹Martin Hengel, Crucifixion: In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, trans. John Bowden (SCM/Fortress Press, 1977), 87.

In antiquity, moreover, it was associated directly with human sacrifice, and more broadly with the very depths of unspeakable human suffering. It is this depth of degradation that God himself entered and embraced at the cross: ‘In other words, in the death of Jesus of Nazareth God identified himself with the extreme of human wretchedness, which Jesus endured as representative of us all, in order to bring us to the freedom of the children of God.’²²Hengel, Crucifixion, 89.

Early Christians – hearers and readers – were familiar with crucifixion – and so the New Testament does not describe it in detail. For most of us, mercifully unfamiliar as we are, the following offers a vivid description of crucifixion’s combination of maximum pain and abject humiliation:

‘The condemned person was first flogged, then made to carry the horizontal beam (patibulum) of the cross to the place of execution. Bystanders along the way could abuse him as they pleased. Outside the town in a prominent place, vertical poles were in place, fixtures from the last executions. The victim was stripped, spiked through the wrists, and the patibulum was hoisted up and attached to the pole. His feet were then nailed to the upright, and a board with his name and crime was fixed above his head. There he hung for however long it took to die. Death, when it came, was from exhaustion and suffocation: when the victim was no longer able to push down on his feet, the full weight of his body sagging from outstretched arms made it impossible to breathe; he died in a few minutes. A strong man might suffer for days before that final collapse. To remain still was agony; movement was worse. Nakedness, immobility, and incontinence – blood, urine, excrement, and flies combined to create a display of impotent degradation. It was hard to imagine such a one any longer as a hero. This was Rome’s answer to “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”’²³Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 112. This section tracks Seccombe, pages 111-150.

It is precisely this death, in all its dread, outrage, and disgust, that each of the four Gospel accounts insists on placing at the very centre of the good news. The gospel message involves public proclamation of a crucified King. The ruler of God’s kingdom is one whose reign came by way of suffering death on a cross; his triumph was achieved in this way, and no other. His death as a criminal was, therefore, not an embarrassment to be explained away, but fundamental and essential to the good news itself.

The wisdom and power of God’s saving work were manifested precisely through the experience of acute agony, weakness, wounds, and mortality. The victory of God’s King, and the triumph of God’s kingdom, were accomplished and secured through the crucifixion of that King (1 Cor 1:22–25). In appearance, this is repulsive, feeble, and disturbing. But its reality, power, and purpose are such that it overcomes and surpasses not only the might of the Roman Empire but the pretensions and pride of the entire world (John 16:33). The word of the cross thus became the spearhead of the gospel message.

Conquest and Victory

From the moment Adam and Eve sinned, the LORD God promised a programme of offensive action for the future: that the woman’s seed — her ‘offspring’ — would eventually bruise, crush, overcome, and vanquish the evil one, ‘the serpent’ (Gen. 3:14–15). Satan’s schemes, and indeed Satan himself, would be outdone, overthrown, and destroyed. The blessing of God would flow out to ‘all nations’ through the woman’s seed via the patriarchs (Gen. 22:18), culminating in the coming and accomplishment of one ‘offspring,’ one Person, our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:16).²⁴Cole, Against the Darkness, 142-43. Various parts of this material are guided by Derek W. H. Thomas’ class on ‘Victory,’ available at https://www.monergism.com/school-theology-mp3-series. Refer also to John Stott, ‘The Conquest of Evil, in The Cross of Christ (IVP, 1986), 227-254.

When the Saviour-King came, however, he would be both born of woman — and therefore fully human — and at the same time the Son sent forth by God (Gal. 4:4) to be the one and only ‘Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim. 2:5). As Mediator and Messiah (‘Anointed One’) he pursued and fulfilled the concerns and needs of both God and humanity through the help of God’s Spirit (Mark 1:10).

Jesus understood his own death as a means of conquest. Through it, he said, ‘the ruler of this world’ — Satan — would be ‘driven out,’ and ‘all people’ drawn to Jesus himself (John 12:31–32; cf. 14:30; 16:11, 33). Paul likewise saw the cross of Jesus as the disarming and defeat of ‘the rulers and authorities’ (Col. 2:15) — a phrase referring to satanic powers and their various physical-political manifestations. Yet it is the ‘blood of the Lamb’ that is the basis upon which ‘the salvation and the power and kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ’ has been, and remains, established (Rev. 12:10–11).

The gospel of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and return is thus set against the broad backdrop of the conflict between God and the devil — a conflict which began with Satan’s rebellion prior to humanity’s fall, and which is set to continue until the final overthrow, confinement, punishment, and destruction of all evil powers. With Christ’s ‘coming, cross, and coming to life again … the decisive blow was struck against the darkness.’²⁵Cole, Against the Darkness, 141. The present paragraph tracks pages 141-48.

How, Then, Does Christ Defeat the Devil and Destroy His Works?

First, he remained obedient to God, standing faithful and true in the face of repeated temptation to sin (e.g. Matt. 4:1–11). Second, he taught the truth about Satan and demons (e.g. Matt. 10:25; 12:43–45; 13:38–39; 25:41; Mark 4:15; Luke 21:31–32; John 17:15); and it is worth pointing out that the devil cannot overthrow true truth taught and understood. Third, he directly engaged and overpowered the devil — characterised by Jesus himself as ‘the strong man’ (Mark 3:27; Matt. 12:22–29; Luke 11:21) — thus releasing sinful men and women from Satan’s grasp. According to Peter, ‘Jesus of Nazareth … went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him’ (Acts 10:38). Fourth, and decisively:

‘The victory which establishes the kingdom of God is the victory of Christ’s obedience and his sin-bearing sacrifice. By the first he establishes himself as the King of God’s kingdom, with the second he wrests people from Satan’s grasp and provides them free access to his kingdom. The gospel truly understood has at its heart the sin-bearing cross of the Lord Jesus.’²⁶Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 137-38.

Again, a

‘vital and repeated dimension of the New Testament testimony to the gospel of Jesus Christ … [is] that by his death and resurrection Jesus defeated Satan and all the hosts of evil. He has done so in the most utterly paradoxical way, by giving up his life as an offering for sin and so cancelling the debt of those for whom he died. It is this which breaks Satan’s power over them because it is their sin which empowers him and which he exploits to bring about their destruction. And so Jesus overcame him and all the spiritual powers of darkness by offering himself to God as an atoning sacrifice. … The crucified Christ is the mighty conquering Christ – he is Christus Victor.’²⁷Ferdinando, Spiritual Warfare, 121.

Among the ways and categories by which the saving activity and achievements of Jesus Christ may be understood, none is more closely tied to his kingship and lordship than the theme of victory. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism summarises, ‘Christ executes the office of a king, in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies’ (Q26).²⁸Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 416. This victory is won over sin, death, and the powers of darkness — demonic forces that are unseen and invisible, yet no less real for that (Eph. 6:12). The battle is waged not against God and Satan as equal contenders, but as Christ’s conquest of the world, the flesh, and the devil together.

Ransom-to-the-Devil Theology and its Error

From the second century up to Augustine, a significant — and, as we shall see, mistaken — strand of patristic thought, represented with variations by Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa (Great Catechism, chs. 18–26, esp. 24), understood the atonement as a ransom paid to the devil.²⁹Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco, ‘Devil,’ in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, eds. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco and Guilio Maspero, trans. Seth Cherney (Brill, 2010), 223-26. See also, Cole, Against the Darkness, 154-155. See further, John A. McGuckin, ‘St. Gregory of Nyssa on the Dynamics of Salvation,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 155-174. This ‘rights of the devil’ theory was strongly opposed even in its own era by Gregory Nazianzen (Oration 45.2).

Rather, it is God himself who both makes and receives payment by ransom — though it must be said that Scripture does not in fact describe this transaction in quite such exact terms. C. S. Lewis’s rendering of the atonement in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — ch. 14, ‘The Triumph of the Witch’ — however beloved, is similarly unorthodox on this point.

‘“Ransom,”’ although drawn from the background of purchasing the freedom of a slave or captive (i.e., to free by payment), is … used in a metaphorical sense for a setting free from sin and its penalty at the cost of the sacrifice of Jesus.’³⁰Donald Hagner, Matthew 14-28 (Word, 2002), 582; cited in Cole, Against the Darkness, 155.

What Scripture depicts is Jesus making war on the evil powers — not deceiving them or paying them off, but, by his sacrificial death and death-defeating resurrection outdoing, them and winning the war of God against them.

The Biblical Trajectory of the Victory of God in Christ

We have already noted that the fatal blow struck against the serpent is foretold as early as Genesis 3:15: the serpent will be defeated and destroyed, while the woman’s offspring — ultimately, Christ himself — will be victorious. Psalm 68:18, quoted in Ephesians 4:8, speaks of Christ carrying off the spoils of war and giving ‘gifts to men.’ Isaiah 53 concludes (v. 12) with the triumph of the suffering servant, ‘dividing his spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death.’ In the temptation narratives of Matthew 4 and Luke 4, the devil comes in person to deceive, entice, and overthrow Christ — a battle signalling the beginning of Satan’s downfall, fought and won by Jesus on our behalf.³¹Refer to the excellent article by M. J. Wilkins, ‘Temptation of Jesus,’ in Joel B. Green ed., Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Second Edition (IVP, 2013), 952-959. When the seventy-two disciples ‘returned with joy,’ saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name,” Jesus ‘said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven”’ (Luke 10:17–18); and at his arrest he issued what amounts to a call to war: ‘Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand’ (Matt. 26:46).

John’s Gospel includes neither Jesus’ temptation by the devil nor his expulsion of evil spirits, but dramatically portrays the greater conflict: ‘Now is the judgement of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out’ (John 12:31); ‘the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me’ (14:30); ‘the ruler of this world is judged’ (16:11); ‘I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world’ (16:33).³²See Edward W. Klink III, ‘Gospel of John,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 515-22. All these sayings fall within the context of the cross and resurrection as Satan’s defeat — ‘he who is in you [the Spirit of Christ] is greater than he who is in the world’ (1 John 4:4).

Other biblical passages place particular weight upon the notion that the very purpose of the incarnation and atonement was the devil’s defeat and destruction (Heb. 2:14–15; 1 John 3:7–8). Hebrews 2:14–15 speaks of Christ’s coming ‘that he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,’ while Colossians 2:15 stands as a pinnacle text of the victory theme, together with 1 John 3:8: ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.’

‘In short,’ comments Calvin,

‘neither since as God could he feel death, nor as man alone could he overcome it, he coupled human nature with the divine to atone for sin he might submit the weakenss of the one to death; and that, wrestling with death by the power of the other nature, he might win victory for us. … But we should especially espouse what I have just explained: our common nature with Christ is the pledge of our fellowship with the Son of God; and clothed with our flesh he vanquished death and sin together that victory and triumph might be ours. He offered as a sacrifice the flesh he received from us, that he might wipe out our guilt by his act of expiation and appease the Father’s righteous wrath.’³³Calvin Institutes, 2.12.3; Battles ed., 466—67.

Dimensions of Christ’s Conquest

Christ’s victory unfolds across at least seven dimensions.

(1) The destruction of the devil. ‘The whole world lies in the power of the evil one’ (1 John 5:19), and apart from Christ all are, in this sense, ‘children of the devil’ (1 John 3:10). In Christ, however, Satan has lost his claim and hold upon the believer. Oscar Cullmann’s D-Day illustration is apt here: Christ’s death and resurrection mark the decisive turning point of the war, won at enormous cost, even though offensive operations continue toward a final resolution.³⁴Oscar Cullman, Christ and Time (SCM Press, 1951), 84. ‘That is like Jesus’ decisive battle with the powers of darkness on the cross, where the New Testament makes it very clear, Satan was irreversibly defeated, the place of human beings in God’s kingdom was secured, and a hole was punched in the wall of death.’³⁵Seccombe, Gospel of the Kingdom, 74.

(2) The dominion of Christ. Christ is enthroned, powerful, assuming all authority — and it is this that grounds the believer’s assurance of his victory and lordship. Paul writes of him being ‘highly exalted’ by God because of his obedience unto death, and of the name given him that is above every other name, before whom ‘every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth’ (Phil. 2:8–10). Paul also depicts Christ as supreme — ‘head’ and ‘beginning,’ above all created ‘thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities,’ ‘the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent’ (Col. 1:15–18). John sees the Lamb standing ‘between the throne and the four living creatures’ (Rev. 5:6). This total and settled dominion is the ground of the believer’s confidence.

(3) The launch of a  new age. Christ’s conquest of evil ushers in a new age — the last days, the ultimate endpoint towards which God is moving history, have penetrated and impacted the present. From Pentecost onward, the church and the world live in ‘the last days’ of which Joel, Peter, Paul, and James spoke (Joel 2:28–32; Acts 2:17; also 2 Tim. 3:1; Heb. 1:2; James 5:3; 2 Pet. 3:3), a period marked by tribulation (Matt. 24:21, 29). John, too, speaks of the last hour (1 John 2:18). On the basis of Christ’s victory and his subsequent gift of the Holy Spirit, Christian believers are established as a future-oriented people, ‘who live the life of the future in the present as they await the consummation.’³⁶See Graham A. Cole, ‘Eschatology,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 473-78.  Then Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God (Hendrickson, 1996), 49-62 (49). Also consult Gregg R. Allison and Andreas Köstenberger, The Holy Spirit (B&H Academic, 2020), 457-461; Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (IVP, 1996), 175-182, 248-255; and Dennis E. Johnson, ‘Holy Spirit, Eschatological Role of,’ in Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Baker Academic, 2023), 331-336.

(4) The promise of total final destruction of evil, encompassing the resurrection of the dead, the final judgement, and the new creation.³⁷See Matthias Grebe, ‘The Problem of Evil,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 707-712. In a fascinating passage reflecting on Jesus’ promise that in the new world human beings will be ‘equal to angels’ (Luke 20:36), Augustine suggests ‘the repopulation of heaven’ as a goal of Christ’s victory:

‘Since it was not the whole company of angels that had perished by deserting God, those who had perished should remain in perpetual perdition, while those who had preserved with God … should have the joy of knowing that their future happiness was assured; as for … humankind …, since they had totally perished by reason of their sins and punishments, …. some of them should be restored to fill the gap left in the company of the angels by the devil’s fall.’³⁸The Augustine Catechism: The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love, trans. Bruce Harpert (New City Press, 1999), 59-60; cited in Cole, Against the Darkness, 158. See also, Adam J. Johnson, ‘Angels,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 365—70.

