Sermon
The Doctrine Of The Atonement
November 29, 2003
Pastor Donald Sheley

I would like to begin just a short two sermon series on the subject of the atonement. It is the work of Christ that was accomplished in His life and death to secure eternal salvation for us. When I started this study, again I realized as we did in the study of the Holy Spirit, this is an immense subject, the subject the doctrine of the atonement. The work and the ministry of Christ and what He did to secure our salvation for us at Calvary. You see the death of Christ the incarnate Son of God is the most remarkable event in all history.

Centuries before it occurs it was foretold with an amazing fullness of detail. The prophets of Jehovah described the promised messiah not only as a person of high dignity and as one who should perform wondrous and blessed miracles, but also as one who would be despised and rejected by men and whose labors and sorrows should be terminated by a death of shame and violence. In addition, they affirmed that He should die not only under human sentence of execution, but it pleased the Lord for it to be that way.

And when we think of the death of Christ at Calvary, the supernatural phenomena which attended Christ's death clearly distinguishes it from all other deaths. The darkening of the sun at midday without a natural cause, the earthquake which laid open the graves, and the rending of the veil in the Temple from top to bottom proclaims something very profound; the One who died on that cross that day was more than a mere mortal. And three days after His body had been placed in Joseph's tomb He came forth victorious over death and over the grave. Forty days later, having appeared again in a very tangible form, He ascended into the heavens and there to be our great high priest.

So when we think of the death of Jesus Christ and all that was associated with it, it becomes a very profound and important moment in the history of mankind. And the death of Christ was the great subject on which the apostles were commissioned to preach, although it was known before hand that it would be an offensive message to all classes of men, but they still made the determination. And when we go through the New Testament, especially in the book of Acts, it was the death of Christ which was at the heart of all of the New Testament preacher's message.

Paul said I determine to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Great is the mystery of godliness, amazing beyond all infinite conception is that transaction which was consummated at Golgotha for all of us. There we behold the Prince of Life, dying, there we gaze upon the Lord of glory made a spectacle of unhonorable shame. There we see the holy one of God made sin for His people, there we witness the author of all blessing made a curse for us. The cross. We are carried above the sphere of the highest relations of created beings and in the very council of the eternal.

And you know folks, as I contemplated this massive subject the last few days, I realized that so little do we touch upon the great truths, even in the process of our worship. And I'd like just to journey with you some of the great truths that are involved at the cross. Take your notes. I'm going to read for you Hebrews chapter 10 verses 1 through 23.

"For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come; and not the very image of the things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year after year, make those who approach perfect.
For then would they not have ceased to be offered? For the worshippers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins.
But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.
For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.
Therefore, when He came into the world, He said:
"Sacrifice and offerings You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you had no pleasure. Then I said, Behold I have come-in the volume of the book it is written of Me-to do Your will, O God."
Previously saying, "Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them" (which are offered according to the law), then He said, "Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God." He takes away the first that He may establish the second.
By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
But this Man (speaking of Christ), after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool.
For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before,
"This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them."
Then He adds, "Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."
Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin.
Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the Holiest by the blood of Jesus,
by a new and living way which He consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh,
and having a High Priest over the house of God,
let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful."

I'm at page 2 in our notes. What was the ultimate cause that led Jesus to come to earth and die on a cross for our sins? And when you journey through the Scriptures you'll come to two conclusions, I believe, two reasons why Jesus came to be that sacrifice to offer Himself once and for all on that cross for your sins and for mine. The Scripture points out two things: the love of God and the justice of God.

The great Scripture verse that I think most of us memorized in our Sunday school days is: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Now this verse tells us that the initiative in all salvation lies with God. Sometimes Christianity is presented in such a way that it sounds as if God had to be pacified, or as if He had to be persuaded to forgive. Sometimes men speak as if they would draw a picture of a stern, angry, unforgiving God in the Old Testament and a gentle, loving, forgiving Jesus in the new. Sometimes men present the Christian message in such a way that it sounds as if Jesus did something which changed the attitude of God. But John 3:16 tells us that it was with God that it all started...at the back of everything is His love. God is love.

It is easy to think of God as looking at men in their heedlessness and their disobedience and their rebellion and saying: "I'll break them: I'll discipline them and punish them and scourge them until they come back." But the tremendous thing about the text, John 3:16, is that it shows us God acting not for His own sake, but for ours, not to satisfy His desire for power, not to bring a universe to heel, but to satisfy His love. God is not like an absolute monarch who treats each man as a subject to be reduced to abject obedience. God is a Father who cannot be happy until His wandering children have come home. God does not smash men into submission...He yearns over them and woos them into love.

