The Need for an Atonement

These masses of people are walking up and down not concerned about atonement because they are basically convinced they have no need for an atonement. People want running around asking the question, how can I be reconciled to God.

Talking I state the judgment of God Renewing Your Mind on this Monday. I hope you had a joyful Christmas you and your family had plenty of opportunities to consider in celebrating the gift of salvation that the Lord Jesus secured for us by coming into this world to save sinners. Jesus accomplish that by doing the father's will, living in perfect obedience, thus becoming the perfect sacrifice for our sin. That's what will be looking at this week as we feature Dr. RC school series, the cross of Christ in this series of lectures were going to be focusing our attention on the atonement of Christ in the field of systematic theology we divide that discipline into various subheadings such as theology proper, new mythology, which is the study of the person work of the Holy Spirit and someone in one of the most important subdivisions of theology is what we call Christology, which is a study of the person of Christ and the work of Christ. And when we consider the work of Christ, and we get to that aspect which is most crucial, which we may call safely.

The crux of the matter of the person of Christ. We go immediately to what obviously to the cross and notice how these words were crucial the word crux the word excruciating.

All have their roots in the Latin word for cross because the concept of the cross is at the very center and the core of biblical Christianity. The cross in a sense crystallizes the essence of the ministry of Jesus. At least I think it's safe to say that in the viewpoint. For example, someone like the apostle Paul who said the engaging in a bit of hyperbole.

Of course, that he was determined to preach nothing but Christ and him crucified.

I get it's up perhaps a tad of hyperbole but not far from the truth to say that there's a sense in which all of Paul's writing were merely a concluding unscientific postscript 88 and attempt to write some kind of exposition of the meaning of the significance of that central moment in the ministry of Christ that ministry on which Jesus met his. Our ministry for which he was born, for which he was baptized but he was preordained to carry out that moments of passion that theology calls the grand passion of Christ before which of course he swept drops of blood everything as it were in the life of Jesus converges in that point of climax in his death. So if if we were able to read the New Testament with virgin ice as if we were the first generation of people to hear the message. I think that it would be crystal clear that that event is at the very core of the preaching of the teaching and of the catechizing of the New Testament community of course, with its attending capstone, the resurrection, and subsequently the ascension as part of that complex that focuses on the cross so if it is true that the cross is of central not to feel but central importance to biblical Christianity is essential. It would seem to me that Christians have some under standing of its meaning and biblical but I think that would be true in any generation. But I think it's particularly necessary in this generation. I doubt if there's ever been a. In 2000 years of Christian history where the significance of the cross and the centrality of the cross and indeed the very question of the necessity of the cross has been such a controversial matter, as it is today. I'm speaking with in the church. I have to point out a course from a historical perspective that there have been other periods in church history where theologies emerge that the regarded the cross of Christ as an unnecessary event. It had value to be sure, but it was not something that men needed in any ultimate or significant way.

That's interesting thing to me to find so many people who say to me in my own experience that they are not Christians, not so much because they have never been persuaded of the truth claims of Christianity. That's not so much the issue with them as it is that they have never been persuaded of the need for what the Bible is teaching.

How many times have you run into people who said that maybe true, maybe it isn't true, but I personally don't feel the need for Jesus or I don't need the church or I don't need Christianity, but people say that to me.

I like to try to steer the conversation to the other question and that is the truth of it because I feel like if we could persuade people of the truth of the identity of Christ and the truth of the work of Christ that it would become instantly apparent that people need it. I was in a shopping mall not too long ago investor was shopping in one store and I went out the hall and was waiting for her and I became a bookstore and I can't walk past a bookstore about going in it and I happen to go under was one of these secular bookstores and there were just rack after rack after rack and shelf after shelf and counteract the counter of books in the bookstore and they had the various divisions of the bookstore marked prominently in fiction and nonfiction business in sports and self-improvement in sex and marriage and children start away back all the way back in the back of the store. There was this section on religion and it had about four shelves and I saw that this was the smallest segment in the store number one and number two that the material that was for sale on those racks was somewhat, how should I say the it certainly wasn't what you would call mainstream Orthodox classical Christianity that was being sold there and I said to myself will what's wrong with the store that all I sell is fiction and self-improvement and they don't seem to place any premium of value on the contents of biblical truths as part of their program as a way to minute the storeowners are not here is a ministry there. Here, for business there.