(5) The end of sin’s reign in the lives of believers. ‘For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.’ (Rom 6:14) [verse reference to be confirmed]). John Owen argued that our transferral to the kingdom of Christ has, in this respect, a twofold pastoral application: convincing unbelievers that they remain under the power of sin, and convincing believers that they are no longer under that power but under the dominion of Jesus — though sin still remains present in them.³⁹John Owen, The Dominion of Sin and Grace, Goold ed., 7:500-560, esp. 552-560; idem, Overcoming Sin and Temptation, Kelly Kapic and Justin Taylor eds. (Crossway, 2006). See Kelly Kapic, ‘John Owen,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement,’ 659-664.

(6) Christ’s ongoing application of his achieved salvation. It is only by virtue of Jesus’ victory that God is able – by the gift and work of the Holy Spirit – to distribute and apply the benefits and blessings he has won for his people (John 16:17; Acts 2:33; Eph 4:8-11; Heb 7:25).

Christ’s saving work did not conclude at the cross, nor even at the empty tomb — it issues, of necessity, in his present, ongoing ministry of applying what he has achieved. This is the force of the Lord’s own teaching in John 16:7: he must depart precisely so that the Paraclete may come. The two events are not merely sequential but causally bound — Christ’s exaltation is the condition of the Spirit’s coming, as John makes explicit when he notes that the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified (Jn 7:39). Peter draws out the same logic at Pentecost, tracing the outpouring of the Spirit directly to Christ’s session at the Father’s right hand: having been exalted, he has received the promised Spirit from the Father and has poured out what the crowd now sees and hears (Acts 2:33). Paul reads Psalm 68 the same way — the ascended Christ’s gifts to the church (Eph 4:8–11) are the spoils of a victory already won, distributed from a throne already occupied. Nor is this distribution a single, past transaction. The writer to the Hebrews grounds the believer’s ongoing salvation in Christ’s unceasing intercession: he saves to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he lives forever to intercede for them (Heb 7:25). He has entered heaven itself, not to rest from his labour but to appear continually in God’s presence on our behalf (Heb 9:24). Union with this reigning Christ (Col 3:1) is therefore not a static fact secured once but a living relation continually mediated — the benefits of Calvary are held out to us moment by moment by the same hand that won them.

(7) Dealing with fear by confidence in Christ. The last enemy, death (1 Cor 15:26), has yet to be finally destroyed, and the devil manipulates our fear of it (Heb 2:14-15). But, as we considered elsewhere, because Jesus reigns over all things in the kingdom of God, death itself may be faced with calm assurance (Luke 12:4; John 8:51):

‘It is against precisely this backdrop that his words carry and land their full weight: ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death’ (John 8:51). His trial before Pilate brought the collision to a head (John 19:10–11). There, Jesus identified himself with the true and ultimate source of power — in every sphere of life, and of death. Slavery to the fear of dying, and dread of whatever lies beyond it, holds an enormous sway over human existence. But this bondage has been done away with (Heb 2:15), and death itself can even be said to have been abolished (2 Tim 1:10). With that, the instruments of exploitation, oppression, and control — so regularly deployed by those who wield power — lessen and lose their capacity to threaten, coerce, and terrorise. Similarly, ‘[t]he resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was intended by God to challenge our most fundamental assumptions about the world and about ourselves.’⁴⁰Ashley Null, Eastertide: Meditations on the Easter Collects of Thomas Cranmer (Anglican House, 2024), 12. Christ’s death and resurrection are not merely historical events to be admired from a distance. They are metaphysical realities in which believers share (Rom 5:10; Gal 2:19–20; Col 3:1–14). The good news is this: in Christ’s kingdom, death has become the route to resurrection — a raising into participation in the very life and nature of God himself (2 Pet 1:4).’⁴¹Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – Kingdom, Freedom, and Fullness of Life: Jesus in the Broad Perspective of the Life He Brings; https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/kingdom-freedom-and-fullness-of-life/

We may approach the future in peace and confidence. For,

‘[I]n all these things we are more than conquerors through him who love us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels, no rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8:37-39).

Obedience

Christ’s Obedience and Our Justification

Paul states the matter with stark clarity: ‘For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous’ (Rom 5:19). The obedience of Jesus Christ, rendered for us and in our place, is God’s own gift to us. Sent in love by the Father, he lived a perfect life, fully obedient to the Father’s will, and perfectly pleasing to him.

This obedience is presented in Scripture in two main ways. Firstly, and most simply, Jesus’ sustained submission to the will of God provides the perfect example of a life lived in constant alignment with, and submission to, God’s will, and so pleasing to him (John 5:30; 6:38; 8:29; 12:49). Secondly, and most significantly, Jesus’ sustained learning of obedience in the face of intense suffering (Heb 5:7-9) – in the ‘form of a servant’ even ‘to the point of death … on a cross’ (Phil 2:8) – was ‘an act of righteousness’ (Rom 5:18) on our behalf, for our good. The value of Jesus’ obedience in life and death is such that it constitutes ‘the free gift of righteousness’ (Rom 5:17), leading to ‘justification and life for all men’ (Rom 5:18).

Trust in Jesus, accordingly, involves acknowledgement of, and reliance upon, his obedience on our behalf. To grasp the significance of Jesus’ obedience is to receive personally by faith ‘the free gift of righteousness’ – that is, our justification, God’s declaration that, rather than being guilty and in the wrong before him, we are forgiven and forever in the right with him. His obedience is reckoned to us and counted as ours (Rom 4:3-8), as we are ‘justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 3:24; cf. 5:1-11).⁴²See Alan Spence, ‘Justification,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 585-90.

Christ’s Obedience in Life and Death

The category of obedience, then, helps us grasp and appreciate what Jesus was doing in his life and death. Sin, at root, is disobedience — disobedience to God, breaching his commands, violating his law. Adam, tested in the garden, failed to keep the command and law given him; he was, in a word, disobedient. Christ came to reverse Adam’s disobedience by his own obedience, a pattern already anticipated in the Old Testament — most clearly in the figure of of the LORD’s Servant (Isa 42:1; 43:10; 50:10; 52:13; 53:11) — and confirmed in the New, where Paul describes the eternal Son as taking ‘the form of a servant’ (Phil. 2:7).⁴³For concise discussion of Old Testament teaching about covenant obligation to obedience, see Morris, Atonement, 24-26. See also, Jeremy R. Treat, ‘Covenant,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 431-36.

This obedience begins before it is ever tested on the cross. Christ came to fulfil the covenant, command, and law of God, and his very entry into the world was itself an act of obedience to the Father, agreed upon in the counsel of eternity. His whole work of salvation is best understood as an obedient service – willing response – to the will of God the Father, who sent him. As Paul puts it, ‘God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law (Gal. 4:4). To be ‘born under the law’ was to be sent, and to come, in order to do the law — to submit to its authority and to fulfil it entirely. His sinlessness meant precisely this: that he never violated or broke God’s law in thought, word, or deed. Christ’s work, considered under this heading, is obedience to the law of God.

It is worth returning here, with fresh attention, to the distinction — already touched on above — between Christ’s active and passive obedience. The distinction is of some real use, marking a genuine difference between what he deliberately chose to do and what was inflicted upon him: active obedience refers, broadly, to Christ’s fulfilment of God’s law throughout his life, while passive obedience refers to his passion and death. Yet the distinction can mislead if pressed too far, since Christ’s suffering and death were never passive in any straightforward sense. It must be insisted that in his death Christ was supremely active, laying down his life freely and of his own accord, rather than having it merely taken from him. His obedience, then, spans his entire life and culminates on the cross: he was obedient both to the law’s demand and — in suffering and dying — to its curse, just as he was obedient to its blessing, receiving the reward of exaltation and glorification.

John’s Gospel brings this active obedience into sharp – perhaps, sharpest – focus. Jesus is actively obedient to the Father’s command and authority throughout, accomplishing the ‘work’ the Father gave him to do (summed up in John 17:4). ‘My food,’ Jesus said to them, ‘is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work’ (John 4:34). Again, he said, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working’ (John 5:17; also 5:20, 36; 10:25, 32, 37, 38); it is ‘the Father who dwells in me [who] does his work’ (John 14:11, also 12). His final word from the cross — a single word in the Greek, tetelestai — declares this obedience complete: ‘It is finished’ (John 19:30). Everything the law demanded, everything the Father commissioned, has been fulfilled.

This definitive, once-for-all obedience of Christ is not merely a doctrine to be admired and understood but a pattern to be reflected by the Christian, as passages such as Philippians 3:10 and Colossians 2:11 make explicit: ‘Paul repeatedly presents Jesus’ sacrificial death as the supreme example of selfless obedience to God and sacrificial service to others. He urges believers to imitate Jesus’ example by prioritizing the needs of others above our own and by devoting ourselves to service to others.’⁴⁴Hammet & Quarles, Work of Christ, 138. Paul makes the same appeal directly, grounding the church’s practice and unity in the pattern Christ has already set: ‘So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind’ (Phil 2:1-2).⁴⁵See Joseph Mangina, ‘Ecclesiology,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 461-66.

Sacrifice

Four Applications and Terminology

Closely connected to Christ’s obedience, though bringing out the meaning of his death in its own distinctive way, is the category of sacrifice.

Space here does not allow a detailed treatment of sacrifices and offering in the Old Testament;⁴⁶For this, see Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ in DNTUOT, 727-30; Morris, Atonement, 43-62; Also T. Desmond Alexander, ‘Pentateuch,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 677-684; Richard S. Briggs, ‘The Historical Books,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 543-46. our focus falls on Jesus’ death as a sacrifice in the New Testament, which nonetheless draws its meaning directly from that earlier pattern.⁴⁷Morris, Atonement, 62-67. Averbeck suggests that the New Testament’s use of Old Testament sacrificial concepts and practices, applied to Jesus Christ, yields four principal applications: (1) Jesus as our Passover sacrifice; (2) Jesus as our burnt and peace offering; (3) Jesus as our sin offering; and (3) Jesus as our guilt offering.⁴⁸Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 727-730.

This sacrificial logic is not left merely implicit but is named with precise vocabulary. Specific atonement terminology appears six times in the New Testament: the verb hilaskomai in Luke 18:13 and Hebrews 2:17; the noun hilasmos in 1 John 2:2 and 4:10; and hilastērion in Romans 3:25 and Hebrews 9:5.⁴⁹Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 727. See Matthew D. Jensen, ‘John’s Letters,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 581-84; David M. Moffit, ‘Hebrews,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 533-36.

Of these, Romans 3:25 is the pivotal text, in the ESV: ‘God put forward [Christ] as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his forbearance he had passed over former sins.’ There is debate as to whether hilastērion here should be rendered ‘propitiation,’ ‘sacrifice of atonement,’ or ‘mercy seat’—a question addressed in detail elsewhere.⁵⁰For example, ‘Reconciliation, Restoration, Propitiation, Atonement,’ in NIDNT, ed. Brown, 3:145-176; Crisp, Approaching the Atonement, 98; Hammett and Quarles, Work, 241-243; Morris, Atonement, 151-176. For present purposes, however, the term’s Old Testament background points the way to its meaning:

‘ … the combined offerings in the OT accomplished both propitiation [the aversion and placation of God’s wrath] and expiation [making amends or reparation for and removal of our guilt]. The same is true for Christ’s work of atonement in the NT. The noun hilasmos (propitiation, atoning sacrifice) in 1 John 2:2 and 4:10 captures the picture as a whole, without breaking it down into parts. Jesus is the ‘atoning sacrifice for our sins,’ making propitiation and expiation. The corresponding verb ‘to make atonement’ (hilaskomai) appears in Heb 2:17 and likewise captures the whole idea: Jesus became ‘fully human in every way, in order that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.’’⁵¹Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 730.

The full intent and embrace of this propitiation is stressed by John. ‘He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2).’

Ransomed by His Blood

Paul makes the connection directly elsewhere: ‘Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God’ (Eph 5:2). Peter draws out the same sacrificial logic in terms of ransom and blood, tracing it back to God’s eternal purpose:

‘[18] knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefather, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, [19] but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. [20] He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you [21] who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God’ (1 Pet 1:18-21).⁵²See David Nienhuis, ‘1-2 Peter,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 685-58.

What Peter states, John sees. In the throne-room vision of Revelation, the slain Lamb is worshipped precisely because his sacrificial blood has ransomed a people for God:

‘[6] And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. [7] And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. [8] And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. [9] And they sang a new song, saying,

    “Worthy are you to take the scroll
        and to open its seals,
    for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God
        from every tribe and language and people and nation,
    [10] and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God,
        and they shall reign on the earth”’ (Rev 5:6-10).⁵³See Joseph Mangina, ‘Revelation (Book of),’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 719.

What does describing Jesus’ death as a ‘ransom’ mean?  ‘Ransom’ means that we as individual sinners have been released from our slavery to sin and death and devil. We are no longer condemned prisoners or debtors before God (Mark 10:45; Luke 24:24; Tit 2:14; Rev 1:5; 5:9).⁵⁴Charles E. Hill, ‘Atonement in the Old and New Testaments,’ in Charles E. Hill and Frank A. James, The Glory of the Atonement: Biblical, Historical, and Practical Perspectives (Inter-Varsity Press, 2004), 30.

Scripture, then, states the necessity of Jesus’ blood sacrifice explicitly, in terms that leave no room for a bloodless alternative: He permitted himself to be killed; he sacrificed himself to God, for us. That he did so was necessary because of the nature of God’s character. That bloody death was necessary follows from the very nature of God’s character, and helps us appreciate the sinfulness of sin; it is very sinful. Only by sacrificial bloodshed could our sins be forgiven and true fellowship with God, and with one another, be restored. It is God’s way.⁵⁵See Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., ‘Blood,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 403-06.

Oblation – or Offering – in the Anglican Formularies

This same conviction — that Christ’s death was a single, sufficient, and unrepeatable sacrificial offering — is written into the historic formularies of the Anglican tradition, where the language of oblation (offering) recurs at every turn. The Thirty-Nine Articles state the point with characteristic economy in Article 31, ‘Of the One Oblation of Christ Finished upon the Cross’:

‘The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of [Roman Catholic] Masses, in which it is commonly said, that the priest offers Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, are blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.’⁵⁶Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 128.

The Book of Common Prayer takes up the same vocabulary and extends it in two directions. First, oblation describes Christ’s own once-for-all self-offering, commemorated rather than repeated in the Eucharist. In the 1549 and 1662 rites alike, the Prayer of Consecration speaks of Christ’s ‘full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world’ — language that draws directly on the Article’s own triad of redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, and applies it explicitly to the cross. Second, and by a natural extension, the Prayer Book applies the same word to the believer’s own response: the offertory rubrics speak of ‘alms and oblations,’ and later prayers of self-offering call the worshipper to present ‘ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice’ — an oblation of a different order, made possible only because Christ’s own oblation has already been finished.