And as the great old Catholic theologian Augustine said: "God loves each one of us as if there was only one of us to love." I laid down that premise first of all, folks, because I think too frequently over the past number of years preachers don't emphasize enough the love of God, and sometimes His sternness and His judgment far exceed attention than His love. I know there has to be that beautiful balance...God is not only a God of love but He's a God of justice, but at the heart of everything for us is God in love with us.

Someone wrote a beautiful hymn. "The love of God is greater far then tongue or pen can ever tell, it goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell; the guilty pair, bowed down with care, God gave His Son to win: His erring child He reconciled and pardoned from his sin.
Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made, were every stalk on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade, to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole tho stretched from sky to sky.
O love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong! It shall forever more endure-the saints' and angels' song."

There's a Jewish legend that goes like this: When God was about to create man He took into His counsel the angels that stood about His throne. Create him not, said the angel of justice, for if Thou does create he will commit all kinds of wickedness against his fellow man. He will be hard and cruel and dishonest and unrighteous. Create him not, said the angel of truth, for he will be false and deceitful to his brother man and even to Thee. Create him not, said the angel of holiness, for he will follow that which is in pure in Thy sight and dishonor Thee in Thy face. And as the old legend goes then stepped forward the angel of mercy, and said, create him heavenly Father for when he sins and turns from the path of right and truth and holiness, I will take him tenderly by the hand, speak loving words to him, and then lead him back to You.

There are a number of Scripture verses that point out the tremendous love of God. Romans 5:6-8 says, While we were yet in weakness, at the fitting time Christ died in behalf of the ungodly. Now it is an extraordinary thing for one to give his life even for an upright man, though perhaps for a noble and lovable and generous benefactor someone might even dare to die. But God shows and clearly proves His own love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ the Messiah, the Anointed One died for us.

Paul writes to the Ephesians in chapter 2, And you He made alive, when you were dead by your trespasses and sins in which one time you walked according to this world, following the prince of the power of the air. Among these we as well as you once lived and conducted ourselves in the passions of our flesh, our own behavior governed by our corrupt and sensual nature. We were then by nature the children of God's wrath and heirs of His indignation. But God so rich as He in His mercy. Because of and in order to satisfy the great and wonderful and intense love with which He loved us, even when we were dead by our own shortcomings and trespasses, He made us alive together in fellowship and in union with Christ. Because of His love.

And John writes again in 1 John: See what an incredible quality of love the Father has given and shown and bestowed on us, that we should be permitted to be named and called and counted the children of God! And so we are! The reason that the world does not know or recognize us is that it does not know nor recognize Him. Beloved, we are now God's children; it is not yet disclosed or made clear what we shall be hereafter , but we know that when He comes and is manifested, we shall be as God's children. We shall resemble and be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

So when we read through the Scriptures the first and primary reason why Christ came to die on that cross is because of His intense love for us. For God so loved the world. I'm back to my notes at page 2, down in the middle. We have another note there. The second reason we have suggested as the cause that led Christ coming to earth and dying on the cross for our sins was the divine justice of God. Now we can understand love but it's a little more difficult for us to understand the concept of divine justice.

You see the justice of God required that a way be provided that satisfied the penalty due to us for our sin. He could not accept us into fellowship with Himself unless that penalty had been paid. What was that penalty? God said, when you sin you'll die. And thus the penalty of death had to be paid in order for our relationship with God to be a righted.

In the beginning of man's history, God had laid down a divine law that without the shedding of blood, there could be no forgiveness of sins. The wages of sin is death, thus the penalty for sin is death, but it must be the death of a perfect sacrifice. Because in the reading of the text we read from Hebrews it says that the blood of bulls and goats and lambs could never take a way sins. Thus, there had to be that perfect sacrifice and that perfect sacrifice was none other than Jesus Christ.

Look at what it says in Romans 3:20. And I've taken this from the Amplified. "For no person will be justified (made righteous, acquitted, and judged acceptable) in His sight by observing the works prescribed by the Law. For the real function of the Law is to make men recognize and be conscious of sin [not mere perception, but an acquaintance with sin which works toward repentance, faith and holy character]. But now the righteousness of God has been revealed independently and altogether apart from the Law, although actually it is attested by the Law and the Prophets. Namely, the righteousness of God which comes by believing with personal trust and confident reliance on Jesus Christ (the Messiah). [And it is meant] for all who believe. For there is no distinction. Since all have sinned and are fallen short of the honor and glory which God bestows and receives.

