Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Strange Atonement vs. Biblical Atonement
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text today is found in the book of Isaiah beginning at chapter 52 verse 12. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Isaiah 52 beginning in verse 12. For you shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight. For the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. Behold, my servant shall deal prudently. He shall be exalted and extolled and be very high. Just as many were astonished at you, so his visage, which marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of man, so shall he sprinkle many nations.

Kings shall shut their mouths at him, for what had not been told them, they shall see, and what they had not heard, they shall consider. Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness. And when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way.

And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before the shearers is silent. So he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. And who will declare his generation? For he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgressions of my people he was stricken.

And they made his grave with the wicked. But with the rich at his death because he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many for he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul unto death and he was numbered with the transgressors and he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressor. Sing O barren you have not borne. Break forth into singing and cry aloud you have not labored with child for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married woman, says the Lord.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the tremendous words of the prophet Isaiah. We thank you for the great truth that we celebrate in our Easter tide, this season of rejoicing in the resurrection of our savior. We thank you that he turned 40 days of fasting and mourning into 40 days of great joy by his resurrection and moved the world from death to life. We thank you that you have moved each of us individually also from death to life and that we serve the risen Savior, him having made full atonement for our sins.

Help us to think through the implications of that today, Lord God, by your word. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

Ten years ago or so, last time actually I spoke on this same topic. Our topic today is strange atonement in contrast to biblical atonement. And in preparation for that, the night before I was to preach that sermon, we had gone out to run some materials for the church. Charity was sick. I think the other kids were too. So we decided to get some pizza at one of these take and bake places or whatever it was. And I went to the door and it was closed at 9:00 and it was like 10 or 15 minutes till 9:00 and the door was locked. I saw a man in there and I tapped on the door and he opened it up and I said, “Well, are you open?” He says, “No, we’re closed.” I said, “You’re supposed to close it at 9:00. It’s 10 or 15 till.” He said, “It’s 9:00. I’m talking here. Oh, okay.”

So he was, you know, I spoke with him kindly and he actually did open up and let us get a pizza. But what I want to talk about today is strange atonement. Atonement is an inescapable concept. We could say somebody has to pay the price for our sin and guilt. And when men reject the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s not as if they reject the concept of atonement. They simply redefine it. “This is what atonement is to me.” And this has horrific consequences for them individually as well as for our culture.

And in the providence of God, we’ve had a horrific example this past week of trying to make others pay the price for your situation. And I’ll talk in a little while about that and about someone taking out and making others pay the price for his state of being and then finally turning inward on himself and making himself pay, or at least trying to accomplish that. And this is what we’ll talk about in a little bit.

I do it to explain the great importance of what we’ve talked about here the last couple of weeks. What we’re rejoicing in is the resurrection, the finished atonement for the elect of God. The context for this as we’re going through the teaching of how God is sovereign, specifically as it relates to our salvation. And what we’re trying to do is lay a foundation again with our young people growing up as to what it is, who we are, and why we do the things we do as a church and what drives us.

And at the root of everything else is our understanding of the person of God. And God is sovereign, and God has justice as well as mercy. And in the atonement, we see God’s justice playing a large role in that as well as his mercy toward his people.

So I want to talk about it but I want to talk first again about what the atonement that the scriptures say is real atonement, biblical atonement is. You know, they say they train counterfeits. One way to train somebody to spot counterfeit bills is to get them to be familiar with the real deal. The reason for that is counterfeits come in all kinds of ways, shapes and forms. There’s never an end to how many attempts there are to counterfeit a dollar bill. So if you become well acquainted with the genuine article, then you’re going to notice the counterfeit because it’s not like truth.

So it’s important that we’re going to talk today about some manifestations of strange atonement, but there’ll be others in the history of men, and we can’t address each of them in detail. But we do want to familiarize ourselves with what the scriptures say about atonement and the importance of it.

And what we’re saying is that this is the second head of doctrine of the Canons of Dort, the sovereignty of God as it applies to the salvation of men, is limited atonement. Actually, some people say the term limited atonement is not actually used in the Canons but when we’ve come up with this five-letter acronym TULIP for the five heads of doctrine that the men at Dort came up with, the L stands for limited atonement.

And as we’ve said, we sort of, really if we wanted to put it in the order of the Canons, it’d be ALIP, right? They start with unconditional election and then they move to limited atonement, or “the death of Christ is the actual heading of their section” and the redemption of men thereby. So some people think it may be a little better to call it particular redemption or effectual atonement. It’s limited, it’s not limited in its value. It’s limited in its purpose.

And in fact, people that say that we posit, you know, people who don’t agree with what the scriptures teach about God’s atoning work in Christ on the cross for his people, say that we’re too limited in our view of the atonement. But you know, all atonement in terms of its purpose is limited, right? Even if Christ atoned for the sins of every person, that’s a limited number. So limited atonement is what everybody believes and we’re saying that the limit of who he dies for in terms of its purpose are the elect, not limited in its value as we’ll see in the Canons of Dort in just a minute.

We can say there are various scriptures. We talked about these a couple of weeks ago. In John 10:11, we read this is a deductive method from scripture saying why we believe in limited atonement. He says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.” So there’s sheep and non-sheep, sheep and goats. And he gives his life for the sheep.

Matthew 26:28, “This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for many for the remission of sins,” not for all, but for many.

