"A True and Perfect Sacrifice to God" -- B. B. Warfield on The Death of Jesus

The Biblical doctrine of the sacrifice of Christ finds full recognition in no other construction than that of the established church-doctrine of satisfaction. According to it, our Lord’s redeeming work is at its core a true and perfect sacrifice offered to God, of intrinsic value ample for the expiation of our guilt; and at the same time is a true and perfect righteousness offered to God in fulfillment of the demands of His law; both the one and the other being offered in behalf of His people, and, on being accepted by God, accruing to their benefit; so that by this satisfaction they are relieved at once from the curse of their guilt as breakers of the law, and from the burden of the law as a condition of life; and this by a work of such kind and performed in such a manner, as to carry home to the hearts of men a profound sense of the indefectible righteousness of God and to make to them a perfect revelation of His love; so that, by this one and indivisible work, both God is reconciled to us, and we, under the quickening influence of the Spirit bought for us by it, are reconciled to God, so making peace—external peace between an angry God and sinful men, and internal peace in the response of the human conscience to the restored smile of God.

This doctrine, which has been incorporated in more or less fullness of statement in the creedal declarations of all the great branches of the Church, Greek, Latin, Lutheran, and Reformed, and which has been expounded with more or less insight and power by the leading doctors of the churches for the last eight hundred years, was first given scientific statement by Anselm (q.v.) in his “Cur Deus homo” (1098); but reached its complete development only at the hands of the so-called Protestant Scholastics of the seventeenth century (cf. e.g. Turretin, “The Atonement of Christ,” E.T. by J. R. Willson, New York, 1859; John Owen, “The Death of Death in the Death of Christ” (1648), Edinburgh, 1845).

Benjamin B. Warfield, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: Studies in Theology, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1981), 278.