The Atonement (Solomon Stoddard) | The Whole Counsel

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Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast, I'm Jon Snider, and with me is Chuck Baggett. And on the opening day, you won't get this on opening day, but we're actually filming on opening day, baseball, and I have my

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Yankees cap here, and Chuck and Teddy are in open revolt. So if they seem grumpy, that's why.

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Good Cardinals. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to be looking again at this really helpful book called

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Salvation in Full Color. It's a collection of 20 sermons by Great Awakening preachers on the theme of our redemption.

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It begins with the character of God working through the sinfulness of man, the response of God in Christ's redemptive labors, the application of that, the response of that, all the way to sanctification, perseverance, and final judgment.

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So really, a treatment of all these aspects laid out in a very specific order.

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And again, this week's sermon demonstrates why the order of truths is so important, because if you've been following along with us, we've looked at the bigness of God and the holiness of God, the sinfulness of sin.

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And if you're not careful, I think what Chuck and I have found pastoring is that as a person's view of God becomes more biblically correct, the gap between you and God expands, you know, in your understanding.

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And if a person cares about those things, then that can be a very crippling thing. It can bring a sense of despair.

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You know, what hope is there for me? Why should I even try, et cetera? And so as our view of God increases, there must be at the same time an increasing awareness of the size of Christ's work.

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If those aren't kept in tandem, then, you know, then you get this despair. So it may not be a thing that you expect, but I think that you'll find it happening in your own soul if you're not careful.

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So today's sermon is on the atonement, the fact that Christ's blood does cleanse the believing repentant sinner from all sin, and that's such a wonderful truth.

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It's brought to us by Solomon Stoddard. Stoddard was born in 1643, so early colonies, and Solomon Stoddard really was one of the most influential of the ministers in New England from the late 17th century into the early 18th century.

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He also was the grandfather of the most famous American Christian, I suppose, in that era, and that was

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Jonathan Edwards. Stoddard was a pastor in New England and saw multiple waves of revival, four or five, depending on how you count them, waves of revival, local revival, so not like Great Awakening where all the colonies were impacted, but his town, his church, and a very faithful and influential man.

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Sadly, though, he was also influential in a negative way. He pressed for what they called the halfway covenant, and that was the idea, and it was an attempt to kind of revitalize church, but sadly, it was an unbiblical attempt, we believe.

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It was the idea that if your child was baptized, now this is in a congregationalist church, so it was a covenant baptism, not believer's baptism.

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If the child was baptized, they could take the Lord's Supper without demonstrating any evidence of genuine faith and repentance, you know, conversion.

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And the thought was that if you got them involved in the Lord's Supper like that, just going through that process,

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God would use that to save them. So, the old way of saying it is, the Lord's Supper was seen as a converting ordinance, that God would use that to shake them up, to turn them to him.

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The problem, of course, is that that goes against what we believe the scripture says about who is a rightful candidate.

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Years later, when Jonathan Edwards was the pastor, and the grandfather's already passed away, Stoddard's gone, after the

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Great Awakening, Edwards labored to turn the church toward a more biblical view of the right use of the

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Lord's Supper, disagreeing with his grandfather's view. And it led, ultimately, to some strife in the church, and eventually,

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Edwards was kicked out. So, strange, historic, you know, circles.

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Chuck, you want to kind of run us through the basics of the sermon? Yeah, there are three major points.

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The first is that there is a mighty virtue in Christ's blood to atone or to remove the guilt of sin.

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The second, why is there such virtue in the blood of Christ? And then there are applications.

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Under each of those, there are a number of points. The sermon's really very tightly woven, and I don't know if we'll be able to get to all of it or not, because there's so much there.

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But those are the—that's kind of the highlights. There's virtue in the blood of Christ to remove guilt. Why is there such virtue in the blood of Christ?

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Under that first point, let's run through his subpoints there, and again, as Chuck said, they're so good, we're just going to have to hit them kind of quickly.

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The first thing he says is that we know there's virtue in the blood of Christ to cleanse the sinner from sin because the

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Father would not have put Christ to this service of bearing our sin on the cross if his death would not have purchased true pardon for sin.

