Just as the sprinkling of blood sealed a particular people in the old covenant (Ex. 24:1–8), so here the inauguration of the new covenant requires Jesus to shed his blood for a particular people. That particular people is the “many” for whom Jesus gives his life as a ransom (Matt. 20:28). The combination of “many” and “forgiveness of sins” here in Matthew 26:28 forges a link back to the angelic announcement in Matthew 1:21 that Jesus “will save his people from their sins.”

The Ultimate Purpose of the Atonement Is the Glory of the Father

Before determining for whom Christ died,1 it is necessary first to establish the ultimate purpose of his death.2 Doing so provides a starting point for evaluating other purposes and benefits of Christ’s death as stated in Scripture. According to the Synoptics and Johannine Literature, the ultimate purpose of Christ’s death is to display the glory of God definitively. The Son glorifies the Father by doing the work of the Father, which is to accomplish effectively the salvation of those whom the Father gave him.

The Gospels repeatedly emphasize that everything Christ does is for the glory of the Father. According to John 1:14, a result of the incarnation is that “we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”3 By alluding to Exodus 33–34, John asserts that the same glory displayed to Moses is now visible in the incarnate Word.4 Just a few verses later John further explains that this same Word in the flesh “has made him [God] known” (John 1:18). The Greek verb used here (ἐξηγέομαι) means “to provide detailed information in a systematic manner—‘to inform, to relate, to tell fully.’”5 The stunning point that John makes is that, as the Word-made-flesh, Jesus Christ is the fullest revelation of God. As such, John intends the reader to see that everything that Jesus says and does is a manifestation of God’s glory.

Once Judas leaves to betray him, Jesus says to his remaining disciples, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once.” By sending the betrayer off, Jesus sets in motion the chain of events that will lead to the ultimate expression of God’s glory—his sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection. Thus the ultimate sign that displays God’s glory is the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ.6

Doing the Work of the Father

Scripture does more than simply present the death of Jesus as glorifying the Father—it sets his death within the larger framework of the Son glorifying the Father by accomplishing the work that the Father gave him to do before he ever took on flesh. The Son agrees to display the glory of the Father by redeeming the people that the Father gave to him.7 As a result, these redeemed people will participate in the intra-Trinitarian communion shared by the Father and the Son from all eternity.

Several passages in the Johannine literature describe this agreement. Let’s consider a particularly important one in the Bread of Life Discourse (John 6:22–58), where Jesus explains the work that the Father gave him to do. After identifying himself as the Bread of Life, Jesus asserts,

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. . . . No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:37–40, 44)

Several times in this section Jesus emphasizes that he has come down from heaven to accomplish the will of the Father. From this passage, the plan established by the Father and the Son may be summarized as follows: (1) the Father gives a specific group of people to the Son; (2) the Son comes down from heaven to do the Father’s will; (3) the Father’s will is for the Son to lose none of them but raise them on the last day; (4) these people come to the Son by looking on him and believing; (5) the Son gives them eternal life; (6) the Son will raise them on the last day; and (7) no one can come to the Son unless the Father who sent the Son draws them. Thus it is the Father’s election of a specific group of people that defines who comes to the Son and is raised on the last day.8

This progression seriously undermines the contention that “the decree of election is logically after the decree of atonement, where also, in fact, it belongs in the working out of the application of salvation. That is to say, the atonement is general, its application particular.”9 According to John 6:37–44, the Father does not plan to send the Son to save everyone, and then only elect some, knowing that apart from such an election none would believe. Such a contention suggests that redemption circumscribes election; in other words, God’s general beneficence to all of mankind ultimately drives the atonement, and election is necessary only because without it none would believe. But John 6 indicates that the Father gives a specific group of people to the Son for whom he then comes to die in order to give them eternal life.

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