The Cross of Christ

by John R.W. Stott

Anselm was right that only man should make reparation for his sins, since it is he who has defaulted. And he was equally right that only God could make the necessary reparation, since it is he who has demanded it.

The only way for God’s holy love to be satisfied is for his holiness to be directed in judgment upon his appointed substitute, in order that his love may be directed towards us in forgiveness.

The substitute bears the penalty, that we sinners may receive the pardon.

What we see, then, in the drama of the cross is not three actors but two, ourselves on the one hand and God on the other. Not God as he is in himself (the Father), but God nevertheless, God-made-man-in-Christ (the Son).

in giving his Son he was giving himself.

There is neither harsh injustice nor unprincipled love nor Christological heresy in that; there is only unfathomable mercy. For in order to save us in such a way as to satisfy himself, God through Christ substituted himself for us. Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice. The cross was an act simultaneously of punishment and amnesty, severity and grace, justice and mercy.

Seen thus, the objections to a substitutionary atonement evaporate. There is nothing even remotely immoral here, since the substitute for the law-breakers is none other than the divine Lawmaker himself.

no mechanical transacti...

The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For 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. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.

at least two important inferences follow,

the first theological and the second personal.

theological inference is that it is impossible to hold the historic doctrine of the cross without holding the historic doctrine of Jesus Christ a...

The second inference is personal.

doctrine of substitution affirms not only a fact (God in Christ substituted himself for us) but its necessity (there was no other way by which God’s holy love could be satisfied and rebellious human beings could be saved).

We would rather perish than repent, rather lose ourselves than humble ourselves.

Moreover, only the gospel demands such an abject self-humbling on our part, for it alone teaches divine substitution as the only way of salvation.

The New Testament gives three main answers to these questions,

‘salvation’,

‘revel...

‘conq...

the blessings of ‘such a great salvation’ (Heb. 2:3) are so richly diverse that they cannot be neatly defined.

terms like ‘propitiation’, ‘redemption’, ‘justification’ and ‘reconciliation’,

so the images of salvation are incompatible (justification and redemption conjure up respectively the divergent worlds of law and commerce), yet underlying them all is the truth that God in Christ has borne our sin and died our death to set us free from sin and death.

beyond the images of the atonement lies the mystery of the atonement, the deep wonders of which, I guess, we shall be exploring throughout eternity.

‘Images’ of salvation (or of the atonement) is a better term than ‘theories’. For theories are usually abstract and speculative concepts, whereas the biblical images of the atoning achievement of Christ are concrete pictures and belong to the data of revelation.

‘substitution’ is not a further ‘theory’ or ‘image’ to be set alongside the others, but rather the foundation of them all, without which each lacks cogency.

If God in Christ did not die in our place, there could be neither propitiation, nor redemption, nor justification, nor reconciliation.

If we are to develop a truly biblical doctrine of propitiation, it will be necessary to distinguish it from pagan ideas at three crucial points, relating to why a propitiation is necessary, who made it and what it was.

First, the reason why a propitiation is necessary is that sin arouses the wrath of God.

His anger is neither mysterious nor irrational. It is never unpredictable, but always predictable, because it is provoked by evil and by evil alone.

Secondly, who makes the propitiation?

In a pagan context

But the gospel begins with

the Old Testament, in which the sacrifices were recognized not as human works but as divine gifts. They did not make God gracious; they were provided by a gracious God in order that he might act graciously towards his sinful people.

cannot be emphasized too strongly that God’s love is the source, not the consequence, of the atonement.

God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us.

Sounds like Sinclair Ferguson in “The Whole Christ”

treatment....God’s feeling toward us never needed to be changed. But God’s treatment of us, God’s practical relation to us – that had to change.’19 He forgave us and welcomed us home.

Thirdly, what was the propitiatory sacrifice?

So then, God himself is at the heart of our answer to all three questions about the divine propitiation. It is God himself who in holy wrath needs to be propitiated, God himself who in holy love undertook to do the propitiating, and God himself who in the person of his Son died for the propitiation of our sins.

Although we must resist every attempt to replace propitiation by expiation, we welcome every attempt to see them as belonging together in salvation.

the imagery changes from temple court to market-place, from the ceremonial realm to the commercial, from religious rituals to business transactions.

We conclude that redemption always involved the payment of a price, and that Yahweh’s redemption of Israel was not an exception.

The imagery implies that we are held in a captivity from which only the payment of a ransom can set us free, and that the ransom is nothing less than the Messiah’s own life.

What then, first, is the human plight, from which we cannot extricate ourselves and which makes it necessary for us to be redeemed?

Secondly, having considered the plight from which, we need to consider the price with which, we have been redeemed.

New Testament never presses the imagery to the point of indicating to whom the ransom was paid, but it leaves us in no doubt about the price: it was Christ himself.

Alan Stibbs’ excellent Tyndale monograph was published, The Meaning of the Word ‘Blood’ in Scripture,

To ‘drink Christ’s blood’, therefore, describes ‘not participation in his life but appropriation of the benefits of his life laid down’.46

The ‘redemption’ image has a third emphasis. In addition to the plight from which, and the price with which, we are ransomed, it draws attention to the person of the redeemer who has proprietary rights over his purchase.

Our body has not only been created by God and will one day be resurrected by him, but it has been bought by Christ’s blood and is indwelt by his Spirit. Thus it belongs to God three times over, by creation, redemption and indwelling.