The Atonement - Part 3

We talked about the necessity of Christ's sacrifice last time. In this last post about The Atonement, let's look at exactly what effects it has on us.

     The New Testament uses different words and terms to desribe these effects but let's just examine four of the most important ones.
     These four terms show how Christ's death met the four needs that we have as sinners:

1. We deserve to die as the penalty for sin.
2. We deserve to bear God's wrath against sin.
3. We are separated from God by our sins.
4. We are in bondage to sin and to the kingdom of Satan.

These four needs are met by Christ's death in the following ways:


(1) Sacrifice: To pay the penalty of death that we deserved because of our sins, Christ died as a sacrifice for us. "He has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Heb. 9:26).

(2) Propitiation: To remove us from the wrath of God that we deserved, Christ died as a propitiation for our sins. "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10 NASB) (See The Atonement - Part 1 about propitiation ).

(3) Reconciliation: To overcome our separation from God, we needed someone to provide reconciliation and thereby bring us back into fellowship with God. Paul says that God "through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:18-19).

(4) Redemption: Because we as sinners are in bondage to sin and to Satan, we need someone to provide remption and thereby "redeem" us out of that bondage. When we speak of redemption, the idea of a "ransom" comes to view. A ransom is the price paid to redeem someone from bondage or captivity. Jesus  said of himself, "For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). If we ask to whom the ransom was paid, we realize that the human analogy of a ransom payment does not fit the atonement of Christ in every detail. Though we were in bondage to sin and to Satan, there was no "ransom" paid either to "sin" or to Satan himself, for they did not have power to demand such payment, nor was Satan the one whose holiness was offended by sin and who required a penalty to be paid for sin.

     As we saw earlier, the penalty for sin was paid by Christ and received and accepted by God the Father. But we hesitate to speak of paying a "ransom" to God the Father, because it was not he who held us in bondage but Satan and our own sins. Therefore at this point the idea of a aransom payment cannot be pressed in every detail. It is enough to note that a price was paid ( the death of Christ ) and the result was that we were "redeemed" from bondage.

     We were redeemed from bondage to Satan because "the whole world is in the power of the evil one" (1 John 5:19), and when Christ came he died to "deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage" (Heb. 2:15).

     In fact, God the Father "has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son" (Col. 1:13).

     As for deliverance from bondage to sin, Paul says, "So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus...For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace" (Rom. 6:11, 14). We have been delivered from bondage to the gult of sin and from bondage to its ruling power in our lives.

     Do you see how complete Christ's sacrifice was? How great His blood truly is?