The pattern is worth pausing on. Anglican liturgy does not ask the church to offer Christ again, nor even to add to what he has done; it asks the church to receive what was ‘once made,’ and, in receiving it, to offer itself. Oblation, in other words, moves in only one direction at the cross — from Christ to us — before it can rightly move in the other — from us back to God.⁵⁷See Geoffrey J. Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy (Palgrave MacMillan, 1982); Scott Harrower, ‘Thomas Cranmer,’ and ‘Eucharist,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement,’ 437-440, and 479—84; Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love (Oxford University Press, 2000); Bryan D. Spinks, Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day (SCM Press, 2013); Peter Toon, The Gospel According to Cranmer and God’s Company 1500–1640 [no publisher, date].

Substitution

The Self-Substitution of God

‘The concept of substitution may be said … to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation.’⁵⁸Stott, Cross of Christ, 160. John Stott’s celebrated formulation of ‘the self-substitution of God’ captures with precision what is at stake here: ‘The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.’ The symmetry is exact, and the stakes are ultimate. Substitution is not an outlier, peripheral to Jesus’ saving work, but the load-bearing structure upon which the entire edifice of salvation rests.

Solidarity, Representation, and Substitution

The death of Christ was vicarious — a word whose meaning is reflected in that the English word vicar means substitute, one acts on behalf of another.⁵⁹The following paragraphs are guided by Derek W. H. Thomas’ class on ‘Substitution,’ available here https:www.monergism.com/school-theology-mp3-series Yet substitution, rightly understood, is not a bare transaction but encompasses a cluster of related concepts that together disclose its full meaning. When Paul writes that Christ ‘loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20), the apostle reaches for language that holds together several distinguishable but inseparable dimensions of Christ’s self-offering.

Solidarity and representation are deeply intertwined in the New Testament description of the life and death of Jesus Christ. We are all caught up in the sin of our founding ancestor, Adam –  ‘in Adam all die’ (1 Cor 15:22). That original sin has reached into and shaped who we are, born rebels and blind to God’s good rule (Rom 1:18-32, 3:9-20; John 1:1-11, 9:39-41). Jesus Christ, truly God and truly man, is the second founder of the human race, the ultimate Adam, who in solidarity with us, as our representative, reverses our sin and shame, blindness and rebellion. Paul makes this point by an extended comparison of ‘the one man’ Adam and  ‘the one man Jesus Christ’ in Romans 5:12-21. ‘For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous’ (v. 19).

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews also teaches that Jesus Christ is our representative before God who is in solidarity with us. The same Adam-Jesus contrast is made in chapter 2 by the author quoting Psalm 8 and asking, who has fulfilled its description of mankind as ‘crowned . . with glory and honor [with] everything in subjection under his feet’ (v. 8)? Jesus, who is also our elder brother (vv. 8-18). He has taken on our human nature and battled and defeated sin and Satan, for us (vv. 14-18). He has done what Adam should have done when tempted in the Garden of Eden, but did not do (Gen 1:26-3:7; cf. Luke 3:38, 4:1-13). And the description of Jesus as our representative before God and his solidarity with us is further elaborated on in terms of him being our great high priest, our brother, our mediator, who prays for us at the right hand of the Father (Heb 7:25, 9:24; and see also Rom 8:34, Luke 22:31-32).  This representation and solidarity then means that all that Jesus has done for us, affects us, changes us, at the very depths of our being.

But solidarity and representation, for all their breadth and depth, are not yet the whole. To these must be added substitution in its proper and most precise sense — Christ taking upon himself the consequences, the penalty, that our sin deserves. He gave himself for us not merely in our company or on our behalf, but instead of us, bearing what we could not bear and should have borne.⁶⁰‘The testimony of Scripture, while not ignoring Jesus’ representative nature, does not stop there. It is therefore not enough for us to say that he dies a representative death: a death for me, rather than instead of me. The testimony of Old Testament and New is that our sins were laid on Christ (Gal 3:13; Heb 9:28; 1 Pet 2:24). There has been a real and substantial transfer of sins (2 Cor 5:21) along the pattern of the Old Testament sacrificial system  and in line with the prophetic expectation (Isaiah 53). … The classic statement here is that of Mark 10:45 (// Matthew 20:28). Jesus uses the word lytron (‘ransom’) which is used 140 times in the LXX and denotes deliverance from bondage by payment or offering. The image is not developed here or elsewhere in the New Testament. There is no indication of to whom such a ransom is paid, for instance. It is an image which is used to carry the more fundamental notion of substitution which effects release. The use of ‘many’ connects it with the basic ideas of Isaiah 53. … The ransom image carries with it most of the elements of our idea of substitution. This is underlined by the use of the Greek preposition anti (‘instead of’, ‘in the place of’) in both Mark 10:45 and its parallel Matt 20:28. There is another Greek preposition, hyper + genitive case, which is of importance here.  Its primary lexographical meaning is: ‘for,’ ‘on behalf of’, ‘for the sake of’, which carries with it notions of representation. However, it is often used, both in the New Testament and in the wider Greek literature, with much the same sense as anti, i.e. substitution.  For example, in soteriologically insignificant passages – Rom 9:3; Phlm 13; and soteriologically rich passages – John 11:50; 2 Cor 5:14,21; Gal 3:13. Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics (1994, 4^th ed.), 183-189, has an excellent article on the use of huper in a substitutionary sense, and the overlap in the New Testament in uses of anti and huper. So, given the context of John’s thematic interest in the judgment and death (John 5:24, 8:51), and  its polar opposite, eternal life, we may be justified in seeing the idea of substitution lying behind the words of Jesus in John 15:12–14’ (Mark D. Thompson and Robert C. Doyle, ‘The Death of Christ 1: Biblical and Theological Reflections.’ Unpublished Lecture. Edited by Robert C. Doyle). See also Jeanine Michele Graham, ‘Substitution and Representation,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 763-68.

The testimony of Old Testament and New is that our sins were laid on Christ (Gal 3:13; Heb 9:28; 1 Peter 2:24). There has been a real and substantial transfer of sins (2 Cor 5:21) along the pattern of the Old Testament sacrificial system and in line with the prophetic expectation (Isaiah 53). Further, there is clear biblical evidence of a ‘penal’ understanding of the atonement. The New Testament consistently links the death of Christ to the picture of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53. That picture is clearly one of penal substitution. Though the critical verse (53:5) is merely alluded to in 1 Peter 2:24, the quotations from this passage and allusions to it clearly invoke the image as an entirety. The human plight from which Jesus came to save us clearly involved a penalty (e.g. Rom 1:18–3:20; 6:23). The great benefit of his death for us can be spoken of as ‘justification’ (Rom 3:24–25) and ‘no condemnation’ (Romans 8:1). The clearest expression of the penal element of the atonement is found in Galatians 3:13: ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us – for it is written “Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree.”’

The Witness of Romans and The Westminster Confession

In their context, two passages in Romans highlight the rich meaning of substitution.  Romans 3:25 and 8:3 ‘teach that Jesus bore God’s judgement against our sins in our place to secure our forgiveness and right standing before God.’⁶¹Rosner, Strengthened by the Gospel, 108. Both texts are complex, tight-packed, and the key terms greatly discussed. Without getting into the details, for the sake of brevity we simply cite them, with a comment ahead that each teaches this: ‘We are set free from sin’s condemnation by God’s sending his son as a sin offering, bearing our guilt and the wrath of God in our place.’⁶²Rosner, Strengthened by the Gospel, 109.

Romans 3:25 – ‘God put forward [Christ Jesus] 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.’

Romans 8:3-4 – ‘For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.’

The Westminster Confession of Faith expresses substitution, describing Christ as both mediator and surety (WCF 8.3) — a term drawn from the world of legal obligation, in which one party stands as guarantor for another’s debt. The Son, called by the Father to this office, substituted himself for his people, bearing in his own person the results that sin deserves.

The Old Testament Background: Sacrifice and Ransom

The background and basis for substitution is grounded in the sacrificial logic of the Old Testament.⁶³T. Desmond Alexander, ‘Pentateuch,’ (677-684) and Mark S. Gignilliat, ‘Major Prophets,’ (623-30) both in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement. Christ is the Lamb of God — the one to whom every lamb offered at Israel’s altar pointed forward. His death is sacrificial in character, and the nature of his work was declared in advance by his own self-testimony: ‘For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45). The Old Testament conception of ransom (kippur) carries the sense of covering — a payment that settles a debt in full, cancels the outstanding obligation, and requires no further restitution. The account is closed.

Made Sin for Us: 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Galatians 3:13

2 Corinthians 5:21 presses further into this: ‘For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ The question this verse forces is arresting: why is the eternal Son — perfect, fully divine, sinless — reckoned sinful? The answer Paul himself supplies in Galatians 3:13: ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.’ God cursed him. We should bear the curse and deserve to bear it; yet he bore what we deserved. It cost Christ his life and death that we might know blessing, peace, God’s favour, life in abundance, eternal life — because he bore in our stead judgment, condemnation, death, and hell.

The Necessity and Voluntariness of Substitution

Without this substitutionary logic, the death of Christ becomes incomprehensible. Why did the wrath of God fall on Christ at Calvary? Three answers present themselves, and only one is coherent. Either God is unjust, or the Bible’s presentation of God is simply mistaken and immoral — or, when the wrath of God was inflicted on his eternal Son and borne by him for us, it was right and just, and accomplished our forgiveness and reconciliation. The third answer is the answer of Scripture, the creeds, confessions, and catechisms. And it is worth noting that this substitution was entirely voluntary: the Son freely committed himself to the Father’s redemptive purpose. Penal substitutionary atonement is not something imposed upon an unwilling victim but embraced by a willing Saviour.⁶⁴On the necessity of penal atonement, see Adam Neder, ‘Sin,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 749-52

Two Objections to Penal Substitution

Two objections to penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) recur with particular persistence and deserve response.

The first is that PSA is merely one perspective among several — alongside identification, victory, example, moral influence, satisfaction, and reconciliation. This is true, and the concession should be made generously. The atonement is many-faceted, and the New Testament deploys multiple categories to illuminate its meaning. But the multiplicity of perspectives does not diminish the centrality of any one of them; it means that all are true simultaneously.⁶⁵A highly influential exposition and defence of these matters is J. I. Packer, ‘What Did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution,’ Tyndale Bulletin 25 (1974): 3–45; republished in Celebrating the Saving Work of Christ. Collected Shorter Works of J. I. Packer (Paternoster Press, 1998), 1: 85-123. For critical discussion, see Stephen R. Holmes, ‘Penal Substitution,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 295-314. The substitutionary nature of Christ’s work, moreover, is not confined to the cross alone but extends across his whole life — his active obedience rendered in our name no less than his passive obedience endured in our place.

The second and more rhetorically charged objection brands PSA as ‘cosmic child abuse’ — the image of a vengeful Father punishing his Son for that which was not the Son’s own fault, with inherent violence – sadism – on God’s part and masochism on Christ’s. But this caricature depends on a fundamental misreading of both the character of God and the teaching itself. The wrath of God is not arbitrary cruelty; it is the holy and necessary reaction of moral perfection – righteousness – against sin. God, being who he is, can do no other. And PSA, crucially, is self-substitutionary. It is God himself who bore our sins at the cross of Christ. It is not the Father punishing an unwilling third party but the Triune God himself — in the Person of the Son — bearing the penalty that God’s own justice demands.⁶⁶‘Jesus’ complete Godhood means that he is not a third party to the relationship between God and mankind. In him God does not inflict the penalty on another, he absorbs it himself. Likewise his complete manhood allows him to act in our place. There is a kinship bond between Christ and humanity that is not diminished by the fact that he was “without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Put these two together and we have what has been called ‘the double-identification of Christ’: he is one with sinners (we are saved ‘in Christ’ Romans 8:1) and he is one with the Father (John 10:30). The doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the perfect humanity of Christ are the key defences of the morality of penal substitution. The allegation of child abuse may be evocative (provocative?), but it is vacuous.’ (Thompson and Doyle, ‘The Death of Christ 1’). Stott’s treatment of this point remains unsurpassed, and the same truth is enshrined in the hymn: ‘In my place condemned he stood.’⁶⁷The phrase ‘In My Place Condemned He Stood,’ is from the hymn by Philip P. Bliss, Man of Sorrows! What A Name, first published in 1875. The line appears in the second stanza, ‘Bearing shame and scoffing ruse, In my place condemned he stood, Sealed my pardon with his blood.’ See the valuable volume by J. I. Packer and Mark Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement (Crossway, 2008). To remove substitution is not to escape divine violence but to leave the sinner to answer for his own sins — which is the only alternative the gospel does not allow.⁶⁸‘Surely the primary issue with which penal substitution is concerned is neither the morality nor the rationality of God’s ways, but the remission of my sins; and the primary function of the concept is to correlate my knowledge of being guilty before God with my knowledge that, on the one hand, no question of my ever being judged for my sins can now arise, and, on the other hand, that the risen Christ whom I am called to accept as my Lord is none other than Jesus, who secured my immunity from judgement by bearing on the cross the penalty which was my due’ (Packer, ‘What did the Cross Achieve’, 27). Adam J. Johnson, ‘Violence,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 791-796.

Calvin on Isaiah 53:6

This is Calvin’s tremendous comment on Isaiah 53:6, ‘the LORD has laid on him [Christ] the iniquity of us all’:

‘Here we have a beautiful antithesis. In ourselves we are scattered, in Christ we are collected; in Christ we find the road by which we are led to salvation. Our sins overwhelm us; but they are transferred to Christ, in whom we are acquitted. When we were perishing, separated from God and hastening to hell, Christ took upon himself the filth of our iniquities and rescued us from eternal destruction. (This refers of course only to the punishment of sin, for he was free from all guilt.) Let each one of us weigh his own sins carefully, that we may truly taste the grace [of Christ] and begin to see the fruit of his death.’⁶⁹Calvin, Commentaries; Haroutunian ed., 155.

Did the Father Punish the Son?

Care must be taken in the wording of Christian songs and preaching to avoid, and indeed to repudiate, any sense that in the God-forsakenness and dereliction of the cross (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34) the Father punishes the Son. A doctrine of the atonement containing such a notion — of the Father’s punishment of the Son — leaves our expression and teaching open to the charge of child abuse, or to the suggestion that ‘a loving Son wrests redemption from an angry or reluctant Father.’⁷⁰Robert C. Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?’ Unpublished Lecture, 2. How, then, does the New Testament instruct us to understand and explain this?

