The great Baptist preacher Paul Washer recalled in his 2016 Shepherd’s Conference sermon how a man hanging on a tree, can save a number of sinners from an eternity of damnation. He famously replied that Christ outweighs them all.

At first, you might feel like this is not an adequate response and leaves a lot to be desired. However, this more than adequate response is not outside of Reformed understandings of the atonement. In fact, in an unpackaged and encapsulated way, Paul Washer expresses the historical teaching about the infinite worth of Christ’s death.

The Value of Punishments

There are plentiful theologians that address this issue. One of them is Charles Hodge. Charles Hodge in his Systematic Theology teaches us how Christ’s death satisfies the justice of God. He first distinguishes between the kind of punishment and the value of the punishment. A punishment might vary in kind or duration, but it must have an inherent value proportionate to the crime. Hodge writes:

The penalty for theft is not the restitution of the thing stolen, or its exact pecuniary (financial) value. It is generally something of an entirely different nature. It may be stripes or imprisonment. The punishment for an assault is not the infliction of the same degree of injury on the person of the offender. So of slander, breach of trust, treason, and all other criminal offences. The punishment, for the offence is something different from the evil which the offender himself inflicted. All that justice demands in penal satisfaction is that it should be a real satisfaction, and not merely something graciously accepted as such. It must bear an adequate proportion to the crime committed. It may be different in kind, but it must have inherent value. To fine a man a few pence for wanton homicide would be a mockery; but death or imprisonment for life would be a real satisfaction to justice.

Therefore, Christ on the cross died as a sufficient satisfaction, because of the inherent worthiness of his sacrifice. On this Hodge writes:

…what He did and suffered was a real adequate compensation for the penalty remitted and the benefits conferred. His sufferings and death were adequate to accomplish all the ends designed by the punishment of the sins of men. He satisfied justice. He rendered it consistent with the justice of God that the sinner should be justified. But He did not suffer either in kind or degree what sinners would have suffered. In value, his sufferings infinitely transcended theirs. The death of an eminently good man would outweigh the annihilation of a universe of insects. So the humiliation, sufferings, and death of the eternal Son of God immeasurably transcended in worth and power the penalty which a world of sinners would have endured. (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Book 1)

Mountains and Molehills

So Christ’s punishment on the cross (body and soul) is sufficient because Christ’s death is of more value than the eternal punishment of sinners. Or, as Paul Washer puts it: