Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Savior’s command word to us. Second Corinthians 5, reading at verse 14 through verse 21. 2 Corinthians 5:14-21. For the love of Christ constrains us, because we thus judge that if one died for all, then we’re all dead. And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh.

Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. But all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation. To wit that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and have committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God, for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

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Last night my wife and I ventured out in what was then snow. Actually, we went out to run copies of the food list and then I forgot them this morning—shows what happens if my wife isn’t with me. This falls apart. I also didn’t bring tape labels. But anyway, we went out into the snow to make the food list. And then we thought we would swing by a Papa Aaldo’s or Papa Murphy’s, whatever it’s called these days—a pizza place. Children are all sick. Charity’s had a fever of over a hundred for four or five days now. Anyway, we went to this pizza place and it was 10 minutes till 9 and it was supposed to close at 9:00.

So we just go in and buy a couple of pizzas to take home, maybe get the kids to eat something if it was pizza. And the door was locked, so I kind of like that. And there was a young guy in there working. He comes up to the door and he says, “Well, do you need a pickup?” And I said, “No, I just like to buy a pizza.” He says, “We’re closed.” I said, “Well, you know, it’s supposed to close at 9:00, right? It’s 10 till 9:00.” And he said, “It’s 9:00 in here.”

Oh, okay. I said, “Well, gee, my watch says 10 till 9 and my wife’s watch says 10 to 9.” “It’s 9:00 in here,” he said. And I said, “Well, gee, you know, I think you’re supposed to open. You don’t mind. Well, maybe I can make you one,” he said. And I said, “Oh, that’d be great if you would.” So he did. He let us in and he made us one. And I don’t know if their clock was actually turned forward.

I know some businesses, including one at this church, do that with time to make sure you’re always on time. But I thought it was an interesting example of how man thinks he can by his fiat word declare a new reality. It’s 9:00 in here. Out there, you know, it’s 10 to 9, but in here it’s 9:00 and I’m not working anymore, you know. And man, of course, does that with his word to affect his own well-being as this young gentleman was trying to do.

Fortunately, we got through anyway.

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Well, all of that to say that with the doctrine of the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ, man also thinks he can simply by an assertion of his word change us into something that it isn’t. And that happens a couple of different ways. One, it happens—I think it happens when men assert the universal atonement, that Christ died for all men everywhere in particular, as opposed to what the scriptures teach, which is limited atonement.

And I know limited is a funny word, maybe, but atonement is a real good word because atonement really brings together the doctrines of expiation, of propitiation—appeasing God’s wrath—expiation for sin, as well as reconciliation. We’ve talked about that last week a little bit. So atonement is a great word and limited isn’t bad either because it’s limited in the design of who the death of Christ was intended to be for, and that was for the elect.

To those who were, as a result of God’s sovereign choice of his good pleasure, chosen to salvation. So, but men think they can change this and make it into something just by simply the assertion that it is something else. But they can’t. Modern man also, any man who rejects the atonement of Christ doesn’t thereby do away with the doctrine. He simply—because he’s made the image of God—he simply perverts the doctrine.

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Much of what I’m going to say today I gleaned from R.J. Rushdoony’s article first in the Journal of Christian Reconstruction, I believe in 1982. They had a symposium on the atonement and there’s four articles in that symposium, and one was an article by R.J. Rushdoony on the atonement. Secondly, his Systematic Theology apparently took that exact same work word for word and then added maybe 15-20 pages to it for the Systematic Theology that came out a couple of years ago. I am amazed and I wish to commend to you all the reading of R. Rushdoony in these works. Nobody really does what he does.

You read a lot of reformed theologians and they’re really good. You know, sort of what I did last week and sort of what I’ll probably do next week when we return actually to the actual wording of the Canons of Dort—what’s done by most reformed theologians on this topic is they expose what the scriptures say about the atonement and they prove that this and this and this, and that’s it. And there it is. And so the whole end is that you understand intellectually the doctrine of the atonement, which is very important. And we want to do that. Rushdoony, however, with most things that he does—he does a little bit of that, but you know, most of that’s been done, right? For, you know, since the Reformation, 4 or 500 years, we’ve had good reformed guys doing that. So he sort of takes that and then says what the implications are in our world. And frequently what he does is point out the implications as men reject that particular truth and how they twist it.

