AND ITS RELATION TO
BY
Cambridge:
MACMILLAN AND Co.
1856.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. |
|
PAGE | |
THE ENDS CONTEMPLATED IN THE ATONEMENT AWAKEN THE EXPECTATION THAT WE ARE TO UNDERSTAND IN NATURE |
1 |
CHAPTER II. |
|
TEACHING OF LUTHER |
32 |
CHAPTER III. |
|
CALVINISM, AS TAUGHT BY DR. OWEN AND PRESIDENT EDWARDS |
49 |
CHAPTER IV. |
|
CALVINISM, AS RECENTLY MODIFIED |
75 |
CHAPTER V. |
|
REASON FOR NOT RESTING IN THE CONCEPTION OF THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT ON WHICH THESE SYSTEMS PROCEED.--THE ATONEMENT TO BE SEEN BY ITS OWN LIGHT |
113 |
CHAPTER VI. |
|
RETROSPECTIVE ASPECT OF THE ATONEMENT |
128 |
CHAPTER VII. |
|
PROSPECTIVE ASPECT OF THE ATONEMENT |
150 |
CHAPTER VIII. |
|
FURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF THE FIXED AND NECESSARY CHARACTER OF SALVATION AS DETERMINING THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT AND THE FORM OF THE GRACE OF GOD TO MAN |
191 |
CHAPTER IX. |
|
THE INTERCESSION WHICH WAS AN ELEMENT IN THE ATONEMENT CONSIDERED AS PRAYER |
227 |
CHAPTER X. |
|
THE ATONEMENT, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE DETAILS OF THE SACRED NARRATIVE |
240 |
CHAPTER XI. |
|
HOW WE ARE TO CONCEIVE OF THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST, DURING THAT CLOSING PERIOD OF WHICH SUFFERING WAS THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER |
253 |
CHAPTER XII. |
|
THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST, IN WHICH THE ATONEMENT WAS PERFECTED, CONSIDERED IN THEIR RELATION, 1ST, TO HIS WITNESSING FOR GOD TO MEN, AND 2DLY, TO HIS DEALING WITH GOD ON BEHALF OF MEN |
273 |
CHAPTER XIII. |
|
THE DEATH OF CHRIST CONTEMPLATED AS HIS "TASTING DEATH," AND "FOR EVERY MAN;" AND THE LIGHT IT SHEDS ON HIS LIFE, AND ON THAT FELLOWSHIP IN HIS LIFE, THROUGH BEING CONFORMED TO HIS DEATH, TO WHICH WE ARE CALLED |
295 |
CHAPTER XIV. |
|
COMPARATIVE COMMENDATION OF THE VIEW NOW TAKEN OF THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT AS TO (1) LIGHT, (2) UNITY AND SIMPLICITY, (3) A NATURAL RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY, AND (4) HARMONY WITH THE DIVINE RIGHTEOUSNESS |
314 |
CHAPTER XV. |
|
THAT GOD IS THE FATHER OF OUR SPIRITS, THE ULTIMATE TRUTH ON WHICH FAITH MUST HERE ULTIMATELY REST |
334 |
CHAPTER XVI. |
|
CONCLUSION |
371 |
THE ENDS CONTEMPLATED IN THE ATONEMENT AWAKEN THE EXPECTATION THAT WE ARE TO UNDERSTAND ITS NATURE.
THE fundamental place which the atonement occupies in Christianity, gives importance to every aspect in which it can be contemplated. Of these aspects the chief are, its reference, its object, and its nature. For whom was it made? what was it intended to accomplish? what has it been in itself?
These are distinct questions, though the discussion of any one of them has generally more or less involved that of the other two. Certainly to be in possession of the true answer to any one of them must be a help in seeking the answers of the others; as also a misconception as to the answer of one must tend to mislead us in our consideration of the others. This is true, whichever aspect of the subject we may regard as the most important, or as having in it most light.
The question between the Reformers and the Church of Rome--the question of
justification by faith alone--was most closely connected with the second aspect
of the atonement, viz. what it has accomplished. The discussions which
subsequently divided the Reformers among themselves turned on the first;
being as to whether the atonement had been made for all men, or for an election
only. Much recent advocacy of the atonement has dealt freely with the third
point, i.e., what the atonement is in itself, as to which there
was
It is this third aspect of the atonement--i. e., its nature--that I now propose to consider; which I propose to do with more immediate reference to the second aspect of the atonement, viz. what it has accomplished--i. e., its relation to the remission of sins, and the gift of eternal life. The first point, viz., the extent of the reference of the atonement, it is no part of my immediate purpose to discuss. I believe that the atonement has been an atonement for sin, having reference to all mankind; I believe this to be distinctly revealed; I believe it to be also implied in what the atonement is in itself. But it is the illustration of the nature of the atonement which I have immediately in view; for it is in the prevailing state of men's minds on this subject that I feel a call to write.
I have just noticed that the exigencies of controversy, and the natural
desire to give a philosophical
harmony to theological system, has recently led to a
reconsideration of the subject of the nature of the
atonement. I shall subsequently have occasion to
notice particularly what the result has been; and why,
I am not satisfied with that result: which had I been,
I should gladly have felt this volume superseded. But
the intellectual exigencies of systems are, if real, closely
connected with the spiritual exigencies of the living
The kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man--the grace of God which hath appeared bringing salvation to all men--has a twofold aspect; the one retrospective, referring to the evil from which that grace brings deliverance; the other prospective, referring to the good which it bestows. Of that evil men have the varied and sad experience, as they have also feelings that may be interpreted as longings after that good; but that experience is unintelligent and these longings are vague, and the grace which brings salvation is itself the light which reveals both our need of salvation, and what the salvation is which we need; explaining to us the mystery of our dark experience, and directing our aimless longings to the unknown hope which was for us in God.
The light which reveals to us the evil of our condition as sinners, and the
good of which God saw the
capacity still to remain with us, reveals to us, at the
same time, the greatness of the gulf which separated
these two conditions of humanity; and the way in
which the desire which arose in God, as the Father
of spirits, to bridge over that gulf, has been accomplished. That way is the
atonement; as to which it
is certain that, if we were so far from seeing the evil
But we know that, though the gospel alone sheds clear and perfect light on
the evil of man's condition as a sinner, conscience fully recognises the truth
of that revelation of ourselves which the gospel makes to us. Were it otherwise,
assuredly its light would be no light to us. So also as to the gift of eternal
life. When that gift is revealed to our faith, its suitableness to us, and
fitness to fill all our capacities of well-being as God's ofispring, is
discerned by us in proportion as we are awakened to true self-consciousness, and
learn to separate between what God made us, and what we have become through sin.
And, in like manner, I believe that the atonement, related as it must needs be,
retrospectively to the condition of evil from which it is the purpose of God to
save us, and prospectively to the condition of good to which it is his purpose
to raise us, will commend itself to our faith by the inherent light of its
divine adaptation to accomplish all which it has been intended to accomplish.
Nor can I doubt that the high prerogative which belongs to us of discerning,
and, in our measure, appreciating the divine wisdom, as well as the divine
goodness, in other regions of God's acting, extends to this region also; which
doubtless is the highest region of all, but which, while the highest, is also
the region in which our human consciousness, and the teaching of the Spirit of
God in conscience, should help our understandings most. When the apostle
represents himself as by manifestation of the truth commending himself
In this view the internal evidence of the atonement ought to be the securest stronghold of Christianity: whereas we find many who profess to rest all their hope of acceptance with God upon the atonement, receiving it as a mystery which they do not feel it needful to understand; so that to them it is no part of the evidence of revelation, being commended to their faith only by the authority of a revelation itself received upon other grounds; while there are others to whom the presence of that doctrine in revelation is a strong objection to revelation itself. In this state of things it is natural to ask, "Can it be that conception of the atonement which the apostle expected would commend itself to every man's conscience in the sight of God which some thus treat as an argument against revelation, and which others, while receiving it, hold only as a mystery?" and the latter part of the question is the more difficult: for a rebellious spirit may reject revelation for the very reason for which it has most claim to be received; while a meek, obedient spirit may be expected at once to receive and to understand. For the secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will shew them his covenant.
The lowest measure of internal evidence claimed
for the doctrine of the atonement is, that conscience
testifies to a need be for an atonement. It has been
usual, in arguing with those who refuse to concede
even this much, to urge the fact that in all nations,
in every age, men have sought to atone for sin by
sacrifice. Whether this practice be referable to the
universal tradition of an original institution of sacrifice,
As to the use that has been made of the recorded instances of heroic
self-sacrifice connected with assumed divine requirements,--in reference to
which it has been lately beautifully said that the love of Christ was "foreshadowed
in these weaker acts of love'' (Thomson, p. 35),--however much we must admire
the self-devotion manifested, it is not very clear how far the moral element in
the sacrifice, by which the person sacrificing himself was endeared to those for
whose sakes he so devoted himself, was that which was supposed to give its value
to the sacrifice in the eyes of the angry deities whom it was sought to
propitiate. All that the demand implied was the high value of the offering to
those from whom it was required, and the offended gods may
But if the testimony of conscience on the subject
of the need be for an atonement, is sought in the
history of religion, let it be sought in the history of
Christianity: and let not this seem a begging of the
question. No man is entitled to put aside the assertion of a true man, declaring
what the testimony of his
conscience is, because that testimony coincides with the
man's faith. And to those who say that they find in
themselves no internal testimony to the doctrine of the
atonement, we present a fact which no serious mind
will lightly put aside, when we refer, not to the dark
and blind endeavours of the heathen to propitiate an
unknown God, but to the experience, recorded by themselves, of those who, in all
ages of the Church, have
seemed to have attained to the highest knowledge of
God, and closest communion with him, and who have
professed that they have seen a glory of God in the
cross of Christ; that is, in the atonement as the channel through which sinful
man receives the pardon of
sin and eternal life. No one, indeed, is called upon to
constrain his conscience to adopt the testimony of the
conscience of others, whoever they may be. But if a
man understand the nature of conscience, and realise
how imperfect its development usually is, and how
much the more matured Christian mind of one man
may, without dictating, aid the faith of another man,
he can never make little account of the conclusions on
But the question is not to be decided by authority. Nor would I seem to be insensible--for I am not--to the force of what may be urged, even in reference to the recorded experience of the better portion of the Church, as to the extent to which theological systems, and traditional habits of thought, may affect, and have affected, religious experiences. I have, indeed, seen, in cases of deep awakening of spirit on the subject of religion, an identity of experience in reference to this matter under teachings so very different as to form of thought, as to preclude the idea that these experiences were an echo of the teaching; while, most certainly, they were not traceable to any previous habits of thought in the taught. But I dwell not on the argument from this source, as no man will, or should accept the doctrine of the atonement because it has commended itself to the consciences of others while it does not as yet commend itself to his own.
