Bridges / Bevington The Great Exchange (Foreword by Sinclair Ferguson)

My Sin for His Righteousness
1. Auflage 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2051-8
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten

Believers often take for granted the great act of salvation provided to us by the work of Jesus Christ. Beginning with the Old Testament sacrifices and the prophecies that foreshadowed Christ, authors Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington guide believers through the biblical overview of Christ's atonement. The Great Exchange helps believers see how the Old Testament practices tie in with the New Testament discussion of Christ's great work of salvation. As believers work through these principles, they will begin to recognize that even though we deserve condemnation and punishment from a holy God, he has given us the opportunity to experience his great riches through his Son, Jesus Christ. The clear gospel message presented throughout the entire book offers a great appreciation of Christ for believers and an opportunity for salvation for unbelievers.

 Jerry Bridges (1929-2016) served for over sixty years on the staff of the Navigators. He authored fifteen books and five devotionals, including The Pursuit of Holiness, which has sold over a million copies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bridges, Jerry

Bevington, Bob

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2:
Christ’s Atonement:
The Apostles’ Summary

Coming face-to-face with the resurrected Christ in the aftermath of the crucifixion, the apostles finally and clearly understood Jesus to be God incarnate, that is, God in the flesh. Jesus no doubt intended to impact these men with this truth when he declared to Thomas, “‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’” (John 20:27–28).

This new understanding—Jesus is God—filled the apostles with wonder and delight. It became one of the foundations for their testimony to the atoning work of Christ. Later in their inspired writings where they describe the Lord’s work of redemption, the apostles always directly or implicitly ascribe to him a divine nature. For example, they speak of the Jews killing the Author of life (Acts 3:15) and of them crucifying the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8). The writer of the book of Hebrews describes the Son who made purification for sins as “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” and showed that “he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3).

The deity of Christ in his atoning work is of paramount importance in understanding the gospel. In order for Jesus Christ to qualify as the atonement for the sins of the redeemed, he must be personally perfect—that is, holy, having lived a sinless life. In order to be perfect, Christ must be more than a mere man—he must be divine. God’s chosen mediator, Jesus Christ, is himself fully God (John 1:1, 18) and thus uniquely qualified to complete the work of redemption.

However, because man sinned, man must bear the penalty of sin, so in addition to being fully God, the mediator must also be fully man in order to bear the sin of man as their representative. Also, the mediator must be a man since the mediating act of atoning for sin requires a sacrificial death (Lev. 17:11; Heb. 9:22), and it is impossible for God to die. The apostles affirm that the eternal Son of God, who exists outside of the realm of time and who created the universe (Heb. 1:2b; John 1:1–3), allowed, accepted, and welcomed an infinite reduction in stature in order to become the incarnate Son of Man. Perhaps this can be seen most clearly where Paul states:

[Jesus Christ] who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.(Phil. 2:6–8)

Furthermore, the apostles explicitly assert that the incarnation took place in a single, historic person who became the representative head of the redeemed multitude who find their righteousness, justification, and sanctification in Christ as the Last Adam (Rom. 5:18–19). Paul writes, “Thus it is written, ‘The first man Adam became a living being’; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. . . . The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven’” (1 Cor. 15:45, 47). Both the first Adam and the Last Adam were men. But the Last Adam is a man who came from heaven. His incarnation, sinless life, and substitutionary death on the cross were inseparable steps toward accomplishing his unified purpose: conquering death and giving eternal life to those who are united to him by faith.

Jesus Christ is the God-man. He was “born of woman . . . to redeem man” (Gal. 4:4–5). He took on flesh and blood that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14b). He “appeared . . . to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8b). And he “came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15b). Much more than merely a sinless man, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, embodies the union of the two natures, possessing all-sufficient value and validity. Jesus Christ, the God-man, was, therefore, the perfect sacrifice.

