What is the concept of the vicarious atonement?

Christ has made atonement: God is satisfied and glorified by His work (propitiation), and ‘our’ sins have been born by Him (substitution).

(*By substitution is meant that the Lord Jesus died in the room and stead of His people — that He took their place, bore their sins, and endured on the cross the just judgment of God — all that was due to them on account of their sins.)

(*By substitution is meant that the Lord Jesus died in the room and stead of His people - that He took their place, bore their sins, and endured on the cross the just judgment of God - all that was due to them on account of their sins.)

A substitute is someone who takes your place. On the cross, Christ took the place of those who believe in Him. The righteous suffered for the unrighteous (1 Peter 3:18). He bore ‘our’ sins (Is.53:12 and 1 Peter 2:24). By His stripes we were healed (1 Peter 2:24).

All that was needful, not merely to meet our condition, but to satisfy His claims, vindicate His majesty and glorify His name, He Himself has provided in the atoning death of His own Son. Thus He is satisfied. Hence He can preach peace to us by Jesus Christ, Lord of all. The spotless Christ was judged on the cross in our place. God hid His face from that blessed One, turned away His countenance, closed His ear and forsook Him for the moment. Why? Because He was delivered for our offenses. God forsook Him that He might receive us. He treated Him as we deserved in order that He might treat us as He deserved. Jesus took our place in death and judgment, that we might take His place in life, righteousness and everlasting glory.

Anxious reader, weigh this great fact. What was it that brought the precious Saviour to the cross? What brought Him down to the dust of death? Was it not our offences? Truly so. "He was delivered for our offences." He was nailed to the cursed tree for us. He represented us on the cross. He was our Substitute, in all the full value and deep significance of that word. He took our place and was treated, in every respect, as we deserved to be treated. The hand of infinite justice dealt with our sins — all our sins, at the cross. Jesus made Himself responsible for all our offences, our iniquities, our transgressions, our liabilities, all that was or ever could be against us — He, blessed be His peerless and adorable name! — made himself answerable for all, and died in our stead, under the full weight of our sins. He died, the just for the unjust.

Jesus our Lord has died. But He did not die for Himself, but for us. Our offences were in view. He was the Substitute, and assuming all the liabilities incurred, He was delivered up to judgment and death on their account.

"For our offences": Not as a martyr merely, but as a sacrificial victim, He stood in our stead. He took upon Himself the awful load of our guilt. He charged Himself upon Calvary's tree with the full weight of our broken responsibilities, and the dread liabilities resulting therefrom. He stood there representatively for us. Each believer may say "He went into death as my Representative beneath the load of my offences."

The meaning of atonement is to cover, and David spoke of the blessedness of the man whose sin is covered. Nothing but the blood-shedding of a spotless victim of infinite worth could cover the countless sins of those whom God has forgiven. How wonderful that God Himself provided the spotless victim, at infinite cost to Himself, in the Son of His bosom. None but the Son of God could take away our sins from before the eye of God, but this He did when "His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree … and once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God" (1 Peter 2:24; 3:18).

Here is the way in which the whole question may be divinely set. Sin entails suffering, the world is full of it because sin dominates the earth. Suffering beyond the grave is entailed for those who die unconverted. Why? Because sin entails suffering. Why did Christ suffer? He suffered for sin. It is true in a certain sense that He suffered for righteousness because He was in an unrighteous world, there was a perfect man in the midst of sinful men, and they hated Him and His Father and they put Him out by way of the malefactors gibbet, the cross. But when He was thus put out by the action of sinful men something else happened, He offered Himself as the great atoning sacrifice, what Scripture calls the propitiation, that is to say, He said, in effect, ‘Let me be the One who bears the judgment and the wrath.’ How could He do it? He could do it on this universal scale because of who He really was. Had He not been the mighty Son of God, had He not been God manifest in the flesh, He could not have done it. What a wonderful thing! The God who acts in righteousness and who has to bring in judgment upon sin came in the Person of His Son into manhood to bear the judgment!