The thing that makes sin such a dreadful thing, just on a human level—never mind our relationship for a moment to God—but just in terms of our relationship with one another, the thing that's so bad about sin is that in our sin we violate people, we violate other human beings. And even if there would be such a sin, where a person commits it solely against themselves, they are still violating a human person. Human dignity is assaulted and debased and demeaned. Yesterday on Renewing Your Mind, Dr. R.C.
Sproul introduced the idea of what Saint Anselm called the God-Man, particularly the question: Why the God-Man? Why both? Why not just one or the other? And what does this idea have to do with the function of Christ's atonement? Welcome back to Renewing Your Mind.
I'm glad you've joined us. Our God is a just God, and so when we sin, He demands justice. That's why we need atonement. Today, we're continuing our study of Dr. Sproul's series, "The Atonement of Jesus," as Dr.
Sproul dives deeper into addressing Saint Anselm's question: Why the God-Man? You can explore this topic further by receiving RC's book "Saved from What" when you donate in support of Renewing Your Mind. Call us today at eight hundred four three five forty three forty three, or go to renewingyourmind.org to give, and you'll receive the digital edition of this helpful resource. Let's join Doctor Sproul now for today's message. Why the God Man?
That was the work that we alluded to in our last session, written by Saint Anselm of Canterbury, under the Latin title *Cardeus Homo*. Why the God-Man? And we saw that the principal reason why it was necessary for Christ to come to this world, for the Son of God to become incarnate, was to solve a problem, and that problem. Is the problem of God's justice? God's justice has been violated by His creatures.
Now we also looked at the difficulty of defining justice, and I mentioned in our last session how, in biblical terms, justice is so frequently linked to righteousness, so that the simple definition of justice is doing that which is right. In philosophical terms, the great philosophers of the ages have probed this problem of justice. Mortimer Adler, in our day, has written a book on the. Great ideas that shape modern culture and civilization, and he goes in his examination into several concepts that we use every day, concepts like freedom. Concepts like virtue, concepts like justice—words that slip so easily from off our lips—and yet words that we very infrequently take the time to examine and analyze carefully, so that we know exactly what we mean when we use these terms.
A little exercise that I've done with my students in the seminary frequently is to give them a pop quiz. And ask them to take out a piece of paper, and write a brief, succinct, clear definition of justice. And oh, it's agony for them to take a word that we use like this every day, and to boil it down to its crystallized essence. Aristotle tried it, and Aristotle came to the conclusion that the essence of justice is to give to every person his or her due, and in that sense, justice satisfies an obligation. In our culture, we say, in terms of the treatment of prisoners in the criminal justice system, that injustice takes place when a person is punished with greater severity than the crime dictates.
And when we also think of justice, we also think in terms of rewards. And punishments, merits and demerits, and an injustice occurs when somebody receives less reward than they deserve, or more punishment than they deserve, and so on. And so we struggle with trying to gain an exact understanding of justice. But in simple terms, justice involves satisfying an obligation. Giving what is due.
Now the problem that we have with the justice of God is that we have violated the justice of God, and so that means that there is an obligation somehow that has not been met and must be satisfied.
Now, what I'd like to do, in practical terms here, is to take three. Areas or ways in which we have violated the justice of God, and that how, as sinners, we become exposed to an obligation here that must be satisfied. The first is this: that sin is a crime. It is a crime against God. I've told the story already about receiving in the mail a few years ago an anthology of quotations, much like Bartlett's quotations, and I was given a complimentary copy of this thing from the publisher, and I had no earthly idea why they were sending me a free copy of this book of quotations, and I was leafing through the quotations.
And I was reading quotations from Kant and from Mill and from Aristotle and from Plato and from Aquinas and Augustine, and to my utter astonishment, I came upon a quotation from me. That's why, and I said, "Ah, this is why they sent me a copy of this thing. They graced me by including some statement that I made in this book of quotations." And the thing that was ironic was when I read the quotation. I was barely even able to remember ever having said the statement that I was quoted on in this text, and I had never particularly thought that that statement that I had made somewhere was all that significant. But somebody thought it was significant enough to include it in this book of quotations.
And here's the quotation: "Sin is cosmic treason." I was trying with those words to communicate to people on one occasion the seriousness of human sin. That because we are all sinners, and because no one is perfect, we rarely take the time to think through the full ramifications of our sin. And we realize that in the slightest sin that we commit, those peccadillos that we consider as little white sins, as it were, that in that slightest sin we are violating the law of the Creator of the universe. In the smallest sin, we defy God's right to rule and to reign over His creation. In the smallest sin, we seek to usurp for ourselves the authority and the power that belongs properly to God.