The Legal Aspects of Christ’s Atonement

The apostles placed the death of Christ in a judicial context: God is the supreme judge of his creation, and his judicial actions always reflect his holiness and perfection. God is a God of justice—absolute justice. Therefore, he must by his very nature condemn and punish sin. He never deals with the due penalty of sin by sweeping it under the rug of the universe. With regard to sin, he never lowers the bar or turns a blind eye. If he did, he would become unjust and defiled—something that is unthinkable. In order to remain holy he must hold court, declare sinners guilty, and execute the sentence due, which is eternal condemnation and death for all mankind (Rom. 3:10–18).

But is this God of perfect justice not also a God of perfect love? Aren’t these two attributes of his in conflict? To deal with this judicial dilemma, God devised, initiated, and executed the perfect plan of judicial redemption. It is a plan that required atonement, a judiciously paid penalty. It is a plan that involved the cross:

And you, who were dead in your trespasses . . . God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. (Col. 2:13–14)

At the cross, forgiveness was achieved by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. What are these demands? They are the demands that the lawful penalty be actually and fully executed. What is the penalty? The penalty is the punishment that sinners rightly deserve—death. This penalty must be executed by a holy God. Yet, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). While we were still sinners, God nailed the record of our legal debt to the cross of Christ’s death.

Man’s sin was not a mere paper debt. It was not a hypothetical debt. It was an actual legal debt. It was Christ’s own flesh that was nailed to the cross, as he was made sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21). Paying our legal debt cost Christ agonizing pain and separation from his Father as he bore the full force of God’s wrath against the offense of sin.

At the cross, Christ extinguished the wrath of God toward believing sinners by his own bloody death, thereby paying the full legal debt due by sinners. The result: with the penalty paid, the justice of God was forever satisfied, and sinners united to Christ have been justly forgiven (declared not guilty), and justified (declared righteous). In God’s plan of redemption, he remains just in forgiving sinners, since a qualified person actually paid the legal penalty required by the law. At the infinite cost of his Son’s life, God constructed the judicial solution in such a way that does not cause God to be defiled or believing sinners to be eternally condemned. Biblically speaking:

God put forward [Christ Jesus] as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Rom. 3:25–26)

The death of Christ is the basis for the believer’s exemption from condemnation, the courtroom equivalent of acquittal, pardon, and forgiveness. As Paul said, “Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died . . .” (Rom. 8:34).

Numerous other passages in the Bible describe God’s forgiveness, all of which presuppose atonement. One example of this is found in Ephesians where the apostle Paul argued, “In [Jesus] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7). Here, Paul shows redemption and forgiveness to be a direct, objective benefit of the blood (death) of Christ.

In another example we are told, “[God] will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more” (Heb. 10:17). As can be seen in the context of Hebrews 10, the Judge chooses to remember sins no longer for a very specific reason—the sacrifice of Christ (vv. 10, 12, 14, 18–22). Because of Christ’s great atonement, our sin record is completely expunged forever!

It must be noted that the death of Christ bought more than a strictly legal settlement. The phrase in Christ, which appears seventy-three times in the New Testament, refers to a union with Christ in which the redeemed have one life with him, as truly as the head and the members of the same body have one life. This is a great, sacred, and glorious mystery, one to be further explored in chapter 7. But for now, let it suffice to say that none of this is possible apart from the atoning work of Jesus Christ, the perfect sacrifice.

Sadly, not everyone understands this requisite necessity for God to be just. Many picture him exclusively as absolute and unconditional love, thinking he will dismiss the legal demands that result from mankind’s sin on that basis alone. This approach is offensive to God because it demeans two of the other essential facets of his unfathomable nature—holiness and justice. In addition, to see God solely as love is to overlook the beauty and the purpose of the cross. For at the cross, the perfect holiness of God meets his perfect love in action. Worse, it is to belittle the costly price of Christ’s sacrifice. Neglecting the holiness of God and misunderstanding the vital significance of the cross is more than simply a theological error—it may have damning consequences, since apart from...