Devotional 48: The Intercession of Christ: He Ever Lives to Make Intercession

The Confession Read

The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience, and sacrifice of himself, which he through the eternal Spirit, once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of his Father; and purchased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him.

— Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 8, Section 5

Introduction

What did it cost? Every sinner who has ever felt the weight of guilt, every soul that has stared into the abyss of its own undoneness before a holy God, every heart that has awakened in the night and known itself to be uncovered and exposed before the throne of heaven — that sinner has asked it. What can pay for this? What offering could possibly balance the scales? What price could purchase peace with the God against whom I have sinned? The question is not trivial. It is not misplaced. The law of God is not a negotiable suggestion, and the justice of God is not a mood that can be charmed away by earnest religious sentiment. When Moses descended from Sinai, his face shone with the reflected glory of a God who had declared Himself to be "merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth." And in the very next breath He added, "that will by no means clear the guilty." The same mouth that spoke pardon also declared that guilt cannot be waved aside. The same hand that stretched out to save also wrote the law upon tablets of stone. And so the question stands before every son and daughter of Adam with an urgency that no philosophy can quiet: If God is just — perfectly, inflexibly, eternally just — how can there be reconciliation? How can guilty sinners dwell in the presence of the holy without being consumed? How can the Judge be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly? Section 5 of this eighth chapter of the Confession is the answer. It is not an answer of sentiment or wishful thinking. It is an answer of blood, of obedience, of the eternal Spirit, of a once-for-all sacrifice, of full satisfaction, of purchased peace and purchased glory. It is the most concentrated statement the Westminster Divines ever wrote on the nature of Christ's atoning work, and it stands at the very center of the entire chapter. Every section before it has led here: the eternal decree in Section 1, the incarnation in Section 2, the Spirit's anointing in Section 3, the willing obedience and suffering in Section 4. All of these converge upon the declaration that the Lord Jesus Christ, in His one offering, has fully satisfied divine justice and purchased for His people both reconciliation with God and an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven. We stand now at the heart of the gospel. Let us not pass quickly.