Acts 20:28, “Therefore take heed to yourself and to all the flock among whom the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.” So who did he purchase? What was the purpose of him giving his blood? The church, specifically those that come to faith in Christ.

Ephesians 5, “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her.” So the death of Christ is specific for the church, for those who were unconditionally elected by God in eternity past on the basis of his sovereign good pleasure and his love for us.

Romans 8:32, “He did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” And by the way, there’s a series of verses like that where there’s parallelisms that Jesus gave his life up for us all, for the church that is, and in parallel to that he’ll freely give us all things. He gives all things to those that he died for and in both cases it’s for the church and if we say that Christ made atonement for the sins of the world then he gives every last man all things and of course this is ridiculous.

So there are certain deductive proofs from scripture, there’s certain texts that make it obvious that the purpose of Christ’s death on the cross was for the elect. There’s inductive proofs as well. And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

If we look at what Jesus accomplished by the atonement—expiation, propitiation, salvation, justification—the list of things that we spoke about a couple of weeks ago on Easter Sunday, if this is what you know has been accomplished on the cross for those he died for, well then the effective work of that is applied to a certain kind of people, right? If he died for everyone, then everybody would be saved. And so, and on the converse, either he died for everyone and everyone would be saved or only those that would be saved, on the basis of their ability, their faith, their works, what they choose to do—those are the people that’ll be saved. So salvation is not of grace; everybody’s been put in the same position.

So those that teach the opposite of the biblical views view a particular strange atonement. And so really nobody was actually saved, justified, redeemed, expiated, their guilt and wrath propitiated before God, made at one with God. Nobody really, that was not accomplished fully for anybody on the cross. It becomes a potential for everyone.

I think it was Spurgeon who said that their road, their view of limited, or their view of atonement—it’s a mile wide. Everybody gets to walk across that bridge, but it doesn’t actually go all the way across the chasm. The last little thing you got to do. Our bridge may be narrower in terms of the extent of the atonement, but it goes all the way across. Jesus has by his sovereign grace accomplished salvation for us, not leaving it up to us. If he did that, we have free will. We would always choose to reject the grace of God.

So by way of you know inductively thinking about it, the implications of it, then we can see that only an actual realized atonement is what’s taught in the scriptures and therefore every last person couldn’t be atoned for because every last person’s not going to heaven.

A second inductive proof is the intercession of Jesus Christ for those he is atoned for. And we talked about this last week. In Romans 8:33 we read, “Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died and furthermore is also risen who is even at the right hand of God who also makes intercession for us.”

And we talked about this last week that the resurrection is the demonstration that Christ has atoned for sins and it’s the necessary element for Christ to go to the right hand of the Father to make intercession for us. So atonement is, you know, linked up like this with the intercession of Jesus. He intercedes at the right hand of the Father for those he made atonement for. And so if you’re going to say that he made atonement for everyone, that means he’s interceding at the right hand of the Father effectively for all people. And of course, we know that can’t be true.

So there’s lots of ways to discuss this. Jesus made it real clear in John 17 that he didn’t pray for the whole world. He prayed for those that would believe in him and have faith in him. Death and resurrection are also linked in 2 Corinthians 5. And so resurrection being linked to death. Those that Jesus makes atonement for have been raised up in Jesus as well in saving life. And so there’s all kinds of ways to skin this cat, but the cat is obviously should be skinned. The systems that don’t posit effectual real particular atonement on the cross are systems of strange atonement.

Now before we get to the Canons of Dort, there are universal passages and I just want to go over this briefly. We’ll talk more about this in a couple of weeks. But first of all, you know, it says well you know it seems to say that Jesus died for all people or all the world and let me give some brief explanations for universal passages.

First of all there’s the use of normal language in scripture. It says that all people were going to the Jordan to be baptized by John. Does that mean every last person? No. Means a whole bunch of people. So, you know, first of all, we don’t want to forget that normal language is not necessarily precise in terms of trying to say we’re saying about every last person. Normal language.

Secondly, the term “all” can refer to all the elect. The passages I just read, from Romans 5 and also in 2 Corinthians 5, when it says he died for all, it means all the elect are died for, are the subject of Christ’s atonement on the cross.

Third, the word “all,” is, or the term “world,” rather, the Greek word cosmos, and it means Jew and Gentile together. So another use of the term “all” in terms of the subject of who Jesus died for is for Jew and Gentile together. In the Old Testament there’s a bipolarity. There’s two groups: a priestly nation and those that are to come to faith and be led by the priestly nation. In the New Testament, that’s done away with and now the atoning work of Jesus is for all, in other words Jew and Gentile alike.

And then fourth, another and I think very significant use of the term “all” is in an eschatological sense. So what we say here is that Jesus did indeed die for, you know, many people, all people, in the sense that eventually the world will be populated almost totally by those who are the subjects, or the objects rather, of Jesus’ atonement on the cross.

So there’s an eschatological sense and I wanted to read a comment here by B.B. Warfield, Rushdoony, and he says the universalism of the faith is eschatological not a universal atonement for every last person but a universal atonement in the end, to the end that it actually attains eschatologically the salvation of the world.

Here’s what Warfield said:

“The rate of the church’s progress to its goal of perfection, the nature of its progress, the particular individuals who are brought into it through every stage of its progress. All this is in his divine hands. The Lord adds to the church daily such as are being saved.” And this is the conclusion, by the way, of his little booklet on God’s plan for salvation. “And it is through the divine government of these things, which is in short the leading onwards of the race to salvation, that the great goal is at last attained. To say that is of course already to say election and reprobation.

