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Reformed Classicalist

What is the Gospel? Part 3

Christ and Redemption

RTS Papers / Evangelism / Summer 2016


Lewis once said that “religion is what man says about God, but Christianity is what God did about man.” So what exactly did God do about this impossible situation? Well one thing He did not do is sit back and watch the world burn itself out. Nor did He wait to see if anyone down here would ever get things right and start over. In fact He did not even wait until the punishment took effect to begin making a way back to life.

Before the man and woman even left the Garden, the Lord made them a promise. It is first seen in the curse read to the serpent:

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel (Genesis 3:15).

One from among the children of men and women would deliver them from the evil one and their own bondage to sin. The promised child to come would be the Prince of the sovereign King of all things and therefore He would be the rightful heir of this world. He would accomplish all of this in a battle against the serpent. Jesus would become for us all of those things that we needed to do but could not.


Jesus Obeyed the Law of God For Us


Quick review. God made us to be like Him and to do as He does. Adam failed. Israel failed. And each and every one of us fail. But God sent his Son to start things over. He was “born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Jesus lived the life that we should have lived. His obedience to God was designed to count for our obedience. Those who put their trust in Christ are treated by God as if we did what Jesus did: “by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19)


There is nothing arbitrary about this. If a holy God and sinful man are to be reconciled, then someone who perfectly represents both parties will have to satisfy the terms of living together. This is what Paul had in mind where he wrote that, “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). A MEDIATOR is someone who represents two hostile parties. That Jesus was fully God means that He could represent God’s side of holiness perfectly. That Jesus was fully man means that He could represent man’s side of obedience required perfectly. It means not only that He stood in our place legally, but that He faced what we face psychologically. Think about that for a moment!

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

That Jesus was our mediator means that He became our substitute: in life and in death. He puts Himself in the place of us, both positively and negatively. All the good we still owe God and all the curse God still owed to us. There is nothing in life or in death that we need more than such a Substitute!


We need two things for salvation to occur. We need to have every single one of our wrongs made right, and we need someone else who is perfect to start over again for us and succeed till the end. A kind of double exchange is going to have to occur.


Jesus Was Punished By God For Us


The cross was not first and foremost an ethical example or moral influence directed at our hearts, nor even a victory over the powers of darkness. Although the cross was those things too. But this is not the first thing Jesus accomplished by his death. The cross was first and foremost an atonement for sin. The primary aim of the cross was not toward any part of the creation at all. Its primary effect was heavenward. One theologian, Leon Morris, described it in this way,

Clearly it is God’s demand that we live holy lives that is the root cause of the problem. As long as he is angry with the selfishness, the disregard of the needs of others and the general attitude of lovelessness that the Bible calls sin, the attitude of God is going to be an important factor, indeed the important factor … There can be no fellowship between God and man as long as God is persisting in a demand to which men are indifferent. (1)

There is a divine dilemma. A good God cannot simply forgive sinners by joining them in their dishonor. He cannot agree with the sinner that his glory is no big deal, and so sweep sins under the rug of the universe. Instead the Son of God absorbed the wrath of God for us. He took the hell we had to pay. He satisfied his own justice. He spent it on his own Son instead of on us. Paul says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). There is no greater demonstration of love and no greater security for the beloved: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).


So Jesus gets all of our sins and we get all his righteousness. There is a great exchange: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). So it is not by our external works, nor by our internal will power, but by Christ’s performance alone that we are accepted by the Father.

not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith (Philippians 3:9).

Jesus Rose to Newness of Life For Us


No one would ever believe that someone’s death had killed death itself if they themselves remained under its power. So in Peter’s sermon he claims that in this emptying of a tomb Psalm 16:10 was fulfilled: “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.”


At first it may seem that the Resurrection of Christ is only related to salvation somewhat indirectly. Sure it vindicates Jesus, but what does it do for us? Paul’s theology of the believer’s union with Christ continues from Good Friday to Easter Sunday and beyond. He asks his readers in Rome:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (Romans 6:3-5).

That is the idea. Those whom God has placed into his Son have been placed into the work of his Son. His destiny becomes our destiny. This is not only Paul saying this, but Jesus Himself,

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day (John 6:37-40).

Jesus rising from the dead does something to us right now. Remember that we said the problem in our hearts was double. In Christ, as the hymn says, there is a double cure. If by the cross Jesus killed our old man, then by the resurrection Jesus raised us by his Spirit to a new life which begins right now. The great hope of the resurrection is complete when our bodies and souls are united in the consummated new creation. But the good news is better still. It also means that we are even now beginning to see the killing of the old man of sin and the growth of the new man in righteousness. As the Reformers put it, we are made acceptable to God by faith alone, but not by a faith that stays alone. Through faith the Holy Spirit begins to give birth to new desires in us. We start to see our sin for what it is and hate it. We start to see the promises of God for what they are and love Him for it. “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).


Jesus Reigns Over All and Restores All Things For Us


The plan of God revealed in the Bible comes to a head in the reign and rule of his Son. The Father wanted all the rulers of the earth to listen up when He promised the whole universe to his Messiah,

The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel (Psalm 2:7-9).

The Bible adds to all of this good news that all who believe in Christ share in his inheritance. We inherit the whole world in fact (cf. Romans 4:13). God’s good creation will be even better than the first time around. Paul even gives a kind of poetic foretaste of the new world and the new race looking together for the ultimate dawn.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:22-23).


In the end God is going to bring an end to all evil and the new world will be one of never-before-experienced love and joy and peace. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (Revelation 21:4-5).



(1) Leon Morris, The Atonement (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press 1982), pp. 137-138

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