The Need for an Atonement

These masses of people are walking up and down here, not concerned about an atonement because they are basically convinced they have no need for an atonement. People aren't running around asking the question, how can I be reconciled to God?

How can I escape the judgment of God? Welcome to Renewing Your Mind on this Monday. I'm Lee Webb, and I hope you had a joyful Christmas that you and your family had plenty of opportunities to consider and celebrate the gift of salvation that the Lord Jesus secured for us by coming into this world to save sinners. Jesus accomplished that by doing the Father's will, living in perfect obedience, thus becoming the perfect sacrifice for our sin. That's what we'll be looking at this week as we feature Dr. R.C. Sproul's series, The Cross of Christ. In this series of lectures, we're going to be focusing our attention on the atonement of Christ. In the field of systematic theology, we divide that discipline into various subheadings such as theology proper and pneumatology, which is the study of the person and work of the Holy Spirit and so on. And one of the most important subdivisions of theology is what we call Christology, which is a study of the person of Christ and the work of Christ. And when we consider the work of Christ and we get to that aspect, which is most crucial, which we may call safely the crux of the matter of the person of Christ, we go immediately to what, obviously?

To the cross. You notice how these words, the word crucial, the word crux, the word excruciating, all have their roots in the Latin word for cross, because the concept of the cross is at the very center and the core of biblical Christianity. The cross, in a sense, crystallizes the essence of the ministry of Jesus. At least I think it's safe to say that in the viewpoint, for example, of someone like the Apostle Paul, who said, engaging in a bit of hyperbole, of course, that he was determined to preach nothing but Christ and Him crucified. Again, it's perhaps a tad of hyperbole, but not far from the truth to say that there's a sense in which all of Paul's writings were merely a concluding unscientific proscript, an attempt to write some kind of exposition of the meaning and the significance of that central moment in the ministry of Christ, that ministry on which Jesus met His hour, the ministry for which He was born, for which He was baptized, that He was preordained to carry out, that moment of passion that theology calls the grand passion of Christ, before which, of course, He sweat drops of blood.

Everything, as it were, in the life of Jesus converges in that point of climax in His death. And so if we were able to read the New Testament with virgin eyes, as if we were the first generation of people to hear the message, I think that it would be crystal clear that that event is at the very core of the preaching and of the teaching and of the catechizing of the New Testament community, of course, with its attending capstone, the resurrection, and subsequently the ascension as part of that complex that focuses on the cross. So if it is true that the cross is of central, not peripheral, but central importance to biblical Christianity, it is essential, it would seem to me, that Christians have some understanding of its meaning in biblical terms.

Now I think that would be true in any generation, but I think it's particularly necessary in this generation. I doubt if there has ever been a period in 2,000 years of Christian history where the significance of the cross and the centrality of the cross, and indeed the very question of the necessity of the cross, has been such a controversial matter as it is today. Now I'm speaking within the church. I have to point out, of course, from a historical perspective that there have been other periods in church history where theologies emerged that regarded the cross of Christ as an unnecessary event.

It had value, to be sure, but it was not something that men needed in any ultimate or significant way. It's an interesting thing to me to find so many people who say to me in my own experience that they are not Christians, not so much because they have never been persuaded of the truth claims of Christianity. That's not so much the issue with them as it is that they have never been persuaded of the need for what the Bible is teaching. How many times have you run into people who said, well, that may be true, maybe it isn't true, but I personally don't feel the need for Jesus, or I don't need the church, or I don't need Christianity. Whenever people say that to me, I like to try to steer the conversation to the other question, and that is the truth of it, because I feel like if we could persuade people of the truth of the identity of Christ and the truth of the work of Christ, that it would become instantly apparent that people need it. I was in a shopping mall not too long ago, and Vesta was shopping in one store, and I went out in the hall and was waiting for her, and I came on a bookstore, and I can't walk past a bookstore without going in it, and then I happened to go into, it was one of these secular bookstores, and there were just rack after rack after rack and shelf after shelf and counter after counter of books in the bookstore, and they had the various divisions of the bookstore marked prominently in fiction and nonfiction and business and sports and self-improvement and sex and marriage and children's stories, and way back, all the way back in the back of the store, there was this section on religion, and it had about four shelves, and I saw that this was the smallest segment in the store, number one, and number two, that the material that was for sale on those racks was somewhat, how should I say it, it certainly wasn't what you would call mainstream orthodox classical Christianity that was being sold there, and I said to myself, well, what's wrong with this store that all they sell is fiction and self-improvement, and they don't seem to place any premium of value on the content of biblical truth as part of their program?

