Redemption Accomplished And Applied Quotes

The glory of the cross is bound up with the effectiveness of its accomplishment.

It has been charged that this doctrine represents the Son as winning over the incensed Father to clemency and love, a supposition wholly inconsistent with the fact that the love of God is the very fount from which the atonement springs.

With all these considerations in view, the order in the application of redemption is found to be, calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justification, adoption, sanctification, perseverance, glorification. When this order is carefully weighed we find that there is a logic which evinces and brings into clear focus the governing principle of salvation in all of its aspects, the grace of God in its sovereignty and efficacy. Salvation is of the Lord in its application as well as in its conception and accomplishment.

Regeneration is at the basis of all change in heart and life. It is a stupendous change because it is God’s recreative act. A cheap and tawdry evangelism has tended to rob the gospel which it proclaims of that invincible power which is the glory of the gospel of sovereign grace. May the church come to think and live again in terms of the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation.

Christ did not come to put men in a redeemable position but to reedem to himself a people. We have the same result when we properly analyse the meaning of expiation, propitiation, and reconciliation. Christ did not come to make sins expiable. He came to expiate sins — “when he made purification of sins, he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3). Christ did not come to make God reconcilable. He reconciled us to God by his own blood.

What is offered to men in the gospel? It is not the possibility of salvation, not simply the opportunity of salvation. What is offered is salvation. To be more specific, it is Christ himself in all the glory of his person and in all the perfection of his finished work who is offered. And he is offered as the one who made expiation for sin and wrought redemption. But he could not be offered in this capacity or character if he had not secured salvation and accomplished redemption.

Indeed, the more sanctified the person is, the more conformed he is to the image of his Savior, the more he must recoil against every lack of conformity to the holiness of God. The deeper his apprehension of the majesty of God, the greater the intensity of his love to God, the more persistent his yearning for the attainment of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, the more conscious will he be of the gravity of the sin which remains and the more poignant will be his detestation of it.

According to Romish theology, all past sins both as respects their eternal and temporal punishment are blotted out in baptism and also the eternal punishment of the future sins of the faithful. But for the temporal punishment of post-baptismal sins the faithful must make satisfaction either in this life or in purgatory. In opposition to every such notion of human satisfaction Protestants rightly contend that the satisfaction of Christ is the only satisfaction for sin and is so perfect and final that it leaves no penal liability for any sin of the believer.

This means that to him, as the great sacrifice offered without spot to God, were transferred the sins and liabilities of those on whose behalf he offered himself as a sacrifice. By reason of this imputation he suffered and died, just for unjust, that he might bring us nigh to God. By one sacrifice he hath perfected forever all them that are sanctified.

Our definition of atonement must be derived from the atonement of which Scripture speaks. And the atonement of which Scripture speaks is the vicarious obedience, expiation, propitiation, reconciliation, and redemption performed by the Lord of glory when, once for all, he purged our sins and sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Chart 7.1: The Work of the Son and the Spirit The Work of the Son The Work of the Spirit God with us, as one of us God with us, dwelling among us Incarnation Indwelling Hypostatic union Communion Assumes a human nature Enlivens human persons Substitutes for you Regenerates you Takes your place Puts you in your place Completes work all at once Continues work constantly Becomes a pattern for imitation Forms us to fit that pattern Is the one mediator Unites us to the mediator Accomplishes redemption Applies redemption

Union with Christ is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.

The Reformers laid special emphasis upon this element of faith. They were opposing the Romish view that faith is assent. It is quite consistent with Romish religion to say that faith is assent. It is the genius of the Romish conception of salvation to intrude mediators between the soul and the Savior — the church, the virgin, the sacraments. On the contrary, it is the glory of the gospel of God’s grace that there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And it was the glory of our Protestant Reformation to discover again the purity of the evangel. The Reformers recognized that the essence of saving faith is to bring the sinner lost and dead in trespasses and sins into direct personal contact with the Savior himself, contact which is nothing less than that of self-commitment to him in all the glory of his person and perfection of his work as he is freely and fully offered in the gospel.

As one has aptly and truly stated the case, it is not faith that saves but faith in Jesus Christ; strictly speaking, it is not even faith in Christ that saves but Christ that saves through faith. Faith unites us to Christ in the bonds of abiding attachment and entrustment and it is this union which insures that the saving power, grace, and virtue of the Savior become operative in the believer. The specific character of faith is that it looks away from itself and finds its whole interest and object in Christ. He is the absorbing preoccupation of faith.

