The Highway Forums Announcements What's New on The Highway website? "The Atonement: Its Source" by A.W. Pink

“In approaching this solemn and sacred mystery we should do so with awe and reverence, remembering it is rather a subject of faith and adoration than of reasoning and arguing; a sanctuary open indeed to the meek and sorrowful, to the earnest and contrite, but always to be approached with solemnity and godly fear” (A. Saphir). It is written, “The meek will he guide in judgment; and the meek will he teach his way” (Psa. 25:9). The “meek” are they who have no confidence in the flesh, who lean not unto their own understanding, whose dependence is in and upon God alone.

The source of the Atonement or Satisfaction of Christ is God. This of necessity, for only God can produce that which satisfies Himself. Men can no more provide that which will meet the requirements of God’s holiness and justice against their sins than they can create a universe: “None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give a ransom for him” (Psa. 49:7). A perfect law can only be kept by a perfect creature. One who has been rendered impotent by sin is “without strength” (Rom. 5:6) to do anything that is good; therefore deliverance must come from without himself: “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom. 8:3,4).