The Necessity, Uniqueness and Sufficiency of the Substitutionary Atonement

The central question in redemptive history is how can a holy God forgive rebellious humanity without compromising the demands of justice? If the demands of justice cannot be ignored in the governance of the temporal affairs of the world, how much more in the eternal matter of the Kingdom of God. To paraphrase Swiss theologian Emil Brunner, forgiveness without atonement –unprincipled forgiveness--would undermine the very moral order of the universe.12 Thus to make forgiveness for man possible, Christ’s substitutionary atonement was necessary. Christ’s death for our sins established the grounds for a just acquittal.

God’s solution to the problem of forgiveness of the elect has always been the substitutionary atonement through a blood sacrifice. Just as the moral law served as a kind of schoolmaster, to teach the elect that they were sinners who needed a Savior, so the ceremonial law served to establish the principle that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin."13

In the Old Testament economy, the Israelites could only receive the forgiveness of their sins by the sacrifice of bulls or goats or lambs.14 As the Christian sacrament of the Lord’s Supper looks back to the cross, the Israelite blood sacrifices looked forward to the cross. The ceremonial law set the stage for John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament type of prophet, to proclaim, "Behold the Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world."15

Because man had sinned, a man had to pay the price, but because of the magnitude of sins, no mere man could possibly pay the price. Thus, "the Word…who was God, became flesh" to become the Lamb of God.16