The Gracious Power of the Cross 1. Atonement for Sin Heb 10:1-14; Ps 51:1-9; Matt 3:1-17 (Lev 16:1-34)
Introduction
To my shame, especially as someone who likes to see themselves as a “prophet of the cross”, it took some prompting from Donna to persuade me to use some of Dale’s Lenten studies as a basis for this sermon series on the cross. Perhaps I was deceived into thinking that I had already mastered the meaning of the death of Christ. Yet the cross is at the heart of the most profound spiritual mystery, that “in Christ God” suffers in our place (2 Cor 5:19). We cannot understand the nature of God before we understand the cross. This would be to assume that we can do without the climactic special revelation which only the cross can bring.
Conscience
Before speaking of the cross, I must say something about the importance of conscience. For the impact of the cross involves a transformation of conscience. Often also referred to as “heart” in scripture e.g. 1 Sam 2:27. When Adam and Eve sinned, they activated “the knowledge of good and evil” (Gen 2:17), so that by fallen nature, like it or not, we know good is real and evil is real and that they are real in us. Which means that we know in our deepest hearts we deserve to die. No one can avoid being held responsible for their attitudes and actions, Indigenous peoples are famous for “payback” and their languages have no word for “forgiveness”. Or, make the simplest of slips on social media and you will be held mercilessly responsible for your “sins”. Reading the Bible alone as a 20-year-old I was inwardly convinced I deserved the fires of hell for not loving my Creator, but in pointing to Jesus the scriptures assured me there was a way out. Today I know that be held responsible by God as he is revealed in Christ is an unlimited blessing; which this series will seek to expound.
David
It is at this point that David’s personal testimony in Psalm 51 is so powerful. He was a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam 13:40) whose songs bear witness to a very intimate relationship with the Lord. Not unexpectedly then, when he committed adultery and murder his conscience was traumatised, but not in a way we might first suspect. Instead of being worried about being stoned to death, the punishment under the Law of Moses (Lev 20:10; Ex. 21:12, 14; Lev. 24:17, 21; Num. 35:16–21; Deut. 19:11) he calls out to the Lord to renew their relationship (v.10). Most intensely he cries out for his sin to be cleansed and covered (vv.2, 7, 9). This is normally, but not in this psalm, the language of sacrifice. The reference to the offering of animal sacrifices comes only after David anticipates his plea for reunion with God will have been met. Given that “Holy Spirit” appears only 3 times in the Old Testament cf. Isa 63:10-11] When David beseeches the Lord, “take not your Holy Spirit from me” (v.11) he shows remarkable insight for an old covenant man that only the Spirit can renew intimacy between a holy God and a sinner (v.4).
David illustrates for us in an extraordinary way the relationship between law and grace. He lived in a society saturated with moral commandments and rituals to preserve purity that encompassed everyday things like food, speech, sex, what you can touch and so on (e.g. Lev 17-26). Any blemish of body or soul meant a worshipper could not “draw near” to God (Lev 21:18). With a conscience uniquely sensitised to the presence of the Lord by Law and Spirit, he says his sin is “ever before me” (v.3), David’s guilt is an awareness of law-breaking as separation from God. He felt intensely that his guilt rendered him entirely impotent to approach God (P.T. Forsyth) He knew his sin/guilt wasn’t essentially against Bathsheba and Uriah, but only “against God” (v.4) so he longed with his whole heart for a resumption of oneness with the Lord which is the fruit of what scripture calls atonement.
“Atonement involves forgiveness, reconciliation, reunion, but is more than all these. The Old English word, “at-one-ment,” means a making at one, and points to a process of bringing together those who are estranged. This is the heart of atonement. The secret of David’s ability to reach through the psalms across generations is his profound intimacy with the Lord, formed in sheep pastures and battlefields, broken by grievous sin but fully healed and deepened by divine mercy (v.1). The atonement has no limits.
Gospel and Christ
There are many ways to talk about atonement, but this is the best by far, “Jesus Christ is the atonement.” (Barth). Christ deals with our need to draw near to God in a way that is far “better” (Heb 11:40) than anything any old covenant person could imagine. David’s grasp of the possibilities of reunion with God was limited by just how broken and contrite (Ps 51:17) an human heart could be, we have insight into the unlimited humility and brokenness of the atoning God on our behalf (Phil 2:7-8; 2 Cor 10:1). It is here that the writer to the Hebrews, a Jew, perhaps even a priest, intimately familiar with the old covenant sacrificial system, is especially helpful.
From a priestly perspective he understood the powerlessness of sacrifices to cleanse the conscience from shame and blame, the Old Testament law “can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship”. Sacrifices can never take away a “consciousness of sins” from the worshippers (Heb 10:1-2). No matter how devout the offeror, sacrifices could never remove a sense of guilt for sin (Rom 3:20). Suffering from what Hebrews calls an “evil/guilty conscience” (10:22) the old covenant worshipper could never draw near enough to achieve fully satisfactory intimacy with an all pure and holy God.
At this point Jesus stepped in as our great sacrifice and High Priest to do what the blood of bulls and goats could never do, take away sin (Heb 10:4). This does not mean it is impossible for us to sin, but it means he has taken away our guilt so as to reunite us with a holy Father. Since he has perfectly done God’s will in our place we can approach our heavenly Father without ritual, moral or spiritual blockages (Heb 10:7).
