"The Reasons for This Infinite Value" -- Article Four, Second Head of Doctrine, Canons of Dort

Article 4: Reasons for This Infinite Value

This death is of such great value and worth for the reason that the person who suffered it is—as was necessary to be our Savior—not only a true and perfectly holy man, but also the only begotten Son of God, of the same eternal and infinite essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Another reason is that this death was accompanied by the experience of God’s anger and curse, which we by our sins had fully deserved.

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At this point, it is important to state with some precision what is implied in the previous articles. The reason why Jesus’s death can satisfy God’s justice and anger toward our sin is found in Christ’s incarnation. Jesus is the God-man who suffers and dies for us in our place. Since he is truly human, Jesus possesses our nature, and therefore can identify with us so that our sin can be imputed to him. He is one with us in every respect—sin excepted. As true man and the Second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), Jesus Christ stands in our place as our representative before God, just as did Adam in Eden as the biological and federal head of the human race. But unlike Adam, Jesus Christ endured all temptation without sin and lived a perfect life in fulfillment of all righteousness.

But Jesus Christ is also God in human flesh (John 1:1-14). Therefore, his death is sufficient to bear the holy God’s wrath in such a way as to satisfy his justice. The redemptive value of his death has no limit. Paul says of him, “he became a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13), while Peter proclaims of him,

knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. . . . He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed (1 Peter 1:18-19; 2:24).

Jesus Christ bore in his own body the penalty of the curse due us for our sin. Because he is truly God, his sacrifice alone is sufficient to satisfy God’s justice so that our sins are forgiven. Because Jesus is truly human, he can die for us and in our place bearing the guilt of our sin imputed to him. Therefore, the incarnation lies at the heart of the biblical teaching about the death of Christ—Christ dying for us and in our place to satisfy the justice of God (i.e., the doctrine of a “substitutionary atonement”).

It is God’s love for his fallen creatures and his mercy towards his elect which motivates him to send Christ to do what is necessary so that we might be saved. Yet, the words “God is love,” are meaningless apart from the death of Christ (as in 1 John 4:10), where we see the second person of the Holy Trinity, having taken to himself a true human nature, suffering unspeakable agony so that God’s anger toward us is turned away.

In the cross we see both the love and the justice of God. Neither is sacrificed. Through Christ’s death, God’s elect are delivered from the guilt and power of sin.