Soteriology, Part 5

By Lewis Sperry Chafer

The Savior

A. The Person of the Savior

V. The Sufferings of Christ

2. Sufferings in Death.

g. Two Major Features of Soteriology.

And finally, as to words of introduction, there are two major features of Soteriology—(a) the finished work of the Savior on the cross, and (b) the application of the work to those who believe. Each of these factors is declared to have been divinely determined from a dateless past. Of the Savior’s work it is written that He was a Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8). Of the saved one it is said that he was “chosen in him from the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4). To this will be added under Ecclesiology a third aspect of the eternal purpose, namely, that the good works of the saved one are foreordained that he should walk in them (Eph 2:10). These three—a foreordained Savior, a foreordained salvation, and a foreordained service—constitute the essential elements in the eternal counsels of God respecting the Church which is His body. Confusion too often characterizes the treatment men give to the first two of these eternal purposes. The Savior has finished the work and it only remains for the sinner to believe and be saved. What Christ has done on the cross and what He will do now for the one who believes are widely different aspects of truth. On the one hand, there are those who teach that it is equivalent to the salvation of a soul if Christ dies for that soul. On the other hand, there are those who direct the unsaved to plead with God for their salvation. Certainly the unsaved are not called upon to ask Christ to die for them; and as certainly they are not called upon to urge the Savior to apply His salvation. The promise is not to those who ask, but to those who believe. Since, through the death of Christ, God is propitious, saints may be restored and sinners saved without reproof or punishment from God—no blow is struck and no condemnation is uttered. The Savior has died. That may be believed, and such belief leads to the salvation of the soul; but what He did for the sinner two millenniums ago should not be confused with that salvation which is wrought now when the sinner believes. Hypothetically considered, the Savior might have died, thus providing every ground for a perfect salvation, and no one have believed; for the cross compels no one to believe. It is the sovereign election of God, that which made choice of men for salvation before the foundation of the world, which insures the salvation. In the execution of that sovereign election, the Spirit calls, illuminates, engenders faith, and applies all the value of Christ’s death to the one who thus believes.

Things Accomplished by Christ in His Sufferings and Death

When anticipating His cross Christ said, “For this cause came I into the world” (John 18:37), and, again, “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost) (Luke 19:10). In the light of these sayings, it may be concluded that, as before asserted, the theme of the sufferings of Christ in death is the ground of all right doctrine and the central fact in this cosmic universe. It exceeds the importance of the material universe—in so far as the universe provides a sphere wherein evil may be tested, judged, and banished forever. Of all that the cross of Christ achieved in angelic realms and toward the final judgment of evil as a principle, somewhat has been said previously under Hamartiology; yet it is clear that unaided finite minds cannot follow far in this vast domain of reality. Some revelation is recorded with respect to these immeasurable issues, and to this attention will be directed in due time. The general theme of that which Christ accomplished in His death-sufferings and in His death may, in an attempt at clarity, be divided into the following fourteen divisions: (1) A substitution for sinners; (2) Christ the end of the law for those who believe; (3) A redemption toward sin; (4) A reconciliation toward man; (5) A propitiation toward God; (6) The judgment of the sin nature; (7) The ground of the believer’s forgiveness and cleansing; (8) The ground for the deferring of righteous divine judgments; (9) The taking away of pre-cross sins once covered by sacrifice; (10) The national salvation of Israel; (11) Millennial and eternal blessings upon Gentiles; (12) The spoiling of principalities and powers; (13) The ground of peace; (14) The purification of things in heaven. To the end that the student may be encouraged to pursue these limitless themes more exhaustively, an introductory outline or condensed survey of each is here undertaken.

I. A substitution for sinners

Though it underlies much of all that Christ accomplished, His vicarious sufferings and death, being the foundation of all truth respecting the divinely provided cure for sin, will first be treated separately and recognizing five particulars, namely (i) The words which imply substitution; (ii) Vicarious suffering in general; (iii) Mediation; (iv) Substitution in respect to the judgment of sin; and (v) Substitution in the realms of divine perfection.

