0322. Atonement
Atonement
"And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom we have now received the atonement" (Rom_5:11).
We have before us another great Calvary word. Atonement is the word that expresses the ground of our approach to God. The atonement of Christ is the reconciliation we have with God. The atonement portrays Christ upon the Cross as the meeting place between God and the sinner.
1. The wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all unrighteousness. Children of disobedience are children of wrath. There is but one word that expresses the wages of sin, and that is the word DEATH. Physical death is the separation of spirit and body. Spiritual death is eternal separation of the soul from God.
When Jesus Christ hung upon the Cross, He cried "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me!" He tasted the cup of death for every man.
There is much we do not know, but this we know, that when Christ took the sinner’s place upon the Cross, God let the billows of His wrath fall full upon Him.
The sinner is hopelessly shut away from God. The wrath of God abideth upon him.
2. Jesus Christ upon the Cross bore our chastisement, He suffered "the Just for the unjust" that He might bring us to God. He became the atonement for our sins. The sufferings of Christ on Calvary’s Cross present not a theory but a fact.
When you stand at the foot of the Cross and behold the sufferings of Christ, you must see your sins actually placed upon Him. Christ did not die in behalf of some lofty ideal, He died for the ungodly. Our sins nailed Him to the tree.
3. The holy wrath of God falling upon Christ as He stood in the sinner’s place makes possible our approach unto the Father.
The atonement is the AT-ONE-MENT. The atonement is the ground of our individual acceptance by the Father.
Illustration: A motherless lamb and a lambless mother were in the same sheepfold. The shepherd brought the little lamb which had no mother, to the mother who had no lamb. The mother sheep immediately refused and spurned the motherless lamb. The shepherd then took the fleece from the dead lamb and covered it about the living lamb. Immediately the mother sheep was appeased. She received the motherless lamb.
"No man cometh unto the Father but by Me," said Christ. God pity any one who dares to seek approach to the Father apart from the Cross of Christ.
Illustration: En route one day to New York city, we were reading the passage, "And a man shall be a covert from the storm." Suddenly a new light burst upon us. We had often before thought of ourselves as hidden in the cleft of the Rock, we had praised God that we were in Christ secure from the storm, we had gloried in the peace and quiet of our covert.
Suddenly, however, it dawned upon us that the storm from which we were so snugly sheltered was bursting in all its fury upon the covert that sheltered us. We saw at once the ingratitude of our boasted peace. Reveling in the joy of fellowship with the Father, we had almost forgotten the cry: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Let us never forget that the atonement, not only gave us approach to God, but that it gave us approach upon the basis of the agonies of Calvary.
Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR