LESSON 11
Our Redemption through Christ (A)
Scripture Readings: I Peter 1:3–12; Hebrews 2:10–18
The saved sinner never wearies of talking about the work of Christ as his redeemer! Redemption is salvation secured by Christ by His perfect payroent for all our sins. In His work as our redeemer Christ offers the only sacrifice fully acceptable to God. “For such an high priest became us (was suited to us, JHP), holy, guileless (innocent and uncontaminated, Jerusalem Bible), separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who needeth not daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people: for this he did once for all, when he offered up himself” (Heb. 7:26, 27).
The first three sections of a six-part treatment will comprise this lesson. The headings are: the covenant of grace, the natures of the Mediator, the names of the Redeemer.
The Covenant of Grace
When Adam fell by breaking the covenant of works (or. better, the covenant of God’s favor) humanity disintegrated. This disintegration came because Adam fell as our covenant head, as the one in whom all things were Slimmed up (as they are now in Christ, Eph. 1:10 ). By virtue of the covenantal structure of things, the human race could only fall apart with the covenant-breaking sin of its first man, Adam.
It pleased God, however, to restore all things under one head, Christ. This was an act of free, unqualified grace: God could have left the world under the curse. His gracious provision of His own Son as our covenant head was not an afterthought since He is the God of the eternal decrees, as we have seen earlier. From eternity in His counsel, the redemption of the world was fixed. God had sovercignly willed that His work should not miscarry.
This restoration took place in the covenant of grace in which Christ is the appointed head . The covenant of grace concerns the whole world. This does not imply that all men arc saved in thc covenant of grace. In the strictest sense Christ is head only of His own, of believers. In them, however, the whole world is redeemed. Unbelievers share in certain fruits of the covenant of grace in this life as long as they live in organic oneness with the whole human race.
Back of the covenant of grace, in eternity, lies the counsel of redemption (cf. lesson 7). According to the counsel of redemption, in which the Son agreed to assume the awesome task of our salvation, He became the head of His own in the covenant of grace. In fact, that covenant was actually arranged by God with Him:
who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end of the times for your sake (1 Pet. 1:20);
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love (Eph. 1:4).
We must distinguish therefore between the eternal counsel of redemption, in which both the Son of God and the Holy Spirit function, and the covenant of grace as established from eternity with God’s Son as the Christ who would become flesh. As our Head in the covenant of grace Christ can call God “my God” and He can be called the servant of Jehovah. This can be seen in Scripture:
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God (John 20:17);
Behold, my servant, whom I uphold; my chosen, in whom my soul delighteth: I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles (Is. 42:1; cf. also Is. 53:11).
The covenant of grace is established with Christ as the head of the new humanity. In that covenant Christ took over Adam‘s obligations in the covenant of God’s favor (covenant of works), and, us our Surety, became a curse for us, milking satisfaction to God’s justice for the sins which Adam Imd we in him have committed. It is not correct to say, therefore, that the covenant with Adam was abrogated. All of its obligations have been fully met by our Redeemer.
The history of the covenant of grace in Scripture may be sketched as follows:
(a) its establishment in eternity with Christ as head of His people;
(b) its revelation after the Fall to Adam:
(c) its delimitation at the time of the calling of Abraham to him and his seed;
(d) its enclosure within the framework of the ceremonial laws at the time of the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai;
(e) its expansion to all peoples at the time of the death of Christ and through the outpouring of the Spirit, by which the former delimitations (the seed of Abraham within the ceremonial laws) were taken away and the true freedom of the new life through faith was introduced (Gal. 5:1).
The Old Testament or Old Covenant is merely the old dispensation or administration of the one and same covenant of grace. It was predictively prophetic of the New Testament, the old is in the new fulfilled. With the New Covenant comes the principal restoration of the Kingdom of God on earth, that Kingdom in which all of life is subject to the gracious rule of God in Christ.
Distinction ought to be made between the covenant of grace as arranged in the eternal counsel of redemption with Christ as the head of His own and the revelation and realization of that covenant in time. As this covenant exists in eternity with Christ it encompasses the elect only, promising them eternal life. That covenant is absolutely unconditional. All things in that covenant, even faith and conversion, are gift‘s of God for Christ’s sake.
