41 Sermon Illustrations on Atonement Theology

In the Tabernacle Holy of Holies, the light of God's glory was present between the cherubim, telling Israel that God was in her midst. The mercy seat was the place appointed where God met once a year the blood of the sacrifice of atonement. The blood of atonement was sprinkled there. It was not an appeasement. God does not have to be appeased. He is merciful, compassionate, and full of lovingkindness, but He will not hold man guiltless without an atonement. When the blood was sprinkled, there was satisfaction. Sin was covered. The offering for sin was made. The One whose soul was made an offering for sin is Messiah Jesus. He is the Mercy Seat where the justice of God and the satisfying sacrifice meet, bringing peace to all who believe.

An artist can paint the physical hands and feet of our Lord, but he cannot paint the healing power of those hands and the godly walk of those feet. He can paint the outward suffering, but not the inward cause; the cursed tree, but not the curse of the law; the bearing of the cross, but not the bearing of the sins of His people; the cup of vinegar, but not the cup of wrath-the derision of His enemies and the forsaking of the Father. Where is the artist who can paint one hand of Christ nailed to the cross and the other hand claiming an inheritance of believers? Or who can paint our Lord bruising the serpent's head, conquering sin, death and the grave? The artist can only portray blood and water flowing from Christ's side, but he cannot paint what the eye of faith sees in that blood: salvation and pardon.

In the sixteenth century, Oliver Cromwell ordered that an English soldier be shot for a cowardly crime. The execution was to take place at the evening bell. But at the appointed time no sound came from the belfry. Investigation revealed that the girl who was engaged to be married to the condemned man had climbed into the bell tower and clung to the clapper of the giant bell to prevent it from striking. They found her there with her hands bleeding and torn to shreds. All of us are sinners under sentence of death. But Christ intervened in our behalf. Look at His bruised and bleeding nail-pierced hands on that cross.

“It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.” Leviticus 17:11

Some years ago a fearful railroad wreck took a dreadful toll of life and limb in an eastern state. A train, loaded with young people returning from school, was stalled on a suburban track because of what is known as a “hot-box.” The limited was soon due, but a flagman was sent back to warn the engineer in order to avert a rear-end collision. Thinking all was well, the crowd laughed and chatted while the train-hands worked on in fancied security. Suddenly the whistle of the limited was heard and on came the heavy train and crashed into the local, with horrible effect.

The engineer of the limited saved his own life by jumping, and some days afterward was hailed into court to account for his part in the calamity. And now a curious discrepancy in testimony occurred. He was asked, “Did you not see the flagman warning you to stop?”

He replied, “I saw him, but he waved a yellow flag, and I took it for granted all was well, and so went on, though slowing down.”

The flagman was called, “What flag did you wave?”

“A red flag, but he went by me like a shot.”

“Are you sure it was red?”

“Absolutely.”

Both insisted on the correctness of their testimony, and it was demonstrated that neither was color-blind. Finally the man was asked to produce the flag itself as evidence. After some delay he was able to do so, and then the mystery was explained. It had been red, but it had been exposed to the weather so long that all the red was bleached out, and it was but a dirty yellow!

Oh, the lives eternally wrecked by the yellow gospels of the day — the bloodless theories of unregenerate men that send their hearers to their doom instead of stopping them on their downward road!

I remember when in the old country a young man came to me--a minister--and said he wanted to talk with me. He said to me: "Mr. Moody, you are either all right and I am all wrong, or else I am right, and you are all wrong." "Well, sir," said I, "You have the advantage of me. You have heard me preach, and you know what doctrines I hold, whereas I have not heard you, and don't know what you preach." "Well," said he, "the difference between your preaching and mine is that you make out that salvation is got by Christ's death, and I make out that it is attained by His life." "Now, what do you do with the passages bearing upon the death?" and I quoted the passages, "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission," and "He Himself bore our own sins by His own body on the tree," and asked him what he did with them, for instance. "Never preach them at all." I quoted a number of passages more, and he gave me the same answer. "Well, what do you preach?" I finally asked. "Moral essays," he replied. Said I, "Did you ever know anybody to be saved by that kind of thing, did you ever convert anybody by them?" "I never aimed at that kind of conversion; I meant to get men to heaven by culture--by refinement." "Well," said I, "If I didn't preach those texts, and only preached culture, the whole thing would be a sham." "And it is a sham to me," was his reply. I tell you the moment a man breaks away from this doctrine of blood, religion becomes a sham, because the whole teaching of this book is of one story, and this is, that Christ came into the world and died for our sins.