[All] are justified and made upright and in right standing with God, freely and gratuitously by His grace (His unmerited favor and mercy), through the redemption which is provided in Christ Jesus, Whom God put forward [before the eyes of all] as a mercy seat and propitiation by His blood [the cleansing and life-giving sacrifice of atonement and reconciliation, to be received] through faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance He had passed over and ignored former sins without punishment. It was to demonstrate and prove at the present time (in the now season) that He Himself is righteous and that He justifies and accepts as righteous him who has [true] faith in Jesus."

So divine justice says, God laid down a law, and that law is that all who sin must die. And Jesus comes to this earth...He takes that penalty which was given to us for our sin. He takes that penalty on Himself and He dies on the cross, and thus we can live eternally with Him. So justice has been satisfied, the debt is paid, sin has been covered, atoned for by the death of Jesus Christ, and now of God's justice has been cleared.

Now back to our notes. You'll notice that Christ was the perfect sacrifice which satisfies the just requirement as a penalty for the sins of mankind. But Paul uses a very interesting word. It's the word propitiation. We don't use it much now in our days, but there are two or three verses in the Scriptures that use that word. It's a very interesting word - propitiation -- and in our notes I have noted that what it means is this: It is a sacrifice that bears God's wrath so that God becomes "propitious" or favorably disposed toward us. And I guess the best verse that we can find to explain that is found again in 1 Corinthians 5:21, "For our sake He made Christ [virtually] to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in and through Him we might become [endued with, viewed as being in, and examples of] the righteousness of God [what we ought to be, approved and acceptable and in right relationship with Him, by His goodness]."

This to me is a concept that I really worked at this week to try to get my mind and heart around because it's something we don't think very much of -- propitious. And the idea is that there is an object on which the wrath of the person is taken out on that object so that that wrath has been appeased. When we say that Christ is the propitiation, we say that on Him God took all of His wrath out on sin. But Paul includes another dimension that many times we've never realized. All those who lived and died before Christ came, they had sinned also, and all who live and die after Christ went to that cross, we sinned also, and what Paul is saying is that on Jesus Christ God took all of the wrath of man's sin from the past and the present and future and He piled it on the back of Christ. Christ became sin, He who knew no sin, for us.

Now that's a thought folks that most of us cannot really get to when you think of all the sinners that have lived before...there's Cain who killed his brother. You take all the sin that happens in the Old Testament; you take the anger and the wrath that was poured out on Christ there at the cross by those soldiers and by those who crucified Him; you take all the sin of mankind down through the centuries, even to our present day, the sins of mankind have been terrible. Think of those who have killed murdered millions for their political reasons and their historical ambitions. I've walked the streets of Magadan in Siberia were 6 million people were taken there by Stalin and just allowed to freeze to death. What a sinner.

The Bible says that God piled on Jesus the wrath of that sin of all mankind. You can't grapple with that. He became the object of God's wrath so that we become the object of God's love. That's amazing! That's what it means, the propitiation, the one who suffered God's wrath against sin so that I could be set free from that wrath. And we don't have that wrath to look forward to. When we finish our journey here and we come into the presence of God, the whole problem of sin has been settled because Christ settled it at the cross. An amazing thought. Let's go on.

We notice in our notes we have noted that Christ was the perfect sacrifice. And I want you to think for a moment again about the sacrifice in the Old Testament context. Now here again is something we've never experienced, but it's very pronounced in the Old Testament times -- the idea of the sacrifice. You go to many countries of the world today and there are still some of the back countries those who will present a sacrifice, and animal, but it's something so uncommon for us today. But here's what happened. When God came down in the evening to walk and talk with Adam and Eve, because it said He had fellowship with them, he finds them out hiding. They admit their sin, and God had every right to strike them dead then and there, because He said if you partake of that tree you'll die.

God could have immediately ended mankind by slaying Adam and Eve in the garden, but He didn't do that. The amazing thing is He provided a coat of skins and to do that He had to go into that garden and kill an animal, the slaying of an animal, so that the animal skins could cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve. And thus the first moment when something gives its life and sheds its blood so that Adam and Eve could have the covering for their sins. And what God did in the Old Testament He started that process whereby there had to be some shedding of blood so that sins could be forgiven, and so you selected an object which was an animal -- a lamb or a goat or a dove, whatever it might be -- and that lamb shed its blood for your sins and you could walk away free.

