What is the Doctrine of Christ’s Redemption?
The Doctrines of Grace: How God Saves Sinners—Start to Finish (#2)
John 1:29; 3:16; Matthew 1:21; Ephesians 5:25–27; Revelation 5:9; Canons of Dort 2.3; 2.5; 2.8
Redemption is the language of purchase: Jesus Christ has bought us out of the slavery of sin—not with gold or silver, but with his own precious blood.
In this second sermon on the doctrines of grace, Dr. Daniel Hyde shows how Scripture speaks in two ways at once. Christ died for all sufficiently—his sacrifice is of such infinite value that, had God so desired, it could have redeemed a thousand worlds—and he died for the elect savingly, ransoming people for God from every tribe, language, people, and nation. Far from silencing evangelism, this doctrine gives believers the assurance that Christ died for me, gives the church its very reason to worship, and sends us out with the gospel—because the people Christ died for are right outside our doorstep.
Introduction
We're going to focus our hearts and minds this evening on what we call “the doctrines of grace.” Sometimes they’re called the quote unquote, “five points of Calvinism.” I’m a firm believer that there’s no such thing as the five points of Calvinism! There were five points of the Remonstrants or students of Arminius back in the 17th century. They’re the ones who had five points. We only have five points because we responded to theirs. We have 129 points in the Heidelberg Catechism plus 37 in the Belgic Confession of Faith; so I’d say we’re really 166-point Calvinists! But that’s a lot of points, so we take the bait and say, “yeah, we believe in the five points.”
We thought about the doctrine of election last time—God’s eternal grace from his own good pleasure to demonstrate his own mercy and love to rescue us. Sometimes we say God chose some to salvation, but as we just heard from Revelation 5, it’s out of every tribe and out of every language and out of every people that the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed people. In Revelation chapter 7, John hears this great noise that sounds like the roaring of a sea. He turns to look at the sound—that very strange biblical irony to look at the sound—and what does he see? A numberless host in heaven, a multitude of peoples that no man can number.
So, we shouldn’t think of the doctrines of election or of Christ’s redemption in terms of a minuscule number. We don’t know how many God has chosen or how many Christ has died for or whom the Holy Spirit is going to draw. It’s not for us to know that; only God knows that. It’s for us to praise him for his redeeming grace and to cast the net wide and to spread the seed to every human being who will hear us. Amen?
The doctrines of grace are these wonderful doctrines that summarize for us what it means that God is God and what it means that he gives to sinners like you and me salvation.
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have worked from all of eternity and in time, space, and history to bring salvation to the ends of the earth out of mere grace. That's the great thing we should be struck by in all of Scripture: God saves sinners. Amen? It’s not a matter of our deserving, our being better than somebody else. God didn't choose me over and above someone else in my particular family because I was somehow better or maybe prospectively better. No, God saves sinners by his grace alone.
Tonight we take up the doctrine of Christ’s redemption.
What is the doctrine of Christ's redemption? Redemption, of course, comes from the world of business and commerce. Even in the Old Testament it’s a word or concept of purchasing, buying something. And so Jesus Christ has purchased us, he's bought us. And the cost of course is himself, or as we say, the cost of his own precious blood. We’re not bought as Peter tells us with gold and silver but by the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ like a lamb who was slain. He’s purchased us out of the slavery of our sins, the slavery of being held by the devil. And he brings us into the kingdom of God to be adopted as his sons and daughters. Have you experienced this freedom from slavery yet? Give your life to Jesus and become a Christian, or follower of Jesus, with us.
So as we think about his redeeming grace, what is Christ's redemption?
He Died for All Sufficiently
The first thing we want to say is that Jesus died for all sufficiently. Yes, he also died for the elect savingly. That’s why we say “sufficient for all, efficient for the elect.”
The first text on your sermon notes page is the wonderful words of John the Baptist. He’s out preaching in the wilderness and he sees Jesus walking by through the crowds with some of his disciples. John says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
Up until that point, God had given his Old Testament laws to Moses some 1,500 years before the coming of Jesus Christ. Among these laws are the Passover lamb and the Day of Atonement. There had been say, 1,500 Passovers and Days of Atonement—the lamb that was slain was a symbol of God redeeming and forgiving his people’s sins. And there had been 1,500 years of every morning and every evening daily sacrifices that God required in the law. There had been 1,500 years of believers freely offering sacrifices and offerings and giving the first of their flocks—the most precious, the best, the most costly.
