The Doctrine of the Atonement

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles, turn with me to the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. We're actually going to have two scriptures that we look at this morning. So if you want to hold your place in Isaiah and then go to Hebrews 10 and hold your place there, you may do that as well.

Last week, we began a series on the doctrine of salvation, soteriology. And we began that series by looking at why sin is the universal condition of man. We answered that question from Scripture. Because we are all sons and daughters of Adam, we have all inherited a nature of sin.

And we have inherited a legal responsibility toward God. And because of sin, we are all at enmity with God. The Bible says we are at war with Him. And we are in desperate need of something which can bring unity to that broken relationship.

We often ask the question, how can the relationship which has been broken between God and man be made one again? In essence, we are asking the question, how can atonement happen? I've shared this before and I know many of you have heard this, but I think it's always good that we understand the meanings of words.

In particular, when we're dealing with theological ideas and theological words, the word atonement is actually a derivative of an idea of two things that are apart becoming at one. So atonement is at-one-ment.

It's actually early 16th century. It denotes unity or reconciliation, particularly between God and man. And it is from the Latin adjumentum, which means unity. It means to unite that which is separated.

And if you think of the word one, the number one, if you think of it as a verb, which normally you don't because one is not a verb, but if you think of one as a verb, that's what atonement is. It's wanting two things that are separated.

It's bringing them at one or wanting the two things together. And that is what is necessary between God and man. Man's sin brought a division between himself and God, and not a slight division, not just a slight hiccup in the relationship, but a complete and utter separation, and the relationship is absolutely broken, it's destroyed, it's separated, and an atonement is necessary if that divide is ever to be overcome.

So today we're going to address the doctrine of the atonement and the larger construct of the doctrine of salvation. How was the atonement made? And for whom was the atonement made? It's the subject of our lesson today, and we're going to read two Scripture passages.

I encourage you to stand. We're going to first begin in Isaiah 53. This is the great messianic prophecy. Speaking of the suffering servant, and certainly we could read the entire chapter, but for the limitations of this message, we're going to look at specifically verse 5, Isaiah 53, verse 5, speaking of the coming Messiah, it says this,.

But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. Now I encourage you to turn to Hebrews chapter 10, and look with me at verse 14, Isaiah 53, look forward to the work of Christ, Hebrews 10, looking backward to the work of Christ, says this,.

For by a single offering he, that is Christ, has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. Father in heaven, I thank you for your Word. I thank you for the opportunity to study your Word today.

I pray first and foremost that you would keep me from error, as I certainly am fallible and capable of preaching error. I pray on behalf of your people and myself that you would protect me from that, and protect them.

I pray that you would open the hearts of your people to the truth, that we would have a better understanding of how we are made right with you, and that we would have a better understanding of the atonement, whereby we might be able to more clearly articulate our own faith, and how we understand our standing before you, as having been won for us by Christ and not earned by anything that we have done.

Father, again, we give you all glory and praise for what you have done and are going to do. In Jesus' name, Amen. It is without doubt that when we look at the church and the history of the church, that the cross is the very central focus of the Christian religion.

Just look at any church throughout the centuries, not just modern churches, but look at the great cathedrals of the past. What are they adorned with? They're adorned with giant crosses. Now depending on whether or not they were Roman Catholic, you might see a crucifix that has Jesus still on the cross, but normally in a church that holds the Reformation teachings, it's simply the cross without Jesus on it.

That does speak a little bit to theology, as the Roman Catholics believe that Christ continues his work of sacrifice in the mass. That's why typically in the Reformation churches, you won't see Christ on the cross.

But we know that throughout the history of the church, the cross has stood as a symbol of the very central teaching of Christianity. In fact, R .C. Sproul, in his teaching on the atonement, made this point very interesting.

He said the cross is so central that words have made their way into the English language simply because of their association with the cross. Have you ever heard someone say, that's the crux of the matter?

Well, what is the crux of the matter? It's the focus point, it's the central part. Well, the word crux is from the Latin, where we get the word crucifix, or cross. Crux is the same root, and the word crucial.