But when Scripture speaks of the revelation of that covenant in time it says that it is arranged by God with believers. The Bible tells us specifically that the covenant is established with an Abraham or Jacob or David. These believers are said to be one with Christ, their head. And further, Scripture says that believers and their teed are included in the covenant of grace. God does not save only individuals in His covenant, but He saves people in the organic oneness of their generations. All emphasis falls then upon the responsibility of man, upon the calling of God to faith and repentance. From that viewpoint there are indeed conditions in the covenant: God’s grace in His covenant is for them who believe and turn to Him.
Whenever we try to see the covenant of grace in time as the revelation of the eternal covenant with Christ as head of His own we get into insurmountable difficulties. Believers and their seed are reckoned as belonging to the covenant of grace as revealed in time. It appears, however, that not all children of believers are true followers in Christ, all do not fulfill the conditions of the covenant. Scripture itself says that there is chaff among the wheat (Matt. 3:12) and that “they are not all Israel, that are of Israel” (Rom. 9:6). It would seem that the covenant of God with Christ in eternity and its revelation in time do not completely correspond.
It is not helpful to try to resolve this difficulty by separating the revelation of the covenant in time from the covenant as it is eternally with Christ and His own. Doing that we lose all assurance and comfort of the covenant. After all, God does promise believers that He will be their God and the God of their children. This means to say that He promises them aU things, including faith and conversion. Nor may we distinguish the revelation of the covenant in time into something external, including all baptized persons and all church members, and something internal, in which only the true believers are participants. For that also renders God’s promise to believers and their seed powerless.
We are here up against the same difficulty which we met whell we considered, on the one hand, all things as they are eternally in God’s counsel and as they are carried out by Him according to that counsel, and as we think of our personal responsibility on the other hand. This difficulty can never be resolved by us because we live and think in time. We must be sure not to try to solve problems outside of a true faith, for then we can never know or understand anything of God‘s covenant. We must act believingly upon God’s covenant promises and then the certainty of these promises will appear. No one will perish because the covenant of God and His promises are not reliable. He who perishes is lost because he does not trust God and His promises.
The Natures of Our Mediator
Our Mediator is truly God, as Scripture abundantly indicates:
For unto us a child is born , unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Is. 9:6).
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, which Art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth arc from of old, from everlasting (Micah 5:2).
Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God (John 20:28).
whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen (Rom. 9:5).
Our Mediator is also truly man:
For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus (I Tim. 2:5).
But now ye seek to kill me, a man that told you the truth, which I heard from God: this did not Abraham (John 8:40).
Christ had human feelings of joy and grief. He spoke of His soul as being very sorrowful (Matt. 26:38). His knowledge is represented as limited (“But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father,” Mark 13:32). He subordinates His will to the will of the Father (“And he went forward a little, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt,” Matt. 26:39). And the Bible speaks of Him as having a physical body (“who in his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed,” I Pt. 2:24).
There are two natures in our Mediator, the divine and the human. He is “a true and righteous man, and yet more powerful than all creatures; that is, one who is withal true God” (Heidelberg Catechism, V, 15). He is a complete man, “like unto His brethren in all things, sin excepted” (op. cit. XIV, 35). These two natures are, as the church confessed against Eutychus, unmixed and unchanged; they are also, as was confessed against Nestorius, one without division and without separation. They are together in one person. His human nature was not a person by itself because we can speak of person only when one functions over against the outside world as a distinct entity. This possibility is ruled out by the character of the origin of the human nature in our Mediator. The Second Person in the divine being took upon Himself human nature. He became flesh (John 1:14). In the oneness of God and man our Mediator is a person, After His incarnation the Mediator possesses in the unity of His person two natures, and these are, as said above, one without confusion, change, division, or separation.
It is as such a person that the Mediator appears on this earthly scene as the head of His own, as the second Adam. Into that official position He had been placed by God, even as Adam was onee so placed. In that position He as head could cover all His own, and redeem them. His headship is not due to some characteristic of His human nature but to its official position as given by God.
