This is to say that Christ's death was a vicarious, or substitutionary , atonement. But the Christian Faith is by no means individualistic. It addresses the individual as an individual made in the image of God though a sinner against God, but it also and equally addresses the individual in the corporate or covenantal scheme of God's dealings. In God's plan, the one and the many are equally ultimate. An aspect of this corporate or covenantal character of Christianity is culture .
Culture is the externalization of a society's religion.
It is the decisively religious element of society as it expresses itself in that society's life. This means, among other things, that a Christian society will look different from, say, a secular, Islamic, Satanist, or Buddhist society, and these will produce different cultures. The society anchored in orthodox Christianity will manifest the implications of the doctrine of the atonement, since the atonement is the crux of Christianity. Justice First, a Christian culture, because of its understanding of the atonement, is rooted in Biblical justice . This is simply another way of saying that it is anchored in Biblical law .