Articulating the Glorious Cross to an Atonement-Rejecting Culture

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Welcome to a new week on the podcast.

00:00:07.320 | We start the week with an email

00:00:08.960 | from a podcast listener named Jessica

00:00:10.900 | from Davis, California, and it couldn't be more important.

00:00:14.640 | Pastor John, as I talk with millennials

00:00:17.200 | about Christ and the gospel,

00:00:18.640 | I've repeatedly had people say that they don't believe

00:00:21.200 | that someone else paying the punishment

00:00:24.040 | for another's sin, substitutionary atonement, is just.

00:00:29.280 | I too have internal pushback against this,

00:00:31.840 | but have come to know that substitutionary atonement

00:00:34.840 | has its roots in the Mosaic sacrificial system.

00:00:38.000 | Our generation, however, at least in California,

00:00:40.760 | is biblically illiterate

00:00:42.560 | and doesn't have this framework to go off of.

00:00:45.840 | How would you explain the justice

00:00:48.040 | of substitutionary atonement to this generation?

00:00:52.640 | - Well, not much more could be more important

00:00:56.200 | than the question of whether Christ was, in fact,

00:01:00.640 | a just and merciful substitute for sinners,

00:01:04.200 | so that when he died for his elect,

00:01:09.200 | he actually bore their punishment

00:01:12.280 | so that they can experience no condemnation.

00:01:15.000 | That is the heart of the Christian gospel.

00:01:18.440 | If that goes, everything goes,

00:01:21.160 | and let us eat, drink, and be merry,

00:01:22.920 | for tomorrow we perish.

00:01:25.920 | Now, there are at least two issues here.

00:01:29.200 | One is how biblical authority relates

00:01:33.760 | to the categories of thought in people's minds,

00:01:38.760 | and the other is how to help people today

00:01:42.400 | grasp the justice of the atonement,

00:01:45.880 | given what they presently have as categories in their mind.

00:01:50.880 | A word about that first issue.

00:01:52.960 | My approach to biblical authority

00:01:56.160 | in relation to John Piper's fallen and fallible mind

00:02:00.760 | is to try, at least try, to let the Bible shape

00:02:06.640 | and even create categories of thought in my mind.

00:02:12.960 | In other words, if I come to the Bible

00:02:15.400 | and I find I don't have a category

00:02:16.600 | to make sense out of something,

00:02:17.660 | I wanna try to let the Bible shape

00:02:20.720 | or create new categories.

00:02:23.440 | The alternative, it seems to me,

00:02:24.960 | would be to insist that the Bible,

00:02:28.440 | God's word whose ways are higher than my ways,

00:02:31.600 | be squeezed into my present ways of thinking.

00:02:36.360 | I mean, it's just absurd.

00:02:37.540 | It's absurd when I think about it.

00:02:39.520 | All over the world, people are trying to squeeze the Bible,

00:02:42.320 | limit the Bible into their conceptuality

00:02:45.640 | that they inherited from their sinful culture and parents.

00:02:50.940 | If people today are unwilling to have their way of thinking

00:02:55.780 | about the world changed,

00:02:58.180 | then either we will twist the Bible

00:03:01.260 | to fit our preconceptions or we will reject the Bible

00:03:05.020 | because the Bible is resolute

00:03:08.500 | in insisting that Christ died in the place of sinners

00:03:12.780 | so that the justice of God is satisfied

00:03:15.420 | and sinners escape punishment.

00:03:16.860 | So Galatians 3:13, "Christ redeemed us from the curse,"

00:03:21.580 | that's God's curse, "the curse of the law

00:03:24.420 | by becoming a curse for us.

00:03:27.960 | It is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.'"

00:03:32.900 | Or Isaiah 53, 5, "He was pierced for our transgressions."

00:03:37.900 | Our transgressions.

00:03:39.820 | He pierced, we transgressed, he's pierced.

00:03:42.460 | "He was crushed for our iniquities.

00:03:45.540 | Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace

00:03:50.500 | and with his wounds we are healed."

00:03:54.940 | Glory, glory.

00:03:57.380 | - Oh my, yes, amen.

00:03:59.380 | - "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,"

00:04:03.340 | 1 Peter 2:24.

