What Did Jesus Mean by “The World”?

by Nick Batzig

[Rev. Nicholas T. Batzig is senior pastor of Church Creek Presbyterian in Charleston, S.C.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series and was originally published on August 31, 2018.]

In his excellent little book The Emotions of Jesus, Robert Law offers a passing contemplation about how the Savior would have seen the world through the lens of sinless human experience. He writes: “Though little is directly reported of it in the Gospels, this also belonged to the perfection of our Lord Jesus. No one has ever lived in such a marvelous world as he, to whom ‘the glory in the grass and splendor in the flower’ continually revealed the diviner miracle of a Heavenly Father's munificent love and care.”

If anyone could have sung the words of the hymn “This Is My Father’s World” with a heart full of delight at the manifestation of the glory of God in the intricately created plants, trees, animals, fish, sunsets, oceans, seasons, minerals, gems, rocks, scents, food, and drink, it was the sinless Son of God incarnate. And yet, there was another world that the Savior viewed from the side of sinless humanity. These two worlds collided when the Son of God entered the first world in order to redeem men out of the second. The mystery of the incarnation is that “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him” (John 1:10).

As He walked the dusty Palestinian streets, moving ever closer to the cross, Jesus declared the essence of what He had come into the world to do. In addition to coming to atone for the sins of His people—and in addition to conquering the evil one—Jesus came to overcome the world. He made this clear when He said, “Now is the judgment of this world” (John 12:31). Again, as He brought the Upper Room Discourse (John 13–17) to a close, Jesus told His disciples: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Judging and overcoming the world was an essential part of Jesus’ work on the cross.

Of course, in order to rightly understand the nature of Jesus’ victory over the world, we have to come to a right understanding of His use of the word “world” in these two places in John’s gospel. Jesus surely did not have creation per se in mind. Though it is subjected to futility on account of the sin of man (Rom. 8:20), there is nothing inherently evil about creation. It couldn’t be that Jesus was frowning on the world that He had created together with His Father and the Holy Spirit. It must have been another “world” altogether.

The Apostle John spelled out what Jesus had in mind when he described the world of which Jesus spoke: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15–17). It is the world under the sway of the evil one to which Jesus referred when He spoke of overcoming it. He had come to conquer the prince of the power of the air—the (little r) ruler of this world—and to overthrow the dreadful results of the rebellion into which the evil one had led mankind. One writer captured so well what Scripture has in mind when it speaks of this fallen world:

It is the world with its power and might, its knowledge and wisdom, its commerce and industry, its culture and civilization, without God and in opposition to Him; the world with its pride and self-exaltation, its trust in man and in the power and wisdom of man, its hatred for God and of one another, its covetousness and lust for power, and for the glory of man; the world with its lust of the flesh, its idolatry and adultery, its profanity and deceit, its striving after pleasures and treasures, its . . . vanities; the world, too, with its strife and debate, its unrest and revolutions, its wars and destruction.[1]

Just as Jesus came to conquer the sin of His people and the stronghold of the evil one, He came to overcome this present evil world by His death on the cross. But, how could He say that the judgment of the world had already come when He was on the earth? After all, Jesus said, “Now is the judgment of the world.” The answer is found in the already/not-yet of His finished work on the cross. In the death of Jesus, the world was put on trial. When the Son of God was being condemned before human judges, the Judge of all the earth was condemning this fallen, evil world. When He hung on the cross, the Son of God was tearing away the facade of goodness with which the world masks its idolatry, pride, foolishness, self-righteousness, and lawlessness. When we see Christ crucified, we see the world as it really is—in all of its rebellion and deceit. There is a day coming in which the verdict, which was rendered at the cross, will be fully and openly manifested. In that day, all of the world’s deceit and hypocrisy, falsehood and wickedness will be laid bare and viewed in light of the righteous judgment of the Son of God.