And, you know, I don’t read—well, I guess I do read quite a bit. I probably visited at least 15 or 20 websites the last couple of weeks on particular redemption, different articles and stuff, and while some of them might touch us a little bit, nobody does like Rushdoony. He’s just amazing. So I want to commend that to you. And my topic today is really two of the chapter headings that he had in his book, on the section on the atonement—called “the Atoned and the Unatoned.” Who are the atoned and there are men who are unatoned? The two great divisions of men are the atoned and the unatoned. I want to talk about that today and what Satan’s man does with his word. A man doesn’t do this with his fiat, his ex cathedra, his authoritative word supposedly, to come up with a new system of atonement, with a new system of substitution or imputation—a new system of all the things that we talked about last week and some more. And that’s what I’m going to talk about.

You might just—I’m going to, after I’m done with this short introduction, I will talk about imputation. I will talk about sacrifice. I’ll talk about satisfaction. I’ll talk about blood. And then I’ll talk about responsibility or release. Okay?

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And basically the idea is, in case this illness comes upon me in the middle of this sermon, you at least know that the idea of this talk was to look at the fact that Jesus Christ received the imputation for our sins and we receive the imputation of his righteousness. So imputation is part of the doctrine of atonement because, as Isaiah 53 says, he bore our sins. They’re imputed to him by God the Father.

And pagan man, rejecting the imputation of sins on Christ, imputes sins to other people. Parents is a frequent one these days with the advent of Freudian psychology. He imputes his sins to some other sin bearer and rejects the imputation on Christ.

Imputation is so that the sacrifice might be made. So Jesus Christ is the sacrifice for our sins. The word sacrifice means to make holy by means of death. And the Old Testament system—lots of sacrifices pointing to the one great sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, the imputation is one thing, but then the doctrine moves on to assert that Jesus Christ in his atoning death was a sacrifice for our sins. He was bruised for our iniquities and buried. He died. He was the sacrifice for our sins. Pagan man rejects the sacrifice of Christ, of course. And with false imputation there comes a necessity then for a false sacrifice. So he makes somebody else pay for his sins, just the way we have someone else pay for our sins—the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, he rejects Christ and seeks satisfaction or impute—or sacrifice rather—through imputing his sins to others and making them pay. The poor impute their sins to the rich and they make them pay with confiscatory tax rates, for instance. The cycle goes on.

The Lord Jesus Christ in his imputation—that he received of our sins—died on the cross as a sacrifice and made satisfaction through that death and his act of obedience for us.

So satisfaction follows imputation and sacrifice. And pagan man, rejecting the imputation that is godly, going to a false imputation of his sins unto others, and rejecting the sacrifice—the Lord Jesus Christ—can’t really achieve satisfaction because he’s got nothing that’s going to satisfy him. His attempts of false imputation, false sacrifice cycle up in violence. And so he plays his presuppositions out by rejecting the presuppositions of God.

But he’s made in God’s image. He’s made as a creature of God and he cannot completely do away with these great truths or realities. You know, as you watch movies—this is the time of year when a lot of people watch movies—you read books and you can see a lot of biblical themes in a lot of movies, most of them. And sometimes that’s because, really, it may be Christians making these movies and they’re getting across the Christian message. But a lot of times it’s just that pagan man doesn’t do away with the urge dominion, for instance. He simply twists it and turns it into something else. So you’ll see movies about imputation of sin, about sacrifice, satisfaction being made by somebody else. It’s all from a pagan perspective.

The satisfaction based on Christ’s sacrifice, being imputed our sins to him, resulted from his blood. And his blood is the fourth element in terms of the atonement that I wanted to touch on today. And in that blood of the Lord Jesus Christ we have satisfaction for our sins. Pagan man again has an interest in blood. Pagan man sheds blood to try to achieve that sacrifice and satisfaction.

