Christmas will be here in a couple of days and this is the season when I'm reminded of a powerful line from John Donne the 17th century poet and pastor in his Christmas Day sermon way back in 1626 he said this quote Christ's birth and his death were but one Continual act and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day end quote There's a sobriety about Bethlehem Even there within the text with the slaughter of the innocents all the early signals tell us that the birth of Jesus is not all glee And joy, but it will be a story tinged from the very beginning with sacrifice and bloodshed In fact the meaning of Christ's birth will not make sense unless we see how deeply the incarnation is embedded Within a grand storyline of atonement and sacrifice in the Bible story from Genesis to Revelation So on occasional Fridays, I call dr.

Don Carson Carson is the co-founder and president of the gospel coalition And he's also the editor of the NIV's under Vince study Bible man He takes up a theme in biblical theology for us on those occasional Fridays And it just so happens that today in the shadow of Christmas.

We are talking about sacrifice Here's dr. Carson to explain One might think that in western secular Thought the notion of sacrifice and especially blood sacrifice sounds primitive and obsolete Something that doesn't make any sense anymore But the notion of sacrifice is enduring in every culture in one fashion or another we admire the sacrifices for example of our soldiers who Perhaps sacrifice themselves in order to save a batch of their mates for that.

We give the Medal of Honor posthumously and Honor their sacrifice. I remember when I was a high school student reading a story I was brought up in French it was by a French writer called Gui de Montpassant Concerning this couple childless deeply deeply in love Long married she had gorgeous gorgeous long hair and they were dirt poor She would have really liked a certain silver clasp that she had her eye on to to Set off the hair and hold it together and so on and he for his part no less poor both of them hard-working But with barely enough money to survive he had inherited his grandfather's watch and he would have dearly dearly loved to have a silver chain to Wear the wrong watch it was a pocket watch and he wanted a silver chain But of course neither of them could could afford what they wanted and then that Christmas She cut off her hair which could be used for a variety of things a century and a half ago and earned enough money To buy him a silver chain And he sold the watch in order to buy her a clasp for her hair And that's all of the story was but in in both cases.

There was a an image of sacrifice Out of love for the other person and in this case there was irony built into it of course so we are moved by stories of sacrifice and We need to become aware of how sacrifice works as a theme in all of the Bible and finally brings us to the cross the first possible mention of sacrifice in the Bible is in Genesis 321 Where God chooses to cover Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness by selecting the skins of animals He could have used something else they had used fig leaves Now there's no specific mention that this was an atonement for sin or the like there's no way that one should read back complex later sacrificial theology into Genesis 321, but you stick it on a trajectory and it's Seminal it's a covering that involves the death of another creature And that's the first mention of that sort of thing It prefigures as it were The sacrifices that are still to be unpacked then there are many many sacrifices in the Old Testament before anything is ritualized or concretized in law, it's almost as if Sacrifices hardwired into early humankind both in pagan circles and in believing circles So in chapter 4 verses 3 to 5 there are sacrifices being offered by Cain and Abel and Even Cain the prototypical evil doer according to 1st John 3 11 and 12 Is offering a sacrifice and you learn there that some sacrifices are acceptable and some are not Noah offers sacrifice following the flood in Genesis 8 Abraham offers sacrifices on various altars mentioned in Genesis 12 Genesis 13 and of course there is the great theme of the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 or the near sacrifice of Isaac when God himself in fact provides a Sacrificial lamb and the son is saved which becomes a paradigmatic of God's own sacrifice see Hebrews 11 17 to 19 and once the law comes the law of Moses there are many sacrifices that are required a morning and evening sacrifice and sacrifices that are not always of animals, but but but sometimes of grain or vegetables But the two dominant sacrifices are Passover and Day of Atonement Passover is connected with Israel's very identity since the first Passover in Exodus 12 takes place as The people of God are called out of slavery and on the way toward the promised land to constitute themselves under God as a nation and Eventually this this first Passover is tied in a symbol aden way to Jesus death see John 1914 to 16 Paul goes so far as to say Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us in first Corinthians 5 6 to 8 and So the Passover meal in which a lamb has been slaughtered and its blood sprinkled on the two doorposts and the lintel of the house and the whole animal is eaten in the house and reminds the people of the first Passover when they escaped slavery when God redeemed them from the land of of Slavery and because the blood was on the doorpost and the lintel Therefore the the angel of death passed over the house And hence the term Passover passed over the house and everyone in the house was spared including the firstborn son who was otherwise Killed so that became a way of looking for looking back to the past and that great act of redemption But because it was repeated year after year after year after year century after century Eventually thoughtful people would start asking.

