What did the death of Christ accomplish? Depending on the context of the question, there are a number of correct answers. Ultimately, however, there was one single purpose.
Whether one thinks of the work of Christ as accomplishing reconciliation or propitiation or penal satisfaction or redemption or justification or forgiveness of sins or liberation, the aim of them all is summed up in the ultimate gift of God himself. First Peter 3:18 is the clearest statement: “Christ also suffered once for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” Ephesians 2: 13–18 is the next most explicit statement of this truth. “In Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blod of Christ . . . . That he might . . . Reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross. . . . . For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” The ultimate aim of the blood of Christ is that we be “brought near” to God and “have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
—John Piper, God Is the Gospel (Crossway, 2005), 120–121.
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