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Part 3 of a three-part series on the atonement. (See Part 1 and Part 2).


In the Old Testament we sometimes see innocent individuals as the means by which a majority might be spared. For example God promises Abraham that if there are ten righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah, he will not judge those cities (Gen 18:23-33). Similarly Job, the “blameless and upright” sufferer (Job 1:1), becomes an intercessor for his misguided friends:

(T)he LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite: ‘My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends…Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly…’ (Job 42:7,8).

The Suffering Servant

The greatest Old Testament example of blessing brought through an innocent individual comes with the suffering servant of Isaiah 53:

But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Is 53:5,6).

The servant’s suffering is described as a sacrifice for sin.

[Y]ou make his life an offering for sin … The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities … he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors (Is 53:10-12).

Christ the Innocent Sufferer

These patterns carry on into the New Testament and are fulfilled in Christ:

  • Luke’s crucifixion narrative highlights Jesus Christ as innocent/righteous climaxing in the centurion’s words, “Certainly this man was innocent.” (Luke 23:4,14,22,41,47).[1]
  • The Lord Jesus is called the “righteous one” three times in Acts (Acts 3:14,15, 7:52, 22:14).
  • Peter wrote, “For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God,” (1 Pet 3:18). John wrote of “Jesus Christ the righteous…the atoning sacrifice for our sins,” (1 John 2:1,2).

Peter Adam –

The theme of the innocent and righteous Christ saving the guilty is further developed by Paul – chiefly through the categories of justification/righteousness. For Paul, God’s solution to his wrath against wickedness (Rom 1:18-3:20) is justification which comes about through “… Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood” (Rom 3:24,25).

The result of justification by faith is “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Accordingly, there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 5:1, 8:1). And this reveals God’s love: “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us,” (Rom 5:6–8).

Christ’s act of justification is an act of righteousness, and its effects come from his solidarity with the whole human race, which meant that he acts as our representative, and so can serve as our substitute:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (5:21 c. f. Rom 5:18,19).

As Donne preached:

(T)o make Christ able to pay this debt, there was something to be added to him. First, he must pay it in such money as it was lent; in the nature and flesh of man; for man had sinned, and man must pay. And then it was lent in such money as was coyned even with the Image of God; man was made according to his Image … [but] in the wombe of the blessed Virgin, there was new money coyned; the Image of the invisible God, the second person in the Trinity, was imprinted into the human nature…his person fulfilled all righteousnesse, and satisfied the Justice of God by his suffering.[2]

Real justification, real wrath

This “justification” is a legal image but is not, as it is sometimes claimed, a legal fiction. For there is real solidarity between Christ and the human race, and even more between Christ and those who are baptized into him and his death and resurrection. Christ’s followers have died with Christ and live with him (Rom 6:1–11).

The judgment and wrath endured by Christ were also real. Christ’s death did not satisfy a coldly impersonal law; nor was the wrath he bore simply metaphorical. For as God gives his personal law to his people as an expression of a personal covenant, so his judgments and his wrath are also personal. As the Roman Catholic scholar Hans Urs von Balthasar writes, “the wrath of God is the reverse side of his love … It is that wrath which the Son must face in his Passion.” [3]

The Anglican book of Homilies expresses it in this way:

Christ did put himself between God’s deserved wrath and our sin, and rent that obligation wherein we were in danger to God, and paid our debt … yea, there is none other thing that can be named under heaven to save our souls, but this only work of Christ’s precious offering of his body upon the altar of the cross. [4]

This justification is corporate as well as individual. Thus it transforms relationships within the church (Rom 12, 14, 15), and brings together Jews and Gentiles into one new body (Eph 2, Rom 1:16). It’s “the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith” (Rom 1:16).

O the overflowing kindness and love of God toward man! God did not hate us, or drive us away, or bear us ill will. Rather, he was long-suffering and forbearing. In his mercy, he took up the burden of our sins. He himself gave up his own Son as a ransom for us—the holy one for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, the righteous one for the unrighteous, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal. For what else could cover our sins except his righteousness? In whom could we, lawless and impious as we were, be made righteous except in the Son of God alone?
O sweetest exchange! O unfathomable work of God! O blessings beyond all expectation! The sinfulness of many is hidden in the Righteous One, while the righteousness of the One justifies the many that are sinners. 
[5]

 

Picture: “Job and his Friends”, Ilya Repin, 1869

* These posts are adapted from Peter Adam’s essay “The Atoning Saviour,” in Michael R. Stead, ed., Christ Died for Our Sins: Essays on the Atonement, Canberra, Barton, 2013, pp. 15-34. See Barton Books, or order a copy here.

[1] See also Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology: The Triune God, New York/Oxford, OUP, 1997, 183,184.
[2] Donne, Sermons, IV, 288.
[3] Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, tr. Aidan Nichols, Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1990, 12.
[4] The Book of Homilies, [(1864]),  “An Homily for Good Friday”, London, SPCK, 1864, 439-442.
[5] Epistle to Diognetus, 9:2

 

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