*This blog is part of an annual series I do that explores a facet of Christ’s atonement that we remember every Good Friday.

God’s Justice
God, the King, is a great Lawgiver and Judge. His moral law is summarized in the 10 commandments or the Great Commandment. Because He is perfect, His Law is perfect. Because He is eternal, His law is weighty. The penalty of breaking God’s Law was death (Gen 2:15).

Our Injustice
God required of Adam perfect obedience to His Covenant and Law (Gen 2:15). However, Adam broke God’s Law (Gen 3), and as our representative, placed all of mankind under God’s just judgement for sin, which is death. This is why we are spiritually dead and physically dying. Not only do we inherit Adam’s guilt (Ro 5) but we all, daily, in our thoughts, words and deed, break God’s Law—we coopt into sin every day (Ro 3:23; Ro 6:23a). Try as we may to satisfy or meet the Law’s demands, we’ve broken it and in our sinfulness can do nothing worthy of satisfying it (Isa 64:6). As the hymn writer, Augustus Toplady, wrote, “Not the labours of our hands, can fulfill the law’s demands.” As a result, humans are without hope staring down an eternal death sentence.

God’s Justification
While God would have been perfectly just to sentence us to death, in His great kindness He offered His Son to do the work of satisfaction that sinners could not do so that we might be forgiven and know life.

On the Cross Jesus said, “It is finished!” (Jn 19:30). What is ‘it’? What is ‘finished’? ‘It’ refers to Christ’s work of satisfaction and ‘finished’ refers to its completion or being satisfied. Remember, mankind is under God’s just sentence of death because of our lawlessness.

Christ satisfied the Law’s demands by dying a sinner’s death. He ‘fulfilled the Law’s demands.’ He did this positively by living the perfect life (so that His righteousness might be applied to us) but also passively by dying the perfect death. Jesus satisfied or expiated[1] God’s justice.  In theology this is called penal satisfaction or expiation.

This is clearly seen in Mk 10:45, which says Jesus, ‘gave His life as a ransom for many.’ Jesus offered a ransom (payment) to the Father to satisfy divine justice. The old Baptist confession says, ‘[He] has fully satisfied the justice of God.’ (1689.8.5). So perfectly did Jesus’s merits do this that there is an abundance of His merits to share. Another old confession says,  ‘This death of God’s Son is the only and entirely complete sacrifice and satisfaction for sins; it is of infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world.’ (Dort 2.3.). The Bible refers to this as ‘the unsearchable riches of Christ’ (Eph 2:8–9) or the treasury of Christ. This gift is freely offered to sinners (Ro 6:23b).
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Our Justification
How can we receive these riches so that we may be justified? By repentance and faith or turning and trusting (Mk 1:15). We must call upon the name of the Lord—casting ourselves upon His mercy in faith—in order to be saved. To be saved from the penalty of sin means to be justified (declared just vs. unjust). This we must do by faith (Gal 2:16).  In justification the merit of our sin is credited (or imputed) to Christ’s account; and Christ’s justness is credited to our account. This is called the ‘sweet exchange.,’ the result of which is that we are no longer under the sentence of death and so forgiven to know life!


[1] Expiation means a payment that rescues from a penalty; or removes the guilt of sin through punishment. 

Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? (Lk 24:26)
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The darkness of Good Friday can be difficult to swallow. Understanding why it was necessary, to use Jesus’ own words, is helpful to move from a foul stench to a pleasing aroma.

Jesus’ death was necessary for a few basic reasons:

1. To demonstrate God’s love and justice; how they met with a kiss. In other words it enabled God to extend grace without compromising His justice or holiness.
2. To propitiate God’s wrath toward our sin (turn wrath into favour).
3. Because the wages of sin is death (Ro 6:23a). If God was to show us mercy, then someone would have to pay the penalty our sin deserved.
4. It was also necessary because sin itself needed to be atoned for. We are guilty. Jesus the innocent, took the place of guilty sinners so that we could be pardoned.
5. So that Christ’s perfect obedience in His life, would not only allow Him to be a perfect sacrifice, but impute His righteous perfect to our account. Not only is the believer forgiven, they are declared righteous.

Why the Cross? Love, Justice, appeasement, substitute, pardon, righteousness and more. This is why it was necessary for Jesus to die on the Cross to make atonement. 

What precisely happened on the Cross? The momentous events surrounding it like the darkness, the earthquake, etc, all point to the fact that something of cosmic significance took place.

We call what happened on the Cross the atonement, what Christ did in His life, and ultimately His death, that earned the believer’s salvation. Put another way, what He did to enable sinners to become right with their Creator (at-one-ment, the act of making someone at one with someone else).

The atonement, because of the infinite criminality of our sin against a holy God, has a certain wonderful multifacetedness to us. Not only does it have a depth but a breadth. This is borne out by the number of different pictures of the atonement that Scripture uses to convey just what transpired on that day. Knowing these helps us contemplate the wonder of the Cross.
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* Moral Example: I don’t include this in the numeric list because this is less what Jesus accomplished and more the example He set. Nevertheless, in His death, Christ did set an example for us of self-sacrificial service. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. (1 Pet 2:21).

1. Sacrifice: The act of giving up something to gain something else. Christ gave up His life in order to gain salvation for us. He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Heb 9:26).
2. Reconciliation: A relational word. Through sin our relationship with God was severed, broken. Through Christ’s death He restored that relationship for the believer so we might be called friends of God (Jn 15). All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself (2 Cor 5:18a).
3. Redemption: Slave language. The act of buying or purchasing someone out of slavery. The believer was in bondage to sin, but faith in Christ releases us because He paid the price. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb. (Rev 14:4).
4. Ransom: A ransom of is usually paid to someone to release a hostage. Great controversy has debated whether Christ paid that ransom to Satan, but no, Christ owed Satan nothing, the ransom was paid to God so the believer might be released. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mk 10:45)
5. Healing: Sin is like contracting a deadly disease. Christ's death is the cure or the medicine. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. (1 Pet 2:24).
6. Washing: Sinning against God, we became stained, dirty, unholy. Jesus’ blood cleanses, or washes the believer. “What can wash away my sin, nothing but the blood of Jesus.” Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! (Ps 51:2).
7. Honour/Shame: The Ancient Near East, as the Middle East is today, was an honour and shame culture. We were created to honour God with our lives, but in sinning we dishonoured Him, thus bringing shame upon ourselves.  Through His death Jesus enabled the disgraced one’s honour to be restored. “Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.” (Isa 54:4).
8. Propitiation: This means a sacrifice that turns God’s wrath [just anger] toward sin into favour. Because Jesus bore God’s wrath, God’s wrath passes over the believer. Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. (Ro 3:24b–25a).
9. Penal: Legal speak. That because we’d broken the Law of God, we were legally guilty of a penalty, a punishment. Jesus stood in the believer’s place to bear God justice against crime.

In all these things Jesus was the believer’s substitute, which accomplished a variety of different things to enable us to become at one with God. Captivated by this Isaac Watts wrote the hymn, When I survey, which has been adapted by Chris Tomlin that includes the chorus, O the Wonderful Cross…