Article: What Really Happened on the Cross? Part 1 – Sacrifice and Propitiation by Mike Riccardi (original source here)
The atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross stands at the very epicenter of Christianity. It is no exaggeration to say that the cross-work of Christ is the heart of the gospel. When the apostle Paul summarized the gospel he preached, he encapsulated it by speaking of the atonement: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3). The cross is the content of the gospel itself, for “we preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:23). The gospel message by which we are saved is “the word of the cross” (1 Cor 1:18). The eighteenth-century slave-ship captain turned Puritan preacher, John Newton, captured it well when he said, “I advise you by all means to keep close to the atonement. The doctrine of the cross is the sun in the system of truth.”
One way to “keep close” to the atonement is to ensure we understand precisely what happened on the cross. We’re likely familiar with the events of the crucifixion, but the significance of those events is so boundless that it will be the theme of the saints’ praise for eternity (Rev 4–5). Despite this, there has been, historically, and there is, today, great confusion concerning this central and essential doctrine of the Christian faith. We must therefore ask of the text of Scripture, “What really happened on the cross? What is it that Jesus has accomplished in His work of atonement? What is the biblical significance of what our Savior has done on our behalf?”
The most fundamental description one can give to the atonement is that it is a work of penal substitution. The cross is not a ransom payment to Satan; the chief captive of hell is in no position to demand ransom payments from God. The cross is not an illustration of God’s general moral government of the world. Still less is the cross God’s declaration of the value and worth of humanity, except as it testifies to the depth of our sinfulness. Neither is the cross merely a cosmic victory of good over evil or a good example for Christians to imitate. Most fundamentally, the cross is a work of penal substitution—the Lord Jesus suffering the penalty for the sins of His people as a substitute for them. In His great love, the Father appointed the Son to stand in our place, to bear our sin, to carry our guilt, to receive our punishment, and thereby to satisfy the righteous wrath of God against us.
The Lord Jesus is the Suffering Servant who “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isa 53:4), who “bore the sin of many” (Isa 53:12). On the cross, “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6), and so “he shall bear their iniquities” (Isa 53:11). He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) by taking that sin upon Himself. The Father “made [Jesus] to be sin on our behalf” (2 Cor 5:21); our guilt was counted to be His. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us” (Gal 3:13), in our place. “He himself bore our sins in His body on the cross . . . for by His wounds you were healed” (1 Pet 2:24). Simply put, “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace” (Isa 53:5; cf. also, e.g., Mark 10:45; 2 Cor 8:9; 1 Pet 3:18; Gal 2:20). Penal substitutionary atonement is woven into the very fabric of God’s revelation from beginning to end, because it is the very heart of the gospel message.
But we ought to press further and ask, “What precisely is the character of this substitutionary atonement? What exactly did Christ accomplish on the cross?” Scripture answers with at least five themes, or motifs, of the atonement: (1) it is a work of substitutionary sacrifice, in which the Savior bore the penalty of sin in the place of sinners (1 Pet 2:24); (2) it is a work of propitiation, in which God’s wrath against sinners is fully satisfied and exhausted in the person of their substitute (Rom 3:25); (3) it is a work of reconciliation, in which sinful man’s alienation from God is overcome and peace is made through the blood of the cross (Col 1:20); (4) it is a work of redemption, in which those enslaved to sin are ransomed by the precious blood of the Lamb’s (1 Pet 1:18–19); and (5) it is a work of conquest, in which sin, death, and Satan are defeated by the power of a victorious Savior (Heb 2:14–15). Each of those five motifs is worthy of our reflection and consideration.
1. Sacrifice
First, Scripture characterizes the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ as a sacrifice (e.g., Eph 5:2; Heb 9:26). This imagery draws from the Old Testament’s prescriptions for Israel’s sacrificial worship to God under the Mosaic Covenant (cf. Heb. 9:23), outlined most thoroughly in the Book of Leviticus. As Leviticus begins, the tabernacle has been completed, and the glory of God has come and filled the tabernacle, signifying that the spiritual presence of Yahweh is now dwelling in the midst of His people (cite Lev?Exod 40:34–38). The presence of God, then, becomes a key theme in Leviticus, as the phrase “before the Lord” or “in the presence of the Lord” appears fifty-nine times. Further, Leviticus teaches that this God who is present is also holy; the terms holy and holiness appear 150 times, more frequently than any other book. Thus, Leviticus answers the question: “How can the holy presence of God dwell in the midst of a sinful people?” The answer God gives is that sinners are to make sacrifices to the Lord that will atone for their sin and render them acceptable in his presence. The worshiper “shall offer [his sacrifice] at the doorway of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the LORD. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf” (Lev. 1:3–4). Immediately we are confronted with penal substitutionary atonement by sacrifice.
