Book 2, Chapter 15, Section 1 to Book 2, Chapter 16, Section 12

[Alex, Moderator]

At our last meeting, we concluded our study on the person of Christ. Now, we turn our sights upon his redemptive work.

15. TO KNOW THE PURPOSE FOR WHICH CHRIST WAS SENT BY THE FATHER, AND WHAT HE CONFERRED UPON US, WE MUST LOOK ABOVE ALL AT THREE THINGS IN HIM: THE PROPHETIC OFFICE, KINGSHIP, AND PRIESTHOOD

1. Calvin introduces the three offices of Christ: prophet, priest, and king. Beginning with the office of prophet, Calvin reinforces the fact that we are dependent upon God’s willingness to speak to us, or we would be lost. God communicates to his people through prophets, the greatest of which is Christ. “We have already said that although God, by providing his people with an unbroken line of prophets, never left them without useful doctrine sufficient for salvation, yet the minds of the pious had always been imbued with the conviction that they were to hope for the full light of understanding only at the coming of the Messiah” (pp. 494-495). The Old Testament prophets point towards Christ. “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets. In these last days he has spoken to us through a beloved Son” [Hebrews 1:1-2].

2. We do not need any prophecies that go beyond Jesus Christ and the gospel. “The perfect doctrine [Christ] has brought has made an end to all prophecies. All those, then, who, not content with the gospel, patch it with something extraneous to it, detract from Christ’s authority” (p. 496). “That is, outside Christ there is nothing worth knowing, and all who by faith perceive what he is like have grasped the whole immensity of heavenly benefits” (p. 496).

3. to 5. Turning to the office of king, Calvin explains that Christ is the eternal protector and defender of the church. “God surely promises… that through the hand of his Son he will be the eternal protector and defender of his church” (p. 497). Therefore, the eternal preservation of the church is guaranteed. “Whenever we hear of Christ as armed with eternal power, let us remember that the perpetuity of the church is secure in this protection” (p. 497; Psalm 2:2; 110:1). “No matter how many strong enemies plot to overthrow the church, they do not have sufficient strength to prevail over God’s immutable decree by which he appointed, his Son eternal King. Hence it follows that the devil, with all the resources of the world, can never destroy the church” (p. 498).

But, this does not mean that the church will not suffer here on earth. Calvin says, “The life of the godly is nothing but an exile full of sorrow and misery” (p. 498; footnote 11). “We ought to know that the happiness promised us in Christ does not consist in outward advantages — such as leading a joyous and peaceful life, having rich possessions, being safe from all harm, and abounding with delights such as the flesh commonly longs after. No, our happiness belongs to the heavenly life!” (p. 498). “Thus it is that we may patiently pass through this life with its misery, hunger, cold, contempt, reproaches, and other troubles — content with this one thing: that our King will never leave us destitute, but will provide for our needs until, our warfare ended, we are called to triumph” (p. 499).

Christ’s kingship is spiritual. “Christ fulfills the combined duties of king and pastor for the godly who submit willingly and obediently; on the other hand, we hear that he carries a ‘rod of iron to break them and dash them all in pieces like a potter’s vessel’ [Psalm 2:9]” (p. 501). Christ’s kingdom will prevail over all earthly authority in the end. “The full proof will appear at the Last Judgment, which may also be properly considered the last act of his reign” (p. 501).

6. Christ is priest and sacrifice. “As a pure and stainless Mediator he is by his holiness to reconcile us to God. But God’s righteous curse bars our access to him, and God in his capacity as judge is angry toward us. Hence, an expiation must intervene in order that Christ as priest may obtain God’s favor for us and appease his wrath. Thus Christ to perform this office had to come forward with a sacrifice. For under the law, also, the priest was forbidden to enter the sanctuary without blood [Hebrews 9:7]… The priestly office belongs to Christ alone because by the sacrifice of his death he blotted out our own guilt and made satisfaction for our sins [Hebrews 9:22]” (pp. 501-502). At the end of this section, Calvin firmly rejects the Roman Catholic Mass, which they believe to be a (re)-sacrificing of Christ.