The difference between the two natures of Christ must not be ignored. For example: after the ascension they remained distinct although the human nature was glorified (“And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was,” John 11:5). The human nature of Christ was not submerged or turned into the divine nature. Both Rome and Luther have erred at this point. The Roman Catholic Church says that Christ’s human nature after His exaltation has fused with the divine nature, something like icon is smelted by fire. Luther taught that the Son at the time of His incarnation laid aside certain of His divine attributes, especially His omnipresence. In His exaltation, however, the divine nature made the human nature to share in such attributes. This erroneously obliterates the difference between the human and the divine natures. Luther appealed to Philippians 2:1 (“but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men”) to support his view. The right position is that the Mediator did not divest Himself of His divine nature in the incarnation, but only of its apparent glory (John 17:5).
In its 16th and 17th answers the Heidelberg Catechism speaks of the need for the two natures. The divine nature supported the human in Christ’s otherwise unendurable suffering and gave to that suffering eternal and infinite value. Still more, He had to be truly God in order that “He might obtain for us, and restore to us, righteousness and life.”
The human nnture of Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit. For that reason He was not reckoned among the children of Adam and He is free of their inherited guilt and pollution (“And the angel answered and said, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is begotten shall he called the Son of God,” Luke 1:35). In the birth of Christ humanity is given a new beginning. In it the fatal linkage evident in the birth of the impure from the impure is broken.
Romanism accounts for the holy conception and birth of Christ hy going back to Mary whom Pope Pius IX in 1854 declared to have been conceived without sin, This sinlessness of Mary is not the result of conception by the Holy Spirit. Rome’s veneration of Mary is almost boundless: she is “Mother of God,” the perpetual Virgin, she was miraculously taken into heaven, she is as co-mediatrix a contributor to salvation, and she as a mediatrix prays for us, gaining from God and distributing to believers eternal blessings.
But Scripture teaches that Christ is also Mary’s Savior (Luke 1:41). It must be confessed, of course, that Christ was in truth flesh and blood of Mary. Anabaptism, proceeding from the idea that sin worked a corruption of the very substance of the world, cannot tolerate the thought of Christ’s sharing Mary’s flesh and blood. It asserted, therefore, that Christ took the substance of His human nature from heaven and that it merely passed through Mary. But then Christ would not be fully one with us and He could not be our head and Redeemer. Scripture says that He is the true seed of David, and that He was “born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4 ). We believe that Christ is “God’s eternal Son, who is and continues true and eternal God,” and that He “took upon Himself the very nature of man of the flesh and blood of the virgin Mary, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, that He might also be the true seed of David, like unto His brethren in all things, sin excepted” (Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 35).
Th e Names of Our Mediator
“Jesus” or Joshua means Savior (“And she shall bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name JESUS; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins,” Matt. 1:21). Our Savior has not only earned for us the possibility of salvation, He applies it as well (“and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand,” John 10:28). He has not merely brought us back to the state of Adam, He has not merely saved us from the curse, He actually brings us into eternal fellowship with God.
“Christ” or Messiah means anointed. In the anointing (the sacred rite by which God‘s officebearers were consecrated for their holy toil) we find both ordination or assignment and qualification by the Holy Spirit. Christ’s ordination took place in the eternal counsel of redemption. His qualification by the Spirit can be seen in three moments of His life on earth: His conception by the Holy Spirit, the descent of the Spirit fol. lowing His baptism by John, and His ascension. By His Spirit-wrought conception His human nature was prepared for the task of fulfilling His official calling as our chief Prophet and Teacher, our only High Priest, and our eternal King. When after His baptism the Spirit descended upon Him as a dove (Matt. 3:16), He was driven by the Spirit to undertake His official labor (Matt. 4:1). When He was exalted at the right hand of God He received complete authority with respect to the dispensation of the Spirit and His gifts (“Being therefore by the right hand of Goo exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath poured forth this which ye see and hear,” Acts 2:33)
“God’s only begotten Son” is another of His more familiar names. In the 35th answer of the Catechism we find a distinction between the eternal, natural Son of God and children by adoption, for Christ’s sake. The importance of this distinction is obvious. The history of the church includes a series of rejections of the eternal, natural Sonship of Christ; the Arians spoke of a highest being who became flesh in Christ, who belonged, however, to things created and was not eternal; Socinians denied the pre-existence of the Mediator, and although they acknowledged His miracles, taught that the man known as Jesus of Nazareth became the Son of God by His exaltation; others taught that Jesus of Nazareth was full of divinity while we have only some sparks of the divine. This erases the absolute difference between Jesus and us in favor of a relative or graduated difference; many modernists see Christ as mere man even though he was, perhaps, in a special and emphatic way driven by and filled with God’s Spirit.