So, for at least a thousand years, God's people had been dutifully serving the Lord, following his commandments, offering up sacrifices, offering up lambs for forgiveness, redemption, atonement.
But these all were pointing forward to something else, something greater. The book of Hebrews tells us that if those lambs were able to actually redeem people and actually forgive them of their actual sins, there would have been no need for them ever to be offered again yet they kept being offered. Why? Because they weren’t meant themselves to forgive, but only to point to the redemption that comes by the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s that once and for all sacrifice, the final Lamb of God who would come not just for the Jews but the Gentiles—the whole world.
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! In other words, from that passage and many others, we get this biblical idea that Jesus did everything that was necessary to save sinners. He’s sufficient for all.
How Sufficient Was Jesus’ Death?
How sufficient was Jesus’s sacrifice. Note that John says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin, the sin of the world.” Sin is singular. Why? Because he’s speaking of a collective guilt of the world. Because of Adam's fall the world was in the collective state of guilt and sin. The sin of the world, the status of guiltiness, of standing before God unable to save oneself.
There was John, a Jewish prophet, looking at a Jewish Messiah, crying out amidst Jews in Judea and Jerusalem, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Not just the sin of the nation of Israel, not just of the Pharisees—the best of the best—no, the sin of the world; not just Jews, but all peoples.
He did everything necessary to save sinners.
Why Was His Death of Infinite Value and Worth?
Why was Jesus’s death infinitely valuable? Because of the infinite value of his sacrifice as a perfect human being and because he is also divine.
God is infinitely just. If God is an infinite God that means that he has no boundaries; there's nothing constraining him, tying his arms or his hands behind his back. Nothing can hold him, nothing can contain him. Stephen said that the heavens, even the highest heavens cannot contain God much less a temple (Acts 7 ). God is infinite.
And if God is infinite in himself and God is a just God, that means his justice is also an infinite justice. What does that mean? It means that every single sin that every single human being commits against an infinitely just God deserves what? Not just justice, what kind of justice? An infinite justice. Every single sin that every human being has ever committed is against an infinitely just God. An infinitely just punishment means the full wrath of God. Every sin deserves that.
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus did all that was necessary to forgive every single sin that every single human being ever committed against an infinite God, satisfying in himself the infinite demands of God's justice. His death was of infinite value, infinite worth, more than sufficient.
Ancient writers describe it like this: the sacrifice of Christ is so sufficient and infinitely valuable, that if God had wanted to, he could’ve redeemed a thousand worlds by the one sacrifice of the God-man, Jesus Christ. That’s how infinite, valuable, and full of worth his one sacrifice is, as the infinite divine Son of God in human flesh. If God wanted to save a million, a billion, an infinite number of worlds, the one sacrifice of Christ was sufficient for that. Why? Because he’s the Savior, because he’s the Lamb of God who takes away those sins. He’s that eternal Word that was made flesh.
And why of infinite value? Because he suffered on the cross the infinite wrath of God. It’s not just that we as human beings and sinners sin, and we deserve God’s infinite justice and wrath; then there’s Jesus, just like us as a human being, who dies and sort of covers us and he takes away a bunch of temporal wrath and punishments. Maybe he gets us off the hook for some sins and then kind of puts us back in a level playing field, sort of like Monopoly. We get out of jail and we were able to start rolling the dice again and playing the game.
But what happens on Monopoly? You roll the dice and eventually you’re going to wrap yourself around the board and you’re going to hit the “Go to Jail” square. Then you’re back to square one. That’s what it is to be a human being, a sinner. We’re never getting out of that rat race of jail and of sin. It’s inevitable.
Jesus’ once and for all, infinitely valuable sacrifice, satisfies in him once and for all the infinite justice of God, and experienced all of that.