The implications are enormous for those who have been united to Christ by faith alone. In the first place, the believer must learn to live his or her Christian life in light of the relationship that he or she now sustains to the overcome world. At the end of the letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul made that glorious declaration about the result of the death of Jesus in regard to his relation to the world: “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14). The great Scottish pastor William Still explained:

We like to think of the double crucifixion, envisaged here, in theatrical terms. There stand the world, and there stand I, and between us stands the cross. Viewed from the world’s side I am crossed out, because branded with that hateful cross the world has no time for me. Viewed from my side the world is crossed out, for through my faith in Christ’s death I have also died to the world; so that I and the world are agreed on one thing, and one only; that through Christ we have equally and mutually no time for each other.

In the second place, there is a promise to believers that no matter how much the world may persecute, oppose, oppress, scoff at, and deride them, Christ is the victorious King and Savior of those He chose out of the world and for whom He gave Himself on the cross. The victory is already won. There is nothing that the world can do in all of its persecuting malice to separate the believer from the love of God in Christ. This is the reason why the Apostle cried out, “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39). In the world, believers will most certainly have tribulation. “But,” Jesus says, “take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

In the third place, there is a cosmic implication to Christ’s victory over the world. Jesus has conquered this fallen world and secured a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. This does not mean that Jesus is going to scrap this present world and create one that is altogether new. It does mean, however, that because of what Christ has accomplished at the cross, God will purify this present world of all of its evil, pollution, and corruption and bring something new and righteously beautiful out of what was old and corrupt. In our next article, we will look in more detail at this dimension of the cross.

Notes

1. Herman Hoeksema, The Amazing Cross (Jenison, Mich.: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2018), 10–11. 

Disarming the Devil

by Nick Batzig

[Rev. Nicholas T. Batzig is senior pastor of Church Creek Presbyterian in Charleston, S.C.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series and was originally published on July 6, 2018.]

Last spring, a spider wove a cobweb across the entryway to our house. In the evening, it took the cobweb down and it spun a new one in the same spot the very next morning. This event recurred over a period of several weeks. At first, I simply sought to avoid the cobweb by sneaking under it whenever I came or went. (I’m sure that our neighbors thought I was practicing the Limbo whenever they saw me doing this.) After about a week or so, I realized that something had to be done. I took a broom and knocked the web down. Much to my frustration, this didn’t solve the problem. A new web hung across the front of our entryway the very next morning. Finally, I did what I should have done at the outset—I killed the spider. Problem solved.

Many people approach sin the same way that I initially dealt with the cobweb. Most simply seek to avoid dealing with sin as long as they possibly can. Others attempt to get rid of their sin by cleaning themselves up (Luke 11:24–25). A real and lasting solution, however, required Christ to come and conquer the one who conquered man. It is only in this way that believers can live in the full enjoyment of deliverance from the guilt and power of sin. It was not sufficient for Christ merely to lay down His life in order to atone for the sins of His people—He also had to conquer the evil one. The Apostle John intimated as much when he wrote, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). The conquest of the evil one in the death of Jesus is an essential part of the work of redemption in that it results in liberty and victory for those for whom Christ died (1 John 2:14).

After the creation of the world, Satan wove a web of deception and lies in order to lead our first parents in rebellion against God. Ever since the fall of mankind, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). So powerful is the devil’s influence on humanity as a whole that Scripture describes him as “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2). All the sin of men and women against God occurs in tandem with the stratagems of Satan. Having led mankind in rebellion against God, Satan now manifests his influence over men in a variety of ways. False teaching (1 Tim. 4:1) and false living (John 8:44; Eph. 4:26–27; 1 Tim. 3:6–7) are foremost among his principal strategies.

In addition to the manifold temptations of Satan, he also has a number of psychological weapons in his armory. The evil one “has the power of death” and “through fear of death [subjects men] to lifelong slavery” (Heb. 2:14–15). Satan loves to keep men and women in bondage to sin and in the fear of death. Even believers are subject to Satan’s oppressive attacks, but the devil assaults us uniquely. All of the devil’s malice is aimed at the people of God so that Scripture refers to him as “the accuser of the brethren.” The evil one loves seeking to condemn those whom Christ has redeemed.