The pinnacle of the sacrificial system was the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement. Once a year, the high priest of Israel was to enter the holy of holies into God’s presence in order to “make atonement for himself and for his household and for all the assembly of Israel” (Lev 16:17). He was to offer two goats, one to be sacrificed to God and the other to bear the sins of the people and be banished from the Lord’s presence (Lev 16:8–10). The blood of the sacrificial goat was to be sprinkled on the mercy seat, the place where atonement was made (Lev 16:15). With regard to the scapegoat, “Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness” (Lev 16:21–22).
By laying his hands on the head of the scapegoat and confessing all Israel’s sins over it, the high priest symbolized that God had reckoned the sin and guilt of the people to be transferred to the goat. Instead of bearing their own iniquity and being banished from the holy presence of God, Israel’s sin was imputed to a substitute. The innocent scapegoat bears the sin, and guilt, and punishment of the people and is banished in their place. By sprinkling the sacrificial blood of one substitute on the mercy seat, and by virtue of the imputation of sin to a second substitute, Israel’s sins are atoned for and the people are released from punishment.
The only other picture of Old Testament sacrifice that rivals the Day of Atonement in Israel is the Passover sacrifice. As the Lord was about to send the tenth plague upon Egypt, He promised to kill every firstborn child and animal throughout the land. And though Israel had been spared from the first nine plagues, they were not automatically spared from the tenth, because they had fallen into idolatry and worshiped the gods of Egypt (cf. Ezek 20:8). In order to be spared from God’s wrath, He required each family to kill an unblemished lamb and to put its blood on the doorposts of the house (Exod 12:13). The Passover lamb died as a substitute for the firstborn children of Israel. The wrath of God was turned away by the blood of a spotless lamb slain in their place. Yahweh forgave Israel’s sins by a substitutionary sacrifice (Exod 12:27).
Both the Levitical sacrifices as epitomized in the Day of Atonement and the rite of the Passover vividly picture the sacrificial work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Passover meal was the setting of Jesus’ last supper with His disciples, when He instituted the New Covenant, declaring that His body would be broken for them, and that the cup poured out for them was “the new covenant in My blood” (Luke 22:20). At this Passover meal, Christ declared that the breaking of His body and the pouring out of His blood would be the fulfillment of the Passover. He is, as John the Baptist heralded, “the Lamb of God” (John 1:29), whose “precious blood . . . as of a lamb unblemished and spotless” redeems God’s people (1 Pet 1:18–19), “for Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5:7). Just as the blood of the slain lamb protected Israel from the execution of God’s judgment, so also does the blood of the slain Lamb, Jesus, protect His people from the Father’s wrath against their sin.
Jesus is also the fulfillment of the Levitical priesthood and sacrificial system. While God graciously allowed Himself to be temporarily satisfied by Israel’s sacrifices, those sacrifices were never truly final or perfectly efficacious (Heb 9:9; 10:1, 4). That is why there had to be a greater, perfect sacrifice that would put away sin once for all: “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, He entered then through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb 9:11–12). The parallel imagery is astounding. Just as the high priest entered beyond the veil into the most holy place, so also Christ is the “great high priest who has passed through the heavens” (Heb 4:14) and entered beyond the veil of the heavenly tabernacle into the very presence of God Himself. While the high priest sprinkled the blood of the sacrificial goat on the mercy seat to make atonement, the Lord Jesus sprinkled His own blood. And inasmuch as His blood is infinitely more valuable than that of goats and calves—inasmuch as His blood speaks better than the blood of Abel (Heb 12:24)—He secured an eternal redemption. Our great Mediator and Substitute is the fulfillment of both the high priest and the sacrifice. He is both offerer and offering, for “He offered Himself” (Heb 9:14).
Not only this, but Jesus is also the fulfillment of the mercy seat. The high priest was commanded to sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, where God’s holy presence was uniquely manifest for fellowship with Israel (Exod 25:22; Lev 16:2) This is a holy place that cannot be entered except under the strictest of circumstances by the most qualified in the nation. And yet the apostle Paul declares that God displayed Jesus “as a propitiation by his blood” (Rom 3:25). And that word “propitiation” is actually the word for propitiatory—the Greek word that translates the Hebrew term for the mercy seat in the holy of holies. Just as the mercy seat was the place where atonement was made and God’s wrath against sin was averted, so now is Jesus the place where atonement is made and God’s wrath against sin is averted. The Lord Jesus Christ is the high priest who offers, the sacrifice that is offered, and the mercy seat upon which the sacrifice is offered!