1. The words which imply substitution

Two prepositions are involved in this aspect of this theme—ἀντί and ὑπέρ. On the meaning and force of these words, Archbishop Trench, in his New Testament Synonyms (pp. 290, 291), writes thus: “It has been often claimed, and in the interests of an all-important truth, namely the vicarious character of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, that in such passages as Heb. ii.9; Tit. ii.14; 1 Tim. ii.6; Gal. iii.13; Luke xxii.19, 20; 1 Pet. ii.21; iii.18; iv.1; Rom. v.8; John x.15, in all of which Christ is said to have died ὑπὲρ πάντων, ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων and the like, ὑπέρ shall be accepted as equipollent with ἀντί. And then, it is further urged that as is the preposition first of equivalence (Homer, Il. ix.116,117) and then of exchange (1 Cor. xi.15; Heb. xii.2, 16; Matt. v.38), ὑπέρ must in all those passages be regarded as having the same force. Each of these, it is evident, would thus become a dictum probans for a truth, in itself most vital, namely that Christ suffered, not merely on our behalf and for our good, but also in our stead, and bearing that penalty of our sins which we otherwise must ourselves have borne. Now, though some have denied, we must yet accept as certain that ὑπέρ has sometimes this meaning, but it is not less certain that in passages far more numerous ὑπέρ means no more than, on behalf of, for the good of; thus Matt. v.44; John xiii.37; 1 Tim. ii.1. and continually. It must be admitted to follow from this, that had we in the Scripture only statements to the effect that Christ died ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν, that He tasted death ὑπὲρ παντός, it would be impossible to draw from these any irrefragable proof that His death was vicarious, He dying in our stead, and Himself bearing on His Cross our sins and the penalty of our sins; however we might find it, as no doubt we do, elsewhere (Isa. liii.4–6). It is only as having other declarations, to the effect that Christ died ἀντὶ πολλῶν (Matt. xx.28), gave Himself as an ἀντίλυτρον (1 Tim. ii.6), and bringing those other to the interpretation of these, that we obtain a perfect right to claim such declarations of Christ’s death for us as also declarations of His death in our stead. And in them beyond doubt the preposition ὑπέρ is the rather employed, that it may embrace both these meanings, and express how Christ died at once for our sakes (here it touches more nearly on the meaning of Matt. xxvi.28; Mark xiv.24; 1 Pet. iii.18; διά also once occurring in this connexion, 1 Cor. viii.18), and in our stead; while ἀντί would only have expressed the last of these.”

As intimated by Archbishop Trench, there is no problem connected with the word ἀντί. In as definite a manner as language may be made to serve, this word means substitution—one taking the place of another. The word ὑπέρ, however, is broader and does mean in some instances no more than a benefit provided and received; yet, in other instances, it as certainly becomes the equivalent of ἀντί. The way is therefore open to some extent for those who would belittle the doctrine of substitution to stress the more general use of ὑπέρ, while those who heartily defend this doctrine stress its vicarious meaning. The reasonable attitude is to allow ὑπέρ its full latitude to the extent that when, according to the context, it seems to express actual substitution, to give it the same force as ἀντί. If by the restriction of ὑπέρ to the idea of mere benefit, the doctrine would be eliminated, the case would be different, but as long as ἀντι serves its specific purpose and cannot be modified, the truth is only clarified and strengthened by the more specific and wholly legitimate use of ὑπέρ as implying an actual substitution. Philemon 1:13—”Whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel”—and 2 Corinthians 5:14—”For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead”—may serve to demonstrate the truth that ὑπέρ does convey, when the context sustains it, the thought of actual substitution. This twofold meaning of ὑπέρ serves a real advantage, for Christ died in the sinner’s place and as a benefit to the sinner. The word ἀντί appears in such a declaration as, “The Son of man came…to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28), and the absolute character of substitution is seen in such Scriptures as Matthew 2:22; 5:38; Luke 11:11. However, in a much larger body of Scripture the word ὑπέρ occurs and in these the deeper meaning should be read: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for you” (Luke 22:19, 20); “The bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51); “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13); “Christ died for the ungodly; while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:6–8); “He delivered him up for us all” (Rom 8:32); “If one died for all then all died” (2 Cor 5:14, 15); “He made him to be sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21); “Being made a curse for us” (Gal 3:13); “Christ gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God” (Eph 5:2, 25); “The man Christ Jesus gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Tim 2:5, 6); Christ “tasted death for every man” (Heb 2:9); Christ “suffered the just for the unjust” (1 Pet 3:18).