We say something is crucial. What is it? It's the most important thing. And so too we speak that in regard to the root there of being the Latin. Even excruciating, why do we say something is excruciatingly painful?

Because of the cross. You think of the cross as being the most excruciating of deaths. The cross is central to the Christian faith. It's become a symbol now, which is often used inappropriately. We tend to adorn ourselves with crosses as if they are some type of meaningless jewelry.

I think often that happens as it becomes sort of just another meaningless piece of attire. Often forgetting the true depth and weight of it. But the cross is central, and it is meant to be central. It is supposed to be central because the cross is the central part of our faith, the part in which we have to focus on when we focus on our understanding of God and man and salvation.

The cross is the place where our atonement was made. One of the most difficult things for many men to accept is their need for an atonement. They think themselves to be relatively good, and thus there is no real reason why there should be hostility between them and God.

Sure there's hostility between others and God. Surely the person who beats his wife, surely he has hostility between he and God. Surely the man who is the rapist or the murderer. Surely the thief and the adulterer.

Surely those people have ought with God. But the average person who lives a basically moral life, a basically, if we want to use the social meaning of the word good, a good life. The person who lives as such often doesn't see the weight of the need of the atonement to be made for them.

This is why it is so essential that we help explain it to them when we're sharing the gospel. Every proper conversation about the gospel has to begin with an understanding of sin. Can I say that again?

I don't want to lose anybody. I don't want eyes glazing. This is huge. Every proper conversation about the gospel has to begin with a proper understanding of sin. Has to. Those who claim to preach the gospel and do not preach on the sinfulness of sin, do not preach the gospel.

They preach something. They often preach man's wisdom. They preach stories. They preach Reader's Digest. I don't know if they preach the Florida Times Union. I don't know if they preach something. But if they are not proclaiming the sinfulness of sin, they are not proclaiming the gospel.

Understanding sin is necessary to understanding the atonement. And understanding the atonement is understanding the gospel. Understanding the atonement is necessary to understanding Christ. And that's why last week we began with the doctrine of sin.

We began, if you're going to study the doctrine of salvation, you better understand sin. So if you weren't here last week, get the tape. Tape, like we're in the 90's. The tape. Go online and download the MP3.

But if you weren't here, I encourage you to go back. Because understanding the sinfulness of sin, understanding the nature of man in sin, understanding that is necessary to understanding why atonement is necessary.

If you don't understand that you're a sinner, you won't understand that there's ought between you and God. That there's enmity between you and God. And you won't understand why there is a precious truth of Christ going to the cross to make a bridge to bring you back to God because you were so divided because of your sin.

So having said that, I want to begin today by looking at something that is a little different. I don't often do this, but I do it at times. I want to begin by looking at wrong things. I see some of you, what do you mean?

Well, there are many errors regarding the cross of Christ, regarding the atonement. And I want to first address some errors. To help you understand what's the wrong view of the cross, and then I want to turn your minds to the right view.

And the reason for this is very simple. We live in a world that is hugely confused about the cross. We live in a world that doesn't understand the need for atonement. And often times they even deny the need for atonement.

Dr. Michael Brown recently debated a man who called himself a Christian who denied penal substitutionary atonement, which we'll understand what that means later. But he denied the atonement. He said, no, the cross wasn't about Jesus dying, receiving the wrath of God for our sins.

That's terrible, that's cosmic child abuse, is what the guy said. If Christ was suffering the wrath of God on the cross for my sin, then that's God being unfair to Christ. This guy spent hours debating with Michael Brown on that subject, and Michael Brown stood strong for the doctrine of the atonement.

But my point is this, that guy wasn't a no-name nobody. That guy was one of the leaders in the modern church movement. This guy wasn't some guy from a podunk church in North Georgia nobody's ever heard of.

This guy was a leader in the movement saying we don't need the atonement. This is a huge issue. And to understand the truth, I think it's first important that we understand what the errors are. And as is often my custom, I take the role of the teacher.