16. HOW CHRIST HAS FULFILLED THE FUNCTION OF REDEEMER TO ACQUIRE SALVATION FOR US. HERE, ALSO, HIS DEATH AND RESURRECTION ARE DISCUSSED, AS WELL AS HIS ASCENT INTO HEAVEN

1. We now look at Christ’s work of redemption. Salvation is found in Christ alone. “What we have said so far concerning Christ must be referred to this one objective: condemned, dead, and lost in ourselves, we should seek righteousness, liberation, life, and salvation in him, as we are taught by that well-known saying of Peter: ‘There is no other name under heaven given to men in which we must be saved’ [Acts 4:12]” (p. 503). He is a complete Savior, able to bring us through from beginning to end. “Our redemption would be imperfect if he did not lead us ever onward to the final goal of salvation” (p. 503).

2. to 4. Before Christ came, we were God’s enemies and under his wrath. Apart from Christ, we are in dire straits. It is important for us to acknowledge the “greatness of the calamity from which [we have] been rescued” to appreciate the sweetness of the gospel (p. 505). “To sum up: since our hearts cannot, in God’s mercy, either seize upon life ardently enough or accept it with the gratefulness we owe, unless our minds are first struck and overwhelmed by fear of God’s wrath and by dread of eternal death, we are taught by Scripture to perceive that apart from Christ, God is, so to speak, hostile to us, and his hand is armed for our destruction; to embrace his benevolence and fatherly love in Christ alone” (p. 505).

We can be comforted to know that God was the first to love us (with an eternal electing love) and gave his Son for us (1 Jn. 4:19). It is not because of our goodness that God loves us, but rather “because the Lord wills not to lose what is his in us, out of his own kindness he still finds something to love” (p. 505). While it is true that God eternally loves his own, it is not “until Christ succors us by his death” that “God’s indignation” is removed from us. Hence, “the love with which God embraced us ‘before the creation of the world’ was established and grounded in Christ [Ephesians 1:4-5]” (p. 506).

This is not to say that God’s love is subject to change. “Christ’s death must not be understood as if his Son reconciled us to him that he might now begin to love those whom he had hated. Rather, we have already been reconciled him who loves us, with whom we were enemies on account of sin… Thus in a marvelous and divine way he loved us even when he hated us. For he hated us for what we were that he had not made; yet because our wickedness had not entirely consumed his handiwork, he knew how, at the same time, to hate in each one of us what we had made, and to love what he had made” (p. 507).

5. to 6. Christ saved us by his whole life of obedience (active and passive). There is a two-fold demand of the law. Active obedience refers to the fulfillment of the precepts of the law (i.e., doing what the law positively requires as duty). Passive obedience refers to the payment required as a penalty of sin (i.e., suffering what the law demands for transgression of it). Jesus Christ met both the preceptive and penal requirements of God’s law. The distinction between Christ’s active and passive obedience refers to the different aspects, not periods, of his work. It was his entire life of obedience that was necessary for our redemption with the apex at the cross. “In short, from the time when he took on the form of a servant, he began to pay the price of liberation in order to redeem us… Yet to define the way of salvation more exactly, Scripture ascribes this as peculiar and proper to Christ’s death” (p. 507).

It was important that Christ willingly died and that he was not forced. It had to be a judicial death, not any old death. It was necessary for him to die a cursed death on the cross because death in itself would have been insufficient. “To take away our condemnation, it was not enough for him to suffer any kind of death: to make satisfaction for our redemption a form of death had to be chosen in which he might free us both by transferring our condemnation to himself and by taking our guilt upon himself. If he had been murdered by thieves or slain in an insurrection by a raging mob, in such a death there would have been no evidence of satisfaction” (p. 509).

Christ was innocent (in himself) but guilty (because of us). “He repaid what he did not steal [Psalm 69:4]… He was burdened with another’s sin rather than his own… The guilt that held us liable for punishment has been transferred to the head of the Son of God [Isaiah 53:12]” (pp. 509-510). Christ bore our punishment on the cross. “When Christ is hanged upon the cross, he makes himself subject to the curse. It had to happen in this way in order that the whole curse — which on account of our sins awaited us, or rather lay upon us — might be lifted from us, while it was transferred to him” (p. 510). Here, we have the notion of double imputation: our guilt is placed on Christ as he bears the consequences of our sins, while Christ’s righteousness is counted to those who would believe in him unto salvation. “For our sake he who knew no sin was made sin by the Father, so that in him we might be made the righteousness of God” [2 Corinthians 5:21].

