Notes on *Redemption Accomplished and Applied*

Redemption Accomplished and Applied, John Murray, (Eerdmans, 1955)

Main Idea/Takeaway

The atonement, central to the Christian faith, has its source in the free and sovereign love of God.

Interaction

• "Lamb and Priest" (28)

• "Faith is not a work" (85)

• "On mystery" (167)

• "On union" (168)

Table of Contents

Part I: Redemption Accomplished

I. The Necessity of the Atonement

II. The Nature of the Atonement

III. The Perfection of the Atonement 

IV. The Extent of the Atonement

V. Conclusion

Part II: Redemption Applied

I. The Order of Application

II. Effectual Calling

III. Regeneration

IV. Faith and Repentance

V. Justification

VI. Adoption

VII. Sanctification

VIII. Perseverance

IX. Union with Christ

X. Glorification

Favorite Quotes by Chapter

Part I: Redemption Accomplished

I. THE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT

• “No treatment of the atonement can be properly oriented that does not trace its source to the free and sovereign love of God.” (9)

• “God was pleased to set his invincible and everlasting love upon a countless multitude and it is the determinate purpose of this love that the atonement secures.” (10)

• “The reason resides wholly in himself and proceeds from determinations that are peculiarly his as the "I am that I am." The atonement does not win or constrain the love of God. The love of God constrains to the atonement as the means of accomplishing love's determinate purpose.” (10)

• “In a word, while it was not inherently necessary for God to save, yet, since salvation had been purposed, it was necessary to secure this salvation through a satisfaction that could be rendered only through substitutionary sacrifice and blood-bought redemption.” (12)

• “The more we emphasize the inflexible demands of justice and holiness the more marvelous become the love of God and its provisions.” (18)

II. THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT

• “The real use and purpose of the formula is to emphasize the two distinct aspects of our Lord's vicarious obedience. The truth expressed rests upon the recognition that the law of God has both penal sanctions and positive demands. It demands not only the full discharge of its precepts but also the infliction of penalty for all infractions and shortcomings. It is this twofold demand of the law of God which is taken into account when we speak of the active and passive obedience of Christ. Christ as the vicar of his people came under the curse and condemnation due to sin and he also fulfilled the law of God in all its positive requirements.” (21)

• “We must interpret the sacrifice of Christ in terms of the Levitical patterns because they were themselves patterned after Christ's offering.” (27)

• “That Christ's work was to offer himself a sacrifice for sin implies, however, a complementary truth too frequently over-looked. It is that, if Christ offered himself as a sacrifice, he was also a priest. And it was as a priest that he offered himself. He was not offered up by another; he offered himself.” (28)

• “The propitiation of the divine wrath, effected in the expiatory work of Christ, is the provision of God's eternal and unchangeable love, so that through the propitiation of his own wrath that love may realize its purpose in a way that is consonant with and to the glory of the dictates of his holiness.” (31)

• “Thirdly, propitiation does not detract from the love and mercy of God; it rather enhances the marvel of his love. For it shows the cost that redemptive love entails. God is love. But the supreme object of that love is himself. And because he loves himself supremely he cannot suffer what belongs to the integrity of his character and glory to be compromised or curtailed. That is the reason for the propitiation. God appeases his own holy wrath in the cross of Christ in order that the purpose of his love to lost men may be accomplished in accordance with and to the vindication of all the perfections that constitute his glory.” (32)

• “The wrath of God is the inevitable reaction of the divine holiness against sin. Sin is the contradiction of the perfection of God and he cannot but recoil against that which is the contradiction of himself. Such recoil is his holy indignation.” (32)

• “To deny propitiation is to undermine the nature of the atonement as the vicarious endurance of the penalty of sin. In a word, it is to deny substitutionary atonement. To glory in the cross is to glory in Christ as the propitiatory sacrifice once offered, as the abiding propitiatory, and as the one who embodies in himself for ever all the propitiatory efficacy of the propitiation once for all accomplished.” (32)