Apart from regeneration our thought of God, of ourselves, of sin, and of righteousness is radically perverted. Regeneration changes our hearts and minds; it radically renews them. Hence there is a radical change in our thinking and feeling. Old things have passed away and all things have become new. It is very important to observe that the faith which is unto salvation is the faith which is accompanied by that change of thought and attitude.

The emphasis upon repentance and upon the deep-seated change of thought and feeling which it involves is precisely what is necessary to correct this impoverished and soul-destroying conception of faith. The nature of repentance serves to accentuate the urgency of the issues at stake in the demand of the gospel, the cleavage with sin which the acceptance of the gospel entails, and the totally new outlook which the faith of the gospel imparts.

But justification does not refer to this renewing and sanctifying grace of God. It is one of the primary errors of the Romish Church that it regards justification as the infusion of grace, as renewal and sanctification whereby we are made holy. And the seriousness of the Romish error is not so much that it has confused justification and renewal but that it has confused these two distinct acts of God’s grace and eliminated from the message of the gospel the great truth of free and full justification by grace. That is why Luther endured such travail of soul as long as he was governed by Romish distortion, and the reason why he came to enjoy such exultant joy and confident assurance was that he had been emancipated from the chains by which Rome had bound him; he found the great truth that justification is something entirely different from what Rome had taught.

No treatment of the atonement can be properly oriented that does not trace its source to the free and sovereign love of God.

But to approximate chastisement to satisfaction for sin is to impinge not only on the perfection of Christ’s work but also upon the nature of Christ’s satisfaction. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). There must not be any abatement of the Protestant polemic against this perversion of the gospel of Christ. If we once allow the notion of human satisfaction to intrude itself in our construction of justification or sanctification then we have polluted the river the streams whereof make glad the city of God. And the gravest perversion that it entails is that it robs the Redeemer of the glory of his once-for-all accomplishment. He by himself purged our sins and sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high (cf. Heb. 1:3).

The Finality. In historical polemics this feature of the atonement has been urged against the Romish doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass. This polemic against Romish blasphemy is just as necessary today as it was in the Reformation period. The atonement is a completed work, never repeated and unrepeatable. In our modern context, however, it is necessary to insist upon this tenet not only in opposition to Rome but also in opposition to a viewpoint prevalent within Protestant circles.

The very nature of Christ’s mission and accomplishment is involved in this question. Did Christ come to make the salvation of all men possible, to remove obstacles that stood in the way of salvation, and merely to make provision for salvation? Or did he come to save his people? Did he come to put all men in a salvable state? Or did he come to secure the salvation of all those who are ordained to eternal life? Did he come to make men redeemable? Or did he come effectually and infallibly to redeem? The doctrine of the atonement must be radically revised if, as atonement, it applies to those who finally perish as well as to those who are the heirs of eternal life. In that event we should have to dilute the grand categories in terms of which the Scripture defines the atonement and deprive them of their most precious import and glory.

Self-confident moralism promotes pride, and sanctification promotes humility and contrition.

When the Scripture relates redemption to the law of God, the terms it uses are to be carefully marked. It does not say we are redeemed from the law. That would not be an accurate description and the Scripture refrains from such an expression. We are not redeemed from the obligation to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind and our neighbour as ourselves. The law is comprehended in these two commandments (Matt. 22:40) and love is the fulfilling of the law (Rom. 13:10)... It would contradict the very nature of God to think that any person can ever be relieved of the necessity to love God with the whole heart and to obey his commandments. When Scripture relates redemption to the law of God it uses terms that are more specific.

To be spared God’s tenth plague, the Israelites have to take specific action—anyone failing to apply blood to his doorframe would meet the fate of the Egyptians. Thus, the Passover also teaches that in order to avail oneself of God’s saving work, you have to appropriate it for yourself—you have to smear the blood on your door, metaphorically, by placing your saving faith in Jesus Christ. “The provision must be applied personally,” Dr. Roy Matheson writes. “It is not enough that the provision was made at Calvary for my sins. I must appropriate and apply this provision by trusting Christ in a personal way.”21 This points to God’s requirement that Christ’s blood, in order to effect our individual salvation, must be appropriated by each of us and applied personally by our faith, trusting in Him and His redemptive shedding of blood. The late Pastor Ray Stedman put it well: “The Passover is a beautiful picture of the cross of Christ. . . . But the Israelites—those who, by a simple act of faith, took the blood of a lamb and sprinkled it on the doorposts and lintels of their houses—were perfectly safe. Then and now, salvation is accomplished by the simple act of faith, a trusting response to God’s loving provision of a Savior who has settled our guilt before God. Then and now, the angel of death passes over those who are covered by the blood of the Lamb.”22

Glorious Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—I praise you for the incalculable riches of redemption you’ve lavished on us in the gospel. Father, for planning such a stunning salvation; Jesus, for accomplishing all things necessary for our complete salvation; Holy Spirit, for faithfully applying the work of Jesus to us. I wish I had adequate words to express my gratitude, but my words fail me.

