“Christ became a Surety for his people from everlasting; engaged to pay their debts, bear their sins, and make satisfaction for them; and was accepted of as such by God his Father, who thenceforward looked at him for payment and satisfaction, and looked at them as discharged, and so they were in his eternal mind; and it is a rule that will hold good, as Maccovius {15} observes, “that as soon as one becomes a surety for another, the other is immediately freed, if the surety be accepted;” which is the case here and it is but a piece of common prudence, when a man has a bad debt, and has good security for it, to look not to the principal debtor, who will never be able to pay him, but to his good bondsman and surety, who is able; and so Dr. Goodwin {16} observes, that God, in the everlasting transaction with Christ, “told him, as it were, that he would look for his debt and satisfaction of him, and that he did let the sinners go free; and so they are in this respect, justified from all eternity.”
Dr. John Gill
18th Century Baptist Theologian
This language of “surety” is not often used any longer in the Western Church. Because it is no longer often used in pulpits in 21st century America and because it is so frequently used above we will spend a paragraph defining this idea of Jesus as our surety.
A surety in bible-talk is someone who is legally responsible for the debt of someone else. In our language a surety would be like someone who co-signs a loan. If the person who has taken the loan out can’t meet the responsibility of the note the person who co-sign the note is legally responsible for the debt in question. In Scripture Judah became surety to Joseph for his brother Benjamin (Gen. 43:9; 44:32). Hebrews 7:22 finds Jesus as the surety for the elect under the new covenant.
“22 by so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant.”
The idea communicated in Hebrews 7 is that Jesus secures the purpose of the better covenant by being the agent who guarantees and secures the promised better covenant in light of our failure. Jesus is our surety inasmuch as by His work God’s law, which the sinful elect broke is honored, and the law’s penal demands fulfilled in our stead by Jesus — our surety.
Now as to Justification the question obtains; “When did the Son become our surety?” Was the Son only received as our Justification upon our regeneration? Was the Son only received as our Justification upon the completion of His redemptive cross work? Or, as we contend was the Son our surety from eternity as a immanent and eternal act of God accepted as the elect’s justification?
The quotes that Gill offers are convincing.
“that as soon as one becomes a surety for another, the other is immediately freed, if the surety be accepted;” — Maccovius
“(the Father) told him (the Son), as it were, that he would look for his debt and satisfaction of him, and that he did let the sinners go free; and so they are in this respect, justified from all eternity.” Thomas Goodwin