And so we had at our house on Christmas Eve we had a white elephant gift exchange. And I don’t know the origins of the white elephant gift exchange, but it’s kind of an odd deal, you know, because you have these gifts that really nobody, you know, they’re just kind of odd things you’d get rid of otherwise. And through that you have kind of fun and it is fun. But it reminded me of the chaos festivals—Mardi Gras, for instance, is really a chaos festival where pagans would try to turn everything upside down for a period of time, a day, a week, whatever it is. Riots. Shed a lot of blood. And at the end of that time, all the sins were expiated, you see, and society could rebirth itself in a new form. It’s kind of like the Phoenix rising from the ashes. Everyone needs ashes to rise out of.

And the ashes that are God’s ashes are the ashes of the Lord Jesus Christ on the altar, and that coal applied to our tongues. And we rise in true regeneration. Pagan man rejects that, though. Falsely imputes sin to other people, demands of them sacrifices for his sins. Someone’s going to pay and it’s not going to be me. And then seeks—tries to seek satisfaction for that through the shedding of blood of other people.

And so Cain strikes out against Abel, trying to get rid of his hatred for God. Of course, he can’t get it. Blood—ultimately in the rejection of the atonement of Jesus Christ, pagan man rejects responsibility.

We’ll see if we get this far that we are atoned to the end of becoming responsible citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Nothing short of a new humanity. I’ve talked about that before. Talk about again today.

And so we’re ushered forth from the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ into the fullness of Christian life. We’re freed from the penalty of the law that we might live to the power of the law as the standard by which the Holy Spirit guides and directs our lives and writes upon our hearts. And we become responsible citizens.

Pagan man, rejecting imputation, sacrifice, satisfaction, and the blood of Jesus, moves away from responsibility. And all he’s seeking to do really is to obtain release from the guilt and the fear that results from his guilt—that he feels true moral guilt before God, both because of his covenantal imputation of Adam’s sins on him as well as his own sins.

And so in the context of that guilt, pagan man gets fearful and his life is marked by a lack of peace, a lack of rest. The wicked—there’s no rest for the wicked, the scriptures say. They’re like the sea always churning. They’re not moved into responsibility, but they seek release from that sin and they never really finally accomplish it. And so they cannot move on into the future.

We’re at the beginning of a new year. And really the atonement—and the understanding of the relationship of the imputation, sacrifice, satisfaction, and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ—is that we are moved into responsible citizenship in the kingdom of heaven. And we then move into the future being redeemed and released from all the sins of the past. The pagan man can’t do that. He’s involved in a perpetual effort to justify himself and to seek self-justification for the past. So he’s always past-oriented.

Well, that’s basically what I want to give you.

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But let’s return now to where we’re at in terms of this particular series. And what we said last week is that in spite of some men’s attempts to really misinterpret the scriptures, the doctrine of limited atonement or particular redemption is one that is absolutely necessary in scripture. It’s first of all, it’s clearly taught in the scriptures.

For instance, I’ve mentioned these before, but hopefully through repetition, you’ll get them into your head, and I will too. John 10—Jesus says in John 10:9-11. Well, verse 10 specifically, verse 11 rather: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.” Jesus dies, gives his life, not for everyone, but for the sheep—the sheep that will hear his voice, that will know him. And there are people, he says, “You’re not my sheep because you don’t hear my voice.” He dies particularly for the sheep. That’s who he dies for.

John 10:14, “I know that I’m the good shepherd and the sheep know me and I am known of them. Even as the father knows me, even so I know the father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.” Verse 15 of John 10. So verse 11 and verse 15 clearly state that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ is for the sheep.

Matthew 26:28, “For this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for forgiveness of sins.” A formula we reenact in our liturgy relative to communion, or a form of it, every Lord’s day. And in that formula we reassert the doctrine of particular redemption because we reassert that Jesus Christ said that this is the blood of the covenant poured out for many for the remission, for the forgiveness of sins. Not for all but for many. It’s a distinguishment between many and all. And he says it’s for many.

Ephesians 5, where we’re told, “Husbands love your wife just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Jesus died on the cross for the church particularly, not for the world in general, not for every particular person in the world, but rather for the church. So Ephesians 5—these are clear assertions of scripture.

