OUT OF HIS GOOD PLEASURE

COLOSSIANS 1:19–23

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself …

(Col. 1:19).

The moving cause of the Atonement is sometimes represented as being the love of Jesus Christ for sinners. He is often depicted as having such sympathy for sinners in their travail that He gave up His life to pacify an angry God. When the Atonement is put in this light, people tend to praise Christ for His supreme sacrifice and to blame the vengeful Father for putting His Son through such intense suffering. Christ is presented as gentle, meek, and sacrificial while God the Father is portrayed as vengeful, mean, angry, and unjust.

Such an understanding of the Atonement is unbalanced, erroneous and unbiblical. It gives Christ His due, but it robs the Father of His honor and the Trinity of its unity. According to the Scriptures, the cause of the Atonement is found in the good pleasure of God. It was God’s good pleasure to save sinners by a substitutionary atonement. Christ’s work was the fruit of this divine pleasure as He was sent to take man’s place and, hence, submit to the eternal plan of the triune God. All three persons in the Godhead were in agreement and in complete unity regarding the Atonement. “For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fullness dwell; and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself” (Col. 1:19–20 kjv).

The Father did not forcefully send the Son to die on the cross for sinners. The Son volunteered, in agreement to the eternal decree of God, to bear the penalty for sin and to satisfy the demands of divine law. It was not only the Son being gracious in this action, but God the Father who sent the Son out of His love for His people all over the world (John 3:16).

In our effort to understand the Atonement, we cannot bring disunity to the triune God, setting the Father’s motives in opposition to the Son’s. They act as one, with the same purpose and according to the same design. The death of Christ was an act of sovereign grace bestowed on undeserving sinners by a loving and gentle Lord. The Atonement was not Jesus’ plan simply to appease the Father, but the plan of God Himself, which was devised in love and out of His own good pleasure.

CORAM DEO

Ezekiel 1–3

Hebrews 9

Too often Christians set Christ in opposition to the Father. This is evident when someone says, “The God of the New Testament (meaning Jesus) is gentle and loving, but the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and mean.” Using today’s verses, formulate a response to this statement.

For further study: Isa. 53:10 • Luke 2:14 • John 3:16 • Gal. 1:4

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november