"If a prince, passing by an execution, should take the malefactor's chains, and suffer in his stead, this would be a wonderful instance indeed." The deed would ring through all history, and be quoted as an amazing instance of heroic pity; and well deserved would be all the words of praise and sonnets of admiration which would record and eulogize it. Yet our Lord Jesus did this and infinitely more for those who were not merely malefactors but enemies to His own throne and person. This is a wonder of wonders! But, alas, it meets with small praise. The most of men around us have heard of it and treated it as an idle tale, and multitudes more regard it as a pious legend, worthy to be repeated as a venerable fable, and then forgotten as an unpractical myth. Even those who know, believe, and admire, are yet cold in their emotions with regard to the story of the cross. Herein is love which ought to set our hearts on fire, and yet we scarcely maintain a smouldering spark of enthusiasm. Lord Jesus, be more real to our apprehensions, and so be more completely the Master of our affections.

The satisfaction must carry proportion with the merit of the offence. A debt of a thousand pounds is not discharged by two or three brass farthings. Creatures are finite, their acts of obedience are already due to God, and their sufferings for one another, if they had been allowed, would have been of limited influence. Jesus alone, as the Son of God, could present a substitution sufficient to meet the case of men condemned for their iniquities. The majesty of his nature, his freedom from personal obligation to the law, and the intensity of his griefs, all give to his atonement a virtue which elsewhere can never be discovered. None of the sons of men "can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him." Jesus only could stand in our soul's stead, and pay the dreadful price. What sinners we are! What a sacrifice has been presented for us! No brass farthings were our price; nay, gold and silver are called "corruptible things" when compared with the precious blood which has paid our ransom.

Throughout the Old Testament, the word "atonement" is constantly used to signify the reconciliation of God by means of bloody sacrifices to men alienated from him by the guilt of sin. The priest made atonement for the transgressors of the law by sacrifices; and it was forgiven them (Lev. iv. 20, v. 6, vi. 7, xii. 8, xiv. 18; Num. xv. 25). On the great "day of atonement," the high priest made atonement, — first for his own sins by the sacrifice of a bullock, and for the sins of all the people by the sacrifice of a goat; and then the sins thus atoned for were confessed, and laid upon the head of the live goat, and carried away by him into oblivion (Lev. xvi. 6-22). A. A. Hodge.

Oh! who shall measure the heights of the Saviour's all-sufficiency!—first tell how high is sin, and then remember, that as Noah's flood prevailed over the tops of earth's mountains, so the flood of Christ's redemption prevails over the tops of the mountains of our sins. In heaven's courts there are to-day men that once were murderers and thieves and drunkards and whoremongers and blasphemers and persecutors; but they have been washed, they have been sanctified. Ask them whence the brightness of their robes hath come, and where their purity hath been achieved, and they, with united breath, tell you that they have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Spurgeon.

The experience of poor Jack, a deaf-mute, is thus given by Charlotte Elizabeth:—

His sublime idea of the RED HAND was ever present. He had told me, some years before, that, when he had lain a good while in the grave, God would call aloud, "Jack!" and he would start and say, "Yes, me Jack." Then he would rise and see multitudes standing together, and God sitting on a cloud, with a very large book in his hand (he called it "Bible-book"), and would beckon him to stand before him, while he opened the book, and looked at the top of the pages, till he came to the name of John B. In that page, he told me God had written all his "bads," every sin he had ever done; and the page was full. So God would look, and strive to read it, and hold it to the sun for light; but it was all "no, no nothing, none." I asked him, in some alarm, if he had done no bad. He said yes, much bads; but, when he first prayed to Jesus Christ, he had taken the book out of God's hand, found that page, and, pulling from His palm something which he described as filling up the hole made by the nail, had allowed the wound to bleed a little, passing His hand down the page, so that, as he beautifully said, "God could see none of Jack's bads, only Jesus Christ's blood." Nothing being thus found against him, God would shut the book, and there he would remain standing before him, till the Lord Jesus came, and saying to God, "My Jack," would put his arm around him, draw him aside, and bid him stand with the angels till the rest were judged.

