Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
NT Framework - Depth of Atonement
It's time for us to move beyond our understanding of the work of the cross as a simple ransom or covering of sin; It's deeper than our wildest dreams. A full legal restoration of our relationship with the only perfect, non-created being.
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament framework. Today, the full lesson from Jeremy Thomas. Here's a hint of what's to come.
SPEAKER_01:By the way, this answers one of the most complicated passages in the Old Testament, Leviticus 40 to 40. I'm sorry, Ezekiel 40 to 48. There's not 40 chapters in Leviticus. Ezekiel 40 to 48, which talks about sacrifices in a millennial temple. Remember that passage? I mean, you've got eight chapters. Many of those chapters talk about atonement being made during the Messianic kingdom as offered by the priests. And this has been a trouble spot for many believers. What why are there millennial sacrifices? Christ is the final sacrifice for sin. Why do we have these millennial sacrifices?
SPEAKER_00:It's so easy to have a simple view of the cross. To look back at what Jesus did and think He saved me. He did what was necessary to save me. That's absolutely true. And yet there's so much depth to the things that Christ accomplished on the cross. Far more than an accovering for sin, far more than a ransom paid, far more than any sort of free gift given to us. The depth of what occurred and the ramifications of what happened are so deep and moving. How can we not fall upon our knees and thank God for the beauty of what his son accomplished? Today Jeremy's going to cover just a few of the things. And they should amaze you and cause you to worship.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, the doctrine of atonement. I want to talk a little bit about this word first. Then what we'll do is ask the basic question what is the nature of the atonement, or what did Christ accomplish on the cross? And then I want to take you through four views down through church history in the process of the development of this doctrine as Christians throughout the centuries have studied and attempted to unravel the meaning and nature of the atonement. The reason I will take you through some church history is to because there needs to be some respect in our modern day for the process that the Spirit took the church through in terms of our understanding of the New Testament writings as they built upon the Old Testament writings. And it's not like people just woke up after the New Testament was written and they had all this clarity of doctrine that we have today. It took centuries of men searching the scriptures and trying to understand to develop the real clear doctrinal articulations that we have today. The other reason I want to take you through these four views in church history is because what's interesting about them is that all four views have elements of truth, but only one is the truth in whole. So it's it's this is common actually. I think sometimes when we hear a perspective, a perspective on a certain doctrine that we disagree with, we we say, well, that's wrong. Whereas sometimes in these views there are truths. But in the end, the way they've organized all the ideas, it's not true. But you can accept parts of it. And I think it's in those parts we want to accept that. We want to understand that truth because it's true. Um, so in this sense, what I'm saying is not always to throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? Um, I may not be a Calvinist, but there are certain Calvinist teachings that are true. See, that's what I mean. Um but at any rate, um, that's why I want to take you through these four views because each one of them does have a truth to it. So the doctrine of the atonement, first, let's just talk a little bit about the word. And I don't, yeah, I made a slide for this. You know probably as well as I do that when someone talks about atonement, the first thing that everybody thinks about is the idea that in the Old Testament the sins were covered. How many have ever heard that view? Have you heard that idea? That, you know, they offered this animal sacrifice and the sin was covered until what? Until Christ came and took it all away. I'm I'm here to tell you that view is wrong, first of all. I'm just gonna state it bluntly. That's not correct. That's not that is based on an older uh Hebrew lexical meaning of the term uh to uh kipper, okay, the Hebrew kipper, uh, from which we get the atonement seat, the mercy seat, you know, atonement, that word, and so forth. So that's the most common uh view. Now that view assumes something. It assumes, and this is actually a deadly assumption. I consider this to be the most deadly assumption of the word, uh, that animal sacrifices in the Old Testament function in the same spiritual sphere as Christ's sacrifice. Now, if that's the case, of course, they did not atone for people's sins or for bring forgiveness, did they? Because that would mean you're saved by animal sacrifices, right? If those sacrifices were functioning in the spiritual sphere or spiritual cleanliness, spiritual forgiveness, then that would mean that you could be saved by animal sacrifices in the Old Testament. And that's just not true, is it? So that's the deadly assumption of this idea, of this uh covering thing, or covering idea of atonement. Um, the these animal sacrifices, I'm gonna just ask you a question, and it may be controversial because people have ideas, but did the Old Testament animal sacrifices atone for sin? Yes or no? 100% yes every single time. And it says this all over your Old Testament, it says it every time in the Old Testament, every single time it says that they were atoned for. Now that creates uh a problem in a lot of people's mind. But again, it's because it's under the assumption that it was functioning in the same spiritual sphere that Christ's sacrifice functioned in, and that is patently false. It is biblically stated to be false. That's why I'm taking you through the word. Now, let's go to um the second meaning here, which is the actual more accurate meaning. This word means to, kipper means to smear or to so as to cleanse, to smear so as to cleanse. It's the idea that when the animal sacrifice was brought, it cleansed the offering, offerer, I'm sorry, and brought ceremonial cleanliness or forgiveness in the physical sphere. You picked up impurities bodily under the Old Testament Mosaic legislation. And because you picked up these ceremonial bodily impurities, you could not be in the presence of God who dwelt in the physical temple, right? That's why you couldn't go there