very much for that welcome it's a little bit scary because I like it and the last thing we're allowed to do is to seek the applause of men but I do appreciate the tender care and love that you've expressed and for Steve and Steve and Chris and for the Reformed faith and for this historic place I've been asked to speak this afternoon on the subject why the necessity of the atonement and if we were in a courtroom right now some attorney would surely stand up and say asked and answered because we've already heard the answer to that in so eloquent terms since last evening and so the best I have to offer you now in this closing message is a concluding unscientific PostScript so let's open with prayer shall we our Father and our God when we consider this question of questions we confess that we are simply unable to fathom the depths and the breadth and the width of the riches of this truth in our most learned conversations we gain but a glimpse of what took place in that moment in history when you sent your son to pay it all for us to help us to understand today through the power of your spirit why it not only happened but why in the fullness of time it had to happen for our sakes and for yours for we ask it in Jesus name Amen when we ask the question of why was the atonement necessary usually behind that question people have certain assumptions they say wait a minute God is a merciful God he's a loving God why did he have to go through all of this bloody Gore humiliation pain and suffering of his only begotten son why didn't he just from heaven graciously extend his forgiveness to his fallen creatures and be done with it well if we're going to answer that question there are two generic answers and those two answers are these it was necessary in the first place because of who God is and it was necessary in the second place because of who we are the two things that we fail to understand most miserably in popular theology it's the nature and character of God and the nature and character of sin if we can understand either one of these it would advance our understanding of Sacred Scripture and the history of redemption and normally but with respect to the first part of the answer as to who God is I'd like to turn your attention to the book of Genesis - chapter 18 where we read in verse 20 these words then the Lord said because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me and if not I will know so god hears an outcry screams that are coming to his ears from two cities that represent the quintessence of evil two cities that historically represent the lowest point the nadir of human depravity so much so that they crystallized the essence of evil and have become typical for us of human corruption the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and so the narrative says that this outcry comes to the years of God and God said I'm going to go down and I'm going to visit these cities and see for myself as if he didn't already know this is anthropological language of course I'm going to see whether this outcry is justified and so we read in verse 22 so the men turned from there and went toward Sodom but Abraham still stood before the Lord and then Abraham drew near and said please listen to this question from father Abraham the father of the faithful the one whom Paul uses Exhibit A for the doctrine of justification by faith alone one who represents the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob this Titan among the patriarchs listen to this question I've said as a seminary professor that there's no such thing as a stupid question but that's a lie because you're about to hear a stupid question that comes from a venerable patriarch and the question dear friends is not only stupid it's blasphemous listen to what Abraham asked Abraham drew near and said will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked God in your judgment are you going to allow your judgment and your wrath to fall on innocent people now Genesis doesn't say this but I know what God was thinking he was thinking what's wrong with you Abraham have you lost your mind do you suffer from the same mental illness that my servant stevelawson suffers from do you enjoy it as much as he does we had a question their last national conference for somebody asked this why was God so severe in his judgment of Adam and Eve I almost had apoplexy because the question I can't figure out is why in the world are transcendently holy and righteous creator be so incredibly merciful to Adam and to Eve when Abraham asked this question it sounded like he didn't know God at all because God does not punish the innocent with the guilty when I was in the ninth grade we had a teacher who was in her first year and she came in the first day as this tough disciplinarian and we decided among ourselves we were going to show her that she couldn't be this strict in our presence few days into the term she turned her back to write something on the blackboard and one of the boys in the class lit a cherry bomb and drop it in the AO BAM this woman almost jumped out of her skin now not everybody saw who did it but everybody in the room knew who did it because there's only one kid in that class that would have done it and it wasn't me but in any case she turned around and she said all right who did it nobody confessed and nobody squealed and she said okay you're all going to stay after school until somebody tells me who did this it was a very effective form of punishment but it was not just because she punished the innocent with the guilty something schoolteachers may do but God would never do so listen to what happens Abraham asked suppose there are 50 righteous within the city we then sweep away the place and not spirit for the filth 50 righteous who are in it now finally Abraham after his profound lapse after nodding into a dogmatic slumbers by asking one of the most stupid questions ever asked of God now probably by the awakening power of the holy spirit comes to his senses and finally utters sound theology because he says far be it from you to do such a thing to put the righteous to death with the wicked so that the righteous fair as the wicked far be that from you Abraham had no idea how far it was from God to ever punish the righteous with the wicked unless of course that righteous one carried the imputed sins of others on himself far be it from thee to do that and then listen to what he says shall not the judge of all of the earth do what is just well again a question this time it's not a stupid question this time it's a rhetorical question which can only have one answer shall not the judge of all of the earth do what is just and the answer is of course God forbid that he