The Mediator is also called “our Lord” because He redeemed us by His blood and made liS His own possession (Heidelberg Catechism, XIII, 34). The price of His blood was not paid to Satan but to God as the Righteous One, by which we are delivered from all the power of the devil, into whose hands we had been consigned by God because of our sins.
Christ often called Himself while dwelling among us “the Son of Man.” This corresponds to the Old Testament prophecy found in Daniel 7:13 ,“I saw in the night-visions, and, behold, there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.” In terms of that name He endured humiliation as the suffering Messiah. “Son of Man,” however, has as well a most glorious connotation.
To help with discussion:
1. Do you see the essential importance of the doctrine of the covenant of grace for our salvation? How do you account for the fact that millions of Christians seem aware of or indifferent (even hostile) to covenantal theology? 2. Does the covenant of grace as revealed in Scripture lead to carelessness and unconcern on the part of believers, or the opposite? Can you demonstrate? 3. What are the implications for missions and evangelism in the biblical teaching of the covenant of grace? If the biblical idea of covenant has bearing upon all of creation, does this bear upon our world-wide missions assignment? 4. The Bible compares the covenantal relationship to marriagee (“For thy Maker is thy husband; Jehovah of Hosts is his name . . .” Is. 54:5), Can you think of parllels between God’s covenant with us and Christian marriage? Does this have meaning for our view of marriage both in terms of its ceremonies and practice?5. Why do we regard the doctrine of the two natures of Christ as pivotal in the Christian faith? Was a former Archbishop of Canterbury right when he said that the distinctive feature of the Christian religion is its belief that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the very Son of God?
6. I Corinthians 7:14 says that “the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother: else were your children unclean; but now they are holy.” Do you see any parallel or relationship here between that and the sanctifying of Mary by the Spirit in the birth of Christ? Does this work of the Spirit in Mary mean that she was at least during the time of her conception and the birth of Christ without sin? Why not? 7. How must we think of the names of our Savior: as mere identifications or as actual designations or revelations of His person and work? Does this hold similarly for the names of God in Scripture? 8. Have you ever counted or seen listed all the names which Scripture uses for our Savior? Why don’t we use more of them? 9. Herman Hoeksema says in his Reformed Dogmatics that the name Son of Man denotes “the Mediator in His human nature, as in this nature, in the way of deepest humiliation He will be clothed with the highest honor and glory in the everlasting Messianic kingdom.” Is this helpful?
LESSON 12
Our Redemption through Christ (8)
Scripture Readings: Philippians 2:5–11; Isaiah 53:1–10
We complete our discussion of the redemption which is ours in Christ by considering these topics: the offices of our Mediator, the satisfaction or atonement wrought by Him, and the states of our Mediator.
The Offices of Our Mediator Originally man received from God the threefold office of prophet, priest, and king. By our sin we have made ourselves unworthy of that office. Christ was given that office as our head and served in that office in our place (cf. Lord‘s Day XII and its excellent statement on this matter!). But He did not merely do that much for us, He also restored that office to us so that we might in fellowship with Him serve God. That is why the Bible says that Christ did not fill the shadowy offices of the Old Testament but that He is a priest after the order of Melchizedek rather than Aaron. The Book of the Hebrews tells us that Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek, and concludes therefrom that he is greater than Abraham (cf. Heb. 7:1–10).Even before His incarnation Christ exercised that threefold official. In fact, He began to do so immediately after the Fall. When He was on earth that official service continues with first the one and then the other receiving the greater emphasis. We ought to look at each of these separately in order that we may review the great work which Christ did as our redeemer.
The prophetic office: to prophesy is to proclaim the counsel of God unto redemption with respect to the past, the present, or the future. During the Old Testament Christ sent and inspired the prophets, during His stay on earth He personally proclaimed “the secret counsel and will of God concerning our redemption,” after His ascension He sent and inspired the apostles and prophets of the New Testament. This revelation is permanently inscribed in the Bible; also that inscripturation belongs to the prophetic netivity of Christ. Now He as prophet preserves the Scriptures in the world, calls men to the ministry of the Word, and opens the hearts and enlightens the understanding of people.