2. Vicarious suffering in general

As the term vicar refers to a deputy or agent who acts in the place of another, thus the word vicarious means that one takes the place of another, serving or acting as a substitute. In the case of an obligation between man and man, the law permits the debt to be discharged by a third party, provided no injustice to others is wrought. However, the divine permission for a substitute to act for man in his relation to God is one of the most fundamental provisions of saving grace. As fallen man stands obligated to God as an offender—both in his federal head and in himself—against His Creator and against the divine government, he owes an obligation which he could never pay in time or eternity. Unless a vicar shall intervene there is no hope for any member of this fallen race. No sin-laden human being could be vicar for a fellow being. The vicar must be sinless as well as prepared to bear those immeasurable judgments which divine holiness must ever impose upon sin. In God there are two attributes which are at once involved when a creature sins. These are justice and mercy. Justice imposes, and continues to impose, the undiminished judgment which sin entails. Not for one instant is justice softened or curtailed in the interests of mercy. Because of His holy character, God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. The truth abides, that the soul that sinneth, it shall die. No greater misrepresentation could be formed against the holy character of God and the government of God than the implication that His justice is ever softened or modified in the interests of mercy. To contend that God could save one sinner from the judgment of one sin by the exercise of mercy, is to accuse God of the greatest folly that could be known in the universe; for if one sin could be cured by mercy alone the principle would be established by which all sin could be cured and the sacrificial, vicarious death of Christ would be rendered wholly unnecessary. When Christ died at the hand of His Father as an offering for sin, it is evident—except God be deemed the example of infinite foolishness, if not infinite wickedness—that there was no other vay by which sinners could be saved. The Bible teaches without deviation that Christ by His death met the demands of justice in behalf of the sinner—in the sinner’s room and stead—, and those who will come unto God by Him are saved without the slightest infringement upon divine holiness. If it be inquired as to where divine mercy appears, the answer is that it is manifested in the provison of a Savior to meet the demands of infinite justice.

Theologians are wont to distinguish between personal and vicarious satisfaction to God for sin. When the sinner bears his own penalty, he is lost forever and his achievement, though a failure, is a thing which originates in him and which he offers to God. This is personal satisfaction to God. On the other band, when a sinner accepts the vicarious Sin-Bearer, he is saved forever and the achievement originates with the Savior and is offered to the sinner. This is vicarious satisfaction to God. These two principles—personal and vicarious satisfaction to God—are better known by the terms works and faith. The principle of works represents all that man can do for himself; the principle of faith represents all that God can do for man. The one is void of mercy; the other is the greatest possible display of mercy. The one has no promise of blessing in it; the other secures every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. None has stated the value of Christ’s sacrifice more clearly than Augustine. He states: “The same one and true Mediator reconciles us to God by the atoning sacrifice, remains one with God to whom he offers it, makes those one in himself for whom he offers it, and is himself both the offerer and the offering” (Trinity, IV. xiv. 19). The doctrine of the Bible is that God saves His own people—those who trust Him—from His own wrath (cf. Ps 38:1; Isa 60:10; Hos 6:1; Job 42:7, 8). Unconfused and without counteraction the one against the other, God experiences both wrath and love at the same time and each to the extent of His infinite Being. Ezekiel portrays Jehovah as beating His breast in lamentation over the fall of Lucifer who became Satan (Ezek 28:12); yet there is no redemption for that angel and the lake of fire awaits him forever (Rev 20:10). How great is Jehovah’s wrath and indignation against Israel as seen in the chastisements which fall upon them! Yet He loves them with an everlasting love. The Christian, likewise, discovers that the grace by which he is saved is exercised toward him by the very tribunal which condemned him. A throne of awful judgment has become a throne of grace. Upon these two characteristics in God—wrath and love—Dr. Henry C. Mabie writes thus: “The whole Deity is behind the atonement, within it, and at the root of it. Grace is after all God’s grace. When our sin arose, it created an antinomy, a self-opposition, so to speak, in God. God, as holy, must oppose and condemn sin, otherwise He could not be God. That side or polarity of the divine nature must judge and punish sin. But there is another side, or polarity, to God’s being called love. And as such it just as eagerly and spontaneously yearns to pardon and save. How then could these opposite polarities which even the anticipation of sin as well as its actual occurrence called into exercise in one and the same Trinity, be reconciled, and so reconciled as to save the guilty? We answer at once, God, Himself, reconciled them by His own voluntary vicarious suffering, whatever it was. This was the essential reconciliation—the cosmic reality—the divinely satisfying thing to God Himself. But He could not so manifest it as to give the needed assurance and help that man needed, except as it came to concrete and visual and God-human disclosures of its reality, in Christ on the Cross. Nor could the historic fact of sin without it be met and demonstrated upon the same earth where the sin had occurred but by an adequate answering historical event…. Thus only evidently could God be exhibited as ‘just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus’ (Rom. iii.26). Hence, the atonement conceived in any way that separates the Father from the fullest participation in it is but a partial view. Grace, in the nature of the case, is something that must be construed as an expression of government—it is a governmental function—and also has reference to a unified divine government. The source of grace can never be divided. Yet the Trinity is not excluded thereby, and the Trinity is not tri-Theism. Dual relations, rapports, arise in God as the expression of two moral poles of His being; and the reconciliation made necessary by the incoming of sin is conceived as immanent in God, in His very unity. So God on one side of His nature provides what on another side of His nature He exacts. That is, God may do one thing in order to another” (Under the Redeeming Aegis, pp. 89-92).

