It may be helpful to notice briefly some prevalent speculations of our day which work banefully against the truth, and to the injury of souls.
We need not dwell on the virtual Socinianism which reduces the death of Christ to an example of love, or to a fidelity which stopped not short of martyrdom. His suffering for us was as unique as His person. Many have lived in devoted love, many have died martyrs, and on a cross too. How comes it that not one suffered as Christ, that He alone is an object of faith or means of peace? Because He, and He only, suffered for our sins. Quite as low do they go who make His death only a necessary step to His resurrection for assuring men of a future life and fresh pardon, either on God's prerogative, or on man's repentance, or on both. It is clear that, for vindicating God and the conscience, any theory of the kind scarce goes beyond heathenism. Such men neglect the true light which now shines with fullness of love in Christ. Righteousness and grace are alike lost by these thoughts; and Christ, far from being “all,” is reduced comparatively, and really indeed, to nothing for atonement.
(1) Beyond these in apearance is the scheme that, as our Lord ever went about doing good in grace and mercy, so His sufferings were endured up to death as a perfect manifestation of God in man. So Mr. Maurice on “Sacrifice,” who regarded the Son of God as the ideal man, the true root and eternal anti-type of humanity. But this is no more than philosophizing on Christ. As it obliterates the guilt and ruin of fallen man, so it accounts in no true sense or divine way for the sufferings of Christ at the hand of God. Guilt on the one hand is ignored, and God the Judge of sin on the other. Hence the infinite work of Christ is viewed merely on the side of love and self-surrender, not at all in the light of His suffering once for sins, that He might bring the believer to God. Thus the cross is regarded in its most superficial aspect. The judgment of God therein is wholly absent from the theory, no less than the deliverance and new status of the believer as identified with Christ risen from the dead, and seated at God's right hand in heaven.
It is true that Christ felt the sins of men with that anguish, with which only a perfectly pure and holy One could feel the sins of others, along with perfect grace toward themselves in His heart. But sympathy is not what is wanted with sins, or even with sinners as such. Suffering for sins can alone avail, and that by One Who is adequate to meet God in all His holy feeling and righteous dealing about sin. Sinners need a sufficient Savior, and a divinely acceptable salvation.
Again, union does not mean Christ becoming partaker of man's nature, though this was essential to save souls. The faithful now are united by and in the Spirit to Him glorified on high. The union of mankind as such with Christ is a fiction destructive of truth and holiness.
(2) The late Dr. J. McLeod Campbell, in his book on “The Nature of the Atonement,” betrays the like ruinous departure from revealed truth. He contends for Christ's “condemnation of sin in His own Spirit” as atoning, not His blood-shedding. Scriptural atonement is given up for one of purely holy and loving sentiment, altogether short of, and differing from, what the cross really means. For Christ is supposed to have atoned for men by offering up to God a perfect confession for their sins, and an adequate repentance! for them, with which divine justice is satisfied! as a full expiation made for human guilt! “Fatherliness in God originating our salvation: the Son of God accomplishing that salvation by the revelation of the Father.”
Here again, Christ suffering for sins, the Just for the unjust, has no true place, any more than the righteousness of God in answer to Christ's infinite suffering. It is a strange and vague substitution of Christ making a confession, “Which must, in its own nature, have been a perfect amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.” It thus evidently leaves out God arrayed against our sins laid on Jesus. All admit the love which brought Him down and carried Him through to the uttermost. But what was the meaning of the cup which His Father gave Him to drink? What of His praying in agony that, if it were possible, this cup might pass from Him? What, still more, of the cry on the cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” These were no merely sympathetic woes, which last He never prayed should pass from Him, but His unutterable suffering—yea, beyond all our thoughts—at God's hand, when His necessary hatred and judgment of sin broke forth even on His own Son made sin for us. Nothing but vicarious suffering for us from God can account for the profound feelings and language of our Lord when delivered for our offenses, and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. It is allowed also that Christ in grace took up our sins and confessed them as His own, in His heart substitution for us. But to say that all the elements of a perfect contrition and repentance except! the personal consciousness of sin (the very element essential to repentance and contrition) were in Him, is to mistake the word of God, and foist in a fable.
As contrary to scripture is it to say that thus was accorded to divine justice that which is its due, and which could alone satisfy it. Was it not immeasurably more to be forsaken of God? This Christ suffered for us, if we believe Himself, on the cross. He poured out His soul an offering for sin. Isaiah says nothing short of this could satisfy divine justice, nor an adequate expiation be, unless our guilt were righteously borne as it was in His cross. Here again is the same swamping of necessary truth which characterizes the theory of Mr. Maurice. Like his it also blots out the essential difference which faith creates, Substitution is wholly gone in these efforts to show nothing but divine love to everybody. If in these solutions there were any adequate answer to the first goat, there is no recognition whatever of what the second conveys; but even as to the first, how poor is the notion of sympathy in the presence of God's judgment of sin in Christ's cross!