00:04:04.940 | One more, I love this one because it's the kind of image

00:04:08.540 | I expect for a Sunday school teacher to create

00:04:10.840 | and actually Paul created it.

00:04:13.020 | "God canceled the record of debt that stood against us

00:04:18.020 | with its legal demands."

00:04:21.780 | This, this record of debt,

00:04:23.660 | "He set aside, nailing it to the cross."

00:04:28.660 | In other words, when the spike was put against Jesus' hand,

00:04:33.660 | actually the spike was lifted up,

00:04:37.700 | a document was inserted between the spike and the hand

00:04:41.680 | called Record of John Piper's and Tony Ranke's Debts

00:04:46.000 | and it was driven through the record,

00:04:49.200 | into the hand, into the wood,

00:04:51.480 | and that record was settled, paid, finished.

00:04:56.480 | Now those are simply glorious truths.

00:04:59.760 | And I grieve, I grieve that there are people

00:05:03.320 | who turn away from those truths as inconceivable or unjust,

00:05:08.320 | but I'm not surprised because Paul said,

00:05:13.200 | "Greeks see it as foolishness

00:05:15.520 | and Jews call it a stumbling block."

00:05:18.440 | So we need grace to have our categories of thought

00:05:22.560 | adjusted by the Bible.

00:05:24.780 | Now the second issue of how then do we try?

00:05:28.400 | That's what I wanna do here for just a minute.

00:05:30.740 | So let me make an effort to try to describe

00:05:34.640 | the justice of the atonement.

00:05:36.480 | This is a little bit like trying

00:05:39.520 | to conceptualize the Trinity.

00:05:42.020 | It's always risky because human conceptuality

00:05:45.320 | of divine things might be inadequate.

00:05:49.200 | I mean, they are inadequate in that they're not

00:05:51.420 | comprehensive, but let's see if they can be true at least.

00:05:55.040 | So here goes.

00:05:56.040 | The fundamental issue here is what does sin do to God

00:06:01.040 | and how is this set right?

00:06:02.880 | The most important answer is that sin dishonors God.

00:06:09.140 | It detracts from his glory.

00:06:12.660 | It belittles him.

00:06:14.660 | It treats him as inferior in value to what we prefer

00:06:19.660 | in our sinful desire.

00:06:22.900 | I think that's what sin is.

00:06:25.220 | This is why the most important paragraph on the atonement

00:06:29.020 | in the Bible contains the words, this is Romans 3.23,

00:06:34.020 | all have sinned and fall short or lack,

00:06:38.520 | literally lack, the glory of God.

00:06:42.100 | In other words, sin is related to glory

00:06:45.460 | and it's related as losing glory,

00:06:49.580 | that is exchanging the glory of God for images,

00:06:53.220 | chapter one, verse 23.

00:06:54.860 | It's an effort to rob God of his glory.

00:06:58.060 | So the greatest problem in the universe

00:07:00.980 | is that God's creatures have gone on record

00:07:04.740 | as devaluing the glory of God.

00:07:08.500 | It's as if the image of the Roman Caesar

00:07:12.900 | was ripped off the wall and trampled by mobs.

00:07:17.900 | And treason like that has always been a capital crime

00:07:22.300 | everywhere in the world.

00:07:23.580 | Trampling the glory of the most glorious being

00:07:28.340 | is the most serious crime in the universe.

00:07:33.340 | How then is this situation to be remedied justly?

00:07:38.440 | How's justice to be done here?

00:07:41.580 | And the answer is that the injury done

00:07:46.300 | to the glory of God has to be repaired.

00:07:50.140 | That's what justice is.

00:07:52.560 | Justice is, or righteousness is,

00:07:55.180 | that the glory of God is to be restored

00:07:58.620 | to its rightful place of exaltation and admiration.

00:08:03.160 | This justice happens by stripping glory

00:08:08.160 | from the perpetrators in proportion

00:08:11.940 | to the way they have stripped it from God.

00:08:15.660 | That's the meaning of hell.

00:08:18.180 | It will take an eternity to strip sufficient glory

00:08:21.660 | from finite creatures.

00:08:22.940 | They don't have infinite glory.