And I said, well, wait a minute. These store owners are not here as a ministry. They're here for a business. They're here for a profit, and I guess the reason why they don't have many books for sale here is because there's not a whole lot of folks coming in here saying, where can I find a book that will teach me about the depths and the riches of the atonement of Christ? And I thought, well, maybe if we go to the Christian bookstore, then we'll find it, but then I go to the Christian bookstore, and I don't find there that people are seeking in-depth understanding of something as central as the atonement of Christ. And so as I thought about that, sitting in the mall and watched people walk up and down in front of me, I got this impression. It was a very scary impression that these people, these masses of people are walking up and down here not concerned about an atonement, not interested in an atonement because they are basically convinced they have no need for an atonement.

This isn't what you call a felt need for people today. People aren't running around asking the question, how can I be reconciled to God? How can I escape the judgment of God? If there's anything that's been lost from our culture, it is the idea that human beings are privately, personally, and individually, ultimately, inexorably accountable to God for their lives. Now think what would happen if suddenly the lights came on and everybody in the world said, hey, someday I have to stand before my Maker, and I have to give an account for every word that I've ever spoken, for every deed that I have ever done, for every thought that I have ever thought, for every task I have failed to do. I am accountable. Now if everybody woke up to that fact instantly, a couple of things could happen. One could be they could say, well, yes, I'm accountable, but isn't it great that the one to whom and before whom I'm accountable isn't really concerned about what kind of a life I lead? Because he understands that boys will be boys and that girls will be girls. So maybe nothing would change.

But if people understood two things, if they understood that there is a holy God and that sin is an offense against a holy God, if they understood those two things, they would be breaking the doors down of your churches saying, what must I do to be saved? I was in the hospital a couple of years ago with a kidney stone, not a life-threatening thing. It just seems like it. Get a kidney stone. I'm one of those kinds of folks that if I have pain, I will do everything in my power to deny that it's there so that I don't have to go to the doctor and have him probe around and tell me all the bad news.

You get a kidney stone, at least when I got a kidney stone, within five minutes of the time I got the kidney stone attack, I was on the telephone calling the doctor, this kind of thing that gets your attention, you know, real quick, right? When in there, they don't know what's going on. They can't find it.

They're having all kinds of problems, and I'm waiting for the tests to come back. It's right around Christmas time. I'm flat on my back in a hospital room, and there was a television program, one of these Sunday preachers.

Get on there. And all he did was he read the Christmas story, and the annunciation, for unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. Now how many thousands of times have I either read that or heard that phrase? But when I was in that hospital bed with my future uncertain, that thing hit me like a sledgehammer, and I said to myself, that's exactly what I need is a Savior. I have to have a Savior. Well, to save me from what? Again, I felt a need for a Savior because I was hurting, I was fearful, and matters of life and death were central in my attention. But that's not the way it is under normal circumstances in the normal flow of our lives. Then we like to think that we don't need a Savior, but the atonement and the cross and Christianity operates on that primary assumption that man is in need of salvation.

Now, like I say, in our culture today, that's not paramount as an assumed item. I've said many times that the prevailing doctrine of justification in the United States of America today is not justification by faith alone, and it's not even justification by and it's not even justification by good works or by a combination of justification by faith and works. The prevailing notion of justification in our culture today is justification by death, that all one has to do to be received into the everlasting arms of God is to die.

That's all that's required because an atonement is not necessary. Now, I have a theologian friend who frequently makes this statement. He said, they're basically in church history only three basic types of theology. There's been a jillion schools with a jillion names and a jillion subtle nuances, but generically there are only three kinds of theology historically, what we call Pelagianism, Semipelagianism, and Augustinianism. Virtually every church in Western history, and Eastern church as well, has fallen into one of those three categories. Now, Semipelagianism and Augustinianism, in my opinion, represent significant debates within the Christian family, differences of opinion of biblical interpretation and of theology among Christians. In my opinion, Pelagianism in its various forms is not an intermural issue among Christians, but Pelagianism is at best sub-Christian and at worst anti-Christian.

Pelagius in the fourth century, Socinianism in the 16th and 17th centuries, and what we would call liberalism as a distinctive theology in contemporary terms, in my opinion, is essentially non-Christian because at the heart of it is a denial of the atonement of Jesus Christ, a denial of the cross, which I am saying and which orthodoxy has said for centuries is an essential of Christianity, essential in this sense that it is a sine qua non without which nothing, without the cross. Take away the cross as an atoning act, you take away Christianity. Now, it's not like the Pelagians, the Socinians had no view of the significance of the cross of Christ.