But a response in conscience as contemplated by the apostle, implies much more than a reception of a need be for an atonement; nor can it be regarded as accomplished, unless the atonement revealed be felt to commend itself by its own internal light, and its divine fitness to accomplish the high ends of God in it. And as this presupposes that these ends are themselves seen in the light of God, it is necessary, before proceeding further, to fix attention for a little, on the amount of the assertion, that there is a response in conscience to the testimony of the gospel regarding the evil condition in which the grace of God finds us, and the excellence of the salvation which it brings.
When it is said that the representations of revelation on the subject of our
sin and guilt, and need of
Now it is not strange, or, in one sense, wrong, that we should shrink from
the feeling of simple unqualified guilt. It would not be well that it should be
otherwise than both painful and terrible to conclude that, in the sight of God,
I am guilty of not loving God, and not loving men. Things would be worse than
they are with us, if such a discovery could be without causing both self-loathing
and fear. Nor, as to forgiveness, is it to be wondered at, that, when we really
come to understand that we need it, we find it most difficult to believe in it.
God has been to us too much an unknown God, and our thoughts of him too far
removed from the apprehension that there is forgiveness with God that he may be
feared, to permit it to be otherwise. But, however painful the discovery of our
sin, and however unprepared we may be to bear it by the knowledge of the help
that is for us in God, the thoroughly awakened conscience, or rather conscience
when we are thoroughly awakened to hear its voice,
If any will not concede this much,--if any will extenuate the guilt of sin by referring what man is to his circumstances,--or by treating his moral condition as a low state of development, corresponding to that in which intellectually he is found in savage life, and if the forgiveness needed be thus reduced to the lowest possible amount, until, indeed, it ceases to be forgiveness, and there is room left only for a benevolent pity at the most; from persons in this mind I cannot expect that they will take the next step with me in this path, seeing they do not take the first. But, although I can concede much qualification of the apprehension of sin which we find uttered by newly awakened sinners, and admit that their language is very much affected by their ignorance of God, and the perturbing effect of the awful discovery as to their own moral and spiritual state which they have made, I cannot qualify the assertion, that the testimony of Scripture as to the reality and guilt of sin, and the sinner's dependence upon free grace for pardon, has a clear and unequivocal response in conscience; the recognition of which response on the sinner's part, is the proper attitude for his mind to assume, in listening to, and weighing the doctrine of the atonement.
Nay, more, looking at sin in reference to a still
deeper weighing of a man's own state as a sinner,
I believe that the experience which the apostle Paul
speaks of, in the close of the seventh chapter of his
Epistle to the Romans, must be recognised as the completeness of that development
of conscience, which fitly
As to the testimony of conscience to the discovery of revelation on the
subject of the gift of eternal life, to which the atonement has prospective
reference, the fact of this testimony is not alleged on the ground of men's
ordinary habits of thought and feeling, in this case any more than in the
former. The intelligent apprehension of that which is said, when it is said,
that "God has given to us eternal life," and the enlightened self-consciousness
in which that gift is welcomed as
But conscience is capable of such development; and eternal life may be apprehended by us as a manner of existence--a kind of life, the elements of which we understand, the excellence of which commends itself to us, and our own capacity for participation in which as originally created in God's image, and apart from our bondage to sin, we can discern in ourselves.
I speak of eternal life--that life which was with
the Father before the world was, and which is manifested in the Son--of his own
acquaintance with
which as a life lived in humanity, through his acquaintance with Him in whom it
was manifested, the
apostle John speaks with such fulness of expression
in the beginning of his first epistle. I do not speak
of an unknown future blessedness, in a future state
of being, of which conscience can understand nothing;
but I speak of a life which in itself is one and the
same here and hereafter,--however it may be developed in us hereafter, beyond
its development here.
Of this life conscience can take cognisance, its elements
it can understand and consider,--comparing them with
the elements of that other perishing life of which man
has experience; and, taking both to the light of what
man is as God's offspring, it can, in that light, decide
on the excellence of eternal life, and on the great grace
of God in bestowing it, and the perfect salvation in
which man partakes in receiving it. How little men's
consciences address themselves to this high task, is
too manifest; inasmuch as ordinary religion is so much
a struggle to secure an unknown future happiness,
This, then, is the second part of the due preparation for considering the nature of the atonement, with the purpose of coming to know what response that doctrine has in the heart of man, viz.--that the gift of eternal life, revealed as bestowed on us through the atonement, be taken to the light of conscience; and what that gift is, be there seen; and the high result that is accomplished in man in his coming to live that life, be truly conceived of. For thus having before the mind what God has proposed to do through the atonement, now prospectively, as formerly retrospectively, there is the likelihood that its nature, and its suitableness for accomplishing the divine end, shall become visible to us; if that may be at all.
These two extreme points being clearly conceived of, and together present to
the mind; and the evil condition of man which the gospel reveals, and the
blessed condition to which it raises our hopes, being seen in the light of
conscience, developed to this degree under the teaching of God; the gulf which
separates them is seen to be very great. We are contemplating extreme opposites,
in the highest and most solemn region of things:--spiritual darkness and death,
sin and guilt, the righteous condemnation and wrath of God, inward disorder and
strife between man and the law of his own well-being;--from these our thoughts
pass to divine light filling humanity, eternal life partaken in, righteousness
and holiness, the acceptance and favour of God,
It is difficult for us to realise the opposite states,
which, by such words, we attempt to describe. The
very words we use, though we know them to be the
right words, we use with the consciousness, that they
have, in our lips, but a small part of their meaning. If
we set ourselves steadfastly to study their use in the
Scriptures, and listen with open ear and heart to the
interpretation of them, which conscience, under the
teaching of the Holy Spirit, accepts, we find these
awful realities of evil and good, becoming gradually
more and more palpable and real to us; so that they
come to be felt as the only realities, and existence
comes to have its interest entirely in relation to them.
But the wings of our faith do not long sustain this
flight. Not that we come to doubt the conclusions at
which in such seasons we have arrived; but that, so to
speak, we descend from this high region of light and
truth, and come down to the earth, and to ordinary
human life, and the conditions of humanity that present
themselves around us; and, looking at men and women
as they are, and at the mixture of good and evil which
they exhibit,--seeing also ourselves in others--we practically reconcile
ourselves to them, and to ourselves; and
the vision of unmixed evil, and of perfect good, fades
from our remembrance, or, at best, from having been felt
as that which was most real, becomes but as an ideal.
One cause of the practical difficulty that is experienced in keeping our
habitual thoughts and feelings
in harmony with the perceptions of our most far-seeing
moments, is this, that the world in which we are is
actually a mixture of good and evil; that it presents
neither the unmixed evil of which the Scriptures speak,
Therefore we must, in studying the subject of the atonement, exercise our minds to abide in that sense and perception of things to which we attain, when the teaching of the Bible, as to the sinful state from which the atonement delivers us, and the eternal life which through it we receive, is having a full response in conscience. So shall we see the work of God in Christ in the light of a true apprehension of what that work had to accomplish; and shall not fall into the error of allowing the partial effects of that work itself to be to us arguments for doubting its necessity and reality.
The first demand which the gospel makes upon us, in relation to the
atonement, is, that we believe that
This is a faith which, in the order of things, must precede the faith of an atonement. If we could ourselves make an atonement for our sins, as by sacrifice the heathen attempted to do, and as, in their self righteous endeavours to make their peace with God, men are, in fact, daily attempting, then such an atonement might be thought of as preceding forgiveness, and the cause of it. But if God provides the atonement, then forgiveness must precede atonement; and the atonement must be the form of the manifestation of the forgiving love of God, not its cause.
But surely the demand for the faith that there is
forgiveness in God has a response in conscience; and
doubtless it is, in part at least, ignorance of God that
causes the difficulty in believing in forgiveness, which
is felt when an actual need of forgiveness that shall
be purely such, is realised. For it ought not to be
difficult to believe that, though we have sinned against
God, God still regards us with a love which has
survived our sins. Nay more, we cannot realise the
two ideas with reference to man which we have just
been considering, viz.,--the evil state into which sin
has brought him, and the opposite good state of which
the capacity has remained in him, as together present
to the mind of the Father of the spirits of all flesh,
without feeling that he must desire to bridge over the
gulf that separates these two conceived conditions of
humanity;--that if it can be bridged over He will
bridge it over; that, if that conceivable good for man
The expression once familiar to the lips of ministers of Christ in our land, and which the greater awakenedness of their people's minds on the subject of sin, caused them to feel the need of practically, viz., "that it is the greatest sin to despair of God's mercy," surely is a record of the inward sense of mercy as entering into our original and fundamental apprehension of God: ''Unto us belong shame and confusion of face: unto the Lord our God belongeth mercy," is an instinctive utterance of the human heart. Accordingly, when our Lord teaches us to "love our enemies that we may be the children of our Father in heaven, who makes his sun to shine on the evil and on the good," he assumes, that the witness without which God has never from the beginning left himself, in that he has given rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, has addressed something in man which could interpret the acting of love to enemies.
The atonement, I say, presupposes that there is forgiveness with God; and in
doing so has a response in conscience. But this is not the question which the
doctrine of the atonement raises, neither is it because it implies such
forgiveness that it has been objected to: on the contrary, the objection has
been made,--but an objection that could apply only to a false view of the
atonement,--that that doctrine did not recognise the mercy that is essentially
in God, inasmuch as it represented God as needing to be propitiated--to be made
gracious. An atonement to make God gracious,
Those, therefore, who object to the doctrine of the atonement on the assumption that the atonement is presented to them as the cause of God's forgiving love, are placed under a great disadvantage by this misapprehension of the demand that is made on their faith. What they are asked to believe has its difficulties,--and I do not wish to understate these; but they are as nothing in comparison; and let them learn with thankfulness, that that is not the true conception of the atonement which has so repelled them. That which they are really asked to consider as what, it is expected, being truly apprehended, will commend itself to conscience in the sight of God, is the way in which the forgiving love of God has manifested itself for the salvation of sinful men.