A man on the Malabar coast had long been uneasy about his spiritual state, and had inquired of several devotees and priests how he might make atonement for his sins; and he was directed to drive iron spikes, sufficiently blunted, through his sandals, and on these spikes to walk a distance of about four hundred and eighty miles. He undertook the journey, and travelled a long way, but could obtain no peace. One day, he halted under a large, shady tree, where the gospel was sometimes preached; and, while he was there, one of the missionaries came, and preached from the words, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." While he was preaching, the poor man's attention was excited, and his heart was drawn; and, rising up, he threw off his torturing sandals, and cried out aloud, "This is what I want!" and became henceforward a witness of the healing efficacy of the Saviour's blood.

Alexander the Great was dying of a wound, which did not seem very dangerous at first; but it baffled his physicians, and was rapidly becoming mortal. One night, however, it is said he dreamed that some one had brought him a peculiar-looking plant, which, when applied to the festering sore, had cleansed and closed it. In the morning, when he awoke, he described the plant; and the historian informs us that it was sought for and found, and, when applied to the wound, the fiery pain subsided, and he was speedily healed. Now, your soul has received a deadly hurt: it has been stung by the old serpent, the Devil. The wound gets worse. There is a tender plant which is able to heal you: it is the Balm of Gilead. They used to wound the balsam-tree, in order to obtain its healing essence; and so for our transgressions the Saviour was wounded, and "by his stripes ye are healed."

— Dr. J. Hamilton

There is a legend of Luther, that, during a serious illness, the Evil One seemed to enter his sick-room, and, looking at him with a triumphant smile, unrolled a vast roll which he carried in his arms. As the fiend threw one end of it on the floor, and it unwound itself with the impetus he had given it, Luther's eyes were fixed on it, and, to his consternation, he read there the long and fearful record of his own sins, clearly and distinctly enumerated. That stout heart quailed before that ghastly roll. Suddenly it flashed into his mind that there was one thing not written there. He said aloud, "One thing you have forgotten: the rest is all true; but one thing you have forgotten, — 'The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.'" As he said this, the "Accuser of the brethren," and his heavy roll of "lamentation and mourning and woo," disappeared together.

A father once kept a cancelled bond for his family to look upon, and see how he had paid a heavy debt, through much self-sacrifice, to make them happy. Christ cancelled the claim of justice against us, "nailing it to his cross." In the Lord's Supper, his family look upon this bond.

Cleopatra put a jewel in a cup, which contained the price of a kingdom: this sacred cup we are to drink of, enriched with the blood of God, is above the price of a kingdom.

The late Thomas, Earl of Kinnoul, a short time before his death, in a long and serious conversation with the Rev. Dr. Kemp, of Edinburgh, thus expressed himself:—"I have always considered the atonement the characteristic of the gospel; as a system of religion, strip it of that doctrine, and you reduce it to a scheme of morality, excellent, indeed, and such as the world never saw; but, to man, in the present state of his faculties, absolutely impracticable.

"The atonement of Christ, and the truths immediately connected with that fundamental principle, provide a remedy for all the wants and weaknesses of our nature. Those who strive to remove those precious doctrines from the word of God, do an irreparable injury to the grand and beautiful system of religion which it contains, as well as to the comforts and hopes of man. For my own part, I am now an old man, and have experienced the infirmities of ad- 27.28

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chapel, in order to conduct his evening service. On his way thither he was accosted by a friend, who inquired whether he had heard of the severe loss the church had sustained in the death of their able minister. He replied, "No;" but being much affected at this singular intelligence, he inquired of him the day and the time of the day when his departure took place. To this his friend replied, "This afternoon, at twenty-five minutes after three o'clock."

The first sermon preached by the late Rev. Robert Hall at Cambridge, after he had become the pastor of the congregation there, was on the doctrine of the atonement, and its practical tendencies. One of the congregation, who had embraced very erroneous views of the gospel, said to him, "Mr. Hall, this preaching won't do for us, it will only suit a congregation of old women." "Do you mean my sermon, sir; or the doctrine?" "Your doctrine." "Why is it that the doctrine is fit only for old women?" "Because it may suit the musings of people tottering upon the brink of the grave, and who are eagerly seeking comfort." "Thank you, sir; for your concession. The doctrine will not suit people of any age, unless it be true; and, if it be true, it is not fitted for old women alone, but is equally important at every age."