Now listen, there is no antinomianism. Therefore, no opposition 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. But it must be punctually observed that unless it is Christ who not opens the way of salvation to all, but actually saves his people, unless it is Christ who does this, there is no ground to believe that there will ever be a saved world. The salvation of the world is absolutely dependent, as is the salvation of the individual soul, on its salvation being the sole work of the Lord Jesus Christ himself in his irresistible might. It’s only the Calvinist that has warrant to believe in the salvation whether of the individual or of the world. Both alike rest utterly on the sovereign grace of God. All their ground is shifting sand.”

So do you see what he says? If we have an atonement that doesn’t actually effectively save anyone, but makes it possible for everyone to be saved, we have no assurance that anybody will be saved. And Jesus Christ’s death could well be for nothing.

So we, both the individual salvation and the salvation of the world eschatologically, are tied to the fact that Jesus Christ is sovereign. He’s the one who unconditionally, in the Trinity, in the Godhead, elected certain people. The Father gave him those people. Jesus Christ came to die for those people. The Holy Spirit sovereignly, irresistibly draws us to himself—those people. And if it’s not for that, Warfield says, then we have no assurance that anyone will ever be saved if it’s up to us. And in fact, I would say that based on the teaching of the scripture in terms of man’s depravity, no one would ever be saved.

All right. Now this is very important because our sin produces guilt and guilt leads to enslavement to sin. We have to break out of the bondage from guilt and the atonement of Jesus Christ. The effectual atonement is the method by which God frees us from guilt. Guilt tends to make servants or slaves of us. But in the atonement Jesus frees us from that. So limited atonement means that the atonement is inestimable in value but limited in purpose. And for those people for whom Christ died, he has moved us away from slavery and guilt into the freedom of action in the Lord Jesus Christ. It wasn’t limited in value, but it was limited in purpose.

Let’s look briefly then at the next page where we have the Canons of Dort on your handout on this particular section. I want to go over this very quickly, but as I say, I think it’s important to recognize what the Canons do. First, they tell us this is what the atonement is all about. And then they’ll reject some specific errors.

Article One:

“God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just. His justice requires, as he has revealed himself in the world, that our sins committed against his infinite majesty should be punished, not only with temporal, but with eternal punishments, both in body and soul, which we cannot escape unless satisfaction be made to the justice of God.”

All right. So you see, if you move away from the real deal, atonement is a demonstration of God satisfying his justice. Now if we move away from the biblical view of atonement, what we move into is a world in which justice is no longer a big deal, or everything’s mercy. We become, as I said before, nicer than Jesus, cheap grace, no civil penalty. All the justice of God and its implications for our civil statutes gets washed away eventually as well. So the biblical atonement is based on the satisfaction of God’s justice.

Someone has to be punished temporally and eternally to make satisfaction to the justice of God.

Article Two:

“Since therefore we are unable to make satisfaction in our own persons, we can’t do it. We can’t pay the price or to deliver ourselves from the wrath of God, that he has been pleased of his infinite mercy to give his only begotten son for our sake, who is made and became a curse for us and in our stead.”

So the justice of God requires something we can’t do and Jesus Christ is our substitute. All right? Our sins are imputed to Jesus Christ and his faith and its works are imputed to us in the exchange. But he’s a substitute. So the atonement, the doctrine of the biblical atonement says that God’s justice needs to be satisfied. We can’t do it and we need a substitute and that’s Jesus. And this substitute has to die.

Article Three:

“The death of the son of God is the only and most perfect sacrifice and satisfaction for sin.” The word sacrifice in the English word means to make something holy. And to make us holy, a sacrifice had to be given. Death had to be accomplished. And so we can’t meet the conditions. We need a substitute. This substitute is the only proper sacrifice who will die for us and make satisfaction. “It is of infinite worth and value abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.”

So it’s not limited in terms of value.

Article Four:

“This death is of such infinite value and dignity because the person who submitted to it was not only begotten son of God of the same eternal and infinite essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, with which qualifications were necessary to constitute him a savior for us. And moreover, because it was attended with the sense of the wrath and curse of God due to us sinners.”

So, you know, we need a problem. We have a problem. We can’t make payment. We need a substitute. The substitute has to die to make satisfaction. And that substitute satisfaction is effectual because he is the son of God and he’s placating. He’s dealing with God’s justice.

Now, I skip the next few articles and I print Article Eight for you in bold because this is a nice summation of the biblical teaching on atonement:

“For this was the sovereign counsel and most gracious will and purpose of God the Father, that the quickening and saving efficacy of the most precious death of his son should extend to all the elect for bestowing upon them alone the gift of justifying faith there to bring them infallibly to salvation. Not make a potential but to bring us infallibly to salvation. That is it was the will of God that Christ by the blood of the cross whereby he confirmed the new covenant should effectually redeem out of every people, tribe, nation, and language all those and those only who were from eternity chosen to salvation and given to him by the Father, that he should confer upon them faith which together with all the other saving gifts of the Holy Spirit, he purchased for them by his death, should purge them from all sin, both original and actual, whether committed before or after believing, and having faithfully preserved them even to the end should at last bring them from every spot and blemish to the enjoyment of glory in his own presence forever.”