Scripture Foundation

The Confession's words are dense with biblical substance, and the Divines who wrote them were not inventing a theological system out of air. They were tracing the pattern of truth they found in the sacred text. Let us follow their steps through the Scriptures and see the doctrine emerge from the page. The apostle Paul, writing to the church at Rome, set forth in one dense passage the whole doctrine of satisfaction. In Romans 3:24-26 we read: "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Here, in the great courtroom of Romans, Paul lays bare the problem and the solution in a single sweeping argument. The problem is that God must be just. He cannot simply overlook sin. A judge who acquits the guilty without satisfying the demands of the law is no longer a righteous judge; he has become an accomplice to the crime. And yet Paul declares that God justifies the ungodly. How? Through the propitiation — the Greek word is hilastērion, a term freighted with the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, hilastērion is the word used for the mercy seat, the golden cover of the ark of the covenant upon which the high priest sprinkled the blood of atonement once a year on the Day of Atonement. God set forth Christ as the mercy seat. The place where wrath is turned away, where justice is satisfied, where the sinner may approach without being consumed — that place is a Person. And the blood that was sprinkled was His own. Paul insists that this was done "to declare his righteousness." The cross does not merely declare God's love; it declares His righteousness. It is a public demonstration, set forth before the watching universe, that God has not compromised His justice one hair's breadth in the salvation of sinners. Every sin that is forgiven was paid for. Every transgression that is covered was punished. The mercy seat is not mercy at the expense of justice; it is mercy established upon the foundation of justice fully satisfied. The author of Hebrews takes us deeper into the nature of this once-for-all offering. In Hebrews 9:12-14, we read: "Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" Every phrase here corresponds to something in the Confession's text. "By his own blood" declares this is the sacrifice of himself. "Who through the eternal Spirit offered himself" points to the source of the offering's efficacy. "Without spot to God" shows the perfect obedience of the spotless Lamb. "Once" — the Greek word hapax rings through this passage like a bell struck once and never needing to be struck again. The priests of the old covenant stood daily at their altars, offering sacrifices that could never take away sins. But Christ offered one sacrifice, once, and sat down at the right hand of God. The seated posture of the High Priest is the proof that the work is finished. No priest in the old covenant ever sat down in the tabernacle; there were no chairs in the holy place because the work was never done. Christ's sitting is His declaration that satisfaction has been made in full. And what did this sacrifice obtain? "Eternal redemption." Not a temporary reprieve, not a conditional probation, not a partial payment that requires our supplementation, but eternal redemption — a deliverance from the bondage of sin and death that extends into the ages of ages and can never be reversed. The Old Testament saints received typical redemption through the blood of animals, but they awaited the true redemption that only the blood of the eternal Son could purchase. We who live on this side of Calvary possess what they possessed only in promise. The apostle Paul, writing again to the Corinthians, unfolds the doctrine of reconciliation, the second great purchase mentioned in our Confession. In 2 Corinthians 5:18-21, he declares: "And 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 hath 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." The Greek term behind "reconciliation" is katallagē, and it describes the restoration of a relationship that has been ruptured by offense. In human affairs, reconciliation requires that the offended party be satisfied, that the wrong be acknowledged, the debt paid, the honor restored. But here the apostle tells us that it is God Himself, the offended party, who initiates and accomplishes the reconciliation. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." Not that Christ wrung mercy from a reluctant Father, as if the Son were loving and the Father were angry, and the Son had to persuade the Father to forgive. No; the Father and the Son are one in the work of redemption. The love that sent the Son is the same love that the Son manifested on the cross. The justice that the Son satisfied is the justice of the Father that He Himself shares as the second Person of the Trinity. And note the mechanism of reconciliation: "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." This is the great exchange, the glorious imputation at the heart of the gospel. Christ was treated as sin, counted as a sinner though He was sinless, so that we might be treated as righteous, counted as righteous though we are sinful. The perfect obedience of Christ, the very righteousness of God, is credited to the account of every believer. And the sins of every believer were credited to Christ, and He bore the penalty for them in full. The prophecy of Isaiah, written seven centuries before Calvary, gives us the language of satisfaction that the Confession so carefully adopts. In Isaiah 53:10-11, the prophet declares: "Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt 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 of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied." What an astonishing statement. The LORD, Yahweh the covenant God of Israel, was pleased to bruise His own Servant. Not pleased with the suffering itself, as if God took some perverse delight in inflicting pain upon His Son, but pleased with the outcome, pleased with the purpose, pleased with the redemption that the suffering would purchase. The Father and the Son were united in the purpose even as the Son bore the wrath alone. The soul of the Servant was made an offering for sin — the Hebrew word here is asham, the guilt offering, the sacrifice that made restitution for wrongs committed. And the result? The Servant shall see the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. God shall be satisfied. Justice shall be satisfied. The debt shall be paid. The scales shall be balanced. And the satisfaction shall be full. Finally, the Confession speaks of an "everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven." The apostle Peter gives us this inheritance language in 1 Peter 1:3-5: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." The Greek word klēronomia, inheritance, appears repeatedly in the New Testament to describe what Christ has secured for His people. But an inheritance in the ancient world was not earned by the heir; it was a gift bestowed by the testator, received by virtue of sonship, not merit. And so Peter describes it here: an inheritance that cannot decay, cannot be defiled, cannot fade. It is reserved in heaven, guarded by the power of God, awaiting the day when it shall be fully revealed. And what purchased this inheritance? The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the public vindication that the satisfaction was accepted, the payment was sufficient, the purchase was complete. Paul, writing to the Ephesians, uses the same language in Ephesians 1:13-14: "In whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory." The Holy Spirit is the down payment, the earnest money, the first installment of an inheritance that will be delivered in full when Christ returns. And that inheritance was purchased, bought with a price — the precious blood of Christ.