As certainly as God foresees and predetermines, the event of Calvary was ever as real to Him as it was in the hour of its enactment—the hour of the greatest of all achievements, the answering of all that an offended God demanded to the end that He might be free to exercise His love unhindered in behalf of the objects of His affection. These opposites in God were ever reconciled in His anticipation of the cross; yet there was the necessity—the thing He anticipated—that the cross should become historical—an actual doing of that which could not be avoided. In truth, if the heart of God could be seen as it is now, and always has been, not only would infinite hatred for evil be discovered, but the same willingness to give His Son to die for the ungodly and His enemies would be discerned. Calvary was, then, the necessary working-out in time of that which was eternally in the heart of God. It is the fact that within God a reconciliation was anticipated from all eternity, made real in time, and to be recognized by Him in all eternity to come, that forms the basis of His grace. Grace and love are not the same. Love may long to save, but, because of the immutable demands of justice, be powerless to do so. On the other hand, grace in God is that which love accomplishes on the ground of the truth that Christ has met the demands of justice. The self-reconciliation in God, which the cross provides, opens a field for divine achievement in the salvation of the lost which otherwise was impossible. Doubtless God was free to act toward sinners in grace in past ages on the ground of His anticipation of the cross; but with great assurance it may be believed that He is free so to act since the cross. By its very character, grace is related to divine government. It is a way of getting things done. Whatever God does in grace He is free to do because of the cross. In ages to come He will display His grace by means of that salvation of sinners which He will have achieved (Eph 2:7). To those thus saved He says: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph 2:8, 9). This incomparable grace is not only wrought out by God, but is wrought out in God. He is “the God of all grace.” Peace is sealed by the Holy Spirit in the heart of those who believe and because of the fact that they are right with God and God is right with them.

3. Mediation

In the broadest significance of the term, mediation implies at least two parties between whom it functions. The lament of Job reflects the need of a mediator as that need existed in the world before the advent of Christ. Job said: “For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment. Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, that might lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:32, 33). The separation between the righteous God and sinful Job is recognized when Job said, “For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment”; and the case was even more hopeless since no “daysman” existed “that might lay his hand upon us both.” The English term daysman means arbitrator or umpire. The thought in Job’s mind is of an established and accepted mediator between God and man. Job’s conception, which pictures this intermediate agent as having the right to lay his hand on each party, is exceedingly clear, reaching, as it does, far beyond the range of conditions which might arise between men. The laying on of the hand, which Job visualizes, speaks of inherent equality between the daysman and the one on whom the hand is placed. Since Job has indicated that the estranged parties are God and himself, the placing of the daysman’s hand upon God requires that the daysman shall be equal with God, and the placing of the daysman’s hand on Job requires that the daysman shall stand, also, on the same level with Job, having the inherent right which belongs to a fellow man—a representative of actual kin. Thus, in terms which breathe more of the wisdom and purpose of God than is common to man, Job has declared the fundamental features which of necessity are found in the Theanthropic Mediator. Sin caused an estrangement between God and man, and since all have sinned, the need is universal. That God is offended by sin need not be argued. It is less recognized, however, that sin has hardened the heart of man, befogged his mind, and caused him to be full of unreason and prejudice. When Adam and Eve sinned, they hid, not from each other, but from God.

There is a public or general sense in which Christ’s reign as King will be mediatorial in that, standing between God and man, He will put down authority and every enemy of God, thus restoring peace in a universe torn and distressed by sin (1 Cor 15:25–28); but His personal mediation is the combined functioning of His work as Prophet and Priest. In the one He represents God to man, while in the other He represents man to God. In the priestly office He offers a sacrifice which answers the demands of divine justice and the uttermost need of the doomed sinner. He thus puts His hand upon God and upon man. He is the true Daysman. In its relation to the sinner, the work of the Mediator is none other than the substitutionary work of Christ, and, to avoid repetition, the theme need not be pursued separately at this point.

Dallas, Texas