The place to begin is with Christ’s bearing of our curse, becoming a curse for us (Deut. 21:23; Gal. 3:13): ‘Christ hung on the tree in obedience to the Father’s will, fulfilling the Father’s purpose of love, doing a work with which the Father was well pleased, and on account of which the Father highly exalted him; hence to describe as accursed of God would be absurd.’⁷¹James Denney, The Death of Christ (1902 ed.), 159-160; cited in Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?’, 3. This raises a real question, however: was Jesus punished by God? Is it not morally objectionable for an innocent party to be punished in place of the guilty? There is a genuine difficulty here. But whatever our response, it must hold the following together:

‘It is not a picture of an angry father placated by a loving son. Nor of a separation in will and being of the Father from the Son in this great atoning act, as John 3:35, 4:34, and 5:30 makes clear. Nevertheless, because death is seen in the biblical witness as the penalty appointed by God for sin, we must say that Jesus’ sufferings were penal. [Yet] with respect to question of the nature of the forsakenness of Jesus, John 16:32 … leads us away from notions of the Father deserting the Son on the cross: “The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, every man to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.”’⁷²Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?,’ 3.

This tension — penal suffering without paternal desertion — can only be resolved by returning to who God is. The truth is that ‘in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor 5:19) and our grasp and expression of the atonement must therefore be determined and controlled by what we know of the nature and character of God — who he is and what he is revealed to be like, across all Scripture and pivotally in Jesus’s person, public ministry, and atoning death. As Robert Doyle has it: ‘The uniqueness of Jesus Christ tells us that the propitiatory act of atonement wrought by his incarnation, life of obedience and especially by his death, is in fact an act in God himself. … The incarnation means that “substitution” is at a very great depth.’⁷³Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?,’ 4.

On this basis the two claims can stand together without contradiction: Jesus bore the penalty issued by God for sin — his sufferings were penal, a punishment — yet, sinless, he died the death of a sinner as an act within the Being of God himself, not as the action of one Divine Person against another. Robert Doyle draws these threads together in conclusion:

‘First … the New Testament does not give us a license to infer that the Father punished his Son, neither at the level of exegesis or at the level of the apostolic witness as to “Who God is” and “How he works personally and directly in the world for our salvation.” Secondly, when we do appropriately think and speak of propitiatory atonement against its ground in God we may grasp and convey some of the breadth and depth of what has happened there. Understand penal substitutionary atonement in this way, we may not only avoid the charge of “child abuse,” but may offer the atonement for what it is, as that which heals our deep alienation from God and each other through a reconciliation which encompasses the whole depth of our being, because it has occurred first of all in the depths of God’s being. Finally, let me suggest that in our song writing and evangelism, when we speak of the death of Christ, we make a distinction between “bearing penalty” and “inflicting punishment.”’⁷⁴Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?,’ 7-8.

Satisfaction

A Non-Biblical Term to Express a Biblical Reality

What was the death of Jesus for? That is the question which continues to press upon us.⁷⁵The following paragraphs are initially guided by Derek W. H. Thomas’ class on ‘Satisfaction,’ available at https:www.monergism.com/school-theology-mp3-series. John Stott’s discussion ‘Satisfaction for Sin,’ in The Cross of Christ 111-132,is valuable. See also, Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Disputation 29 ‘On the Satisfaction by Jesus Christ’; Boer and Faber eds., 327-340.

The true extent and significance of Christ’s work – and here his death in particular – demands full and rigorous Biblical explanation. Scripture of course furnishes a rich vocabulary for this purpose — atonement, ransom, propitiation, reconciliation, and more. To these Biblical terms have been added others, coined not to supplement Scripture but to gather together, define, summarise, and articulate what Scripture means and teaches, even where the words do not appear in its pages. We speak of the Trinity, of God as Triune, of homoousion — the Nicene declaration that the only-begotten Son is ‘of one being’ with God the Father — and we have already considered substitution: not a Biblical term, but a vital one. Satisfaction belongs in the same category. ‘For Christian theology, the truth value of a [term or] doctrine is how well it explains and communicates the truths of Scripture.’⁷⁶Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 246. See also Oliver Crisp, Approaching the Atonement, 63-72. Crisp argues that satisfaction was not in fact original to Anselm but that similar notions are to be found in Tertullian. Fleming Rutledge’s discussion of Anslem is contained in The Crucifixion, 146-166.

What, then, does satisfaction address? Two things simultaneously — the reality of us, and the reality of God. In us: offence against the law of God and resulting guilt. In God: justice and mercy. Slightly more fully, the Leiden Synopsis treats the various ‘causes of the satisfaction by Jesus Christ. The different causes are God, Christ as the God-and-man, God’s love and justice, Christ’s love to those who belong to him, and our sins.’⁷⁷Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Volume 1, eds. Den Boer and Faber, 327-340.

Anselm and the Classical Formulation

The principle was first deployed and given classical formulation by Anselm (1033-1109) in his work Why God Became Man (published in 1098), within a broader current of medieval thought shaped by the governing intuition that when honour has been offended it must be satisfied. This instinct, however culturally clothed, points toward something that Scripture itself affirms – offering a significant correction and clarification to what had come before. Because ‘[p]rior to his Why God Became Man, the view that prevailed most widely was that Christ’s death was a ransom paid to the devil in order to deliver souls over whom he had a legal claim. This view – entirely absent in Scripture – was a very old, present in the writings of Origen, Tertullian, and John of Damascus.⁷⁸For reference to their works, see Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:341. Anselm by contrast decisively redirected attention: ‘Christ’s death was a satisfaction rendered not to Satan but to God’s justice and honor.’⁷⁹EDT, 774. See Katherine Sonderegger, ‘Anselmian Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 175-194. This correction and reorientation proved hugely influential in Western Christianity – both Roman Catholic and Protestant alike – picked up and developed by figures including Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and post-Reformation teachers.

Anselm understood satisfaction as central to the atonement: ‘everyone who sins is under an obligation to repay to God the honour which he has violently taken from him, and this is the satisfaction which every sinner is obliged to give to God.’⁸⁰Anselm, Why God Became Man, 1.11; Davies ed., 283. See also 2:6-14. The logic Anselm pursues is well framed by the following extract:

‘Given the fact of human sinfulness, the alternatives are satisfaction or punishment. The consistency of God’s character requires that he act with both justice and mercy. He cannot be merciful in an unjust way or just in an unmerciful way. This eliminates the possibility of the simple annihilation of the human race in punishment for the offence to God’s honour. That would be unmerciful justice. But it also eliminates forgiveness without satisfaction. That would be unjust mercy. The “necessary” response to human sin is satisfaction. … The satisfaction of which Anselm speaks is the reparation due to an offended party. It requires going beyond the honour which is already due to the offended party. Here is another reason why even a perfect man cannot make satisfaction for the sins of others. His perfect obedience would simply be his own proper response to the person of God. The satisfaction must be greater than that which was lost by the dishonourable rebellion of mankind. The sacrifice of Christ’s life, because of its infinite value, and because he was sinless, honours God beyond that which is required of man. His sacrifice was free, not obligatory. … The voluntary self-sacrifice of the one who always honoured God, brings even greater honour to God. His zeal for the glory of the Father earns him merit which he does not personally require and so is able to pass on to whomever he wishes.’⁸¹Mark D. Thompson and Robert C. Doyle, ‘The Death of Christ 2: Historical Theology.’ Unpublished Lecture, 3.

Three great truths converge in Anselm’s account: the appalling nature of sin — affront, mutiny, rebellion, and revolt against the Creator; the perfect justice of God, which cannot be compromised or set aside; and ‘the unique perfections of Christ (as the God-man who voluntarily gave himself up to death for us).’⁸²Stott, The Cross of Christ, 119.

Christ’s Satisfaction of Divine Justice: The Reformed Inheritance

Reformed teaching received and sharpened this inheritance. The Westminster Confession of Faith, in its treatment ‘Of Christ the Mediator,’ says that Jesus’ obedience and sacrifice — climaxing in his death — being ‘offered up to God, has fully satisfied the justice of his Father’ (8.5); and again, in its account ‘Of Justification,’ says that God justifies the elect by ‘imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ to them who receive and rest on him’ (11.1). But what does this satisfaction consist in, and what is its Scriptural basis?

The Biblical Basis: Galatians 3 and the Curse of the Law

A controlling passage is Galatians 3:10–14, where Paul declares that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. The background is the antiphony of blessings and curses set out in Deuteronomy 27–28: obedience brings blessing; disobedience brings curse. Paul’s argument is that Jesus’ death involved his bearing the curse of God that was due for our disobedience, so that we might receive the blessing of God promised for obedience. At the cross, then, we see something that defies our imagination:  God cursed Christ — that we might be blessed. In bearing our curse, Christ satisfied God’s justice in its judgment of sin. It is vital to recognize that as Judge of all the earth God is not under any law above, beyond, or independent of him – he is himself the law.⁸³Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?,’ 1. The cross is at once the channel and the means, the instrument and the focus, of both God’s justice and God’s wrath – and God’s love.

This raises a precise question: what — or who — is being satisfied in Christ’s death? Not the devil, as though his death were a ransom payment to a malevolent captor. It is God’s own righteousness and justice, expressed in God’s own law, that is satisfied. Ezekiel 7:7–8 speaks of God pouring out his wrath and spending his anger — and it is exactly this spending, this exhaustion of divine anger, that is accomplished in Jesus Christ. His death spends the justice of God and satisfies it to the full.⁸⁴Some of the main tenets of Christ’s death as satisfaction may be set out in rudimentary point fashion: ‘(1) Sin is robbing God of his honor. (2) People must render satisfaction for their sin: they must repay – actually, pay more than – the honor they have stolen from God. (3) People cannot pay their debt, for whatever they could pay is owed already to God. (4) Only the God-man can offer satisfaction. (5) By dying, Jesus gave something that he did not owe to God – the obligation to die – and thus obtained a reward. (6) Christ gave this reward to provide satisfaction for people’s sins’ (Gregg R. Allison, The Baker Compact Dictionary of Theological Terms, 188). This connection between the cross and the honour of God is glimpsed in passages such as John 17:1 and Hebrews 2:9, where Christ’s death is bound up with the glorification of the Father.⁸⁵There is a useful discussion of Scriptural warrant for satisfaction in Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 237-243.

First John 1:9 illuminates the same truth from a different angle. When we confess our sins, John says, God is ‘faithful and just’ to forgive us. The striking word is just: forgiveness is not merely an act of grace but of righteousness — the correct, the fitting, the legally proper response of God when sin is confessed.⁸⁶See Cynthia Rigby, ‘Forgiveness,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 493-98. Why? Because the just anger of God has already been spent and satisfied by the cursed death of Christ. His justice has been preserved and met in full in Jesus’ pain, passion, and punishment. There is therefore no conflict between justice and mercy: in the cross of Christ, each is satisfied together — definitively and completely.

Propitiation

Redemption’s Price: Propitiation in Romans 3

Our redemption in Christ does not involve the literal exchange of money. But our redemption does involve a payment, a price, a cost. That cost, price, and payment is the presentation of Christ as a propitiation.⁸⁷See Graham A. Cole, ‘Expiation/Propitiation,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 489-92.

Redemption and propitiation are linked by Paul in Romans 3:23-25, a passage so important that some suggest it forms the centerpiece of the whole Bible:

‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and 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.’⁸⁸Comprehensive yet accessible commentary is offered in D. A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus (IVP, 2010), 39-74; on propitiation in particular, see Scandalous, 60-66, and Morris, Atonement, 151-176. A fuller treatment is Packer and Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood, 29-100. The authors argue that penal substitution is the only interpretation of the cross doing full justice to the value and significance of the Savior’s death and passion. For Calvin’s account of Jesus’ death as penal substitutionary atonement, the propitiation of God’s wrath, and the satisfaction of God’s justice, see Institutes 2.16.1-6; Battles ed., 503-11. A useful recent survey across a spectrum of opinion is David Ceri Jones, ‘Evangelicals and the Cross,’ in Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones eds., The Routledge Research Companion to the History of Evangelicalism (Routledge, 39-56). Companion to the History of Evangelicalism, 39-56.

Dealing with sin and all its effects was the purpose of Jesus’ death. Most crucially, his death delivered rebellious humanity from facing and suffering the judgement of God.

What Propitiation Means: Appeasing God’s Righteous Anger

Propitiation is a sacrifice offered to one who is angry, that he may instead be appeased. ‘Propitiation is the act by which someone (in this case, God) becomes propitious, that is, favorable. Propitiation is the sacrificial act by which someone becomes favorable.’⁸⁹Carson, Scandalous, 60.

Propitiation satisfies or sets aside God’s righteous anger at sin, that holy anger which, from Romans 1:18 onward, Paul argues is directed against sinful human beings whose sins offend against him.

Certainly, the sin must be cancelled and removed; ‘that is expiation. But the God who has been offended against must be satisfied; that is propitiation. … in the Bible expiation and propitiation hang together.’⁹⁰Carson, Scandalous, 62-63. (Expiation, cancels, sets aside, and removes sin itself.)

The Result: Redemption, Acquittal, and Atonement

The action and initiative here is God’s. It was Christ Jesus ‘whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood’ (Rom 3:25). By the death of Christ, God achieves what we could not possibly perform ourselves. He resolves his own anger toward our sinfulness and sins by presenting Jesus as a sacrifice for them.

In so doing, God delivered us from his own

‘present rejection, as well as from destruction in his final judgment. It [propitiation] moves us from a position of guilt and inevitable condemnation into acquittal [the declaration of innocence] and friendship with God. By this means we are redeemed – from sin (i.e., guilt), alienation, judgment, and all that goes with them. Redemption focuses primarily on the results of the cross – rescue, liberty, freedom – with the added idea that Jesus’ death pays the price. Propitiation explains both the necessity for that ransom and the nature of the ransom: it is a sacrificial offering to deal with God’s anger at our sin.’⁹¹Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 127.

‘The Bible pictures God’s standing over against us in both wrath and love.’⁹²Carson, Scandalous, 64. Propitiation, then, involves the deflecting, turning aside, and diversion of God’s anger, through the presentation of a sin offering – Jesus’ own substitutionary blood sacrifice.  The result is atonement. ‘The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us.’⁹³Stott, The Cross of Christ, 159-60.

Christian Propitiation Distinguished from Pagan Propitiation

There is, however, a

‘fundamental difference between pagan propitiation and Christian propitiation. In pagan propitiation, a human being offers a propitiatory sacrifice to make a god propitious. In Christian propitiation, God the Father sets forth Jesus as the propitiation to make himself propitious; God is both the subject and object of propitiation. God is the one who provides the sacrifice precisely as a way of turning aside his own wrath. God the Father is thus the propitiator and the propitiated, and God the Son is the propitiation.’⁹⁴Carson, Scandalous, 64-65.