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And he quotes from Acts 2, verse 23, where it makes it very clear that though men were the instruments for the crucifixion, it was by that predetermined plan, the foreknowledge of God, that his son was crucified.

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He gives a great quote here, the dignity of Christ's person is infinite, and the love of his

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Father is exceedingly great. There is no reasonable explanation of why the

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Father would be willing to lay this punishment on the Son if it would not have had a mighty efficacy for his taking away the guilt of sin.

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Why would God lay this upon him for nothing or for a small matter?

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Certainly, it must be for some great design. The second of these arguments is that God promised to Jesus that his death would be accepted for the doing away of sin, and within that promise there is certainty.

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There's no uncertainty there. I was thinking earlier about the various tasks that we take on, some of them very uncertain, some of them we think very certain, and yet how often do they not come to pass?

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But there's no wiggle room in this. God has promised this to the Son, and it will come about, because God is who he is.

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The third, he says, is that the virtue of Christ's blood has been illustrated in the sacrificial system.

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All those sacrifices, he lists the multitude of creatures throughout the

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Old Covenant that were put to death, their blood was shed, as a foreshadowing of Christ.

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The only reason that the Father found pleasure in that was because they were a picture of the coming of his

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Son, and the doing of that was an expression of faith. So his argument is, why would

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God have, for thousands of years, instructed us through this costly sacrificial system if, when the

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Messiah himself comes, it does nothing, it guarantees nothing? Or why would the

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Father have had any pleasure in those Old Testament sacrifices if the actual sacrifice they foreshadowed could be ineffective?

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The fourth, he argues that the sacraments of the New Testament teaches us to hope in the blood of Christ.

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We see in baptism that we are united to Christ in his death, and what value would that be if his death didn't accomplish anything, if it didn't do away with our old man, and the resurrection provide new life for us?

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But also in the Lord's Supper, where Jesus tells us this is the new covenant of my blood, he teaches us there clearly that that blood was shed for the remission of sin.

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So why would God command us to continue observing that ordinance, particularly the continual observance of the

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Lord's Supper, until he comes, if there were no value in it? The fifth argument, he says that God himself commands us to put all of our trust in the blood of Christ, in the cross of Christ alone.

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And so he just goes through the arguments that how many invitations in scripture are there which tell us to hope in Christ for forgiveness?

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That's the positive argument. The negative argument is, if the blood of Christ is not effective for every sinner that trusts in Christ, why would

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God threaten us with such terrible punishment for not trusting in Christ?

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So listen to what he says. Would God require us to put an honor upon Christ that he is unworthy of?

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Will he command us to trust in that which would not save us? And then on the negative side, if there is no safety in believing on Christ, there's no reason that we should be punished for not believing on Christ.

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Will God damn men for not building their hopes of heaven upon the sand?

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Would he cast you into hell for not trusting in a broken reed? So many of those,

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I was thinking yesterday when looking over our notes again, we could just stop and discuss which of these do we find most compelling.

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But I think really it's the cumulative weight. When you look at all of those, one after the next, even as a

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Christian, we both have been Christians for quite a few decades, 32 years

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I've been a believer, and after 32 years of being a believer, when I read what Stoddard lays out here,

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I am amazed all over afresh at the solid confidence that the worst of sinners has in Christ.

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His first argument here is that there's such virtue in the blood of Christ because Jesus did actually suffer the legal and full curse of the offended and the broken law.

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And he does this in his body, in a real physical death where he actually suffers. He gives a quote where he says,

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God was not angry with Christ for taking his office upon him, but for our sins. His anger was directed toward our sin, not because he took the office.

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God's wrath burned against him. God looked on him as if he were the guilty person.

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God looked upon him as the object of his vindictive justice. And Jesus was pursued by divine vengeance for our sins.

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The second argument he gives for why there is such a virtue to cleanse our sins in the death of Christ is that Jesus suffered as the eternal

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Son of God and not just as the sinless man. And he gives a couple of verses here, 1

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Corinthians 2, 8, they crucified the Lord of glory, Acts 3, 15, they killed the

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Prince of life. This one really answers the objection that comes to our minds when we look at the magnitude of our sins.

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So we look at the frequency, perhaps, of a heinous sin, you know, the repetitive nature in our life.