What the Divines Meant

The Westminster Assembly met in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey from 1643 to 1653, and the fifth section of the eighth chapter emerged from their deliberations as a careful refutation of three distinct errors that plagued the church of their day. To understand what the Confession affirms, we must understand what it denies. First, the Divines were confronting the Socinian heresy, which denied the doctrine of satisfaction entirely. The Socinians, followers of Faustus Socinus, argued that God could forgive sin simply by an act of His sovereign will, without any satisfaction of justice. If God is free, they reasoned, He can do whatever He pleases, including forgiving sin without requiring payment. Why would an almighty God be bound by some necessity to exact punishment before He could pardon? The Socinian position reduced the cross of Christ to a moral example, a demonstration of God's love, a pattern of self-sacrifice for us to imitate, but not a true satisfaction of divine justice. The Confession answers: the Lord Jesus "hath fully satisfied the justice of his Father." The word "fully" is deliberate. It is not a partial satisfaction that must be completed by our penance, our suffering, our purgation, or our good works. It is full — complete, finished, entire. And the word "justice" is equally deliberate. God's justice is not a negotiable attribute that He can set aside at will. It is essential to His nature. A God who could forgive sin without satisfaction would be a God without justice, and a God without justice is no longer the God who revealed Himself at Sinai and at Calvary. The Socinian error, for all its claim to exalt God's freedom, actually diminished His holiness by suggesting that sin is not so serious that it requires atonement. Second, the Divines were answering the Roman Catholic doctrine of the mass as a propitiatory sacrifice. The Council of Trent had declared that "in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in the mass, that same Christ is contained and immolated in an unbloody manner who once offered Himself in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross." Rome taught that the mass was a true sacrifice, not a new sacrifice but a re-presentation of the one sacrifice, yet possessing genuine propitiatory power. The Confession answers with a single word: "once." Christ offered Himself "once" — once for all, never to be repeated, never to be re-presented, never to be supplemented. The finished work of Christ requires no continuation at human altars. His one offering was sufficient for all the sins of all His people for all time. Third, the Divines were contending against the Arminian tendency to make redemption universal in its intention but conditional in its application. The Confession speaks of "all those whom the Father hath given unto him," language drawn directly from Christ's high priestly prayer in John 17. The purchase of reconciliation and the purchase of the inheritance are for a definite people: the elect, those given by the Father to the Son in the eternal covenant of redemption that we studied in Section 1. The satisfaction was sufficient for the whole world, but it was efficient, actually achieving its purpose, for the elect alone. Christ did not purchase a possibility of reconciliation that the sinner must then actualize by faith. He purchased reconciliation itself, actual reconciliation, for a particular people. And faith, when it comes, is not the condition that makes the purchase effective; it is the instrument by which the purchased benefit is received. The Confession also carefully distinguishes two purchases. Christ purchased "not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance." Reconciliation answers to our need; we were enemies of God, alienated from His presence, under His wrath. The inheritance answers to God's bounty; we are not merely forgiven and left standing at the threshold; we are brought into the family, adopted as sons and daughters, and made heirs of all that belongs to Christ. The Puritans were fond of saying that Christ has purchased for us both a pardon from the prison and a place in the palace. And note the instrumentality: "through the eternal Spirit." The sacrifice of Christ was a Trinitarian act. The Son offered Himself. The Father accepted the offering. The Spirit was the power through whom the offering was made, the one who upheld the human nature of Christ in its moment of supreme trial, the one who rendered the sacrifice efficacious, the one through whom Christ was raised from the dead as the public declaration that the satisfaction was accepted. The cross is not merely the work of the Son; it is the work of the triune God.