In this fashion, Christ’s propitiating sacrifice saved sinful men and women from condemnation to punishment by death, as is required by God’s law (Rom 6:23; 8:1-4; 10:4; Gal 3:13; Eph 2:15).

On John the Baptist’s acclamation of Christ in John 1:29, ‘Behold the Lamb of God,’ Calvin remarks,

‘The chief office of Christ is explained briefly but clearly. By taking away the sins of the world by the sacrifice of his death, he reconciles men to God. Christ certainly bestows other blessings upon us, but the chief one, on which all the others depend, is that by appeasing the wrath of God he brings it to pass that we are reckoned righteous and pure. … Accordingly John, that he may lead us to Christ, begins with the free pardon of sins which we obtain through him.’⁹⁵Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 1-10; trans Parker, 32.

Atonement by means of propitiation is, then, the epitome of the gospel.

Ransom and Redemption

The Price of Our Redemption

Jesus’ death, an act of extreme violence, was a necessary act of service to his people, taking the form of ‘a ransom’ (Greek, lytron; Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45;⁹⁶See Jonathan T. Pennington, ‘Matthew and Mark,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 631-68. cf. 1 Tim 2:6). Paul draws on the same field of language when he says that Christians have been redeemed from slavery to sin, and have instead become slaves to righteousness and to God (Rom 6:15-23); in Romans 1:1, Paul refers to himself as a ‘slave’ (doulos) of Christ Jesus, the implication being that he had been—as all Christians have been—redeemed from slavery to sin, because Christ paid the price to buy us back from our enslavement.⁹⁷See Adam Kotsko, ‘The Persistence of the Ransom Theory of the Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 277-94.

In the Greco-Roman world, redemption language belonged to ordinary economic and commercial transactions—most notably the redemption of slaves, whose freedom could be secured by the payment of a price. At the time,

‘redemption was a common transaction and therefore an understandable concept. A person or thing was redeemed out of a condition of slavery, captivity, or danger by the payment of a price (the ransom), thereafter to be at the disposal of the purchaser (the redeemer). Jesus (the Redeemer) will give his life (the ransom) to redeem many people from a manifold captivity into the freedom of belonging to God’s Kingdom.’⁹⁸Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 121.

The New Testament writers understood the value of Jesus’ bloody death in exactly these terms, for ‘redemption … is in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 3:24). As Augustine explains, ‘he was able to pay for our sins by dying precisely because he died and, at the same time, did not die for any sin on his part.’⁹⁹Augustine, The City of God, 10.24; trans. Babcock, 378. See also David Vincent Meconi, ‘Augustine,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 381-88. More popularly put, the good news tells us that Christ ‘paid for our freedom with his priceless life’¹⁰⁰Billy Graham, The Reason for My Hope: Salvation (Thomas Nelson, 2013), xii. (cf. Titus 2:14). The outcome of ‘redemption’ by Jesus’ ‘blood’ is ‘the forgiveness of our sins’ (Eph 1:7; also Rom 3:24-25; 1 Cor 6:20; 7:23; Col 1:12-14; Heb 9:12; 1 Pet 1:18-19; Rev 5:19).

The kind of captivity from which Christ’s death ransomed us is a complex web of consequences flowing from sin: satanic spiritual power, divine judgment, guilt, the evils of the present age, and death itself. The price paid through Jesus’ violent death purchases our transition from one realm to another: ‘He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins’ (Col 1:13). Christ’s redeeming death thus brings liberation from demonic darkness and entry into God’s kingdom of light.

Redemption in the Old Testament

Redemption is, of course, only one of the ways the New Testament describes the meaning of Jesus’ death; it stands alongside sacrifice, victory, propitiation, and reconciliation. These are related to one another, and the nature of their connection is combined and clarified in the simple statement that Jesus ‘died for our sins’ (1 Cor 15:3; also Eph 1:7; Col 1:14; Titus 2:14; Heb 9:15).

The Old Testament employs two principal terms for redemption. The Hebrew gā’al occurs some 118 times, describing the work of a relative kinsman who purchases a relation out of difficulty or danger—ten of these occurrences fall within Leviticus 25, at vv. 25–27 and 47–54, and the pattern is enacted narratively in Ruth 4:1–12. The Hebrew pādâ, occurring some sixty times with nine derivatives, denotes the payment of a required sum for the purchase of property or life (Exod 13:11–16). Deuteronomy 7:8 speaks of redemption from the house of slaves—the whole Exodus event—redemption into liberty achieved by God’s own power to bring it about. Israel’s departure from Egypt is thus itself termed a redemption (Exod 6:6; 15:13), with the Most High God himself named ‘their redeemer’ (Psa 78:35). Scripture repeatedly stresses the strength of God to accomplish Israel’s redemption from captivity, whether in the Exodus or in the return from Babylonian exile (Jer 31:11; 50:33–34). Job, for his part, expresses trust in the Lord as his own personal, individual, and living Redeemer (19:25). The notion of redemption from sin, by contrast, appears only twice in the Old Testament (Psa 130:8; Isa 59:20, cited in Rom 11:26).

It is this Old Testament background that the New Testament writers draw upon in their own use of redemption language:

‘Against the background of the Old Testament, particularly the Book of Exodus, it is not surprising that this image should be used by the New Testament writers to describe the meaning of the death of Christ. “Redemption” means to secure the release of someone or something by the payment of a price. “Ransom” indicates the price that is paid.’¹⁰¹Thompson and Doyle, ‘Death of Christ 2,’ 6.

Redemption Fulfilled in Christ

The New Testament’s vocabulary of redemption comprises the verb lytrousthai and the nouns lytrōsis and apolytrōsis, together with agorazein and exagorazein, terms drawn from the marketplace and used particularly of the purchase of slaves. The corresponding words for ‘ransom’ are lytron and antilytron, used some 140 times in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, referring to ‘deliverance from bondage by payment or offering.’¹⁰²Thompson and Doyle, ‘Death of Christ 2,’ 5. The conceptual link between the Old and New Testaments’ use of this language lies in the power of God to save, deliver, liberate, and set free.

Mark 1o:45 records the definitive saying of Christ about redemption: ‘For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ ‘Ransom’ here is an image which is used to carry the more fundamental notion of substitution which effects release. The use of “many” connects it with the basic ideas of Isaiah 53.’¹⁰³Thompson and Doyle, ‘Death of Christ 2,’ 5.

Paul develops the theme in several directions. Galatians 3:13 and 4:5 speak of Christ redeeming his people from the law’s curse; Rom 3:24 links redemption to justification and propitiation; Ephesians 1:7 applies redemption specifically to the forgiveness of sins through the blood of Christ. Romans 8:23 marks a significant conceptual development, extending redemption beyond the moral and forensic to the physical: ‘not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies’—that is, redemption from corruption itself. Ephesians 4:30 names this future event—the moment when Christ’s redeeming work will be applied fully to body and soul alike—’the day of redemption.’ Colossians 1:12–14 draws these several threads together, declaring that in Christ the Father ‘has delivered us from the domain of darkness’—that is, from hostile demonic powers—’and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.’

The value of teaching on ransom and redemption lies in what it discloses of the cost of our purchase by God. Christ gave himself, at infinite personal cost, to acquire us—to bring us out of slavery and back into his own loving possession.

There is, besides, a particular attractiveness about redemption language as applied to the death of Christ. It clearly focuses attention on Christ himself, the ransom for many. It speaks of a real, objective change, not merely a shift in status or perception. And through the idea of a change of ownership, it binds together justification and sanctification: the one who has been purchased out of slavery belongs, thereafter, wholly to his new master, so that the acquittal secured at the cross and the transformed life that follows from it are two aspects of a single act of redemption rather than two separate transactions.¹⁰⁴Thompson and Doyle, ‘Death of Christ 2,’ 6.

Reconciliation (Atonement)

Reconciliation and the Peace of God

The work of the Lord Jesus Christ is, likewise, a work of reconciliation.¹⁰⁵Initially partly guided by Mark Ross’ valuable ‘Adult Sunday School’ class on ‘Reconciliation,’ available at https:www.monergism.com/school-theology-mp3-series. Reconciliation is an act of God – like forgiveness, justification, and adoption – that effects ‘a change in our state in relation to God.’¹⁰⁶Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 614. The term is relatively rarely used in the New Testament (Rom 5:1–11; 2 Cor 5:18–20; Eph 2:11–16; Col 1:19–22), yet it is important and essential, underlying and informing everything else. Though the term belongs uniquely to Paul’s vocabulary,¹⁰⁷See Timothy G. Gombis, ‘The Apostle Paul,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 669-76. the thought is present throughout Scripture wherever alienation, hostility, and relational breakdown are resolved and relationship is restored because peace has been made (e.g., Luke 15:24; 19:10; 1 Pet 3:18). Reconciliation is the underlying rationale and overarching thrust of New Testament teaching as a whole.

Culminating in the cross, reconciliation is most beautifully demonstrated and embodied in Jesus’ broad ministry to sinners — in healing, deliverance, feeding, teaching, friendship, fellowship: summed in his characteristic word, ‘your faith has made you well: go in peace, and be healed of your disease’ (Mark 5:34).

The God of the gospel is ‘the God of peace’ (Rom 15:33; 16:20; Phil 4:9; 1 Thess 5:23; Heb 13:20; cf. 1 Cor 14:33; 2 Cor 13:11; Phil 4:7); the person of the gospel — Jesus Christ — is the ‘Lord of peace’ (2 Thess 3:16); and the gift of the Holy Spirit produces the fruit of ‘peace’ (Gal 5:22). Peace, in all its fullness – shalom – is the signature and hallmark of the triune God’s saving work. So, the first Apostolic preaching to non-Jews announced ‘good news of peace through Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all)’ (Acts 10:36); for the Christian gospel is indeed ‘the gospel of peace’ (Eph 6:15); and ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God’ (Matt 5:9).¹⁰⁸Two fine books on the theme are Graham Cole, God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom (Apollos, 2009); and Leon Morris, The Atonement: Its Meaning and Significance (IVP 1983). One of the earliest discussions – beyond Scripture – about Christ’s suffering and death as reconciliation and restoration to God is Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3 and 5. On Irenaeus, see ‘John Behr, ‘Irenaeus of Lyons,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 569—76. See Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:342 for other background, as well as Harry O. Maier, ‘The Apostolic Fathers,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 371-76. See also the fairly advanced works (of differing length and levels of orthodox): Thomas Andrew Bennett, ‘Reconciliation,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 713-18; William Lane Craig, The Atonement (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Oliver Crisp, Approaching the Atonement: The Reconciling Work of Christ (IVP Academic, 2020); Eleonore Stump, Atonement (Oxford University Press, 2018).

The language itself illuminates the concept. The principal Greek verb, allassō, and is cognate noun, katallage,derives not from the vocabulary of sacrifice but likely from political diplomacy or negotiation,¹⁰⁹Treier, Lord Jesus Christ, 85. carrying the basic idea of a unifying exchange between persons. Thus reconciliation is thus ‘a personal category; [and] means the making of peace after a quarrel or state of hostility.’¹¹⁰Leon Morris, New Testament Theology, 72. See also in fuller form Morris, The Atonement, 132-150. It captures ‘the nature of Christ’s peace-making work. As God’s Son he both reconciles all things through an extraordinary sacrifice and pacifies all opponents through a newly creative exercise of power.’¹¹¹Treier, Lord Jesus Christ, 85.

The Prior Hostility: Enmity Between God and Sinners

Sinner are people who have offended God and so stand at odds with him. Reconciliation, accordingly, is the fruit of God’s love, flowing and working outward through the whole course and consequences of Christ’s incarnation, atonement, propitiation, satisfaction, redemption, ransom, justification, deliverance, and conquest; it is, at root, the restoration of a foundering, fractured, frictional relationship. Leon Morris, in his chapter on reconciliation in The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, argues that those who are reconciled were previously clearly and entirely at odds with one another—in a state of enmity, hostility, and alienation.¹¹²Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Eerdmans, 1955). Fellowship between God and humanity was broken entirely through the massive offence of one party — humanity — against the other – God. Sin results in this: ‘the wrath of God remains’ (John 3:36; cf. Rom 1:18). For reconciliation to occur, this hostility requires resolution and removal; peace must be made by taking away the wrong and all its repercussions. There is genuine hostility between God and sinners. Unreconciled sinners are God’s enemies (Rom 5:10; 11:28).

So, in short, reconciliation means ‘“restore to friendship,” “make up after a quarrel.” It is not a word to describe good relations in general. It means good relations which follow when an enmity has been overcome. …  It means bringing people into a state of friendship after they have been at loggerheads.’¹¹³Morris, Atonement, 132-33.

This distinction becomes even clearer when reconciliation is set alongside Christ’s sacrifice, which not only restores friendship but also deals objectively with sin before God:

‘Christ’s sacrifice has objective significance, a significance also valid to God. In the Old Testament, the sacrifices were intended to cover the sins of the offering before the face of God. … Now nowhere does this atonement have God as its direct object, but it does take place in relation to him and therefore before his face (Lev 1:3; 6:7; 10:17; 15:15, 30; 19:22; Num 15:28; 31:50) and aims, by covering the sin, to avert his wrath (Num 8:19; 16:46) and to propitiate him. Similarly, in the New Testament Christ is a propitiation (Rom 3:25), ‘the propitiation for our sins’ (1 John 2:2; 4:10)’, ‘a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people’ (Heb 2:17). As high priest, with the offering of this perfect obedience, he has covered the sins of his people, thus averting God’s wrath and securing his grace.’¹¹⁴Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 447; slightly amended. See Jeremy J. Wynne, ‘Wrath,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 807-12.

Romans 5:10–11 stands as the pinnacle passage on the theme. Paul argues that if, while we were God’s enemies, we were brought into a reconciled relationship with him through the blood of Christ, then how much more, now reconciled, will we be kept safe through the Saviour’s life. And not only that — we may now also rejoice in God himself, by our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation. The objective of that reconciliation is then unfolded in Romans 8:12–17: believers are adopted by God – brought into his family – becoming children and heirs together with Christ.¹¹⁵Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 121.

Wrath and Love In Harmony Together

Reconciliation, then, is achieved by Christ’s incarnation and, above all, his death. Without it, God reckons human beings his enemies — not merely that we regard him as our enemy, but that he stands, in justice, condemning us, altogether opposed to us. Without reconciliation there is both judicial barrier and relational estrangement.

And yet God is at odds with sinners at the very same time that he loves them. Wrath and mercy, hatred and love, judgement and compassion, rejection and acceptance — these are all simultaneously and actively the case at once, and harmoniously so, each absolutely consistent within God’s character and nature. How this can be so exceeds our human capacity for comprehension; yet, as has been well said, there is all the difference in the world between not knowing everything and not knowing anything.

