We live in a time of theological confusion, calling for a renewed focus on the cross of Christ. Join Reformation Bible College for the 2027 Winter Conference on January 14th and 15th. Gather with like-minded Christians, the faculty of RBC, and guest teachers to explore the atoning work of Christ, the sure foundation for our worship, unity, and witness. Visit reformationbiblecollege.org/cross. Usually, when we think of the cross and we think of the atonement of Christ, we think that the thing that most strenuously motivates the sending of Christ into the world is the mercy of God or the love of God, and we tend to overlook that characteristic of God's nature that makes the atonement absolutely necessary.
And that is the justice of God. We want the world to be just, don't we? We hate injustice. But what about justice for our own sin?
Sometimes it's difficult or uncomfortable to come to terms with the idea of our place as subjects of God's divine justice. But the Bible says we are all sinners, and in the face of a just and holy God, our only hope is the cross of Christ. I'm Dave Terrio, and welcome to Renewing Your Mind. Thanks for joining us. Today we begin a brief study in Dr.
R.C. Sproul's "The Atonement of Jesus," and we'll begin by looking at why it was necessary for Jesus to die on the cross in the first place.
Some might wonder, could God have done something else, or why couldn't God simply forgive without the cross?
Well, as we'll hear Dr. Sproul argue, the reason our salvation required Christ's death on the cross is because our God is a just God. Renewing Your Mind is a listener-supported program, and because of that, I want to ask you to consider supporting this ministry, so even more people can hear faithful Bible teaching. You can give today by calling eight hundred four three five forty three forty three, or by giving online at renewingyourmind.org, and thank you in advance for standing with us. Let's listen now to Dr.
Sproul's message on the necessity of the cross. When we think through the passing of time in church history, there are certain theologians that stand out as giants in the course of church history. People like Augustine and Aquinas and Luther and Calvin and Edwards, and so on. And normally, we would say that Saint Augustine was the greatest theologian of the first millennium of church history. And then during the Middle Ages, we don't hear of too many great thinkers, apart from, of course, Thomas Aquinas and so on.
But a theologian, philosopher, who in those early days made an enormous contribution to church history, was a man known by the name of Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm left us a legacy of three very important works, all of which were quite short and brief in their volume. The first two were works in apologetics. One is called the Monologium, the other one is the Proslogium, in which he gives his arguments for the existence of God and so on. And Anselm is famous for being the architect of the historic ontological argument for the existence of God.
But perhaps his greatest contribution to church history. Was in his little work that appeared under the Latin title, Cur Deus Homo? Question mark. Cur C U R Deus D E U S Homo H O M O, and what this title of this book says or asks by way of the question is this question: Why? The God-Man.
Why the God-Man? Why an incarnation? Why Christ? That's the question that Anselm probed so brilliantly, and at the heart of Anselm's thinking. Was his understanding, in the first instance, of the character of God, Anselm saw as the chief reason for the need for a God-Man, the need for a Redeemer, the need for a Savior, the need for incarnation, is the justice.
Of God, isn't that strange? Because usually, when we think of the cross and we think of the atonement of Christ, we think that the thing that most strenuously motivates the sending of Christ into the world is the mercy of God or the love of God, and we tend to overlook that characteristic of God's nature. That makes the atonement absolutely necessary, and that is the justice of God. God's justice has to do with His own internal righteousness, His internal character. That defines everything that God does.
God never acts according to injustice. God never violates any of the standards or canons of righteousness. Because the simplest definition that I can give you. Of God's justice is God's eternal, immutable commitment, always to do what is right. For the Jew, justice is never an abstract thing.
Justice inevitably, in the Old Testament, is linked with the concept of righteousness. And what does righteousness mean? But doing what is right.
Now, for background in our study of the cross of Christ and of the atonement of Jesus, I want to turn our attention to a narrative that takes place in the Old Testament that I find both fascinating and instructive. It's found in the eighteenth chapter of the book of Genesis, and it is the story of the intercession of the patriarch Abraham in behalf of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Now, just to say those names, Sodom and Gomorrah, conjures up the most ghastly imagery imaginable of corrupt and decadent cities.
Sodom and Gomorrah were so evil in Old Testament times that they became later on literary symbols for corruption.
Well, let's go back to the days of Sodom and Gomorrah and listen to this narrative as it unfolds in chapter 18 of Genesis, beginning at verse 16. Then the men rose from there and looked toward Sodom. And Abraham went with them to send them on the way. And the Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing? Since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all of the nations of the earth." Shall be blessed in him, for I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham.
What he has spoken to him? Do you see? God is musing in this narrative. Should I let Abraham know what I'm planning to do here, or should I keep it back from him? And he's obviously about to tell Abraham what he's going to do because God, who has promised Abraham that he will be the father of a great nation and has made his covenant promise to Abraham and to his descendants.