Let's go down through our notes because there are some very interesting things about the sacrifice. And there are at least four or five different aspects to an offering. When any of the four great animal sacrifices were being offered, these things took place. First of all there was the bringing near. It's a phrase, again, that you'll find frequently in the Old Testament. It simply means that when a worshipper made an animal draw near he had the intention of worshipping. He wanted to honor God, to get rid of his sin, to live in fellowship with God and man. He came obediently, bringing the prescribed offering.

For most sacrifices the young of one of the domestic animals was specified such as an ox, or a sheep or a goat, and in some cases for very poor people, it was pigeons. Some animals which were excluded and would never be accepted by God as a sacrifice was the horse or the donkey. It must be ceremonially clean. It must be without blemish. It must be perfect in its kind.

So think with me: you live in the Old Testament times; you know that God has laid down a law that there must be the shedding of blood for the covering of sins; you know that you've sinned, so you now become concerned about your relationship with God and you're concerned about your sin. So what you do is you decide what's going to be your offering, what's going to be your sacrifice. It can be a lamb. If you are very, very poor it could be a pigeon. But you would secure that lamb. You would go out into your flock, if you had a flock, and you'd find the very finest. It could not be with any blemish. It had to be a perfect animal.

This is one of the reasons why when you get to the book of Malachi God is so concerned about the way people were sacrificing, because all they were bringing is the lame and the sick lambs to be sacrificed. God said that's unacceptable. It's got to be perfect. It's got to be the best one in your flock. It's got to be flawless. And I can imagine the feeling that must have gone through that worshiper knowing he's getting ready to go to present his offering. He's going to bring near his sacrifice, and he's going to provide that sacrifice for his sins.

Look at the next thing that happens. The laying on of hands. The worshipper laid his hand on the head of the animal. It was a symbolic transferal of the sins of the worshipper to the animal, so that when it died it was taking the punishment due to the worshipper of his sins. You know folks I've often told you, I could have never, I could have never been a worshiper in the Old Testament times. One of the things I always run from is the sight of blood.

We have 900+ children in our school and many, many times a day they have their times out on the playfield where they get their cuts and scars and their bruises, and when I see them come in bleeding I go hide. And to think about going to a place where sacrifices are being made and blood is being given, I couldn't do that. We used to have a little house up on the lake and someone went up and used the house and caught a fish and fixed a little pen out in the water and said, Pastor, when you get up there you'll have a fish to eat. When I picked up that fish and looked it in the eyes, I said to my son, don't kill that fish; just put it back in the water and let it go. That's my nature, and I just tell you this because when I think of the way the Old Testament folks had to deal with their sins, I couldn't have done it.

But what they would do is after they would bring their animal, whatever it is, and they would place it on the altar then they had to put their hand on the head of that sacrifice. They had to stand there at the altar with that sacrifice, and then look at the next step which they had to do.

The third step was they had to kill the animal. The animal was killed by the worshipper. And that was interesting to me as I was journeying through the various manuscripts this week, I had always told you folks that it was the priest that killed the sacrifice. But when you get into the text of the Scripture you'll find it was the worshiper who killed his own sacrifice. And looked at what I've noted here. In personally killing the animal, the worshipper gave symbolic expression to his recognition that his sin merited the severe punishment. He himself performed the act which set forth the truth that he deserved death. He identified with that act as that animal dying for him and for his sin.

I'm at the top of Page 4. The manipulation of the blood; it's here that the work of the priest then begins. Up to this point, it was the worshipper who did everything. At this stage in making the sacrifice, the priest collects the blood and proceeds to use. He collects the blood in a conical vessel, that is, a vessel without a base on it. The shape of the vessel made it impossible for him to set it down and this meant that the priest must move without delay to the prescribed actions so that the blood had no chance to settle or coagulate.

If the sacrifice was a burnt offering the priest was required to bring the blood and sprinkle it against the sides of the altar. If it was a bird the blood was drained out on the side of the altar. The procedure was the same for a peace offering. The big difference came when the sacrifice was a sin offering and here it depended on the person(s) for whom the sacrifice was being offered.

And so in our notes there I lay out the various ways in which the sacrifice, the blood, was handled. Many times it was caught in this vessel without a base because immediately the priest had to proceed with whatever the prescribed activity which took place at that particular offering. The blood became a very, very important part.