• “Reconciliation presupposes disrupted relations between God and men. It implies enmity and alienation. This alienation is twofold, our alienation from God and God's alienation from us. The cause of the alienation is, of course, our sin, but the alienation consists not only in our unholy enmity against God but also in God's holy alienation from us.” (33)

• “Redemption from the power of sin may be called the triumphal aspect of redemption. In his finished work Christ did something once for all respecting the power of sin and it is in virtue of this victory which he secured that the power of sin is broken in all those who are united to him. It is in this connection that a strand of New Testament teaching needs to be appreciated but which is frequently overlooked. It is that not only is Christ regarded as having died for the believer but the believer is represented as having died in Christ and as having been raised up with him to newness of life? This is the result of union with Christ. For by this union Christ is not only united to those who have been given to him but they are united with him. Hence not only did Christ die for them but they died in him and rose with him (cf. Rom. 6:1-10; 2 Cor. 5:14, 15; Eph. 2:1-7; Col. 3:1-4; I Pet. 4:1, 2).” (48)

III. THE PERFECTION OF THE ATONEMENT

• “If we once allow the notion of human satisfaction to intrude itself in our construction of justification or sanctification then we have polluted the river the streams whereof make glad the city of God. And the gravest perversion that it entails is that it robs the Redeemer of the glory of his once-for-all accomplishment.” (51)

• “In a word, Jesus met all the exigencies arising from our sin and he procured all the benefits that lead to, and are consummated in, the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” (58)

IV. THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT

• “The question is: on whose behalf did Christ offer himself a sacrifice? On whose behalf did he propitiate the wrath of God? Whom did he reconcile to God in the body of his flesh through death? Whom did he redeem from the curse of the law, from the guilt and power of sin, from the enthralling power and bondage of Satan? In whose stead and on whose behalf was he obedient unto death, even the death of the cross? These are precisely the questions that have to be asked and frankly faced if the matter of the extent of the atonement is to be placed in proper focus.” (62)

• “Christ did not come to put men in a redeemable position but to reedem to himself a people.” (63)

• “Christ did not come to make sins expiable. He came to expiate sins " when he made purification of sins, he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high" (Heb. 1:3). Christ did not come to make God reconcilable. He reconciled us to God by his own blood.” (63)

• “The very nature of Christ's mission and accomplishment is involved in this question. Did Christ come to make the salvation of all men possible, to remove obstacles that stood in the way of salvation, and merely to make provision for salvation? Or did he come to save his people?

  Did he come to put all men in a salvable state?

  Or did he come to secure the salvation of all those who are ordained to eternal life? Did he come to make men redeemable? Or did he come effectually and infallibly to redeem?” (63)

V. CONCLUSION

• “Here we are the spectators of a wonder the praise and glory of which eternity will not exhaust. It is the Lord of glory, the Son of God incarnate, the God-man, drinking the cup given him by the eternal Father, the cup of woe and of indescribable agony. We almost hesitate to say so. But it must be said. It is God in our nature forsaken of God. The cry from the accursed tree evinces nothing less than the abandonment that is the wages of sin. And it was abandonment endured vicariously because he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. There is no analogy. He himself bore our sins and of the people there was none with him.” (78)

Part II: Redemption Applied

I. THE ORDER OF APPLICATION

• “God justifies the ungodly who believe in Jesus, in a word, believers. And that is simply to say that faith is presupposed in justification, is the precondition of justification, not because we are justified on the not ground of faith or for the reason that we are justified because of faith but only for the reason that faith is God's appointed instrument through which he dispenses this grace.” (85)

• “Salvation is of the Lord in its application as well as in its conception and accomplishment.” (87)

II. EFFECTUAL CALLING

• “We do not call ourselves, we do not set ourselves apart by sovereign volition any more than we regenerate, justify, or adopt ourselves. Calling is an act of God and of God alone.” (89)