without sacrifice, because God is holy, and here you have ceremonial impurities on your physical flesh that you picked up, and that barred you from being in his presence, okay? So therefore, the offerer would, for these purposes, have sacrificed, animal sacrifice, in order to cleanse so they could be in the presence of God who dwelled in the temple. Now, he doesn't dwell in the physical temple today, does he? Where does he dwell? In us, spiritual temples, right? This you'll see is the difference. Okay, now that Christ has come, there's going to be a difference in his sacrifice and the sphere in which it is applicable for our salvation, so that he can dwell in us, okay? Um, so that's where we're going with all this. But let's look at Leviticus 17, and then we'll go back to Leviticus 4. And then we'll go to Hebrews to show you that this is uh even exactly what Hebrews 9 says explicitly. There's a physical sphere for the animal sacrifice, there's a spiritual sphere for what Christ was doing. Leviticus 17. And I've taken you this before earlier in discussing sacrifice in this series just a few weeks ago. Remember, 1711, the life of the flesh is where? In the blood, okay? And I've given it to you on the altar to make what? To make atonement. It's there for what? To make atonement. Does it do that? Well, yeah, that's what it's for. That's what it was happening in the Old Testament, okay? Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, No person among you may eat blood, nor may any alien who sojourns among you eat blood. So when any man from the sons of Israel or from the aliens who sojourns among them in hunting catches a beast or a bird which may be eaten, he shall pour out its blood and cover it with the earth. Why? Well, because the life is in the blood, and so you would pour out the blood and cover it with the earth, because the blood belonged to God. And therefore the hunter was not supposed to consume it. Or verse 14, the life of all flesh, its blood, the life is the is the blood, with its life. Therefore I said to the sons of Israel, you are not to eat the blood of any flesh, for the life of all flesh is its blood. Whoever eats it shall be cut off. Alright, so it was somewhat serious, right? Well, let's read on a little bit so we see more. When any verse 15, when any person eats an animal which dies or is torn by beasts, whether he is a native or an alien, he shall wash his clothes and bathe in water. What did I say earlier about certain sacrifices being related to uncleanliness of the body, physical, which barred you from being in the presence of God? I said that, right? Because uniquely in the Old Testament, you have God indwelling in the tabernacle and later the temple, and you had to go up to Jerusalem or to the tabernacle, right, in order to worship. Now, do we have to do that now? Do we have to go to Jerusalem? Do we have to bring sacrifice? Do we have to make this annual journey? No. Remember what Jesus said? There is coming a day when neither here or there will you worship, you know, this mount or that mount, you worship God, but all men will worship me in spiritual truth, right? Just wherever you are. Why? Because the temple's in you. You don't have to go to it. It's in you, right? So things have changed with the death of Christ. But in the Old Testament, you had to go. And you couldn't go into God's presence if you had physical impurities. And that's what it's saying here. You're unclean. You have to do this ritual of going through washing the clothes and bathing in water and remain unclean until evening, then you will become clean. So there's different procedures for ceremonial purity in the Old Testament. This one did not require sacrifice, but others did. Let's go back to chapter 4, Leviticus chapter 4, which also speaks about atonement. Chapter 4 and verse 20. It's talking about bringing a bull and what the priest will do and so forth, how he cuts up the animal, what is offered, and so forth. And then in chapter 4, verse 20, he the priest, the priest shall also do with the bull, just as he did with the bull of the sin offering, thus he shall do with it. So the priest shall make atonement for them, and they will be what? You can say it. It's okay because the Bible says it. It's just that modern you know theology hasn't quite clearly dealt with it all the time. So the priest is going to make atonement for them with this bull of the sin offering, and the individual will be uh forgiven. Um that's what I'm saying. They they were forgiven, but this forgiveness relates to ceremonial impurities that the offerer had brought. It was physical impurities, it was not providing for their spiritual well-being or spiritual salvation. That's something that only Christ could do. Right? Does everybody agree with that? Well, let's go see if the author of Hebrews agrees with that. Hebrews chapter 6. On the way, as we go, I'll mention that the first usage of this word kipper atonement is with respect to the ark, Noah's Ark. You remember that after they built the ark, they put a pitch on the external surface of the ark to waterproof it, right? We don't know exactly what this substance was. We think of something like a tar or something like that, bitumen. Whatever it was, though, it was smeared. See, it was smeared on the ark so as to signify that all its inhabitants were cleansed. It is our for first idea or picture of what atonement will do. Okay, that it will cleanse those who are smeared, so to speak. Okay, and the ark was smeared, so those within it were cleansed before God. Everything outside the ark was uncleansed, right, and therefore destroyed. Um Hebrews chapter 9, did I say? Yeah, 913. Notice the distinction of sphere between the physical sphere here and the spiritual sphere, and that what was happening in the Old Testament with the animal sacrifices in the physical sphere was foreshadowing what the Messiah would do for us in the spiritual sphere, so he could come dwell in us, and we could become the temple. 9 13. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling, those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the what? Flesh. These sacrifices in the Old Testament had to do with cleansing the flesh for ceremonial purity purposes, because God dwelt among them in the tabernacle or temple, and you couldn't go up in that condition and live. You would be killed. How much more, verse 14, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Now, this then, Christ's sacrifice, is functioning in a different sphere. It's not for the flesh, it's for the cleansing of the conscience, which is an aspect of the human spirit. Right? So his sacrifice is functioning in the spiritual sphere, not in the same sphere as the animal sacrifices. Because under the Old Testament, nobody was saved by animal sacrifices. Right? Of course not. Um, but these sacrifices did picture what it would take to be in God's presence eternally. We would have to be cleansed both bodily, ultimately through resurrection, right? And spiritually through regeneration, so that we can be with God forever. So the meaning of atonement then is really to smear so as to cleanse. The Old Testament sacrifices look forward to this because they were actually atoning for people's sins and providing forgiveness that in the sense that it cleansed them from their physical impurities so they could enjoy ceremonial fellowship with God at the tabernacle or temple. But they all looked forward to or foreshadowed a sacrifice of the Messiah who would provide spiritual cleansing so that he could actually come and dwell in us. Okay? So I know this is a little different than what you've ever heard before, probably. But I've I have taught it since probably 2005. But anyway, it's such a new concept in our generation that people typically have trouble grasping it at first. But that's normal, that's normal, it just takes time. Um by the way, this answers one of the most complicated passages in the Old Testament, Leviticus 40 to 40. I'm sorry, Ezekiel 40 to 48. There's not 40 chapters in Leviticus. Uh Ezekiel 40 to 48, which talks about sacrifices in a millennial temple. Remember that passage? I mean, you've got eight chapters. Many of those chapters talk about atonement being made during the Messianic kingdom as offered by the priests. And this has been a trouble spot for many believers. What why are there millennial sacrifices? Christ is the final sacrifice for sin. Why do we have these millennial sacrifices? See? Well, they're functioning in a different sphere. Again, they have to do with the fact that God is now dwelling on earth again with men in a physical temple. So all the nations have to go up, right, annually to worship the Lord for a thousand years. If they're going to go up and they picked up, we're talking about mortals, mortal people going up. And if they picked up ceremonial impurities, physical contaminations of the flesh, which bar them from being in that proximity to God, they will have to have sacrifice offered. Okay, it doesn't have anything to do with their eternal salvation. That's always by grace through faith and the finished work of Jesus Christ. That's that's a give, should be a given. Um, but there are other purposes for these sacrifices. And by the way, they're not going to be returning to the Mosaic law, so that's different. They're going to be under the New Covenant. But the New Covenant also has provisions that in this sense are similar and teach us about the sphere. So it resolves all of that. That all falls into place. If you want to read more about this, I would encourage reading something like Jerry Hollinger's articles on uh animal sacrifice and so forth in atonement, kippur, and all that. It's all very interesting stuff. So understand atonement. Now, now when we go to the New Testament, what the New Testament, guess what? The New Testament never uses a Greek equivalent for the Hebrew Kippur. Never. There's not one use of a Greek word for atonement. It doesn't exist. What happens when you come to the New Testament is it breaks the Old Testament concepts of atonement into three ideas. Some say four, but ideas, redemption, reconciliation, and propitiation. And you know all those words. Um and some people say the fourth would be expiation. They would separate it from propitiation and say it's doing something else. So we'll talk about those words next week as the New Testament does. But what we want to do is we want to say, okay, we we're pretty, are we all pretty confident that Christ made an atonement on the cross? Yeah, I think we're all pretty confident in that, even though there's not a Greek word for that. It's described these other ways, like his redemption, that reconciliation work, his propitiation work. Um, so we want to fill that out and ask the question, well, what did it accomplish? What is the core of what Christ accomplished on the cross? Whatever he accomplished on the cross, it has to meet the requirement of the justice of God. That's what we've been harping on for the last four or five weeks. God's justice, we've said, is inextricably linked to blood sacrifice. You know, man offended God by sending in Adam, and they brought immediately fig leaves, right? They went the vegetation route. Adam and Eve did, and that wasn't acceptable, right? So God took a lamb and he slit its throat and he literally cleaned the animal right there in front of them, and then he took the skins, and this is the first uh leather clothes that anybody wore. So it wasn't invented by people who ride Harley Davidson. Um, leather clothing was invented by God, and he clothed them, and this was saying, No, you can't come to me by way of vegetation, plants, because plants don't have life in them, they don't have blood, so they don't have life. Animals do have blood, so he was signifying um that atonement requires the sacrifice of something living, right? Or the lamb was dying for Adam and Eve, of course. It was a picture. Okay, now so there are two ways then people have tried to come to God essentially, um, through nature in the sense of vegetation, life, plants, and so forth, and then of course, through sacrifice of uh living animals. Um, so whatever happened on the cross, it has to fit into this idea that God's justice was being satisfied by the offering of a person who shed their blood. And we know that. That's well, but not everybody does in Christian circles. So it has to be said. Now, there's a history again of how this doctrine developed. James Orr wrote the book, Progress of Dogma. Just an interesting book to see that down through church history, as men study the Bible, the Holy Spirit is teaching as we study, right? We walk in fellowship, we study the word, and he teaches, but it does, he doesn't teach it all at one time, is what we've discovered. But he's done it over the corridors of church history. So uh charte this out, like the way that you can see the doctrine develop. In the first three centuries, the church was focusing on Christology, Christ. Who is Christ? They knew that there's only one God, but the problem is that you've got the Father. This is very clear in the New Testament. You've got the Father, and we know He's God, and then you've got Christ, and there's so many indications in the New Testament that He's God too. So they thought, well, how can this be if you've only one God, but you've got