In the slightest sin, we do violence to His holiness, to His glory, and to His righteousness. It is indeed an act of treason against the cosmic King. In our society, treason is one of those few offenses that is regarded as a capital offense, and so is it a capital offense biblically, as the scriptures teach us: "The soul that sins shall die," because every sin against an infinitely valuable being is worthy. Of death, and so when we talk about divine justice, the first thing we have to consider as sinners is that we have been brought before the tribunal of God's court, and have been convicted of committing crimes against the King, crimes against the Creator. I remember the Westminster Catechism asked the question, "What is sin?" And as children, we had to learn to recite the answer.
And at the time, it didn't mean anything to me. As we recited, "Sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God." See, beloved, when God issues a law, when He enacts a decree. When he legislates a code of behavior, it is our duty as his creatures; it is our moral obligation that is imposed upon us justly from his hand, to conform to that law. And when we don't conform to that law, we are breaking that law, and we are committing a crime. In the sight of God, and when a crime is committed, His justice has been violated, and we are worthy of the sanctions that flow out of that transgression.
And there is a sense in which God now has an obligation to punish criminals. A just judge, a good judge. A just God and a good God is not a God who lets crime go unpunished. God is supremely a God of law and order, and God not only enacts laws but He enforces His laws. That's why, with the slightest sin, we're in trouble.
If God is just, because His justice demands. That we be punished.
Well, that's only the first problem we have. The second one is like unto it, and that is that when we sin, we incur a debt. Again, when God commands us to do something by virtue of His authority, let me just stop there for a second. What do we mean when we use the word authority? When we say that someone possesses authority, we mean by that that they have the right to command, the right to impose obligations, and supreme authority rests with God.
So that when God gives a command, He imposes in that command. An absolute obligation on his creatures to obey it, and just as every sin is a crime, every sin is likewise a violation of our obligation to God, and we have become indebted to God morally.
Now Jesus, using parables in the New Testament, describes us as being in a condition or in a situation, whereas we are debtors who are not able to pay our debts.
Now we have a structure in our society to cover people in that miserable situation. It used to be in the financial world, if a person failed to be able to pay his debts, that person was put in prison. They went to so-called debtors' prison, and we still speak of prison in terms of people paying a debt to society. But now we have provisions for various forms of bankruptcy, where bankruptcy is declared and a person is relieved from the obligation to pay a hundred percent of what they owe to another person.
Well, civil courts may do that for us and for our benefits, if we are finding ourselves in a situation where we have debts we simply cannot pay. God doesn't have a bankruptcy court. There is no chapter eleven with God. What do you do when you have an obligation to God that you cannot pay? We'll explore that concept in more detail later on in this series, but for now, just in passing, I want us to see that we have a problem, that we have an obligation that we are not able to satisfy, we have a debt that we are unable to pay.
The third problem that results from the slightest sin is the problem of enmity. Or estrangement that takes place between God and His people, because the relationship that God has with His creatures is a relationship that is defined by law, and when we break that law, we violate the personal relationship that we have with God. And the violation of that personal relationship leaves us in serious jeopardy. Again, we cannot think of sin merely in the abstract. The thing that makes sin such a dreadful thing, just on a human level, never mind our relationship for a moment to God, but just in terms of our relationship with one another.
The thing that's so bad about sin is that in our sin we violate people. We violate other human beings. And even if there would be such a sin where a person commits it solely against themselves, they are still violating a human person. Human dignity is assaulted and debased and demeaned. I've mentioned this before, but I remember again as a junior high school student, coming into our locker room after a basketball game, and as we were getting dressed, one of the fellows turned around and said, "Where's my wallet?" And it seemed that during the game, somebody had gotten into the locker room and stole this fellow's wallet out of his locker.
And I remember then just being completely baffled by that. I thought, how can a human being be so selfish that they would actually go and help themselves to somebody else's property? That somebody else labored and worked and saved in order to be able to have this possession, and then with no labor, out of strict greed, avarice, and covetousness, this person just takes it from somebody else. I often wonder how thieves can sleep at night, how they can look in the mirror at themselves. Because they have violated another person.
I remember a few years ago, somebody stole my golf clubs off the golf cart where I was playing. I'd gone into the pro shop and was in there less than a minute. Came out, and sixteen hundred dollars worth of stuff was gone. And the police came, and I had to give the police report. And the policeman said to me, "He said, 'Do you feel personally violated here?'" I said, "Yes, I do." Somebody had sinned against me on that occasion, and I felt not just the material loss, but I felt the personal violation.