Has a destiny for his people, which destiny is defined here in the text by the terms justice and righteousness. God has not selected Abraham out of the pagans of the world just for the fun of it. But he's creating a nation that is to be a holy nation, a nation that is set apart, a nation that will bear witness to the character of God by themselves, imitating God in the pursuit of justice and of righteousness.
Well, now in the narrative, we hear the announcement that God has for Abraham. In verse twenty, we read, and the Lord said, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave, I will go down now and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry against it that has come to me, and if not, I will know." And then the men turned away from there and went towards Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. And Abraham came near and said, "Would you also destroy the righteous with the wicked?" Now, do you get the drama of what's going on here? God said, "I'm going to go down and take a look. I'm going to visit with my judgment, Sodom and Gomorrah, because I hear this great outcry, of the severity of their wickedness and the gravity of their evil.
I'm going to go down and check it out. And of course, God is saying, 'I'm going to come down and visit them with judgment.'" Because if it is as the reports are, of course God knows that this is part of the narrative. But God already knows what is going on in Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham comes to God with a question, a theological question, and this question that Abraham asks makes the hair on my neck stand up. I mean, Abraham is indeed the father of the faithful. He's the venerable patriarch of the Old Testament, a man after God's own heart, a man who is the spokesman for goodness and justice and truth and all of that stuff.
And so, we would expect Abraham, in his privileged position, in his elevated status as the patriarch par excellence of the Old Testament, not to be coming to the deity and asking questions that are thinly veiled forms of blasphemy. I mean, we would think that Abraham would be a better theologian than he indicates in the question that he brings before God. He comes to God and asks this question: Will the Lord destroy the righteous with the wicked, the innocent with the guilty?
Well, to ask a question like that is to answer it with respect to God. I remember when I was a child, growing up in the public school system. I wasn't a Christian, but I did have some ideals and so on, and had this hope in my chest of the great American dream of truth and justice for everyone. And I listened to Superman, where he fought for truth and justice as the American way of life, and all of that sort of thing. I hated injustice.
Even as a child, living in a white community, where many of the people in the town had maids who were black, who were bused into this white community, we had a maid in our house who came from the black community, and I loved this woman. She was so kind to me, and I remember as a child. Coming to the dining room table at lunchtime, and the maid would be having her lunch out in the kitchen, and I would say to my mother, "Mother, why isn't Eva having lunch with us?" And my mother just sort of looked at me and said, "Well, you just don't understand. Just drop it, young man. That's none of your business.
She eats out in the kitchen." But I had this sense of rage in my soul. This is right. How can this be? This is not just. Why is this woman being treated that way?
This was before the civil rights movement and all the rest. But there was something deep within my soul that protested against that kind of discrimination because I felt that it was manifestly unjust, and I did not like. In justice, and I can remember in school.
Well, sometimes we would get in trouble. I remember one day when one of my friends lit a cherry bomb in the classroom when the teacher had her back turned to the class while she was writing on the blackboard, and my friend David King.
Sorry, David. Drop this cherry bomb, and ah, in that closed room when that thing blew up, sounded like the atomic bomb, and the teacher jumped about ten feet in the air, had dropped the chalk and turned around, horror stricken, and she said, "Of course, what? All right, who did it?" Now, not everybody in the class knew who did it, but the vast majority of the people in the class would have guessed who did it, and certainly the teacher had a good idea of who done it in this case because David had a reputation for these kinds of pranks and so on. I was sitting in the back of the room right next to David, and I knew that he did it. But there was a code: you don't rat on your friends, you don't turn anyone in.
And the teacher stood there and said, "All right, who did it?" And nobody confessed, and nobody told. And so she made the entire class stay after school until somebody confessed or turned them in. And that bothered me. It was an effective device for. Pedagogy and discipline and so on, but it bothered me because it was not just.
Because in order to get to the guilty party, our teacher punished the innocent people who didn't know who did the crime, who were not in on the prank, and yet they were forced to stay after school, lose their freedom. Because of the teacher's strategy, wasn't just maybe effective, maybe practical, but it wasn't just. And I remember later on when I became a Christian and I read this story in Genesis 18, and Abraham asked the question, "Will the judge, you know, will you, O God, judge and punish the innocent with the wicked?" Well, God's not a frustrated schoolteacher. God is omniscient. God doesn't have to play games like this to ferret out who the guilty party is.
God is just. God is righteous. God would never, ever, ever punish the innocent. And Abraham should have known that. And to ask the question that he asked of God was a downright insult to the deity.
Let's continue with what happens in this narrative. Abraham begins to negotiate and bargain with God. He says in verse twenty-four of chapter eighteen, "Suppose there were fifty righteous within the city, would you also destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous that were in it?" Far be it from you to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked. Far be it from you! Shall not the judge of all the earth?