You know, people come in sometimes, you're not a preacher, you're a teacher. Well, get over yourself. I'm yelling, isn't that not good enough? I'm raising my voice. But I do want to teach you. Because so many people come into church, they leave just as ignorant as they came, they don't learn anything.

But they feel good. I don't care how you feel. I want to know that you understand the truth. Because your feelings will come and go, but your understanding of the truth is what's going to bring about your sanctification.

You're drawing, conforming to Christ. That's what's important. So we're going to look at two different types of errors regarding the atonement. In regard to the atonement, the errors fall in two categories.

Errors of purpose and errors of scope. Errors of purpose and errors of scope. So let's look first at the errors of purpose. Those who believe the atonement, there are multiple views on this, but I want to give you two.

One is that Jesus went to the cross so as to ransom us from Satan. That's called the ransom to Satan theory of the atonement. And if you want to write next to that, wrong, but go ahead. I just want to make sure you don't think that's right.

That's the wrong view. And it says this, that Christ died to make a payment to Satan. To purchase men's freedom so that they would be released from the slavery to Satan and thus be free to worship God.

This view is erroneous in that it makes Satan the object of the payment that Christ made. Completely ignoring God's demands for justice and giving all the power for our spiritual condition to Satan. One of the worst things that has happened, and I don't know how long it's been, but I know it's the last generation specifically, is that Satan gets all the attention in some churches.

Everything that happens, it's the devil, it's the devil, it's the devil. And God gets no attention because they're always so focused on the devil did this, the devil did that, and they become sounding like that old comedian, the devil made me do it.

I don't know if you remember, I don't remember who it was. Flip Wilson. The devil made me do it. And it's all about the devil this, the devil that. You can't go into some churches, I hear about the devil this, the devil that.

And what did Jesus do to pay the penalty? He paid it to Satan. No, He did not. Jesus didn't owe Satan a dime. And Jesus doesn't have to pay Satan. Do you understand that Satan is under God's authority?

Do you understand that in the very first chapter of Job, Satan had to present himself before God before he could ever lay a finger on Job? That Satan has no authority outside of God? We are not dualists.

Do you know what a dualist is? A dualist believes that there is all good energy and all evil energy, and those two are always conflicting. You ever see a yin-yang symbol? It's a Dallas symbol. It looks like a black swirl and then a white swirl, and they swirl together.

And there's a little dot of black in the white, and a little dot of white in the black. You've seen it, right? You know, that's a symbol of dualism, that there's positive energy and there's negative energy.

And in everything positive, there's a little negative. In everything negative, there's a little positive. That's why you have a little dot, right? We are not dualists. We believe God is sovereign over everything, even over Satan.

God don't owe Satan nothing. I don't want to spend too much time on it. You got it? Somebody tells you Satan paid the ransom to Satan? No. There's no scriptural support for that at all. The next thing we see is called the example theory.

This teaches that Jesus didn't die to pay for our sins, but rather Jesus died as an example of obedience so that others would follow Him in His obedience to God. In this, Christ is not paying the price for sin, but rather He is simply showing us how to live obediently by example.

How many of you remember when The Passion came out, that movie? The Passion of Christ. I remember there was a famous movie actor who went and saw it, and he was interviewed after. What do you think about this movie?

And I remember him giving this answer. Jesus was a great example of obedience to us, and that's what the cross is all about. It's about one man being obedient to God, and all of us following His example.

No, no, no. That's not what the cross is about. The cross is not Christ is an example of obedience, and so we all need to be obedient too. Christ is our example. Don't get me wrong. Christ is the ultimate example.

He's the one to whom we are supposed to be conformed. But that was not the intent of the cross, neither is that the focus of the atonement. The atonement is not just to give you a better example to live up to.

No, that's not it. And again, there's no scripture for that, but that's often the case that people want to argue for that. And there are other inappropriate and false views of the purpose of the atonement.

There's recapitulation theory, moral influence theory, mystical theory. There's a lot of different views in regard to the purpose of the atonement that are incorrect. And I just wanted to point out a few of them to you.