7. “By dying, he ensured that we would not die” (p. 511). We are reminded that Christ “tasted death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9) and that “through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Heb. 2:14-15). Through Christ’s death, our old self is put to death. “His death mortifies our earthly members so that they may no longer perform their functions; and it kills the old man in us that he may not flourish and bear fruit” (p. 512). “Therefore, in Christ’s death and burial a twofold blessing is set forth for us to enjoy: liberation from the death to which we had been bound, and mortification of our flesh” (p. 512).

8. to 9. Here, Calvin explains the phrase “he descended into hell” from the Apostles’ Creed. The importance of the clause is explained. “We ought not to omit his descent into hell, a matter of no small moment in bringing about redemption… if it is left out, much of the benefit of Christ’s death will be lost” (pp. 512-513). While it was almost certainly added to the original creed after it was originally penned, the phrase still has a heritage that dates back to ancient times. “This much is certain: that it reflected the common belief of all the godly; for there is no one of the fathers who does not mention in his writings Christ’s descent into hell” (p. 513).

From Calvin’s perspective, “hell” is not synonymous with “grave” here. The phrase does not simply mean that Christ was buried. Calvin rejects the theory that Christ’s descent into hell refers to his literal descent to the nether world (or limbo) “to [find] the souls of the patriarchs who had died under the law, to announce redemption as accomplished and to free them from the prison where they were confined” (p. 514; so-called “proof-texts” used to defend this view come from Ps. 107:16; Zech. 9:11; and 2 Pet. 3:19).

[Alex, Moderator]

10. to 11. Rather, Calvin interprets the clause “he descended into hell” to mean that Christ “suffered the death that God in his wrath had inflicted upon the wicked” on the cross (p. 516) for “if Christ had died only a bodily death, it would have been ineffectual” (p. 515). As such, when the Apostles’ Creed says that Christ was buried and that he descended into hell, these two phrases “[set] forth what Christ suffered in the sight of men, and then appositely speaks of that invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he underwent in the sight of God” (p. 516).

So terrible was the torment Christ felt on the cross that it is rightly called hell. There, Christ was forsaken by God and endured God’s wrath. “Surely no more terrible abyss can be conceived than to feel yourself forsaken and estranged from God; and when you call upon him, not to be heard” (p 516). So great was his despair that Christ, in deep anguish, had to cry out: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” [Ps. 22:1; Matt. 27:46]. By enduring hell, Christ conquered all and shares his victory with us. “Therefore, by his wrestling hand to hand with the devil’s power, with the dread of death, with the pains of hell, he was victorious and triumphed over them, that in death we may not now fear those things which our Prince has swallowed up [cf. 1 Peter 3:22]” (p. 517).

12. In this last section, Calvin answers potential objections to his interpretation of “he descended into hell.” Here, Calvin reminds us that Jesus suffered in body and soul for “unless his soul shared in the punishment, he would have been the Redeemer of bodies alone” (p. 518). Although Christ suffered in our place, he remained uncorrupted. What Christ feared was God’s wrath, not death itself. This is why Christ was troubled (Jn. 12:27-28) and wrestled with whether or not to drink the cup of God’s wrath (cf. Lk. 22:41-42). He had multiple levels of desire; as the eternal Son of God, he sought to fulfill the Father’s saving purposes (Jn. 4:34; 10:18; Ps. 40:7-8), and as the perfect man, he had an aversion to God’s wrath and a holy fear of God (cf. Is. 11:3). It is important to affirm that Christ truly endured God’s wrath so that we can appreciate just how much we have been rescued from. “Yet this is our wisdom: duly to feel how much our salvation cost the Son of God” (p. 519).

At our next meeting, we will continue our study by examining the resurrection of Christ and his ascension! Then, we will begin Book 3, where we will learn about the means of salvation, starting with saving faith!