(3) Another human key has been offered whereby to escape the offense of the cross. The late Mr. Robertson (of Brighton) labored to make out that “Christ simply came into collision with the world's evil and bare the penalty of that daring. He approached the whirling wheel, and was torn in pieces. He laid His hand on the cockatrice's den, and its fangs pierced Him. Such is the law which governs the conflict with evil. It can be crushed only by suffering from it. The Son of Man, who puts His naked foot on the serpent's head, crushed it; but the fang goes into His heel.” Here again the same irreparable want appears. God is in none of these thoughts. It is not suffering for sins, but suffering from sinners only. The judgment of God is left out, sin being unjudged; and the grace of God does not appeal to or for sinners. How irreverent also to think and speak of Christ bearing the penalty of His “daring”! How grievous the lowering and the loss of truth which reduces all in Christ to “law"! It is a mere victim overcome of evil, instead of a divine sacrifice for us which overcame it with good, but at infinite cost to Himself even from God. Jehovah bruising Him becomes a mere figure, instead of being the deepest reality. Scripture is plain that His sacrifice on the cross was not merely by God's foreknowledge, but by His determinate counsel. Whatever part the Jews played in heart, whatever the lawless hands of Gentiles did, after all it was that which God's hand and God's counsel determined before to be done. “Jehovah laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” Such was the baptism with which He must be baptized; such the cup His Father had given Him to drink. Thus only can we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins; as God set Him forth a propitiation through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness. Thereby is God just and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus.
In his Expository Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Mr. R. joins others of the school in basing all on the Incarnation, as if God then reconciled the world unto Himself and Himself to man. “Consequently everyone is to be looked at now, not merely as a man, but as a brother in Christ!” The passage on the contrary declares that, whatever God's loving attitude and overtures in the Incarnate Word, man was so evil and hostile that there was no way to bring him to God, short of His making Christ sin for us that we might become His righteousness in Him (2 Cor. 5).
(4) Hence all the efforts of such men as Dr. Young in the “Life and Light of Men” are vain. “The Jews sacrificed Christ—sacrificed Him to their vile passions; but as certainly (!) He did not mean to atone for their sins (!!), or to tender satisfaction to divine justice (!!!).” It is not a question of Jews or Gentiles, but of God's purposes and means. All scripture from beginning to end reveals the way of sacrifice to be not Abel's only, but divine. Of all that was done in faith the foundation lay before God only in the atoning death of the Lord Jesus. His inward sufferings were as perfect as real; but it is sheer unbelief to abuse them to the denial that God made Christ, Who knew no sin, to be sin for us. How false and bold then to say that “a true salvation is not escape from the consequence of sin, present or remote”! Undoubtedly salvation by Christ is far fuller; but it is rebellion against God to deny that remission of sins is included. “Without shedding of blood is no remission:” so says the N. T., as well as the Old.
Similar remarks apply to Dr. Bushnell's treatise on “Vicarious Sacrifice,” and “Forgiveness and Law.” His is another variety of atonement by moral power. What can be worse than to say that, in Christ made a curse for us, “the meaning of the expression is exhausted, when Christ is said simply to come into the corporate state of evil, and to bear it with us—faithful unto death for our recovery”? Is this to give “His life a ransom for many”? “He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him.” He bore the penalty of our sin, and by His blood purged our conscience to serve the living God. It is to reverse the truth, if His aim and way were, as Dr. B. says, “to bring us out of our sins themselves, and so out of their penalties.” Vitally needful was the vicariousness of His suffering for us, and not love only. Indeed love is incomparably more proved therein. Otherwise we have no more left than goodness and martyrdom, an example for us to imitate and reciprocate. “Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins.” This is excluded by all these unbelieving theories. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved through His life.”
Prof. B. Jowett, in his “Epistles of Paul” as elsewhere, has committed himself to rash and irrelevant utterances on this most sacred and momentous subject. His distinct tendency if not effort is to undermine divine authority and certainty in scripture; which if accepted would dissolve the truth of atonement as indeed of everything else.