Those who will be saved were not even contemplated by the Father in the ultimate counsel of his predestinating love apart from union with Christ–they were chosen in Christ.

The love of God from which the atonement springs is not a distinctionless love; it is a love that elects and predestinates.

in Titus 3, Paul locates God’s salvation in three moments: the moment of redemption accomplished, when Christ appeared in history; the moment of redemption applied, when the Holy Spirit regenerates and renews us in our own lifetime experience; and the moment of redemption consummated, the hope of eternal

As with the other Pauline passages that I have analyzed, similarities surface: (1) each moment is held as distinct but integrally connected to the others; and (2) salvation is not viewed as fully completed at the moments of redemption accomplished or redemption applied, but remains an eschatological hope. In addition to these similarities, Romans 5:9–10 reveals a new link, an unbreakable bond. Paul’s whole argument for the believer’s assurance of salvation at the final judgment rests on the connection between redemption accomplished and applied on the one hand, and redemption consummated on the other. As in Titus 3:3–5, redemption applied occurs through redemption accomplished, but now the synergy of redemption accomplished and applied together guarantees redemption consummated: if God has already done the most difficult thing—reconcile and justify us by Christ’s death—how much more (πολλῷ οὖν μᾶλλον) will he rescue us on that last day of his wrath. Paul stresses his point by twice using this greater-to-lesser argument.

If we are to appreciate that which is central in the gospel, if the jubilee trumpet is to find its echo again in our hearts, our thinking must be revolutionized by the realism of the wrath of God, of the reality and gravity of our guilt, and of the divine condemnation. It is then and only then that our thinking and feeling will be rehabilitated to an understanding of God’s grace in the justification of the ungodly.

A cheap and tawdry evangelism has tended to rob the gospel which it proclaims of that invincible power which is the glory of the gospel of sovereign grace. May the church come to think and live again in terms of the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation.

Just as sacrifice is directed to the need created by our guilt, propitiation to the need that arises from the wrath of God, and reconciliation to the need arising from our alienation from God, so redemption is directed to the bondage to which our sin has consigned us.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who might consummate and lead to what is perfect as many as were to be sanctified. He, therefore, our God and Lord, though He was about to offer Himself once on the altar of the Cross unto God the Father by means of His death, there to operate an eternal redemption, nevertheless, because that His priesthood was not to be extinguished by His death, in the Last Supper on the night in which He was betrayed—that He might leave to His own beloved spouse, the Church, a visible sacrifice, such as the nature of man requires, whereby that Bloody Sacrifice, once to be accomplished on the Cross, might be represented and the memory thereof remain even unto the End of the World and its salutary virtue be applied to the remission of those sins which we daily commit

Why did God become man? Why, having become man, did he die? Why, having died, did he die the accursed death of the cross? This is the question of the necessity of the atonement.

Christ, as the Great Priest, acts as Representative, Substitute, Instructor, Guardian, and Intercessor of his people, not only paying for their sins but securing everything necessary, including the work of the Spirit, to apply his work to them and to bring them to their eternal rest. Ultimately what is at stake in the debate over the extent of the atonement is a Savior who saves, a cross that effectively accomplishes and secures all the gracious promises of the new covenant, and a redemption that does not fail.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who might consummate and lead to what is perfect as many as were to be sanctified. He, therefore, our God and Lord, though He was about to offer Himself once on the altar of the Cross unto God the Father by means of His death, there to operate an eternal redemption, nevertheless, because that His priesthood was not to be extinguished by His death, in the Last Supper on the night in which He was betrayed—that He might leave to His own beloved spouse, the Church, a visible sacrifice, such as the nature of man requires, whereby that Bloody Sacrifice, once to be accomplished on the Cross, might be represented and the memory thereof remain even unto the End of the World and its salutary virtue be applied to the remission of those sins which we daily commit—declaring Himself constituted a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech, He offered up to God the Father His own Body and Blood under the species of bread and wine; and under the symbols of those same things He delivered His own Body and Blood to be received by His Apostles, whom He then constituted priests of the New Testament, and by those words, ‘Do this for a commemoration of Me’ (Luke 22:19), He commanded them and their successors in the priesthood to offer them, even as the Catholic Church has always understood and taught.” (Session xxii, Ch. 1).