And still further, He is also the fulfillment of the scapegoat. Just as the high priest confessed Israel’s sins over the head of the scapegoat, such that their sins were laid on the goat, so also has the Father “caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him” (Isa 53:6). The Father imputed to Jesus every sin of every person who would ever believe (2 Cor 5:21), so that it can truly be said that “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross” (1 Pet 2:24). As the midday sun is shrouded in darkness, the Father is, as it were, laying his hands on the head of the Son, and confessing over Him the sins of His people. And as a result of bearing their sin, like the scapegoat the Son is banished from the presence of the Father, leaving him to suffer outside the gate (Heb 13:12), and to experience the terrifying abandonment of His Father, leaving Him to cry out those wretched words: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” God the Son—from eternity the apple of His Father’s eye, His ever-present companion, in whom His soul was always well-pleased—was forsaken by the Father, as He laid upon Christ the iniquity of us all, and abandoned Him to bear the unleashed fury of Almighty God in the place of His people.
“Outside the camp,” away from the presence of the Lord and of His people, was where the carcasses of the sacrifices were to be disposed (Lev 4:12; Heb 13:11), where the leper was isolated to bear his shame (Lev 13:46), where the blasphemer was stoned (Lev 24:14, 23). It is to that place of shame and of isolation that the Son of God was banished, so that we guilty, treasonous, sinful sons and daughters of Adam might be welcomed into the holy presence of God.
Dear sinner, if the Son of God has humbled Himself to such a place of degradation and shame, will you not humble yourself before His cross? Dear reader, if you are without Christ, humble yourself and come to Him who has died for sinners. Turn from your sins and put your trust in the precious blood of this spotless Lamb slain for your salvation.
2. Propitiation
A second motif Scripture employs to describe the atonement is propitiation. Christ’s death is not only a sacrifice, but a propitiatory sacrifice. The word propitiation just means appeasement or satisfaction. And when applied to the atonement, it communicates that by receiving in Himself the full exercise of the Father’s wrath against the sins of His people, the Lord Jesus Christ satisfied the Father’s righteous anger, and thus turned away His wrath from us who, were it not for our Substitute, were bound to suffer under that wrath for ourselves.
Four key texts explicitly identify Christ’s work as a propitiation: Romans 3:24–25, Hebrews 2:17, 1 John 2:2, and 1 John 4:10. However, some have objected that these passages have been mistranslated, and argue that the Greek term does not mean “wrath-averting sacrifice.” That would suggest the primitive and obscene notion that God is wrathful toward humanity and must be appeased. Rather than propitiation, these objectors say the hilaskomai word group signifies expiation—the cancellation or removal of sin, without reference to wrath.
But there is clear biblical justification for reading these words as a wrath-averting propitiation, not merely expiation. The Septuagint employs hilaskomai to translate the Hebrew kāphar. While kāphar has a range of meanings—including to forgive (e.g., Lev 4:20), to cleanse (e.g., Lev 14:18–20), and to ransom (e.g., Num 35:29–34), there are several key texts where it is unmistakable that kāphar refers to turning away God’s wrath. For example, when Israel commits idolatry with the golden calf, God responds in wrath (Exod 32:10). But on the next day, Moses tells the people of his intentions to intercede on their behalf: “Now I am going up to the LORD, perhaps I can make atonement (kāphar) for your sin” (Exod 32:30). Moses clearly understood the problem: God’s wrath was kindled against the sin of His people. And his instinctive solution was to try to “make atonement” for their sin, that is, to seek to turn God’s wrath away from His people.
There is a similar scene in Numbers 25. As God was preparing Israel to enter the land of Canaan, the people engaged in sexual immorality with Moabite women and worshiped the gods of Moab (vv. 1–2). Here again, the Lord responds in wrath to His people’s idolatry: “And the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel” (v. 3, ESV). That anger was exercised upon them in the form of a plague that killed 24,000 people (v. 9). Verse 4 says that God directed Moses to kill the leaders of Israel so that His wrath might be turned away from them. And just as God said that, another Israelite had brought a Midianite woman to his family’s tent, apparently intending to follow in the immorality of the rest of the people.
Then Phinehas, one of the priests, was so incensed by such outright rebellion that he killed them both (vv. 7–8). As a result of Phinehas’ zeal, God’s wrath was propitiated and the plague was stopped. God then says, “Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, has turned back my wrath from the people of Israel, in that he was jealous with my jealousy among them, so that I did not consume the people of Israel in my jealousy. Therefore say, “Behold, I give to him my covenant of peace, and it shall be to him and to his descendants after him the covenant of a perpetual priesthood, because he was jealous for his God and made atonement (kāphar) for the people of Israel” (vv. 11–13). Moses considers the concept of turning back God’s wrath to be synonymous with the term kāphar (see also Num 16:45–59).