"I have taken much pains," says the learned Selden, "to know every thing that was esteemed worth knowing amongst men; but with all my disquisitions and reading, nothing now remains with me to comfort me, at the close of life, but this passage of St. Paul, 'It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners;' to this I cleave, and herein I find rest."

Des Barreaux, a foreigner of eminent station, had been a great profligate, and afterwards became a great penitent. He composed a piece of poetry after his conversion, the leading sentiment of which was to the following effect:— "Great God, thy judgments are full of righteousness; thou takest pleasure in the exercise of mercy: but I have sinned to such a height that justice demands my destruction, and mercy itself seems to solicit my perdition. Disdain my tears, strike the blow, and execute thy judgments. I am willing to submit and adore, even in perishing, the equity of thy procedure. But on what place will the stroke fall that is not covered with the blood of Christ?"

A poor negro on the coast of Africa, who felt some concern about his soul, applied to his priest, who gave him various directions, which were all unavailing. He was so distressed in his mind, that he went wandering about from place to place, without meeting with any thing to comfort him. One day as he was sitting in a solitary manner on the beach, some English sailors came ashore to get water. As they were rolling the cask along, one of them heard the moanings of the poor negro, and going up to him said, "Hallo, shipmate! what's the matter with you?" The negro began to tell his tale of wo, in broken language, but was hastily interrupted by the sailor exclaiming, "Oh, I see what's the matter with you; you must go to England, and there you'll hear of the Christian's God, who paid the debt." These words were spoken in a careless and thoughtless manner; but they made an impression on the mind of the negro, and he determined to proceed to England. He traveled a great many miles until he came to an English settlement, where he got leave to work his passage over in a ship that was lying there. During the voyage he would frequently approach one sailor and another, and say, with great simplicity, in a plaintive tone, "Please, massa, you tell me where Christian's God dat pay de debt?" The seamen, who it appears were all irreligious, only laughed at him, and concluded he was mad. The ship arrived at London, and the negro was put ashore at Wapping. Having no money to receive, he wandered from street to street, and whenever he could catch a single passenger, he would stop and say, in the most melancholy manner, "Please, massa, you please tell poor black man where Christian's God dat pay de debt?" Some told him to go about his business, some gave him money, and others, supposing him to be deranged, passed on; but he met no one to answer his question. In this manner he continued to stroll about, as devoid of comfort in England as in his own land. and frequently would he steal down some by-place, and give vent to his soul in accents like these: "Ah! me no hear of Christian's God dat pay de debt; me walk, walk, day, day, but me no hear. White man tell me in Africa, go to England, but me no find; me go back, me die dere." He saw some people on the Sabbath going into a large house, which he concluded was the temple of the Christian's God; he followed them; he heard a sermon, but he heard nothing about Christ. It was all unintelligible to him, and he still remained the subject of despondency, and still went mourning about. A gentleman accidentally overheard him one day, while he was complaining to himself of his unsuccessful inquiry after the Christian's God. He spoke to him, and directed him to go to such a place that evening, and there he would hear of the Christian's God. He went, and

### 83. CHRISTIANITY

Rev. Mr. P., of New-York, when settled in B—, N. Y., was called to see a young lady on the brink of the grave. In the course of the conversation he says, "I inquired, 'Do you not feel that you are a great sinner before God?' Bursting into an agony of tears and raising her attenuated hands, she cried, 'Oh!' yes, that is all that pains me. Oh, I have been such a sinner, and God has been so good to me—Christ so good, and I have sinned so much!"

"Being satisfied that she was sincerely penitent for sin, I spoke of the atonement of Christ—its necessity and nature and terms, and asked her if she could see in that plan to save, that there was room for her. 'No, not for me, I am such a sinner,' she said, and the fresh torrents of tears attested the sincerity of her confession. Then I told her of the 168. 169

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posal was universally acceptable; and accordingly, a narrative was heard from a native of each of the four quarters of the globe—of their views and feelings, of their trials and temptations, &c. The result was highly gratifying to all present; and I think Dr. Livingston said, that it was generally admitted by those present, that they had never before witnessed so interesting a scene.