The priestly office: to His priestly service belongs His self-sacrifice. His intercessory prayers and His blessing. In this way the priesthood of the Old Testament shadows was fulfilled. We will study this in greater detail in the next section.
The kingly office: Christ is and remains the eternal king of His people, and He shall always be king over them in the kingdom of peace wherein He and His own will reign over all the works of God’s hands. For the time being He has been given power and authority over all enemies, sin, the world, death, Satan, in order to govern and restrain them. He exercises this might in such a way as to promote the welfare of His people. He may rightly say, “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth,” Matt. 28:18. This holds fo r Him as our Mediator, which is why He says that to Him it has been given. This temporary authority over all enemies shall at the end of the world be returned to the Father (“And when all things have been subjected unto him, then shall the Son nlso himself be subjected to him that did subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all,” I Cor. 15:28).
By faith we are partakers of Christ’s anointing (“And ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things,” I John 2:20), and we are thus restored to the threefold office of prophet, priest and king (cf. Heidelberg Catechism, XII, 32).
The Satisfaction Wrought by Our Mediator
As out priest our mediator gave Himself for us as a sacrifice of reconciliation. His suffering must be seen primarily as a substitutionary atonement. If we use the term surety (“by so much also hath Jesus become the surety of a better covenant,” Heb. 7:22), we must remember that His was a fully substitutionary rather than an emergency or casual type of suretyship. As our substitute Christ Himself guarantees the realization of all that is demanded and promised in the covenant.
Various theories of the atonement have appeared in history, some of which are:
a. the moral theory: sometimes called the moral influence theory, according to which the true purpose of Christ’s death was to bring by way of example a beneficial reformatory influence upon man;
b. the governmental theory: as a good governor God cannot allow sin to go without some manifestation of His righteous indignation, and so God gave a demonstration of that wrath in the death of His Son designed to move the sinner to seek the forgiveness God offers purely and solely upon the basis of His mercy;
c. the mystical theory: the suffering of Christ is not merely an influence upon man’s moral consciousness but by its influence a change is worked in man’s subconscious life, and that mystically, i.e., by way of some kind of blending of the human and the divine;
d. the example theory: “Christ saves men by revealing to them the way of faith and obedience as the way of eternal life, by giving them an example of true obedience both in His life on earth and in His death, and by inspiring them to lead a similar life” (L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, p. 387).
Most theories of the atonement contain some element of truth, but unless we hold unqualifiedly to the substitutionary character of Christ’s atonement we are helpless and hopeless. In the Heidelberg Catechism, for example, this substitutionary significance of the atonement is stressed almost exclusively. In only one of the several questions and answers dealings with Christ‘s suffering and humiliation do we read of “a further benefit” of the atonement (“our old man is crucified, slain, and buried with Him, that so the evil lusts of the flesh may no more reign in us,” Lord’s Day XVI, 43).
The atonement was really necessary because our sin has violatcd the rip;htful claims of God’s love and has offended the most high majesty of God. God’s law is not something arbitrary or capricious. It is the law of love because God Himself is love, and God wills to maintain and vindicate Himself against all sin. The only way that we may escape the punishment fur sin is the way of full satisfaction.
It was especial!y the Socinians who attacked the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement. They did so on the following grounds: a. love and justice are mutually exclusive; b. if the redemption of the sinner is by a just payment, then it is not by grace; c. it is impossible to bear the moral guilt of someone else; only financial debt can be assumed by another. Over against a. must be maintained that love and justice are mutually inclusive; love without justice is mere sentimentality. With respect to h. we must observe that Christ has gone the full way of justice in our behalf and that we are saved hy grace for His sake. So far as c. is concerned, the following observations are in order: I. not just any man can take the moral guilt of another upon himself because no other man is guiltless; Christ could because He is the righteous One; 2. no man can put himself in the place of another since no man has the right to dispose of his own life; Christ did have such a right because He had voluntarily assumed His life on earth; 3. most importantly, Christ is for us not just another man; He is our Head, He holds an office as the second Adam (“For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous,” Rom. 5:19).