the Father and you've got the Son, right? So they tried to sort that out for 300 years, and they did. And they formulated this at a council and developed it. Then they had, well, there's also this person in the New Testament called the Holy Spirit, and he's also God. So how do we articulate this? It wasn't much harder, it only took about another 60 years. By 389, they had that sorted out. Then they were like, okay, so we've got one God, three persons. How do these all work together? And by 451 AD, they sorted it out in what we call the Trinity. Okay. So you can see this is taking time. We've got Christology, we've got pneumatology, now we've got Trinitarianism. And then you go into the period when Roman Catholicism, under allegorical interpretation of the Bible, began to rise. And for about a thousand years, you don't see a lot of development. But there is one figure in this period that we're going to look at in a few moments who did make some good contributions. Um by the time you get to um now, by the way, this is the middle, we call this the Middle Ages, not the dark ages. Um, who do you think called it the dark ages? What comes after after the so-called Dark Ages? What period? The Enlightenment, right? This was a humanistic movement. Okay, they were they were saying, oh, well, human reason is ultimate. And so what'd they do to what was technically the Middle Ages? They looked back and they dubbed that the Dark Ages. Because that was when, you know, there was just religion and stupid people and uh things like that. By the way, though, did anything good come out of the Middle Ages? Well, sure. Hospitals, schools, well, you know, help taking care of the needy and the poor. These were all things that the church developed. I mean, humanists and pagans didn't develop that stuff. So there are good things that came out of the Middle Ages, but you'll the history you get today is contaminated because people will call it the Dark Ages, and that's to be an attack on Christianity in any of its forms. Okay. You know, the crusades and all that. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, some good things did come out in the Reformation. You've got some soteriology is developed, justification by faith, right? That's clarified. And then you enter into a period in the 1800s where what we call eschatology or prophecy began to really get worked out. So there's a progress, see? Christology, pneumatology, trinitarianism, soteriology, and then last thing. Which does kind of indicate that if we're now developing last things and have been for 200 years, we may be close to those last things. You know, what else would there be to develop? Most of theology has been developed very carefully. And so we may be uh close to the end of all that. But and the church age may be almost over. Okay, but in the midst of this, in the Middle Ages, there is the development of a doctrine of atonement that I will point out under a man named Anselm. Okay, A-N-S-E-L-M. Anselm. But before Anselm developed, I want to show you what for 1100 years most Christians believed about the atonement. It was a ransom. Jesus Christ was paying a ransom to Satan for Satan to release the human race who was held captive to him. That was the prevailing view of what Christ was doing on the cross. He was making a payment to Satan. For 1,100 years, that's what most Christians believe. Really? For 1,100 years. Lots of people had Bibles and read Bibles and they didn't figure out the atonement. So God, their idea is that Adam and Eve sold the human race over to the devil. God set a trap then with the cross. This is interesting. God set a trap with the cross. So that the devil would fall into that trap, right, and accept Christ's blood as a ransom. You've actually already seen this if you've read the Narnia Chronicle. C.S. Lewis? This is his view of the atonement. By the way, C.S. Lewis had a lot of very unorthodox doctrine. He believed in universalism, that everybody be saved, things like that. He believed some of the Psalms were not inspired. So as wonderful as he is pronounced to be, you know, in mere Christianity, the greatest Christian book and all this stuff. Really not. But um he had a lot of very unorthodox views. This is one of them. He held to the ransom theory of the substitutionary blood, of the blood atonement of Christ. It wasn't a substitution, it was a trick. Remember the white witch thought she had Aslan, right? By killing him on the what was the rock, whatever. Yeah, the table. And then, you know, since she fell into the trap, and then she finds out, oh God, he rose. Uh-oh, I'm in trouble, you know. Now, does God set traps? I mean, is this this does cast some shadow on God's character, as maybe he's a deceiver, maybe, in that he set a trap for Satan to fall into. Um, this view is also somewhat revolting since the devil could not have a just claim on the human race, and God somehow had to meet the devil's demand. God is somehow uh required, you know, to appease Satan, and he does that through Christ. So you can see this view has some really strange things to it that probably don't gel too well in your mind with what is accurate or true. But it does have a true part. There's some there's some truth to this. It's true that a ransom price was paid. Matthew 20, 28. Let's look at Matthew 20, 28. This word ransom is is definitely used, Lutron or anti-Lutron. Um Matthew 20, 28. Jesus said this. We'll just read 26 to 28, because I like to emphasize that a couple things here about Christ and what it looks like to be Christ-like. Matthew 20, 26. He says, it's not this way among you, but whoever wishes to become great among you, you shall be uh your servant. Um and whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. In other words, how do you become great in the coming kingdom? Well, you become a slave. How do you become greater than all? You become slave of all. Well, you can't do that, but guess who did? Guess who did become slave of all? Christ. And that's verse 28. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. There's the word ransom, right? So a ransom, he was making a ransom or paying a ransom price on the cross. But the question is, to whom was the ransom being made? It's not stated here, but these early theologians said it was being paid to Satan, but truly it was actually being paid to who? God. The payment was being made to God. So we've also got, let's see, 1 Timothy 2. Look at 1 Timothy 2. By the way, all the T books are together, right? 1 2 Thessalonians, 1 2 Timothy, and Titus. Five books all stuck together. All start with T. That makes them easy to find. If you find one, you can find the others. 1 Timothy 2, 5, and 6.