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And we wonder, have I sinned against God one too many times, you know, has the pile grown so high?

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And so it's good to contrast the size of our sin, which is terrible, with the infinite dignity and magnitude of the sin bearer.

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He is the Prince of life. He is the Lord of glory. And there is no reason to fear that our sin is too great for that cross.

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Can we take a moment here and talk about the two natures in Christ? Yeah, go ahead. I do think it's important to make some distinctions here.

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We have the God -man with two natures, and if we're not careful, we can come up with some really bad ideas.

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We understand, and Stoddard mentions this, that Christ suffered in his humanity.

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The deity cannot suffer pain. Christ died in his humanity. The deity cannot die.

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God is eternal. And yet, we can say that Jesus, the God -man, suffered and died because there is one person with two natures, and he endured all of that.

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And his deity lent such dignity to his humanity that this sacrifice becomes of infinite value.

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Yeah. Yeah, that's really important to keep. One person, two natures. Not two persons with a mingled nature.

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Yeah, and you can go too far one way and think that the deity of Christ died somehow, which is problematic, but you could also go too far the other way and think because the deity cannot be touched with that, we could say that the humanity somehow was lessened, that the sacrifice was lessened, and it does not bear the dignity that it actually does.

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He mentions also that the suffering was of a perfectly holy sacrifice, and we see that foreshadowed in the

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Old Testament, the spotless lamb. We see that clearly described in the New Testament, John 14, at the end of that chapter when he's with his disciples, the night of his crucifixion, he tells them that they need to get up and leave the room, they're going to go out to Gethsemane, and he says to them, it's time for us to get up and leave because the evil one has nothing in me.

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I'm not going to go and be taken and crucified because of anything wrong in me, but because there's nothing wrong in me, he can be the sacrifice.

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And I think that that applies in a second way to the objections of the heart, not just the bigness of my sin, but the shamefulness, the stain, the dirtiness of every sin.

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And when we see them as God sees them, as we begin to see them more clearly, then there might be that feeling that nothing, nothing could ever make me right with God now.

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And so we must contrast the horrible stain of every sin with the infinitely beautiful holiness of the sacrifice and find all of our confidence there.

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Yeah. I think this is probably, to me, one of the sweetest points, and one of the most astounding to think about too, you know, that Christ, holy not just in lack of original sin, but actual sin, that he does not commit any deeds that are sinful, but thoughts and attitudes and no sin, not only of commission, but of omission.

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He omits nothing that is right to do. It's just really remarkable. No cause to blush.

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The fourth argument that he gives is that Jesus was appointed by the Father in eternity past for the sacrifice.

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This is why there's such virtue in Christ's blood, because the Father appointed Him toward this end.

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This is the payment that is acceptable, because it's the payment that the Father demands.

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So even if we could bring something to the Father that was worthy, that was good, and that we might stack somehow against our sin, it's not equal to the stain and guilt of our sin.

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There's no – the scales don't balance. But Christ's sacrifice is not only sufficient to pay the actual debt, it is exactly what the

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Father has requested. It's legal tender for this. Yeah, and he talks about it later in the applications, but let's hit that more here.

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If we could, as you mentioned, if we could actually bring some kind of obedience that was pure, obedience that was equal to the sin somehow, could we pay for it?

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And the answer is no. The law that's offended does not call for that kind of payment.

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The God that was offended does not call for that payment. So it would be like us paying a $750 house payment every month by bringing $750 worth of vegetables from our garden and saying to the bank owner, well, this is worth $750.

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And he might say, I agree, it really is worth $750, but we can't accept that tender.

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The only thing, God says, that can pay for sin is death, and the death must be the death of an infinite and pure sacrifice, and it must be the sacrifice he chose.

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One theological explanation for that we find in the book of Hebrews where it says that even

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Christ did not take it upon himself to be the priest, to be the sacrifice. That was what the

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Father assigned him. And so, you know, there's a great deal of comfort for the believer to realize that the very sacrifice that Jesus Christ perfectly gave was the sacrifice in eternity past that the

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Father requested. I think it's also helpful to remember, we've talked about these truths in the right order, and there's a danger in getting them out of order so that we don't see them in their proper proportions.

