"The Punishment Which God’s Judgment Requires" -- Article One, Second Head of Doctrine, Canons of Dort
Article 1: The Punishment Which God's Justice Requires
God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just. His justice requires (as he has revealed himself in the Word) that the sins we have committed against his infinite majesty be punished with both temporal and eternal punishments, of soul as well as body. We cannot escape these punishments unless satisfaction is given to God's justice.
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Background:
In the first head of doctrine, the authors of the Canons set out their treatment of human sinfulness (total depravity) and divine mercy (unconditional election), commonly known as the first two points of Calvinism.
The Canons established that all men and women have fallen in Adam, and are guilty before God from birth because Adam acted as our divinely chosen representative in Eden so that the guilt of Adam's sin was imputed (or reckoned, or accounted) to us (Romans 5:12-19). But we are also guilty for all of our own sinful actions which spring forth from sinful human nature.
This is what we mean when we speak of “total depravity.” This does not mean that we are always as bad as we possibly can be, only that sin has infected our entire person, from head to toe, and that there is no part of human nature that is not tainted, stained, or corrupted because of the fall of our race into sin.
Several lines of biblical argument make this clear. Paul indicates that we are by nature children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) and dead in our sin (Colossians 2:13). In Matthew’s gospel (7:15 ff.) Jesus describes our fallen race as bad trees which can only bear bad fruit. As our Lord tells us, this bad fruit is the visible manifestation of our hidden wickedness and depravity.
On a practical level this means that we are born in sin, and apart from God's grace our wills are in bondage to our sinful nature. We use the good gifts which God has given to us for sinful (self-centered) purposes. Lacking faith, we cannot please God (Hebrews 11:6). We sin because we are sinners. We sin because we like to sin. Since the wages of sin is death, we are all subject to the curse. Left on our own, and to our own devices, we do not want Jesus as our Lord. Instead, we desire to be lord of our own lives. We go our own way, not overly concerned about God showing his mercy to us, since we do not think that we really need it, Besides, we mistakenly think that God is obliged to extend his mercy to us any way.
Because of our sinful orientation, we do not accept what Scripture teaches, namely that God has chosen us in Christ despite what we are as fallen in Adam. The Bible repeatedly tells us that God is gracious to sinners, that he has sent to us a Savior upon whom we must believe if we are to be saved from the guilt and power of our sin. We do not want to believe this to be true because our itching ears are all too eager to believe the wisdom of the age and the foolishness of men, which always tell us how good we are. We do not like hearing this because it exposes our sin and reminds us of what is required to deal with it—the death of Jesus.
But this is what the Scriptures clearly teach—in first head of doctrine, the relevant biblical passages are set forth. If any of the sons and daughters of Adam are to be delivered from the guilt and consequences of our sin, it must be because there is something good in God, namely his grace and mercy. Certainly, there is no good thing in us which could motivate or cause God to act on our behalf.
This truth is is crystalized in the doctrine of election. In his grace and mercy, and from out of the mass of fallen humanity who deserve his wrath, God chooses to save a multitude so vast that no one can count them. Those chosen will be his glorious eternal possession, and become the bride of his own dearly beloved Son. This is where we find the meaning of divine election and predestination in Scripture—there is nothing good in us, but there is only good in God.
For reasons known to himself, and in order to magnify his grace and mercy, God chooses a multitude of Adam’s fallen children, predestining them unto eternal life. And for equally mysterious reasons, God leaves the rest of humanity in their sin, so as to suffer its horrible consequences and eternal punishment so as to magnify his justice. We will never understand the meaning of grace if we do not clearly recognize that God is not under any obligation whatsoever to save any of his rebellious creatures. The fact that he saves even one of us demonstrates his great mercy and love for a lost and fallen world.
At this point, under the second head of doctrine, the authors now turn to what is the central theme in Reformed (and biblical) theology, the covenant and its mediator. It is important to keep two things in mind as we proceed.
First, historically speaking, following John Calvin, Zacharius Ursinus (as well as a number others), the Reformed often speak of Jesus Christ as prophet, priest and king, and as the mediator of the covenant of grace whom God had promised to Adam. No sooner had sin entered the human race (Genesis 3:15) than God promised a redeemer. Jesus Christ, as the eternal son of God, was chosen by the father to be that redeemer of the world, and the savior of God’s elect. He came to earth to seek and to save God’s elect, providing what was necessary (forgiveness of past sin and as well as a faultless righteousness) so that God’s elect might be delivered from the guilt of their sin and its consequence (death).
Under the terms of the covenant of grace, in Christ, God provides sinners with a perfect righteousness when Jesus fulfills God’s law, is without sin, and then satisfies God’s holy justice, which demands that there be payment for the guilt of the sin of Adam and his descendants. Jesus Christ came to live a perfect life and to die upon the cross for the sins of the elect. It is this understanding of the particular structure and design of redemption (in which God intends to save the individual persons whom he has chosen) which was rejected by the Arminians.
