Humbled by full atonement

I suspect that while I am still clothed in mortal flesh, I will never fully appreciate the magnitude of the wrong I have done against God.

R. C. Sproul has helpfully highlighted three metaphors that Scripture uses to describe sin: crime, debt, and enmity. In the first case, God is seen as Lawgiver and Judge. In the second, He is Creator and Creditor. In the third, He is King and Master. Now of course God is Lawgiver, Creditor, and King at the same time. The metaphors are not mutually exclusive, but only offered to help us see our sin problem from a number of angles.

If God is Lawgiver and Judge, then I am lawbreaker and criminal. If He is Creator and Creditor, then I am bankrupt and debtor. If He is King and Master, then I am enemy and traitor. Each perspective helps me understand the nature of my sin problem, and what the cross of Christ accomplished for me. At the cross Jesus acted as my substitute, propitiating God's wrath, expiating my guilt, crediting me with His own righteousness so that I am pronounced "Not Guilty!" before the tribunal of God (Rom 3:21-26). At the cross Jesus acted as my surety, paying my debt, ransoming me from my futile ways, canceling the bill against me, and granting me access to the riches of God (I Cor 6:9-11, 20). At the cross Jesus acted as my mediator, reconciling me to God, making peace between us, and grafting me into His holy people (Eph 2:11-22).

All this was accomplished definitively and finally at the cross. The Scripture never uses hypothetical language to describe what Christ accomplished for me or for anyone who believes at the cross. That which the Father planned is that which the Son accomplished and that which the Spirit applied. The Father chose me and sent His Son to die not a generic death, not potentially for me, but really and actually for me (Jn 10:14-16; Gal 2:20). My salvation was decreed from eternity and securely purchased through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. And as John Owen reminds us, in this secure and completed work are grounded "the assurance of our eternal glory and freedom from all accusations."

I deserve none of this. It is all free, extravagant grace, the opposite of what I deserve. But even this contemplation does not breed the humility that I need to cultivate.

Even if I were able to number every last law I had broken, even if the overdrafts on my account printed on a statement, even if on the duties I owed were spelled out in a job description, it would not be sufficient to help me understand the depth of my problem before God. John Piper has helped begin to get even an inkling of this with the following reasoning: God is of infinite worth and value. Therefore when I do not honor, trust, obey, worship, and delight in Him as I ought, I commit an infinitely weighty wrong. In fact, never in my life have I done what I ought in regard to God. And so the justice of God then requires a punishment proportionate to that wrong.

The more I think such thoughts, the more I meditate on passages such as Isaiah 42:8 -- "I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols" -- the more I see that the apostle Paul did not believe himself to be engaging in hyperbole when he called himself the chief of sinners (I Tim 1:15). The more I see that I was by nature and by choice an object of wrath (Eph 2:1-3). And the deeper that conviction runs, the lower my own self-estimation becomes, and the more precious the atoning work of Christ becomes. Philip Bliss captured it well:

Guilty, vile, and helpless we;
Spotless Lamb of God was He;
“Full atonement!” can it be?
Hallelujah! What a Savior!