They did have some view. They said, here is where we see Jesus dying as a moral example for men, as an existential hero, as one who brings inspiration to us by His commitment and devotion to self-sacrifice and to His humanistic concerns, but no atonement. I can remember when I was in seminary, one of my classmates had to preach in homiletics class, and he preached on the cross, and he preached on the cross where Christ was the Lamb slain for us.

And when he was finished, the professor was furious, and he attacked the student while he was still standing in the pulpit. And he said to them in anger, how dare you preach a substitutionary view of the atonement in this day and age. What he meant by that is how can you proclaim from the pulpit such an archaic, old-fashioned, out-of-it notion as one dying to bear the sins for another, as if there were some kind of cosmic transaction taking place here by which I am allowed to be reconciled to God because of something Christ did. Dear friends, you take away the reconciling action of Christ from the New Testament, and you have nothing but moralisms which are anything but unique and hardly worthy of persuading people to give 10 percent of their take-home pay to. Because in Pelagianism, there is no salvation.

In Pelagianism, there is no Savior, because in Pelagianism, there is no atonement, and the reason is because of the conviction in Pelagianism that no such salvation is necessary. Now, I've said there are three basic types of theology. There are also three basic views of the atonement with respect and necessity, historically. There are those as the Sosinians and Pelagians who have believed that an atonement is absolutely unnecessary, absolutely unnecessary. Then there are those who believe an atonement is only hypothetically necessary.

Now to understand that, we have to stop for a second, go slowly here. What a hypothetically necessary atonement has meant in church history is the idea that God could have redeemed us by a host of different ways and means, but He chose to reconcile us, to redeem us by the cross. That was the method He chose. That is, to do it by the cross, that is to do it by atonement, but He could have done it many different ways. He could simply have chosen to overlook human sin, but He decided to do something dramatic, and He committed Himself to a certain course of action. Now once He committed Himself to it, once He determined to have an atonement, then it becomes necessary, but only necessary, not de juro or de facto, but de pacto, that is by virtue of a pact or a covenant that He has made by way of issuing a promise that He would do something. The promise was gratuitous in the first place. There's no need for it, but He makes the promise.

Once He makes the promise, then He's of course committed to that course of action. That's what is meant by a hypothetical necessity for an atonement. The third view, which I am persuaded is both the biblical view and the classical Orthodox Christian view, is that an atonement was not merely hypothetically necessary for man's redemption, but was abso-lutely necessary if a single person was ever going to be reconciled to God and redeemed in the kingdom of God. Now that's quite a bold statement to say that the cross or the atonement was an absolute necessary prerequisite for redemption, and I think that the next item on the agenda has to be to answer the question, why is an atonement necessary? I want to spend the next lecture developing that question, why an atonement is absolutely necessary, if we're going to have fellowship with God.

Dr. R.C. Sproul will be looking at that tomorrow, and we do hope you'll make plans to be with us here on Renewing Your Mind. Yes, theologians may debate the atonement, but it really is not a debatable matter. Christ's death on the cross in our place is the only way we can be saved.

Atonement is absolutely necessary. We are pleased this week to have Dr. R.C. Sproul in the series The Cross of Christ, and for your donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries, we'll be happy to provide you with a digital download of the series, six messages in all, plus a digital study guide.

You'll be able to stream the messages right away. Additionally, we'll send you a beautiful hardbound copy of R.C. 's book on the same topic. It's titled The Truth of the Cross. There are a couple of ways you can make your request.

One is by phone. Our number is 800-435-4343, but you can also go online to renewingyourmind.org. I want you to know what an encouragement it is to hear from so many of you who've been blessed by Ligonier Ministries. You've expressed your appreciation for this program, for Table Talk magazine, for our conferences, and for the many resources we produce and publish here. If you have been blessed by the ministry, would you consider providing us with a financial gift here at Year's End?

Your letter will need to be postmarked by this Friday, the 31st, to qualify as a year-end gift, or you can give online at ligonier.org. Donate. The Bible informs us that if we break one aspect of God's law, we're guilty of breaking all of it. How much interest payment can I make in addition to the principle in order to make up for the blemish? What do I have to do to become perfect after I have once been imperfect? I can't. It is impossible. I do hope you'll join us for Dr. Sproul's message titled, The Drama of Redemption. That's Tuesday, here on Renewing Your Mind.