In order to deal with these aspects of Satan’s work, the Son of God came into the world. Jesus came to conquer the one who conquered man. In that first great promise of the gospel (Gen. 3:15), God swore to send a Redeemer who would crush the head of the serpent. In order to redeem those who were fallen in Adam, the Redeemer had to be a man—born of a woman. In order to conquer the one who conquered man, the Redeemer also had to be more than a man. He had to possess such divine origin and power that He could overthrow the rebellious kingdom of the evil one and reestablish the righteous rule of God in the hearts of His people. The seed of the woman is none other than the God-man, Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul drew a straight line from Genesis 3:15 to Christ when he wrote, “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal. 4:4).

When Jesus began His earthly ministry, He did so by facing off against that great serpent of old in the wilderness (Luke 4:1–13). As the last Adam, Jesus subjected Himself to an onslaught of temptations by the evil one. By virtue of His obedience, the Son of God struck a decisive blow to the powers of darkness. From the wilderness to the cross, Jesus was destroying the kingdom of darkness by obeying His Father, proclaiming the gospel and casting out demons. When He hung on the cross, Jesus fully and finally “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them” (Col. 2:15). The death of Jesus on the cross was the exorcism of all exorcisms (John 12:31). The last Adam was cleansing the world of its arrogating occupant. By His death, Jesus defeated the evil one and took all of his weapons away from him. On His way to the cross, Jesus explained that He was going to “bind” the strong man (Matt. 12:29; Rev. 20:2, 4) and deliver captives. The hymn “Praise to the Holiest in the Height,” captures the essence of the victory of Jesus, the last Adam, over the evil one:

O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
a second Adam to the fight
and to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
which did in Adam fail,
should strive afresh against the foe,
should strive and should prevail.

There are now two main benefits that flow from Jesus’ defeat of Satan. First, the devil is bound so that the gospel may spread throughout the nations for the conversion of God’s elect. The devil is bound so that he can no longer deceive the nations to the degree that he did before the incarnation (Rev. 20:2). Before Christ came into the world, the nations were completely under the darkness and enslaving power of idolatry. This was Satan’s premier stronghold. He is a liar and the father of lies. He holds men in captivity by holding them under the lying deception of false teaching and beliefs. In the death of Jesus, God so bound the devil that the gospel might go to the nations. The spread of the gospel to the nations in the new covenant is a direct manifestation of the binding of the evil one. The preaching of the gospel sets a free course for the conversion of God’s people “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” We now go boldly into the world to proclaim what our Savior has done in His death on the cross. Interestingly, the very message that we proclaim for the salvation of the nations includes the message of the binding of the One who deceives the nations. When we preach the devil-defeating, sin-atoning, wrath-propitiating, death-conquering death of Jesus, men and women are set free from the enslaving power of Satan.

Second, the devil is bound so that believers may have their consciences protected from Satan’s malicious accusations. Jesus died to take away the devil’s power over the consciences of believers. Christ has conquered Satan, sin, and death. In doing so, He has taken away the devil’s power to keep believers in bondage to the fear of death.

When believers sin, the devil and his cohorts stand ready to heap condemnation on them. Among the thoughts he speaks in the consciences of believers are these: “How could you do this? You’re not a Christian. A believer would never do something like this. You have surely out-sinned the grace of God.” These and other such accusations the devil hurls at believers. Sinclair B. Ferguson puts it succinctly when he says, “Satan trades in accusations.” However, just as Christ took away the devil’s power to hold men under the bondage of the fear of death, He took away the devil’s power to paralyze believers under his condemning accusations. Now, the believer has the strongest possible confidence because of the victory of the Redeemer over Satan and sin. As Charitie Bancroft put it,

When Satan tempts me to despair,
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look, and see Him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died,
My sinful soul is counted free;
For God, the Just, is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.

The Vertical Dimensions of the Cross

by Nick Batzig

[Rev. Nicholas T. Batzig is senior pastor of Church Creek Presbyterian in Charleston, S.C.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series and was first published on June 22, 2018.]

