CHAPTER TWELVE: Coordinates All Aspects of Life, Death, and Destiny

I. Significance of Christ’s Life and Death in Plan of Redemption

Before we turn to another related truth, likewise taught by Christ and centering in Him, let us note again the foundational principles and provisions of salvation in, and only in, Christ Jesus. This is essential to the balanced understanding of all special outworkings, manifestations, and teachings emanating from and centering in Him.CFF1 207.1

1. CHRIST—REVEALER OF GOD AND REDEEMER OF MAN

Jesus Christ came as the revealer of God, and the redeemer of man from the power both of sin and of death. And both of these enemies He overcame in His own person, and made His victory effective for us through His triumphant resurrection, and thus brought “life and immortality to light,” and made them operational “through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). That, in a word, is the tremendous scope—the height, depth, length, and breadth of salvation through Jesus Christ our Saviour and Sacrifice, Priest and judge, and coming King.CFF1 207.2

We have already noted the foundational incarnation side. Now let us observe its outworking in Christ’s atoning death. Christ’s sinless life and vicarious atoning death met all the just and holy requirements of the divine law (Romans 7:12), in order that divine love and grace might be poured forth freely, and reclaim and forgive sinful, dying man, and restore him both to holiness and to his forfeited life. In accomplishing this, Christ lived sinlessly and died voluntarily as our atoning Substitute. As another has impressively put it, He bore the full consequences of the sin in which He had no personal part, that we might share the full benefits of His triumph in which we had no personal part.CFF1 207.3

Christ’s atoning death, with its vast significance, was all foreordained, foretold, and then actualized in Christ. The fateful history of sin and death, and the antithetical righteousness and life, may be summarized thus, as attested in both Testaments. This is the Biblical foundation for our hope and confidence. Here is an epitome in six points:CFF1 208.1

Note that death phase in greater depth. The laying down of His life, by Christ, was the consummating act in His transcendent self-sacrifice for man. This act of satisfaction and submission, in behalf of the race, to the full death penalty deserved by the race because of sin is truly unfathomable to the human mind. It scales the summit as well as plumbs the depths of divine love and grace. As to its central importance, 33 per cent of Matthew’s Gospel is devoted to the record of the last week of Christ’s life; of Mark’s, 37 per cent; and of John’s, 42 per cent. That is the proportionate emphasis given by Inspiration.CFF1 209.1

Let it never be forgotten that Christ did not choose between dying at one time rather than another, but instead, between dying and not dying for man. He died voluntarily, vicariously, and victoriously. He died to cancel the curse, to lift the ban, to bestow divine grace, to purchase pardon, to ransom sin’s captives, to restore life—and to once and for all defeat and end Satan’s malign work of rebellion, enslavement, and murder of the human race. Christ died as the representative of man—His death, as we have seen, being voluntary, vicarious, sinless, and sacrificial. It was purposeful, propitiatory, reconciliatory, once-for-all, and al-sufficient. It afforded complete atonement for all who will accept it, and thus come under the application of its provisions.CFF1 211.1

4. REJECTION OF CHRIST’S REDEMPTIVE PROVISIONS SUPREME SIN

In the light of all this, it therefore follows that, inasmuch as Christ is the supreme revelator, mediator, sole propitiator, and the reconciliator of God and man, the most fearful and fatal form of sin and rebellion is willful rejection of Christ as our atoning sacrifice, and of what He has done and what He offers Himself to be as the restorer of the lost life, and the sole giver of Immortality. The rejection of Christ and His teaching on this supreme provision of love is therefore the gravest of sins, and the rejector deserves and will experience everlasting death. That is the gravity of the ground we are traversing.CFF1 211.2