QUESTION: What is the difference between redemption and atonement?
ANSWER: Atonement is the act itself before God, and is the ground of redemption. Man is redeemed by the atoning work of Christ. The one is the act, and the other is the result.
In the first three hours on the cross, Christ's suffering was from man's hand, and in the last three hours His suffering was from God's hand. We can immediately see the mighty difference. From the sixth hour to the ninth, there was darkness over all the land. Up to that, there had been communion with God in all that He had endured on the cross, and He was pleading with God.
Psa. 69 says, "I looked for some to take pity, but there was none." At the last there was no God to appeal to—He had withdrawn. He had not only withdrawn, but was visiting judgment on the Lord Jesus. As the Lord drank the cup of death on the cross, it was in the realization that God had forsaken Him, because sin was on Him. But not only that, for that is general, but God was laying on Him the stripes by which we are healed. How well may we say there is nothing like the cross, and there never will be in time or eternity—heaven or earth.