Rom 5:11 …we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.
The atonement of Christ is a foundational doctrine of the Bible running from cover to cover, and is to be rightly received and proclaimed by those who take the name of Christian. There are at least four questions that need to be rightly regarded concerning the doctrine, they are as follows:
1) What it is?
2) Why it was necessary?
3) What exactly was accomplished by it?
4) What it means to you?
The answers to these questions are foundational and are to be fully and rightly proclaimed that the souls of men might be saved.
1) The atonement of Christ is the satisfaction of the justice of God, by God, on our behalf, allowing God to then extend mercy to us. It is God Himself doing that which He requires to bring us into communion with Him. No longer being opposed to Him we are made His children and brought into fellowship with Him through the atoning work of Christ, otherwise known as being ‘at one’ with Him. This is why it is sometimes referred to as the At-One-Ment.
2) It was necessary because as one would expect from God, He is ABSOLUTELY holy, and absolute holiness is not found in fallen man. So God in mercy provides the way to impute His ABSOLUTE holiness to those who will receive it. He tells us in Lev 17:11 “it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul”. By His own rule, the blood of Christ, our Passover lamb, is required to make atonement for the soul. The transaction is applied to us by faith in this atoning work, without which, we are nought but enemies of God and have no possibility of fellowship with Him.
3) The accomplishment was that the wrath of God on the believer’s sin was ENTIRELY satisfied, and thereby we are brought into communion with the Most High God. Having been washed in the blood of the Lamb and purified for entrance into the holy of holies, our sin no longer provides an impenetrable barrier to fellowship with God. For the believer, sin can separate them from that most intimate of communion with God for a short time, but in mercy that separation is limited both in intensity and duration, its lack simply gives the offender a thirst for more of right fellowship with God.
4) We rejoice not because we are not going to hell, but rather because we have been brought into communion with the Most High God. The motive is not where we are not going, but rather who we are now in fellowship with. Being now in fellowship with God through the atoning work of His own Son, we have a new desire to both give and bring glory to His name at the expense of our own.
Based on God’s own rules of ‘..Thou shalt give life for life..’ etc., IF Christ was a mere man like us, He could not have atoned even for Himself; IF Christ was only a sinless man He could only atone for one other man who required it; but because Christ Himself is the Almighty God as He has stated, He alone has the infinite value required both in quantity and type, to redeem multitudes from generations past, present and future. His condition for exercising restitution on your behalf is that you trust Him.