Theological Depth

Turretin, in his treatment of the satisfaction of Christ, addresses the question that lies at the bottom of this whole doctrine: Was satisfaction necessary? Could God have saved sinners without it? His answer is that satisfaction was necessary not by any absolute necessity imposed upon God from outside Himself, as if there were some law above God to which He must conform, but by hypothetical necessity, grounded in the decree of God and the nature of His justice. Given that God had decreed to save sinners, and given that His justice requires the punishment of sin, satisfaction was necessary if salvation was to be accomplished without the violation of justice. Turretin writes that "the will of God to punish sin is natural and necessary to Him; for holiness, as well as goodness, belongs to His nature." God cannot simply decide to stop being just any more than He can decide to stop being God. The satisfaction of Christ is therefore the demonstration that God's justice and God's mercy are not enemies but allies; that they meet, embrace, and are both glorified in the cross. The Scottish theologian Samuel Rutherford, whose Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself remains among the most searching treatments of the extent of the atonement, presses the particularity of Christ's purchase with characteristic force. Rutherford argues that if Christ died for all men in the same sense, then either all men must be saved, because the purchase of reconciliation and inheritance cannot fail of its effect, or Christ's death did not actually purchase reconciliation and inheritance, but only a possibility of these things, leaving the actual outcome to the will of man. The Confession will have none of this. Christ did not purchase a hypothetical kingdom. He purchased a real people, with real sins, and actually secured their reconciliation and their inheritance. The blood of Christ is not an offer extended to the elect; it is the price by which the elect were bought. Rutherford writes: "Christ, by doing and dying, hath purchased a new covenant-right to Christ, to grace and glory, to all the redeemed, so as the law-right that sin and Satan had over them is broken and dissolved." The purchase is real, the transfer of ownership is complete, and the devil has no claim on those for whom Christ died. Warfield, whose treatment of the biblical doctrine of propitiation cuts through a century of theological confusion, insisted that the cross was not merely a demonstration of love but a satisfaction of wrath. The modern tendency, beginning with certain streams of nineteenth-century liberalism, was to deny that God's wrath played any role in the atonement. God was love, only love, and nothing but love; the cross was simply God's way of showing how much He loved us, moving our hearts to repentance. Against this reduction, Warfield thundered: "Propitiation," he wrote, "does not mean to make God loving; it means to render God propitious — that is to say, to turn away His wrath by the offering of an adequate sacrifice." The mercy seat was not a stage set for a sentimental drama. It was the place where the holy fire of divine judgment fell and was quenched in blood. The cross is a spectacle of love, but it is love bearing wrath, love enduring the stroke of justice, love paying the debt that love itself had imposed. To these voices we may add the Scottish divine James Durham, whose commentary on Revelation provides a vision of the inheritance purchased by Christ that lifts the believer's gaze from this passing world to the world to come. Durham, preaching on the new Jerusalem, saw in Revelation's description of the holy city a preview of the everlasting inheritance. The city whose builder and maker is God, the city whose streets are gold and whose gates are pearl, the city where there is no temple because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple — this is what Christ purchased at Calvary. Not a temporary reprieve, not a tolerable eternity, but the fullness of glory in the immediate presence of God. Durham would have us understand that every stone in that city, every ray of light that streams from the throne of the Lamb, every note of the celestial choir, was paid for by the blood of Christ. When we sing of the inheritance that is "incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away," we are singing of a purchase made in blood, secured by satisfaction, and guaranteed by the resurrection. Hodge, commenting on this section of the Confession, helpfully distinguishes between the two purchases. Reconciliation is the restoration of peace between the sinner and God; the inheritance is the gift of all the privileges that belong to the children of God. The one answers to our misery; the other to God's munificence. The one delivers us from what we deserved; the other bestows what we could never have earned. And both were purchased by the same act, the same obedience, the same sacrifice. We were not merely set free from prison; we were brought into the King's household and made joint-heirs with the Prince.

