The Doctrine of Christ

LESSON TWENTY-TWO As Our Representative, Christ Died for Our Sins

1. The whole human family died in the person of Christ, the head of the family. 2 Corinthians 5:14, ARV; Romans 5:19. TDOC 60.2

2. Christ bore the penalty of sin in our stead. 1 Corinthians 15:3; Galatians 1:4; Romans 5:7, 8; Hebrews 2:9; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 3:18; Isaiah 53:5, 6; John 10:11; 11:51. TDOC 60.3

3. By his death Christ paid the price of redemption. Matthew 20:28; 1 Timothy 2:5, 6; 1 Peter 1:18, 19; Galatians 3:13; Acts 20:28; Revelation 5:9; Romans 3:24; 8:32; Ephesians 1:7; 5:25. TDOC 60.4

NOTES: A ransom

“And now the Lord of Glory was dying, a ransom for the race.... Christ was the prince of sufferers; but this suffering was from a sense of the malignity of sin, a knowledge that through familiarity with evil man had become blinded to its enormity. Christ saw how deep is the hold of sin upon the human heart, how few would be willing to break from its power. He knew that without help from God, humanity must perish, and he saw multitudes perishing within reach of abundant help. TDOC 60.5

“Upon Christ as our substitute and surety was laid the iniquity of us all. He was counted a transgressor, that he might redeem us from the condemnation of the law. The guilt of every descendant of Adam was pressing upon his heart. The wrath of God against sin, the terrible manifestation of his displeasure because of iniquity, filled the soul of his Son with consternation.... TDOC 60.6

Now with the terrible weight of guilt he bears, he cannot see the Father’s reconciling face. The withdrawal of the divine countenance from the Savior in this hour of supreme anguish pierced his heart with a sorrow that can never be fully understood by man. So great was this agony that his physical pain was hardly felt.”-The Desire of Ages, 752, 753. TDOC 61.1

Redeemed by his blood

“Thus it is abundantly shown that Christ, the Son of the Most High, the Word, by whom the worlds were made, in whom all things consist, the first and the last, the image of the invisible God, in whom all fullness dwells, was made flesh, and laid down his life to purge us from sin, and to redeem us to God by his own blood.” TDOC 61.2

The sin-bearer

“The spotless Son of God hung upon the cross, his flesh lacerated stripes; those hands so often reached out in blessing, nailed to the wooden bars; those feet so tireless on ministries of love, spiked to the tree; that royal head pierced by the crown of thorns; those quivering lips shaped to the cry of woe. And all that he endured, the blood drops that flowed from his head, his hands, his feet, the agony that racked his frame, and the unutterable anguish that filled his soul at the hiding of his Father’s face, speaks to each child of humanity, declaring, It is for thee that the Son of God consents to bear-this burden of guilt; for thee he spoils the domain of death, and opens the gates of Paradise. He who stilled the angry waves and walked the foam-capped billows, who made devils tremble and disease flee, who opened blind eyes and called forth the dead to life, offers himself upon the cross as a sacrifice, and this from love to thee. He, the Sin-bearer, endures the wrath of divine justice, and for thy sake becomes sin itself.” The Desire of Ages, 754, 755. TDOC 61.3

A subject for study

“It would be needful for his church in all succeeding ages to make his death for the sins of the world a subject of deep thought and study. Every fact connected with it should be verified beyond a doubt.” Id., 571. TDOC 61.4

Things which cannot be described

“Men can paint the cursed tree, but not the curse of the law that made it so. Men can paint Christ bearing the cross to Calvary, but not Christ bearing the sins of many. We may describe the nails piercing hi s sacred flesh. But who can describe eternal justice piercing both’ flesh and spirit? We may describe the soldier’s spear, but not the arrow of the Almighty; the cup of vinegar which he but tasted, but not the cup of wrath which he drank out to the lowest dregs; the derision of the Jews, but not the desertion of the Almighty forsaking his Son, that he might never forsake us who were his enemies.” TDOC 61.5

Bearing our sins

“Christ is set forth as a propitiation, that through faith in his blood we may receive the remission of sins that are past, that God may be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. TDOC 62.1

Romans 3:23-26. No one can imagine that Christ bore our sins on the tree except in the sense of suffering in his death the desert of our sins, for death is that desert. He hath made him to be sin for us ‘not that he was a sinner, for he knew no sin,’ but he was counted a sinner-sin-was imputed to him, if you please, for our sake, ‘that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.’ 2 Corinthians 5:21. We cannot imagine how he was made sin for us, except by his bearing our sins, which he did, and standing in our stead before the violated law.” TDOC 62.2

Liberation from the penalty

“In what sense does Paul assert in Romans 3:24 that there is redemption in Christ Jesus? Wherever the word and its cognates are found we have the idea of liberation. And in the passage before us this idea is already suggested by the word justified: for the justification of men who ‘have all sinned’ involves their liberation from the due penalty of their sins. That this liberation is brought about by the violent death of Christ on the cross, is implied in the conspicuous words ‘in his blood’ in verse 25. In verse 26 Paul adds that the purpose for which ‘God set forth’ Christ ‘in his blood’ was to harmonize with his own justice the justification of those that believe in Christ. If so, Christ’s death was absolutely needful for our salvation: for God cannot possibly be unjust. And if so, it was, in the full sense of the word, the redemption price of our salvation.” TDOC 62.3

Salvation refused

“God’s purpose of salvation through the death of Christ embraced all men, and ... consequently they who perish do so, not because they were excluded by God from his purpose of salvation, but simply and only because they refused the offered salvation.” TDOC 62.4

The Lamb of God

“He gave himself for our sins. He came to a world steeped in wickedness, seething with rebellion against God, hating him because it hated the Father that sent him, sure to say as soon as it saw him, ‘We will not have this man to reign over us.’ Not therefore by way of incarnation and revelation alone, as it might have been for an innocent race; but by way of sacrifice, as a victim on the altar of expiation, ‘a lamb led to the slaughter,’ he gave himself up for us all.” TDOC 62.5

The basis of forgiveness

Christ’s death has so met the requirements of the divine law that the divine love can come freely forth, and embrace and forgive sinful men. That fact is the very center of the revelation of God in Christ, the very secret of his power. He has died. Voluntarily and of his own love, as well as in obedience to the Father’s loving will, he has borne the consequences of the sin which he had never shared.” TDOC 62.6

The costly means

“As the costly means absolutely needful for man’s salvation, the various writers of the New Testament speak of the death of Christ as a ransom for men. This metaphor implies that Christ died in our stead: For the ransom takes conspicuously the place of the captives set free. We may now describe the use of this family of words in the New Testament by saying that evangelical redemption is the deliverance of sinners from the penalty and power of sin by the costly means of the death of Christ.” TDOC 63.1