Therefore, when the New Testament authors use the same Greek terms that the Septuagint uses to translate the Hebrew kāphar, it is unmistakable that the hilaskomai word group signifies the concept of propitiation—of wrath-satisfying appeasement—just as it did in the Old Testament. That conclusion is especially inescapable when one considers the contexts in which the term is used. Consider just one of those, in the Book of Romans. Paul spends two chapters detailing how the wrath of God is kindled against the sin of all mankind (1:18) and indicting all the nations of the earth who “knew God” through the creation, but “did not honor Him as God or give thanks” (1:19–21). As a result, God manifested His righteous anger by delivering the Gentiles over to lust and impurity (1:24), to “degrading passions” (1:26), and to “a depraved mind” (1:28). In chapter 2, we learn that the wrath of God abides on the Jews as well, for, though they have the law of God and condemn others for breaking it, they practice the very same unrighteousness as the Gentiles (2:1–4). And so Paul says, “Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (v. 5). “Those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness” can expect only “wrath and indignation” (v. 8). In chapter 3 verse 5, Paul calls God “the God who inflicts wrath.” There can be no mistake: God is angry with sinners. Every righteous fiber of His holy being is aroused with just hatred of unrighteousness.
And so this thread of divine wrath has been so woven through this opening section of Romans that the reader is left asking, “If this is the miserable state of sinful mankind—hopeless under the wrath of Almighty God—how will we ever be able to be in a right relationship with Him?” No more important question has ever been asked: How will sinful man escape the wrath of God? And that answer comes to us in Romans 3:21–26, the very heart of the gospel of Christ. God has provided righteousness, but not through the law; we have all broken the law! Not through good works, because we could never perform enough good works to satisfy the inflexible demands of divine holiness and justice! But He has provided righteousness, by publicly displaying his own Son the Lord Jesus Christ, “as a propitiation in His blood through faith.” God Himself has satisfied His own wrath against sin by sprinkling the blood of the spotless Lamb upon the mercy seat of the heavenly altar (cf. Heb. 9:11–15, 23–24). He has punished the sins of His people in a Substitute, and therefore, in unspeakable grace, His wrath has been turned away from us.
How essential this concept of propitiation is to a proper understanding of what happened on the cross! To deny that the atonement was fundamentally a propitiation is to deny that God’s wrath is aroused against sin, or that it must be appeased for man to be granted salvation. But such a denial does violence to the full breadth of biblical revelation. The small sample of texts which we have considered has demonstrated that clearly. Whether it is idolatry in Exodus 32, sexual immorality in Numbers 25, grumbling against the leaders in Numbers 16, or any sin committed by any man, God’s response to human sin is to be justly stirred to holy fury. Because God is holy, righteous, and good, He must punish sin in wrath. And that is why propitiation is so precious. Because Christ’s cross-work is a propitiation, the atonement is a wrath-bearing sacrifice. Sin will not be overlooked; God’s forgiveness does not mean that He just sweeps sin under the rug. He would never so violate His own holiness. He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished (Exod 34:7). The Holy One of Israel will ever and always punish sin in one of two places: sin will be punished in the sinner in hell, or it will be punished in Christ the Substitute on the cross.
Conclusion
Dear reader, behold the glory of the cross. If you are in Christ, every ounce of the unmixed fury that God would have visited upon you in the eternal torments of hell was fully poured out on this Substitute in those three terrible hours on Calvary. Because of that, there is no longer any wrath left for you. God is propitious toward His people, because our sin has been paid for and our punishment has been borne. And so we sing with the saints and angels in heaven in Revelation 5: “Worthy are You, . . . for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation! . . . Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!”
Perhaps the best non-inspired worship song that I know that captures the depth of the theology of penal substitutionary atonement—of propitiatory sacrifice—is a nineteenth-century hymn called “O Christ! What Burdens Bowed Thy Head.” In these six verses we behold the beautiful juxtaposition of Christ’s punishment and the sinner’s freedom, and are compelled to worship the Lamb who bore our wrath:
O Christ! What burdens bowed Thy head!
Our load was laid on Thee;
You stood in the sinner’s stead,
Did bear all ill for me.
A Victim led, Thy blood was shed;
Now there’s no load for me.
Death and the curse were in our cup:
O Christ, ’twas full for Thee;
But Thou hast drained the last dark drop,
‘Tis empty now for me!
That bitter cup, love drank it up;
Now blessing’s draught for me!
Jehovah lifted up His rod;
O Christ, it fell on Thee!
Thou wast sore stricken of Your God;
There’s not one stroke for me.