We have a fireman here and I don't want to tread on his domain, but I would assume that this illustration kind of gets at the point: the fireman enters a burning building. In some sense obviously he’s going to be covered up and he’s going to have oxygen and so forth. But in some sense, he’s going to experience the same kind of danger of the heat, smoke, and potential death that anyone in a burning building also experiences. Whether or not the fireman saves one person out of the building or whether he saves everybody, he’s experienced the same threat of death as everybody or the one person.
In the same way, our Lord Jesus Christ. When he came to this world, he suffered the same things that we’ve suffered. He experienced the same sense of dread on the cross of being under the infinite wrath and fire of hell of God himself. So, whether he redeems one human being or a billion or an infinite number, he experienced all that there was to experience, entering the burning building of our sinful world.
He died for all sufficiently. He did everything necessary to save sinners. Amen?
Three applications of this sufficiency
What that means is this.
If you’re an unbeliever, there’s no special kind of sinner that'‘s outside of the satisfaction of Christ. There's no special kind of sinner that sins in that way or sins in this way or that sins beyond the pale, and thus, you’re the kind of sinner that Jesus didn’t die for. No, his death was a sufficient satisfaction of infinite value and worth so that he did all that was necessary to save you. There’s no special class of sinners that he didn’t die for. His death is sufficient. If you’re a sinner, no matter what kind, Jesus’s death is the only death, the only satisfaction, the only sacrifice that can forgive your sins.
If you're a believer, this means that Jesus’s sacrifice continues to be for us the only sacrifice, the once and for all sacrifice, the infinite sacrifice, the sufficient sacrifice for you and for me in all of our daily struggles with sin. Again it’s not just that he died once, then we’re forgiven once and left on our own. We have to come to Jesus continually with our daily practical sins—in our minds, words, and deeds. We come to him knowing that his once and for all death still is sufficient for that sin. There’s no sin that we commit later on that we’re on our own for. He did all that was necessary to save sinners.
And this means for us as a church, that we must preach, we must share, we must witness, we must testify, we must evangelize, we must offer the gospel to everyone. We don’t do that in spite of our doctrine; we do that because of our theology.
Some say, “You Calvinists only share the gospel because you have to, it’s in contradiction to your theology. But you know deep inside that you have to share the gospel with people, so it’s in spite of your very limited idea of Jesus’s death that you offer the gospel to sinners.”
No, we do so because of our theology. Jesus has done all that’s necessary for every single sinner. There’s not one sinner who’s outside the pale. There’s not one believer who goes on to sin who then becomes somehow outside the camp or outside the gate and Jesus’s sacrifice isn’t good enough. No, we share the gospel because of our theology.
“God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whosoever believes should not perish” (John 3:16). That’s not just a verse for those who aren’t Calvinists or Reformed. That’s our verse too! “Whoever believes.” Do you believe that?
Jesus died for all sufficiently. Jesus did all that’s necessary for our salvation, for the salvation of the world. Jesus accomplished all that’s necessary.
He Died for the Elect Savingly
On the other hand, the Bible also speaks of Jesus’ redemption being applied savingly to those that the Bible calls the “elect” or the “sheep” or the “people of God” or the “church” or “believers.” So, he’s accomplished all that’s necessary to save sinners so that all who believe are saved; but the Bible also says what he accomplished is applied savingly only to some.
Our friends who don’t like this doctrine will say, “You guys believe in limited atonement because you limit the death of Jesus on the cross of Christ; you limit the amount of people that can hear the gospel and believe; you limit Jesus.”
I’d say everybody actually—except for a Universalist—every Bible-believing evangelical Christian limits the redemption of Jesus in one way or another. The difference is either it’s God who applies savingly the death of Christ to some or it’s limited by us. “Jesus died for all people’s sins but the sin of unbelief sends you to hell.” That's a limiting too.
So, Jesus has done it all, but he applies it to some. That’s what God’s Word says he’s done. God in his good pleasure, in his own will, in his own love, in his own eternal grace—he’s the one who says this.
Again, it’s not for us to know. “Maybe there’s a secret handshake that this guy or this girl is really going to be ready for the gospel? Or a secret word for when you’re talking to somebody and they have that little glint in their eye? Maybe there’s a lightning bolt where God makes us see this person really is elect?” You're never going to know that!