There are things we do know. We know, for example, that God loves the image and nature he has made at same the time as hating the sins that his creatures perpetrate against him.¹¹⁶Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III.49.4. We know that we are chosen and predestined in love by God ‘for adoption to himself in Jesus Christ’ from ‘before the foundation of the world,’ yet until we receive ‘the forgiveness of our trespasses’ we remain ‘children of wrath’ (Eph 1:4–5, 7; 2:3; cf. Rom 5:9). Each of these statements is true. The marvellous mystery here is that ‘God reconciles those he recognises, up to the moment of reconciliation, as enemies.’¹¹⁷EDT, 727. Loving us, he reconciled himself to us: he loved us first, but, having turned against him, we had to be reconciled to him — and that reconciliation was his own doing.¹¹⁸Echoing Augustine, as cited in Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:449. Strangely but nonetheless clearly there is a fury to the love God. Calvin captures the tension well:

‘God, who is the highest righteousness, cannot love the unrighteousness that he sees in us all. All of us, therefore, have in ourselves something deserving of God’s hatred. With regard to our corrupt nature and the wicked life that follows it, all of us surely displease God, are guilty in his sight, and are born to the damnation of hell. But because the Lord wills not to lose what is his in us, out of his own kindness he still finds something to love. However much we may be sinners by our own fault, we nevertheless remain his creatures. However much we have brough death upon ourselves, yet he has created us unto life. Thus he is moved by pure and freely given love of us to receive us into grace.’¹¹⁹Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.3; Battles ed., 505-6. See Paul Dafydd Jones, ‘The Fury of Love: Calvin on the Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 213-36.

Bavinck draws out the necessary implication: ‘Reconciliation is not unilateral but bilateral: not only must we be reconciled to God, but God, too, must be reconciled to with us in the sense that, by giving Christ as propitiation … he puts aside his wrath and establishes a relation of peace with human beings.’¹²⁰Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 447; slightly amended.

Reconciliation is God’s Initiative

This initiative belongs entirely to God. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul declares that God ‘reconciled us to himself’ and ‘is reconciling the world to himself,’ and on this basis the appeal goes out: ‘be reconciled to God.’ The direction of movement is telling: ‘[i]nstead of the offending party taking the initiative by offering sacrifice at the altar to atone for sin, God, the offended party, takes initiative by offering sacrifice through Christ to restore peace and friendship — to reconcile humanity to himself.’¹²¹Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Second Edition, 794.

Reconciliation is set in motion by God himself. He must begin it, carry it off, and complete it; we cannot be its initiator or its accomplisher, because of our sinful condition. ‘People do not  reconcile themselves with God as though along and side-by-side with God they were the subject of reconciliation. But God reconciled the world with himself, without its assistance, apart from it, without the world contributing anything to it or needing to contribute to it. People only receive reconciliation as a gift (Rom 5:11) and accept it by faith (2 Cor 5:20).’¹²²Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:450. It remains our responsibility, therefore, to respond and to receive what he has done – — yet even this capacity is his gift: God must first transform us so that we are able to repent, believe, and trust.

The Scope of Reconciliation: Personal, Communal, and Cosmic

The scope of this reconciling work widens as Paul’s letters are read in turn. In Ephesians 2:11–22, Christ is described as ‘making peace’ so as to ‘reconcile us … through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.’ Those who were once ‘far off’ from God are brought near by ‘the blood of Christ.’ Strikingly, the cessation of hostility between God and humanity triggers the cessation of enmity between Jews and Gentiles. A new multi-ethnic, international community — with Christ over all, among all, and alongside all — is established for all eternity as a direct consequence of the cross.¹²³Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 126. In Colossians 1:18–20, the scope expands further still. Peace has been made ‘by the blood of his cross,’ and through Christ, ‘all things’ have been reconciled to God — a reconciliation that encompasses the new creation, the new heavens and new earth, in which the curse and all corruption are undone and perfection is wholly restored (cf. Eph 1:10).

Reconciliation — whereby God makes friends and family of his human enemies — presupposes a prior state of ‘enmity with God’ (Jas 4:4). Before atonement can yield peace, restoration, renewal, and relationship, that hostility must first be removed. Once it is, reconciliation issues in peace with God (Rom 5:1), access to the Father (Rom 5:2; Eph 2:18), nearness to God (Eph 2:13), confidence that God is for us rather than against us (Rom 8:31), and joy — indeed, rejoicing — in God himself (Rom 5:11). Its reach even extends to the relationship between husband and wife (1 Cor 7:11). In a word, reconciliation makes the relationship with God — and with one another, and with all creation — for which we were made, both possible and real.

The range of what reconciliation secures is captured here:

‘When Jesus bears our curse, it’s not simply that he’s bearing punishment—in the sense of certain blows determined arbitrarily for certain crimes—but that he’s assuming upon himself the consequences of Israel’s and the world’s idolatry, which include condemnation and death.’¹²⁴Michael Horton, ‘N. T. Wright Reconsiders the Meaning of Jesus’ Death,’ available at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/the-day-the-revolution-began/

And at slightly more length here:

‘The gift of reconciliation is personal, communal, and cosmic in scope. Personal: The new creation has come (2 Cor 5:17) once sinners are reconciled to God through Christ (2 Cor 5:18). Communal: Beyond ‘not counting people’s sins against them,’ this reconciling God teaches those who are in Christ to stop regarding others from a worldly point of view (2 Cor 5:16, 19). Cosmic: Passages like Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1 celebrate “all things” as the object of reconciliation. In between individual sinnersand all things Christ has placed the church as a new form of reconciled and reconciling humanity.’¹²⁵Treier, Lord Jesus Christ, 303.

Bavinck offers a fuller list of benefits accruing from reconciliation across every dimension of human existence – the juridical (forgiveness, justification, adoption, eternal life, redemption); the mystical (crucified, buried, raised, and seated with Christ); the ethical (regeneration, new life, sanctification, cleansing); the moral (following and imitating Christ); the economic, meaning ‘household management’ (covenant and law fulfilment, ethnic unity); and the physical (victory of the world, death, hell, and Satan). He concludes:

‘In a word, the whole enterprise of recreation, the complete restoration of a world and humanity, which, as a result of sin, is burdened with guilt, corrupted, and fragmented, is the fruit of Christ’s work. Objectively, in principle, in the sphere of legality, he has accomplished that recreation by the cross. Then katallage (reconciliation) was established between God and the world. And for that reason, Christ will in due time – for everything will be done in a set order – present the church without spot or wrinkle to the Father, deliver the kingdom to God, and God will be all in all (1 Cor 15:22-28).’¹²⁶Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:451-452. This is Calvin, noting the distinction and contrast between our legal-relational position as reconciled sinner with our ongoing current moral condition: ‘Christ, bearing our sins, takes them away. Although, therefore, sin continually stays in us, yet in the judgment of God it is nothing, for as it is abolished by the grace of Christ, it is not imputed to us. … Let us therefore learn that we are reconciled to God by the grace of Christ if we go straight to his death and believe that he who was nailed to the cross is the only sacrificial victim by whom all our guilt is removed’ (Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 1-10, trans. Parker, 33).

The Cross and Trinitarian Atonement

The reconciliation accomplished at the cross cannot be understood as the act of the Son alone, isolated from the Father and the Spirit.¹²⁷See Fred Sanders, ‘These Three Atone: Trinity and Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 19-34. As has been well said,

‘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).’¹²⁸Thompson and Doyle, ‘Work of Christ: Traditional Approaches.’ Unpublished Lecture, 1.

This reveals an extremely large and deep truth about God’s holy character and identity.¹²⁹Adapted 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 that happens 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 hatred 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.

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 of 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, so to speak.  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.¹³⁰See 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-Shaped Love of God

The Cross at the Heart of the Gospel

Jesus’ death certainly is presented in the New Testament as a model of behavior to be echoed and appropriately emulated.Yet even where this is the case, his exemplary suffering is inseparable from his atoning work. In 1 Peter 2, for instance, 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.’¹³¹Stott, The Cross of Christ, 87.

Having said this, in the New Testament the preached gospel did not in every instance contain an explanation of the cross. Public proclamation of the good news that Jesus of Nazareth is Lord and Christ in the Kingdom of God could concentrate on his resurrection, and occasionally on his second coming. Nevertheless, what is assumed throughout — even where it is not 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.

The crucifixion of Jesus is presented as the climax of his earthly story and the gravitational centre and heartbeat of the gospel. There is ‘a tremendously tight tie between the gospel and the cross of Christ.’¹³²Carson, ‘What is the Gospel? – Revisited,’ 154 The good news maintains that God’s greatest work was to save us from sin by sending his Son to be crucified and die for us. 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.’¹³³Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 147-48. Cf. Packer and Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood.

The Gospel is More Than the Cross – Yet the Cross is its Centre

Now it is at the same time true that, 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.’¹³⁴Sam 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. Salvation from the judgment of God into fellowship with God is all of God.’¹³⁵Ray 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.’¹³⁶U. Becker, ‘Gospel, Evangelize, Evangelist,’ in Colin Brown ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 2:111.

The Love of God Has a Specific Shape

Yet it is equally that case that, according to Scripture, 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 of Christ, 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.

God’s love is certainly good news, but it does not follow that the love of God is itself the gospel. It is, moreover, expressed one way or another in every aspect of Jesus’ person and activity, and so cannot be reduced to any single dimension of it.

In popular western culture — whenever it ventures an understanding of God at all — nothing seems so self-evident as divine love. Those who otherwise know little of the Bible, and who generally disdain its teaching, will still know that it says ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:8, 16). Love is what people today like, and find most attractive about God; if they think about him at all, this tends to be what they prefer to think about – God as an abundant source of love, generous beyond measure.

It is true that God is infinitely loving, personal, and relational, and equally true that human beings, made in the image and likeness of this loving, personal, and relational God, are ‘made to know, to give, and to receive love.’¹³⁷David Wells, God in the Whirlwind, 77. In our highly inward-looking, overly-subjective, emotionally-driven, and identity-absorbed age, such thoughts come naturally to us — and they go some way towards explaining ‘why it is we assume we know automatically what God’s love is.’¹³⁸David Wells, God in the Whirlwind, 79. Surely, it cannot be wrong to believe that God really is love! Yet, in sentimental, strongly narcissistic times, ‘the question, though, is whether we are thinking about this truth in a biblical framework or not, and whether we are drawing the right conclusions from it or not.’¹³⁹David Wells, God in the Whirlwind, 78. Well’s situmlating broader discussion of the love of God is set out here, 77-100. Useful cultural analysis is offered by Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (Norton, 1979) and prescient ethical analysis and foresight is provided by Alasdair Macintrye, After Virtue, Third Edition(Duckworth, 2007).

The good news about the love of God in Jesus has a specific concentration. Its focus is the love of God in its action upon — and overcoming of — sin. The gospel concerns the greatest and most particular demonstration of that love: the sin-bearing death of God’s Son. It is here that we may truly see what it means for God’s love to be ‘generous beyond measure’.

In the gospel, God’s love is directed towards dealing with sin and all its consequences. The good news does not revolve around the fact that God so loved the world he created generally, in some broad sense — as though the gospel were simply a declaration of divine benevolence, generosity, and providential care. It is, rather, that God so loved a world that was and is in open rebellion against him, that in the midst of human hostility, misery, and satanic sinfulness he acted with such grace and at such cost that he gave his only Son to perish, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

The Death of Christ: The Principal Focus of the Gospel

The gospel does not deal primarily with the generic, universal love of God, but with something far more specific: the love of God that saves sinners by dying in their place. It speaks of an enemy-love, displayed at its most costly and most luminous in the fact that ‘Christ died for us’ — indeed, ‘died for all’ (Rom. 5:8; 2 Cor. 5:14; cf. John 15:13; Gal. 2:20). The gospel is, as David Seccombe puts it, ‘the announcement of the arrival of God’s kingdom, which is the kingdom of King Jesus, who is the crucified one, who “died for us men and for our salvation,” who call us to know him and share his kingdom forever. The gospel of the kingdom is a message of the cross-shaped love of a Saviour who died on a love-shaped cross.’¹⁴⁰Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 150.

The gospel concerns the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, broadly and fully conceived. Every New Testament definition confirms this — Mark 1, Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Timothy, and elsewhere. The whole Christ, the totality of his person and work, his entire identity and action as Lord and Saviour — including all his words and deeds — is good news from God concerning salvation from sin.¹⁴¹The Whole Christ is the title of a 2016 book by Sinclair Ferguson, published by Crossway. Yet the gospel particularly concerns his death in our place and his resurrection from the dead (1 Cor. 2:2; 15:3–4): the good news of the promised Messiah crucified and raised, the promised Saviour-King who died for our sins and rose again for our justification (Rom. 4:25).

The especial stress of God’s good news, however, falls on Jesus’ death — to save us from our sins and to put us right with God (1 Cor. 15:2–3; Rom. 4:25; 5:6; Gal. 1:4; 1 Pet. 3:18). In these and many other passages, the gospel’s principal — though not exclusive — focus is the death of Christ: what his cross achieved, and how it is bound up with justification, atonement, reconciliation, and all that follows from them. In the cross of Christ, we have the greatest demonstration of God’s love. There, wrote Augustine,

‘We have received from God a great proof of his great love, a proof proper to the good alone. It is certainly true that we can never thank him enough for the fact that we exist, that we have life, that we behold heaven and earth, and that we have mind and reason by which to seek him, the very one who created all these things. But beyond this, when we were burdened and weighed down by sins, turned away from the contemplation of his light, and blinded by our love of darkness (that is, of wickedness) he did not utterly abandon us. Rather he sent us his Word, who is his only Son, so that – from the fact that he assumed flesh, was born, and suffered for our sake – we might learn how very much God valued human beings and might be purified of all our sins by that one sacrifice, and, with love of him spread abroad in our hearts by his Spirit and all our difficulties now overcome, might come into eternal rest and the ineffable sweetness of contemplating him. What hearts, what tongues, could ever claim to be adequate to thank him for this?’¹⁴²Augustine, The City of God, 7.31; trans. Babcock, 285.

The Cross-Based Kingdom of God

The gospel of the kingdom proclaimed by Jesus while on earth is partly distinguished from the gospel preached by the apostles in that, in their preaching and teaching of the good news, the apostles significantly expanded upon the value and meaning of Jesus’ death.

Yet both Jesus and the apostles were clear on two inseparable points: (1) that Jesus’ death was God’s chosen means of averting humanity’s eternal death, and (2) that the King of God’s kingdom established his ongoing, eternal reign precisely and only by way of the cross. ‘For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45).