Here for-profits and I guess the reason why they don't have many books for sale here is because there's not a whole lot of folks coming in here saying where can I find a book that will teach me about the depths and the riches of the atonement of Christ is a wall.

Maybe if we go to the Christian bookstore then will fly but then I got a Christian bookstore.

I don't find there. The people are seeking in depth understanding of something as central as the atonement of Christ SS I thought about that sitting in the mall and watched people walk up and down in front of me. I got this impression it was a very scary impression that these people these masses of people are walking up and down not concerned about an atonement not interested in an atonement because they are basically convinced they have no need for an atonement. This isn't what you call a felt need for people today. People aren't running around asking the question, how can I be reconciled to God talking ice skate. The judgment of God. If there's anything that's been lost from our culture.

It is the idea that human beings are privately personally and individually alter my play and asked for a play accountable to God for their lives. Think what will happen if suddenly the lights came on and everybody in the world, said hey Sunday I have to stand before my maker and I have to give an account for every word that I've ever spoken for every deed that I have ever done for every thought that I have ever thought for every task I have failed to do. I am accountable now if everybody woke up to that fact instantly. Couple things could happen.

One would could be like us are well yes I am accountable.

But isn't it great that the one to whom, and before whom accountable isn't really concerned about what kind of a life I lead because he understands the boys will be boys and the girls will be girls so maybe nothing will change.

But if people understood two things if they understood that there is a holy God, and that sin is an offense against a holy God. If they understood those two things they would be breaking the doors of your churches saying, what must I do to be saved was in the hospital a couple of years ago with a kidney stone. Not a life-threatening thing just seems like it get a kidney stone, those kinds of folks that that if I have pain I will do everything in my power to deny that. Is there so I don't have to go to the doctor and have him probe around and tell me all about new get a kidney stone. Please write a kidney stone.

Within five minutes of the time I got the kidney stone attack. I was on the telephone calling the doctor this kind of thing to get your attention in real quick when their little what's going on but can't find it there. Having all kinds of problems and I'm waiting for the tests to come back is right around Christmas time my back in a hospital room and there was a television program of the Sunday preachers get on there and all he did was he read the Christmas story and the Annunciation for a run to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

How many thousands of times have either read that or heard that phrase, but when I was in that hospital bed with my future uncertain that thing hit me like a sledgehammer and I said to myself that's exactly what I need is a Savior I have to have a Savior will to save me from what again I felt a need for a Savior because I was hurting I was fearful and matters of life and death were central in my attention but that's not the way it is. Under normal circumstances in the normal flow of our lives. Then we like to think that we don't need a Savior, but the atonement and the cross and Christianity operates on that primary assumption that man is in need of salvation like a say in our culture today. That's not paramount as an assumed item I've said many times that the prevailing doctrine of justification in the United States of America today is not justification by faith alone, and it's not even justification by good works, or by a combination of justification by faith and works. The prevailing notion of justification in our culture today is justification by death that all one has to do to be received into the everlasting arms of God is to die. That's all that's required because an atonement is not necessary.

I have a theologian friend who frequently makes this statement. He said they're basically in church history, only three basic types of theology there's been a jillion schools with a jillion names and a jillion subtle nuances, but generically only three kinds of theology historical what we call Pelagianism semi-Pelagianism and Augustinian is him.

Virtually every church in Western history on Eastern church as well has fallen in the one of those three categories well semi-Pelagianism and Augustinian is him.

In my opinion, represent significant debates within the Christian family differences of opinion of biblical interpretation and of theology among Christians.