And now I want to look at the errors regarding the scope of the atonement. So we've looked at the purpose of the atonement, what it's not. It's not to ransom Satan, or to ransom us from Satan. And it's not simply to provide an example of moral obedience.

Well, now let's look at the scope of the atonement, because this one becomes a little bit more difficult. Because the scope of the atonement asks this question. Well, who is the atonement for? Who is the atonement made for?

You have first the universalists. You ever see a universalist church? You know what universalism is? This teaches very simply this. Jesus died to save all men, so all men will ultimately be saved. That's the teaching of universalism.

It's called universal reconciliation. That is the name of the doctrine. Universal reconciliation. In fact, in your questions this week, under the outline that I give you, one of the questions is, what verses would you use to show someone who believes in universal reconciliation that they're incorrect?

Where would you go? Because this is what they teach. I'll read the doctrine. All of mankind will ultimately be saved through Christ, whether or not faith is possessed in him in this life. While most proponents may adhere to many tenets of traditional Christianity, they uniformly claim that God's qualities of love, goodness, and sovereignty require that all people will ultimately be saved, and that eternal punishment is a false doctrine.

End quote. So this is what they teach. They teach Jesus died for everyone, and because Jesus died for everyone, everyone's going to be saved, no matter what. It doesn't matter if you have faith or not.

It doesn't matter if you are a person who has been born again or not. What Jesus said about, unless man be born again, we'll not see the kingdom. None of that's true. There is no eternal punishment. You don't have to worry about that.

Everyone ultimately will be saved because God's love trumps everything else. I don't know how you keep a church like that going. Why go? Why participate? Well, they say this. They say the reason why we go is to celebrate God's love.

I guess you could make the argument, well, we don't come to earn points with God, but certainly we worship God in obedience to him. What is the call to obedience in a universal system? There is none. Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow we die.

So that is universalism, and that is one of the errors regarding the scope of the atonement. The next one you've probably heard me speak about from time to time, Arminianism. Arminianism. Arminianism is named after Jacobus Arminius.

He was a student of Theodor Beza, who himself was a student of John Calvin. By the way, last week was John Calvin's birthday. For those of you who might have missed that. Last week we celebrated John Calvin's birthday.

Arminius had problems with Calvin's teachings. He believed that Calvin's doctrine of sovereignty and predestination were false, as many do today. So he and his supporters offered up a view which said that Christ did pay the penalty of every single person's sins, but that this payment is not applied until the person exercises saving faith.

Now I want to say this. That is the most popular position in the church today. That Jesus paid for everybody's sins, and everybody's sins are paid for, but that payment isn't applied until they exercise faith.

The Arminian teaches that Jesus paid the payment for all sins, but that the payment must be accepted before the payment can be applied. That's the position of the Arminian. And again, you all know people that believe this.

I'd throw a stick, hit 15 churches that believe this, all within our area. So I'm preaching something kind of radical now, because I'm saying they're wrong. This is the popular Arminian explanation. I want to give you their illustration that's very popular among Arminian preachers.

They use the check at the end of the meal. Everybody knows when you eat, you get the check at the end of the meal, right? They bring you that little book and you put your money in it and pay. One popular Arminian preacher makes an analogy using that.

He says this. He says, Christ paid the payment for men's sins in the same way a man might pay a bill for dinner for a group of people. All the people at the table have had their bill paid, but one of the people at the table refused the payment and demand to pay it for themselves.

And that's what is an analogy to the atonement. Jesus has paid everybody's sins, but the people who go to hell are the ones who demand to pay their own payment themselves. There's a problem with this illustration.

Well, there's several, but I'm going to give you the basic problem. The issue with the Arminian view of the atonement and this illustration is the issue of the double payment. If the first man paid for the food and the second man pays for the food, then the restaurant has received two payments for the same thing, and as a result, they would have to return the money to one or to the other, or they would be stealing.

They would be unjust. The Arminian argues that Jesus made the payment, and people still go to hell. So they're paying again for something Jesus already paid for. That's a problem! It's a logical problem and it's a biblical problem.

The problem is that if Jesus made an atonement, their sin is paid for. If their sin is paid for, why are they in hell? The Arminian says, well, they're in hell because they didn't believe. And then my next question is this.