• “The sovereignty and efficacy of the call do not relax human responsibility but rather ground and confirm that responsibility.” (92)

III. REGENERATION

• “God's call, since it is effectual, carries with it the operative grace whereby the person called is enabled to answer the call and to embrace Jesus Christ as he is freely offered in the gospel.” (96)

• “It has often been said that we are passive in regeneration This is a true and proper statement, For it is simply the precipitate of what our Lord has taught us here. We may not like it. We may recoil against it. sIt may not fit into our way of thinking and it may not accord with the time-worn expressions which are the coin of our evangelism. But if we recoil against it, we do well to remember that this recoil is recoil against Christ.” (99)

• “The regenerate person cannot live in sin and be unconverted. And neither can he live any longer in neutral abstraction.” (104)

IV. FAITH AND REPENTANCE

• “The gospel offer is not restricted to the elect or even to those for whom Christ died. And the warrant of faith is not the conviction that we are elect or that we are among those for whom, strictly speaking, Christ died but the fact that Christ, in the glory of his person, in the perfection of his finished work, and in the efficacy of his exalted activity as King and Savior, is presented to us in the full, free, and unrestricted overture of the gospel. It is not as persons convinced of our election nor as persons convinced that we are the special objects of God's love that we commit ourselves to him but as lost sinners.” (109)

• “Faith is knowledge passing into conviction, and it is conviction passing into confidence. Faith cannot stop short of self-commitment to Christ, a transference of reliance upon ourselves and all human resources to reliance upon Christ alone for salvation. It is a receiving and resting upon him.” (111)

• “The specific character of faith is that it looks away from itself and finds its whole interest and object in Christ. He is the absorbing preoccupation of faith.” (112)

• “It is not our responsibility to regenerate our-selves. Regeneration is the action of God and of God alone.

  It is our responsibility to be what regeneration effects.” (112)

V. JUSTIFICATION

• “Justification is both a declarative and a constitutive act of God's free grace. It is constitutive in order that it may be truly declarative. God must constitute the new relationship as well as declare it to be. The constitutive act consists in the imputation to us of the obedience and righteousness of Christ. The obedience of Christ must therefore be regarded as the ground of justification; it is the righteousness which God not only takes into account but reckons to our account when he justifies the ungodly.” (125)

• “Justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. Justification is not all that is embraced in the gospel of redeeming grace. Christ is a complete Savior and it is not justification alone that the believing sinner possesses in him. And faith is not the only response in the heart of him who has entrusted himself to Christ for salvation. Faith alone justifies but a justified person with faith alone would be a monstrosity which never exists in the kingdom of grace. Faith works itself out through love (cf. Gal. 5:6). And faith without works is dead (cf. James 2: 17-20).” (131)

VI. ADOPTION

• “By adoption the redeemed become sons and daughters of the ford God Al mighty; they are introduced into and given the privileges of God's family.” (132)

• “God becomes the Father of his own people by the act of adoption. It is specifically God the Father who is the agent of this act of grace. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called children of God, and we are" (I John 3: 1).” (137)

VII. SANCTIFICATION

• “Sanctification is a work of God in us, and calling and regeneration are acts of God which have their immediate effects in us.” (141)

• “This deliverance from the power of sin secured by union with Christ and from the defilement of sin secured by regeneration does not eliminate all sin from the heart and life of the believer. There is still indwelling sin (cf. Rom. 6:20;7:14-25; 1 John 1:8; 2:1). The believer is not yet so conformed to the image of Christ that he is holy, harmless, unde-filed, and separate from sinners. Sanctification is concerned precisely with this fact and it has as its aim the elimination (of all sin and complete conformation to the image of God's own Son, to be holy as the Lord is holy.” (143)

• “All sin in the believer is the contradiction of God's holiness.” (144)

• “Remaining, indwelling sin is therefore the contradiction of all that he is as a regenerate person and son of God. It is the contradiction of God himself, after whose image he has been recreated.” (144)