In my opinion Pelagianism in its various forms is not an intramural issue among Christians, but Pelagianism is at best sub Christian and at worst anti-Christian alleges in the fourth century so silly and assume in the 16th and 17th centuries that what we would call liberalism as a distinctive theology in contemporary terms, in my opinion is essentially non-Christian because at the heart of it is a denial of the atonement of Jesus Christ, a denial across which I'm saying in which orthodoxy has said for centuries is an essential of Christianity essential in the sense that it is a sine qua non without which nothing without the cross. Take the cross as an atoning act. You take away Christianity.

That's not like the plague genes so simians had no view of the significance of the cross of Christ.

They did have some of you listen here is where we see Jesus dying as a moral example for men as an existential hero as one who brings inspiration to us by his commitment and devotion to self-sacrifice and to his humanistic concerns but no atonement.

A career I was a seminary where my classmates had to preach in homiletics class and he preached on the cross.

And he preached on the cross where Christ was the Lamb slain for us when he was finished, the professor was furious.

He attacked the student while still standing in the book and he said to them in anger. How dare you preach a substitutionary view of the atonement in this day, NH. What he meant by that is, how can you proclaim from the pulpit. Such an archaic old-fashioned out of it notion as one dying to bear the sins for another, as if there were some kind of cosmic transaction taking place here, by which I am allowed to be reconciled to God because of something Christ did difference you take away the reconciling action of Christ from the New Testament, and you have nothing but moralism's which are anything but unique and hardly worthy of persuading people to give 10% of their take-home pay to because in Pelagianism. There is no salvation in Pelagianism. There is no Savior, because in Pelagianism. There is no atonement, and the reason is because of the conviction in Pelagianism that no such salvation is necessary. Well, consider three basic types of theology there also three basic views of the atonement with respect to necessity historical furloughs as the so simians employ agents who have believed that an atonement is absolutely unnecessary. Absolutely unnecessary. Then there are those who believe and atonement is only hypothetically necessary.

Another can understand that we have to stop for some go slowly here.

What a hypothetically necessary atonement has meant in church history is the idea that God could have redeemed us by a host of different ways and me, but he chose to reconcile us to redeem us by the cross. That was the method he chose. That is to do it by atonement, but he could have done it many different ways he could simply have chosen to overlook human sin, but he decided to do something dramatic and he committed himself to a certain course of action. Now once he committed himself to it. Once he determined to have an atonement, then it becomes necessary, but only necessary, not day zero or de facto but they know that is, by virtue of a pact or a covenant that he has made, by way of issuing a promise that he would do something a promise was gratuitous in the first place is no need for, but he makes a promise once he makes the promise that he's a course committed to that course of action. That's what is meant by hypothetical necessity for an atonement. The third view which I am persuaded, is both the biblical view and the classical Orthodox Christian view is that an atonement was not merely hypothetically necessary for man's redemption but was So look like necessary if a single person was ever going to be reconciled to God and redeemed in the kingdom of God. Now, that's quite a bold statement to say that the cross with the atonement wasn't absolute necessary prerequisite for redemption and I think that the next item on the agenda has to be to answer the question why is an atonement necessary. I want to spend the next lecture developing that question why an atonement is absolutely necessary if we're going to have fellowship with God. Dr. RC Sproul be looking at that tomorrow we do hope you make plans to be with us here on Renewing Your Mind. Yes, you theologians may debate the atonement, but it really is not a debatable matter. Christ death on the cross in our place is the only way we can be saved. Atonement is absolutely necessary. We are pleased this week to feature doctors ProSeries the cross of Christ and for your donation of any amount to look at her ministries will be happy to provide you with a digital download of the series 6 messages in all plus a digital study guide, you'll be able to screen the messages right away.

Additionally will send you a beautiful hardbound copy of RC's book on the same topic is titled the truth of the cross there couple of ways you can make your request.

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