Thy tears, Thy blood, beneath it flowed;
Thy bruising healeth me.
The tempest’s awful voice was heard,
O Christ, it broke on Thee!
Thy open bosom was my ward,
It braved the storm for me.
Thy form was scarred, Thy visage marred;
Now cloudless peace for me.
Jehovah bade His sword awake;
O Christ, it woke ‘gainst Thee!
Thy blood the flaming blade must slake;
Thine heart its sheath must be;
All for my sake, my peace to make;
Now sleeps that sword for me.
For me, Lord Jesus, Thou hast died,
And I have died in Thee!
[You have risen]—my hands are all untied,
And now Thou livest in me.
When purified, made white and tried,
Thy glory then for me!
The load of sin was my burden to bear, but there is no load for me. The bitter cup of wrath was mine to drink, but now I drink from the stream of overflowing blessings. The rod of God’s anger was for my back; the sword of His wrath was to pierce my heart. But it pierced the heart of the innocent Son of God, and now that sword sleeps for me.
Dear sinner, it can be put to sleep for you as well. What fleeting and false pleasure of sin is worth losing your soul to the flaming blade of God’s wrath? God Himself calls upon you who remain outside Christ to turn from your sin—to put away all hope of attaining righteousness and forgiveness by your own good works—and to look upon this Savior and see in Him all the righteousness and satisfaction that you could hope for. He is the one Mediator between God and men, and He is bruised, scarred, broken, dead, forsaken, and risen for sinners, so that you might know the “cloudless peace” of eternal life. Turn to Him and live!
To my brothers and sisters, this is what happened on the cross. May it be that your theology informs your doxology—that the depth of your understanding causes your worship of the Lord Jesus Christ to rise to new heights.
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What Really Happened on the Cross? Part 2 – Reconciliation, Redemption, and Conquest by Mike Riccardi (original source here)
In the previous article, we began a study on the very heart of the gospel, the bedrock foundation of Christianity itself: the nature of the atonement of Christ. We framed our study around the question: “What really happened on the cross?” Now, anyone acquainted with the rudiments of Christianity is familiar with the historical narrative of the crucifixion. All four Gospels vividly picture the betrayal, the arrest, the trial, the scourging, the crucifixion, and the death of Jesus Christ. We understand the events that took place. But the rest of the New Testament, when read in the light of its Old Testament background, gives us insight into the significance of the death of Christ—things you would not know anything about even if you were with the disciples in the garden, with Pilate in the Praetorium, and with Mary at the cross. The theological significance of what happened on the cross is so inexhaustible that it will be the centerpiece of our praise in heaven (cf. Rev 5:9). Christ’s people will celebrate for eternity the blessings of what really happened on the cross. But that celebration begins even now, as we devote ourselves to understanding God’s revelation concerning the theological significance of the atonement.
Previously, we argued that the most fundamental characterization one can make of the atonement is that it is a work of penal substitution—the Lord Jesus suffering the penalty for the sins of His people as a substitute for them. Then, we claimed that we might further define this penal substitutionary atonement according to five key themes, or motifs: sacrifice, propitiation, reconciliation, redemption, and conquest. The former article examined the first two of those in detail. In this article, we will devote ourselves to the final three, as we seek to gain a richer understanding of what Christ has accomplished on the cross for those who trust in Him. And we devote ourselves to such study because our theology is the ground and the fuel for our doxology. Our praise to Christ soars only so high as our understanding of His glorious person and work is rooted in the rich soil of God’s Word. The heights of our worship will never exceed the depths of our theology. The followers of Jesus devote our minds to truth in order to enflame our hearts with worthy worship.
3. Reconciliation
In addition to being a substitutionary sacrifice and a propitiation, Christ’s atonement is also the means of reconciliation between God and man. Man’s sin has not only incurred guilt (which requires sacrifice) and aroused God’s wrath (which requires propitiation). Sin has also effected hostility between God and man which must be overcome.
This alienation is pictured vividly throughout Scripture. In the Garden, after Adam and Eve sinned, Scripture records, “They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden” (Gen 3:8). It seems it was a regular occurrence for the holy presence of God to be moving about in the Garden. God would have had what could be described as face-to-face communion with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Yet after disobeying God, their immediate instinct was to hide from Him and avoid his fellowship. Before our first parents had even seen the Lord again, the presence of sin had already fundamentally altered their relationship. Eventually, Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, cut off from the holy presence of their God (Gen 3:22–24).