That’s a nice summation statement. The Father unconditionally elects us. The Son accomplishes an effectual real atonement. Not making something available but actually effectively accomplishing an atonement between us and God. Removing his wrath, propitiating God toward us, making redemption, buying us out of our sins, paying the price, giving us salvation, giving us justification with God. All those wonderful truths Jesus has accomplished on the cross.

Absolutely. And the Holy Spirit then irresistibly calls the elect to himself. It’s not up to us. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace. All of them are sort of wrapped up here in this statement. This is the biblical faith.

Article Nine:

“This purpose proceeding from everlasting love toward the elect has and goes on to talk about how it’s been powerfully accomplished.”

And I love that because it takes us back to that golden chain—that everything starts with love of God in eternity. This purpose proceeds from everlasting love towards the elect. All right? And then the Canons of Dort, saying this is the real deal. This is what the biblical atonement is all about. Then combat certain errors.

And let’s look at these then.

**Rejection of Errors**

Paragraph One:

“We reject those who teach that God the Father has ordained his son to the death of the cross without a certain and definite decree to save any. This is strange atonement. An atonement that doesn’t effectively save anything. And its purpose was not definitively to save anyone that strange atonement. So that the necessity, profitableness, and worth of what Christ merited by his death might have existed and might remain in all its parts complete, perfect and intact, even if the merited redemption had never in fact been applied to any person.”

So this is one of the positions of false atonement that the Canons of Dort reject.

Dropping down to paragraph two:

“We reject those who teach that it was not the purpose of the death of Christ that he should confirm the new covenant of grace through his blood, but only that he should acquire for the Father the mere right to establish with man such a covenant as he might please.”

So this is the view that, well, there was this old covenant and Jesus had to fulfill that so that then he could make a new covenant which has nothing to do with satisfying the justice of God and only grace and grace alone. Judeo-Christian view of the atonement. And as a result, the Bible is splintered. The work of God’s just satisfying God’s justice is denigrated. And the whole idea now is that we have nothing to do with all that Old Testament because it’s gone. And so we have the new. You know, much of evangelicalism today kind of in the backwash of this sort of thinking.

Paragraph Three:

“Who teach that Christ by his satisfaction merited neither salvation itself for anyone nor faith whereby the satisfaction of Christ under salvation effectually appropriated, but that he merited for the Father only the authority of the perfect will to deal again with man and to prescribe new conditions as he might desire obedience to whichever dependent on the free will of man so that it therefore might have come to pass that either more or all should fulfill these conditions.”

So it’s a further elucidation on what they just said. So now they’re saying, you know, that some people think the atonement is he does fulfills the conditions of the old covenant, establishes a new one. The condition of the new covenant he can set whatever way he wants and the only condition for the new covenant is faith and really quite apart from the atoning work of Christ on the cross. And they say this is the old Pelagian error.

Paragraph Four:

“Who teach that the new covenant of grace which God the Father through the mediation of the death of Christ made with man does not herein consist that we by faith in as much as it accepts the merits of Christ are justified before God and saved but in the fact that God having revoked the demand of perfect obedience of faith regards faith itself and the obedience of faith although imperfect as the perfect obedience of the law and does esteem it worthy of the reward of eternal life through grace.”

So again it’s, it’s this is all new testament kind of theories of atonement that the Armenians were positing breaking away the demands of God that are clearly given to us in the Old Testament and taking away the effectual work of Jesus for anyone.

Paragraph Five:

“Who teaches all men have been accepted unto the state of reconciliation and under the grace of the covenant so that no one is worthy of condemnation on account of original sin.”

Okay. So this strange view is that everybody Jesus died for everybody for their original sin. And so no one anymore in the history since then for the last 2,000 years is guilty of original sin. Jesus has paid the price for all of that. And the only condition now that God deals with you on is will you believe or not? You see, the demands of the law are set aside and for each of us individually, a new covenant has come to pass. And in this new covenant, the only thing that’s important is whether you have faith or not.

Paragraph Six:

“Who use the differences between meriting and appropriating to the end that they may instill into the minds of the imprudent and in experience this teaching that God, as far as he is concerned, has been minded to apply to all equally the benefits gained by the death of Christ. So to apply to all equally the benefits gained, but that while some obtain the pardon of sin and eternal life and others do not, this difference depends on their own free will, which joins itself to the grace that is offered.”

Spurgeon said, “Your last little piece of the bridge to get across the chasm is your own work, your own free will.” Whether it’s, you know, we can call it, you know, faith, we can call it “yes” to God. Whatever we call it, it’s your work. He’s done everything except that. And he’s done everything except that for everybody. But of course, the problem with that is that none of us would do it. And if we do it and the next guy over didn’t put that last little part on the bridge, who gets the glory for that? We do. Because ultimately it was our action that produced salvation.

Paragraph Seven:

“Who teach that Christ neither could die nor needed to die and also did not die for those whom God loved in the highest degree and elected to eternal life. Since these do not need the death of Christ, some people actually taught that God doesn’t need the death of Christ for those that he really loves. He loves them. It doesn’t matter that they’ve broken his word. He doesn’t need to send his son to make payment for him because of his love. His love overlooks all the demands of law.”

And of course, these views produce the kind of view we have today toward civil punishment of crimes, that they’re not to be engaged in. They’re of a piece.

