Introduction

One thing I really like about reading the works of the great reformer, John Calvin, is the nuance he brings to the table when he writes about theology and doctrine. It’s something that we, his descendants, often neglect: the importance of nuance in theology.

We really need to read more Calvin today—especially Gospel preachers who talk about the Substitutionary death of Jesus Christ.

Reading this old dead Reformer would help us in correcting the misconceptions that some people make when they hear about what happened at the cross—the Trinity splitting in two; the Father and Christ pitted against each other; the cessation of Christ’s Godhood on the cross, and many more. It would also prevent us as well from devaluing the work of Christ on the cross, which many have done in the past.

Background

This article was borne out of an issue that happened last July of 2017. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer City Church in New York, published a Facebook post about Christ “losing the Father’s love,”

If you see Jesus losing the infinite love of the Father out of His infinite love for you, it will melt your hardness.

A lot of people, sufficient to say, took issue. But the matter was somewhat clarified when Tim Keller wrote an article on Derek Rishmawy’s blog, Reformedish. Soon, Reformation 21 and The Calvinist International posted articles intending to discuss with better detail what Keller originally stated.

Tim Keller was able to clarify his tweet, saying that Christ suffered in his humanity (body and soul) the wrath of God, while God continued to find favor with him. Follow-up articles by Steven Wedgeworth and Scott Cook soon followed, both emphasizing different theological discussions on Christ’s atoning death. We’ll go over these later as we discuss what Calvin believes happened at the cross.

What Happened at the Cross?

Now, what can we learn about what happened on the cross from the works of John Calvin? In what way did Christ suffer? In what way did he “Descend to hell,” to use the Apostle’s Creed term?

We can learn many things, but we can summarize them into three statements:

1. There was in no way a rupture in the Trinity.

For Calvin, in no way did the Father hate Christ. We have to do away with caricatures of the cross that show an angry Father punishing his sheepish Son because while the truth of that lay in scripture, its emphasis is incredibly nuanced.

He emphasizes God’s abounding, eternal love for his Son, even on the cross. In his commentary on the book of Galatians, Calvin surmises that:

“[Christ] could not cease to be the object of his Father’s love, and yet he endured his wrath. For how could he reconcile the Father to us, if he had incurred his hatred and displeasure? We conclude, that he “did always those things that pleased (John 8:29) his Father.” (Calvin’s commentary on Galatians)

So Christ, on the cross, did not suffer any break with the Father in his divinity.

But that forces us to ask the question: are Evangelicals wrong when they say God punished Jesus?

Certainly not, as our quote above demonstrates. Christ, in some way, endures the Father’s wrath due to sinners.

2. Christ did not suffer an ordinary execution and death. There was a far deeper pain on the cross than just being hanged on a tree.

The goal of Jesus was to free God’s elect by suffering in their place as the crucified messiah. His blood was the ransom-price of our redemption.

Because he the redeemer of our body and soul, there was more to Christ’s death than just his physical sufferings.

“Nothing would have been achieved if Jesus Christ had simply endured bodily death. It was necessary for him to feel the severity of God’s judgment, that he might step between and, by satisfying God’s wrath, somehow prevent it from falling upon us.” (Calvin’s Institutes, p.250, Robert White ed. Alternative: II.16.10)

If Jesus merely endured bodily death at the hands of criminals—if the Lord did not “lay the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6) on him, then we would not have salvation. There was a necessity for Christ to “become a curse for us,” (Galatians 3:13) so that he could satisfy God’s wrath, and God could demonstrate his justice while being justifier. (Romans 3:25-26)

Christ’s death was more than just a Martyr’s death. There was an imputation of sin involved.

Calvin explains that Christ:

“…placed himself in our room, and thus became a sinner, and subject to the curse, not in himself indeed, but in us, yet in such a manner, that it became necessary for him to occupy our place.” (Calvin’s Commentary on Galatians)

Christ experiences God’s wrath in this manner: God lays on him the wickedness of us all (Isaiah 53:6).

“The Son of God, being clear and free of all wrong, clothed himself with the shame and disgrace of our iniquities, and in return covered us with his purity.”

“We can now clearly see what the prophet means when he says that ‘all our iniquities were laid upon him’ (Isaiah 53:6). That is, wishing to wipe away sin’s stains, he first took them into himself in order that they might be imputed to him.“

(Calvin’s Institutes, p.247)

We now know from Calvin that Christ did not suffer merely a tragic death at the hands of unjust people. But we have yet to know the price of our redemption, and how far the free grace of God in Jesus Christ went to rescue us from the penalty of our sin.

3. Christ “descended into hell.”

Christ’s descent into hell is not a descent into the hellish afterlife. To Calvin, it is the spiritual agony Jesus endured at the hand of God for us on the cross.

This causes us to ask the question: how can Christ truly endure the wrath of God if God did not cease to love Jesus Christ?

We can learn from Calvin that these pains of hell were in view to his human experience, having our sins imputed to him. Note that this was a real, true, feeling of spiritual pain and suffering generated by taking the place of a sinner.

Calvin writes:

“But after explaining what Christ endured in the sight of man, the Creed appropriately adds the invisible and incomprehensible judgment which he endured before God, to teach us that not only was the body of Christ given up as the price of redemption, but that there was a greater and more excellent price—that he bore in his soul the tortures of condemned and ruined man.” (Calvin’s Institutes, II.16.10)

In his humanity, along with the excruciating sensation of being suspended up in the air, nails digging into his hands, and the weight of his body crushing him, Christ had to deal with the torments of hell we deserved to bear in our soul because of our sins. This is why he cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

“And certainly no abyss can be imagined more dreadful than to feel that you are abandoned and forsaken of God, and not heard when you invoke him, just as if he had conspired your destruction. To such a degree was Christ dejected, that in the depth of his agony he was forced to exclaim, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”” (Institutes II.16.11)

On the cross, all of our deeds were in view, having been imputed to Christ. And Christ in his human body and soul suffered the pains of hell that were reserved for us. This is not a mere physical suffering wrought out by the crucifixion. There was a spiritual pain and terror Christ felt on the cross that was properly reserved sinners who transgressed his law. In all respects, the atonement was truly in our place.

Conclusion

Therefore we have to make a distinction in our understanding of the cross, so that people won’t consider us heretics for believing the Father caused the Son to endure his wrath. Calvin’s nuanced approach takes to consideration the inseparable Ontology of the Trinity and yet the depth of anguish that Christ took, “forsaken” at Calvary. It also takes into consideration the two natures of Christ, and their union in his person. Scott Cook, supporting Tim Keller’s article, quotes the The Westminster Confession of Faith on the operations of Christ’s two natures:

“Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet, by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature.” (WCF VIII.7).

This post reminds us that there was no need for Jesus to be ontologically separated from the Father. God’s wrath is not aimed at the divine—it is reserved for sinful humanity. Thus, Christ endured the pains of hell in his body and soul.

This short post should remind us that the cross is not that the Father got mad at the Son for us. That’s a terrible caricature. For Calvin, the Father loved the Son, and delivered him up to experience the pains and tortures of hell for us, so we can be delivered from our sins.

There’s more to Calvin’s view on the cross than can be said in this essay. This isn’t exhaustive. Check out Steven Wedgeworth’s Christ’s Cry of Abandonment for a much more detailed view of Calvin’s nuances.

But now, it is sufficient to contemplate, with Calvin, with Paul, with Isaiah, with Moses, and with all the saints of the past, to “understand aright how much our salvation cost the Son of God.”