The Atonement in Relation to the Covenant of Redemption
The Atonement in Relation to The Covenant of Redemption Importance of stressing the connection.
IT is of the utmost importance and indeed quite essential that the doctrine of the atonement be considered in connection with other closely related doctrines. The common objection to the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement, that it is purely legal and has no ethical bearings, would hardly be raised, if it were clearly understood and acknowledged that the atonement effects reconciliation, and reconciliation, in turn, carries with it the assurance of complete and perfect redemption. Again, the objection that God, according to this doctrine, inflicts the penalty of sin on the innocent while He permits the guilty to go free, loses a great deal of its point when the union between Christ and those whom the Father has given Him is clearly understood. The doctrine of the atonement is but a part of the whole scheme of redemption and should be studied as a part of this larger category. The Bible reveals the fact that God deals with man in a covenantal way and representatively, not only in the covenant of works but also in the covenant of grace.
Legally He deals with the group as with a single person. Adam was the head of the human race, not only in a biological, but also in a legal sense. He represented all his descendants. When he sinned and thus contracted guilt, they all became guilty in him. Paul says:
"Through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation," and, "through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners," Rom. 5:18, 19. They did not become guilty in virtue of their biological descent from Adam, but only in virtue of the fact that he was their legal representative. Actual guilt (liability to punishment) is not an inherent quality but a relationship, and therefore cannot be passed on from one to another by inheritance but only by imputation. In virtue of man's failure to meet the requirements of the original covenant transaction we can now speak, not only of the sins of the individual descendants of Adam, but also
of their corporate guilt. And it is exactly because sin entered the world through one man, and the guilt of sin therefore constitutes a unity, that it was possible to remove it by a single atoning sacrifice.
And even so this could be done only on the basis of a union between the Redeemer and the subjects of redemption.
Union between Christ and His People necessary; Union with mankind by incarnation.
In order that Christ might be the Redeemer of His people, it was necessary that He should be one with them in some such representative sense as Adam was one with the human race. And the Bible testifies to such oneness in several places. It even speaks of Christ as being one with men in more than one sense. In virtue of the incarnation He shares their human nature: "the Word became flesh."
And this was absolutely essential to the work of redemption. The writer of Hebrews directs attention to this when he says: "Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself in like manner partook of the same; that through death He might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage," Heb. 2:14, 15. Since man sinned, man had to bear the penalty of sin. The idea that an angel might have done this, as Duns
Scotus maintained, does not commend itself to human reason, and is also unscriptural. Paul says, "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive," 1 Cor. 15:21, 22. But the mere fact that the Son of God became man, and even proved to be a sinless man, however basic to the work of redemption, did not yet qualify Him to take the place of thousands of others and to effect their deliverance from the power of sin and death. In order to do that, He had to be a representative man, and the incarnation in itself did not make Him that any more than Adam's mere humanity ipso facto made him the representative of the human race.
The mystical union of Christ with believers.
There is another union of Christ with men which is very prominent in Scripture, a union of a more limited nature, namely, the spiritual oneness of Christ with His people, which is effected by the Holy
Spirit, when He regenerates the sinner and endows him with the gift of faith and thus enables him to appropriate all the blessings of salvation that are in Christ. The mystical union thus established is a very important one and has always been regarded as the spiritual fountain of all blessings for believers. Calvin places it very much in the foreground, in order to give due prominence to the idea that believers receive all their riches only out of and in living relationship with Jesus Christ. In the economy of redemption it was the Father's will that all the fulness of grace and truth should dwell in Christ, and that believers should daily draw on Him for spiritual sustenance, for knowledge and wisdom, for life and light, for strength and courage, for all the Christian graces, and for the hope of immortality. "For it was the Father's good pleasure," says Paul, "that in Him should all the fulness dwell," Col. 1:19. And John completes the thought when he says, "For of His fulness we all received, and grace for grace,"
John 1:16. The same thought finds expression in Eph. 1:3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." The closeness of this union is clearly indicated in the words of Paul, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave
Himself up for me," Gal. 2:20. The apostle is so deeply impressed with the fruitfulness and blessedness of this union that the phrase "in Christ" is one of the outstanding characteristics of his writings. But even this union, however important, does not suffice to explain the possibility of the atonement by Christ. It is itself the fruit of His atoning work, and serves to mediate the application of His merits. It is not the legal union that was required, in order that Christ might undertake and effect the redemption of sinners.
Legal union of Christ with His people.
We are in search of still another union, a union which affords a real legal basis for the atonement, a union rooted in a transaction which makes Christ the legal representative, not of all men, but of all those whom the Father has given Him. Without such a union He could never have served as their substitute; their sins could never have been imputed to Him, nor His righteousness to them. This fundamental and absolutely essential union was established in the covenant of redemption, the eternal basis and prototype of the covenant of grace. In this eternal covenant between the Father and the Son the latter voluntarily takes the place of the elect sinner, assumes his guilt and undertakes to bear the penalty of sin and to merit everlasting life for His own; and the Father pledges to qualify
Him for His great task by the operation of the Holy Spirit, and to grant Him the fruits of the travail of His soul in a redeemed humanity. There are abundant evidences of such a voluntary transaction between the Father and the Son. That Christ as the representative of His people was one of the parties in a covenant with the Father follows from the parallel which Paul draws between Adam and Christ in Rom. 5: through the one came sin and through the other grace; through the one condemnation and through the other justification. Jesus speaks repeatedly of a task which the Father has given Him to do, and stresses the fact that He came, not to do His own will, but the will of the Father who sent Him, John 5:30, 36;
6:38; 7:28, 29; and Psalm 40:7, 8 testifies to His readiness to do the Father's will in bringing a sacrifice more real than those of the Old
Testament. He speaks of having accomplished the work which the Father has given Him to do, and on that basis claims His reward,
John 17:4, 5. He makes mention of those whom the Father has given Him and now expects, on the basis of the effected agreement, that they shall be glorified, John 17:24. Moreover, He even refers to a Kingdom which the Father has appointed (literally, "covenanted") unto Him, Luke 22:29. And it is only in view of the fact that there is not only a vital, but also a legal union between Christ and believers or all those who constitute the new humanity, that Paul can equate
Adam and Christ, as he does when he says, "For since by one man came death (and death is not merely the result, but the wages of sin),