Oh, my faith in Abraham has been restored. There's this man, Homer, nodded in the first question where he was asking such a ridiculous thing. You know, will God actually punish the righteous with the wicked?
Now he speaks correctly.
Now his theology is sound. He says. Far be it from you, O God, to punish the righteous with the guilty. The only thing I would say here is that I don't think Abraham still grasped how far it would be from God to do such an unjust thing. And his final question, the rhetorical question, is right on the money when he says to God, "Will not the Judge of all of the earth do what is right?" Now you're cooking, Abraham.
Now you understand by that question, the rhetorical question that has an answer that is manifestly obvious. Of course, the judge of all of the earth will do what is right, because that's all the judge of the earth knows how to do is what is right. And in His mercy and in His kindness, God is now willing to say, "I'll spare the whole city if we can find fifty righteous ones there." So I'll even be merciful to the guilty.
So far, am I from punishing the innocent? I'll actually let the guilty go in order to protect the innocent. Isn't that an amazing thing? There has been so much interest in the United States over the murder trial of the century, over O.J. Simpson, and the length of that particular enterprise.
And people were getting angrier and angrier as that thing went on and on. And people said, "Well, he's obviously guilty. Why don't they just lock him up and forget about it?" And the thing that that particular trial indicates is a kind of quirk in our criminal justice system that really takes seriously the principle of putting the burden of proof in any case like that on the prosecution. And allowing such a clause as a reasonable doubt clause to protect the innocent, because the assumption is this: that in our system, we would rather twenty guilty people walk free than that one innocent person should ever be convicted and sent to prison or to execution. In other words, since we're not infallible and not omniscient, we don't always know for sure who really has committed the crime.
If we're going to err, the system says, let us err on the side of clemency rather than on the side of severity. And this principle is taken from Scripture itself, where here God is willing. To spare the whole city, for the sake of fifty righteous people.
So the Lord said, "If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I'll spare the whole place for their sakes." Then Abraham answered and said, "Indeed, now I, who am but dust and ashes, have taken it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose there were five less than the fifty righteous, would you destroy all of the city for lack of five?" So God said, "If I find forty-five, I won't destroy it." Abraham's getting a little more sheepish here, and he spoke to him again and said, "Suppose there should be forty." God said, "I'll do it for forty." Then he said, "Let not the Lord be angry, and I'll speak." How about thirty? If we find thirty, God said, "I will not do it if I find thirty there." And he said, "Indeed, now I've taken upon myself to speak to the Lord." Suppose twenty should be found, then God said again, "I'll not destroy it for the sake of twenty." Abraham's getting frightened. He said, "Let not the Lord be angry. I'll speak just one more time.
Suppose ten should be found there." And God said, "I will not destroy it for the sake of ten." And so the Lord went his way as soon as he had finished speaking with Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place. What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah? Couldn't find the ten. In all of these cities, they couldn't find ten innocent people, like Diogenes with his lamp searching for the honest man through the streets of Athens.
So Abraham and his friends could not find the righteous left in Sodom and Gomorrah, and God's judgment fell on the city. And the reason why God's judgment fell. Beloved, is not because God is cruel, and not because God is harsh, and not because God is lacking in love, but because God is just, and God is righteous, and part of what He loves is His own perfect character, and the importance of the maintenance of justice and righteousness, God. Pardons sinners. God makes great provisions for an expression of His mercy, but He will never, ever, ever negotiate justice.
We need to understand that, or the cross of Christ will be utterly meaningless to us. I'm going to ask you today to use your imagination a little bit. Suppose that once upon a time, you lived in Sodom. That you were an inhabitant of that city. And God came to your city in search of an innocent person.
In search of ten righteous people. Would you have been numbered among those ten? I don't know about you, but I know I would have failed that test. I know that God would not have spared Sodom because of me. He would not have rescued Gomorrah on my account.
Because if He would have examined me, He would have found a guilty person. And if God would have exercised His justice upon me, if I lived in that city, I would have perished with the city. One of the things that surprises me more than anything else is when I hear somebody say, "I don't need Christ." Well, beloved, if you are a sinner. And if God is just, then the thing that you need more than anything else in this world is the cross. You need the atonement, because God is not going to put away His justice just for you or just for me.
The thing we need more than anything else. Is the cross? Isn't that the truth? Yes, God is just, but Christians have a sure hope because we have Christ's atoning work on our behalf. Before we go, a reminder that Renewing Your Mind is entirely listener-supported.
So, if you've ever found this program helpful, please consider giving a donation by calling us at eight hundred four three five forty three forty three or giving online at renewingyourmind.org. Thank you. Tomorrow we'll continue with our study of the atonement of Jesus. I hope you'll join us here on Renewing Your Mind.
