Because of the reality of the manhood of Christ, the wholeness of his human nature and the incarnation, the atoning mediation takes place within the human being of the incarnate Savior in the ontological depths of the human and creaturely existence which he assumed from us in order to save us. So that here, creation and redemption come together. That is to say, the act of atoning redemption does not take place outside of Christ, between Christ and us sinners, to some sort of external, judicial or moral relation but falls within our being which Christ has appropriated and made his own.

Now this is the point of the greatest importance: Atonement is not an act done by God simply upon man. But certainly an act of God but done as man and therefore made to arise out of man’s being and nature as in a fundamental way, man’s act toward God and in this sense, it is priestly atonement.

-From Audio Lectures by Thomas F. Torrance