Acts 20:28, “Paul warns the Ephesian elders: Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.” With his blood, he purchases the church specifically. So there’s a distinction made between the church and the rest of the world.

Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all. How will he not also with him freely give us all things?” He delivered Christ up to the cross, not for every last person ever made. He delivers Christ up to the cross for us all. And by the way, there is a key to interpreting the all passages where it talks about Christ’s death for all. And when it says all, it means all the elect. And that’s what he says here: “for us all”—Romans 8:32.

Isaiah 53:12, “I will allow him a portion with the great. He will divide the booty with the strong because he hath poured out himself to death, was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors”—not for all, but for many. He dies and he bears the sins of many and intercedes for the transgressors.

Hebrews 9:28, “Christ also having been offered once to bear the sins of many.” Hebrews 9:28 also asserts many and asserts the doctrine of particular redemption or limited atonement.

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Now we said last week then, in addition to these clear texts of scripture, the deductive analysis thereof—or rather, it’s clear that Jesus died for many. He died for the church. He died for his sheep. He didn’t die for everybody else.

Inductively, we can also look at the relationship as we did last week of the atonement to the doctrine of salvation. Atonement accomplishes salvation. Doesn’t make it possible. Atonement accomplishes justification. Doesn’t make it possible. Accomplishes it. Atonement accomplishes propitiation of the sins of those who are being atoned for. Doesn’t make it possible.

The bridge—isn’t Spurgeon apparently the source originally of the quote that I mentioned last week about the road? You know, “Your road is a mile wide,” Spurgeon says, “but it doesn’t get all the way across the chasm. Doesn’t go across the river. Your faith supposedly—your choice—has to build the rest of the bridge between you and God. My bridge may seem to be narrow to you.” Spurgeon said the doctrine of particular redemption. “But it goes all the way across. Nothing really limited about it. Ours is unlimited. Yours is limited. Yours is halfway atonement. Need to be made up for through your decision.” The scriptures say that wasn’t a possible salvation, justification, propitiation—it was a realized one.

The scriptures say that atonement is linked to the doctrine of redemption and the doctrine of reconciliation. So we can inductively say that when the atonement—the death of Christ—affects salvation, justification, propitiation, reconciliation, and redemption, then it can’t be a universal atonement for every last person because every last person isn’t justified, propitiated for, reconciled, or redeemed or saved.

And so by inductive truth from scripture, we can say particular redemption is the biblical truth. We can add to this the concept of intercession. Let me read a quote here:

“The limitation of his intercession is another argument for particular redemption. The sacrificial work of Christ and his intercessory work are simply two different aspects of his atoning work. These two aspects of atonement are seen in Romans 8:33 and 34: ‘It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ who died, more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God and he is interceding for us.’ Christ’s death, his resurrection, his exaltation at the right hand of God is intercession. All these events together form the complete act of redemption. And since Christ’s death and his intercession are both part of redemption, it stands to reason that the scope of the one can be no wider than that of the other.

“Now Christ very definitely limits his intercessory work. John 17:9: ‘I am not praying for the world, but for those who have given me’—and the reason for limiting his prayer to them is given next—’for they are yours.’ Divine election explains Christ’s limited intercession which implies a limited atonement. Why should he limit his intercessory prayer if he had actually paid the price for all?”

So by way of induction then from the scriptures we can say that since Christ’s atoning death and his intercession are linked in Romans 8, as well as we might say in Isaiah 53 (which we read responsively), then we can say that since the intercession is definitely limited to a particular people, then his atoning death is limited also.

And we could also throw into the mix here in terms of a proof for particular redemption the doctrine—or the fact—that the atonement is a covenantal affair. The Old Testament witness of the sacrifices that were typological of the Lord Jesus Christ were not for every last person on the earth. They’re for Israel. The high priest when he walked in to make atonement for the people does so for the people. It’s the sins of the people that are placed upon the scapegoat, not the sins of all the world. He doesn’t carry on his breastplate, you know, all the nations, but rather the 12 tribes of Israel.

