Theopedia

Atonement

“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.”

— Leviticus 17:11

Definition

Atonement is the covering of sin’s guilt by a sacrifice, satisfying God’s justice and removing the barrier it puts between him and sinners. The English word translates a Hebrew term meaning “to cover,” used throughout the Old Testament’s sacrificial law and concentrated in the Day of Atonement’s blood rites, and it appears only once in the New Testament (Rom. 5:11), where the same underlying word is elsewhere rendered “reconciliation.” In its fullest sense atonement is Christ’s own sacrifice of himself, the reality toward which the Old Testament’s sacrifices pointed, by which sinners are reconciled to God.12

Confessional Definition

The 1689 London Baptist Confession has no chapter titled “Atonement.” Its chapter 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” states that Christ, “by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself… hath fully satisfied the justice of God, procured reconciliation, and purchased an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto Him.”3 The confession’s own vocabulary here is satisfaction rather than atonement, matching the Reformation-era preference for that older, more comprehensive term: it covers not only Christ’s bearing of the law’s penalty but his obedience to its precept, where “atonement” properly names only the expiatory half of his work.1

Biblical Basis

In the Old Testament’s sacrificial law, the priest “shall make atonement” for an offender by presenting a sacrifice whose blood is applied on the offender’s behalf (Lev. 4:20, 26, 31, 35; 5:6, 10, 13, 16, 18), using a Hebrew verb that “signifies to ‘cover’”; Christ, the reality behind these sacrifices, “is a covering to his people, from the curses of the law they have broken… and from avenging justice their sins exposed them to.”2 The rite reached its fullest expression on the Day of Atonement, when the high priest alone carried sacrificial blood behind the veil and sprinkled it on the ark’s mercy seat, which “signified its application to the covering of sin, and its acceptance by God” (Lev. 16).4

The English word appears only once in the New Testament, at Romans 5:11, where the same underlying Greek term is elsewhere translated “reconciliation”; Paul uses it of what believers “have now received” through Christ.1 Hebrews treats the whole Mosaic sacrificial system, the Day of Atonement included, as “shadows” of which Christ is the “body” (Heb. 9:13-24; 10:1, 13; 11:12), identifying him as the true Passover sacrifice (1 Cor. 5:7) and sin offering (John 1:29; Heb. 9:26, 28; 1 Pet. 1:19) toward which the old rites pointed.5 Reconciliation of this kind cannot be accomplished by a sinner’s own works, repentance, or faith, “for that does not make, only receives the atonement made by Christ”; it required “the death of the Son of God,” since death, not any lesser remedy, is what the law’s own penalty demands.2

Historical Development

Reformed theologians have not always agreed on which English word should carry this doctrine. The divines of the seventeenth century preferred “satisfaction” over “atonement” as the more exact and comprehensive term, since it covers both halves of Christ’s work, his bearing of the law’s penalty and his obedience to its precept, where “atonement” properly names only the first.1 Writing in 1872, Hodge could still describe “atonement” as commonly used “especially in this country” (that is, nineteenth-century America) for Christ’s saving work, while treating its rise there as a departure from “the established usage of the Churches of the Reformation.”6 His son A. A. Hodge made the same case a few years later, calling “Satisfaction” “the old word used by the divines of the seventeenth century” and faulting “Atonement” for failing “to express the fact that Christ also merited for us the positive reward of eternal life by his active obedience.”5

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, “Chapter VI. Priestly Office,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 466-468. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book VI, chap. 6, “Of Propitiation, Atonement, and Reconciliation, as Ascribed to Christ.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” para. 5. ↩

  4. A. A. Hodge, 409. ↩

  5. A. A. Hodge, “Chapter XXV. The Atonement: Its Nature, Necessity, Perfection, and Extent,” in Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), 401-402. ↩ ↩2

  6. Hodge, 468. ↩