Those who, being under no misapprehension on
this point, still draw back from the faith of the atonement, do so as feeling a
difficulty which may be thus
expressed: Seeing that there is forgiveness with God,
that he may be feared, and that his love not only
survives men's transgressions, but can confer new gifts
I have referred to the difficulty which a thoroughly awakened sinner feels in
believing that God will pardon his sins, and grant to him eternal life; and such
an objector would say, "Why should he feel any such difficulty? Is it not the
evidence of a morbid moral state so to feel?" Now I have admitted that the
feeling in question, arises in part from the extent to which God has been
previously an unknown God. But only in part. There are other elements in that
difficulty which are connected with the dawn of a true knowledge of God. God's
mercy has not been previously apprehended, otherwise it would be felt wrong to
despair of it;--but neither have God's holiness and righteousness, and his wrath
against sin been previously apprehended;--and the fears, represented as
indications of a morbid moral state, are, I believe, in reality the effect of
light visiting the spirit of the man--flight as to the real sinfulness of sin,
and its contrariety to the mind of God. Admitting that there is much perturbation
of mind;--admitting that the light that is shed upon the truth of man's moral
and spiritual condition, is but partial, and that the name of God and its glory
have not yet shone in upon his soul and conscience full orbed,--still it is
light that is visiting the man who uses language as to his own sinfulness, and
the deserts of his sin, with the expression of fears as to the wrath of God,
which the objector would refer to a morbid state of mind,--fears which may,
indeed, seem extravagant, and almost
Nor is the distress experienced connected with the forgiveness of past sin alone. That grace for the time to come--that gift of eternal life--which it appears to the objector to the atonement may so easily be believed in as the free bounty of God, may be so far conceived of by the awakened sinner, and may so commend itself to him, that he can say, "I delight in the law of God after the inward man;"--and yet, to believe that the good he apprehends is freely granted to him, is so far from an easy and natural act of faith in God's goodness, that the ideal which has dawned upon him, is felt to be the ideal of a hopeless good. He finds "a law in his members warring against the law of his mind, and bringing him into captivity to the law of sin that is in his members;"--so that he cries out,--"O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"
Now, we know that where, in such cases, all general
urging of God's mercy and clemency, and willingness
to pardon and to save, fail to give peace, or quicken
hope; the presenting of the atonement for the acceptance of faith does both.
Awakened sinners, (and I use
the expression simply as to my own mind the most accurate, while also it is the
echo of the word "Awake,
thou that sleepest,") who are finding themselves unable
to believe that God,--not because He is not merciful and gracious, but though
merciful and gracious, and
This fact is surely deserving of the serious consideration of those whose objection to the atonement is, that it should be enough for man's peace and hope to be told, that the Lord God is merciful and gracious and ready to forgive, and to relieve all who call upon him. Here there is manifested an inability to believe in God's forgiveness as meeting man's need, when presented simply as clemency and mercy;--but, presented in the form of the atonement, it is believed in. Not surely because less credit for love and mercy is given to God now;--for on the contrary the conception of love simply forgiving, and of love forgiving at such a cost to itself, differ just in this, that in the latter, the love is infinitely enhanced.
An objector may reply that doubtless this is a remarkable mental phenomenon,
and that he does not deny that what are called religious memoirs abound in
illustrations of it; but that he cannot assume that those who have had this
history were in the light, and that he himself is in the dark;--and that, to his
mind, to preach forgiveness, and the gift of eternal life, in connexion with an
atonement, is only to increase the difficulty of faith;--for that, while he sees
in both these, contemplated simply in themselves, what he receives as worthy of
the goodness of God, the addition of the doctrine of the atonement introduces
other, and to him, mysterious elements into the question, complicating what
should be a simple matter, and, in fact,
It is even so: and this, doubtless, is the difficulty,--the great and ultimate difficulty; and let its amount be distinctly recognised. That God should do anything that is loving and gracious--which implies only an act of will--putting forth power guided by wisdom, this seems easy of faith. But, either that any object should appear desirable to God's love, which infinite power, guided by infinite wisdom, cannot accomplish by a simple act of the divine will, or that, if there be an object not to be thus attained, God will proceed to seek that object by a process which implies a great cost to God, and self-sacrifice,--either of these positions is difficult of faith. But the doctrine of the atonement involves them both: and this we must realise, and bear in mind, if we would deal wisely, nay justly, with objectors.
Yet, doubtless, the elements, in the atonement which
cause difficulty are the very elements which give it its
power to be that peace and hope for man which the
gospel contemplates, and which a simple intimation of
the divine clemency and goodness could not quicken in
him. It is that God is contemplated as manifesting
clemency and goodness at a great cost, and not by a
simple act of will that costs nothing, that gives the
atonement its great power over the heart of man. For
that is a deep, yea, the deepest spiritual instinct in
man which affirms, that in proportion as any act manifests love it is to be
believed as ascribed to God who is
love. No manifestation of power meeting me can so
assure me that I am meeting God as the manifestation
Accordingly, a high argument in favour of Christianity, and which has awakened a deep response in many a heart, has been founded upon this very aspect of the doctrine of the atonement, viz., that it represents God as manifesting self-sacrificing love; and so reveals the depth, not to say the reality, of love, as creation and providence could not do. And as a final cause for the permission of a condition of things, giving opportunity to the divine love to shew the self-sacrificing nature of love, and to bless with the blessedness of being the objects of such love, and, as the fruit of this, the blessedness of so loving--in this view--this argument is both true and deep.
But the internal evidence which at the point at which we stand in our inquiry we need, must be something different from this. The evil condition to which sin had reduced man, the good of which nevertheless man still continued capable; these ideas in relation to man being conceived of as together present to the divine mind, it appeared to us that we could believe, that the desire would arise in the heart of the Father of the spirits of all flesh to bridge over this gulf if that could be: nay, it seemed impossible to believe that that desire should not arise. Now the gospel declares, that the love of God has, not only desired to bridge over this gulf, but has actually bridged it over, and the atonement is presented to us as that in which this is accomplished. What we seek is internal evidence--a response in our own spirits, as to the divine wisdom manifested in what is thus represented as the means by which divine love attains the object of its desire.
But in this view it is not enough to say that this way is that in which the greatest proof of love is afforded. Love cannot be conceived of as doing anything gratuitously, merely to shew its own depth, for which thing there was no call in the circumstances of the case viewed in themselves. A man may love another so as to be willing to die for him;--but he will not actually lay down his life merely to shew his love, and without there being anything to render his doing so necessary in order to save the life for which he yields up his own.
Therefore the question remains, "How was so costly an expression of love as the atonement necessary?"--and how costly this expression of divine love has been to God we must fully recognise. For there is no doubt that a chief source of the difficulty which is felt in receiving the doctrine of the atonement is, that the atonement presupposes the incarnation. "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." A man who is contented to die for another manifests his love at ihe greatest cost to himself. By such an illustration, therefore, the Apostle teaches that the love that is manifested in Christ's dying for us is manifested at a great cost to God. Of course this assumes that Christ is God. That God should sacrifice one creature for another,--subject one of His offspring to death that others of His offspring might live,--would have nothing in it parallel to a man's laying down his own life for another. To say that Christ was not after all sacrificed in this transaction;--that what he endured was on his part voluntary, and endured in the contemplation of a reward,--for that, "for the joy set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame," is no answer; for that God takes credit to Himself for the love that
Christ manifests in dying for us--this is the point of the Apostle's argument! As to the reward set before Christ, it is that fruit of His self-sacrifice which must be presupposed in order that the self-sacrifice should be a reasonable transaction. Self-sacrificing love does not sacrifice itself but for an end of gain to its objects; otherwise it would be folly. Does its esteeming as a reward that gain to those for whom it suffers, destroy its claim to being self-sacrifice? Nay, that which seals its character as self-sacrificing love is, that this to it is a satisfying reward. ''He shall see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied."
In considering why our redemption has been at such a cost, and the whole subject of the nature of the atonement, we shall be greatly helped by keeping distinctly before our minds, these two extreme points to which the atonement is related in that it refers to the one retrospectively, to the other prospectively, viz. the condition in which the grace of God finds us, and the condition to which it raises us.
Christ has "redeemed us who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons"--Christ "suffered for us, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." Both that we were "under the law" and "unjust" and that we were "to receive the adoption of sons" and to be "brought to God" may be expected to have affected the nature of the atonement as determining what it must be adequate to: more especially the latter, as the great result contemplated. Accordingly, in the writings of the Apostles, we find the necessity for the atonement being what it was connected with both--but more especially with the latter.
Yet in our systems of theology the former, and not the latter, has been
chiefly the foundation of the
The important consequences that have followed
from this, as seems to me, departure from the example
of the Apostles will appear as we proceed. But with
the conclusions arrived at as to the necessity for an
atonement, as arising from the fact, that we, whom the
grace of God has visited, were sinners under the condemnation of a broken law, I
fully accord. I believe
that "by the deeds of the law could no flesh living be
justified"--understanding by the law, not the Mosaic
ritual, but that law of which the Apostle speaks when
he says, "I delight in the law of God after the inward
man"--that is to say, the law, "Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thine heart and mind and soul and
strength, and thy neighbour as thyself." I believe that
no modification of the law as a law, in accommodation
to man's condition as a sinner, is conceivable that could
either give the assurance of the pardon of sin, or
quicken us with a new life ; and that all idea of bridging over, by a modified
law, the gulf which we have
been contemplating is untenable. I believe that, if this
was to be accomplished, it could only be by some moral
and spiritual constitution quite other than the law:
while, at the same time, such other constitution cannot
be conceived of as introduced in any way that does not
duly honour the law; or that delivers from the consequences
But I must guard against seeming to give to the reasonings by which these conclusions have been arrived at, an unqualified assent. When it is argued that the justice or righteousness of God and his holiness,--and also his truth and faithfulness, presented difficulties in the way of our salvation, which rendered for their removal an atonement necessary, I fully absent to this; and, when it is added, as I have seen it lately urged, that the goodness, the love of God as the moral ruler and governor of the universe, also demanded an atonement, that our salvation might be consistent with the well being of the moral universe,--I can freely concede this also: nay, more, I would say, not the love of God having respect to the interests of the moral universe only, but the love of God having respect to the interests of the subjects of the salvation themselves. For indeed to me salvation otherwise than through the atonement is a contradiction.
But while in reference to the not uncommon way of regarding this subject
which represents righteousness and holiness as opposed to the sinner's
salvation, and mercy and love as on his side, I freely concede that all the
divine attributes were, in one view, against the sinner in that they called for
the due expression of God's wrath against sin in the history of redemption; I
believe, on the other hand, that the justice, the righteousness, the holiness of
God have an aspect according to which they, as well as his mercy, appear as
intercessors for man, and crave his salvation. Justice may be contemplated as
according to sin its due;
If this thought commends itself to my reader's mind as it does to mine, he will feel it to be important; and he will see, in reference to the atonement, not that it tends to make an atonement appear less necessary, but that it may greatly affect the nature of the atonement required: for it implies that the prospective aspect of the atonement,--its reference to the life of sonship given to us in Christ, has been its most important aspect as respects the demands of righteousness and holiness, as it confessedly is as respects those of mercy and love. This is so--while, assuredly, it is also true that the retrospective aspect of the atonement as connecting the pardon of sin with the vindicating of the honour of the divine law, is not less a meeting of a demand of divine love than of the demands of righteousness and holiness. How could it be otherwise, seeing that the law is love?
TEACHING OF LUTHER.
THE evil of the condition in respect of which we needed salvation, and the excellence of the salvation given to us in Christ; and the reality and exceeding greatness of the difficulties which stood in the way of our salvation, and which the Saviour had to encounter in accomplishing our redemption, have perhaps never been more vividly realised than by the great reformer Luther. And, though he does not afford much help to one seeking a clear intellectual apprehension of the nature and essence of the atonement, or of that might by which Christ prevailed; yet that his spiritual insight into these things has been great, is implied in the depth of his understanding of justification by faith, and of the relation in which peace in believing stands to that which our Lord asserted concerning himself when He said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." I believe it will be of much advantage to us subsequently to occupy a little space here with the consideration of his teaching in relation to the atonement, and what it has accomplished.