Thus he writes in his second Vol. p. 549: “The Old Testament is not on all points the same with the New, for, Moses allowed some things for the hardness of their hearts '; nor the law with the prophets, for there were proverbs in the house of Israel ' that were reversed; nor does the gospel, which is simple and universal, in all respects agree with the epistles, which have reference to the particular state of the first converts; nor is the teaching of James, who admits works as a co-efficient with faith in the justification of man, absolutely identical with that of Paul, who asserts justification by faith only; nor is the character of all the Epistles of Paul precisely the same; nor does he himself claim an equal authority for all his precepts.” How grave the fault to avail oneself of points more or less true to upset the truth! And what can we think of his statement farther on— “Christ Himself hardly uses, even in a figure, the word sacrifice; never with the least reference to His own life or death.” And this, in the face, not only of Matt. 20:2828Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:28), but of chap. 26:28! And what is the meaning of His giving His flesh for the life of the world? of His laying down His life for the sheep? of the corn of wheat dying and bringing forth much fruit? of His being lifted up from the earth and drawing all men unto Him? From the transfiguration we hear Him setting His death constantly before His disciples.
In his Essay on the Atonement which follows his Exposition, Mr. J. strives to get rid of the Levitical types of Christ's death on the ground of no such interpretation accompanying them. Now this really means, that, if true, we should have had the N.T. side by side with the Old: a notion which would blot out God's wisdom and will in various dispensations. 1 Peter 1:1212Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into. (1 Peter 1:12) is in principle the inspired answer. Christ's coming and death for us, followed by the gift of the Spirit on His ascension, was the right time and way of plainly teaching all, which had been wrapt up in figure but not in uncertainty. When declared and seen to be the divine intention after 1500 years, the truth comes out only the more impressively as of God. And unbelief is proved to be not only blind but irreverent as well as absurd, in presence of such facts when Mr. J. adds, “It would seem ridiculous, to assume a spiritual meaning in the Homeric (I) rites and sacrifices; and although they may be different in other respects, have we any more reason for inferring such a meaning in the Mosaic (11)?” One might have hoped that even pre-occupation with Plato's reveries, diversified with relaxation over the Iliad and Odyssey, might leave room even in the most prejudiced mind to remember that the scriptures claim to be inspired of God; so that, even though they consist of two very distinct collections in wholly different tongues, for an earthly people and for Christ's heavenly body, there cannot but be one mind of God in all, either preparing for Christ, or at length revealed in Him fully by the one Spirit sent down from heaven. Now Christ's presence on earth was the stumbling-stone of the one, as the O.T. prophets declared beforehand; and His death of shame, yet in God's hand of eternal redemption, introduces the others. This also explains why He Who was the rejected Messiah, and the glorified Head of the church, did not Himself bring out His death, resurrection, and ascension glory, but left it to the Holy Spirit by the apostles and prophets of the N.T. Yet He said enough to prove that all was known perfectly: only the disciples could not bear to hear all whilst He was here, and the atoning work not yet accomplished. How then must one estimate Mr. J.'s words, “It is hard to imagine that there can be any truer expression of the gospel than the words of the Lord Jesus, or that any truth omitted by Him can be essential to the gospel” (Exp. ii. p. 555)? Had it been true that His death for our sins was absolutely left till it was in fact fulfilled and for the Holy Spirit to testify, how childish the reasoning! Alas! it is much worse: “A deceived heart have turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?”
(7) Another departure from the faith of God's elect is that of Canon J. P. Norris in his “Rudiments of Theology,” which may be noticed briefly as a warning to souls. It is admitted in the letter that Christ bore our sins; but the spirit is neutralized by the distinct denial that He bore the penalty of our sins. For this is the true force of His having borne them in His own body on the tree, of His having suffered for them once (ἅπαξ). Even the prophet is explicit that “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of (or punishment for) our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” Jehovah “hath made to light on him the iniquity of us all.” “For the transgressions of my people was he stricken.” It is bold to say that this is not a vicarious punishment for sin. No doubt there was also a dying to sin; but this is also a further N. T. privilege beyond the old and new and everlasting truth that He died judicially, or penalty suffered, for our sins, as was expressed even in the types which could give but the surface and semblance, not the very image and fullness, of the truth. Redeeming from all iniquity, saving from our sins, is unquestionably scriptural; but it could not be righteously without Christ's enduring the penalty at God's hand that we might not. In the face of scripture to deny this, as the Canon does (p. 49), is extravagantly false and evil.
Dying unto sin, as any one can see in Rom. 6 &c., is that the believer dead with Christ may live to God; it has really no direct connection with “enabling God to forgive the sinner.” Sin in the flesh as such is “condemned” by God in Christ as sacrifice for sin (Rom. 8:33For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: (Romans 8:3)), not forgiven as sins are. The doctrine is shallow and anti-scriptural. Our death with Christ to sin is entirely distinct from His dying for our sins. The last alone is what scripture treats as propitiation or atonement. “For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” This is the vital truth of the gospel which the apostle preached and wrote, and by which also believers are saved.