SPEAKER_02:1 Timothy 2, 5 and 6.
SPEAKER_01:For there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for who? Paul. Now we'll get into the extent of the atonement here in the next few weeks. In other words, for whom did Christ die? Did he die for all people, or did he die just for a subset of the human race? And we'll look more at those passages. But he gave himself here as a ransom for all. So there again, ransom. There's a sense in which a ransom price was being paid on the cross, but again, it's not being paid to Satan, it's being paid to God. And the reason is because he's the one who requires the blood, Genesis 9.5. Three times in one verse, Genesis 9 5, it says, I require the blood. It's required. For me, it's required. It's required. So it's not being paid to Satan, it's being paid to God, the one to whom blood was required. But that's the first theory, again, held for 1100 years. Then came a man named Anselm in 1033 to 1109. And toward the end of his career, he was sort of a mystic and a little bit odd, separated a lot from the common people. But he developed what's called the satisfaction theory. And he introduced this in a book called Curdeus Homo, which means why the God man? Why did God become a man or take to himself humanity, right? Why is this individual, the Messiah, come into the world? He said, God's honor was offended by man's sin. Now you'll notice that word honor, that's the key word to his view. Okay, it's a satisfaction, but the problem he says in the garden with Adam and Eve is that they offended God's honor. And restitution of his honor, actually greater restitution or honor, was due. But man can't give it. We cannot give him this honor because we can't do enough good works to restore God's honor. Nevertheless, it has to be provided by human, so it can be on behalf of humans, but he also has to be God, so the payment's valuable enough, and the honor is enough to make it uh satisfy God. And he says this was provided by the sacrifice of the God man. So you see the problem? The problem is, in his view, God's honor was offended in the garden. Man has to give God his due honor, but he can't do that now. But it still has to come from someone in the human race, and yet it has to also be God who gives it, because only then would it be valuable enough to give God back enough honor. Essentially, that's Anselm's view. And therefore, the Messiah had to be God and man. Now, his book is actually more of a justification for the concept of the God-man, like why the Messiah must be God and man, than it is a theory of the atonement, but the two are linked because he has to be God and man to make the atonement and restore God's honor. Okay, so that's his view, and it it has some problems, but it also has some truth to it. Um, it's we should state very clearly, point two, Anselm's satisfaction view was not the penal substitutionary atonement view that we typically think of. That Jesus Christ was paying a price, making a payment. That's not what he was thinking. Okay, um, but rather God's honor was defrauded by the rest of us as mankind, and honor his honor needed to be restored, and Christ's death pays our honor debt. Okay, it's an honor debt. It's not to satisfy God's justice, see, it's about God's honor. So that's a problem. But it is true that Christ did provide satisfaction on the cross. That's why I said you have to go through these views because there's an element of truth in every one. In the ransom theory, Christ did pay a ransom. He just didn't pay to Satan. But it is true he paid a ransom. So we don't throw the view out entirely, we just accept the ransom concept and apply it where it should be applied. Same thing here. There's a satisfaction that was made on the cross. We would say it just what he's not just satisfying in order to provide honor, he's satisfying God's justice. He's satisfying God's justice. But the satisfaction aspect is true. Um turn to 1 John 2, 2. Because see that there's there's truth in this. 1 John 2, verse 2. This is another one that we'll look at when we get into the extent of the atonement. For whom did Christ die? Into verse 1, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he himself is the what? Propitiation. Now that's that's kind of a big word. So this word basically means satisfaction. Sometimes it's a marginal note that'll say satisfaction. He is the propitiation or satisfaction for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. The whole world. So there is a satisfaction truth in what Anselm said, right? It's just errors because his claim is that the satisfaction is directed to restoring God's honor. And our view today is that no, he was he was doing it in order to pay the penalty of sin, to satisfy God's justice. So this view was a significant step forward from the ransom theory that had been held for 1100 years. And uh so, in that sense, it's a good thing. Now, there was a guy born not long after Anselm died. His name was Peter Abelard, and he really did not like Anselm's view. Um so he wrote against it. He was actually kind of a cowboy in a lot of areas, and he lectured on philosophy and theology and um in Europe, and he was always taking opposing views. He was just kind of a contrarian. But um, that's okay if you're right, but if you do it on everything, you're probably not going to be right every time. So Abelard introduced a view called the moral example theory. In other words, what was Christ doing on the cross? He was providing for us a moral example to follow. That we should, you know, be willing to die for our beliefs and so forth and so on. So he claimed that Christ's death was supposed to influence mankind to moral improvement, to morally improve. So when men see Christ's death, it's it's a picture of God's love, and this is supposed to soften our hearts and lead us to repentance and right action as humans. And this was later adopted by the Socinians in the 16th century, and it gave prominence to what we know today in liberal circles, liberal Christianity. Um a lot of churches you go to, they they believe in the moral example theory. They do not believe in the substitutionary