This is the significance of what the Lord said to John the Baptist at his baptism, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” (Matt 3:15). As our substitute/representative Christ has drawn near to God by obediently fulfilling all the requirements of God’s law on our behalf. The implications of the atonement for a fallen and guilty human race must be expounded carefully and clearly. If all societies acknowledge that atrocious crimes, like murder, rape or child abuse, must be punished, we cannot question, at least in our spirits, that dishonouring God must also be punished. Yet there are always those who mock the cross. When I debated a philosopher some years ago at UWA he commented, “I don’t need to be crucified for my children to know that I love them.” The atonement is much bigger than a revelation of God’s love (cf. Rom 5:8). More famously, the dying German poet Heinrich Heine trivialised the prospect of divine judgement by saying, “God will forgive me, that’s his business” (Heinrich Heine). Since this was the man who also said, “One should forgive one’s enemies, but not before they are hanged.”, we must very much doubt whether he had any real sense of what he was saying. This is eternally dangerous ground (Phil 3:18-19). But how will God punish sin? The death of Jesus is nothing less than the most momentous event ever in the life of God, what someone has called, “The Judge Judged In Our Place” (K. Barth) The divine Judge undergoing judgement in our place.
It does not take special revelation to acknowledge that God has the right to punish offenders, but it does require insight from heaven to believe in our hearts that the highest glory of Father, Son and Spirit is to take their judgement on themselves in in the humanity of Jesus. It is not the case of an angry God punishing an innocent Jesus instead of us, it is God-with-us in his Son enduring the wrath that we deserve. The wrath of Father, Son and Spirit. It is as a fully human and fully divine Person, the “very God of very God” and “very Man of very man” of the Nicene Creed, that Jesus willingly agrees (Mark 14:36) with the verdict of the Father on our guilty race. Being one in mind with the Father in the Spirit Jesus alone can grasp what sin means and does to God e.g., back in Genesis “the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” Gen 6:6 and achieve complete atonement. In his death Jesus did what we could never do for ourselves, as the guiltless party bearing our sin (Isa 53:11) he was clothed with the glory of a unique righteousness (cf. Heb 9:14). As a human being, through death-and-resurrection he became perfectly one with the Father in the taking-away- of-the-judgement we deserved (cf. John 19:30; Heb 2:10; 5:9; 7:28). By his perfect submission as a Son to the righteousness of God’s judgement against sin, he has become our indescribable righteousness (1 Cor 1:30; 2 Cor 9:15).
What Atonement Means for Us
The fruit of the atoning death of Christ is far greater than anything ordinarily imaginable. We can enjoy everything that God in his love and grace planned for humanity from the foundation of the world, we enjoy his eschatological/eternal promises, we can enjoy uninhibited access to God’s presence forever (cf. Heb 4:16; 10:19-22). In Jesus we have passed through the divine court room and now abide in the Father’s heart (cf. John 1:18; Col 3:1-3; Heb 2:10-11). In Christ grace has fulfilled the Law (cf. John 1:17) so we boldly “draw near to God through him” (Heb 7:2 cf. 4:16; 7:19; 10:22)
Hebrews expresses this breakthrough in powerful language which must be carefully expounded; “by a single offering he (Jesus) has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” (Heb 10:14) This is not the language of moral sinlessness, but of unimpeded worship. Through Jesus’ bloody sacrifice we have open access to a holy God in his heavenly sanctuary as men and women without guilt before him. In Paul’s language, we are “blameless” before God (Eph 1:4; Phil 1:10; Col 1:22; 1 Thess 3:13; 5:23 cf. Jude 24; Rev 14:5. We are “spotless” (Eph :27; Rev 3:14) so no moral blemish, stands between me and God the Judge, the blood of Christ sprinkled on my conscience (Lev 16:14ff; Heb 10:22; 12:24; 1 Pet 1:2) speaks with divine authority only of mercy and forgiveness. It tells me I am already complete in Christ (Col 2:10 cf. Heb 12:24=12:2ff.).
Conclusion
A friend who works in a major hospital tells me they are seeing more and more younger people with serious psychological disorders. In an increasingly deranged society this can only get worse. As I will try to expound in this series, to belong to Jesus means to be in in a wrath free and so a guilt free zone. Whilst the New Testament speaks of grief in the Christian life over sin (2 Cor 7:9-11) the complete atonement leaves no space for the unhealthiness of guilt for sins already forgiven. Jesus said the Holy Spirit will “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment…because they do not believe in me.” (John 16:8-9), but since “convict” means to be found guilty by a judge, since the Judge has been Judged in our place such conviction cannot apply to the believer.
I have come to the conclusion, and invite you to test this (1 Thess 5:19-20) that the mass of the Australian Church is under a great deception. Instead of seeking a revelation of the depths of sin we are in avoidance of such a Spirit-led testimony. We are not seeing in the Spirit, and I must emphasise that I am not speaking of the deliverances of the uninspired human conscience, that such a heavenly revelation of the depths of sin will be of sin-totally-taken-away in Christ leaving us as perfected worshippers in the presence of a holy God all of whose righteous demands on sinners have been completely satisfied (cf. Rom 3:20-26). In Christ we can approach/draw near to God sharing with Jesus in his true worship (Heb 9:9-14) and so doing the will of God (Heb 10:7 cf. 1 Pet 4:2) with our whole hearts. In him we become living sacrifices (cf. Rom 12:1-2). It’s time to stop thinking of ourselves from a mere earthly human point of view (cf. 2 Cor :16-17). We are complete in Christ with complete access to our Father in the Spirit (Eph 2:18).