Now, you know, I’m not saying that it was limited to the physical descendants. It wasn’t. We’ll look a little later, if we have the time, at Psalm 86 and Psalm 87. In Psalm 87, it says that “it’ll say of this one that he was born in the city of God.” But it’s really talking in Psalm 86 and 87 about various nations around the world. So nations around the world are said essentially, as they come to repentance for their sins and are part of the elect group of Christ, they’re said to have been born in Jerusalem. You see? So they’re part of Israel. Israel isn’t just the physical descendant, or isn’t even his physical descendants. It’s the chosen of God.

So in the Old Testament, the sacrificial system was limited. The death was for a particular group of people—the covenantal people. And so the doctrine of the atonement is a covenantal fact, as well as the other things we had mentioned. And because of that, it is a limited atonement and it’s a particular redemption that is affected.

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Now Romans 5:12 tells us about this covenantal imputation or headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. By the way—well, we’ll back to that, I guess. Romans 5:12. I’ll begin reading at verse 11. Verse 10: “For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son”—and that’s very important. We talked about that last week. The reconciliation is not a change in us as much as a change in God. Remember the brother going out to get peace of the one who has sinned against him essentially. Well, God does that same thing. We were enemies. We were reconciled to God by the death of his son.

Let me mention also by the way that I am not saying by this that salvation, justification, propitiation, and reconciliation, redemption are ours without the mechanism that God has chosen to apply them to us. Faith is what Christ earned on the cross for us as well. It’s because of that cross work that God gives us that gift of faith. But it’s not the faith that saves us. The faith is simply the mechanism to link us to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so the reconciliation is experientially worked out in time and in space through the application of faith in the word of God. You can look at the atonement really in a trinitarian mode. The Father elects us from all time, and in that eternal covenant the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, comes forward to do the work of redeeming us and securing all these things that we’ve spoken of, and the Spirit then comes and takes those things of Christ and applies them to us in the context of the word and the context of faith.

But in any event it says, “Moreover we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. Much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. We have now received the atonement.”

“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”

The imputation of Adam’s sin is what accomplishes this covenantal reality of our linkage to Adam. And now Romans 5 goes on then to speak about the imputation of Christ’s death and resurrection as well. And so we go on in verse 18 to read:

“Therefore by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”

Let me mention here that the primary point I’m trying to get at is that atonement is a covenantal reality and our fall was a covenantal reality in Adam. And now the recovery of a particular group—the elect group—through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ is a covenantal reality through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us. And in that covenantal reality God has created a new humanity, okay? He’s created a new humanity. And that’s what he’s saying here when we read that “the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.”

He’s not saying every last man in the world. All men here must mean all the elect, all that come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ being predestined to do so by God, because all men are not justified. All men do not have justification of life. We know that the scriptures teach that many will go to hell. So the all here refers to that, just as in our other text that we read from 2 Corinthians:

“And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves. I’m sorry, verse 14. For the love of Christ constrains us, because we thus judge that if one died for all, then were all dead, and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. Wherefore we now know the man after the flesh.”

What’s he saying? This is a passage that some may use to teach universal atonement. And yet what he’s saying is that it says that one man died for all, but he also is resurrected for all. It says they don’t live unto themselves but unto him which died for them and rose again. The chapter develops the relationship of the believer to the death of Christ, but also to the resurrection. If Christ died for every last man on the face of the earth in history, then it means that every last man also he would have rose for, and they would be risen in Christ. But that isn’t the case in 2 Corinthians 5 and in Romans 5.

The all that are being spoken of are all the elect. All the group that God came to effect. “for us all” is what we could say, as we read earlier in the scriptures.

Now it’s an important apologetic point for limited atonement. But it’s also a very important point in that such language is used of us. In other words, when the headship of Adam is compared to the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s more than just the doctrine of covenantal work being taught here. What’s being talked about is a new humanity. What’s being talked about is a new Adam. What’s being talked about is a brand new world—that’s what’s being spoken of.

So the atonement is a covenantal fact. And because it’s a covenantal fact, we see then, as I said before in Psalm 86 and 87, that the reference to people being born in Zion is being born—not physically but being born in the context of their election into Christ. And so all the nations of the earth are represented in that new covenantal humanity.