blood or penal view of the atonement that we believe in. Okay. But this all started with Peter Abelard. Um his view of the atonement, it says is not directed toward God to satisfy his justice, but the atonement is directed to man to persuade men to right action. Well, I mean, what happens to salvation here? Salvation just becomes the process of you making yourself better, moral improvement, reformation of life, right? Not transformation of life by faith in Jesus Christ, but just living a better life, being inspired by Christ's example to do better. Well, that's not salvation, is it? That's salvation by works, if it's anything. Not salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ. But still, there's a truth to this. It is true that Christ's death is supposed to influence men to believe in him. Right? I mean, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. So, how did God love the world? In that he sent his son to do what? To be raised up on the cross in order to do what? To draw all men to himself. John 12. If I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself. So there is a truth to what Abelard said, right? That the cross is to influence men, not to improvement of life, though, right? It is to influence men to believe in him so they can be given salvation as a free gift, right? So despite some of the problems with his view, we still again want to pull out the idea that, well, indeed, yes, the cross is there to influence men. And if we understand the cross right, it is attractive, right? Because we realize that we're sinners, or as put as Jonathan Edwards said, sinners in the hands of an angry God, right? We're in trouble. We're in trouble, mate, here in Australia. Um, I have to keep you awake, everyone. Um we're in trouble, but what has Christ done on the cross for us? He's taken all our trouble upon himself, right? He's borne the penalty that we owed, and then he offers us his life in exchange if we believe in him. So it's attractive in that sense. We're like, wow, okay, my payment's been made for me. I just have to accept it. I just have to accept it. And it's a free gift. So it does influence us. It also is supposed to influence believers to love one another. Look at 1 John. Well, we're already there, right? 419. 1 John 4.19.
SPEAKER_02:Why do we love others?
SPEAKER_01:We love because he first loved us. Well, what's the preeminent picture of his love for us? For God so loved the world that he gave his unique son. It's the crosswork of Christ. That's the preeminent picture of his love for us. Remember, he didn't he didn't have to die, right? He didn't have any sin. He says, No one can take my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord. And he's the only person in history who decided the exact moment of his death. He says, He said, It is finished, and he breathed his last, and his spirit departed. He chose it. Why? Because he was done doing his work. And so he said, I'm done. Okay, I'm going. And he gave up his spirit. So he didn't have to die, but he showed us his love by giving his life for us, and that's why we love others. That's why we love people who are unlovely. Right? Why? Well, I mean, because God loved them. God loved them so much he sent his own son to pay for their sins. You mean that nasty coworker that I can't stand? And I wish we'd just get fired, and I keep trying to set up so they'll get fired? Yeah, God loved them too. So much that if they were the only human in the world, Christ would have come and died for them. See? That's how much is love. So we love others. See? So there is an example that he laid down that should influence us. So this view does have a truth to it. See, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, can you? You can say, it's wrong. That's not the right view. Yeah, that it is the wrong view. I get it. Right? But the idea that the cross should influence us isn't truth. It should change how we view other people and it should change how we live our lives. But that's still not enough. That's not going to get you to heaven. Just morally improving isn't gonna help that at all. So this view, in a sense, was really a significant step backward for from Anselm because Anselm said, Well, hey, look, God has to be satisfied. And he does. It's just not his honor that needs to be satisfied, it's his justice. So at the time of the Reformation, the penal substitutionary, the fourth view, um, became prominent and it's stuck with us to this day, right? This is a view that we all hold in modern Orthodox conservative churches. So the reformers, 16th century, developed Anselm satisfaction theory. They realized that truth and they clung to it. They saw that Christ died a substitutionary death on the cross to satisfy, there's the word satisfy, God's justice. So we say penal, it's a penal substitutionary theory. Penal is the legal aspect, right? Because it's satisfying God's justice. Substitution means he's doing it in our place, right? We owed God, but Christ is making the payment to satisfy God's justice. And this allows God to justify sinners freely without compromising his own justice. So take a look at Romans 3.26 real quick. Romans 3.26. Well, back up to there's so much in this Bible. Just teach Romans 3 today. But this is really good section 24, 3.24, 3.24, Romans 3.24. Being justified as a gift, see, justification is a gift of God, by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. There's a word we'll look at next week, redemption, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation. There it is, the satisfaction. We'll look at that word too, in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate God's righteousness, because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed. It's talking about the spiritual sphere, right? That Christ was satisfying on the cross for the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just. See, he's got to maintain his justice. He can't compromise. He can't say, well, you know, I'll just set that on the side, backburner for a while, my justice, and I'll just justify people on the basis of I love people. You know, I just