In Israel’s history, God’s separation from sinful man is powerfully illustrated by the threefold barrier of the tabernacle and temple. The tabernacle and the temple were where God uniquely manifested His presence, but because of sin there was a threefold separation between God’s people and God’s presence. First, there was the outer court, which was accessible only to those who were bringing substitutionary sacrifices for their sins. Second, there was the holy place, which was accessible only to the priests who offered sacrifices for the people. And third, there was the holy of holies, or the most holy place, which was accessible only to the high priest only on the Day of Atonement, when he would make propitiation for the sins of the entire nation. Consider how far mankind had fallen. Adam and Eve once enjoyed face-to-face fellowship with God in the cool of the day; now blood had to be shed for one person in all of Israel to enter the presence of the Lord on one day of the year. The lesson? Sin separates from God.
The prophet Isaiah comments on this broken relationship when he says, “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear [you]” (Isa 59:2). We who were created for intimate friendship with our Creator have become His enemies (Rom 5:10), alienated from God, hostile in mind, and engaged in evil deeds (Col 1:21). In Romans 8:7, Paul says, “The mind set on the flesh”—which is to say the fleshly human mind in its natural state—“is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” This is our miserable condition. And yet it is precisely here, in the depth of our need, that the atoning work of Christ meets us with saving power. The atonement is a work of reconciliation, whereby the ground of the enmity and hostility and alienation between God and man is removed and peace is accomplished. Note the emphasis:
Romans 5:10–11: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.”
2 Corinthians 5:18–19: “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.”
In Ephesians 2:16, Paul speaks of Christ reconciling both Jews and Gentiles “in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near; for through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.”
And in Colossians 1:20–22, Paul writes, God was pleased “through him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.”
In a real sense, reconciliation is the most ultimate work of Christ’s cross, because it accomplishes the ground of the peace with God that we enjoy through our justification (Rom 5:1). Because of Christ’s atonement, we who were separated from the God we were created to know and worship will be restored to loving fellowship with Him. As Peter says “Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous” (1 Pet 3:18). This verse speaks of both the judicial and relational aspects of Christ’s work on our behalf. There is the judicial reality of the cross: Christ pays the penalty of our sin as our Substitute. Then, the next phrase tells us the “why” of Christ’s penal substitution: “. . . so that He might bring us to God.” This is the very goal of our salvation: restoring us to the all-satisfying, unspeakably glorious, consummately delightful God from whom our sins had cut us off.
The glorious truths of propitiation, redemption, justification, forgiveness, and freedom from punishment (and more) all just get stuff out of the way so that we can get to Him. They exist to give us access to the Father (Eph 2:18), in whose presence is fullness of joy, and in whose right hand are pleasures forevermore (Ps 16:11). What makes the gospel good news is not simply that our sins are forgiven, that we get out of hell, that we do not feel guilty anymore, or that we get to see our friends and family in heaven. The very bottom of why the gospel is good news is because it reconciles us to the God who makes heaven heaven. Our sin had cut us off from Him—this magnificent treasure, this ocean of delight. And the cross of Christ overcomes the alienation and hostility that exists between us and God, and purchases the reconciliation that brings us back to Him.
4. Redemption
A fourth motif that Scripture employs to describe the work of Christ’s atonement is redemption. The concept of redemption is fundamentally commercial language. The Greek terms agorazō and exagorazō which both derive from the word agora, which means “marketplace,” and thus “to redeem” means to purchase out of the marketplace. Another word the New Testament uses for redemption is lutroō, which speaks of a purchase by the payment of a ransom. Putting the two together, we discover that a key concept of redemption is slavery. Slaves were redeemed by the payment of a ransom.
For an example, we might turn to Leviticus 25, the first extended instruction on the laws of redemption in the Old Testament. When an Israelite had become so poor that he had to sell himself into slavery, God’s law made provision for him to be redeemed out of slavery by his family members. And the language used is consistently commercial. In verses 47 to 52, we read of the “purchaser” (v. 50), the “price” (v. 50), the “purchase price” (v. 51)—which is the same word for ransom—and “refund” (v. 52). This is the language of the market, of buying and selling. The family of the one who had been sold into slavery could redeem him by the payment of a ransom price.
In a similar way, Scripture testifies that man is in the bondage of slavery—that we are so beholden to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life (cf. 1 John 2:15–17), that we are properly said to be enslaved to our sin (cf. John 8:34; Rom 6:16–18; 2 Pet 2:19). And our slavery is so pervasive that it extends even to our hearts: our slave-master has deceived us into loving our slavery.
But thanks be to God that Scripture teaches Christ has come to redeem His people from the bondage of our slavery, to purchase us out of the slave-market of sin by the payment of the ransom price of His own life. Paul declares, “There is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Tim 2:5–6) Jesus Himself says, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The mission of His incarnation was a work of ransom, of which His own life was the ransom price that would be given in the stead of the many sinners whose freedom He purchased.