would ever do anything else because the judge of all of the earth is holy the judge of all of the earth is righteous the judge of all of the earth is perfect in the administration of his justice if a judge sits on a bench and excuses every law breaker who has brought before him never sentence anyone to punishment such a judge is not just such a judge is not good if God is holy and God is righteous and there's no if to it since God is righteous not only will he punish sin he must punish it is necessary for his justice to me made manifest of course in the gospel we understand that he judges sin in a substitute of which we have heard where the Apostle Paul says that he may be just and the justifier because sin is really punished in Christ God remains just God does not compromise his own character or his own integrity now I said the first reason why the atonement is necessary is because of the character of God and the second reason generically is because of our character because of sin and the Bible has much to say about sin and it describes sin in several different ways and as dr. Lawson indicated there's not enough time to go through all of the texts of Scripture with respect to definite atonement so by the same token there's simply not enough time to go through all the nuances and various meanings for sin in Sacred Scripture so for the sake of time I'm going to restrict my comments to three various definitions of sin in the Bible and the first metaphor as it were that is used to describe the sinfulness of sin is the word debt you know sometimes when we pray the Lord's Prayer we say forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors but usually when we think of the word debt we're thinking in economic terms let me just say something to you speak as a fool I'm 75 years old that's bad the good news is I don't know one single penny of debt to anyone on this planet my house is paid for my cars are paid for credit card never has a balance we don't live in debt but I have many friends who are way over their heads in debt and for them that debt is a huge burden that they carry about with them every day they don't get this freedom that I experience of having no economic debt but in biblical categories we must distinguish between what we call in theology a pecuniary debt and a moral debt a pecuniary debt is a monetary or financial debt I may I'll give you two brief illustrations of that my favorite one as this little boy goes into the ice-cream store and he asked the waitress for an ice-cream cone with two scoops and she prepares the cone and hands it to the little boy that said here you are son that'll be two dollars please and the boys face begins to sink and he reaches in the pocket and he pulls out a dollar bill and he says my mommy only gave me a dollar but he is a debt of two dollars now you're standing there and you watch this what do you do hundred times out of a hundred you reach in their pocket and you take out that second dollar and you give it to the waitress to say here I'll take care of this debt for the little boy and the woman is legally bound to accept your payment because you're giving legal tender in the debtors behalf it's a monetary debt but suppose instead of the scenario I've just painted the little boy goes into the store and he doesn't order two scoops he just runs behind the counter takes the scoop puts two scoops of ice cream on his cone and runs out the door with it without paying running right into the legs of the policeman walking the beat and the ladies chasing after the boy saying stop thief policemen callers the child marches him back into the store what's going on here in the woman said that young man just stole two dollars worth of ice cream and I'm standing there and I say I'll let the boy go here let me give you the $2 does the lady have to accept that payment no because this isn't a pecuniary debt now it's a moral debt now the boy has broken the law and the store owner has every right to press charges another illustration the same thing suppose I borrowed from you $10,000 and you came to collect and I didn't have it it's a monetary debt that I could go run to my friends or go to the bank and take out a loan from somebody else and say I've got to have $10,000 because I owe this man over here $10,000 and I gotta pay him because he's calling in the debt and so I raised $10,000 from other means I pay off the debt I'm home free but suppose I owe him 10 billion dollars he gives me 24 hours to pay it my name is not Donald Trump or Bill Gates I don't even know those guys I wouldn't know where I would go to raise 10 billion dollars because I would be in debt and a debtor who couldn't pay his debts but even worse instead of borrowing the 10,000 I stole it now by stealing it instead of gaining a pecuniary debt I've now incurred a moral debt and from whom can I borrow to pay off that debt this is the language of Jesus who says to us in our condition of sin we are debtors who cannot pay their debts I am completely helpless to pay that debt there is nothing I can do to atone for my own sins and people say you Christians worry too much about sin after all to err is human than to forgive is divine and everyone's entitled to one mistake we have entitlement programs of every conceivable kind and we include it now an entitlement program of sin before a righteous God God gives you the title to commit one sin yeah soul that sins shall die one sin is all it takes to send you to hell forever be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect God doesn't grave on the curve and said like they say in Islam if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds then you get into heaven no one sin you finished God never entitled anyone to sin but even if he did just for the sake of argument let's assume that God gave you the right for one sin how long ago did you use that up the second way in which the Bible speaks about sin is with respect to enmity this has already been mentioned in our conference but the Bible tells us that we are by nature at enmity with God in our fallen humanity our most formidable foe an enemy is God himself there's no being in the universe with whom we have greater hostility toward than our Creator I was once invited to speak to a college club that was called the atheists club and they wanted me to give an apologetic a rational defense for the existence of God and I accepted their invitation and so when I went there I opened my talk by saying I know that historically brilliant philosophers have raised serious questions about the existence of God and I'm here tonight to try to answer the serious philosophical and theological questions to your satisfaction and try to give to you the