Is unbelief a sin? Thank you! Unbelief is a sin. So did Jesus pay for all their sins except that one? So now you're telling me Jesus didn't die for all the sins of all men. He died for some of the sins of all men.

Who's limiting the atonement now? The logical problem with Arminianism is that it naturally leads to the same arguments that the Universalists use. Listen to a Universalist argue. Listen to an Arminian argue.

They're using the same verses to make the same points. But Arminians are not Universalists. They believe people go to hell. But here's the problem. They believe people go to hell having had their sins paid for.

That's worse than Universalism. That is worse than Universalism. If you believe a person goes to hell and their sins have been paid for, you've got a huge problem with the justice of God. How is God just to send a man to hell whose sins have already been atoned for?

This is not... It always drives me crazy when I talk to people who are not Calvinist and talk to me. These Arminians who talk to me and they say, oh, the one problem I have is with limited atonement. You should believe in limited atonement whether you're Calvinist or not.

Limited atonement ain't even a problem. And most of them don't have a problem with limited atonement. They have a problem with the unconditional election, which I'm going to deal with in the weeks to come.

But that's the problem they have. It's not with limited atonement. Because if you nail them down... I asked a guy one time. He said, I have a problem with limited atonement. I said, do you believe in hell?

He said, absolutely. I said, do you believe people are going to hell? Absolutely. I said, then you have to believe that somehow, in some way, the blood of Christ did not pay for their sins. Because they're in hell.

If their sins are paid for and they're in hell, God is unjust. Do I have to go on? Have I made... I have an aneurysm. This is huge for me. Because this is one of the issues I... People call themselves four-point Calvinists.

Don't ever bring that to me. Because that's silly talk. Never mind. Alright. Having said all that, let me now share with you two things. And this is in your outline. I want to address two truths about the atonement of Christ given to us clearly in Scripture.

There are two things about the atonement which are so clear in Scripture, they're indisputable, and these are the two things that we need to understand about the atonement. Number one, it is a penal substitutionary atonement.

That word is in your notes. You don't even have to write it down. I've given it to you. It is a penal substitutionary atonement. If you look back at Isaiah 53, we'll read again. Verse 5. But He was wounded for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. If there's ever been a passage that's been stolen and corrupted by the charismatics, it's that one.

Because they want to apply that to all types of physical healing. When that does not relate to physical healing, that is relating to our spiritual death having been made alive in Christ. That is having to do with our spiritual healing, not our physical healing.

They'll say, oh, the blood of Christ cleanses you and saves you and heals you, and they pray the blood of Christ over people when they're praying for them, and it's silly talk. It has nothing to do with what this passage has to do with.

This passage is a prophetic announcement about the coming Messiah who would suffer for His people. Now the Jews argue that it's about them. They'll say, we're the servant. We are the suffering servant, Israel.

But the New Testament writers emphatically declare that the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 is Jesus. It's no doubt. If we believe the New Testament, we have to believe that this is about Jesus. Because the New Testament writers tell us clearly this is about Jesus.

And we see in the pronouns our and us and we that the Messiah is suffering on behalf of someone else. He's undergoing the suffering for another person. Read it again. He says He was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. It's all about someone else. What He's undergoing, the punishment He's suffering, is not on behalf of Himself, it's on behalf of another.

This is where we get the word substitute. All of us are familiar with the idea of a substitute. Someone who stands in for someone else. That's what Jesus has done. He has stood in for believers. The healing that's in view here is the healing that comes as a result of our having been healed and our relationship to God.

1 Peter 2 .24 says this, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. He quotes Isaiah 53 to say this, Our sins have been atoned for.

That's the healing that's in view. And this suffering has healed the broken relationship between God and His people. There was once war between you and God. But if you have come by way of the cross, that war has now been called peace.

That is why Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. He's not called the Prince of Peace because He makes peace between nations. He's not called the Prince of Peace because He makes peace between men. In fact, Jesus said, I have come with a sword and I will divide father and mother.

