Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
David Gibson
Read between
October 12, 2017 - August 5, 2022
Definite atonement is beautiful because it tells the story of the Warrior-Son who comes to earth to slay his enemy and rescue his Father’s people. He is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, a loving Bridegroom who gives himself for his bride, and a victorious King who lavishes the spoils of his conquest on the citizens of his realm.
Self-righteousness can feed upon doctrines, as well as upon works; and a man may have the heart of a Pharisee, while his head is stored with orthodox notions of the unworthiness of the creature and the riches of free grace.
The doctrine of definite atonement states that, in the death of Jesus Christ, the triune God intended to achieve the redemption of every person given to the Son by the Father in eternity past, and to apply the accomplishments of his sacrifice to each of them by the Spirit. The death of Christ was intended to win the salvation of God’s people
alone.
The saving power of the cross does not “depend on faith being added to it; its saving power is such that faith flows from it.”
Those for whom Christ died cannot but be affected by his death.
The drama of the Son-King who was promised the nations as his inheritance (Ps. 2:8) adds motivation for the evangelization of the peoples of the world. The Lamb has purchased people for God
If God—Father, Son, and Spirit—has worked indivisibly for us in Christ, who then can be against us? Models of the atonement that make salvation merely possible fail to provide this robust assurance and comfort.
God is glorified when he is seen and savored and enjoyed for what he actually bestows: saving grace.
Salvation from the sting of Satan has come through the cross and refuge in the One who sent his Son into the world to be crucified.34 In a word, the blood of Christ has saved “from all nations those who were once sexually immoral and wicked—they have received forgiveness of their sins and no longer live in sin.”35 All of these references imply a specificity in the extent of the atonement.
if the Son is not fully equal to the Father, he cannot be our Savior.
redemption is possible only as a divine gift. It is the living God who initiates the process of salvation, not men or women.
is God’s foreknowledge the cause of events, or are future events the cause of God’s foreknowledge?
God’s foreknowledge can be causative, but need not always be causative.
God’s foreknowledge is causative because humanity, left to its own devices, could never be saved.
God does not cause an individual to make a particular decision, but he does prepare the “passions” of the individual.
God works in us in such a way that our passions and the ability to choose what is virtuous is chosen by us, so that the decision we exercise by our own will is still fully our own choice.
Christ would not offer himself for those for whom he did not intercede.
God does not provide a universal grace that he extends randomly; God’s grace is only for those whom he has chosen.87 The church is to present the promise of the gospel to all, but only because human beings cannot determine who is elect and who is reprobate.
the nature of “the five points” as responses should “caution us against thinking that they represent the sum of Calvinism,”31 or even its core.
God’s supreme justice, they say, requires that our sins deserve temporal and eternal punishments (temporalibus [et] æternis pœnis). We are unable to do anything about this ourselves, and yet “God, in his infinite mercy, has given us as a Surety his only begotten Son, who, to make satisfaction for us, was made sin and became a curse on the cross, for us and in our place” (pro nobis seu vice nostra).32 This is a classic description of the need for and accomplishment of penal substitutionary atonement.33
Moreover, the promise of the gospel is that whoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish, but have eternal life. This promise ought to be declared and published promiscuously and without distinction, to all nations and people to whom God according to his good pleasure sends the gospel, together with the command to repent and believe.
the Canons place the abundant sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice side by side with the necessity for indiscriminate evangelism, but without explicitly making a logical connection between them.
how can one conciliate in God a universal intent of salvation and the decree of predestination as expressed in Reformed theology?
It is not that Christ has to pile up a heap of suffering to match the offense human beings have given to God; it is that he has to die. Death is the penalty.
Representative headship is covenantally grounded and determined, and discussion of such headship must therefore be rooted in discussion of the nature and terms of the covenant.
The efficacy, the value, the very nature, of Christ’s mediation is entirely determined by the terms of the covenantal structure of salvation.
It is impossible, Owen argues, to claim that Christ intercedes for those for whom he died but who are not ultimately saved.
In short, according to Reformed covenantal theologians, while these non-elect members of the covenant community experience benefits of the atonement,33 over time they are shown not to be lasting beneficiaries or part of the church in the fullest sense.
the provision was made specifically and intended exclusively for those who would believe.
Jesus’s death is the cause of his effectual drawing of all people to himself:
election is the crucial theological prerequisite for atonement. Israel’s experience of atonement rested squarely on Yahweh’s choice of them and their ancestors as his chosen people. Atonement and intercession were made only for the people of Israel, representative of God’s elect.
On any “open-ended” view of the atonement—that is, that the work of Christ only made salvation possible rather than actually secured salvation—“finished” only means “started” and “succeed” only means “maybe, at some future date, and contingent on the contribution of others.” “Finished” is no longer “finished” and “success” is no longer a guaranteed result.
“Yahweh caused to meet on him the iniquity of us all”
No matter how much we make an excuse for the fallen nature which prompts and effectuates actual sin, the fact remains that, in cases too numerous to recall, a choice was presented to us and we chose the path of deliberate, conscious, willful rebellion. We sinned because we wanted to.
We who come making his soul our אָשָׁם know our sin only in a very minute part, but, laying our hands on his head, acknowledging him as our substitute, we act in faith: all our sin in its full extent was borne by the Servant in his death, without remainder, balance, or surplus.
It is totally a story of needy sinners in the hand of God. It is the secret history of every conversion, the real story,
Could any whose iniquities the Lord laid on his Servant fail to be saved?
the atonement itself, and not something outside of the atonement, is the cause for any conversion.
The resources for conversion are found in the Servant’s death; they flow from it. Thus, it is the atonement that activates conversion, not vice versa
The intended recipients and the actual beneficiaries of the Servant’s atoning death are one and the same group.
the ultimate purpose of Christ’s death is to display the glory of God definitively. The Son glorifies the Father by doing the work of the Father, which is to accomplish effectively the salvation of those whom the Father gave him.
John 6 indicates that the Father gives a specific group of people to the Son for whom he then comes to die in order to give them eternal life.
To claim that Christ atones for the sins of everyone but then applies that atonement only to the elect runs contrary to the totality of the work that Christ performs in order to glorify the Father. Such a claim also presents the persons of the Trinity working at cross-purposes with each other: the Father intends the atonement to cover the sins of elect; the Son atones for everyone but then applies it only to the elect by the Spirit.
(1) The Father determines to display his glory. (2) The Son executes this plan by giving his life to ransom for the Father people from every tribe and language and people and nation. (3) The Son makes these ransomed people into a kingdom and priests to God who reign on the earth. (4) The result is that all creation extols the glory of the Father and the Son. This is the goal toward which God is directing all of redemptive history.
when Scripture speaks of God’s purpose in the atonement in terms of saving people from sin or demonstrating his love for the world, these statements must be evaluated in the light of God’s ultimate purpose of displaying his glory. Put another way, the salvation of mankind was not the primary purpose of the atonement, but rather the essential means by which the ultimate goal of glorifying the Father was accomplished.
“This is not a redemption of all peoples without exception but of all without distinction (people from all races),
There is no contradiction, biblical or logical, in saying that Christ died for a particular group of people while at the same time affirming that this good news is to be preached to all without distinction.
Since no one but God knows who the elect are before their conversion, the gospel is preached to all without distinction in the confidence that Jesus’s sheep will hear his voice and believe (John 10:27).
the world is the stage where God accomplishes his redemptive purposes in and through Christ.