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There's also a danger in stopping too soon. So, we've seen sin and the character of God, but when we fear sin is too great, what do we do?

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We come and we look here again and again. When it comes to the practical applications, he gives us quite a few, and like an old preacher, there are multiple sub -points under each sub -point, so we're just going to hit the high spots.

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First, he says, this doctrine, this reality, greatly rebukes and reproves those who despise the blood of Christ.

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And his main point here is those who know they're sinners, but for some reason, they refuse to cast themselves on Christ, so they kind of stand back.

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And he unravels some of their excuses. Some might say, I'm such a terrible sinner,

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I don't think that even this cross could save me. And he says, it's not that you think too lowly of yourself, that you stay back, it's that you think so lowly of Christ.

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He says, some of you might say, well, I know that God is just, and I think so much of the justice of God, I don't believe that I could ever be forgiven.

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And he says, well, look at the cross where the justice of God was satisfied. So much so that every person in Christ might cry out for the justice of God when we're asking for mercy.

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It is right. It is fair for God to continue to love me and forgive me because of what

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Christ did. And then he says, you know, if you say, well, I think too much of the holiness of God, God is so holy,

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I don't think he would want me. Look at the cross, he says. Nowhere do we see the holiness of God so perfectly honored.

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The Holy One bears our sin, becomes the sacrifice so that we might be given the righteousness of God.

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But staying back from God because he's so holy will not honor his holiness.

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Coming and laying hold of the sacrifice and being captivated with that gospel does honor the holiness of God.

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Yeah. So in each of those, he points out that they look humble. There's a false humility in them that says,

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I'm so bad, I'm so this. But really it's not humility, it's pride that doesn't think enough of Christ's sacrifice.

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And refuses the cure because it doesn't trust that it is sufficient.

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His second application under there is, this doctrine condemns those who put more value on their good works than on the death of Christ.

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And he gives a number, again, a number of sub points. Things like, you don't have any warrant for this.

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God did not command you to look to your works. Not only does he say that we do not have a divine warrant for that, there's no command for that.

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And it's a bold presumption to do that. We actually have a command not to do that. And so how wicked is it to trust in your works when

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God has said, don't do that. By the deeds of the flesh, no, by deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified.

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Yeah. And his point there, you know, his point there illustrates real simply.

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To refuse to believe or to trust in Christ, according to God's word, is a sin.

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But to believe in something God forbids you to trust in, to trust in that is an equally terrible sin.

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He goes on to say, you know, your works are polluted. There's unbelief mixed in there.

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You know, there's selfishness, there's pride, they're all imperfect. And so none of them actually help pay for sin.

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And if we're, if we search through the scripture, what we find is that every imperfect work, which has some sin in it, actually adding, it just simply adds to our guilt.

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So it's like bringing an anvil, you know, and like just laying it on the pile of debt and hoping that it'll float it up a little, you know, and you think you just made it worse.

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Right. He next says that your works do not pay for the debt according to the law itself.

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And this goes back to that idea of legal tender, which you're trying to bring to God to pay is not what he's asked for.

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And so how could it possibly pay for it? And then he goes on and argues, your good works are fewer than your sin.

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So even if they really are good and not against his word, can you really argue that if you put them on the scales with your sin, they weigh more?

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Do you really have more good going for you than you do sin? And especially, again, taking into account not just what you've done, but your thoughts and your motives.

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His final argument under this is that suppose your good works prove hypocritical, then obviously they're flawed and they could never justify you.

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God hates hypocrisy. And you might think, well, what does he mean? Like when I do good things, am

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I being a hypocrite? Think of it this way. The good works that God calls us to do are expressions of love to him, to other people, not love to self, not self gain.

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So when we go out and we do nice things for people with the express purpose of benefiting ourselves, we realize there's some hypocrisy there.

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When we say to God, I'm going to do all these good things so that you will, and then we have a long list, then our good works become polluted and hypocritical by being a bribe.

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I'm not serving the living God because he deserves my love and trust and my allegiance.

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I'm offering to give God a few hours a week or a few days a month because I intend to bribe the king to get me off the hook.