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Now, just really briefly—it’s not my purpose today to talk about the universal passages, but I have a little bit. And let me just very briefly say this. We’ll come back to this in the future, but I want to give you four reasons for universal passages very quickly.

First of all, there is the general language. Paul says, “All things are lawful for me.” Well, he doesn’t mean it’s lawful for him to go shoot somebody, okay? Paul’s using general language. All things lawful—in other words, all things that I could do. He’s using the general language. All men were going out to be baptized by John the Baptist. I mean, they’re never the last person. It’s a large number. So we use that kind of language ourselves. Everybody was at the party the other night. So the universal passages—some can be explained by that kind of language, that really it’s a language. It’s perfectly appropriate to use the language that says “all” and really “all” isn’t really necessarily intended.

Secondly, as in 2 Corinthians 5 and in Romans 5, all can mean all the elect. And what Paul is asserting to the Corinthians is that reconciliation—but all the elect in Christ will be brought to that resurrection, you see, and will be brought to maturation, will be brought to reconciliation. He’s asserting that you can’t lose your salvation. In other words, all the elect do indeed have covenantal union to Christ in his death and his resurrection.

So all can mean all—every last person individually—of the elect.

Third, frequently in the New Testament the word world, when it says that Christ died for the sins of the world, those passages can be interpreted as including Gentiles. Remember the context: Jews were excluding Gentiles. So when world is used, sometimes with a specific purpose, very obviously so, it’s to say that all the world—not just Jerusalem, not just the Jews—but the Gentiles also. And we can explain some of those passages that way.

And then finally, the word world can be used in an eschatological sense. Let me read you a quotation from B.B. Warfield on this point. In other words, when I say that the word world can be used in an eschatological sense, and when I say that atonement is a covenantal fact, and when I say that atonement is ushered in a new humanity—the second Adam, Lord Jesus Christ, and all those people—and then the world is used in the context of those things we’re saying eschatologically, all the world will indeed be saved in the context of his history eschatologically.

Let me read what Warfield said about this:

“There is no antinomianism in saying that Christ died for his people and that Christ died for the world. His people may be few today, the world will be his people tomorrow.”

And again, Warfield says, “It is only the Calvinist that has warrant to believe in the salvation, whether the individual or of the world. Both alike rest utterly on the sovereign grace of God. All other ground is sinking sand.”

So there’s an eschatological dimension to the use of the word world. And we’ll talk about those universal passages next week some, but just so you’ll understand those categories, we’ll set them up today because I think it’s good for you to be able to look at those verses in the next few weeks if they come to you and put them in those categories. Okay.

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So basically what we’ve said then is that we’ve just reviewed what we said last week as well as give some indication of the overall thrust of the message. And we’ve looked at the particular references relative to the scriptures that speak to particularly limited atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we put this in the context of Romans 5 and talked about the transition that is now in effect as God develops a new humanity here on earth through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

To quote R.J. Rushdoony on this last point:

“The universalism of the faith is eschatological is not a universal atonement but a worldwide dominion by God’s sovereign and efficacious grace. And as a result of this,” Rushdoony goes on to say, “there are now two covenants, two humanities, and two kinds of atonement. Those who are reprobate find their atonement and self-justification in stoic activities—making yourself pay, making someone else pay. Those who are the elect of God in Christ are called out of the fruitless and self-defeating atonement and into Christ—rather, efficacious work.”

They move from self-government to God’s government, from self-made laws to God’s laws, from talking to themselves to praying to God through Christ, and from the covenant with death and hell to the covenant of God in Christ.

And I believe the scriptures teach that’s who we are. We’re the ones who have moved from those fallen ways of dealing, from self-government to God’s government, from internal conversations to prayer with God, from our own laws and standards to God’s laws and standards, from our attempts to make other people pay the price for our sins—to impute the responsibility for our sins on our wives or our children or our friends or our church or our government or the capitalists or the communists or the rich or the poor, whoever it is—to say the imputation for our sins was effectual in place by God of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So we’re not going to make these people pay. Christ has paid the penalty. We’re not going to justify our sins. We’re going to go to God in Christ and say, “If I sinned, it’s through my fault, my most grievous fault alone that I’ve done this thing.” And we throw ourselves into the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And because of that, we are new humanity now in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And not only this, but the scriptures teach that eschatologically, this humanity is what God intends to populate this world with. We’re an alien nation planted here by God. We’re a new race—not in the sense of our physical lineage at all, just the reverse, because Christ says that he has called men out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. But we’re a new humanity in this new covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ, that we’ve been moved from these sinful patterns into obedience.

