Featured The Atonement of Christ: What did it REALLY Achieve ?7

from: THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT, by T.P. Simmons

II. THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT

2. THE CORRECT VIEW OF THE ATONEMENT

pg. 324 D. The Truth as to the Substitutionary Nature of the Atonement.

The following passages show that the suffering of Christ was a substitute for the suffering that believers would have undergone in Hell:

"Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows ... was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isa. 53:4-6). "

. . . being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forebearance of God; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at the present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus" (Rom. 3:24,25).

Propitiation is a synonym of expiation, which means "enduring the full penalty of a wrong or crime."

Propitiation appeases the lawgiver by satisfying the law in the rendering of "a full legal equivalent for the wrong done."

". . . Christ died for us. Much more then, being justified by his blood,
shall we be saved from the wrath of God through him" (Rom. 5:8,9).

"Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" (Rom. 8:33).

The implied answer is, No one. And the implied reason is, because Christ has paid their sin debt by suffering the penalty of the law in their stead.

"Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone that believeth" (Rom. 10:4).

". . .our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ" (1 Cor. 5:7).

"Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21).

We become the righteousness of God in Christ, not through any moral influence of the death of Christ upon us, but by the imputation of righteousness to us through faith apart from works. See Rom. 4:1-8.

". . . Christ. . . gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God . . . "Eph. 5:2).

". . . offered one sacrifice for sins forever. . ." (Heb. 10:12)"

"Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God . . . "(I Pet. 3:18).

E. The Truth as to the Redeeming of Ransoming Features of the Atonement.

Note the following passages: "The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Matt. 20:28).

"But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God,
and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30).

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us" (Gal. 3:13).

"God sent forth his Son . . . that he might redeem them that were under the law" (Gal. 4:4,5).

" . . . in whom we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace" (Eph. 1:7).

". . .who gave himself a ransom for all" (1 Tim. 2:6).

". . .who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity" (Titus 2:14).

". . . through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12).

"Ye were redeemed . . . with precious blood . . . even the blood of Christ" (I Pet. 1:18,19).

". . . thou wast slain, and didst redeem unto God with thy blood, men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation" (Rev. 5:9).

In the passages above in which "redeem" or one of its cognates appears we have four Greek words or their cognates:
"agorazo," meaning "to acquire at the forum;"
"exagorazo" to acquire out of the forum;"
"lutroo," "to loose by a price;"
and "apolutrosis," "a loosing away."

The Greek words in the passages where "ransom" appears are respectively "lutron," "a price," and "antilutron," "a corresponding price."

The plain meaning of these passages, in the light of the rest of the New Testament, especially Rom. 3:25,26, is that the death of Christ was the price of our deliverance from sin's penalty. See further Rom. 8: 1,33,34; 10:4.

Gal. 3:13 describes exactly how we are redeemed when it tells us that we are redeemed from the curse of the law through Christ who became a curse for us. He bore the curse we deserve.

He paid the penalty we owed. For that reason we go free.

Note that "ransom" in 1 Tim. 2:6 means "a corresponding price."

This means that the price paid by Christ corresponded to the debt we owed.

In other words Christ suffered the exact equivalent of that which those for whom He died would have suffered in Hell.

If the justice of God demanded that Christ die in order that God might justify sinners, the same justice demanded that He pay the full penalty owed by the sinners.

Justice can forego all the penalty as easily as it can forego the least part of it.

"For God to take that as satisfaction which is not really such is to say that there is no truth in anything. God may take a part for the whole; error for truth, wrong for right . . . If every created thing offered to God is worth just so much as God accepts it for, then the blood of bulls and goats might take away sins, and Christ is dead in vain" (Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:573-581; 3:188,189).

"God did not send Christ forever into Hell; but He put on Christ punishment that was equivalent for that. Although He did not give Christ to drink the actual Hell of believers, yet He gave Him a quid pro quo--something that was equivalent thereunto, He took the cup of Christ's agony, and He put in there, suffering, misery and anguish . . . that was the exact equivalent for all the suffering, all the eternal tortures of every one that shall at last stand in Heaven, bought with the blood of Christ" (Spurgeon, Sermons, Vol. 4, p. 217).

"The penalty paid by Christ is strictly and literally equivalent to that which the sinner would have borne, although it is not identical. The vicarious bearing of it excludes the latter" (Shedd, Discourses and Essays, p. 307).

"Substitution excludes identity of suffering; it does not exclude equivalence"

 

SIMMONS- THE DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT

"Sometimes the opponents of the redeeming and ransoming nature of Christ's death ask whom the price was paid to.

And they rather sarcastically remind us that some have been quick to say that it was paid to the Devil.

No, it was not paid to the Devil. It was not paid to anybody as a commercial transaction.

The price is the penalty demanded by the justice of God.


We adopt, therefore, as the true view of the nature of the atonement, a view that combines the commercial theory and the ethical theory as they are described by Strong.

From the commercial theory we accept the idea expressed in 1 Tim. 2:6--the paying of a corresponding or equivalent price.

And from the ethical theory we accept the fact that it was not divine honor and majesty that demanded the atonement, as the commercial view asserts, but the ethical principles of holiness and justice in God.


"Between the most orthodox creed of atonement by proper, real, and full satisfaction of justice, and the frank and utter denial of atonement that offers any satisfaction to law, there is absolutely no logical standing ground."


"Scripture without hesitation and without explanation represents salvation by Christ as a transaction analogous to the payment of debt, the ransom of a captive, the redemption of a forfeited inheritance.

From the beginning to the end of the Bible there is no note of warning, no intimation that these comparisons may be misleading.

It is always assumed that they do plainly set forth Christ's work of redemption.


"The outcry against the theology that compares Christ's work to the payment of debt, the redemption of a forfeited inheritance, the outcry against the use of any one of the abounding scriptural allusions to financial transactions, is an outcry that betrays at once disregard for Scripture and a misconception of Christ's perfect work of redemption" (Armour, Atonement and Law, pp. 128,137).