I have referred more than may meet the indulgence
of some readers, though less than my own feeling of its
value as a source of light would have inclined me to
do, to the experience of deeply awakened sinners. The
great reformer was such an one: and this part of his
history has impressed a special character on his teaching more than anything
else that went to make him
what he was. To any who read his words, not as
extravagance and fanaticism, but,--as I believe they
are entitled to be read,--words of truth and soberness,
I shall endeavour briefly to express the conception of Luther's mind on the subject of the atonement which I have received from a careful study of his full commentary on the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians.
This epistle has had a special interest to Luther, because he recognised Paul's controversy with the judaising teachers, by whom the Galatian converts to Christianity had been seduced, as substantially the same with that in which he himself was engaged with the church of Rome; and, as is common to him with the other Reformers,--his arguing on the subject of the atonement has a special character impressed upon it, by the relation to certain errors in the church of Rome in which he was contemplating it. Luther had not to contend with persons denying the doctrine of the atonement: what he had to contend against was human additions to the provision for peace of conscience and hope towards God, revealed in the gospel; and what we learn of his mind on the subject of the atonement is what he is led to utter in pleading for justification by faith alone.
I have said that no man ever more realised than
Luther did, that there were actual difficulties in the
Not that on these difficult and mysterious subjects, he does not,--as well as
those who do not give the same impression of having approached them nearly,--leave
us disposed to ask many questions. He, as well as others, speaks of our sins as
laid upon Christ, without helping us to understand what this means;--while he is
distinguished from others by the anxiety he shews to select the strongest words
to express the identification of Christ with our sins; refusing (p. 300) to
understand "was made sin for us," in
such statements as that, "the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all," and that
"He bore our sins in His own body on the tree." And, whatever difficulties the
matter may have presented to Luther's own mind, or whatever difficulties his
words may cause to us, attempting to attach to them a definite and consistent
meaning, he leaves no room to doubt that what he sought to set
forth he conceived of as a reality, and not as a legal
fiction. For he thus illustrates the identifying of
Christ with men,--"For when a sinner cometh to the
knowledge of himself indeed, he feeleth, not only that
he is miserable, but misery itself; not only that he is a
Such is Luther's teaching as to the retrospective aspect of the atonement.
His teaching as to its prospective bearing,--the positive fruits of benefit to
us through Christ's victory, the gift of eternal life itself,--is the following
out of that root conception of Christ's identifying of Himself with us. In
virtue of this identification, the freedom and righteousness and life which are
in Christ, being His own proper endowments, and of which His coming under our
sins did not despoil Him, but which proved themselves mightier than all that
power of darkness,--coming forth triumphant from the conflict,--these all are
ours. As ours we are called to recognise them. As endowed with them we are
called to conceive of ourselves. As the provisions of the salvation granted to
us we are to use them. As the elements of our new divine life we are to live in
them and by them. They are all ours as Christ is ours,--"He is made of God unto
us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." Christ our life
is presented to our faith, that believing in Him we may live,--yet not we, but
Christ in us. Faith does not
I do not feel that I can more pointedly express Luther's conception of faith than in saying, that it lifts us into Christ and makes us one with Him, both in our own consciousness, and in God's judgment of us;--as we were, before faith, one with Him in God's gracious desire and purpose.
Luther's conception of how God is justified in "justifying the ungodly who believe," we may learn from what he says, first of Faith's own nature; and then of the results of the living relation to Christ into which it brings us.
First of Faith's own nature he says, "Paul by these
words 'Abraham believed,' of faith in God maketh the
chiefest sonship, the chiefest duty, the chiefest obedience, and the chiefest
sacrifice. Let him that is a
rhetorician amplify this place, and he shall see that
faith is an almighty thing; and that the power thereof
is infinite and inestimable; for it giveth glory unto
God, which is the highest service that can be given
unto Him. Now to give glory unto God, is to believe
in Him, to count Him true, wise, righteous, merciful,
almighty; briefly, to acknowledge Him to be the author
and giver of all goodness. This reason doth not, but
faith. That is it which maketh us divine people, and,
But, secondly, because this excellent condition of faith is in us but as a
germ--a grain of mustard-seed--a feeble dawn, God, in imputing it as righteousness,
has respect unto that of which it is the dawn--of which, as the beginning of the
life of Christ in us, it is the promise, and in which it shall issue, even the
noontide brightness of that day in which the righteous shall shine as the stars
in the kingdom of their Father. So he adds in reference to the words "it was
imputed to him for righteousness,"--"For Christian righteousness consisteth in
two things, that is to say, in faith in the heart, and in God's imputation.
Faith is indeed a formal righteousness, and yet this righteousness is not
in the flesh sin is truly in me. But because I am
covered under the shadow of Christ's wings, as is the
chicken under the wings of the hen, and dwell without
fear under that most ample and large heaven of the
forgiveness of sins, which is spread over me, God
covereth and pardoneth the remnant of sin in me; that
is to say, because of that faith wherewith I began to lay
hold upon Christ, He accepteth my imperfect righteousness
even for perfect righteousness and counteth my sin for
no sin, which notwithstanding is sin indeed." (p. 254.)
The essence of the difference between the law and
the gospel, as conceived of by Luther, seems to be
shortly this;--that the law reveals man himself to
man,--that the gospel reveals God to man;--that the
And this is substantially true. For, though the law, being love, may seem to
reveal God who is love, yet is it rather a demand for love than a revelation of
love; and, though it might have been, in the light of high intelligence, and
where there was no darkening of sin, concluded that love alone could demand
love, yet does the mere demand never so speak to sinners;--but "by the law is
the knowledge of sin:" wherefore ''the law worketh wrath." But the first front
and aspect of the gospel is, the revelation of love; then follows the end
contemplated, the quickening of love in us, (in fact the fulfilment of the
righteousness of the law in us,--
Therefore, the gospel being the revelation of what God is, rather than of what He calls for,--though therein implying what He calls for, and providing for its accomplishment,--Luther, understanding this, rests, not in the scheme of redemption as a plan, or in the work of Christ as a work, the parts of which he is careful to analyse, that he may turn them to their several uses in his intercourse with God; but, in the scheme and the work, and shining through all the details of the work, he sees God appearing to him as He is in Himself, as He eternally is; and he yields his heart and his whole being to the attraction of the heavenly vision. Thus he learns that "God is the
God of the humble, the miserable, the afflicted, the oppressed and the desperate, and of those that are brought even to nothing; and His nature is to exalt the humble, to feed the hungry, to give sight to the blind, to comfort the miserable, the afflicted, the bruised, the broken-hearted, to justify sinner, to quicken the dead, and to save the very desperate and damned. For he is an almighty Creator, and maketh all things of nothing." (p. 321). Not that the law had not spoken truly of God, not only when it declared the will of God as to what man should be, but also when its terrors were revealed in the conscience, through its testimony of God's wrath against sin;--but it left untold,--it was not its function to tell,--what deeper thing than wrath against sin was in God--even mercy towards the sinner.
So Luther, as one whom "the gospel hath led beyond
and above the light of law and reason into the deep
secrets of faith,'' (p. 168) and to a knowledge of God
to which reason had not attained, commenting upon the
words--"Seeing the world by wisdom knew not God,
in the wisdom of God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save
them that believe," applies
them as teaching "that men ought to abstain from the
curious searching of God's majesty." (p. 100.)--For
"true Christian divinity setteth not God forth unto
us in His majesty, as Moses and other doctors do. It
commandeth us not to search out the nature of God;
but to know His will set out to us in Christ. (Ibid.) . . . Therefore begin
thou there where Christ began, viz.
in the womb of the virgin, in the manger, and at
His mother's breasts, etc. For to this end He came
down, was born, was conversant among men, suffered,
was crucified, and died, that by all means He might
set forth Himself plainly before our eyes, and fasten
"Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father."--John xiv. 8, 9.
I add two more quotations to the same effect. "For in Christ we see that God is not a cruel exactor or a judge, but a most favourable, loving and merciful Father, who to the end He might bless us, that is to say, deliver us from the law, sin, death, and all other evils, and might endue us with grace, righteousness, and everlasting life, spared not His own Son, but gave Him for us all. This is a true knowledge of God and a divine persuasion which deceiveth us not, but painteth God unto us lively (living)." (p. 389.). "For the true God speaketh thus; No righteousness, wisdom, nor religion pleaseth me but that only whereby the Father is glorified through the Son. Whosoever apprehendeth this Son, and me, and my promise in Him by faith, to him I am a God, to him I am a Father, him do I accept, justify and save. All others abide under wrath because they worship that thing which by nature is no God." (p. 390.)
How does this language recall that of the Apostle
John,--"And we know that the Son of God is come,
and hath given us an understanding, that we may know
Him that is true; and we are in Him that is true,
even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and
eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
Amen."--I
One other point remains to be noticed that we
may have distinctly before us Luther's teaching on the
Of course, teaching as the result of the victory of Christ over all our spiritual enemies, that Christ was made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, and setting forth this as a constitution of things established by God in His love to man, and revealed to be known and received by faith, he could not teach merely that men might appropriate Christ and His work,--that they were at liberty so to do, and invited so to do, and that Christ was freely offered to them, and would become theirs by such appropriation. He must needs teach that such appropriation was of the very essence of faith; being implied in the most simple reception of that which was revealed. But he has a further reason for insisting on this, viz., that in this personal appropriation he recognised at once the power and the difficulty of FAITH.
The teaching I refer to is in his comment on the words, "who gave Himself for
our sins,'' in which, after insisting on the power of these words to destroy all
felse religions, "For if our sins be taken away by our own works, merits, and
satisfactions, what needed the Son of God to be given for them? But seeing He
was given for them, it followeth that we cannot put them away by our own works,"
(p. 104)--he adds--"But weigh diligently every word of Paul, and especially mark
well this pronoun "our" for the effect altogether consisteth in the
well applying of the pronouns, which we find very often in the Scriptures,
wherein also there is ever some vehemency and power . . . Generally and without
the pronoun it is an easy matter to magnify and amplify the benefit of Christ,
viz., that Christ was given for sins, but for other men's sins which are worthy.
