I’ve decided to participate with Tim Challies’ Reading the Classics Together program again. This time the book is Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray, which I’ve read before, but always planned to read again because this is not a one-time-only kind of book. And now is as good a time as any, right? This week’s reading is chapter 1, The Necessity of the Atonement.
Update: Tim’s summary and response to this chapter.
Update 2: I’ve added a short glossary for chapter 1.
This was a short chapter, nine little pages, but nine pages of dense reading. Here Murray argues for the consequent absolute necessity of the atonement. What this means, to put things as simply as I can, is that God’s decision to save lost sinners was a free one—nothing compelled him to save anyone—but given his choice to save, there was only one way to accomplish this, and that is through the substitutionary sacrifice of his own Son. In other words, sacrificial satisfaction is not simply the best way for God to accomplish the salvation of sinners, but the only possible way, given the nature of sin and the nature of God.
I know that sometimes it makes people uncomfortable when someone says that God cannot do certain things, but the writers of scripture give us a few can’ts regarding God, and these impossibilities are really expressions of God’s immutable perfections. Underlying the argument for the consequent absolute necessity of the atonement is the unchanging nature of God, particularly his perfect justice and holiness.
Murray makes six separate but related arguments, all based in scripture, to substantiate the necessity of the sacrifice of God’s son to accomplish the salvation of sinners.
- There are passages that say that the Saviour had to be made like his brethren in order to save them.
- There are passages that indicate that if God’s Son had not come to die, everyone would have been damned.
- There are passages that tell us that because Christ is a one-of-a-kind person, only his work is effective to save sinners.
- It is necessary, if sinners are to be in fellowship with God, that they not just receive forgiveness of sins, but also justification. This necessary justification can only come from the perfect righteousness of Christ.
- There are passages that declare that the cross is the highest demonstration of the love of God, which would suggest that nothing less than the sacrifice of God’s own son was required to save sinners.
- The vindicatory justice of God requires propitiation.
When you put all those arguments together, it makes a strong case for the consequent absolute necessity of the atonement. Those who argue that Christ’s sacrifice is simply the best way, but not the only way, for God to save sinners, says Murray,
do not take proper account of the Godward aspects of Christ’s accomplishment. If we keep in view the gravity of sin and the exigencies arising from the holiness of God which must be met in salvation from it, then the doctrine of indispensable necessity makes Calvary intelligible to us and enhances the incomprehensible marvel of both Calvary itself and the sovereign purpose of love which Calvary fulfilled. The more we emphasize the inflexible demands of justice and holiness the more marvelous become the love of God and its provisions.
God’s justice and holiness make inflexible demands. Therefore, in order to save us, it was absolutely necessary for Christ to die. There was no other way.
I’m so thankful that God freely purposed to save when it required the sacrifice his own Son.
Glossary for Chapter 1
- adventitious: not inherent or innate
- consonance: agreement, compatibility
- requisite: required by the nature of things
- exigencies: demands