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Now let’s quickly go over again these things that I mentioned: imputation, sacrifice, satisfaction, blood, responsibility.

And what I want us to do with this is number one, understand the world around us. Understand why things happen. Why do we have a society that is filled with a sense of victim? Victims. Everyone’s a victim. You’re a victim for somebody else and they’re a victim. They’ve all been victimized. Why is that? Why do we have an increase in violent crime? Why do we have gangs going on? Why do we have the state trying to assert its authority? Why do people take from the rich to give to the poor or take from the poor to give to the rich? Why do these things happen?

It happens because of people’s perversion of this central doctrine of the Christian faith. There is nothing more central to our faith than that sinful man incapable of making atonement at-one-ment with God through his work is brought to that reconciliation with God through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is absolutely the heart of the faith, and that is absolutely the heart of understanding pagan man’s rejection of God and his perversion of the world round about him.

So I want us to see that—to understand the world around us. And more than that, I want us to make sure that we recognize these principles at work in ourselves. The scriptures say that we’re a new man in Christ. Very important. The scriptures also say that we have an old man, old habits, old ways of doing things. And sometimes we act like pagans. Frequently we do. And I want us to recognize those things so that we can say, “Hey, that’s not who we are in Christ Jesus. He has definitively accomplished our reconciliation to God and he has made us a new creation.” Okay.

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So first of all, imputation. And as I said, the scriptures clearly teach from 2 Corinthians 5 that Jesus Christ received imputation for our sins. It says in 2 Corinthians 5:14, “we thus judge that if one died for all then we’re all dead. So the Jesus Christ died—all things are passed away in him. We read that God was reconciling us to himself by Christ. And then in verse 19, “not imputing their trespasses unto them.”

The clear implication is that God imputes the trespasses of the Lord Jesus Christ—of our sins—to the Lord Jesus. And then in verse 21 of that passage in 2 Corinthians 5, “he has made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”

The scriptures clearly teach imputation on the Lord Jesus Christ of our sins. Bahnsen says in a succinct statement of the doctrine of imputation that there are three essential imputations. I’ll read from Bahnsen here:

“In Christian theology, there are three separate and distinct acts of imputation. In the first place, Adam’s sin is imputed to all of us, his children—that is, judicially, set to our account so that we are held responsible for it and suffer the consequences of it. This is commonly known as the doctrine of original sin. Legally, God places Adam’s guilt on us, imputes it to us.

“In the second place, and in precisely the same manner, our sin is imputed to Christ so that he suffers the consequences of it. And then in the third place, Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. This is all a judicial transaction. It is a statement of judicial action on the part of God.”

Now this isn’t trickery by any sense of the imagination because Jesus actually pays the price for our sins and offers up his act of obedience that we may have his righteousness imputed to us.

So imputation is essential to the doctrine of the atonement. Adam’s sin to us, our sin to the sin bearer—the Lord Jesus Christ—Christ’s righteousness imputed to us—all legal actions. Man, on the basis of this imputation, then moves in the context of the task that God has given him to do.

In Psalm 40:7, we read:

“Then said I, ‘Lo, I come in the volume of the book it is written of me. I delight to do thy will, oh my God. Yea, thy law is within my heart. I have preached righteousness in the great congregation. Lo, I have not refrained my lips, O Lord, thou knowest. I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart. I have not hid my righteousness in my heart. I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation. I have not concealed thy loving kindness and thy truth from the great congregation.’”

