The Cross of Christ: The Salvation of Sinners

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve posted on a reading from John Stott’s The Cross of Christ as part of Reading Classics Together at Challies.com. This week’s reading was Chapter 7, The Salvation of Sinners. 

In this chapter, Stott examines four images of atonement: propitiation, redemption, justification and reconciliation. I’d heard the word metaphor used in regards to the different ways of viewing the atonement, but I’d not heard anyone use the term images. I like it, because these are all different ways of seeing one multi-faceted act, and describing them as images is a perfect way to express this.

I was also pleased to see that Stott relies on (and recommends) Leon Morris’s work when explaining what the four images of atonement tell us. Morris’s work is still one the best resources we have on the atonement and I’d like to see it read more.

Instead of giving a summary of the whole chapter, I’m going to focus on a few things this chapter teaches us about justification. Stott chooses four of the phrases Paul used in regards to justification and tells us what we can learn from them.

1. Justified by his grace. This phrase explains the source of justification. It comes to us from God’s undeserved favor.

   Self-justification is a sheer impossibility (Rom 3:20). Therefore, “it is God who justifies” (Rom 8:33); only he can. And he does it “freely (Rom 3:24, dōrean, “as a free gift, gratis”), not because of any works of ours, but because of his own grace.

2. Justified by his blood. This phrase shows us the ground of justification. Justification is based on Christ’s work.

   When God justifies sinners he is not declaring bad people to be good, or saying that they are not sinners after all; he is pronouncing them legally righteous, free from any liability to the broken law, because he himself in his Son has borne the penalty of their law-breaking.

3. Justified by faith. Faith is the means of justification. “[F]aith’s only function is to receive what grace freely offers.” And since faith is only the means of justification—not the ground—it is the only means of justification.

   For unless all human works, merits, cooperation and contributions are ruthlessly excluded, and Christ’s sin-bearing death is seen in it’s solitary glory as the only ground of our justification boasting cannot be excluded.

4. Justified in Christ. This phrase points to the effects of our justification. It “points to the personal relationship with him which by faith we now enjoy.” Justification “cannot be isolated from our union with Christ and all the benefits this brings.”

There you are, just a short summary of a section of what Stott teaches us about justification in this long and meaty chapter. Next up is chapter 8, The Revelation of God.

The Cross of Christ: The Problem of Forgiveness

This week’s reading for Reading Classics Together at Challies.com was chapter 4, The Problem of Forgiveness from John Stott’s The Cross of Christ. This chapter tackles the question of why it is impossible for God to forgive us without Christ’s sacrifice for sin. Why can’t God just forgive us in the same way that we are required to forgive others?

Stott gives two quick answers and then uses the rest of the chapter to explain them more. Anyone who thinks it God can just forgive us without the sacrifice of his Son does not yet understand the gravity of our sin or the majesty of God.

The problem of forgiveness is constituted by the inevitable collision between divine perfection and human rebellion, between God as he is and us as we are.

In order to carefully examine these two things—the seriousness of sin and the majesty of God—Stott takes the bulk of this chapter to think through four biblical ideas with the reader. 

• The Gravity of Sin: “Every sin is a breach of what Jesus called ‘the first and great commandment,’ not just by failing to love God with all our being but by actively refusing to acknowledge and obey him as our Creator and Lord. … Sin is not a regrettable lapse from conventional standards; its essence is hostility to God (Rom. 8:7), issuing in active rebellion against him.”
• Human Moral Responsibility: “…Scripture invariably treats us as morally responsible agents. … Our responsibility before God is an inalienable aspect of our human dignity.” 
• True and False Guilt: “The Bible takes sin seriously because it take humanity seriously. As we have seen, Christians do not deny the fact—in some circumstances—of diminished capacity, but we affirm that diminished responsibility always entails diminished humanity. … [T]o be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we ‘ought to know better,’ is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image.”
• God’s Holiness and Wrath: God’s wrath “is his holy reaction to evil.” “God’s holiness exposes sin; his wrath opposes it.” Stott lists a few metaphors used in the Bible to illustrate for us that “sin cannot approach God” and that “God cannot tolerate sin.” First, God is said to be high, which the biblical authors use to show his transcendence (or “otherness”).  Second, God is far away from us, so that sinners cannot approach him. Then there are light and fire, two things that make close approach impossible. Last, there is the metaphor of sinners being vomited, showing that God finds sin repulsive.

Those who have a biblical view of God’s wrath and human sin understand the need for the cross. Our sin and God’s wrath stand in the way of our forgiveness, and some sort of satisfaction for sin is necessary. That takes us to next week’s reading, chapter 5, Satisfaction for Sin.

The Cross of Christ: Looking Below the Surface

As you know, I’m participating in this round of Reading Classics Together at Challies.com. This week I read the third chapter of John Stott’s The Cross of Christ.  This chapter, titled Looking Below the Surface, answers the question, “What was there about the crucifixion of Jesus which, in spite of its horror, shame and pain, makes it so important that God planned it in advance and Christ came to endure it?”

Stott answers this question with four points:

1. Christ died for us.
2. Christ died for us that he might bring us to God.
3. Christ died for our sins.
4. Christ died our death, when he died for our sins.

Of course, he doesn’t just list these points, but fleshes them out. I’m going to leave, however, them as bullet points and move on to the second section of this chapter, where Stott looks at three of the main scenes from Jesus’s last day—the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemene, and Jesus’s cry of dereliction on the cross—to see what Jesus said about what was happening and what would happen. Do the four points listed above “fit the facts” that are recorded for us in the gospels?

The Last Supper
Jesus’s words and actions teach us his own explanation of the meaning and purpose of his death.

1. Christ’s death was central to his mission:

   The Lord’s Supper, which was instituted by Jesus, and which is the only regular commemorative act authorized by him, dramatizes neither his birth nor his life, neither his words nor his works, but only his death. Nothing could indicate more clearly the central significance that Jesus attached to his death. It was by his death that he wished above all else to be remembered.

2. Christ’s death took place for the purpose of establishing a new covenant and obtaining forgiveness of sin. His blood is “the blood of the new covenant,  which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
3. Christ’s death needs to be appropriated personally. The dramatization in the Lord’s Supper

   did not consist of one actor on the stage with a dozen in the audience. No, it involved them as well as him. … The eating and drinking were, and still are, a vivid acted parable of receiving Christ as our crucified Saviour and of feeding on him in our hearts by faith.

The Garden of Gethsemane
The “cup” symbolised the agony of enduring the judgment of God that our sins deserved.

God’s purpose of love was to save sinners, and to save them righteously; but this would be impossible without the sin-bearing death of the Saviour.

And so Jesus resolved to drink the cup; he willingly went finish his work by enduring the agony of the cross.

The Cry of Dereliction on the Cross
This section focuses on the meaning of Jesus’s cry, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?”Stott understands these words to mean that “an actual and dreadful separation took place between the Father and the Son.” This is one place where I’ll have to disagree with him, although I don’t have time to explain my reasoning in this post. Still, I do think the Jesus’s cry shows us something of his anguish on the cross. And when he cries out, “It is finished,” he is indeed declaring that he has accomplished our salvation.

Stott sums thing up by saying that the cross enforces these three truths:

1. Our sin must be extremely horrible if there was no other way to forgive it but that Christ should bear it himself.
2. God’s love must be wonderful beyond comprehension if he “pursued us even to the desolate anguish of the cross….”
3. Salvation must be a free gift. Christ declared it “finished.” What is left for us to contribute?

And so ends the first part of The Cross of Christ. Next week’s reading is from the second part, The Heart of the Cross.