The Scriptures give us a robust revelation about all that Jesus accomplished on the cross. As we go about seeking to categorize all of the various dimensions of the cross, we discover that there are both vertical and horizontal dimensions to Jesus’ work. The vertical dimensions are foundational; the horizontal are consequential. The vertical dimensions include Jesus’ defeat of Satan (Gen. 3:15; John 12:31; Col. 2:15), His propitiating the wrath of God (Rom. 3:25; Heb. 2:7; 1 John 2:2; 4:10), His atoning for our sin (Heb. 1:3; Rom. 4:7–8), His breaking the power of sin (Rom. 6:9–14), His securing the new heavens and new earth (Heb. 2:5–11), and His overcoming the world (John 12:31; 16:33). The horizontal dimensions include His becoming the example of self-sacrificial living (Rom. 15:2–3; 1 Peter 2:21) and His reconciling men to one another, thereby making peace for those who formerly lived in hostility with one another (Eph. 2:14).

When men pervert or deny the biblical teaching concerning the vertical nature of the cross, it inevitably leads to a false gospel. When men put horizontal aspects of the cross in the place of the vertical, it ultimately leads to a false gospel. We must diligently study the biblical teaching about the work of Jesus—especially with regard to what is foundational (vertical) and what is consequential (horizontal). We must also be students of the historical development of the doctrine of the atonement and its related dimensions. In this short series, we will consider the historical development and the biblical teaching about the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the cross in order to emphasize that the vertical must have precedence over the horizontal dimensions.

In the final decade of the eleventh century, Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, wrote his magnum opus, Cur Deus homo (Why the God-man?). Nearly a thousand years later, this work remains the seminal defense of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. In it, Anselm argued that the main thing Jesus accomplished on the cross—the thing for which the eternal Son of God became incarnate and was crucified—was substituting Himself for His people in order to atone for their sins. Anselm’s treatment of substitutionary atonement captures the essence of the biblical teaching on the atonement and set the standard for theologians through the Reformation and down to our own day.

There have been, however, numerous theologians who have challenged Anselm’s work and leveled attacks on the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Some of these attacks have been quite forthright and others more subversive. While Anselm focused on the objective nature of the atonement, Peter Abelard—the medieval French scholastic theologian and philosopher—gave primacy to a subjective understanding of the atonement. Abelard taught that Jesus’ death on the cross was chiefly exemplary, “functioning primarily as an example of obedience to the will of God, or of Divine love, which inspires a response in the human heart of love for God that transforms the person.”[1] Throughout the medieval period of the church, the Anselmic and the Abelardian understandings of the death of Jesus stood as the two competing views.

In the late nineteenth century, the German theologians Friedrich Schleiermacher and Albrecht Ritschl challenged the classical Anselmian doctrine of substitutionary atonement. What Jesus accomplished on the cross was, for Schleiermacher, nothing other than the mystical union of Christ and believers, effecting reconciliation. It was not that the Son of God satisfied God’s demands in the place of sinners, but that He “suffered with us in priestly compassion, and upheld his holiness and blessedness down into the deepest sorrow, even to death on the cross.”[2]

Ritschl went further by suggesting that “what Jesus achieved by his moral obedience was not some effect in God—a change of God from being angry to being gracious—nor did he bring about the redemption of believers from Satan’s power or from death. On the contrary, what he obtained was that all who, like Christ, make God’s will their own may in communion with him lay aside the sense of guilt, unbelief, distrust.”[3] Liberal theologians and pastors have followed the lead of Schleiermacher and Ritschl in rejecting the satisfaction of God’s demands on sin and sinners provided in substitutionary atonement and embracing a variety of “theories” that might stand in the place of the Anselmian understanding.

In 1930, Gustaf Aulén, professor of theology at the University of Lund in Sweden, delivered a series of lectures that were later published under the title Christus Victor. Aulén took issue with Anselm’s conclusions, particularly Anselm’s rejection of the idea of Christus Victor—that Jesus paid a ransom to the devil when He hung on the cross. Aulén was zealously seeking to undermine Protestant theology, going so far as trying to intimate that Martin Luther held to a Christus Victor view of the atonement. Aulén ultimately appealed to such early church theologians as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa to substantiate his contention that Christ paid a ransom to the devil on the cross.