Therefore, Paul tells the Corinthians that they had been bought with a price (1 Cor 6:20). In his farewell address to the Ephesian elders at Miletus, he says that God purchased His church with His own blood (Acts 20:28). The apostle Peter says that we were redeemed “not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Pet 1:18–19). And the apostle John records the saints’ heavenly worship of the risen Christ for his atoning work of redemption: “Worthy are You . . . for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev 5:9).
Redeemed from the Penalty of Sin
But from what, specifically, did Christ redeem us? Galatians 4:4 teaches that “. . . when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” Christ had come to redeem us who were in bondage under the law. What, then, does it mean to be in bondage under the law? Just a chapter earlier Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law” (Gal 3:13). The law of God has always brought with it promised blessings for obedience and promised curses for disobedience. Man can try to attain righteousness by his own good works; it is just that the standard of God’s law requires perfect obedience (cf. Gal 3:10; Jas 2:10). Yet because all without exception have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23), all without exception have come under that curse. But it is from the bondage of this curse of spiritual death and destruction that Christ has redeemed His people: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us” (Gal 3:13). Rather than letting us suffer the penalty of the curse for ourselves, He has redeemed us by bearing that penalty in our place.
Redeemed from the Power of Sin
In addition to redeeming us from the curse of the law, Scripture speaks of Christ having redeemed us from sin itself. The Bible says that in our natural state, men and women are “slaves to sin” (Rom 6:6), for we are slaves of the one we obey (cf. Rom 6:16). Jesus says, “Everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). Every aspect of the natural man’s being—mind, desires, and will—is held captive by sin. And if you die in that bondage, you will never be free from it.
Precisely because this was our miserable condition, Christ has redeemed His people from sin by paying the ransom price of His blood. He has redeemed us from the enslaving penalty of sin: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses” (Eph 1:7). He has redeemed us from the enslaving power of sin: Christ “gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds” (Titus 2:14). This means that the atoning work of Christ has not only purchased freedom from sin’s legal penalty in justification, but also freedom from sin’s power and reign in our lives, which is our progressive sanctification. While we were still enslaved, sin ruled over us as a cruel taskmaster; we had no hope of being freed from its bondage. But by the mighty sufficiency of the blood of Christ, sin no longer has dominion in the soul of the believer. Sin has been dethroned in the regenerated heart! Therefore, God’s people have the power to overcome and subdue sin in our lives through the Spirit who dwells in us.
Not only do we have the power to overcome sin, but we have the obligation to do so. Paul puts it simply: “For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor 6:20). Christian, you are not your own; you have been bought with a price. You have been redeemed out of the slave market of sin, and you are now free in regard to sin. But do not let it escape your notice that you were redeemed out of that slave market by another Master: “Having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. . . . But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life” (Rom 6:18, 22). God the Son has redeemed us out of slavery to sin at the ransom price of His own blood. We are not our own. Christ owns us. He is our Master, and it is our privilege to be willing and happy slaves of righteousness. The redeeming blood of Christ gives us both the power and the responsibility to live lives that are honoring to God.
Redeemed from the Presence of Sin
But Christ’s redemption does not merely secure our freedom from the penalty and power of sin in the present. The atonement secures our freedom even from the presence of sin in the future. In Romans 8:23, Paul comments on how believers “wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” The perfect redemption that Christ purchased for us stops neither at justification nor sanctification. The redeeming and conquering power of the blood of Christ will finish its job, and will finally eliminate all trace of sin even from our bodies at our glorification.
While we are in this body, we groan (Rom 8:23), because our outer man is decaying (2 Cor 4:16) and because we are weary of the fight against our sin (2 Cor 5:2, 4). But precisely because Christ has purchased us, we look forward to a day when even our lowly, frail, decaying, sin-sick bodies will be free from all evidences of the curse of sin. Christ has purchased all of us, not merely our souls. He has purchased us as whole persons; soul and body belong to Him. And Christ means to get what He paid for! Therefore, there is coming a day when this perishable will put on the imperishable, and this mortal will put on immortality (1 Cor 15:53), for the cross of Christ has secured not only the inauguration of our salvation, but also its consummation.
5. Conquest
Finally, in addition to being a sacrifice and a propitiation, and having accomplished reconciliation and redemption, Christ’s death was also a work of conquest.