That He died to sin is a blessed and instructive sequel, as taught from Rom. 5:1212Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (Romans 5:12) to chap 8, no less true, and most necessary for deliverance and practical holiness. But it is ruinous to confound the two truths, as is here done, for it really excludes the basis of all righteous blessing in Christ's propitiatory suffering for sins, and renders powerless our death with Him. It exposes also to perilous heterodoxy. Think of a person teaching that Christ “gathered up into His own person all mankind, laden as they were with sin; and with the consciousness of sin upon His heart consummated that dying unto sin which they were in themselves powerless to effect” (p. 56)! Expiation thus vanishes, and a kind of Irvingite universalism remains in Mr. N.'s crucible.
This fundamental error as to Christ's Person appears with no less certainty in a later page (282), and no doubt is his real, perhaps unwitting, doctrine: “He could not redeem us without taking our nature, and He could not take our nature without drawing upon Himself the curse in which sin has involved it.” This is to destroy His holy Person, and to deny His grace in suffering for sins, Just for unjust. It was by no fatal necessity of our nature but by the grace of God that He tasted death ὑπὲρ παντος. It was in the holy liberty of divine love that He laid down His life for us. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.”
In this only, and for this, lay the inevitable need of His death. It was sacrificial in the strictest sense and the deepest way. To say that it was in itself a Roman military execution, and the bloodshed by a soldier's pilum, is to set external circumstances against the revealed mind and purpose of God in what ought to be beyond all dear to the believer's heart and conscience. God's judgment of sin in the cross, and Christ's infinite suffering for our sins there, are ignored and set aside for another truth, distinct yet inseparable, which has no ground-work or application apart from what is denied. There may have been many an Israelite with no thought beyond “There goes my sin in the victim's death “; but that God meant no penalty by the shadow, or in the substance, is mere infidelity as to propitiation for sins. Undoubtedly God's mercy appeared in permitting, enjoining, and accepting, the sacrifice; but there was penal suffering in that sacrifice, which prefigured grace reigning through righteousness.
This profound error is the parent of others; as for instance (p. 234), that “the blood of Christ is uniformly spoken of as a most living thing, now communicable,” as also in pp. 212, 223, 224. Life eternal in the Son, which we have by faith even now, is thus confounded most grossly with His death and blood as a propitiation for our sins. These truths, every spiritual man ought to see, are wholly distinct, though the Christian knows both: (1) that God has sent His Son that we might live through Him; (2) that He sent Him as propitiation for our sins—in both the manifestation of God's love. Mr. N. utterly confuses the blessed φυχὴ (given up in His death and blood-shedding for our sins) with His ξςὴ αἰώνιος in which we live also, and forever, in infinite grace. The old errors and worse re-appear in p. 309; but enough.
(8) The last aberration, which we may notice here, consists of a slight on Christ's work on the cross in two opposite directions. One writer will have it that Christ only completed His vicarious suffering after death and before resurrection in hades, and even the punishment of damnation; the other insists on propitiation being made by Christ's entering heaven, after death and before resurrection. I understand both of them to hold that the work was not finished in the blood and death of Christ on the cross, but the propitiation effectively depends on a further action of Christ (whether in heaven or in hades) in the disembodied state. Each of these appears to be a fable as to a foundation truth.
Thus it is notorious how good and learned men have labored in vain over Isa. 53:44Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53:4), because they have not taken heed to the Holy Spirit's use of it in Matt. 8:1717That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses. (Matthew 8:17). There it is applied to the grace with which He used His power in the removal of infirmities and sicknesses in His ministry among the Jews. Partly through the idea that the prophecy must be solely about the atonement and its consequences, partly through the language of the LXX, many will have it that the verse includes the lesser troubles of the body in the larger thought of man's deepest need. But God is wiser than men, even the most faithful; and subjection to His word is the best, holiest, and surest corrective. If Isa. 4 were any where applied by an inspired authority to the atonement, this would be decisive. It is only applied to Christ's ministry or at least miracles. When His dying for our sins is meant, the Spirit (in 1 Peter 2:2424Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. (1 Peter 2:24), Heb. 9:2828So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. (Hebrews 9:28)) refers to Isa. 53:11, 1211He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. 12Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53:11‑12). The wisdom of inspiration shines conspicuously here; for the Septuagintal Version is avoided when incorrect or equivocal, and employed only when exact; and this by Peter who had no erudition to fall back on. God is the only absolutely wise guide; and here we may see it, if we be not blind.
But again, ver. 11 has two parts, which cannot be confounded without loss. “By His knowledge shall My righteous servant instruct many (rather, the many) in righteousness; and He shall bear their iniquities.” Dan. 12:33And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. (Daniel 12:3) serves to prove the true force of the verb translated “justify.” Translate it as it should be here, and the sense of both clauses is plain and consistent. Take it as it is done ordinarily, and violence ensues at once with error as the result.
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