This leads to the second point, which is the nature of the Arminian objection to the Reformed understanding of salvation that led to the composition of the Remonstrance (see the history of the Arminian controversy summarized here), and the response by the Reformed churches at the Synod of Dort in 1619 which is spelled out under the second head of doctrine. What upset the Arminians was the logical conclusion drawn by the Reformed about the extent of Christ’s mediatorial work—if the Reformed are correct, Christ’s work was performed specifically for the purpose of saving his elect (particular individuals), and not providing the possibility of salvation for the world (i.e., humanity in general) if only fallen sinners meet certain conditions (faith and repentance). But those dead in sin cannot meet these conditions until given the new birth.
The notion of a “limited atonement” (better, a “particular redemption”) has provoked great anger towards the Reformed doctrines expressed in the Canons. As the Arminians saw it, “how can the Reformed teach that Jesus did not die for all men and women?” “How could Calvinists teach that Jesus’s role as mediator and Savior was not intended to make salvation possible for all those who would believe and come to him as the Scriptures apparently teach?” “How could the Calvinists teach that the essence of Christ’s death upon the cross was to be found in the satisfaction of God’s justice, rather than in a display of God’s love for the world?” As the Arminian sees it, the Calvinist supposedly turns God into a cruel deity who must exact his pound of flesh, and who thereby rejects the notion of the loving God of the Bible who accepts Christ’s act of love and self-sacrifice as an entreaty and plea for sinners to turn to the loving father.
The Issue:
This then, is what is at stake under the second head of doctrine— “why did Christ die upon the cross?” and “what does his death mean for sinners?” It is the nature of the death of Christ which defines the extent of our Lord's sacrificial work. In order to respond to the Arminian complaint about the Reformed “limiting” the extent of Christ’s atonement, the Canons must begin by defining what it is exactly that the death of Christ accomplishes so as to answer the question “for whom is it intended?” In other words, the purpose of the cross defines the extent of Christ's saving work.
The Canons begin this discussion of Christ’s atonement with the presupposition that what is taught in the Scriptures about human sinfulness, and summarized under the first head of doctrine, is the proper context for any discussion of the death of Christ. Since all men and women are guilty before God and deserving of his wrath, any whom he elects must have the guilt of their sin taken away in order to be saved from eternal punishment. Since God is infinitely holy, any sin against him is an offense against his infinite majesty and thereby must be punished eternally. The real question here is, “if God graciously chooses to save any one of Adam’s fallen race, what is necessary for them to be saved?” This means that God’s decision to elect some to salvation, taken by itself, does nothing to provide what is necessary for the elect to be saved. Election is God’s decree to save, but election by itself does not remove the guilt of sin from the elect. That will take a bloody cross and an empty tomb.
Election is, therefore, necessarily tied to the person and work of Jesus Christ, because election is said to be “in Christ,” who is the mediator of the covenant of grace, and who will do what is necessary for God to save his elect. This, then, is the context for the first article under this second head of doctrine, namely that God’s justice requires that all human sin be punished.
Exposition of Article One:
The authors begin this section by making the point that “God is not only supremely merciful, but also supremely just.” As we have seen under the first head of doctrine, God is merciful in saving his elect who do not deserve to be saved, but in exercising his mercy, God does not and indeed cannot sacrifice his justice. If God is to save guilty sinners he must do so in such a way as to be both merciful and just. He cannot sacrifice mercy or justice, he must display both.
This is what the apostle Paul is getting at in Romans 3:22-26 when he speaks of . . .
the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
It is not the Calvinist who inserts language of satisfaction of God’s justice into the theological discussion as the Arminian incorrectly charges. It is the apostle Paul! He tells that the death of Jesus Christ not only satisfies God’s anger towards sinners who trust in him through faith alone, but that it also demonstrates God’s justice to the watching world, because sin does not go unpunished even when God is being gracious to sinners. In the case of the elect, Jesus Christ himself bears their punishment in his own body upon the cross. In the case of those not chosen for eternal life (the reprobate), God also demonstrates his justice to them by punishing them for their own sins eternally. God’s very nature as a just God demands this and this is why the authors of the Canons state, “his justice requires (as he has revealed himself in the Word) that the sins we have committed against his infinite majesty be punished with both temporal and eternal punishments, of soul as well as body.”
Because God’s justice demands that every infraction of his perfect will and infinite holiness be punished eternally, no one can “escape these punishments unless satisfaction is given to God's justice.” Though there are many aspects to the death of Christ taught in the Scriptures—reconciliation, redemption, substitution, etc., this is why the death of Christ must be seen as the means by which God’s justice is satisfied. Yet, in providing such a satisfaction, he demonstrates his love for and mercy toward sinners, who otherwise can do nothing about the guilt of their own sins, as well as their sin in Adam. This is why a number of theologians prefer to speak of the death of Christ in terms of a “satisfaction made by Christ,” rather than as an “atonement,” a term which loses some of the sense that the death of Christ is designed essentially to satisfy the justice of God on behalf of the elect sinners whom he has chosen.
What is indisputable is that Jesus dies upon the cross so that the mercy and love of God toward sinners is openly displayed, and so that divine justice is satisfied. God chose to save a multitude of sinners, which is the reason why the Savior came to suffer and die as the mediator of God's covenant of grace.