All right. So the Bible in Isaiah 52 and 53 clearly states that Jesus was our substitute on the cross. That Jesus took our sins, the sins of the elect upon himself. This real transaction is denied by those who don’t hold to the five points of Calvinism. Okay? I mean, if he really effectually accomplished salvation on the cross, everybody got to be saved. That can’t be. But we don’t want the death of Christ only for the elect. So we come up with these weird theories and new covenant and the conditions and how it all works. And it gets very complicated because we’re trying to avoid the simple truth that Jesus on the cross died for his particular people.

He was their substitute. Their sins he took upon himself. He died for those sins of his people. He satisfied the Father’s justice and in doing all this, he freed us from the guilt of sin. That’s the biblical doctrine.

Now, there are other views, you know, that’s the biblical doctrine. Let’s apply it to our world this past week. Let’s say, how are people today saying it’s 9:00 in here? I mean, God clearly states this is the atonement. And those who reject the biblical view of atonement say, “Well, it’s it’s this. The atonement is actually this thing over here,” and it’s strange. It’s different from God.

I use the term strange atonement. I should have explained this. In the Old Testament, Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron the priest, go in to bring fire into the tabernacle and God destroys them. Why? Because they bring their own fire, their own view of how to start worship. The indication is that God’s fire from heaven comes down to consume the first offering. They need heavenly fire, God’s sovereignty, his initiative in order to worship correctly. And Nadab and Abihu bring strange fire, meaning fire that isn’t from heaven, earthly fire, their own works, their own view, their own strange fire into the worship place.

And on the cover of your liturgy today, you see the result. God burns them up. Crispy critters. God’s judgment comes upon them. Well, what we’re talking about today are strange views of the atonement that sincerely held and believed, you know, are a practical denial of the Christian faith. They really are quite important. And these strange views of the atonement apply as well, I think, not just to the strange atonement of Arminius and his followers as articulated in the Canons of Dort, but I want to apply it in a broader sense culturally as well.

And the first thing I want to say is that the strange atonement of Mr. Cho that we saw in the pages of the papers and in our news this last week begins with, well, there’s two manifestations. First is sadistic tendencies, sadism based on the Marquis de Sade who wants to make some other person pay for their guilt. They’re guilty. They’re going to hurt you to make you pay for their guilt, their condition, their sin.

And how does this work? Well, it begins by making false imputation. False imputation.

You know, you got this picture on the back of the handouts today for the little kids to color on a scapegoat. And there was a scapegoat in the requirement of the Old Testament ritual—the sins of the people be placed upon the scapegoat. He would go out and die in the wilderness. Obviously a reference to the substitutionary work of Jesus Christ going outside the camp into the wilderness, carrying our sins and dying for us.

Well, if men reject one scapegoat, the biblical scapegoat, it doesn’t mean they’re done with the concept of scapegoat. It means they’re going to blame somebody else for their sin. We see it in the very condition of mankind, in the very first sin that Adam engaged in. And God comes and talks to him about it and what does he say? He has a scapegoat. It’s the wife, right? He shifts blame to somebody else.

That’s false imputation—for what I did wrong, to someone else. Okay? This is a denial of the biblical doctrine of atonement because atonement begins with Jesus Christ as our substitute for paying the price that we can never pay and no one else can pay either.

Adam begins it. The false blameshifting and his wife continues in his way. She blames the serpent and we could say that both of them ultimately are blaming God. The wife—you gave me the serpent—by implication, the serpent that God has brought into their mix, probably to teach them originally before his fall. But to blame the environment, to blame someone else for our sin is to begin this cycle that Cho entered into.

And if you heard any of his statements on the television, you saw this quite plainly, this very truth of false atonement, beginning with false substitution. He said, “I don’t want to accept Jesus as my scapegoat. You’re my scapegoat. You had a million chances,” he said, “to keep me from doing this, but you didn’t. It’s your fault. It’s your fault. It’s your fault.” That’s what he said over and over again. He blamed someone other than himself.

False imputation is strange atonement. It’s the beginning process of it.

Romans 9 tells us that those that reject the sovereignty of God, they say the same thing. Well, why does God hold us responsible if he’s sovereign? What are they saying? They’re saying the same thing as Adam and Eve. It is endemic to the human condition to blame God for the problems that exist in our lives, our sin, our condition. And that’s particularly true of people that reject the sovereignty of God. According to Romans 9, we blame God for our condition. Why does he find fault? It’s his fault. He’s the one that’s responsible, not me.

Isaiah 53 clearly says that Jesus Christ was our substitute. We read in verse three or verse four, “He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon him. By his stripes we are healed.” He became our substitute. This is the biblical doctrine of the atonement.

It begins, as the Canons talked about, with a need and the need is fulfilled through the substitutionary work of Jesus taking upon himself our sins.

Those that reject the atonement, those that say it’s not 10 minutes till 9, it’s 9:00 in here, that counterstates the reality of what God says—that it’s not God’s fault, it’s not someone else’s fault, it’s your fault, and I’ve provided a substitute for you, the Lord Jesus Christ, to pay the price for your sins.

Those that reject that end up scapegoating other people.