Interestingly, Anselm gave considerable treatment to the claim that Jesus had to pay the devil in order to free men from his power. Toward the close of Cur Deus homo, he explained: “As God owed nothing to the devil but punishment, so man must only make amends by conquering the devil as man had already been conquered by him. But whatever was demanded of man, he owed to God and not to the devil.”[4]

Anselm was, of course, referring to the victory that Christ gained over Satan as the representative of His people. In this, we see that Anselm believed that what Jesus accomplished on the cross was more than simply substitutionary atonement. This is instructive, as Protestants have sometimes mistakenly reduced what Jesus accomplished in His death on the cross to the work of substitutionary atonement alone.

However, Anslem was most interested in keeping the substitutionary nature of Jesus’ death at the forefront of the understanding of the atonement. He wrote, “Without satisfaction, that is, without voluntary payment of the debt, God can neither pass by the sin unpunished, nor can the sinner attain that happiness, or happiness like that, which he had before he sinned; for man cannot in this way be restored, or become such as he was before he sinned.”[5]

No matter how many voices tempt us to move away from the truth of the substitutionary atonement of Christ—either by explicit or implicit teaching—we must hold firmly to it as the central dimension of the cross. In the next post, we will consider in more detail the biblical teaching on the doctrine of substitutionary atonement and how it satisfies God’s just demands.

Notes

1. Steven R. Cartwright, Abelard’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 44n175. 
2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, Sin and Salvation in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006), 353. 
3. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 3:354–55. 
4. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo (Oxford, England: John Henry and James Parker, 1865), 112. 
5. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 42. 

Why Is the Substitutionary Atonement Essential?

by Nick Batzig

[Rev. Nicholas T. Batzig is senior pastor of Church Creek Presbyterian in Charleston, S.C.

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series and was first published on June 8, 2018.]

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, a number of prominent leaders in the emerging church movement asserted that the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is tantamount to “cosmic child abuse.” At a time when men and women were finally starting to see the need to condemn every form of abuse that had been tolerated in our culture, the allegation seemed to be a powerful argument with which to drive people away from the longstanding teaching of the Christian church on the sufferings of Christ. The question of the atonement is not, however, settled by aspersions cast by contemporary theologians but by biblical exegesis and theological coherence.

While Jesus frequently taught His disciples about the certainty and necessity of His death on the cross (Matt. 16:21; Mark 8:31; Luke 9:22; 17:25; 22:22), He only explicitly tied those aspects of His death on the cross to its meaning on three occasions—in Mark 10:45, in the Good Shepherd discourse (John 10), and at the institution of the Lord’s Supper (Luke 22:19–20). In these places, Jesus taught the substitutionary nature of His death for the forgiveness of the sins of His people.

When we move from the Gospels to the Epistles, an explicit articulation of the substitutionary nature of the death of Christ appears. When one considers the many instances in which the Apostles explain the death of Christ, it is incontrovertible that the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is the Apostolic doctrine of the atonement. In what is perhaps the clearest exposition of the death of Christ, the Apostle Paul teaches the vicarious sacrifice of the Savior when he declares, “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 Cor. 5:21). Likewise, the Apostle Peter explained that Jesus “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24).

Behind the Apostolic interpretation of the death of the Savior is the Old Testament teaching on the atonement. The prophet Isaiah, in speaking of the Suffering Servant, foretold of the sufferings that Jesus would undergo in the place of His people: “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). All of Israel’s prophets alluded to the substitutionary nature of the work of the Redeemer when they spoke of the work of redemption. This, of course, also has its foundation in the nature of Old Testament sacrifice.

