The Meaning of Vicarious Atonement

It needs to be stated that all evangelical theologians are united in their agreement that Christ suffered in His earthly life.  However, the disagreement lies as to the purpose and the accomplishments of those life sufferings.  The debatable question is whether Christ’s sufferings in life provide substitution for sin, as did His sufferings in death on the cross.

The issue could be stated as a dispensational disagreement for the simply reason that dispensationalists usually hold to a non-atoning view and non-dispensationalists hold to a vicarious atonement view.  In actuality, an individual’s understanding of the purpose of Christ’s life sufferings and active obedience to the law is directly related to his accepting or rejecting covenant theology.

One of the basic premises in the theological structure of covenant theology is the belief that Christ’s active obedience to the Law during His earthly life was as substitutionary as His passive obedience in death.  The covenant theologian understands Christ’s death and sufferings as passive obedience, whereas Christ actively obeyed the law.  At the cross, Christ did not respond to His enemies; it was a passive obedience in which He was a victim at the cross.

The covenant theologian thus argues that Christ was subjected to the law in order to redeem those who are under its curse (Gal. 4:5) and He learned obedience in the things which He suffered (Heb. 4:8).  On the basis of those statements, Christ could justify man by His active obedience (cf. Rom. 4:19).  Furthermore, although man’s own obedience to the law could not be used as a way of justification, man is savable by the imputed obedience of the Messiah (1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 3:9).  Christ’s active and passive obedience to both the prescriptive and penal requirements of God’s law is imputed to the sinner.  The removal of man’s guilt and his securing of a right standing in the presence of God results, not by his own personal works of the law, but only through the imputation of Christ’s righteousness (in other words, Christ’s perfect obedience, both active and passive, to every demand of God’s law).

The fact that Christ obeyed the Law perfectly and suffered greatly during His earthly life is not denied or even under dispute by dispensationalists.  The issues under discussion are the purpose of Christ’s life sufferings and what was actually accomplished by Christ’s active obedience to the Law.  Scripture simply does not teach that the life sufferings of Christ were vicarious.  Contrary to the vicarious atonement view, Scripture stresses Christ’s death alone as a substitution for sin and sinners.

Christ’s sinless life demonstrated that He was qualified to be the sinner’s substitute, but He atoned for sin only on the cross, where He became a curse (Gal 3:13).  The vicarious atonement view of Christ’s active obedience in His life as substitutionary is the natural result of believing that God promised Adam the ability to earn eternal life (righteousness) for himself and his posterity if he would obey God’s command not to eat of the forbidden fruit.  Adam, of course, did not obey God’s command or law.  On the other hand, Christ, the last Adam, came and did in His life what the first Adam failed to do, that is, to earn righteousness (eternal life) for His own.  For those who hold to a vicarious atonement, the death of Christ was not the only basis on which God made substitution for man’s sin.  Covenant Theology in general believes that through His active obedience the Savior carried His people beyond the point where Adam was before he fell to give them a claim to eternal life.

Dispensationalists do not view the theological covenant of works as promising Adam and his posterity eternal life for obedience.  God promised Adam death for disobedience; there is nothing to indicate that God promised eternal life for obedience.  Furthermore, Adam already possessed creaturely perfection as he came from the creative hand of God.  According to Genesis 1:31, all that God made was “very good” (including man).  Covenant Theology teaches that the way of salvation before the Fall differed from the way of salvation after the Fall.  Certainly, the vicarious atoning view is a strange doctrine coming from those who falsely accuse dispensationalists of believing in more than one way of salvation.

The non-atoning view holds that Christ’s life sufferings are the verification of His claims.  His life sufferings demonstrated Himself as the substitute for sin.  This view would strongly deny that Christ was earning righteousness.  The atonement is substitutionary in that it is objectively directed toward God and the propitiation of His holy character and demands upon the sinner.  It is vicarious in the sense that Christ is the substitute who bears the punishment rightly due sinners, their guilt being imputed to Him in such a way that He representatively bore their punishment.  The non-atoning view is in accordance with the general idea of sacrifices in the Old Testament and is explicitly taught in the New Testament in such passages as John 1:29, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 3:13, Hebrews 9:28, and 1 Peter 2:24.  Furthermore, the non-atoning view is sustained by the use of such prepositions as “peri,” “huper,” and “anti,” which in numerous contexts support the idea of a divine substitute for the sinner in the person of Christ on the cross.