I'll divide husband and I'll divide all these different people. Because Jesus does bring division in households. Jesus brings division in families. But Jesus brings peace between us and God. Which is the peace we are so desperate for.

And unable to attain for ourselves. The word propitiation is one that you need to make sure you add to your spiritual vocabulary. Because propitiation is at the heart of this message. The heart of penal substitutionary atonement.

God is bound by His nature to punish sin. Why? Because He's just. Who said it? Somebody say righteous or just? God is just. And any fully just being must punish that which is unjust for Him to remain just.

I've used this illustration a thousand times. I know you've heard it. But it's still good. The judge who sits as a judge and the man comes before him as a rapist. All the evidence is there. The guy admits to being a rapist and the judge says, Oh, you go free.

What do we say to that? Get off the bench! You can't be a judge with that type of judgment. If God were to look upon sin and simply wink at it or simply turn His face about at it, if God were not to punish sin, He wouldn't be righteous.

And as such, God's holiness demands punishment for sin. Are you a sinner? Yeah, huh? We established that last week. Hopefully you understand. I don't have to prove it to you. You're a sinner. You're at war with God.

God is bound by His nature to punish you, but Christ steps in undefiled and perfectly sinless and He willingly takes the place of the sinner on the cross. Everything Christ suffered on the cross is what we deserve to suffer, but Christ took it in our place.

That's what we call penal substitution. Penal is the word for penalty. The penalty that we owed was placed upon Christ on the cross because He was our substitute and by that He made an atonement. So thus we get the doctrine of PSA or penal substitutionary atonement.

It's not a public service announcement. PSA. Lee read the Scripture this morning. I want to just remind you of what he read. Romans 3, 21. But now the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

There's that word propitiation. What does propitiate? To satisfy. God's anger burned against us. Christ willingly received that anger in Himself so that God's anger could be satisfied or propitiated. That's what that means.

And this is why it goes on to say this. This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance He had passed over former sins. It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be the just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

See, that passage is huge to point out because this is what Paul is saying. He's saying God remained just and yet He justified you who are unjust. How did He do that? He took all the punishment you deserved, all the punishment you've earned, and He put it on the substitute and He bore it willingly for you.

That's how you are made clean. And that's what we call penal substitutionary atonement. Christ takes our penalty as our substitute. So we understand that one. It's a penal substitutionary atonement. Now let's look at the second one.

I could spend months dealing with the first one but for time's sake we're going to deal with the second one. So turn with me to Hebrews chapter 10. And I wish I had time to flesh out the context of these passages.

I pray that you'll read both Isaiah 53 and Hebrews 10 in their context to see that what I'm saying is in accord with the context. Be Bereans, search the Scriptures. But number two, it is a perfectly completed atonement.

First thing we said it's a penal substitutionary atonement. The second thing, it is a perfectly completed atonement. Earlier we discussed Arminian theology which teaches that the atonement paid the price for all sin.

We said that this is the most common view in the church today. But that doesn't make it right. In fact, let me say this. Look how quickly the church turns to wrong things. How many churches do we see flying rainbow flags this week?

They're quick to turn to wrong things. So just because something is popular doesn't make it right. So people say, well, I believe in this view of the atonement because all the other churches believe in it.

Oh, be careful. Oh, be careful. The opposing view, the Arminian view, and then you have what we would call the Reformed view, which is our view. It's typically called limited atonement if you want to write that phrase down.

Not many preachers will deal with this, but I think it's important. It fits nicely in the acrostic. The Tulip, Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Perseverance of the Saints.

We call those the doctrines of grace. Sometimes they're called the five points of Calvinism. I think that's unfair since Calvin didn't write them. But we can call them whatever. Just know this limited atonement is biblical.

But people hear the word limited and they lose their mind. And they'll ask the question. You'll be asked this question one day, especially if you work at the, what's it called? The watering hole. The fishing hole.

Watering hole. If you're working the fishing hole, you're standing in front of a banner with tulips on it. Just so you know. Somebody's going to ask, what about that limited atonement? How can you limit the work of Christ?