IS THE SUFFERING OF CHRIST A PAYMENT TO GOD FOR OUR DEBT OF SIN?
An answer, the answer to the above, is furnished us by the Master Himself, who taught His disciples to say, " Our Father,... forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (Matt. 6:12).
If a debt is paid, it is not forgiven: if forgiven, it assuredly is not paid. Unvarying obedience to God we all ought to have rendered. Having failed in that we are defaulters, debtors who have not discharged what was incumbent on them. Debts τὰ ὀφειλῄματα are unpaid, which we cannot discharge; for no amount of obedience in the future could make up for failure in the past. Nor can any amount of suffering borne by ourselves or another, pay the debt. Obedience only could have done that; hence there is a confusion of thought in the question. We were debtors to God, that is clear. Christ has suffered, that is certain. But His sufferings have not paid our debts, though by them, to use the language of man, He has paid for His people the penalty. The question then confounds the debts and the penalty.
Further, the Lord teaches us by parables that the debts are not paid, but forgiven. The disciples were told to pray for forgiveness: the parables assure us they could receive it. The parable of the servant who owed 10,000 talents (Matt. 18:23-35), is clear upon the point. The parable of the two debtors, uttered in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:41-43), leaves no room for doubt on the question. Had the king's servant's debt been paid, the king could not have exercised his prerogative of mercy in forgiving it. The king's heart, too, would never have been known, nor would the character of the relentless debtor have been manifested. For had the debt been paid, the former debtor might righteously have demanded payment of the three hundred pence due to him from his fellow-servant. Righteousness would have reigned, but grace on the part of the creditor would have been unknown. How, too, would the king have looked for his debtor to act in mercy, and forgive the debt that was owing to him, if the king had not been satisfied himself without payment of his debt by some one, whether the actual debtor or another? The teaching, too, for which that parable is introduced must fall to the ground, if the hypothesis be correct, that Christ has paid our. debts to God. For the parable was spoken to enforce the full forgiveness by each one of his brother's sins, as often as there might be occasion for it. We are to forgive as God in Christ has forgiven us (Eph. 4:32, Col. 3:13). God has acted in grace towards us; we ought to act in grade towards each other.
But another consideration conies in. If any one professedly takes Christian ground as forgiven by God, and yet persistently refuses to act in similar grace towards his brother, the Father will ultimately deal with that person as a debtor to him of that which has never been paid (Matt. 18:35, see also vi. 15). For the absence of grace in the heart will evidence that the person so lacking has never really been a subject of divine grace.
Again, had the debt been paid by another, gratitude to the one who paid it might have filled the debtor's heart. But why should love to him, to whom the debt was due, be called out by the debtor being freed from his creditor? What was it, however, that filled the poor woman's heart in the house of Simon the Pharisee? She loved much, said the Lord; and why? Because she was forgiven much. The strength of her love was the evidence of the great grace shown to her. "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much." Her love flowed from forgiveness enjoyed. Forgiveness was not the consequence of her love.
On another occasion the Lord by His teaching inculcated the same truth: "Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew them, think ye that they were sinners (literally debtors, ὀφειλέται) above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, nay; but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish " (Luke 13:4,5). No thought have we here of His paying the debt, but of repentance, which is closely connected with forgiveness. The Lord Jesus, then, never hints at the payment of our debts to God by His sufferings.
What a loss, too, it would have been, if that had been the case! Exemption for the debtor from punishment would of course have been secured; gratitude, too, to Him who paid the debts might have filled our hearts; but no man could ever have known in his heart what it is to respond in the feeblest way to the love and grace of God. God, as He is, would never have been known to us. Was He then indifferent to our defaulting condition? By no means. Did He think lightly of the sinner's failure in not rendering Him full, perfect, unvarying obedience? No; for, unless Christ had died and made atonement, no sinner could have been forgiven, and we should have all been, to use the language of the parable, on the way to being delivered to the tormentors, till we should pay all that was due; and this never could be done; because no amount of obedience in the future, from one who ought always to have obeyed in everything, could ever make up for failure in the past.
What, then, has the Lord Jesus done for us by His sufferings and death? He has done things of inestimable value. By His precious blood having been shed, God is manifested to be righteous in forgiving, and justifying the ungodly (Rom. 3:25). He too, has borne our sins in His own body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24); our judgment He has borne that we should not bear it, and by His life given for us we are ransomed (Matt. 20:28), and shall be saved from wrath through Him (Rom. 5:9). Thus we are delivered from that condition in which we were as sinners before God. Propitiation, substitution, redemption, all have been accomplished by His death for us. We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins (Eph. 1:7); God is righteous, not in receiving us because another has paid our debts, but in forgiving us, because His Son has died on the cross to glorify Him and to save sinners. Thus God is manifested in a full way. He is light; so He could not think lightly of the debts. He is love; so He sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10). Christ too, is manifested as the obedient One, even to death, who could in infinite love give Himself for His people, and by His death lay the ground for the character of God to be displayed, and His grace to be made known, and enjoyed. [Much speaking to no purpose on this subject might have been saved by those who took part in the "Discussion Meeting," at Stockholm, in August 1876, if they had had the scriptural distinction in their mind between debt and penalty, as given in this paper.-En.]
The doctrine of the Reformation put forth the view that Christ died to reconcile His Father to us-a statement every way erroneous, confounding the name of relationship in blessing with God in His nature; and teaching, what Scripture does not, that Christ's work was to reconcile God to us, to change His mind But others have used this to deny real propitiation and atonement.
" God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." He did not need to have His mind changed. But a righteous and holy God could not pass over sin as nothing, and if God so loved, the Son of man must be lifted up. God was not (as a heathen god) one who had to be propitiated that he might not be against us; but He did require that righteousness and holiness should be maintained in the universe. I think you will find that the New Testament never says God was propitiated, but you will find Christ was an ἱλασμός for our sins (1 John). And that Christ was a priest ἱλάοχεσθαι τὰς ἁμαρτίας. It is not, as in Homer, αἶθρον ίλάσχεσθαι. We have the imperative in Luke 18 ἱλάσθητι " Be gracious." We have never God for the object of ἱλάσχομαι in the New Testament; but we have sins; and it seems to me to
set the point on very clear ground.