really love people. I'd like to be with these people. He can't do that because then his justice is never satisfied. There's this there's this payment that hasn't been made. See, so he's not gonna justify just on the basis of love, so that he would be just and the justifier, the one who has faith in Jesus. See, he doesn't compromise at all. He's just because the penalty's been paid by Christ. So there's no more penalty to be paid. Now he's free to justify anyone who has faith. Because Christ's work has freed him to do that, so to speak, right? So that's the penal substitutionary view. This penal view of the atonement is substitutionary, and it's directed towards satisfying God's justice, not just his honor or something like that. Is this obvious from the Old Testament? We'd say Exodus 12. What is Exodus 12 about? We've been through it in the last few weeks. You know, you got the ten plagues, and then the night of the Passover, they, first Passover, they go out, right? They go out of Egypt. Um, what what the blood of what did they put on the doorpost and lentil? They take that blood. If the angel of death saw it, they'd pass over, right? So was there a substitution being made? Yeah, it was the lamb in substitute for the firstborn son and firstborn of their herds, their flocks. Okay. Isaiah 53.6 is worth looking at. Isaiah 53.6. These are all worth looking at, but the point is to get the point through and see it clearly. Isaiah 53.6. This is one of the passages that say when we do communion, turn in your Bible to this passage. And as we're passing out the elements, just read through this chapter. Okay? Because it says, remember, when we take Lord's Supper, we're supposed to do what? Remember. How do you remember? Well, you read the words and that reminds you of things, right? It's remembering. Isaiah 53, 6. All of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way. Now that's Israel, but by the way, it also applies to the whole human race, right? Every one of us. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. This is 700 years before the Messiah died, but it's prophetic of his the death that he would die. And is that not a substitutionary death? The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. What we owed, he paid, right? That's substitution. Also, verse 12, come down a few verses. Therefore, I will allot him a portion with the great. This is the Messiah. He will divide the booty with the strong, because he poured out himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressor. See, he was bearing our sin. He didn't have any sin of his own to die for, right? He was bearing his own our sin. So it's substitutionary and it's penal. He's paying the price that we'd owed. So the penal view point two here of the atonement says the main issue is the legal penal requirement. That's the fundamental thing that's going on in the cross. So while he did pay a ransom, right? He paid a ransom price. He wasn't paying it to Satan, he was paying it to God. It was to God that it was owed because God requires the blood, the life. Second, it was a satisfaction, right? Anselm said that. It wasn't a satisfaction of God's honor, though. It was a satisfaction of God's justice. Third, it is to influence men, the moral influence view, but not to moral improvement. It's to influence men to believe in Christ. And then for those who have believed in Christ to love as he loved us, see. But the penal view puts all it puts the focal point on the legal aspect. It is the core of the truth. I just don't want the other truths to get lost, see? Those other truths are there. But this view is the core of what is happening on the cross. Okay? The main issue is the legal, penal requirement of God's justice that must be met. Let's look at Galatians 3.13 because we haven't looked at this one in previous weeks. Galatians 3.13. This captures a lot of it, including substitution. Paul says to the Galatians in 3.13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. See, that's the substitutionary thing, right? We were under a curse, but he became a curse for us. Substitution. For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. What, Deuteronomy 21, 21, 2, and 3? That's why we said when the Jews saw him on the cross, what did they think? Oh, he's hanging on a tree. Deuteronomy said that's that he's cursed of God. So Jesus isn't the Messiah, he's the cursed of God. And Jesus said, they don't know what they're doing, didn't he? Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do. They thought he was the cursed of God. Well, he was, because he took our curse on himself on the tree. He wasn't paying for his own curse, he wasn't under the curse, see. Galatians, I'm sorry, uh 2 Corinthians 5.21, and we'll close with this. 2 Corinthians 5.21. What was happening? Did Jesus become a sinner? Did Jesus sin in his life? First of all, did he have uh, well let's back up even further. Did he have a sin nature? No. Because why? Well, because he was virgin born, and it said the child shall be called holy, right? Luke 1.35. So he's born without a sin nature. Now, was he tempted in this world to sin? Yeah, tempted in all things as we, yet without sin, right? Remember, he's impeccable. Now, that qualifies him. He is the only human who's ever walked around his whole life, and he had life in himself that he could give to others, right? So he's not a sinner, right? Now, did he become a sinner on the cross? In other words, were our sins put on him in the sense that he became a sinner? That's what I'm asking. No. They were legally imputed to him. They were legally, he didn't become sin, but our sin was imputed to him. That's what 2 Corinthians 5.21 is saying. He made him who knew no sin sin on our behalf. There's a substitution. Why? So we might become the righteousness of God in him. What happened in this him becoming sin on our behalf is our sin was imputed to him. He paid the penalty for all the sin of the whole human race, including Hitler, Mao, and anybody else who's vilely been a member of the human race. And he paid for all of it, right? Including your sin, my sin, everybody's sin, which