Notice, I'm down two thirds in the page, then there was the burning on the altar. Some part of the animal was always burnt on the altar, this apparently being regarded as God's portion as it ascended heavenwards in the smoke rising from the altar fire. So there at the altar it depended on the kind of sacrifice, and there were a number of various sacrifices that were being made. Sometimes just a very small portion of that sacrifice laid there on the altar and was burned. Some of the sacrifice was often given to the priest, and sometimes the rest of the sacrifice you took home with you for your meal.

God had laid down very specific directions for the way that the sacrifice was given. Then the last one: there was the disposal of the rest of the sacrifice. As to the burnt offering, the whole carcass was burnt up and the hide of the animal belonged to the officiating priest. For other sacrifices, some portions were given to the priest and some portions given to the worshippers.

Notice -- Nobody who came thoughtfully to God by the way of sacrifice could be in any doubt but that sin was a serious matter. It could not be put aside by a light-hearted wave of the hand but required the shedding of blood. Worshippers knew what they had to do to receive forgiveness for their sins and restore fellowship with God. Again, it's hard for us to capture that in our own mind, that matter of continued sacrifices hour after hour, day after day, week after week, year after year. But every time they made a sacrifice it was a reminder they were sinners and that sin required a tremendous payment.

On with our notes -- the essential element of the sacrificial approach was the element of cost. When we think of cost...and in those days people were not rich. Their flocks were very, very small. The average flock we are told was probably 10 no more than 30 lambs. When you knew that you were going to going to a sacrifice, you knew that it was going to take proportion of your assets; it was going to cost you to make that sacrifice. And I note here, no one who came to God by the way of offering the best in his flock would put a low value on the privilege of such an approach. He would realize, as many of us today do not, that the service of God must cost us something.

And I pause here folks. I think again one of the things that should grip our hearts when we come to this whole thought of Christ the sacrifice for us as part of that atonement, doing His work for us, the tremendous cost to God for that sacrifice; to send His only begotten Son, to have the world mock at Him, laugh at Him. He had no place to lay His head. And then God, in order to solve the matter of justice, makes Him the object of wrath, has Him nailed to a cross, and it says it pleased God is so doing. What a tremendous cost for our salvation. And I think many times when we get on our knees at community service that's a truth that really evades us, to realize what God did it order to save us, and the cost of sending His Son to do that for us; the cost of our salvation.

Now I'm at the bottom of Page 4. The Old Testament never tells us in set terms why sacrifice was held to do away with sin. I cannot tell you why. I think oft times when I take time to explain the sacrifice the question is often asked, Pastor, couldn't God have chosen some other way to take care of the problem of sin? Was there no other way available? And here again, we do not know the mind of God. He's sovereign, He's eternal, He determines how it shall be, and the fact of the sacrifice was part of His eternal determination and His plan. Because when we read the Bible, what we read the New Testament, these things were settled in eternity before time ever began.

I'm at the top of page 5 now. It was enough to be that way. We are told many times that sacrifice was offered to make the atonement or the like. As we've often noticed, the term blood is used in the Old Testament 362 times. But far and away the most frequent use of the term is to indicate death with violence, a use which is found 203 times in the Old Testament. But here's the heart of it. Notice this verse in Leviticus 17:11, "For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar, it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life." Now there's the explanation; the life is in the blood, and thus I have given it to you to make an atonement for yourselves on the altar.

Now such passages certainly show that the Israelites saw life and blood as closely connected and that they treated blood with great respect. The men of the Old Testament certainly saw life as specially linked with blood, for when the blood was taken from animal or man, so was the life. Thus the term blood is not used as often in the New Testament, only 98 times, and the reference to the blood is often to Christ's death there at Calvary.

Let me make another observation. One of the things that modernism and liberalism eradicated from the gospel is the emphasis on blood. You go to many, many churches today who are liberal in their theology and you will never hear a song about the blood of Jesus Christ. You and I were raised as Christians on those great old hymns, What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Christ. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. But in our modern world with our liberal theology, the concept of blood within religion has been rejected. Not so here. You can't read through the Scriptures and miss the fact that without the shedding of blood, and Christ's blood, you and I would spend eternity and hell. That's the fact of the matter folks. It's the shedding of His blood in sacrifice for us that becomes that cleansing portion that washes away all of our sins and makes us acceptable unto God.

Look at what it says in Romans 5:6-11, "For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For it is when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation."

The sacrifice that Jesus made was a sacrifice offered in love. Ephesians 5:2 says: "And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma." And the writer to the Hebrews points it out in the passage that we have read in chapter 10, that "by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all."