The Messiah’s dominion was accomplished no other way than through his self-giving, serving, suffering, and dying as a sin-bearing sacrifice and substitute, saving sinful people from their own individual spiritual death and everlasting divine judgment. This exaltation through abasement — Christ being ‘lifted up’ (John 3:14; 8:28; 12:32) in substitutionary suffering, bearing sin and the divine judgment upon it — drove and defined Jesus’ earthly mission and characterises the nature of God’s kingdom itself. In that saving realm over which Jesus Christ presides, greatness, power, and sovereignty are attained and exercised only through self-sacrifice, costly service, and humble self-giving. ‘I am among you as the one who serves’ (Luke 22:27).

Christ-like leadership – indeed, Christ’s own leadership – takes shape in sacrificial service, self-giving responsibility, and sheer arduous labour, ‘working hard’ for the good others, particularly those in direst need, to ‘help the weak.’ For according to Jesus himself, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ (Acts 18:35).

The character of the kingdom of God over which Jesus rules is, then, abnormal and unexpected. For Christ’s kingship – through which all of God’s infinite sovereignty is mediated and upon which it is modelled – is based and built upon, his suffering for us in our place. Its nature is distinguished from all other kinds of kingdom and power by his dying: a death determined by God’s love, demonstrating that love toward ‘sinners’ – those who are by nature ‘weak,’ ‘ungodly,’ ‘enemies’ – who require saving ‘from the wrath God,’ through reconciliation ‘to God by the death of his Son’ (Rom 5:6-10).

‘He came himself,’ wrote Athanasius (commenting on Gen 2:16; 3:1-17; and Gal 3:13), ‘to bear the curse laid upon us,’ by receiving ‘the death set for a curse … that is the cross.’¹⁴³Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 25:1-2; CSMV ed., 54-55.

It is here that the idea, cherished by the early church fathers, that Jesus the King ‘reigns from the cross’ has its root. ‘The Lord offered for our sakes the one death that was supremely good,’¹⁴⁴Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 25:1; CSMV ed., 54. calling to us as he died with arms outstretched and drawing all people to himself (John 12:32). Our need required it – ‘we whom he himself upbore in his own body – that body which he first offered to death on behalf of all, and then made through it a path to heaven.’¹⁴⁵Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 25:6; CSMV ed., 56.

Jesus’ kingdom – the kingdom of God – was established through his atoning death.¹⁴⁶See Cynthia L. Rigby, ‘Kingdom of God,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 601-4.

The Cross: Heart and Power of the Gospel

To proclaim the cross in such terms is, therefore, to preach the gospel. ‘True, the resurrection must be added (Gal 1:1; 2:19-20). So must Jesus’ birth of a woman, and under the law (Gal 4:4). But the gospel is in essence the good news of Christ crucified.’¹⁴⁷Stott, The Cross of Christ, 343.

This does not mean that it is necessary, in gospelling Christ, to explain and expound the cross on each single occasion. It does mean, however, that Gospel-preaching and ministry, moreover, has as its subject-matter ‘Jesus Christ on the cross,’ not as a matter merely of the past, but as a completed event in the past which penetrates the ongoing reality of the present. Galatians 3:1 uses the perfect tense for Christ being ‘crucified’ (Greek, estaurōmenos), that is, to indicate its continuing impact, as ‘a historical event of the past … [of] validity, power and benefits [that] are permanent. The cross will never cease to be God’s power for salvation to believers.’¹⁴⁸Stott, The Cross of Christ, 344.

‘… what the gospel announces, according to the New Testament, is not just what Christ offers people today, but what he once did to make this offer possible. The apostolic gospel brings together the past and the present, the once and the now, historical event and contemporary experience. It declares not only that Jesus saves, but that he died for our sins, and was raised from death, in order to be able to do so. The gospel is not preached if the saving power is proclaimed and the saving events omitted, especially the cross.’¹⁴⁹Stott, The Contemporary Christian, 57.

Much of the saving power inherent in the message of Jesus’ reconciling death on the cross is its power of persuasion — its capacity to generate trust in Christ. The goal and intention of gospel-preaching, firmly focused on Christ’s death, is precisely this: persuasion. The aim and objective of the message of the cross is to convince men and women to place personal faith in Christ, believing and trusting in the crucified Saviour as their very own.

The purpose is to inspire and prompt each of us individually to ‘live in the flesh … by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20). That the love of God moved God the Son to submit himself to betrayal, arrest, condemnation, and to be ‘mocked and flogged and crucified’ (Matt. 20:19) is testimony to the prospect of enjoying God’s pure, unstinting generosity for ever. ‘He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?’ (Rom. 8:32).

Here, hyperbolically yet nonetheless powerfully, is Bishop Ryle:

‘Let others, if they will, preach the law and morality; let others hold forth the terrors of hell, and the joys of heaven; let others drench their congregations with teachings about the sacraments and the church; give me the cross of Christ! This is the only lever which has ever turned the world upside down hitherto, and made men forsake their sins. And if this will not, nothing will. … Never was there a minister who did much for the conversion of souls who did not much dwell on Christ crucified. … This is the preaching which the Holy Spirit delights to bless. He loves to honour those who honour the cross. … Whenever a church keeps back Christ crucified or puts anything whatever in that foremost place which Christ crucified should always have, from that moment the church ceases to be useful. Without Christ crucified in her pulpits, a church is little better than an obstruction of the ground, a dead carcase, a well without water, a barren fig tree, a sleeping watchman, a silent trumpet, a dumb witness, an ambassador without terms of peace, a messenger without tidings, a lighthouse without fire, a stumbling-block to weak believers, a comfort to infidels, a hot-bed of formalism, a joy to the devil, and an offence to God.’¹⁵⁰J. C. Ryle, ‘The Cross of Christ,’ in Old Paths: Being Plain Statements on Some of the Weightier Matters of Christianity, from the Standpoint of an Evangelical Churchman, Second  Edition (William Hunt and Company, 1878), 257-59, slightly amended.

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.’¹⁵¹The Westminster Confession of Faith, 8.5; Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 199, slightly amended.

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 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.”’¹⁵²Luther, Lectures on Galatians, LW 26:292. See Robert Kolb, ‘Martin Luther,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 613-22.

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 bounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.’ (Calvin, Inst. 2.16.19; Battles, 527-28)