It’s interesting. René Girard has done some work on this. He’s this man who you’ve heard me talk about him before. Peter Leithart, Jim B. Jordan talk about him. You know, he has this view that sin is an awful lot of sin is imitating the desire of other people. So we are kind of mimics. And the illustration for Girard’s theory is the simplest. Two kids in a room, two little kids, one of them playing with the toy, the other one sees he likes the toy. He imitates the desire of the second child. He doesn’t like the toy, but now he likes it because he’s imitating his twin. And they start fighting over the toy. What happens?

Well, you know, mankind doesn’t want to rip itself to shreds. What happens is another little boy comes into the room and they both say, “This is your fault that we’re fighting, you, you know, and they’ll mock him for something that is wrong with him.” And they’ll both turn on him and make him the scapegoat for the sins they’re engaging in. And they do this to try to chase some degree of peace and it works.

I see this in marriage counseling. You know, you deal with a couple, husband and wife, that are sitting against each other and if you’re not careful what they end up doing, if they don’t understand the atonement of Christ, you haven’t applied it—they’ll blame you. They’ll come together finally by blaming the pastor. This is a very common phenomenon in counseling both in terms of pastors and non-pastor counseling.

It’s because of this idea that if we’re not accepting the atonement of Jesus Christ as our substitute, we want somebody other. And you know, it’s a little easier to have, you know, after we argue with our wives or our husbands for a while about how it’s their fault and we take it out on them. Eventually, we figure out, you know, that’s not too productive. I’m not. It’s no fun living in a house where we’re fighting. Let’s blame someone else and we end up blaming the pastor or the church or friends or our parents or whatever it is.

So this is how you know, the kind of warfare of mimetic imitative desire is resolved by mankind—they blame someone else. And Girard has a complicated essay about this scapegoating and the sort of guys they end up scapegoating. It’s got to be somebody within the community, not a total outsider, because you’re making atonement for the sins of your own little group. And yet it can’t be somebody that’s just like everybody else. It’s got to be somebody that’s somewhat exceptional, a little different, you know. And so for instance, their status, they have more money than you. It’s a frequent way to make that person the scapegoat.

And what you end up doing then is one person starts the process of saying, “He’s the problem we’ve got. Let’s blame him.” And at first people say, “Well, I don’t think he did this.” But then pretty soon they start to imitate the actions of the scapegoat. And pretty soon everybody’s blaming the guy. And then they kill him.

Now, praise God that Jesus Christ came and stopped us mostly from killing each other. You look at Muslim countries, this process goes on perpetually. That’s why there’s such killing going on over there in Iraq right now. But in Christian countries we don’t do this. We get more sophisticated. There’s still sinful scapegoating going on.

And we saw it in the case of Don Imus. I think here’s one of their own liberals. They have this tension. They see racial tensions increasing. They end up—one person, couple of people blame Imus, an off-hand comment he makes. Even though anybody that knows him clearly knows he’s not a racist, but they blame him because he’s exceptional. He’s kind of the maverick. He’s part of their group, but he’s on the outside almost of the group. He’s just what Girard said the scapegoat’s supposed to look like.

And they start to blame him. And at first, people say, “Well, I don’t know.” But pretty soon, within a week, they’re killing the guy. Now, they don’t do it literally. We do it in a more kindly, more Christian way. I mean, not Christian in the sense of being good, but affected by Christianity. The death of Jesus Christ and his resurrection is the beginning place of removing that kind of pagan sacrifices from mankind. And it has been effectual wherever the gospel has been preached, to get rid of the overt slaughter of one another.

But the sins still persist in somewhat more society-useful forms. And I think that the Imus situation can be thought of in this very way. People are not accepting. And you know, it’s interesting—you know it was Easter weekend when all that occurred and two ministers of the gospel so-called said they would, they didn’t know if they could forgive him or not. And he clearly repented. He was doing everything he could to repent. Can’t forgive him. Got to maintain that because that’s our scapegoat.

Now, so if we reject the atoning work of the scapegoat, the Lord Jesus Christ, the godly one, then we substitute other victims. We blame other people. It’s my sister’s fault. It’s my brother’s fault. It’s my parents’ fault. It’s the fault of my environment. It may not even be personal. It’s my poverty. It’s my sickness. It’s the allergies. This is why I’m so grumpy and yell at you today. We blame all these other things.

And that’s the beginning of false imputation. False imputation. And as I said, Cho as well engages in false imputation. Here’s what he said.

“You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today,” Cho says in the video, “You decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. This decision was yours. Now you have the blood on your hands that will never wash off.”

Strange, but not so strange really. It’s the condition of mankind. It is our condition when we try to impute our sins to someone other than ourselves and blame someone else as a substitute. We have that great prayer we regularly use in our liturgy. “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” It’s my fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault. My sins against you, Father. When we use that in our liturgy, it’s for this very reason—to remind us that the biblical doctrine of atonement means that God has provided a scapegoat who will cleanse us from our sins and we can move ahead.

Sinners try to make atonement other than Jesus. They’ve tried to make somebody other than Jesus pay the price for their sins. It is wrong to blame others for our sins. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the snake. They both really were blaming God. And that’s what we do when we engage in false imputation.

Doesn’t stop there with false imputation. Remember Jesus becomes our substitute. The Canons said, and in Isaiah 53 he does these things. He becomes our substitute in verses four. But then in verse five, he’s wounded for our transgressions. He’s bruised for our iniquities. By his stripes, we are healed. He is led away in verse seven as a lamb to the slaughter.

The imputation of our sins on Jesus was followed by Jesus dying for those sins. And when men begin to impute their sins to someone else, a different scapegoat, then we don’t just stop with that. It’s to the end that we will kill that person. Now, not literally, but in their reputation. We will strike out at them.

And so, what does Cho do? He moves on to violence. What does Adam and Eve do? And they’ve started this cycle up by false imputation. When Cain is troubled, who does he blame? He blames his brother. And what does he do by making his brother the scapegoat? He strikes out and kills him. This is the cycle of violence of false atonement.

Strange atonement begins with imputing our sins to someone else. And it moves on to strike out at that substitute who now bears our sins for us. Jesus Christ made sacrifice for our sins. And this cycle of imputation and violence leads to increased violence as it moves ahead. And that’s what it did with Cho. His false imputation that led him to go out and kill people that he imputed his sins to. Violence and bloodshed occurred.

Now, it’s wrong to not just blame others, but it’s the next step—it is wrong to punish others for our sins. To blame others and to punish them.

The end result of this is not satisfaction. When the Father saw the work of Christ, Jesus was led away as a slaughter. For the transgressions of his people, he was satisfied. We read that in verse eleven of Isaiah 53: “He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied.” True imputation, true atonement through true imputation—the death or sacrifice of Christ produces satisfaction in the end of the cycle and release and freedom to serve God.

False imputation does not. There’s no satisfaction. Cho can kill as many people as he wants. It’s not going to bring satisfaction because it’s strange atonement. It’s not 10 to 9. It’s 9. This is not the way to achieve satisfaction as much as we may think. God doesn’t give us satisfaction based on these things. And in fact, we live increasingly as a culture that blames other people.

Environmentalism, blameshifting. These are the common elements of our day. And what do we have in our day and age? A group of people that can’t get satisfaction. They can’t come to satisfaction about things because they’ve rejected the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.

By the death of Jesus Christ, he satisfies the demands of God’s justice. And if we reject the satisfaction of God’s justice in some sort of Arminian twist on atonement, then we also no longer are left with satisfaction for their peace and rest in our souls because of the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Now, you know, thankfully, you know, we’re inconsistent when we sin in these ways. But that’s the end result of false imputation and false sacrifice—no satisfaction. Violence spirals. Since satisfaction can’t be found, pagan man begins to twist more and more. He twists atonement and as a result, cycles of violence continue. And this is what we’re doing in Iraq right now.

Fourth, this leads to increased bloodletting. If you can’t get satisfied, you’re going to kill more and more people. And as Adam and Eve begin the process with blameshifting and their son takes it into false sacrifice, trying to make someone else pay for his sins, there’s no satisfaction for that. And the end result is a spiral in violence in the ungodly line to where Lamech now kills people for nothing. And he’ll kill a bunch of people if he has to.

The cycle of violence begins with false imputation, false sacrifice, false atonement doesn’t lead to satisfaction. So it’s a false satisfaction—that all it leads to is increasing cycles of violence. And we see this in various rituals because we need satisfaction. We need to be redeemed from fear. We need to be released from fear and guilt. Fear, as someone said, is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt and that fear engages itself in neverending cycles of violence unless we come to Jesus.

The end result of this is escape as opposed to responsibility. But what we want, and we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, is not to be freed so that we might serve. It’s to be freed so that it’s an end point for us and not a beginning point of a new life. Biblical atonement leads to responsibility and increased action. Strange atonement leads to an attempt for relief, that doesn’t accomplish anything, and certainly doesn’t accomplish responsibility on the part of the people that engage themselves into it.

And then finally, the other side of this is masochism. If we’re talking about people that strike out at others, now we can say that Cho at the end became a masochist, didn’t he? He couldn’t get satisfaction from killing as many people as he could, so he turns the gun on himself.

This also is strange atonement. Now, it’s not the false imputation. It is our fault. But God says that we cannot pay the price for our sins. God says we need a substitute other than ourselves. And when we reject that substitute—that is Jesus Christ—and we try to make ourselves pay for our sins, it also yields no satisfaction. And masochism, self-punishment.

Some psychiatrists say this is the basic neurosis of all mankind—self-punishment. We don’t normally see it strike out at other people. We have all kinds of manifestations of self-punishment. You know, some people are compulsive hand washers, right? They’re always washing their hands. Why? They want to be free of guilt and sin and, you know, problems. And instead of accepting the cleansing power of Jesus Christ, everything becomes about self-cleansing, self-ability.

If you look at ads that try to produce a cleansing from guilt and shame and sin, you know, there are a number of them that appeal directly to the state of the unatoned for man who isn’t cleansed from his guilt and he feels guilty and engages in self-punishment. Psychosomatic illnesses. People feel bad when they don’t feel bad. What’s the cure? To accept the atonement of Jesus Christ, to not pay for our own sins. We can’t do it. God says he has a substitute who paid the price for us.

Gamblers, frequently addictive gamblers. When they win, they actually gamble harder to lose because what they really want is to be whipped because they’re making self-atonement for their sins. They’re being masochistic.

Enabling wives. Husbands beat them all the time and they won’t leave them. Why? Because they think they deserve it ultimately in their soul. And in a way they do. But Jesus Christ has provided the way of escape. He’s the one that takes upon himself our sins.

Couples who engage in these kind of enabling behaviors. Drunks, you know, frequently drunkenness is just a slow form of suicide. And suicide is what masochism is all about.