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So they're all of them ruined by that hypocrisy. His next main application to the professing believer is to examine yourself, to make sure you have a true interest in the blood of Christ.

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If this is the means of salvation, if there's virtue in the blood of Christ to remove sin, then certainly it is of the utmost importance to make sure that you actually have benefited from that sacrifice.

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And he goes on to give us a number of evidences that that is true, as well as some false evidences or evidences that it's not true.

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Yeah, so he says, if you're truly convinced of the cleansing virtue of Christ's blood, then you have reason to hope that you have been washed with it.

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But you might say, well, what do you mean by truly convinced? And he gives a whole series, like the

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Puritans, he gives a series of what it might look like how far you might go and still not have gone really all the way.

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And so he says things like you might be convinced that the word of God is true, but that's not really the same as being convinced that Christ died for you.

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You might even believe that Christ died for sins, but that's not the same thing as really trusting Christ's death for you.

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You might have all of your objections silenced and you just can't answer, you know, the scriptural statements or you can't come up with an answer to someone who's witnessing to you.

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But that's not the same as positively, you know, choosing to cast all my hope on the death of the

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Son of God. So he, you know, again, they're true and false faith delineated.

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He next gives another evidence, and that is that you actually live upon the sufferings of Christ, that you live daily depending upon Him and looking to Him, finding strength to live for today.

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And they give some objections and answers them also. One of the objections is that a person might argue that they are uncertain whether they're actually one of the elect, and therefore they can't trust

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Christ. How am I supposed to trust Christ? I don't know if I'm elect or not. And you hear this sometimes. And he gives a great answer to that.

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He asks, he says, you use means for the preservation of your lives, although it is uncertain whether God has decreed that you shall live any longer.

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So you're worried about the decree of God? Has God decreed that you're going to live today? But you get up and you dress yourself and you eat.

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And you assume that it is, and he encourages us to trust

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Christ. So we owe God obedience to His invitations, to His commands to come and to trust.

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We don't have to be—He doesn't have to explain to us His choices in eternity past. Another thing he mentions is that someone might argue, well,

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I don't feel the inward call, and doesn't the Holy Spirit have to give an inward spiritual call for the gospel to be effective?

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And again, he kind of unravels that false—and again, he unravels that false objection by saying your job is to answer the outward call.

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So the gospel is preached, the scripture is read, the command to trust Christ alone for every sinner who is now listening, every sinner who's reading, and the command goes forth.

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You're not to wait on some extra special feeling. When we look at Jesus accomplishing miracles, we see an example of this, how the interplay.

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He says to a lame man, get up, take up your bed and walk. That's the one thing the lame man cannot do.

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But in the going forth of the command, there is also infinite power.

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And as the lame man trusts the word of this Savior and goes to stand, he is enabled to do what

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Christ has just told him to do, and there's the miracle. Same thing with the gospel. The gospel goes forth, believe, repent.

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And you think, but that's the very thing that mankind won't do. But as the call goes forth, there is infinite power with that.

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And as we labor, we turn away from and we turn toward, there is the work of the

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Spirit united to those words in the scripture, enabling us to do exactly what

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God has commanded us to do. There is mystery there, but there is no excuse for inactivity, saying,

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I'll wait until I feel a special call. Well, as you mentioned at the beginning,

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John, it is important that we have these truths in order. If we do not have a high view of God, if our view of God is small, then there's no need for all of this argument.

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We can just quickly nod our head at the atonement and keep moving. But if God is all that he's described himself to be, if sin is as heinous as Bellamy has described it, and dead works are as Freeling Highland has described them, we need a great salvation and we need a great

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God. Also, you mentioned, and we want to mention again, that with a growing view of God, there's often a gap felt where our view of him outpaces our looks to Christ and our hope in him as we feel the weight of our sin and the distances between us.

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So we want to come again and again to look at Christ and bridge that gap, not by our effort, but faith in what

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Christ has accomplished. It really is a wonderful example of why faith is not a thing that's once done, forever accomplished.

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The Christian continues to find hope and strength and the enticement of God's love as we look at the cross, and not just that vague idea of Jesus loves you and dies for you.

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But like Stoddard does here, where you pull the facts of the cross kind of apart and you examine them and you think, what an extraordinary expression of love.