The scriptures say that the result of this imputation—this legal change in us—comes with it a moral change as well. Because with the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us, we are now a new creation. We have been regenerated in the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only that, but there’s also a transfer of our family status from the family of Adam into the family of the Lord Jesus Christ, into his household. So the imputation of Christ, while being a legal fact, then accomplishes a moral fact in our regeneration and it accomplishes a family fact—that we now bear the characteristics of our head, the Lord Jesus, and not Adam.

In reputation of our sins is taught in the scriptures as the basis for all these compounding realities.

Now, pagan man rejects this imputation. Pagan man seeks another scapegoat. You know, the Old Testament system—the imputation of sins—the priest would put his hands upon the scapegoat. And actually, it’s probably true that all the sacrificial animals had hands laid upon them. And by the way, when they put hands upon them, they were supposed to press hard. It’s supposed to be a weighty thing. Really, you know, the idea is that this is my sacrifice. This is me. The scapegoat now. And the sins were imputed unto the scapegoat, who was taken outside the city and left and died out there for the sins of the people.

Well, pagan man rejects the imputation of sins to the scapegoat, the true scapegoat, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not elect. He cannot and he does not wish to come to repentance for his own sins. So rather than an imputation that says—as our imputation does—”It is my own fault that this goat must die. It is my own fault that this bullock will have blood run all over this altar and it is my own fault that the Lord Jesus Christ offers up his body as the price for my redemption”—instead of saying that, pagan man doesn’t want his own fault.

He knows his difficulty. He knows his troubles, but he denies his responsibility and he then imputes his sin to someone else.

Who was the first one who did that? Adam.

Yeah. God comes to Adam and Adam imputes his sin to Eve. It’s not my fault. I screwed up. I didn’t—I did eat the fruit, but you know, it’s not my fault. The woman you gave me—she made me do it. He imputes his sin to someone else. And Eve, then she does the same thing. She has a good wife. She follows her husband, and she says, “Well, you know, it’s not my fault either. It’s this serpent here that you apparently let in somehow into this garden. You place a serpent with us”—by implication of what she’s saying, you know, really at the end of the day, every time we blame shift, it really is essentially a false imputation. And ultimately, I think we can say that Adam is blaming God. It’s the woman that you gave me. And Eve says, “It’s the serpent, one of God’s creations. I was deceived, not my fault.” All false imputations reject the clear statement of our own guilt, attempt to blame somebody else, and ultimately blame God himself.

We live in a world in which we are environmentally determined. Everything you do is not your fault. So you don’t pay the price for anything. According to many people in our culture, when you go to prison for rape, you get put into counseling because it’s not your fault. There’s a false imputation of your guilt upon your parents or upon the culture, upon the environment itself. Our culture moves in terms of false imputations.

And because it does that, it aggravates to itself sin. Because every time we do that, in essence, we are blaming God.

We must say, as we have actually used in this worship service in the last few months occasionally, I think at least once, the Office of Complaining, which says this:

“I confess to God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and before all the company of heaven that I have sinned in thought, word and deed, through my fault, through my own fault, my own most grievous fault. Wherefore I pray almighty God to have mercy on me, to forgive me all my sins, and to make clean my heart within me.”

You don’t get to a cleansed heart by imputing your sin to someone else. And while we are new creatures in the Lord Jesus Christ, we so often are just like Adam. And I mean literally so, man. You know it’s true. We blame our wives for our sins and for what goes wrong in our houses. And wives, you blame somebody else. You blame that serpent of a husband you’ve got. And children, you blame other people.

Don’t do it. That’s not who you are. You’re here today to hear the word of God. You’re here today to worship God. You’re here today because God has made you a new creature in the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s producing a new humanity. He wants this world changed as a result of the once-for-all work of the Lord Jesus Christ historically 2,000 years ago. He’s ushered in a new reality. And you can build that reality or you can go back to the vomit by making excuses for your sins and imputing your sins to other people.

Now the horrific thing is that we impute our sins to others, including those that God gives us. Rushdoony says this:

“The sin or depravity is total of the depravity of man and is the governing fact in his nature which colors his mind, his will, his emotions, his actions and all his being. Just as a tiger is always a tiger, so a member of the humanity of Adam is inescapably a man whose being is not merely marked by but is in essence…”