But when
This is said in reference to the difficulty in believing in forgiveness noticed above as what comes to be felt as soon as the need of forgiveness begins to be realised. Of this Luther was fully aware, as well as of the unmeaning, and, indeed, self-righteous nature of those general confessions of sin which unawakened sinners so easily make; combining with them as easily expressed a trust in Christ:--in reference to which he says--"Men's reason would fain bring and present unto God a feigned and counterfeit sinner, which is nothing afraid, nor hath any feeling of sin. It would bring that is whole, and not him that hath need of a physician, and when it feeleth no sin, then would it believe that Christ was given for our sins." ''But," says he, "learn here of Paul, to believe that Christ was given, not for feigned or counterfeit sins, nor yet for small sins, but for great and large sins; not for one or two, but for all; not for vanquished sins (for no man, no, nor angel, is able to subdue the least sin that is), but for invincible sins. And except thou be found among those that say "our sins," that is which have this doctrine of faith, and both hear, love, and believe the same, there is no salvation for thee (p. 106.) . . . I speak not this without cause, for I know what moveth me to be so earnest that we should learn to define Christ out of the words of Paul. For indeed Christ is no cruel exactor, but a forever of the sins of the whole world . . . Learn this definition diligently, and especially so to exercise this pronoun our that this one syllable being believed may swallow up all thy sins." (p, 108.)
I have reluctantly curtailed these quotations from
Luther's commentary on the apostle Paul's Epistle to the Galatians,--into the
spirit of which the great Reformer has so truly entered. The deep insight into
our redemption, as it has taken its character from our being "under the law" and
"'unjust," which he manifests;--his vivid realisation of "the grace wherein we
stand," being redeemed;--his true appreciation of the glory which God has in our
faith;--his discernment of the relation in which the peace and confidence
towards God, which are present in faith, stand to the perfection of the
revelation of the Father in the Son; the personal interest in Christ, which he
recognises as possessed by all men, and revealed to faith in the gospel; and the
importance which he attaches to an appropriating response on our part:--these
all are aspects of truth which I am thankful should now be present to the mind
of my reader in Luther's strong and vivid form of speech. As to my immediate
subject--the nature of the atonement--I have admitted that he does not offer
much help towards a clear intellectual apprehension of it. Christ's identifying
of Himself with us, "joining Himself to the company of the accursed, taking unto
Him their flesh and blood," in order that in humanity He might encounter "our
sin," and "our death," and "our curse" (p. 301); and the consequent conflict
between these and Christ's own eternal righteousness, as meeting together in
Him,--and the triumph of that divine righteousness, issuing in our redemption;--these
are conceptions which he may have been content to hold as matters of revealed
fact, but still mysteries which precluded clear intellectual apprehension. Yet
the earnestness with which he insists upon the presence together of these
opposites in Christ, and on the reality of their conflict as matter of
consciousness to Christ,--taken along with his true understanding of our
participation
CALVINISM, AS TAUGHT BY DR. OWEN AND PRESIDENT EDWARDS.
IF the great Reformer's teaching had obtained and kept possession of the faith of the reformed Church, and that I could calculate on the presence in the minds of my readers of his preaching of Christ, I might now proceed to consider the nature of the atonement, without further preface or preparation. But I need not say how far the fact is otherwise. And as I am anxious to carry along with me the minds of those who not only believe in the atonement, but give it that very prominent place which it has in the teaching usually designated "evangelical,"--though my appeal is not to what is specially distinctive of any, but is to the consciences of all,--I shall now detain my readers for a little with the teaching on the subject of the atonement associated with the name of Calvin.
Calvinism, as now living in our generation of men, presents to our attention two very distinctly marked forms:--the one, that which I believe those who hold it would recognise as best expounded by Dr. Owen and President Edwards; to whom I may add Dr. Chalmers; (whose recognition of Edwards as his theological teacher is known, and is abundantly manifest in his Institutes of Theology;) the other is that recent modification of Calvinism which is presented to us in the writings of Dr. Pye Smith, Dr. Payne, and Dr. Jenkyn, in England; and Dr. Wardlaw, in Scotland. I name these writers only--while I am aware that there are others, because my knowledge of the system is derived from them.
Two centuries separate us from Dr. Owen, and one from President Edwards; but their theology, which is one, still lives in the present generation--of the Presbyterian section at least--of the Church in Scotland; and, I presume, has much hold on men's minds also in England and in America. No man can accord with these two men in their faith without rejoicing in them as bulwarks of that faith. Owen's clear intellect, and Edwards's no less unquestionable power of distinct and discriminating thought, combined with a calmer, and more weighty, and more solemn tone of spirit;--the former writing as a man whose life was much one of theological controversy, the latter more as living among religious awakenings of which he was at once a subject and the instrument;--justify our regarding them as having set forth the modification of the doctrine of the atonement which they teach to the greatest advantage of which it is capable;--while, wherein any may think it dark and repulsive, they hide nothing, gloss over nothing, soften nothing: for they were true men, and not ashamed of the Christ in whom they believed.
Luther's anxiety to warn men "to abstain from the
curious searching of God's majesty," has been noticed
above. Not by such searching, but by becoming acquainted with Jesus Christ,
would he teach us to expect
the true knowledge of God: and this counsel is altogether
in the spirit of the words, "In Him was life, and the life
was the light of men." "He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father." How sound Luther's judgment was
in sending us to Jesus, that in Him we might see and
embrace God manifested in the flesh; and how much
was thus to be learned which systematic theology cannot
teach, and yet which we must learn if our systematic
thought is to be safe, may well be suggested to us
Now, what, in passing from the record of Luther's thoughts on the atonement
to that of the thinking of Owen and Edwards, has come vividly home to my mind,
is, that it would be well that they had proceeded more in harmony with the
spirit of Luther's warning now
That I say not this self-confidently, or on slight
grounds, will, I trust, be made clear to my readers as
we proceed. I do not make little account of philosophy, nor would I be contented
to see it sharing
in the Apostle's condemnation of "philosophy falsely
so called." I believe that a true philosophy has often
done much service to religion;--neither can I understand how a philosophical
mind can, without submitting
to fetters which I believe are not of God, be contented
to hold a religion which is not to it also a philosophy,
and the highest philosophy. But no one will doubt
that the beloved disciple John, who attained to such
high apprehensions of God, and to whom we listen,
telling us that "God is love," as to one speaking himself
in the light of the eternal love, had his high--and the
only adequate--training for this divine philosophy when
following the footsteps of Jesus, listening to His words,
seeing His deeds, and, from time to time, favoured to
lean upon His breast. "That which was from the
beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen
with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our
hands have handled of the Word of life; (For the life
was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness, and
shew unto you that eternal life which was with the
Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we
have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye
also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father
and with His Son Jesus Christ."--I
I am not going to analyse the reasoning on the Divine Attributes by Dr. Owen and President Edwards to which I refer, and as to which I feel as if the recorded work of Christ were contemplated in their system in the light of that reasoning,--rather than that reasoning engaged in after the due study of the life of Christ. It has been said that Calvinism is a philosophy in its essence; and I do not object to it on that account, but, because it is not to me a true philosophy. If what I have already said of the hope for sinful man that should be found in the righteousness and holiness of God, no less than in His love--contemplating these divine attributes, as much as may be, in their distinctness,--be present to the mind of my readers, it will be felt by those of them that are familiar with the theological writings of Owen and Edwards, that, however clear their reasonings are as reasonings, they must appear to me open to this fundamental objection, that they leave out of account certain important first principles. But not to engage in the analysis of what in the pages of Edwards especially I have read with so solemn and deep an interest as listening to a great and holy man, while, at the same time, feeling the axiomatic defect to which I have referred, it will be enough for my present purpose to notice the results arrived at.
I. The most palpable of these results, and that which first attracts attention, is the limitation of the atonement;--I mean the conceiving of it as having reference only to a certain elected portion of the human family.
His result arose naturally, and, it seems to me, most logically, from the
first principles from which these clear and acute thinkers have reasoned. The
divine justice is conceived of by them as, by a necessity of the divine nature,
awarding eternal misery to sin, and
The grace of God according to this conception,--that is his grace to the
elect, is,--properly speaking,
manifested in the original gift of Christ; all the subsequent
Adhering strictly to his conception of the fixed relation between sin and its
due punishment, Owen anxiously insists upon the identity of that punishment
which Christ endured for the elect, with what they would have endured themselves,
and what the non-elect do eventually endure. ''Now from all this, thus much (to
clear up the nature of the satisfaction made by Christ) appeareth, viz.--It was
a full, valuable compensation made to the justice of God for all the sins of all
those for whom He made satisfaction, by undergoing that same punishment which,
by reason of the obligation that was upon them, they themselves were bound to
undergo. When I say the same, I mean essentially the same in weight and
pressure, though not in all accidents of duration and the like; for it was
impossible that He should be detained by death." (p. 269.) His language
everywhere is in harmony with this conception; as to which I do not feel that it
is justly liable to the treatment which it has received when objected to as a
mercenary, and so an unworthy view of the subject. The mere language of
commerce, viz. "purchase, ransom," etc., is not Owen's, but that of the
Scriptures; and as to the substance of his meaning it is simply, that the
As to the difficulties that present themselves, the
moment the attempt is made to form clear conceptions
of what has thus been asserted,--that is to say, to
conceive to ourselves, on the one hand, what the punishment was which the elect
were bound to undergo;
and, then, on the other hand, how Christ can have
endured the punishment so conceived of--with these
difficulties Owen does not really grapple. Edwards,
indeed, approaches this solemn subject more nearly;
and there is no passage in his exposition of "The Satisfaction for Sin" made by
Christ of deeper interest than
the one in which he does so. After premising that
"Christ suffered the wrath of God for men's sins in
such a way as He was capable of, being an infinitely
holy person who knew that God was not angry with
Him personally--knew that God did not hate Him,
but infinitely loved Him," he goes on to specify two
ways in which he conceives that Christ could endure
the wrath of God. But the elements of suffering
which he specifies, however connected with the sin
of those for whom Christ died, cannot be recognised
as the punishment which they themselves were bound
to undergo,--if such sufferings can rightly be represented as punishment at all.
But, not to enter here
on the nature of the sufferings specified, when explanations are offered as to
how Christ endured the
punishment of the sins of those for whom He died,
the important point is, that His sufferings are regarded
as implying, that it would be unjust that those should
We are not to wonder that, having come to such conclusions as these from such
axioms as that "God is just" and that "God is immutable," texts of Scripture
such as those who believe that the atonement was for all men, quote in proof of
that doctrine, were, however large their sound, urged with little effect. Some
of these might seem difficult of explanation on their system--others might be
more easily disposed of. No one ever took more ingenuity to such a task than
Owen did; as no one ever urged more perplexingly the dilemmas in which those
were involved, who, agreeing with him as to the nature of the atonement,
differed from him as to its reference. "To which I may add this dilemma to our
universalists" (i.e., those who held that Christ had died for all), "God imposed
His wrath due unto, and Christ underwent the pains of hell for, either all the
sins of all men, or all the sins of some men, or some sins of all men. If the
last, some sins of all men, then have all men some sins to answer for, and so
shall no man be saved; for if God enter into judgment with us, though it were
with all mankind for one sin, no flesh should be justified in His sight. "If the
Lord should mark iniquities who should stand?" . . . If the second, that is it
which we affirm, that Christ in their stead and room suffered for all the sins
of all the elect in the world. If the first, why then are not all freed from the
punishment of all their sins? You will say "Because of their unbelief; they will
not believe." But this unbelief, is it a sin, or not? If not, why should they
be punished
To those who approach the subject of the atonement with the conviction that Christ died for all men, and who see this to be clearly revealed in the Scriptures, it must be an insuperable objection to any view taken of the nature of the atonement that it is inconsistent with this faith; and I have already alluded to the fact, that the force felt to be in such reasonings as those just quoted, assuming the truth of that conception of the atonement on which they proceed, has latterly led those who contend that Christ died for all to reconsider the nature of the atonement. I am thankful for this result. That cannot be the true conception of the nature of the atonement which implies that Christ died only for an election from among men.