Now the will is important and we should not overlook the contrast between Christ's willing sacrifice of Himself and the uncomprehending, involuntary sacrifices that necessarily occurred when animals were offered. What happened on Calvary was out of love and the sacrifice for our sins was done with a willing heart on the part of Christ. I drew that comparison because, again, we go back to the scene of going into the flock, taking an animal and taking it to the sacrifice, and there to slay that sacrifice. It unknowingly, uncomprehendingly of what was taking place became involved. Not so with Christ. Before the foundations of the world the Bible says He was lamb that was slain from the foundations of the world. Christ came to this world, was rejected, was hung upon a cross all because of God's plan, but He went there and He died knowingly in love for us.

You know when you try to comprehend this whole concept of the cross, of the death of Christ it's amazing. Why would God choose to do it this way? I cannot tell you, but I bow in worship and reverence when I think of how much God loves us -- so much to send His Son Jesus to die for us.

Go with me to the middle of page 6, and I make a note here down about two thirds of the page. At the heart of the biblical doctrine of the atonement is the idea of penal substitution. What do we mean by that? When we talk of it being penal, we mean that Christ endured punishment. And the obvious questions that arise from this claim relate to the nature of the penalty and the one who exacts it. In the first place, God's law has been broken and sin has been committed against Him. God is the One who prescribes the penalty and God is the one who exacts it.

Secondly, the penalty God laid down for sin is death, exclusion from fellowship with Him for ever. For human beings, this means eternal punishment. The Scripture says, "And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." So when we say substitution we mean that Christ endured this penalty in our place. Christ, Himself, willingly submitted to the just penalty which we deserved, receiving it on our behalf and in our place so that we will not have to bear it ourselves -- the substitution.

And with this I'd like to close. We've not covered the subject completely, and you can read it when you have time. But this whole idea of the atonement is that God provides a way through Christ who comes to this world, who is God incarnate in human flesh, who takes upon Him the form of man, who is taken to that cross, is allowed to beaten, to be mocked and then nailed to a cross, and He did that as our substitute. He died on that cross as our substitute. If He had not gone there, we would die in our sins, but because He died as my substitute, He took my place, your place, on that cross, and because He did, the penalty for sin has been exacted, the gift of forgiveness has been granted, and the promise of life eternal for ever with God has been given.

That's what happened on the cross 2000 years ago, and that's what we mean by the word atonement; what God did through Christ to procure for us the gift of life eternal. And isn't it a wonderful thing that all we have to do is just simply by faith say, Lord Jesus, I am a sinner. You're the one that died on that cross as the perfect sacrifice for me. You took my place. You died on my behalf so that I could be forgiven and spend eternity with You. When we ask Christ by His spirit to come and live within us as our Savior, you're excepting what God did for us at Calvary through Christ, and when we do that, He gives to us the gift of life eternal. That's the atonement. Let's bow our heads in prayer.

Lord Jesus we've tried to understand all of these verses that relate to Your death which took place 2000 years ago. So much is involved. Your plan in the eternities past, the sacrificial system that prefigured the sacrifice of Christ at Calvary, Your love that caused You, Lord Jesus, to die there for us, and to know that when You died divine justice was satisfied. The penalty for sins had been paid, and because we can trust in You, Lord Jesus, we have forgiveness of all of our sins. That's an amazing truth. Thank you Lord Jesus for dying for us.

Maybe you're here tonight and you say, Pastor, that's the first time I've ever understood or at least had it explained why Jesus had to go to that cross. Now I understand He went there for me as my substitute. And I never understood why He had to die, but now I understand He did because divine justice had to be resolved. And the justice was the penalty of sin, and because I'm a sinner that penalty was upon me. Now I understand. Jesus paid that penalty.

In my heart of hearts I'd like to receive Jesus Christ as my Savior. I'd like to become a Christian and I'd like to put my trust in Jesus tonight. Would you like to make that decision? It's the greatest decision you ever make in life to put your trust, your faith in Jesus and receive Him as your Savior by faith. Would you like to do that? You're just simply saying, God, tonight I want to put my trust in Jesus and receive Him as my Savior.

Lord Jesus, we close our meeting tonight and all we can say, even though we don't understand it all...to try to comprehend that You became the propitiation for us, that You became the object of which the wrath of sin was placed upon. We don't understand that; it's just words to a great extent. But we accept it and we thank you dear Jesus. We thank you from the depths of our heart for providing a way of forgiveness for our sins and giving to us the gift of life eternal to be forever spent in Your eternal presence. Thank you for that, Lord Jesus. It's in Your name we pray, amen. God bless you folks.