Penal Satisfaction of Christ's Sacrifice

Pastor Martin uses a sports analogy: a player breaks a rule and the field judge calls a penalty — five, ten, or fifteen yards. The point is not teaching, not example, but punishment for breaking the rule. So Christ's sufferings were penal, not merely instructive.

You don't know anything about sports. What happens when playing football, you break one of the rules? Well, the headlinesman or the field judge will enact a what? A penalty. What happens? You are then punished so many yards for breaking the rules. Now, the main purpose of that is not to teach the people in the stands, 10,000 or 20 or 50,000 people that are watching, to teach them a lesson that crime does not pay. No, no.

13:46 - 14:13 Read in full sermon

Pastor Martin distinguishes three categories of human suffering. Calamity is impersonal misfortune. Chastisement is fatherly correction of a child who knows better. Punishment is legal consequence for breaking a law. Christ's sufferings were of the third kind.

He is penalized for his wrongdoing. You see, human suffering can break itself down or can be broken down into three major categories. Calamity, chastisement, and punishment. Here's a man out taking a Sunday afternoon drive. And his left front tire blows and the car goes out of control and he tumbles over down an embankment and is killed. We call the suffering he endured a calamity.

14:46 - 15:13 Read in full sermon

Driving home: His suffering in body and soul was the wages of sin laid on him as the substitute of his people.

When you buy a house with a mortgage, the bank wants payment. If you default, they will repossess unless they receive full compensation — perhaps cash, or perhaps services equal in value. The bank must be 'satisfied.' So God's law demands full compensation for sin.

of what the people of God have written concerning this subject through the years. Now the basic idea of satisfaction is full compensation. Full compensation. Let me illustrate. Here's a man who has a debt. And there's the man who is his creditor. Perhaps he's bought a house. And the creditor is the bank, and it says, if you will give us so much money every month,

17:09 - 17:36 Read in full sermon

Pastor Martin asks why God ordered history so that Rome was the ruling power at the time of Christ — for crucifixion was Roman, but its declaration of curse-bearing was Mosaic. Hanging on a tree under Deuteronomy 21 was the public sign that this man bore the curse of God.

Deuteronomy chapter 21. Have you ever asked the question, why did God so order the events of history that Christ would come on the scene at such a time when the government in power would put common criminals to death by crucifixion? Why not some other violent death? Have you ever asked that question? Why crucifixion? As long as it was violent death in which his blood is poured out, In that act of dying, why hanging upon a cross? Well, Deuteronomy 21 answers that question for us. Verse 22. And if a man hath committed a sin worthy of death. Deuteronomy 21, 22. And he be put to death, and thou ha...

35:18 - 36:13 Read in full sermon

The point: Once your conscience feels the weight of God's law, your nature, and God's holiness, look only to penal satisfaction in Christ for rest.

Picture the indictment of God's law in your hand — every demand, every threat, every charge against you. Christ marches up to His cross, takes that bond from your hand, and nails it to the wood. There it is canceled by His blood.

He nailed it to its cross. Here was the bond, the law of God with all its demands and all of its threats held in our hands. There we are, indicted. We're subpoenaed and all of the accusations are there. We've got to appear in the court of God. This is what we've done. Christ comes and takes that out of the hand of His people. And as He were, attaches all of the bonds with all of the threats.

44:59 - 45:25 Read in full sermon

The point: Find yourself in Christ — let the floods of wrath beat upon Him while you are kept safe in the ark.

John Owen's image: when a soul has been driven out of self-righteousness, it is like Noah's dove flying over the waters of God's wrath, finding no place to rest the soles of its feet — until it sees the ark of Christ rising from the flood. Pastor Martin reads several paragraphs of Owen aloud.

It makes the poor soul like Noah's dove in its distress, not knowing where to rest the soles of her feet. When a soul hath turned out of its self-righteousness and begins to look abroad and view the heaven and earth for a resting place and perceives an ocean, a flood, an inundation of wrath to cover all the world, wrath of God revealing itself from heaven against all ungodliness so that it can obtain no rest nor abiding place.

48:20 - 48:49 Read in full sermon

The point: Find yourself in Christ — let the floods of wrath beat upon Him while you are kept safe in the ark.

Owen continues: at first the soul sees many hills of self-righteousness and general mercy that look higher than Christ. But when the flood of wrath rises, all those hills go under, and only the ark — Jesus Christ — stands above the waters.

Many appearing hills and mountains of self-righteousness and general mercy at the first view seem to the soul much higher than Jesus Christ. But when the flood of wrath once comes and spreads itself, all those mountains are quickly covered. Only the ark, the Lord Jesus Christ, though the flood fall on Him also, yet He gets above it quite and gives safety to all that rest upon Him.

49:42 - 50:07 Read in full sermon