00:08:25.140 | So it will take an infinite amount of time

00:08:28.820 | to balance the enormity of defacing the glory

00:08:33.020 | of an infinite being.

00:08:34.820 | And that punishment is therefore eternal.

00:08:37.860 | And the question is, can Christ perform this repair

00:08:44.300 | of the glory of God for the people of God?

00:08:48.540 | And the answer of the Bible is yes.

00:08:51.380 | And the reason is that Christ came precisely

00:08:56.140 | to vindicate the glory of God.

00:08:58.800 | That's not true of any criminal on the planet

00:09:01.820 | who's in prison today.

00:09:03.900 | That's why we can't do this kind of thing among men.

00:09:08.460 | The reason Christ came is precisely to repair,

00:09:13.260 | to vindicate the glory of God.

00:09:15.060 | Here's a glimpse of it in John 12, 27.

00:09:17.740 | "Now is my soul troubled," Jesus said.

00:09:21.980 | "And what shall I say?

00:09:23.540 | Father, save me from this hour,

00:09:25.340 | name me the hour of his death?

00:09:27.220 | No, but for this purpose, I have come to this hour.

00:09:31.220 | Father, glorify your name."

00:09:35.060 | Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it,

00:09:38.120 | and I will glorify it again."

00:09:40.140 | This is the ultimate reason for the death of Jesus.

00:09:44.300 | He came to repair the injury we had done

00:09:49.300 | to the glory of God.

00:09:51.380 | He laid aside his glory.

00:09:53.500 | Philippians 2, he emptied himself, laid aside his glory.

00:09:57.220 | He endured utter humiliation, not in a random way,

00:10:02.220 | but precisely for the glory of the Father.

00:10:07.060 | Christ's whole incarnation was a reversal of our attack

00:10:12.060 | on the glory of God.

00:10:14.620 | Since he's infinitely valuable,

00:10:17.820 | his loss of glory in his humiliation and death

00:10:22.700 | can cover all of our God-diminishing,

00:10:27.140 | God-dishonoring, God-defaming sins.

00:10:31.940 | And therefore, complete justice can be done

00:10:36.260 | in justifying the ungodly, like us.

00:10:39.780 | The glory of God is vindicated precisely in respect

00:10:44.780 | to the ways we have insulted the glory of God.

00:10:47.680 | Christ loses glory in suffering and dying

00:10:52.140 | precisely for the ways I have caused God

00:10:56.260 | to lose glory in my sins.

00:10:58.120 | And so, God is shown to be glorious

00:11:01.300 | in passing over my sins for the sake of Jesus,

00:11:05.660 | who lived and died to restore the glory of his Father.

00:11:10.540 | And that's precisely what justice demands.

00:11:14.820 | So, oh, oh, how I hope God will open the eyes

00:11:19.820 | of those who think that the heart of the Bible,

00:11:25.000 | the heart of the gospel,

00:11:26.460 | the best news in all the world is unjust.

00:11:30.100 | It is, in fact, the highest expression of justice

00:11:34.660 | that ever was and the greatest act of mercy.

00:11:39.660 | - That is a magnificent presentation of the gospel,

00:11:43.180 | Pastor John.

00:11:44.020 | Wow, how precious and unfathomable is the depth

00:11:48.240 | of the wisdom of God in the atonement.

00:11:50.660 | Amazing.

00:11:51.500 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:11:53.020 | Well, we have an email from a listener of ours in France

00:11:55.800 | who wants to know, "How do we delight in God

00:11:58.300 | "and delight in excelling at our work?

00:12:01.140 | "How do we delight in God and delight in personal excellence?"

00:12:04.620 | That's an interesting question,

00:12:05.900 | and that is on the table tomorrow.

00:12:08.260 | Of course, you can keep up daily

00:12:09.980 | with our free app for your phone,

00:12:11.680 | and you can get the app, and you can send us questions

00:12:14.280 | at our online podcast home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:12:19.280 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:12:21.140 | I'll see you tomorrow.

00:12:22.180 | (upbeat music)

00:12:24.760 | (upbeat music)

00:12:27.340 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Articulating the Glorious Cross to an Atonement-Rejecting Culture

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