In his Reformed Dogmatics, Herman Bavinck explains the significance of the old covenant sacrificial system for seeking to understand the sacrifice of Christ:

The New Testament views Christ’s death as a sacrifice and the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrificial cult. He is the true covenant sacrifice; just as the old covenant was confirmed by the covenant sacrifice (Ex. 24:3–11), so the blood of Christ is the blood of the new covenant (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Heb. 9:13f.). Christ is a sacrifice (θυσια, זֶבַח), the sacrificial victim for our sins (Eph. 5:2; Heb. 9:26; 10:12), an offering (προσφορα, δωρον; מִנְחָה קָרְבָּן; Eph. 5:2; Heb. 10:10, 14, 18); a ransom (λυτρον, ἀντιλυτρον; Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45; 1 Tim. 2:6) and therefore denoting the price of release, a ransom to purchase someone’s freedom from prison, and hence a means of atonement, a sacrifice by which to cover other people’s sin and so to save them from death. He is a payment (τιμη, 1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23; 1 Peter 1:18–19), the price paid for the purchase of someone’s freedom; a sin offering that was made to be sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 John 2:2; 4:10); the paschal lamb that was slain for us (John 19:36; 1 Cor. 5:7), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and is slain to that end (John 1:29, 36; Acts 8:32; 1 Peter 1:19; Rev. 5:6; etc.). He is an expiation (ἱλαστηριον, Rom. 3:25), a sacrifice of atonement (θυμα), a curse (καταρα, Gal. 3:13) who took over from us the curse of the law, like the serpent in the wilderness lifted high on the cross (John 3:14; 8:28; 12:33) and like a grain of wheat dying in the earth in order thus to bear much fruit (John 12:24).[1]

What’s in a Preposition?

When I was in seminary, I had a professor who would tell the students that the most important parts of speech when studying the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek are the pronouns, conjunctions, and prepositions. The doctrine of the substitutionary atonement is seen most clearly in the Scriptural use of the prepositions associated with the death of Christ. For instance, in Galatians 2:20, the Apostle Paul says, “The Son of God . . . loved me and gave Himself for me.” When Jesus teaches His disciples about His forthcoming death, He says, “The Son of Man did come not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Geerhardus Vos explains the importance of understanding these prepositions:

Besides ὑπέρ, ἀντί also appears, which always means “in the place of” (Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45). Obviously, ἀντί in no way excludes ὑπέρ. That Christ gave Himself as a substitute for His own is not only well understandable along with the fact that He gave Himself for their benefit but also directly includes the latter consideration . . . in more than one place ὑπέρ itself has the full force of ἀντί (cf. 2 Cor. 5:20–21; Philem. 13; 2 Cor. 5:14). Here, too, we again have the same result: What Christ did as priest, He did as the substitutionary Surety of believers and, precisely for that reason, did before God and not toward man.[2]

A Willing Sacrifice

On one occasion, Jesus explained the nature of His death under the figure of the shepherd laying down his life for the sheep. In that discourse, Jesus taught that His forthcoming death was voluntary. He said: “I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:17–18). He went on to say that He had received the command to lay down His life for the sheep from His Father. However, the perfect harmony that He had with His Father was manifested in His laying down His life for His people of His own accord. It is for this reason that any insistence of divine child abuse must be rejected wholesale. The Son of God eternally loved His own and willingly laid down His life for His people in order to save them from the eternal wrath of God.

Whatever other dimensions belong to the work of Christ crucified, on this much we must be settled: The principal work of Jesus on the cross was atoning for the sins of His people by standing in their place and bearing the consequences and judgment of their sins. Jesus was constituted a sinner—though without any sin of His own—by the imputation of the sins of God’s people to His own person so that He might bear that sin in His body on the tree and receive the just punishment for those sins. In doing so, Jesus atones for the sins of all those for whom He died, removing their guilt and providing the basis of forgiveness for their sin. When we come to understand this in our hearts, we sing: “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood. Sealed my pardon with his blood. Hallelujah! What a Savior!”

Notes

1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, Sin and Salvation in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006), 338–39. 
2. Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 3, Christology, eds. and trans. Richard B. Gaffin, Jonathan Pater, Allan Janssen, Harry Boonstra, Roelof van Ijken (Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham, 2014), 100. 

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