But, besides the scripture argument against the limitation of the atonement, on which I do not enter, I would notice two important further conclusions which that limitation involves, and which are very weighty objections to the doctrine to which they are ultimately traceable.
1. The limitation of the atonement, and
therefore the conception of the nature of the atonement which
This Owen fully admits, but he denies that any man is asked to believe, as the first act of faith, that Christ died for him in particular, or to believe anything but what he recognises as actually revealed. He then proceeds to state successive acts or steps of faith; in each one of which the believer has a clear scripture warrant for his faith; but the taking each successive step of which narrows the circle of those who come to be dealt with; some taking the first step who will not take the second; some taking both who will not take the third; some taking the first three who will not take the fourth:--while, as to those who take the whole four, their having taken them has become a ground for that personal appropriation of Christ, as their own Saviour in particular, which was not afforded by the revelation made in the gospel message, but which has thus been added by that work of grace which has proceeded so far in them, and has individualised them as persons for whom Christ died; "for certainly Christ died for every one in whose heart the Lord by His almighty power works effectually faith to lay hold on Him, and assent unto Him according to that orderly proposal that is held forth in the gospel." (p. 315.)
But the difficulty of dealing with awakened sinners on this system has been
practically felt to be very great. And the importance, with reference to all
fruit of that faith whose nature it is to work by love, of
Another indication of the same response is presented in Dr. Chalmers'
Institutes, in the chapter on
"the universality of the gospel." I refer to the tone of
the whole chapter, but quote only these words:--"The
particular redemption of all who are saved, is made good
by their right entertainment of those texts which are
alleged in behalf of universal redemption; and it is the
very entertainment which the advocates of this doctrine
would have all men to bestow upon them. And so I am
sure would we. We should like each individual of the
world's population to assume specially for himself every
passage in the Bible where Christ is held forth generally
to men or generally to sinners, and would assure him
that, did he only proceed upon these, he would infallibly
be saved." I am not sure to what the concession that
seems to be made in the words which I have marked
by italics really amounts, and am fearful of even seeming
to strain his words. I know indeed that "that entertainment which the advocates
of universal redemption would
have all men to bestow" upon "the texts which they
allege in behalf of that doctrine" includes this, that each
man should assume, on the authority of these texts,
But thus to use the expressions of Scripture in a vague largeness in connexion with the faith of an atonement for the elect only, affords no real basis for that personal appropriation of Christ which is recognised as so needful to the practical working of Christianity. And those who see clearly that the Apostle could not have said, "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," unless he had first known that Christ "had loved him, and given Himself for him," must see that such previous knowledge in the Apostle implied that the gospel in which he had believed had imparted that knowledge. However much Owen's four steps of faith without this personal appropriation, followed by a fifth, in which, through the help of these previous four, that appropriation is attained, must repel us as a departure from the simplicity of faith, his teaching is consistent with the doctrine of a limited atonement; but how, without the element of an indication in the inner man of the individual that he is of the elect, the certainty of a personal interest in Christ can be reached by one believing that Christ died for the elect only, I cannot conceive.
2. But a
more solemn result of limiting the atonement remains to be noticed, viz., that,
as appears to me, it makes the work of Christ to be no longer a
The conception of the nature of the atonement on which the system of Owen and Edwards proceeds, and the reasonings in relation to the Divine Attributes by which they attempt to lay a deep foundation for it in the verity of what God is, present this,--I may surely say--startling--result, that, while they set forth justice as a necessary attribute of the divine nature, so that God must deal with all men according to its requirements, they represent mercy and love as not necessary, but arbitrary, and what, therefore, may find their expression in the history of only some men. For according to their system justice alone is expressed in the history of all men, that is to say, in the history of the non-elect, in their endurance of punishment; in the history of the elect, in Christ's enduring it for them. Mercy and love are expressed in the history of the elect alone. Surely, not to enter into the question of the absolute distinctness of the Divine Attributes, or their central and essential unity, if any one attribute might be expected to shine full orbed in a revelation which testifies that "God is love," that attribute is love; and, feeling this strongly, I have ventured to say, that it would be well that these deep reasoners had " used the life of Christ more as their light."
But, not only do I object that in this system the illustration of the divine love by the atonement is presented in the history of the election alone; what I feel is, that so presented the atonement ceases to reveal that God is love.
However little the thought may have received the consideration which its
importance deserves, nothing can be clearer to me than that an arbitrary act
cannot reveal character. We may be reconciled to an act of which
That the transaction has such an aspect of grace to those to whom it has
reference,--that to the elect it is free unmerited kindness,--yea kindness to
enemies,--this is not to the purpose, our inquiry being as to the name and
character of God. For, if we allow our minds due freedom in the contemplation of
this high and solemn subject, it is impossible for us not to feel, that however
great the personal obligations conferred upon the elect, and however the sense
of these may attach them to God, even they cannot intelligently venture to say
that their experience of God--the way in which God has dealt with them, proves
what God is--in Himself is,--essentially is,--when the way in which He has
dealt
I know that when the doctrine of free grace as
meaning absolute unconditional election, is presented to
those who have not yet come under the power of God's
love, it is usual to treat the repulsion they feel as a
manifestation of carnal pride, and their objections as
the suggestions of a self-sufficient reason, which refuses to submit itself to
the authority of revelation. But is
it fair to ask men to put their trust in that God of
whom we cannot tell them whether He loves them or
does not? in that Saviour of whom we cannot tell
them whether He died for them or did not? And
when they find their difficulties so treated by those who
not only are, as it will naturally appear to them, reconciled
What practically goes far to neutralise all this, and to disarm the feeling of irritation which it awakens, even appearing an argument in reply, is, the loving spirit often manifested by those who urge such views as these,--a spirit the very opposite of what we should expect in the holders of a system which veils the love that is in God to every man.
The fact that much of this seeming contradiction meets us is certain. How
does it arise? Although, as I have said, their personal experience of God cannot
warrant those, who, living in the faith of God's love in Christ as love to
themselves, cherish that faith in connexion with the faith of an arbitrary
election and limited atonement, in concluding as to what God is--that He is
love; yet they may so conclude,--they may think of God exclusively as He appears
in His acting towards themselves; leaving out of view the different history of
others: or, if they think of it, regarding it rather as a mystery, with which
they may not meddle, and which, with their convictions, they would feel it
irreverent to trace out to logical conclusions. Thus they will be found
extolling the love which is the plain meaning of what they are experiencing at
the hand of God, viewed simply in itself; and, feeling it as
In Brainerd's case, indeed, as also in the case of his
master Edwards, this contradiction between the faith of
the head and the love of the heart, is the more remarkable, in that, that faith
was not taken up blindly, or
without much reasoning and weighing of all that it
II. The limitation of the reference of the atonement to an election from among men, and the consequences involved in that limitation, must be regarded as bringing into question that conception of the nature of the atonement, which, being consistently followed out, has such results. Another result of that conception of the nature of the atonement, not less conclusive as an argument against it, is the substitution of a legal standing for a filial standing as the gift of God to men in Christ.
"When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a
woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, "that we
might receive the adoption of sons."
President Edwards represents the righteousness of
Christ as a perfect obedience,--yet not perfected until
rendered as obedience unto death; and he enters into
a full detail of all the forms or aspects of law under
which Christ came, and the demand of which He fully
met; and God's acceptance of this perfect obedience he
calls, the Father's justification of Christ; and this he says was in the
Father's raising Him from the dead; and in this justification is it that the
elect are interested, and into the communion of which they enter by faith; and
this perfect obedience it is that is imputed to them, and to the reward of which
they are entitled. In all this attention is fixed upon the obedience of Christ
as the fulfilling of a law, and the life of
sonship in which this fulfilment has taken place, is left
out of view. But that life of sonship is, in reality, what
ought to be prominent; and the proper value of that
fulfilment of the law, besides the honour which it accords
to the law, is, that it is a demonstration of the virtue
and power which is in sonship. For the prospective
relation of men to that fulfilment, is, not that they are
to receive eternal blessedness as the reward due to it,
but that God's acceptance of it as a perfect righteousness
A work of infinite excellence performed by Christ as the representative of men, and men invested with its excellence, and clothed with its worthiness in God's eyes, and rewarded accordingly, is a thought that has had much acceptance. Surely to bestow on us in Christ the life that has taken outward form in that work, is at once a more natural, and a far higher result of that work;--a far higher reward to Christ, and a far higher gift to us: as it is also a higher glory to God in us, and so a higher glory to God in Christ, through whom there is that glory to God in us. "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as a sacrifice for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit,"--that is, the spirit of the Son, for the root idea here is that conveyed by the word " Son." "For the law of the spirit of the life that is in Christ Jesus;" viz. sonship--makes us "free from the law of sin and death."
Dr. Chalmers dwells much on the legal standing given in Christ, as meeting,
by its retrospective and prospective bearing, all the need of the awakened
sinner; and, in connexion with this, has some very striking remarks on what he
calls "natural legalism," as a source of difficulty to men in receiving the
Gospel, in addition to natural pride, and one which he thinks ministers of the
Gospel have not sufficiently considered, or recognised, in dealing with the
consciences of men. These remarks are, I believe, just. I believe that
difficulties have often their root in conscience, which are
In the chapter of Dr. Chalmers' Institutes, to which
I am now referring, that "on the satisfaction that had
to be rendered to the truth and justice of God, ere that
sinners could be readmitted into favour," there is much
important elucidation of the fact, that it is not as a
Father, but as a Judge, that God is thought of by
awakened sinners;--from which he justly argues, that
there is both a departure from the truth of things, and
an embarrassing result to the awakened sinner in not
duly acknowledging that voice of conscience which
causes so much terror, and in, as he says, "keeping the
divine jurisprudence out of sight," and "contemplating
And let us weigh well this question, "How much more could God thus alone realise in us the longings of His heart as our Father?" for that the atonement really contemplated the realising of these longings, and should be seen by us in its relation to these longings, this is what is not understood when the legal perfection of Christ's righteousness is thus abstracted from the law of the spirit of the life of sonship in Christ Jesus, which took outward form in that righteousness, and from the revelation of the Father, which, in being perfect sonship, it presents to faith. If that obedience were not, in its inner aspect, and in its nature, sonship,--if it were not a revelation of the Father, its legal perfection, had such perfection been in that case possible, would have availed little to us, who were to be redeemed from under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons.