Puritan Application

1. Rest in the fullness of Christ's satisfaction. If Christ has fully satisfied the justice of God, then there is nothing left for you to pay. This is the point at which faith must do battle with the natural instinct of the fallen heart, which always wants to contribute something to its own salvation. The Roman Catholic goes to confession and performs penance. The legalist scans his own obedience and hopes it will be sufficient. The anxious soul lies awake at night and reviews the day's failures, imagining that by sufficient remorse he can atone for what he has done. But the gospel declares that satisfaction has been made in full. The cup of divine wrath has been drained to the dregs; there is not a drop left for you. Christ did not make a down payment and leave you to pay the installments. He paid it all. Watson says somewhere that when Christ cried "It is finished," He meant that the whole debt was canceled, the whole curse was lifted, the whole law was satisfied, the whole work of redemption was complete. Do not insult the sufficiency of Christ by adding your own penance, your own tears, your own efforts at self-atonement to what He has already accomplished. Rest in it. Trust it. Let it be the foundation upon which you stand, unshaken. 2. Behold the justice of God in the cross, and tremble at sin. If the sin of others, your sin imputed to Christ, required the death of the eternal Son to satisfy divine justice, then sin is not a trifle. The man who looks at Calvary and continues to play with sin has not understood what he is looking at. The nails, the thorns, the spear, the darkness, the cry of dereliction — these are the measure of what your sin deserved. Do not imagine that because Christ has satisfied for sin, sin is therefore a light thing. Sin is so heavy that it crushed the Son of God. Sin is so offensive to the Father that when it was laid upon His beloved Son, He turned His face away. The Puritan John Flavel, whom we met in Section 4, wrote that "the least sin cost more than we can reckon, for it cost the blood of God." Meditate on the cross until you hate the sin that made it necessary. Let the satisfaction of Christ be both the ground of your peace and the engine of your sanctification. You cannot love the sin that killed your Savior. 3. Pursue reconciliation with God and with your brother. The Confession declares that Christ purchased reconciliation with God. If God has gone to such lengths, the death of His own Son, to be reconciled to us, shall we refuse to be reconciled to one another? The apostle Paul beseeches us: "Be ye reconciled to God." And he adds that we have been given the ministry of reconciliation. The Christian who harbors bitterness against a brother, who refuses to forgive a wrong, who nourishes a grudge until it becomes a settled hatred — that Christian is living in contradiction to the gospel he professes. You have been forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents by the King. Will you seize your fellow servant by the throat over a hundred pence? Let the purchased reconciliation that flows down from heaven flow outward from your heart to everyone who has wronged you. The vertical reconciliation, peace with God, must produce horizontal reconciliation, peace with men. If the cross has broken down the wall of hostility between you and the Father, let it also break down every wall of hostility between you and your fellow image-bearers. 4. Live as an heir, not as a beggar. The Confession insists that Christ purchased both reconciliation and "an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven." The believer is not a parolee, released from prison on condition of good behavior, perpetually anxious that the sentence might be reimposed. The believer is an heir. The apostle Paul writes in Romans 8:17: "If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." All that belongs to Christ belongs to you by virtue of your union with Him. The kingdom, the glory, the eternal weight of blessedness that eye has not seen nor ear heard, all of it is yours, purchased at the cross, secured by the resurrection, sealed by the Spirit. Do not live as if your standing with God were precarious, as if one misstep could forfeit what Christ has bought. The inheritance is "incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you." Walk through this world with the dignity of an heir. Let your conduct reflect your destiny. What does it matter if the world despises you? You are heir to a kingdom that cannot be shaken. What does it matter if you possess little now? The treasures of heaven are yours, and they were purchased for you at the cost of the blood of God. 5. Look to the eternal Spirit, who applies the purchase to your soul. The Confession reminds us that Christ offered Himself "through the eternal Spirit." The same Spirit who upheld Christ in His sacrifice is the Spirit who now applies the benefits of that sacrifice to every believer. Without the Spirit's work, the satisfaction of Christ would remain external to you, true in itself but not true for you. The Spirit unites you to Christ. The Spirit creates faith within you. The Spirit seals you as the down payment of your inheritance. The Spirit testifies with your spirit that you are a child of God. Do not neglect your dependence upon the Spirit. Cry out to Him daily. Ask Him to make real to your heart what Christ has accomplished for your soul. The satisfaction was made two thousand years ago on a hill outside Jerusalem, but it must be brought home to your conscience by the Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son. The inheritance was purchased at Calvary, but it is the Spirit who leads you step by step toward the possession of it. Walk in the Spirit, pray in the Spirit, and wait upon the Spirit until the day when faith gives way to sight and you enter into the fullness of what Christ has purchased for you.

Prayer

O Lord God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we bow before Thee with thanksgiving that surpasses all words. The question that every guilty conscience must ask — how can a just God forgive? — Thou hast answered at Calvary. Not with words, but with blood. Not with a decree of amnesty that ignored our crimes, but with a satisfaction that paid for them in full. We confess that we have too often thought lightly of sin, as if it were a small thing that a small sacrifice could cover. Forgive us. Teach us to look upon the cross until we understand what our sin cost Thee — the suffering of Thy beloved Son, the hiding of Thy face, the descent into darkness, the cry of dereliction. May the satisfaction of Christ become so real to us that we hate the sin that made it necessary and love the Savior who endured it for our sake. We thank Thee that the satisfaction was full, that nothing remains to be paid, no purgatory awaits us, no penance is required. The debt is canceled. The curse is lifted. The law is satisfied. The Judge has become our Father, and the court of justice has become our home. Teach us to rest in this finished work, not adding our own righteousness to Christ's, but receiving His righteousness as the free gift of Thy grace. We rejoice in the reconciliation that Christ has purchased, that we who were once enemies and alienated in our minds through wicked works are now brought near by the blood of the cross. And we marvel at the inheritance, the everlasting kingdom, the incorruptible crown, the glory that shall be revealed in us when Christ appears. We are heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ, and all of this by purchase not by merit, by blood not by works. O eternal Spirit, through whom Christ offered Himself without spot to God, come and apply these purchased benefits to our souls. Unite us more closely to Christ. Deepen our faith. Enlarge our love. Seal to us our adoption. Be the earnest of our inheritance until the day of full possession. Grant us grace to live as those who have been bought with a price. May our reconciliation with Thee work itself out in reconciliation with one another. May our status as heirs shape our conduct in a world that is passing away. And may the hope of our inheritance sustain us through every trial, every loss, every sorrow, until faith gives way to sight and we behold the King in His beauty in the land that is very far off. We ask all this in the name of Him who loved us and gave Himself for us, who fully satisfied Thy justice and purchased for us both peace and glory — Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.