Sermon Tone Analysis

Is the idea of the God-man, Messiah Yeshua, dying in our place hard to understand?

Have you ever taken the fall for somebody?

Has someone ever taken the fall for you?

What motivated that action?

What do you think is the difference between a person taking the fall for another person and the Messiah substituting himself for us?

There are two theological words John Stott says we need to cling to - substitution and satisfaction - when speaking of the Cross of the Messiah.

What does John Stott mean by Substitution?

What does he mean by satisfaction?

The notion of substitution is that one person takes the place of another, especially in order to bear that person’s pain and so save him or her from it.

The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us.

The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us.

How does John Stott define sin?

For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.

Man claims prerogatives that belong to God alone; God accepts penalties that belong to man alone.

Write out a one word or two or three word phrase that sums up what each of the following passages teach us about why Messiah died.

Hebrews 10:

Hebrews 10:19-

Romans 8:31-

How would you respond to a person who says, “God is cruel if He has to punish His Son to forgive my sins?”

The first proposal is that the substitute was the man Christ Jesus, viewed as a human being and conceived as an individual separate from both God and us, an independent third party.

Those who begin with this a priori lay themselves open to gravely distorted understandings of the atonement and so bring the truth of substitution into disrepute.

They tend to present the cross in one or other of two ways, according to whether the initiative was Christ’s or God’s.

In the one case Christ is pictured as intervening in order to pacify an angry God and wrest from him a grudging salvation.

In the other, the intervention is ascribed to God, who proceeds to punish the innocent Jesus in place of us the guilty sinners who had deserved the punishment.

In both cases God and Christ are sundered from one another: either Christ persuades God or God punishes Christ.

What is characteristic of both presentations is that they denigrate the Father.

Reluctant to suffer himself, he victimizes Christ instead.

Reluctant to forgive, he is prevailed on by Christ to do so.

He is seen as a pitiless ogre whose wrath has to be assuaged, whose disinclination to act has to be overcome, by the loving self-sacrifice of Jesus.

We must not, then, speak of God punishing Jesus or of Jesus persuading God, for to do so is to set them over against each other as if they acted independently of each other or were even in conflict with each other.

We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment or God the object of Christ’s persuasion, for both God and Christ were subjects not objects, taking the initiative together to save sinners.

How is the work of the Father different than the work of the Son in the cross?

Our substitute, then, who took our place and died our death on the cross, was neither Christ alone (since that would make him a third party thrust in between God and us), nor God alone (since that would undermine the historical incarnation), but God in Christ, who was truly and fully both God and man and who on that account was uniquely qualified to represent both God and man and to mediate between them.

If we speak only of Christ suffering and dying, we overlook the initiative of the Father.

If we speak only of God suffering and dying, we overlook the mediation of the Son.

The New Testament authors never attribute the atonement either to Christ in such a way as to disassociate him from the Father, or to God in such a way as to dispense with Christ, but rather to God and Christ, or to God acting in and through Christ with his whole-hearted concurrence.

Look carefully at .

How is the work of the Father distinguished from the work of the Son?

Look carefully at .

On this piece of paper, create two columns.

One column write “walking in darkness, anti-love” and the other “walking in love, light.”

In each column, write what Rabbi Paul says is walking in darkness, anti-love” and “walking in love, light.

At the top of the columns write the word “crucified” over the “walking in darkness, anti-love” column and .

Then over the “walking in love, light” write “alive to God” and .

Look again at .

And answer these two questions.

First, how do you imitate God as dearly loved children?

Second, what will be the outcome of living this kind of life?

Based on what we have discussed in this chapter, what is one thing in your life you need to have radically changed by the atoning work of the Messiah?

What is one thing from this chapter that we have read or discussed that will help you to worship God with more depth and breadth?