Scriptural evidences for the substitutionary atonement are, among many others these: the ceremony of the laying on of hands in the sacrifices (“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him an the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, even all their sins; and he shall put them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away . . .” Lev. 16:21), such passages as Isaiah 53:5 and Matthew 20:28,
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Anti then there is that very strong expression in II Corinthians 5:21,
Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
We usually speak of the suffering of Christ as passive and active. This distinction corresponds to the one between sins of omission and commission. Christ has satisfied for our actual misdeeds and has also done that which we neglected to do. Adam was asked to choose for God’s favor while he fully shared and enjoyed that favor, but Christ had to cling to that favor as His very life even while God withdrew Himself from Him. Christ did that throughout His life on earth. The climax came, however, on the Cross when He cried: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” By His suffering He not only did that which Adam and we in and with him fail to do, but He atoned for that which Adam and we in and with him have done.
The active and passive obedience of Christ are two sides of the same work. The Romanist church separates these, asserting that in His passive obedience Christ suffered only the eternal punishment for sin, and that we must suffer for ourselves the temporal punishment, either in this life or in purgatory. The active obedience becomes then something of a personal responsibility. Shortages can be made up, however by participation in the treasury of excessive good works done by the saints.
Christ‘s atoning work was not for all men. It is indeed sufficiently valuable to cover the sins of the whole world and therefore the call of the Gospel which goes out to all men is earnest and well–meant. But the sacrifice is actually brought for the elect only. Scriptural evidence for this is as follows: 1. He came for His people, Matt. 1:21; 2. He laid down His life for the sheep, John 10:15; 3. because He loved His own He went to the Cross, John 13:1; 4. before His suffering on the Cross He prayed for His own, John 17:9 (“I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me; for they are thine;”).
The Remonstrants or followers of Arminius (against whom the Canons of Dort were written) placed over against this truth a kind of general or unlimited atonement, appealing to certain kinds of Bible texts. Under “Predestination” in Lesson 7 we offered an interpretation of these so–called “universal texts” in Scripture, to which all who oppose the doctrine of the limited atonement appeal. We might add: in I Timothy 2:4 (“who would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth”) the expression “all men” obviously means all ranks of men (cf. vs. 2), and the text is surely speaking of the revealed rather than the secret will of God; in Romans 5:18 (“So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life”) the context indicates that the main idea is that with respect to both sin and salvation things go from one to all. In the second instance the expression all men must mean “all to whom the free gift of justification comes.”
The States of Our Mediator
By state we mean one’s legal position (guilty, not guilty). State must be distinguished from one’s nature and from one’s condition. According to His nature Christ was the Holy One, hut His state before God during the time of His humiliation was that of a guilty sinner and His condition was the condition of a sufferer. The believer, reversely, is according to his nature unholy, but his state in Christ is that of the righteous.
In the state of humiliation we distinguish these steps:
1. His conception and birth: Christ’s humiliation here is not in the assumption of the hum:.m nature as such, but in His taking upon Himself our weakened human nature, susceptible to suffering; He became flesh (“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us [and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father], full of grace and truth,” John 1:14); He took upon Himself the form of a servant, Phil. 2:7:
2. His suffering of the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race during His entire life on earth: Luke 12:50, “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!” (RSV), and Heidelberg Catechism, XV, 37 (“all the time He lived on earth . . . He bore, in body and soul, the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race”); 3. His suffering of an unjust judgment under Pontius Pilate, by which we were freed from the severe judgment of God, Catechism, Q. 38; 4. His suffering of God’s curse upon the Cross, by which we were freed from that curse and made blessed of God, Catechism, Q. 39; 5. His suffering of death for the sake of the justice and truth of God (Catechism, Q. 40), by virtue of which our death becomes an entering into eternal life (Catechism, Q. 42); 6. His burial, in order that He might be able to open the grave for us;7. His descent into hell, which is explained in the Catechism as His suffering of the hellish agony “in which He was plunged during all His sufferings” (XVI, 44); this kind of suffering is especially evident in His being forsaken by God in Gethsemane and on the Cross, the fruit of which for us is our eternal fellowship with God. It is certainty true that this suffering of Christ is most determinative for His redemptive work.
It is quite likely that Christ’s descent into hell was understood by the ancient church as a going into the world of the dead. This does not mean to designate a particular place but the gathering of the dead (analogous would be the expressions plant world or animal world). Scripture does not usually say that Christ rose From death but that He is risen from the dead. According to the original curse this going into the world of the dead is to be forgotten. Christ bore this shame also, by which He broke open that world of the dead for Himself and for His own. By His resurrection He returned to our life “under the sun.”
Because the church in later ages no longer understood this Scriptural idea, the words of the Apostles’ Creed were taken to refer to a real descent of Christ’s soul into hell after His death. The Romanists said that this took place in order that He might bring with Him into heaven the fathers of the Old Covenant. Luther taught that it was a triumphant march of the exalted Christ. According to many today its purpose was to preach the Gospel one more time to the dead. This idea is refuted, however, by Christ’s last word from the Cross (“When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished; and he bowed his head, and gave up his spirit,” John 19;30). Nor is an appeal to I Peter 3:18, 19 valid. It reads:
Because Chris t also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also he went and preached unto the Spirits in prison.
Christs going in the spirit is His ascension by which He proclaimed His victory over all His enemies.
Christ’s state of exaltation has the following steps:
1. His resurrection: as an “awakening” (John 11:11) the resurrection indicates the justification of Christ by the Father, in which Christ enters the state of innocence or righteousness; this justification of Him as the head involves His own as well, of course (“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification,” Rom. 4:25); the Catechism in Lord’s Day XVII says that the fruit of His resurrection for us is threefold: He makes us partakers of the righteousness which He earned by His death, by His power we are raised up to a new life, and His resurrection is for us a sure pledge of our own glorious resurrection.
2. His ascension: according to Luther the ascension meant the receiving of the use of the divine attributes by Christ in His human nature; over against this the Catechism sys in Lord’s Day XVIII that “with respect to His human nature, He is no more on earth” but in heaven: Lord’s Day XVIII, 49 lists three advantages of His ascension: He is now in God’s presence as our spokesman or advocate; we have in heaven our flesh as a sure pledge that we, too, will go there; and He sends us His Spirit by whose power we seek the things that arc above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God, and not the thinks that are upon the earth (Col. 3:1). By the things which are above is meant the reign of Christ over our life on earth. By the things which arc upon the earth is meant asceticism (the confusion of world-flight with self-denial) and other sins. Consistent with this is the beautiful admonition found in Colossians 3:17, “And whatsoever ye do, in word or in deed, do the in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”
3. His sitting at the right hand of God: this indicates not only the assuming of the place of highest honor but also the royal rule which Christ administers in the Name of the Father. About this we spoke earlier when we discussed His kingly office. 4. His return as the glorious Judge from heaven: this we will consider in our last lesson under “The Consummation of All Things.”To help with discussion:
1. Is it more important to stress the official rather than the personal? What is your reaction to the statement, “The believer‘s person follows after and is result of His appointment and performance as a faithful officebearer of God?” Is the modern disrespect for authority in any way a product of our current dislike for the official?
2. To what extent docs Christ our Prophet reveal to us God’s secret counsel? Do we in our preaching of the Gospel Similarly reveal that counsel? How are all believers prophets before God? 3. Why is Christ called in the Catechism our only High Priest? What is completely unique about Christ in His priestly work for us? Do we ever in any sense contribute to our own or to anyone else‘s salvation? 4. Why do we have so much difficulty with the idea of the kingship of Christ (think of the differences of opinion among believers with respect to His kingship in education, for example)? In current debates in Reformed circles we find many references to His kingship; how do you react? 5. Can you see the necessary relationship between the covenant of grace and the real substitutionary character of the atonement? How can we have Christ as our sacrifice without falling into some mystical idea of submersion into the divine nature? 6. Do yon sec in our time a tendency to place law against love? Have we as Reformed Christians been too legal rather than loving? Is it true that if you have true love you will not be concerned about law? Or is it perhaps so that if you really have love you will he especially interested in being right before God and man?7. Do you see the threat of universalistic sentiments and tendencies among Christians today? Would it make any real difference to the welfare of the the Church if we adopted the idea that God isn’t really very likely to condemn many or any to hell?
8. Was Christ in His deepest agony separated from God essentially (so that He was in no sense related to Him) or was that separation the experience of being abandoned by God to the agonies of His displeasure? 9. How could Christ really experience the horrors of the state of humiliation without ever having sinned? How can believers really know the comfort of the state of freedom from the curse and the judgment of sin when they are so stubbornly sinful?