intellectual case for the existence of God but let me put my cards on the table and tell you what I really think I'm willing to engage in this discussion and debate about the existence of God what I feel like I'm carrying coals the Newcastle because I know as I stand here tonight before I say another word that every one of you who's a member of the Atheist Club already know that God exists I know that he's already manifested himself to you so plainly and so clearly that you are without excuse and that your problem is not an intellectual question at all it's a moral one your problem is not that you don't know God the problem is you hate him I'm here to this afternoon still alive barely I barely got out of that place with my life you talk about people gnashing their teeth and filled with hostility it was the response of those atheists when I told them their problem was moral rather than intellectual the Bible says that we are not by nature simply indifferent to God but we hate him the desires of our hearts are only evil continuously we don't want God in our thinking we don't want to think about him we don't want him to press the imprint of his general revelation into our brains stay away go away as I said in the Q&A you know people so globally often say that hell is the absence of God no no no that's what people wish it's his presence that they can't tolerate for eternity and so the Bible speaks their salvation in terms of reconciliation in terms of ending a war the first fruit of our justification is what that we have peace with God and access into his presence when we come to Christ the war is over because our mediator has reconciled us to the God who is our enemy do you know the one necessary precondition for reconciliation to happen anywhere estrangement because if there's no estrangement there's no need for reconciliation there's no need for mediation but it's because we're estranged from our Creator that we need an atonement for our sins and thirdly the Scriptures speak of sin as a crime against God when vest and I moved to the Netherlands for my doctoral studies I had to learn the Dutch language and it had all kinds of idioms and slogans and phrases and one of the first phrases we learned it in Holland was Munir who hates the vet overcast Radin sir you've stepped over the line of the law you've broken the law you've gone trans stepped over the boundaries made a transgression by violating the law of God because when he made us he drew a line in the sand the very dirt from which he created us was marked at the edge step here no further if you cross the line you're in defiance of me several years ago I was shocked to get in the mail a copy of Bartlett's familiar quotations the newest edition sent to me by the publisher and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why I would receive such a book free from the publisher so I started to leaf through the book quotes from Immanuel Kant George Washington David Hume John Stuart Mill and to my shock there was one from our seas for all I said what the world did I ever say to get in Bartlett's familiar quotations and the quote they had in there was this sin his cosmic trees the slightest sin that we commit against God we are setting our authority over his we are rebelling against the transcendent majesty of the universe we are violating the rule given by the king of the cosmos but we know we're so used to sinning so accustomed to sin that we rarely ever even have the barest grasp of the gravity involved by defying God God has eternally inherently the right to impose obligations upon his creatures and when we shake our fists in the face of God and say I will not do that he says thou shalt laud he said yes I will thou shalt I will not Jonathan Edwards and his famous sermon sinners in the hands of an angry god said never did a prince have a rebel rebel against him in such depth as our rebellion against God as a boy I learned had to study the Westminster Shorter Catechism the question is what is sin and he wanted conformity to or transgression of the law of God Old English want of conformity to who talks like that maybe Lawson a want of Conformity to is a lack of conformity to a refusal to conform to what God commands or transgression of his law have you ever done that have you ever stepped a lot across the line from the law of God if you've done it once you never have to ask the question why was the atonement necessary we've seen the atonement as an act of victory Christus Victor we've seen it as an act of substitution we've seen it as a ransom a purchase of our souls we've seen it as an act of satisfaction of the justice and the wrath of God in classical reformed theology there's a Latin phrase and I'll probably mess it up you've heard it already in English but they'll give it to you or try to give it to you in a lot and it goes something like this our plot caught a day that Christ died to placate the wrath of God that concept has raised the hackles of theologians of the last two centuries what kind of a God is this who must be placated and it seems that nothing orthodoxy can say can placate the wrath of these theologians who oppose the idea but in the Bible Christ's placate the wrath of a just and holy God and I tell my people at st. Andrews when you think of what happened in the cross think of the cruciform design of the church where we have a center aisle two sides we look at it from above the church building looks like the shape of a cross and on the cross there's a vertical piece and a horizontal piece when we think about propitiation it's the vertical piece it's what Christ does to satisfy the demands of the father's holiness and righteousness and justice that's what he does for God it's propitiation the horizontal piece of the Cross begins not with the prefix Pro for or in front of but with the prefix X and if you're looking to get out of a building on fire you look for that prefix X in a hurry because you know that that X means from or out of or away so in the cross the Lord Jesus propitiate s' the Father and expiates our sin removing it from us as far as the East is from the West so that in the cross god guards protects his own holy character showing forth his justice to all generations while doing so with a substitute thereby manifesting his unspeakable grace and mercy so that in Krauss God is both just and the justifier of his people let's pray father and our God who can take it in what can we say to these things except that if now before us who can be against us who shall lay any charge to your elect words Christ who died who justified the ungodly forever and ever our lips are filled with praise and thanksgiving for this act of Justice an act of mercy you
