Death Is the Penalty
Wednesday, February 5, 2014 at 9:22PM 
I’ve been reading From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective
Here’s a quote from Carl Trueman’s chapter, Atonement and the Covenant of Redemption: John Owen on the Nature of Christ’s Satisfaction, on a point we all need to be reminded of once in a while, because it’s easy to slip back into thinking (wrongly!) of the payment made on our behalf as a kind of commercial transaction—a bit of suffering for each sin, (you know, so much for me, so much for you, on and on, with more for each sinner forgiven, printed out on something like a million mile long till tape) all added together into a “heap of suffering” required to mark “paid in full” on the invoice.
[I]n Of the Death of Christ, [John] Owen makes the point that the penalty required for sin was death. This is an important point: there is a danger when thinking of Christ’s atonement in terms of satisfaction for debt that one can be led astray into thinking in crudely quantitative terms: sin has accumulated x amount of debt; so the penalty is to be paid in terms of x, where x is analogous to money or property. That is not the model with which Owen is operating: the penalty is not quantitative in such a way; rather, it is perhaps better described as qualitative. It is not that Christ has to pile up a heap of suffering to match the offense human beings have given to God; it is that he has to die. Death is the penalty. … Jesus Christ dies and thus pays precisely the same penalty that is required of a sinner (p. 211).
I’m almost halfway through this book. While it takes a little work to read, it is more accessible than I expected. If you’re interested in the doctrine of definite atonement, consider putting it on your reading list.
Reader Comments (1)
Thanks for sharing these quotes. I just added this to the church library, and it's a hefty tome. I think I'll start with it before finally tackling Death of Death.