What does this point forward to it points back? But what does it point forward to and in the New Testament the answer to that is Christ's sacrifice the ultimate Passover In which his sacrifice his blood Spilt on our behalf means that death and destruction pass over his blood-bought people, too And then of course, there's the Day of Atonement Sacrifice was ritually instilled in Israel through a variety of feasts and so on but the great passage that deals with The Day of Atonement is Leviticus 16 here There is the blood of a bull and goat taken by the high priest to cover both his own sins and the sins of the people Taken behind the veil in the tabernacle later the temple only once a year on the prescribed date only by the high priest and sprinkled on top of the Ark of the Covenant and If anyone approached the presence of God in this way Without the blood or if it wasn't the high priest or on some other date Then that person was to be killed You just do not approach God except by the sacrifice and the stipulations that he himself carefully prescribes and so this becomes really Crucial in Israel Sadly on some occasions the ritual becomes more important than what it is pointing to there are careful precautions and preparations that are stipulated by the law and These preparations include not only elements of the sacrifice itself But of the priest and what he wears and his ablutions and and so on all designed to show That there is nothing more important for human beings than to have sins atoned for to have sins covered paid for so that men and women can be reconciled to the Living God and Everything is stipulated by God with sanctions if if people ignore what God stipulates Then there are great sacrificial passages to that point forward nothing more dramatic than Isaiah 52 13 to the end of 53 where the ideal lamb is wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities and the beating that fell on him was for our peace and healing and he sees the the the agony of his own soul and and is is satisfied by By this sacrifice on our behalf, but it still has to be said that sacrifice is not automatically effective for for example that there is a vilification of Old Testament sacrifice by prophets when the sacrifice is offered as a Cover-up for heartless greed and selfishness when it's merely religious duty and the like See for example Isaiah 1 10 to 13 1st Samuel 15 22 and 23 This does the Lord require sacrifice or does he require obedience or Micah 6?

6 to 8 where sacrifice is being used as a an excuse for not pursuing righteousness and the like in which case all the sacrifice in the world is is Merely ritual. It's a stench in the Lord's nostrils. He cannot stand it because it's it reeks of hypocrisy So the Psalms for example hallow lawful and heartfelt sacrifice Psalm 4 5 Psalm 5 3 Psalm 50 verse 5 but even at the same time they point to the reality behind the act and And insist on sincerity of heart.

So that brings us to the New Testament and before we go any farther It's it's worth pausing for a moment to think carefully about some of the terms we use Atonement for example is God's work on sinners behalf to reconcile them to him It's a generic term that is very very broad There is a need for it because we're alienated from God and stand under God's righteous judgment The means for it are prescribed in the Old Testament and together these means point forward to the ultimate sacrifice Christ Jesus himself and that's where we need to stop and think about some theological terms like expiation and propitiation by expiation We mean that the sacrifice cancels the sin.

So the object of expiation is the sin Christ's sacrifice cancels sin by taking the guilt and Absorbing it paying for it suffering taking it on himself But propitiation the object of the verb to propitiate is not sin, but wrath Propitiation is the sacrifice by which God is propitiated that is made propitious made favorable and it's Reasonable simply because God stands over against us both in love and in wrath he stands over against us in wrath because he's a holy God and must respond with perfect righteousness and Therefore judgment against our sin, but he stands over against us in love because he is that kind of God So some people have objected to the notion of propitiation because they say God So loves the world that he gives his son if he's already so favorably disposed to the world that he gives his son Then how can you speak of turning aside his wrath?

But what that neglects is that God stands over against us both in love and in wrath He stands over against us in wrath as a function of his holiness. He stands over against us in love as a function is very of his very character and Thus the sacrifice of Christ is presented in Scripture as simultaneously Canceling sin and turning aside the wrath of God.

It's a mistake to pit propitiation and expiation Against each other. They're both taught in Scripture And I suspect that both are hiding behind the words used in that great atonement passage of Romans chapter 3 verses 21 to 26 One has to remember that before reading those verses Romans 3 21 to 26 one is supposed to read Romans 1 18 to 320 that huge passage outlines all the human sin that Requires atonement if there's to be any cleansing and it begins the wrath of God is disclosed from heaven in other words The sacrifice that is presented deals with the wrath of God as a function of God's own holiness so Christ sheds his blood in the New Testament the blood of Christ and the cross of Christ and the atonement of Christ the death of Christ Are all referring to the same thing that is Christ's sacrifice on our behalf some want the Shedding of blood and the sacrifice of Christ to be merely exemplary or merely celebratory.

That is something that provides an example Or something that is celebrates the love of God, but don't want to call it substitutionary But Christ dies in our place There are so many biblical texts that insist on that point. That's what cancels sin and turns aside the wrath of God So he took our sin in his own body on the tree And that's why Christians still insist on an expression such as penal substitution.

Now, of course, there are different elements of Truth that are depicted in the cross Christ is our representative He becomes a human being and dies as one of us standing in for us But he is also our substitute. He demonstrates his love toward us on the cross But he does so precisely by bearing our punishment.

That's why we speak of penal substitution And in my view penal substitution though It's not the only means of appropriate expression to depict the sacrifice of Christ. It is foundational and and not merely metaphorical And probably is the one that best grounds all the rest of the ways of talking about the cross of Christ Perhaps perhaps it should also be said that Christ's sacrifice unlike the sacrifices of the Old Testament Are once for all Christ cries just before he dies it is finished.