Since man’s fall into sin, the entire creation has groaned under sin’s curse (Rom 8:19–22). Because of that, Scripture speaks of this whole world as under the rule of Satan. “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one,” says the apostle John (1 John 5:19). Paul adds that Satan is “the god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4), “the prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2). There is a pretender to the throne of this world who has been given an enormous amount of leniency by its true King. But from the very beginning, God has promised that the true King—the seed of the woman—would crush the head of the serpent and destroy His work (Gen 3:15). Thus, in the fullness of time, when the Son of God came to be a sacrifice for sin, to turn away God’s wrath as a propitiation, to accomplish reconciliation between God and man, and to redeem His people from the slavery of sin, He also came to conquer the pretender to His throne. The apostle John puts it succinctly: “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).
Even during His earthly ministry, the Lord Jesus demonstrated His power over Satan by casting out demons at His will (Matt 12:28; Mark 1:34, 39). In Luke 11:21–22, He speaks of His relationship to the ruler of demons: “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed. But when someone stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder.” Dear reader, someone stronger than Satan has attacked and overpowered him, and, paradoxically, through His glorious sacrifice of humiliation, Christ has plundered the devil’s house and freed Satan’s captives. And so as he nears the end of His earthly ministry, Jesus declares, “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out” (John 12:31), and “the ruler of this world has been judged” (John 16:11). By the conquering work of His cross, Jesus has dealt the decisive death blow to Satan and his kingdom of darkness.
In Colossians 2, Paul says that when Christ forgave us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, setting it aside by nailing it to the cross, he removed the basis of all of Satan’s accusations against us. Therefore, Paul writes, “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Col 2:15 ESV).
Perhaps the most decisive text concerning Jesus’ conquest is Hebrews 2:14–15, which says, “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” If you were to survey one hundred people on the street and ask them what their greatest fear is, and if they answered honestly, at least ninety of them would answer that their greatest fear is death. For those without the sure hope of eternal life in Christ, death is the great unknown. It is the last enemy.
Hebrews 2 says that human beings are so afraid of death that we are subject to slavery all our lives. And it is self-evident how the fear of death controls people. What great lengths they go to, what enormous sacrifices they make, what inestimable sums of money are paid all to forestall the inevitable! But through the paradoxical triumph of Christ’s death, he rendered the devil powerless, and delivered those who are slaves to the fear of death, by conquering the great enemy of death, and securing eternal life.
And on the third day, Jesus displayed his conquest over the power of sin and death by rising from the grave: “God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24). Because Christ has been raised, and because we are promised to be raised with Him through repentance and faith in the gospel, the agony of death has been ended. The tyrannical slavery that is fueled by the fear of death is broken. The believer in Christ has nothing to fear in death, because to be absent from the body in death is to be present with the Lord in heaven (2 Cor 5:8).
In the first chapter of Revelation, the apostle John falls like a dead man before the ascended Christ. Jesus replies, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades” (Rev 1:17). Now, Hebrews 2 said that Satan held the power of death. But because of the death and resurrection of Christ, Jesus has not only broken free from death’s bonds, but He is now the ruler over death. He has its keys! He has the control over who is released and retained in that realm (cf. Beale, 191). And if He is in control over death, we who are His people need not fear death at all. Just as He said to the grieving Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die” (John 11:25–26). And so we sing in triumph with the apostle Paul: “Death is swallowed up in victory! ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:56).
Conclusion
Dear friends, our great Champion, the Lord Jesus Christ, has accomplished all this by the blood of His cross. The guilt of our sin demanded the penalty of death, and so the Lamb of God was slain as an expiatory sacrifice on our behalf. The wrath of God was kindled against our sin, and so Christ was set forth as a propitiation to bear that wrath in our place. The pollution of our sin alienated us from God and aroused his holy fury against us, and so by atoning for sin Christ has reconciled God to man. Obedient to sin, man was in bondage to sin through the law that exposed sin in our lives, and so Christ has paid the ransom price of His precious blood to redeem us from such slavery. And in doing so, He has plundered Satan’s house, conquering death and its captain by the exercise of His own power.
Dear reader, let your heart sing in praise to Christ for the infinite fullness and worth of his blood. How perfectly suitable is this Almighty Savior to your miserable condition in sin! You are guilty and condemned before the law of God, and yet in Christ you have a sacrifice that washes away your stains. The wrath of God burns hot against you, and yet in Christ you have a propitiation that swallows up that bitter cup of wrath even down to the dregs. You are alienated from the God you were created to know, cut off from Him in whose presence is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore, and yet in Christ you have the reconciliation that restores you to delightful fellowship with God Himself. You are a slave to your lusts and passions, sold in bondage to sin—so enslaved to your taskmaster that you have been deceived to love your slavery. And even if you had the inclination, you have no means by which to purchase your freedom. Yet in Christ you have the precious blood of a spotless lamb paid as the ransom price of your redemption. Every need you could possibly have is fully satisfied by the Person and work of Jesus Christ.
That is what really happened on the cross. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!