Therefore was our Lord ever careful to keep before the minds of the disciples, that, in that perfect obedience to the will of God which they saw in Him, they were contemplating the doing of the will of the Father by the Son. For in His Father's name was He come to them. Had it been otherwise, Christ could not have said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." A servant may make us acquainted with his master; a subject may make us to know the lawgiver and king to whom he owes allegiance; the Son alone could reveal the Father. "No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son revealeth Him."
I have urged above, that the limitation of the atonement, renders the grace
of God in the gift of Christ no
longer a revelation of the name of God,--that He is
love. I say now, that the righteousness of Christ being
contemplated as what was intended to give us a legal
standing as righteous through its imputation to us, has,
if not as a necessary consequence, at all events as a
matter of fact, marred the efficiency of the work of
Christ as in itself a, revelation of the Father by the Son.
I mean, that those who, in looking at Christ as fulfilling
all righteousness, have contemplated Him as employed
in providing a legal righteousness for us, have not been
in the way of receiving that knowledge of God which
they would have received, if their contemplation of
Christ had been determined by the faith of that word,
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Thus
it has come to pass, that our Lord has been contemplated by them as fulfilling
the law of love towards all men, and yet that they have not recognised His doing
so as the revelation of God's love to all men. Edwards,
in his enumeration of the elements of Christ's righteousness, mentions those
virtues which more immediately
respect other men, and these under the two heads of
Justification by faith is so closely related to that work of Christ which the
faith that justifies apprehends, that an error in regard to the nature of the
atonement must affect that doctrine. But there will be some advantage in
postponing the consideration of the teaching of the earlier Calvinists on this
subject, so
CALVINISM, AS RECENTLY MODIFIED.
CALVINISM, as recently modified, differs from the earlier Calvinism in these points:--First, as to the reference of the atonement, which is held to have been for all men, and not for the elect only. Secondly, as to the need be for an atonement, which is not regarded as arising out of the demands of distributive and individual justice, requiring that each man should receive his due desert, according to an eternal necessity in the divine nature, as maintained by Owen and Edwards; but is held to arise out of the demands of rectoral and public justice, which necessitate God, as the moral governor of the universe, if He extend mercy to sinners, to do so only in a way that will preserve inviolate the interests of His moral government. Thirdly, as to the nature of the atonement,--Christ's sufferings for our sins not being held to be the endurance, on the part of the Saviour, of the same punishment, or of punishment equivalent in amount of suffering, with that to which those for whom He suffered were exposed, but to be the substitution of other sufferings for the threatened punishment, which substituted sufferings were equivalent in reference to the result in relation to God's moral government;--and Christ's meritorious obedience not being held to be the fulfilling of the law in our room and stead, so as to provide us with a righteousness to be imputed to us, investing us with a right to the reward of righteousness,--but a moral excellence giving a moral virtue to the atonement whereby it is made a fit ground on which may be rested all acts of grace and clemency towards sinners, and all bestowal of favours upon them.
Fourthly, as to the results of the atonement, that it does not of itself, and by its own nature, secure salvation to any, but only is an adequate provision for the salvation of all, free to all, effectual to salvation in the case of those who are disposed by the sovereign grace of God to avail themselves of it.
These points of difference involve others as implied in them. Thus the idea of imputation of guilt and righteousness, viz. of our guilt to Christ, and of Christ's righteousness to us, as this imputation was held by Owen and Edwards, is rejected as untenable;--"Guilt and merit not being transferable,--but only their consequences." (Payne, 254.) The idea of a legal claim to salvation, which we have just seen commended as the full meeting of the instinctive legalism of the human heart, is rejected as destroying the gracious character of the gospel dispensation;--and, most important of all--the relation of the atonement to the divinity of Christ, is altogether differently conceived of; for whereas, in the earlier Calvinism the divinity of the Saviour is contemplated as making possible infinitely great sufferings endured in time,--the needed substitute for sufferings that would have been infinite in that they would have been eternal,--on this system the divinity of Christ is regarded as giving infinite value to any suffering of His; so that the value of the sufferings would be infinitely great though its amount were infinitely small.
The assumed advantages of this system as a modification of the earlier
Calvinism are chiefly these,--First, as to the extent of the atonement. To teach
that Christ died for all is consonant with the most obvious meaning of the
language of the inspired writers,--which cannot be brought to utter a limited
atonement without much forcing. While, besides, an
With much in what seems to be the mental history
of this modified Calvinism I have full sympathy. The
constraint felt in preaching Christ to all, while believing
that He only died for some, is easily understood; while,
doubtless, Owen's arguments for a limited atonement,
if the atonement had been what, in the controversies
between him and Arminians it was on both sides
assumed to be, were unanswerable as arguments whatever scriptural difficulties
they might involve. Again,
in the concession which seems made to Socinians, on the
subject of the untransferable nature of guilt and merit,
and the difficulty of assuming that by a legal fiction
God sees things other than as they really are, I concur
with them, although I feel that there are important
principles in Edwards' argument on the substitution of
Christ for us, to which they do not seem to me to give
due weight; and, although the even stronger language
of Luther as to Christ's identification of Himself with
us, instead of repelling me, as it does them, is to my
mind a very near approach to truth; and I am disposed to think was spiritually,
though not intellectually,
Believing that Christ died for all, and perceiving that the conceptions of the nature of the atonement from which the earlier Calvinists reasoned, did indeed imply, if logically followed out, that He only died for some, the teachers of this modified Calvinism have seemed to themselves to have found a solution of the difficulty, in their conception of rectoral or public justice as what called for an atonement for sin. But, surely, rectoral or public justice, if it is to have any moral basis--any basis other than expediency--must rest upon, and refer to, distributive or absolute justice. In other words, unless there be a rightness in connecting sin with misery, and righteousness with blessedness, looking at individual cases simply in themselves, I cannot see that there is a rightness in connecting them as a rule of moral government. "An English judge once said to a criminal before him, 'You are condemned to be transported, not because you have stolen these goods, but that goods may not be stolen.' " (Jenkyns, 175, 176.) This is quoted in illustration of the position, that "the death of Christ is an honourable ground for remitting punishment," because "His sufferings answer the same ends as the punishment of the sinner." I do not recognise any harmony between this sentiment of the English judge and the voice of an awakened conscience on the subject of sin. It is just because he has sinned and deserves punishment, and not because he says to himself, that God is a moral governor, and must punish him to deter others, that the wrath of God against sin seems so terrible--and as just as terrible. As little is this sentiment in harmony with what the words teach, "The wages of sin is death."
Owen and Edwards do not err in believing, that the righteousness of God connects sin with misery, as by a righteous reward, irrespective of state reasons. Their error is, I believe, twofold,--concluding as to that award beyond what they had light for their guidance,--and--and this chiefly--not seeing any hope for the sinner in the very righteousness of God,--as if the righteousness of God would have full satisfaction in reference to the unrighteous, in their being miserable. "Good and righteous is the Lord, therefore will he teach sinners the way which they should choose."
Rectoral justice so presupposes absolute justice, and so throws the mind back on that absolute justice, that the idea of an atonement that will satisfy the one, though it might not the other, must be a delusion.
The recommendation of the distinction sought to be drawn has been, that it seemed to harmonise an atonement for all, with the ultimate punishment of those who do not accept of that atonement;--that is to say, as Calvinists pressed the point on Arminians,--the punishment of many whose punishment Christ had previously endured: this stronghold of Calvinism it seemed to overturn. But as long as Christ's sufferings are held to be penal, which, even when the old form of words is most departed from, is the expression still used, I cannot see what difference it makes, whether they be held as by Owen, to have been the same that those for whom he suffered were obnoxious to;--or as Baxter, with Grotius, held,--equivalent;--or as Dr. Jenkyns holds, "different in nature and kind,--in quantity and degree." If they were penal, then, that those for whom He suffered should be punished themselves, must still suggest the idea sought to be avoided, of sin twice punished.
Nor is the difficulty less because, not regarding our
This distinction between being punished, and enduring sufferings which are a
punishment, is adopted in connexion with the denial of the imputation of our
guilt to Christ, and in this view is held to remove the difficulties of one
class of objectors,--although to call sufferings a punishment while the sufferer
is not regarded as punished, involves new difficulties. But,
But there are two points in relation to the sufferings of Christ, as spoken of in these two forms of Calvinism severally, which appear to me deserving of our special attention, viz. that the language employed in speaking of the part of the Father in relation to these sufferings, is much the same;--and that, the details specified, when details of the elements of suffering are ventured, are much the same, or at least are of the same nature.
1. The language of the later Calvinists in speaking of the part of the Father in relation to the sufferings of Christ, is not essentially different from that of those whose system they feel it necessary to modify.
President Edwards is quoted by Dr. Stroud (who
dedicates his book to Dr. Pye Smith) as representing
Christ as "suffering a positive infliction of divine wrath,"
which to teach, he esteems chargeable with error,--"not to say absurdity." (p.
209.) These are some of the
6—2
God, &c. (p. 284.) "The just is treated as if He had
been unjust, the Son of God suffered as if He had been
a transgressor." (p. 285.) Dr. Payne ("On the reality of
the atonement") concludes, that the sufferings of our
Lord were "dreadful beyond conception," and resulted
from intense mental suffering, from the burden of our
guilt which rested upon Him, from that light of His
Father's countenance which then suffered a total eclipse,"
in relation to which he quotes
2. But the other point to which I would direct attention, is more striking still; viz. the oneness of character in the elements of suffering which they specify.
What are the "revenges of divine justice," and
"its terrible executions," which were in Edwards' contemplations when he
employed those general expressions which have exposed him to the charge of
error,
nay, absurdity? The only direct dealing of God with
Christ which he specifies, is purely negative;--"God
forsook Christ and hid Himself from Him, and withheld
comfortable influences, or the clear ideas of pleasant
objects." This negative wrath, if the expression is not
a contradiction, is indeed represented as being in order
that the positive elements of suffering present should
act with unmitigated power; and what were these?
First, God hid Himself from Christ "that He might
feel the full burden of our sins that was laid upon Him.
But how laid upon Him? "His having so clear an
actual view of sin and its hatefulness, was an idea
infinitely disagreeable to the holy nature of Christ;
and therefore, unless balanced with an equal sight of
good that comes by that evil, must have been an immensely disagreeable sensation
in Christ's soul, or,
I am quite sensible of the injustice done to the
remarkable passage from which I quote, by thus curtailing it. But I have given
enough of it for my purpose in
quoting it; viz. to shew that, however strong or startling Edwards' general
expressions as to Christ being, in
consequence of the imputation of our guilt, subjected to
"the revenges of divine justice," there is, when he explains himself, nothing of
the nature of legal fiction in
his conception of the way in which Christ bore the burden
of our sins; as neither is there anything of the nature
of the actual going forth of divine wrath against the
holy one, because of His standing in the room of sinners,
in what is called "His endurance of wrath;" but that
the whole suffering conceived of, is resolved into a vivid
perception and realisation of the hatefulness of sin, and
of the greatness of the wrath to which it has exposed
sinners; these two ideas affecting our Lord in the measure of His infinite
holiness and love. So strictly has
Edwards, in endeavouring to imagine ingredients to fill
a full cup of suffering, adhered to the limits which he
recognises in saying that ''Christ suffered the wrath
of God for men's sins in such a way as He was
capable of, being an infinitely holy person, who knew
that God was not angry with Him personally, knew
that God did not hate Him, but infinitely loved Him."
