You Don’t Need to Pay for What Christ Already Paid For

There is something deeply rooted in us that wants to pay our own debts. This is ordinarily a good instinct. If we owe money, we should repay it. If we have wronged someone, we should seek to make things right. But when that instinct is carried into our relationship with God, it can become spiritually destructive. We sin, confess it, and yet somehow feel that confession cannot be enough. We carry the guilt around for another week. We deprive ourselves of joy. We replay our failure and quietly suppose that feeling miserable for long enough might make us worthy to approach God again.

We would never call this penance. We are Protestants, after all. But there is such a thing as functional penance. Peter, however, gives us something far better: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).

There may be no more important word in that sentence for the troubled conscience than once.

Once for Sins

Peter was writing to Christians who were themselves suffering. That matters. He has been telling them that they may suffer precisely because they are doing what is right. “It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil” (v. 17). Then he points immediately to Christ.

“For Christ also suffered.”

Our suffering does not mean that Christ has abandoned us. Sometimes suffering is precisely where following Christ leads. But there is one kind of suffering the Christian will never have to endure. We will never bear the judicial punishment of God for our sins, because Christ has already borne it.

He suffered once for sins.

The New Testament repeatedly stresses this finality. Hebrews says that Christ “offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins” and then “sat down at the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12). The Old Testament priests remained standing because their work was never finished. Sacrifice followed sacrifice. Christ offered himself and sat down.

Nothing remains to be added.

This was one of the great truths recovered at the Reformation. The Reformers understood that the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice was not an obscure theological question. It touched the conscience of every Christian. If Christ’s work is insufficient, something must still be supplied. But if Christ has offered the perfect sacrifice for sin, then the sinner’s confidence rests entirely outside himself.

John Calvin put it memorably: “Christ by his death has purchased life for us.” The Christian therefore does not look within himself for something with which to supplement Christ. We look away from ourselves to the One who stood in our place.

Peter could hardly make the exchange clearer: “the righteous for the unrighteous.”

He was righteous. We were unrighteous.

He had no guilt of his own for which to suffer. We had nothing but guilt to bring.

And yet the righteous One took the place of the unrighteous.

That is the gospel.

Our Protestant Penance

Yet even Christians who confess this doctrine can struggle to live as though it were true.

Perhaps you have committed a sin that particularly troubles you. You have confessed it to God. Where appropriate, you have confessed it to those you wronged. You have repented and sought to turn from it. Yet months later you continue prosecuting the case against yourself.

Or perhaps hardship comes into your life and you immediately begin searching your past. Maybe God is making me pay for that.

We should certainly allow suffering to search us. Scripture teaches us to examine ourselves, receive the Father’s discipline, and repent where repentance is needed. But the Christian must never confuse a Father’s discipline with a Judge’s condemnation. They are not the same thing.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

Not less condemnation.

Not delayed condemnation.

No condemnation.

God may discipline his children, but he does not demand payment twice for the same debt. The punishment that purchased our peace fell upon Christ.

Spurgeon once described faith as “the eye which looks to Jesus.” That is precisely what the guilty conscience needs. Our instinct is to keep looking inward. Have I repented enough? Have I grieved enough? Have I changed enough? Do I feel forgiven enough? The gospel keeps directing our eyes elsewhere.

Look to Christ.

Your feelings did not atone for your sins. Your tears did not atone for your sins. Your improved behaviour did not atone for your sins. Your promise to do better next time did not atone for your sins.

Christ suffered for sins.

Once.

That He Might Bring Us to God

But Peter does not stop with the payment of our debt. His sentence moves toward something even greater: “that he might bring us to God.”

That is the destination of the gospel.

We sometimes speak about salvation chiefly in terms of what we escape. We are saved from judgment, condemnation, guilt, and hell. All of that is gloriously true. But salvation is not merely evacuation from danger. Christ died to bring us somewhere, or rather, to bring us to Someone.

God himself is the great gift of the gospel.

The sinner’s fundamental problem is not merely that he feels guilty. It is that sin has alienated him from the God for whom he was made. We were created to know God, love God, worship God, and enjoy God. Sin drove us from his presence. Christ came to bring us home.

This means that when the Christian sins, our instinct should not be to hide from God until we feel respectable again. That is Adam among the trees of Eden. The gospel teaches us to run in the opposite direction.

We go to God because Christ has brought us to God.

We confess freely because our acceptance does not depend upon pretending we have no sin. We repent seriously because grace does not make sin trivial. But having confessed our sin, we do not attempt to construct another sacrifice out of our misery.

There is already a sacrifice.

There is already a righteous One.

There is already blood sufficient for sinners.

And there is already a way into the presence of God.

So, Christian, repent when you sin. Make restitution when you have wronged someone. Receive the Father’s correction when it comes. Never use the finished work of Christ as an excuse to make peace with sin.

But do not try to pay for what Christ has already paid for.

The righteous One suffered for the unrighteous.

Once.

And he did it to bring you to God.