Injustice collectors. You walk around at the end of the day: somebody did something wrong to me. Somebody did something wrong. Poor me. Poor me. Poor me. Poor me. Poor me. What are you engaged in? A false trying to pay for the price of your own sins yourself. And we as Christians often do these very things because we don’t appropriate the atonement of Jesus Christ.

Bearing the burdens of everybody else. You know, don’t you know all the horrible deprivation that’s going on in India and Africa. How can you be happy? There was an Aesop’s fable called the dog in the manger. This dog can’t eat hay, of course, but he’s in there in the manger with the hay. And when the ox comes up to try to eat the hay, the dog barks at him. Make sure nobody else eats the hay either. The dog doesn’t have satisfaction. And rather than taking care of that problem and going eating what’s right—the atonement of Christ—we could say by way of analogy, the dog makes sure nobody else has satisfaction either.

And people who are engaged in masochistic tendencies in the context of the church, who are not accepting the full atonement of Christ, end up then torturing themselves because of the affairs of the world, the affairs of the unborn. There’s all kinds of problems out in our world. And if we let those things, you know, innervate us and destroy our ability to work in action, it’s a sign that we haven’t appropriated the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We’re blaming ourselves. And when we do that, you know, misery loves company. And we try to make sure that nobody else has satisfaction either. And nobody else feels very good about their Christian life because the world is in such a horrible state. Global warming would fit here as well quite nicely.

So all these problems in our culture, all the reasons for problems, all come down, I think at their core level, to a failure to appropriate the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Universal atonement, a failure to appropriate the actual atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ in the scriptures. People that reject limited atonement and hold to the universal atonement for all people—they tend to be people who are involved, or can be people that involve themselves, in morbid introspection, great amounts of false piety. As I say, hand-wringing, the various expressions because really they haven’t fully appropriated the fact and submitted to the fact that Jesus Christ has definitively, as a fact, as a historical reality, made full atonement, satisfaction with the Father for all our sins on the cross 2,000 years ago.

We should not make others pay the price for our sin. And also, we cannot pay the price for our sins either. Whether we engage in punishing others or punishing ourselves, it’s a denial of the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it produces less and less freedom.

Isaiah 53 begins with Isaiah 52. And the reason I started it before the text of 53—that describes biblical atonement—and ended it in the beginning chapter, or verses from 54, is that the brackets for the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ is the full-orbed optimistic view of what history holds for those who have been redeemed through the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.

The sprinkling or washing of many nations, the atoning work of Christ applied to the nations, and then the joy that those who are in desolation apart from the atonement of Christ are brought into through the atoning work of Christ. These things are all premised by the central fact that Jesus Christ has definitively provided atonement for our sins. He’s our substitute. He paid the price. He has made satisfaction with us for the Father. He releases us from our guilt into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Jesus atoned for our sins and he has made us free. We leave the past and our sins behind and we move into the future.

**Last Point of Application**

Parents, this is really important. The human tendency is to not believe in the atoning work of Jesus. It’s too good. That good news is too good for us. And in unbelief, we try to pay the price for our sins and we carry them with us. Don’t make your children do that. Tell your children that once they’ve repented of their sins, the full atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ is confirmed in their souls and they are freed from the sins of the past.

Because our world has produced a victim mentality, a disease mentality of sin. No one can leave their sins, many of which are horrific. No one can leave them in the past. They carry with them the rest of their lives. And increasingly, people are marked off as particular deviant people for the rest of their lives because of sinful actions engaged in their youth. That is not biblical atonement. That’s strange atonement. And it doesn’t produce a freedom. It doesn’t produce a pressing toward the future in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It produces a past-bound reflection and meditation of what we have done wrong.

The Lord God calls us to preach to ourselves the good news that Jesus Christ, our substitute, has made full atonement for our sins. He’s effectively released us from guilt of those sins and from fear and brought us into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. That is the gospel we hear every Lord’s day through the forgiveness of sins being declared through the songs that we sang in the sermon being preached. That’s the good news. And we need to hear that good news over and over because if we don’t, it doesn’t help us.

If we cling to the past and to our sins, it produces ever-increasing cycles of guilt. And people wonder, you know, why people that are being treated for sin as a disease, or a person is a victim. Why? They can’t get past it. They can’t get past it because we’ve never brought them to the foot of the cross effectively and said, “Your sins are forgiven through the work of Christ. Leave them behind. Don’t keep thinking about them.”

And parents, may we teach our children this truth: that the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ is the great deliverance from a past-bound people to become a future-bound people. From a people that wants to have others and themselves pay the price for their sins, to those who accept Jesus Christ making atonement for our sins and look forward then to transforming the world based on that message of the gospel.

Let’s pray.

Father, as we come forward to you today, help us, Lord God, to lay behind our sins, to recognize that you’ve removed them from us. Help us, Father, to train our children in the reality of the atoning work of Jesus Christ, moving them away from masochism and sadism, from blaming and punishing others and punishing themselves for their sins.

We thank you, Lord, that the Lord Jesus Christ has made full atonement for our sins and you have been satisfied and you have been propitiated toward us. We are the recipients of your blessing. Help us, Lord God, to apply this in our lives, every day of our lives, preaching the gospel of the good news of the full atonement of sins effected through our Savior, leaving behind our sin in the past and moving forward to be your servants.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.