God never is going to tell you in a little still small voice in your ear, “He’s elect; tell him the gospel.” You're never going to hear that; you’re never going to know that. You share the gospel, but it’s God who does the applying. It’s God who does the quote unquote “limiting,” right? I don’t like that language of a “limited atonement.” It’s a way of limiting us and making us feel like we’re caught in a box. It’s God who’s the one who applies. Jesus died sufficiently for all, but he applies it savingly to some.
Jesus died to accomplish every aspect of salvation:
Revelation 5:9 describes Jesus dying to accomplish every aspect of salvation. And we read there in that song of praise, for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God. “Ransoming” is the language of freedom, bringing out of Egypt, bringing out of slavery. Christ ransomed people from their sins, from the devil, from the world for God.
Notice the language of definiteness, of powerfulness, of what Christ has done. He’s ransomed and he’s made people a kingdom of priests.
Jesus died in the place of a particular people:
Which people? You were slain and from every tribe. The grammar of the text is from every tribe, from every nation, from every language, from every people, from every nation. There are some out of those categories that Jesus has died for in that saving way. He applies the benefits of his redemption for some out of every language, of every people, tribe, and nation. That’s what it says.
Our English is not as clear because it uses from once, but all four times it says in Greek from or out of. Jesus Christ was slain and by his blood ransomed out of those people to be a kingdom and to be priests.
The Bible speaks in these grand ways of the sufficient side of the ledger, so to speak: " for God so loved the world,” “he died for not just our sins but the sins of the whole world." It also speaks in very particular ways too. The Bible describes Jesus dying in the place of particular people. On the one hand, again, his death has done all that’s necessary to save everyone in a billion worlds. On the other hand, the Bible speaks clearly that Jesus died for particular people. Just like in Revelation 5:9: it’s those particular people that are out of every tribe, whom he’s redeemed, ransomed, made kings, made priests.
“The Son of Man came not to be served,” Jesus tells us, “but to serve, to give his life as a ransom for many.” We read that language in the Bible. “I’m the good shepherd,” John 10. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” That’s very particular language. His death is sufficient so that all wolves can come into the sheep pen and become sheep. But he died for the sheep, not the wolves. “I know my own, my own know me, I lay down my life for the sheep,” he says. So a very particular applying of the redemption, right, to some.
That’s why we have that passage from Ephesians 5, where Paul is writing to husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Notice that particular language. Does he love the world? Yes, he loves the world. But in a more particular, special sense, he loves the church, and he gave himself up for her. Note the substitutionary language (Eph. 5:25).
Conclusion
Let me conclude by offering three biblical applications that affirm the intentional satisfaction of Jesus Christ on the cross for his elect.
Why does it matter that we say with Scripture that he died for the church, for the sheep?
First, it gives us who believe assurance and confidence that our Savior has been for us from all of eternity, on the cross, and unto and into all of eternity. And it's out of that assurance and confidence that we can sing and pray with the church in heaven, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain,” and we can say, “and by your blood you ransomed me for God from this tribe and this language and this people and this nation, you've made me a member of your kingdom, you’ve made me a priest, and I shall reign on the earth.” Jesus died for particular sinners; I believe in him; therefore I can say with confidence, “He died for me.”
Second, it gives us the very reason to worship God in the first place. When I can say with Scripture that Jesus actually and personally died for me to actually and powerfully accomplish my redemption, and to bring me out of the slavery of sin and the kingdom of Satan, and he’s applied his death to my account, that’s why I praise him and say, “Worthy are you!”
Third, it gives us the reason to preach, to evangelize, to be a witness in the world. If Jesus actually, personally, and powerfully died for some out of every tribe, out of every language, out of every people, and out of every nation then that means there are particular people that we know or that are in our spheres of influence that are of our tribe, of our language, of our people, of our nation that must come to repent and believe in Jesus! Amen? There’s no doubt about that! If he actually died for those out of those wider circles then he must bring to them the gospel to hear, to recognize our sin, to repent and to embrace Jesus.
Where are those people? Do we have a book in our Bible in the back that has the list—did I miss it? The Lamb has a book of life, but what book do I have? All I have is his revealed Word.
Where are these people? They’re right outside our doorstep. So, what are we waiting for?