—

• 1
  The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, 2; Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 115.
• 2
  This section is, with developments, extracted from Thompson and Doyle, ‘Work of Christ: Traditional Approaches,’ 7-9.
• 3
  An excellent discussion through the range of Christ’s humiliation and exaltation is Crowe, The Lord Jesus Christ, 253-83. See also, Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Disputation 27, ‘On Christ in His State of Humiliation;’ Boer and Faber eds., 305-316.
• 4
  Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 1-10, trans. Parker, 54.
• 5
  Morris, Atonement; passim; Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2015), passim.
• 6
  Robert White, ‘Introduction,’ to John Calvin, Crucified and Risen: Sermons on the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ, trans. Robert White (Banner of Truth Trust, 2019), xv.
• 7
  Michael J. Gorman, ‘The Work of Christ in the New Testament,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Christology, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford University Press, 2015); online version. See also John Webster, ‘The Place of Christology in Systematic Theology,’ in the same volume.
• 8
  Refer to Adam J. Johnson, ‘Atonement: The Shape and State of the Doctrine,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 1-18.
• 9
  Thanks are due to Robert C. Doyle for elaboration here. See also, Thomas Oden, Classic Christianity, 271.
• 10
  On this particular point (2), see Ivor J. Davidson, ‘Atonement and Incarnation,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 35-56.
• 11
  On this particular point (6), see Adam Kotsko, ‘Exemplarism,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 485-88.
• 12
  Among a multitude of sermon examples that could be cited, see Leon Morris, The Story of the Cross: A Devotional Study of St. Matthew, Chapters 26-28 (Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, 1957; and Timothy Keller, Kings Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus (Hodder and Stoughton, 2013). For a sample of technical studies of approaches to the atonement (of varying orthodoxy) see the following essays in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement (T & T Clark, 2017): Stephen B. Chapman, ‘God’s Reconciling Work: Atonement in the Old Testament’; Oliver D. Crisp, ‘Methodological Issues in Approaching the Atonement’; Joel B. Green, ‘Theologies of Atonement in the New Testament’; Adam J. Johnson, ‘Atonement: The Shape and State of the Doctrine’; Andrew Root, ‘ Ministry.’
• 13
  See Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 4; CSMV ed., 29. See Thomas Weinandy, ‘Athanasius’s Incarnational Soteriology,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 135-154.
• 14
  Calvin, Institutes, 2.13.1; Battles ed., 475.
• 15
  The following paragraphs are guided by Derek W. H. Thomas’ class on ‘The Sufferings of Jesus,’ available here https:www.monergism.com/school-theology-mp3-series. Also, see Mark Jones, Knowing Christ, 117-126.
• 16
  John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 20-24.
• 17
  Basil of Caesarea’s list of Christ’s humiliations is worth attention: ‘Homily 20: Of Humility,’ in St. Basil, Ascetical Works, trans. by M. F. Toale, D.D. Written as Homilia 20, with the Greek text referenced at PG 31, cols. 525–531.
• 18
  The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, 3; Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 116.
• 19
  Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.8-12, especially section 2.16.10; Battles ed., 512-520. For broader discussion, see Rodney Howsare, ‘Christ’s Descent into Hell,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 257-276. Also, Bray, God is Love, 592-93.
• 20
  For example, Rutledge, The Crucifixion, especially Part 1, 41–200. See also,  Christopher R. J. Holmes, ‘The Atonement and the Holy Spirit,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 77-94.
• 21
  Martin Hengel, Crucifixion: In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, trans. John Bowden (SCM/Fortress Press, 1977), 87.
• 22
  Hengel, Crucifixion, 89.
• 23
  Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 112. This section tracks Seccombe, pages 111-150.
• 24
  Cole, Against the Darkness, 142-43. Various parts of this material are guided by Derek W. H. Thomas’ class on ‘Victory,’ available at https://www.monergism.com/school-theology-mp3-series. Refer also to John Stott, ‘The Conquest of Evil, in The Cross of Christ (IVP, 1986), 227-254.
• 25
  Cole, Against the Darkness, 141. The present paragraph tracks pages 141-48.
• 26
  Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 137-38.
• 27
  Ferdinando, Spiritual Warfare, 121.
• 28
  Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 416.
• 29
  Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco, ‘Devil,’ in The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, eds. Lucas Francisco Mateo-Seco and Guilio Maspero, trans. Seth Cherney (Brill, 2010), 223-26. See also, Cole, Against the Darkness, 154-155. See further, John A. McGuckin, ‘St. Gregory of Nyssa on the Dynamics of Salvation,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 155-174.
• 30
  Donald Hagner, Matthew 14-28 (Word, 2002), 582; cited in Cole, Against the Darkness, 155.
• 31
  Refer to the excellent article by M. J. Wilkins, ‘Temptation of Jesus,’ in Joel B. Green ed., Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, Second Edition (IVP, 2013), 952-959.
• 32
  See Edward W. Klink III, ‘Gospel of John,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 515-22.
• 33
  Calvin Institutes, 2.12.3; Battles ed., 466—67.
• 34
  Oscar Cullman, Christ and Time (SCM Press, 1951), 84.
• 35
  Seccombe, Gospel of the Kingdom, 74.
• 36
  See Graham A. Cole, ‘Eschatology,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 473-78.  Then Gordon D. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God (Hendrickson, 1996), 49-62 (49). Also consult Gregg R. Allison and Andreas Köstenberger, The Holy Spirit (B&H Academic, 2020), 457-461; Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (IVP, 1996), 175-182, 248-255; and Dennis E. Johnson, ‘Holy Spirit, Eschatological Role of,’ in Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Baker Academic, 2023), 331-336.
• 37
  See Matthias Grebe, ‘The Problem of Evil,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 707-712.
• 38
  The Augustine Catechism: The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love, trans. Bruce Harpert (New City Press, 1999), 59-60; cited in Cole, Against the Darkness, 158. See also, Adam J. Johnson, ‘Angels,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 365—70.
• 39
  John Owen, The Dominion of Sin and Grace, Goold ed., 7:500-560, esp. 552-560; idem, Overcoming Sin and Temptation, Kelly Kapic and Justin Taylor eds. (Crossway, 2006). See Kelly Kapic, ‘John Owen,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement,’ 659-664.
• 40
  Ashley Null, Eastertide: Meditations on the Easter Collects of Thomas Cranmer (Anglican House, 2024), 12.
• 41
  Benjamin Dean, Great Truths – Kingdom, Freedom, and Fullness of Life: Jesus in the Broad Perspective of the Life He Brings; https://www.greattruthsglobal.org/kingdom-freedom-and-fullness-of-life/
• 42
  See Alan Spence, ‘Justification,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 585-90.
• 43
  For concise discussion of Old Testament teaching about covenant obligation to obedience, see Morris, Atonement, 24-26. See also, Jeremy R. Treat, ‘Covenant,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 431-36.
• 44
  Hammet & Quarles, Work of Christ, 138.
• 45
  See Joseph Mangina, ‘Ecclesiology,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 461-66.
• 46
  For this, see Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ in DNTUOT, 727-30; Morris, Atonement, 43-62; Also T. Desmond Alexander, ‘Pentateuch,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 677-684; Richard S. Briggs, ‘The Historical Books,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 543-46.
• 47
  Morris, Atonement, 62-67.
• 48
  Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 727-730.
• 49
  Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 727. See Matthew D. Jensen, ‘John’s Letters,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 581-84; David M. Moffit, ‘Hebrews,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 533-36.
• 50
  For example, ‘Reconciliation, Restoration, Propitiation, Atonement,’ in NIDNT, ed. Brown, 3:145-176; Crisp, Approaching the Atonement, 98; Hammett and Quarles, Work, 241-243; Morris, Atonement, 151-176.
• 51
  Averbeck, ‘Sacrifices and Offerings,’ 730.
• 52
  See David Nienhuis, ‘1-2 Peter,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 685-58.
• 53
  See Joseph Mangina, ‘Revelation (Book of),’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 719.
• 54
  Charles E. Hill, ‘Atonement in the Old and New Testaments,’ in Charles E. Hill and Frank A. James, The Glory of the Atonement: Biblical, Historical, and Practical Perspectives (Inter-Varsity Press, 2004), 30.
• 55
  See Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., ‘Blood,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 403-06.
• 56
  Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 128.
• 57
  See Geoffrey J. Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy (Palgrave MacMillan, 1982); Scott Harrower, ‘Thomas Cranmer,’ and ‘Eucharist,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement,’ 437-440, and 479—84; Ashley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to Love (Oxford University Press, 2000); Bryan D. Spinks, Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day (SCM Press, 2013); Peter Toon, The Gospel According to Cranmer and God’s Company 1500–1640 [no publisher, date].
• 58
  Stott, Cross of Christ, 160.
• 59
  The following paragraphs are guided by Derek W. H. Thomas’ class on ‘Substitution,’ available here https:www.monergism.com/school-theology-mp3-series
• 60
  ‘The testimony of Scripture, while not ignoring Jesus’ representative nature, does not stop there. It is therefore not enough for us to say that he dies a representative death: a death for me, rather than instead of me. The testimony of Old Testament and New is that our sins were laid on Christ (Gal 3:13; Heb 9:28; 1 Pet 2:24). There has been a real and substantial transfer of sins (2 Cor 5:21) along the pattern of the Old Testament sacrificial system  and in line with the prophetic expectation (Isaiah 53). … The classic statement here is that of Mark 10:45 (// Matthew 20:28). Jesus uses the word lytron (‘ransom’) which is used 140 times in the LXX and denotes deliverance from bondage by payment or offering. The image is not developed here or elsewhere in the New Testament. There is no indication of to whom such a ransom is paid, for instance. It is an image which is used to carry the more fundamental notion of substitution which effects release. The use of ‘many’ connects it with the basic ideas of Isaiah 53. … The ransom image carries with it most of the elements of our idea of substitution. This is underlined by the use of the Greek preposition anti (‘instead of’, ‘in the place of’) in both Mark 10:45 and its parallel Matt 20:28. There is another Greek preposition, hyper + genitive case, which is of importance here.  Its primary lexographical meaning is: ‘for,’ ‘on behalf of’, ‘for the sake of’, which carries with it notions of representation. However, it is often used, both in the New Testament and in the wider Greek literature, with much the same sense as anti, i.e. substitution.  For example, in soteriologically insignificant passages – Rom 9:3; Phlm 13; and soteriologically rich passages – John 11:50; 2 Cor 5:14,21; Gal 3:13. Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics (1994, 4^th ed.), 183-189, has an excellent article on the use of huper in a substitutionary sense, and the overlap in the New Testament in uses of anti and huper. So, given the context of John’s thematic interest in the judgment and death (John 5:24, 8:51), and  its polar opposite, eternal life, we may be justified in seeing the idea of substitution lying behind the words of Jesus in John 15:12–14’ (Mark D. Thompson and Robert C. Doyle, ‘The Death of Christ 1: Biblical and Theological Reflections.’ Unpublished Lecture. Edited by Robert C. Doyle). See also Jeanine Michele Graham, ‘Substitution and Representation,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 763-68.
• 61
  Rosner, Strengthened by the Gospel, 108.
• 62
  Rosner, Strengthened by the Gospel, 109.
• 63
  T. Desmond Alexander, ‘Pentateuch,’ (677-684) and Mark S. Gignilliat, ‘Major Prophets,’ (623-30) both in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement.
• 64
  On the necessity of penal atonement, see Adam Neder, ‘Sin,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 749-52
• 65
  A highly influential exposition and defence of these matters is J. I. Packer, ‘What Did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution,’ Tyndale Bulletin 25 (1974): 3–45; republished in Celebrating the Saving Work of Christ. Collected Shorter Works of J. I. Packer (Paternoster Press, 1998), 1: 85-123. For critical discussion, see Stephen R. Holmes, ‘Penal Substitution,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 295-314.
• 66
  ‘Jesus’ complete Godhood means that he is not a third party to the relationship between God and mankind. In him God does not inflict the penalty on another, he absorbs it himself. Likewise his complete manhood allows him to act in our place. There is a kinship bond between Christ and humanity that is not diminished by the fact that he was “without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Put these two together and we have what has been called ‘the double-identification of Christ’: he is one with sinners (we are saved ‘in Christ’ Romans 8:1) and he is one with the Father (John 10:30). The doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the perfect humanity of Christ are the key defences of the morality of penal substitution. The allegation of child abuse may be evocative (provocative?), but it is vacuous.’ (Thompson and Doyle, ‘The Death of Christ 1’).
• 67
  The phrase ‘In My Place Condemned He Stood,’ is from the hymn by Philip P. Bliss, Man of Sorrows! What A Name, first published in 1875. The line appears in the second stanza, ‘Bearing shame and scoffing ruse, In my place condemned he stood, Sealed my pardon with his blood.’ See the valuable volume by J. I. Packer and Mark Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood: Celebrating the Glory of the Atonement (Crossway, 2008).
• 68
  ‘Surely the primary issue with which penal substitution is concerned is neither the morality nor the rationality of God’s ways, but the remission of my sins; and the primary function of the concept is to correlate my knowledge of being guilty before God with my knowledge that, on the one hand, no question of my ever being judged for my sins can now arise, and, on the other hand, that the risen Christ whom I am called to accept as my Lord is none other than Jesus, who secured my immunity from judgement by bearing on the cross the penalty which was my due’ (Packer, ‘What did the Cross Achieve’, 27). Adam J. Johnson, ‘Violence,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 791-796.
• 69
  Calvin, Commentaries; Haroutunian ed., 155.
• 70
  Robert C. Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?’ Unpublished Lecture, 2.
• 71
  James Denney, The Death of Christ (1902 ed.), 159-160; cited in Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?’, 3.
• 72
  Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?,’ 3.
• 73
  Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?,’ 4.
• 74
  Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?,’ 7-8.
• 75
  The following paragraphs are initially guided by Derek W. H. Thomas’ class on ‘Satisfaction,’ available at https:www.monergism.com/school-theology-mp3-series. John Stott’s discussion ‘Satisfaction for Sin,’ in The Cross of Christ 111-132,is valuable. See also, Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Disputation 29 ‘On the Satisfaction by Jesus Christ’; Boer and Faber eds., 327-340.
• 76
  Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 246. See also Oliver Crisp, Approaching the Atonement, 63-72. Crisp argues that satisfaction was not in fact original to Anselm but that similar notions are to be found in Tertullian. Fleming Rutledge’s discussion of Anslem is contained in The Crucifixion, 146-166.
• 77
  Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Volume 1, eds. Den Boer and Faber, 327-340.
• 78
  For reference to their works, see Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:341.
• 79
  EDT, 774. See Katherine Sonderegger, ‘Anselmian Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 175-194.
• 80
  Anselm, Why God Became Man, 1.11; Davies ed., 283. See also 2:6-14.
• 81
  Mark D. Thompson and Robert C. Doyle, ‘The Death of Christ 2: Historical Theology.’ Unpublished Lecture, 3.
• 82
  Stott, The Cross of Christ, 119.
• 83
  Doyle, ‘Did the Father Punish the Son?,’ 1.
• 84
  Some of the main tenets of Christ’s death as satisfaction may be set out in rudimentary point fashion: ‘(1) Sin is robbing God of his honor. (2) People must render satisfaction for their sin: they must repay – actually, pay more than – the honor they have stolen from God. (3) People cannot pay their debt, for whatever they could pay is owed already to God. (4) Only the God-man can offer satisfaction. (5) By dying, Jesus gave something that he did not owe to God – the obligation to die – and thus obtained a reward. (6) Christ gave this reward to provide satisfaction for people’s sins’ (Gregg R. Allison, The Baker Compact Dictionary of Theological Terms, 188).
• 85
  There is a useful discussion of Scriptural warrant for satisfaction in Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 237-243.
• 86
  See Cynthia Rigby, ‘Forgiveness,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 493-98.
• 87
  See Graham A. Cole, ‘Expiation/Propitiation,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 489-92.
• 88
  Comprehensive yet accessible commentary is offered in D. A. Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus (IVP, 2010), 39-74; on propitiation in particular, see Scandalous, 60-66, and Morris, Atonement, 151-176. A fuller treatment is Packer and Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood, 29-100. The authors argue that penal substitution is the only interpretation of the cross doing full justice to the value and significance of the Savior’s death and passion. For Calvin’s account of Jesus’ death as penal substitutionary atonement, the propitiation of God’s wrath, and the satisfaction of God’s justice, see Institutes 2.16.1-6; Battles ed., 503-11. A useful recent survey across a spectrum of opinion is David Ceri Jones, ‘Evangelicals and the Cross,’ in Andrew Atherstone and David Ceri Jones eds., The Routledge Research Companion to the History of Evangelicalism (Routledge, 39-56). Companion to the History of Evangelicalism, 39-56.
• 89
  Carson, Scandalous, 60.
• 90
  Carson, Scandalous, 62-63.
• 91
  Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 127.
• 92
  Carson, Scandalous, 64.
• 93
  Stott, The Cross of Christ, 159-60.
• 94
  Carson, Scandalous, 64-65.
• 95
  Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 1-10; trans Parker, 32.
• 96
  See Jonathan T. Pennington, ‘Matthew and Mark,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 631-68.
• 97
  See Adam Kotsko, ‘The Persistence of the Ransom Theory of the Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 277-94.
• 98
  Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 121.
• 99
  Augustine, The City of God, 10.24; trans. Babcock, 378. See also David Vincent Meconi, ‘Augustine,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 381-88.
• 100
  Billy Graham, The Reason for My Hope: Salvation (Thomas Nelson, 2013), xii.
• 101
  Thompson and Doyle, ‘Death of Christ 2,’ 6.
• 102
  Thompson and Doyle, ‘Death of Christ 2,’ 5.
• 103
  Thompson and Doyle, ‘Death of Christ 2,’ 5.
• 104
  Thompson and Doyle, ‘Death of Christ 2,’ 6.
• 105
  Initially partly guided by Mark Ross’ valuable ‘Adult Sunday School’ class on ‘Reconciliation,’ available at https:www.monergism.com/school-theology-mp3-series.
• 106
  Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, 614.
• 107
  See Timothy G. Gombis, ‘The Apostle Paul,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 669-76.
• 108
  Two fine books on the theme are Graham Cole, God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom (Apollos, 2009); and Leon Morris, The Atonement: Its Meaning and Significance (IVP 1983). One of the earliest discussions – beyond Scripture – about Christ’s suffering and death as reconciliation and restoration to God is Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3 and 5. On Irenaeus, see ‘John Behr, ‘Irenaeus of Lyons,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 569—76. See Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:342 for other background, as well as Harry O. Maier, ‘The Apostolic Fathers,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 371-76. See also the fairly advanced works (of differing length and levels of orthodox): Thomas Andrew Bennett, ‘Reconciliation,’ in T & T Clark Companion to the Atonement, 713-18; William Lane Craig, The Atonement (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Oliver Crisp, Approaching the Atonement: The Reconciling Work of Christ (IVP Academic, 2020); Eleonore Stump, Atonement (Oxford University Press, 2018).
• 109
  Treier, Lord Jesus Christ, 85.
• 110
  Leon Morris, New Testament Theology, 72. See also in fuller form Morris, The Atonement, 132-150.
• 111
  Treier, Lord Jesus Christ, 85.
• 112
  Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Eerdmans, 1955).
• 113
  Morris, Atonement, 132-33.
• 114
  Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 447; slightly amended. See Jeremy J. Wynne, ‘Wrath,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 807-12.
• 115
  Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 121.
• 116
  Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III.49.4.
• 117
  EDT, 727.
• 118
  Echoing Augustine, as cited in Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:449.
• 119
  Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.3; Battles ed., 505-6. See Paul Dafydd Jones, ‘The Fury of Love: Calvin on the Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 213-36.
• 120
  Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 447; slightly amended.
• 121
  Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Second Edition, 794.
• 122
  Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:450.
• 123
  Hammet and Quarles, Work of Christ, 126.
• 124
  Michael Horton, ‘N. T. Wright Reconsiders the Meaning of Jesus’ Death,’ available at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/the-day-the-revolution-began/
• 125
  Treier, Lord Jesus Christ, 303.
• 126
  Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:451-452. This is Calvin, noting the distinction and contrast between our legal-relational position as reconciled sinner with our ongoing current moral condition: ‘Christ, bearing our sins, takes them away. Although, therefore, sin continually stays in us, yet in the judgment of God it is nothing, for as it is abolished by the grace of Christ, it is not imputed to us. … Let us therefore learn that we are reconciled to God by the grace of Christ if we go straight to his death and believe that he who was nailed to the cross is the only sacrificial victim by whom all our guilt is removed’ (Calvin, The Gospel According to St. John 1-10, trans. Parker, 33).
• 127
  See Fred Sanders, ‘These Three Atone: Trinity and Atonement,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 19-34.
• 128
  Thompson and Doyle, ‘Work of Christ: Traditional Approaches.’ Unpublished Lecture, 1.
• 129
  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/
• 130
  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.
• 131
  Stott, The Cross of Christ, 87.
• 132
  Carson, ‘What is the Gospel? – Revisited,’ 154
• 133
  Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 147-48. Cf. Packer and Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood.
• 134
  Sam Storms, ‘The Gospel,’ in ESV Systematic Theology Study Bible (Crossway, 2017), 1706.
• 135
  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).
• 136
  U. Becker, ‘Gospel, Evangelize, Evangelist,’ in Colin Brown ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 2:111.
• 137
  David Wells, God in the Whirlwind, 77.
• 138
  David Wells, God in the Whirlwind, 79.
• 139
  David Wells, God in the Whirlwind, 78. Well’s situmlating broader discussion of the love of God is set out here, 77-100. Useful cultural analysis is offered by Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (Norton, 1979) and prescient ethical analysis and foresight is provided by Alasdair Macintrye, After Virtue, Third Edition(Duckworth, 2007).
• 140
  Seccombe, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 150.
• 141
  The Whole Christ is the title of a 2016 book by Sinclair Ferguson, published by Crossway.
• 142
  Augustine, The City of God, 7.31; trans. Babcock, 285.
• 143
  Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 25:1-2; CSMV ed., 54-55.
• 144
  Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 25:1; CSMV ed., 54.
• 145
  Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 25:6; CSMV ed., 56.
• 146
  See Cynthia L. Rigby, ‘Kingdom of God,’ in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 601-4.
• 147
  Stott, The Cross of Christ, 343.
• 148
  Stott, The Cross of Christ, 344.
• 149
  Stott, The Contemporary Christian, 57.
• 150
  J. C. Ryle, ‘The Cross of Christ,’ in Old Paths: Being Plain Statements on Some of the Weightier Matters of Christianity, from the Standpoint of an Evangelical Churchman, Second  Edition (William Hunt and Company, 1878), 257-59, slightly amended.
• 151
  The Westminster Confession of Faith, 8.5; Van Dixhoorn ed., Creeds, 199, slightly amended.
• 152
  Luther, Lectures on Galatians, LW 26:292. See Robert Kolb, ‘Martin Luther,’ in in T & T Clark Companion to Atonement, 613-22.