is all vile. Nasty, despicable stuff. They can't be in God's presence. He paid for it all in those three dark hours on the cross, right? And when he was done paying for the sin penalty of the whole world, he said what? It's finished. It's finished. That's why it's called good news. The problem is no longer the sin problem between man and God. In fact, in this verse, look at this passage, 518. Here we go. All these things are from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. This is your ministry, my ministry, our ministry. Namely, this that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. See, that's not the problem anymore. He already paid for that. That's paid for. But he's committed to us, it says this word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. This is who we are, right? This is what we're supposed to be doing. As though God were making an appeal through us, we become the vehicles for his appeal. We beg you, he says, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. See, God has already been reconciled to the human race. That's not the problem because Christ solved it. And God is satisfied, He's propitiated, He's good to go. But people aren't reconciled to God. Isn't that what verse 20 says? People aren't reconciled to God. Reconciliation has in view war being taken away, right? If you have two people, let's just say, let's just say something crazy here. Let's say Israel and Hamas decided they were going to reconcile. Never, but anyway, you have war in the background, right? To get past that, there has to be reconciliation. The whole human race was at war with, or is at war with God. God said, Hey, I'm at peace with you. It's been resolved by Christ. And the whole, and everybody who's an unbeliever is still saying, Well, we're still at war with you. We're still at war with you. Those of you who believe, you said, I don't want to be at war with God. I want the peace of God. So I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we have peace with God. We've been reconciled from our we have reconciled ourselves toward Him as well. But the rest of the human race, see, no. They're still at war with God. Now, does that mean they're neutral? Are unbelievers neutral toward God and the things of God and toward Christ? They're at war with God. At war. Psalm 2 was read this previous hour in the teaching on uh Zechariah. Psalm 2 is when that hatred that's inside man explodes, and you see it come out very visually. We don't always see that with people today. You see it sometimes, but their hatred for God. But it's all gonna come out in the future time of difficulty, tribulation, that time, it's in the future. Hatred from God, shaking their fists at God, taking up horses and mounting up to go to war with God. Right? Psalm 2. Um says, let them cast off their cords from us. You know, man wants to be autonomous. Man wants God out of the picture and he wants to do whatever he wants to do. Here's the problem. God gives every man every breath, every moment. You can't you can't live without God. You can't breathe without God, you can't speak a word without God. Van Til used to make. He'd say, um he said he was on a train one day and he saw a little girl and her daddy was holding her. And the little girl slapped her daddy in the face. And he said, he said, gosh, it became a memory I could never put away from me because I realized that people who hate God are like that little girl.
SPEAKER_02:God holds them up to do it.
SPEAKER_01:He gives them every life, every breath, every capability they have. And what do they do? They slap them in the face. But look what look at the attraction of the crowd. What look at what Christ has done for us? There's no reason to hate God. God has loved us so much that He sent the second person of the Trinity into this filth.
SPEAKER_02:Can you imagine sending your own son into a filthy place?
SPEAKER_01:I don't know, somewhere like Afghanistan. Send one of your sons as a soldier to go into that mess? I mean, is that what you want, mothers? Is that what you want, father? Would you send that's nothing compared to what God sent his own son into, but it's just some something short of a good analogy, right? You wouldn't want to send your own son into the field, but he did. Why? Because he loved us. That's why. And yet through it all he wasn't contaminated by any of the filth. And so he has a life to give us and he gives it. I mean, he experienced a horrible death. Did God have to experience that by taking to himself a humanity? Only if he loved us so much he wanted to restore the relationship, see. That's why a penal view of the atonement is not bland. It can be bland if you just present as legal justice. But if you understand that the justice grew out of his love, then you have a deeper appreciation. And you want to love him as he first loved you, see? You want to love others, yeah. Why? Because he did that for them too. I used to in the final story on the quote. I used to have well, I still have believers that get mad at me sometimes. I've had people say absolutely terrible things to me. Um and these are believers, of course. You know, I always go back and I say, you know what, I'm spending eternity with that person. The first thing I say, I'm going to spend eternity with that person. So I may not see them again till then, but am I should I really be mad at them? I mean, what is this gonna accomplish in the grand scheme? Nothing. So the first thing to do after that is just to pray for them, right? And to promise yourself that if you see them again, you're gonna do what? You're gonna be cordial, you're gonna be kind, and and you're gonna love them insofar as they'll let you. Because you're gonna spend a turn with that person Christ died for you. So if you haven't believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, he's paid it all, right? Just believe in him, that you have everlasting life. That's a totally free gift.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spotify. And Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app. And until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.