There is no more sacrifice for sin Hebrews insists Hebrews 9 depicts Christ as the ultimate fulfillment of the great day of atonement passages and And thus the New Testament insists that Christ brings all of these sacrificial themes together in himself and of course the the sacrifice of Christ is inevitably tied to the priesthood theme and to the temple theme and to the Jerusalem theme because The sacrifices were offered in the temple in Jerusalem by the priests And and thus all of these themes come together in spectacular fulfillment in the vision of Revelation 21 and 22 Where so many of these things come to a certain kind of climax?

Two more details that I should mention during his earthly ministry the Lord Jesus performed healings and Raised the dead and cast out demons preached the gospel and so on the very interesting passage Matthew chapter 8 verses 14 to 17 insists that when he was Healing the sick and casting out demons.

He was actually fulfilling Isaiah 53 and so people have asked in the healing of people and this healing is paid for by the sacrifice depicted in Isaiah 53 Does this mean there is healing in the atonement and if there is why does such healing take place? before the cross That is it takes place while Jesus is in his earthly ministry Heading toward the cross and to this two things must be said first of course There's healing in the atonement all the blessings that come to us from God are secured ultimately through the atonement Including resurrection bodies the fact that God is patient with us and forbearing and doesn't just wipe us out is A function of the fact that his dear son has now paid for our sins So of course this healing in the atonement the question is not whether this healing in the atonement The question is when do we receive all the benefits of the atonement some of these benefits we receive right away But physical healing in its most ultimate sense takes place at the consummation when we gain resurrection Bodies all secured at the end of the day by the cross of Christ So of course there's healing in the atonement But it doesn't follow that we always get the healing right now that we want which is why for example the Apostle Paul has to leave Trophimus behind because he's sick It's not that Paul forgot to pray for him or that that his prayers weren't particularly effective that day some some sicknesses are not going to get healed now until the end and Yet there are instances where God's Miraculous healing that does a point to the ultimate healing that takes place at the end and in both cases They're secured by the cross of Christ But the fact remains that the healings that Jesus performs are Themselves a function of Christ's cross work which when Jesus performs the healing has not yet taken place in other words the effect of Christ's cross work runs backward in time as well as forward in time And that's merely a function of the fact that God knows Christ knows What Christ has come to do there is a sense as?

Revelation puts it in chapters 13 and 17 that Christ is the lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world Not literally, but in God's mind. It's it's already a done deal and thus there is a sense in which Jesus healings done before the cross Find their effective payment in the cross which is still around the corner and thus point forward to the cross Just as any healing in the book of Acts for example points back to the cross and the resurrection What have already taken place as the crucial step in bringing about the ultimate healing that arrives with the consummation of the return of Christ?

And the last thing to be said although it is true that Christ's sacrifice is once for all and it pays for our sins and it grounds our Forgiveness it grounds our assurance before God We don't have to earn our way to the presence of God all of these things Flow from the cross they flow from the sacrifice of Christ they flow from a shed blood Yet at the same time when for example in Matthew 16 or mark 10 Jesus announces clearly that the Messiah must be crucified and rise again the third day the apostles aren't ready to accept it Jesus insists that it's the case and then also says that his disciples are to take up their cross and follow him and In that sense Christians are called to sacrifice, too So in first Peter 2 where this is very strong the uniqueness of Christ's sacrifice is greatly stressed He bore our sin in his own body on the tree That's unique, but at the same time Peter can say That Jesus went to the cross leaving us an example that we should follow in his steps So there is an exemplary component to the cross of Christ That's why the Apostle Paul can pray.

Oh that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering He wants to be conformed to Christ and it's why elsewhere Paul can write to the Philippians and say it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on his name But also to suffer for his sake so there is a sense in which we are to take up our cross Gladly and follow Christ on the way to the cross not because any suffering that we endure atones for the sins of others But because it does identify us with Christ We want to go where Jesus went Paul can go so far as to say that he'd like to fill up the afflictions of Christ that is to say Christ through his body the church still suffers Jesus identifies with his body the church it still suffers it's almost as if there's a quota a top amount of suffering that the church must endure and Paul is prepared to take more than his share as it were precisely by filling up the afflictions of Christ in this way to Enable some fellow Christians to suffer a little less So in our day and generation when dark clouds are looming Far from complaining that it's not fair We need ourselves to take up the example of the early apostles who rejoiced when they were beaten up Because they were found worthy to suffer for the name so in that sense Christ's sacrifice is Perpetual Perpetually effective rather it's unique it does not recur It cannot be copied or imitated But the Lord's table points back to it and our own sufferings are to be aligned with it that we in turn ourselves May commend the cross of Christ to others today Amen that is a helpful and valuable overview from his home office that was dr.

Don Carson the co-founder and president of the gospel coalition Well, it's time for us to celebrate Christmas this weekend and for John Piper and on behalf of the entire team at desiring God org we would like to extend to you all a very Merry Christmas And we pray that it would be a season to draw you near to Christ to see the magnificent glory of His sacrifice a sacrifice which begins in the little town of Bethlehem I'm your host Tony Reinke.

We'll see you on Monday You