• “Lest there should be any disposition to take sin for granted, to be content with the status quo, to indulge sin or turn the grace of God into lasciviousness, John is jealous to summon believers to the remembrance that everyone who has hope in God "purifies himself even as he is pure" (1 John 3:3).” (144)

• “Indeed, the more sanctified the person his, the more conformed he is to the image of his Savior, the more he must recoil against every lack of conformity to the holiness of God. The deeper his apprehension of the majesty of God, the greater the intensity of his love to God, the more persistent his yearning for the attainment of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, the more conscious will he be of the gravity of the sin which remains and the more poignant will be his detestation of it.” (145)

• “It is God who sanctifies (1 Thess. 5:23). Specifically it is the Holy Spirit who is the agent of sanctification.” (146)

• “We must rely not upon the means of sanctification but upon the God of all grace.” (147)

VIII. PERSEVERANCE

• “The truth is that the faith of Jesus Christ is always respective of the life of holiness and fidelity. And so it is never proper to think of a believer irrespective of the fruits in faith and holiness.” (154)

IX. UNION WITH CHRIST

• “A mystery is, therefore, something which eye hath not seen nor ear heard neither hath entered into the heart of man but which God has revealed unto us by his Spirit and which by revelation and faith comes to be known and appropriated by men.” (167)

• “Union with Christ is mystical because it is a mystery. That fact that it is a mystery underlines the preciousness of it and the intimacy of the relation it entails.” (167)

• “Believers are called into the fellowship of Christ and fellowship means communion. The life of faith is one of living union and communion with the exalted and ever-present Redeemer.” (169)

• “The life of faith is the life of love, and the life of love is the life of fellowship, or mystic communion with him who ever lives to make intercession for his people and who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. It is fellowship with him who has an inexhaustible reservoir of sympathy with his people's temptations, afflictions, and infirmities because he was tempted in all points like as they are, yet without sin.” (170)

• “Union with Christ is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.” (170)

• “There is no truth, therefore, more suited to impart confidence and strength, comfort and joy in the Lord than this one of union with Christ. It also promotes sanctification, not only because all sanctifying grace is derived from Christ as the crucified and exalted Redeemer, but also because the recognition of fellowship with Christ and of the high privilege it entails incites to gratitude, obedience, and devotion. Union means also communion and communion constrains a humble, reverent, loving walk with him who died and rose again that he might be our Lord.” (171)

• “It is union, therefore, with the Father and with the Son and with the Holy Spirit that union with Christ draws along with it.” (172)

• “It is the mysticism of communion with the one true and living God, and it is communion with the one true and living God because and only because it is communion with the three distinct persons of the Godhead in the strict particularity which belongs to each person in that grand economy of saving relationship to us.” (172)

• “Believers enter into the holy of holies of communion with the triune God and they do so because they have been raised up together and made to sit together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:6). Their life is hid with Christ in God (Col. 3: 3).” (173)

X. GLORIFICATION

• “Glorification is the final phase of the application of redemption. It is that which brings to completion the

  process which begins in effectual calling. Indeed it is the completion of the whole process of redemption.” (174)

• “This truth that glorification must wait for the resurrection of the body advises us that glorification is something upon which all the people of God will enter together at the same identical point in time.” (175)

• “Glorification is an event which will affect all the people of God together at the same point of time in the realization of God's redemptive purpose.” (177)

• “Glorification is glorification with Christ. Remove the latter and we have robbed the glorification of believers of the one thing that enables them to look forward to this event with confidence, with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” (178)

• “The biblical doctrine of "immortality," if we may use that term, is the doctrine of glorification. And glorification is resurrection. Without resurrection of the body from the grave and the restoration of human nature to its completeness after the pattern of Christ's resurrection on the third day and according to the likeness of the glorified human nature in which he will appear on the clouds of heaven with great power and glory there is no glorification.” (181)

• “Glorification has cosmic proportions. "We according to his promise look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness" (2 Pet. 3: 13).” (181)