And when we sin against each other in many, many ways besides stealing and so on—slander, dishonesty, all the rest—these things create a situation of estrangement. They break human relationships. And not only human relationships, but supremely, our relationship to God, is violated, when we sin. And so we see three problems that we have, as we try to live in the presence of a just and holy and righteous God. That in our sin we have committed a crime.
In our sin, we have gotten ourselves into a debt that we cannot pay, and in our sin, we have created a situation of estrangement or enmity that requires some kind of reconciliation.
Now, again, going back to Saint Anselm, who asked the question, "Why the God-Man?" and he said, "The primary need for atonement." The primary need for the cross is rooted and grounded in the justice and in the righteousness of God, because what is required, according to Anselm, by these things—the crime, the debt, and the enmity—is satisfaction. Satisfaction. When we commit a crime against God. His justice must be satisfied. That is, a payment or penalty must be given or made that satisfies the demands of divine justice, or his justice is compromised.
Secondly, when we incur a debt. In which we fail to meet an obligation before God, that debt must be satisfied. That obligation must be satisfied. And what does it mean to satisfied? That is to meet the requirements in a satisfactory way.
And finally, when sin creates enmity and estrangement, the terms to end that estrangement, the terms to bring about reconciliation, must take place. In other words, they must be satisfied. And so we see that at the heart of Saint Anselm's understanding of the atonement of Christ is this concept of satisfaction, and he's the one who first gave full development to the concept known as the satisfaction theory of the atonement, namely that the work of Christ on the cross. Was among other things designed to satisfy the demands of God's justice, to satisfy the demands incurred by the crime, to satisfy the demands incurred by the debt, and to satisfy the demands that were brought about through enmity and estrangement. We're going to explore that in greater detail, as I said.
But for now, I want us to see that this concept of satisfaction is at the very heart of the biblical concept of the cross. And I'm laboring the point because in this day and age, theologians tend to repudiate Anselm's insight and to somehow think less of a God who requires satisfaction. And who have, in many ways, in a wholesale way, rejected the whole idea of satisfaction. But I don't know how you can read a page of the New Testament, a statement in the New Testament about the work of Christ that does not drive us back again and again to this, as Paul says in Romans. In chapter three, when he's expounding the doctrine of justification, he says in verse twenty-six to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ.
That's what the cross is all about: the justice of God and the mercy of God. That by virtue of the atonement, God can maintain his own justice. And yet, demonstrate his mercy by bringing justification to those criminals who can't pay for their crime, those debtors who can't pay their debts, and for those who are estranged who cannot bring about reconciliation. In just a moment, we'll hear a closing thought from R.C. But before that, I wanted to mention today's resource offer: the digital edition of "Saved from What" by R.C.
Sproul. This title explores the theme of salvation from Scripture, explaining both how we're saved and God's purpose in reconciling us to Himself. You can receive this resource today when you donate in support of Renewing Your Mind. Just use the link in the podcast show notes to give. And now a final thought from R.C.
Have you ever thought of your sin as a crime? We have rules in this country that people are restricted from certain offices if they are a convicted felon.
Well, maybe we aren't felons according to the law courts of our land, but we are all convicted felons in the presence of God. We don't like to think of ourselves as criminals. We don't particularly like the term sinners, but we've heard it enough that we're willing to embrace it to a certain degree. At least, say, "Well, none of us is perfect, but we're certainly not criminals." Yes, you are a criminal. I am a criminal because we have committed a crime against the King of the Universe.
Have you thought of yourself as a debtor? Who is bankrupt? Who cannot pay your debts? All you have to do is get out your pencil and go to your ledger book, and look at your assets and your liabilities with respect to God, and see if you have the resources to meet the requirements of God on your own. A cursory glance at the ledger sheet will reveal to you that you are indeed a debtor who has no earthly means to pay your debts.
Have you really thought about the ramifications of the way in which we violate each other, and that we have violated God? And that we stand without Christ in a relationship of enmity and of estrangement with Him. What can you do, in and of yourself, to effect reconciliation, beloved? We need the cross. It's the only thing, this side of heaven, that is designed to fulfill the obligations that none of us.
Has the capacity to fulfill ourselves. At the time of recording this, I've recently returned to the United States from our regional conference in London, the topic of which was chosen by God. Let's consider that last bit you just heard there from Dr. Sproul. The cross is the only thing, the sign of heaven.
That can fulfill the obligation of God's justice, because none of us have the capacity to fulfill it ourselves. That's the comfort we have in election. We can't affect any of this ourselves, but through the cross we receive atonement, literally at one with God. What a treasure that is! Tomorrow, we'll continue to explore the truth of Christ's atoning work, as we come to the next episode of this series titled "The Curse of the Cross." I hope you'll join us here on Renewing Your Mind.