It is, indeed, a great relief, to see this great and good
man, while dealing so much in the language of what
seems legal fiction in that high region in which fiction
can have no place, when he comes to explain the facts of Christ's actual
experience, as they were conceived of
by him, saying nothing that implied, either that God
looked on Christ in wrath, or that Christ felt as if He
did. And, when I use the word "explain," I am very
The teaching that substitutes, "enduring the punishment of our sins," for,
"being punished for our sins," has still, to seek for elements of penal
suffering;--and the same relief which is felt in interpreting the general
expressions of Edwards in reference to the divine wrath which Christ suffered,
by the details of Christ's actual sufferings which he specifies, is again
experienced in passing from the general expressions of the modified Calvinism
to the illustrations of these which are offered. The "wrath" or "malediction,"
as he more frequently expresses it, which Dr. Stroud contemplates, is "the loss
for a time of all sense of God's friendship, all enjoyment of His communion" (p.
192),--which, the consciousness of sinlessness remaining, and there
being no misconception assumed as to the Father's true estimate of Him as
the holy one of God, however it would be suffering, could with no propriety
be called malediction and wrath. Dr. Pye Smith's specification of the elements
of suffering, is strikingly like that of President Edwards, both in the limit
recognised. "He suffered in such a manner as a being perfectly holy could
suffer" (p. 41), and in the moral nature assigned to the suffering, as arising
from holiness and love realising the evil of sin, and intensely interested in
those who were its victims, (p. 42.) The elements which Dr. Payne finds in our
Lord's sufferings, are also intense views of the evil of sin, combined with the
withholding of counterbalancing support (p. 181);--and, though he speaks
of
My quotations are necessarily brief, but the references will guide those who
may be disposed to verify
the correctness of the impressions which these quotations convey. What remains
with me, after fully
weighing all that either school of Calvinists have felt
warranted to present to our faith in picturing the actual
elements of the sufferings of Christ, is the conviction,
that they have not ventured to assume anything as to the
actual consciousness of Christ in suffering, or as to the
actual mind of the Father towards Him, while it pleased
But, my objection to the conception of rectoral or public justice, as that in which the necessity for the atonement has originated, is much more serious than its inadequacy to remove difficulties as to the universality of the atonement. My great objection is that, equally with the view for which it is offered as a substitute, it takes a limited, and,--in respect of the important elements which it leaves out of account,--an erroneous view of what the atonement was intended to accomplish.
If my readers have entered into my objections to the mere legal character of the atonement, as we see it in the system of the elder Calvinists, they will see that, in respect of these objections, the modified Calvinism has no advantage. An atonement which has conferred on those with reference to whom it was made a legal standing of innocence, as having had their guilt already punished, and of righteousness as having a righteousness already wrought out for them; and an atonement whose result is merely to lay a foundation on which God may proceed to pardon sin, and to treat as righteous, are alike purely legal atonements, that is, atonements, the whole character of which is determined by man's relation to the divine law.
Dr. Wardlaw asks,--man having sinned, "what
is to be done? The unconditional absolution of the
transgressor would be a flagrant outrage on the claims
of retributive justice;--his annihilation would be a
tacit evasion of these claims,--while, if the law has its
course, and the demands of justice are satisfied by the
infliction of its penalty, he is lost for ever,--eternal
life forfeited, and eternal death endured. Here, then, is
the place for atonement,--what is it?" (p. 10.) He then,
quoting from Dr. Alexander, says,--"In its simplest
form the problem of a religion may be expressed thus:
Given a Supreme Deity, the Creator and Governor of
all things, and an intelligent creature in a state of
alienation and estrangement from his Creator;--to determine the means whereby a
reconciliation may be
effected, and the creature restored to the favour and
service of God." This statement of the question he
adopts--adding, "The problem to be solved is this.
How may this be accomplished honourably to the
character and government of the Supreme Ruler?" He
then quotes several definitions of atonement, among
But the problem which the work of God in Christ solves, however it includes, goes far beyond that stated by Dr. Alexander, or recognised in these definitions. In the light of the Gospel we see, that our need of salvation, and our capacity of salvation as contemplated by the Father of our spirits, involved the problem,--not "how we sinners could be pardoned and reconciled, and mercy be extended to us;'' but, "how it could come to pass, that we, God's offspring, being dead, should be alive again, being lost, should be found." "God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem us who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." It was as employed "in bringing many sons to glory, that, it became Him, of whom are all things, and by whom, are all things, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings."
Nothing can illustrate the way in which this purely legal view of the
atonement works, and what is its
The objection to both forms of Calvinism on the ground of the narrow and exclusively legal basis on which the necessity for atonement is placed, is instructively illustrated by the relation in which the atonement is represented as standing to justification by faith. We may here take President Edwards as the representative of the earlier Calvinism, and Dr. Payne as the representative of the modified Calvinism.
Both Edwards and Payne regard the work of Christ as the meritorious ground of justification. Both regard faith as that by which the individual is so connected with that work as to be justified on the ground of it. Both are alike solicitous to exclude the faith present in justification from being itself in any measure included in the ground of that justification; while, at the same time, both regard this faith as what has a rightness in itself, and as what is due from man as the right reception of the gospel. Payne, indeed, treats faith more as an intellectual act that Edwards does. But, still, he objects to putting it on a footing with the ordinary case of belief under the power of evidence; in doing which he thinks some others have erred. The difference between their several systems is connected with the idea of imputation. As Edwards holds man's guilt to have been imputed to Christ when He suffered for sin, so he holds Christ's righteousness to be imputed to believers, making them personally righteous in God's sight,--which imputation he holds, not only to clothe their persons, determining the complacency with which God regards them, but also, all their virtues and graces, giving them a value beyond their intrinsic value. Payne on the other hand, as he rejects the conception of imputation of guilt, rejects also that of imputation of righteousness, and holds, "that to be in a justified state, is not either to be pronounced just, or to be made actually just,--for both are impossible in the case of a sinner,--but it is to be treated as if we were just: or rather, perhaps, to be in the state of those whom God declares that He will treat as if they were just, i. e., it is to be in the faith of Christ; for the divine declaration is, that believers are the persons who shall be treated as if they were just." (p. 333.)
Whatever difficulty attaches to the idea of imputation,
As respects the sinner's relation to God, the effect of sin which is most important is, the displeasure awakened in the divine mind. But, Christ is not held to have been really the object of the divine displeasure through the relation in which He stood to us and our sins, however, expressions have been used which, apart from the details offered in explanation, might seem to contain that assertion; and Dr. Payne has not only asserted the very opposite to have been the case, but has asked, and the question is unanswerable,--"How could God manifest that displeasure which did not exist?" Neither God's displeasure, nor, therefore, anything expressing God's displeasure, are we to conceive of as included in the alleged transferred effects of sin. But what in all our Lord's sufferings can be rightly spoken of as "transferred effects of sin"? were not these sufferings in their nature altogether determined by what He was who suffered? and is not the fact that Christ's sufferings were in reality the effects of holiness and love, and not transferred effects of sin,--discernible in all the attempts which we have seen made to specify the elements of His sufferings?
But, are the effects of righteousness more transferable? It is, indeed, far
less repulsive to think of these as transferred to us than to think of the
effects of sin as transferred to Christ; as it is also far less repulsive
The strict maintenance of the idea of imputation enables Edwards to give to
the expression, "for Christ's sake," an amplitude of meaning that, as respects
justification, may seem to meet all the exigences of the subject. If God sees
us as clothed with the righteousness of Christ, he may be conceived of as
smiling on us with the smile of favour proper to that righteousness: and
Dr. Payne quotes Mr. Bennet as "having happily and satisfactorily shewn, that 'the practice of conferring favours upon many, from regard to, and as an expression of approbation of, some eminently distinguished individual,' may be regarded as a law of the divine government: while, on the other hand, the procedure supposed, viz. CONSIDERING a person what he really is not, and then TREATING him as if he HAD been what he is not, has no analogy in any part of the divine conduct." (p. 263.) No doubt this is true. But we must not forget the high region in which we now are, and that, not of secondary gifts, but of that life which lies in God's favour, are we speaking. This we receive through Christ, or we receive nothing; and in reference to this, any correct use of the expression, "for Christ's sake," must have a far higher meaning than these analogies furnish. Abraham believed God, and was called the friend of God, and his descendants received many favours for his sake;--but were they for his sake "friends of God," or "treated as friends of God," apart from their participation in that reality in respect of which he was the friend of God? "They who are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham."
Edwards ascribes the place which faith has in justification simply to this,
that it connects the individual
with Christ. Payne says, "If we are justified solely on
the ground of the perfect work of Christ, there is
nothing to prevent the justification of all men, without
a single thought or act on their part, but the rectoral
character and relation of Jehovah, which renders it
But the fear about self-righteousness arises entirely
from not seeing, that the true protection from self-righteousness is found in
the very nature of faith. The
true faith precludes self-righteousness, because that
This serious error would never have been fallen into, if the atonement had
been seen in its prospective relation to the gift of eternal life in Christ, and
as that by which God has bridged over the gulf between what we were through sin,
and what, in the yearnings of His Father's heart over us, He desired to make us.
"This is the record, that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in
His Son." Less than our being alive in that eternal life which is sonship, could
not satisfy the Father of our spirits; nor, as orphan spirits, as in our
alienation from God we are, would less than the gift of that life have met our
need. And the faith which apprehends this gift as given, excludes boasting,
because it occupies the spirit, not with itself, but with the gift which it
apprehends. For the gift is given; and he that understands what it is, and
apprehends it as given, is altogether filled with the excellent grace wherein he
stands, rejoicing in it, and conforming himself to it;
Now, because of the very near approach to this
which is in the conception of Edwards, though the
legal light in which he has so exclusively seen the
atonement has kept him intellectually (though I do
not think spiritually) away from it, I would prefer the
language of Edwards, notwithstanding the tone of
legal fiction which it has, to what, in seeking to avoid
fiction. Dr. Payne and others have substituted. It is
really true, that he that comes to God in Christ, comes
invested with the interest to the Father's heart of that
sonship in which he comes, and finds that sonship a
living way to the Father--an actual getting near to
God. Therefore, rightly in his own thoughts, because
truly in the Father's thoughts, is such a worshipper as
one on whom that very favour rests, which rests upon
Christ. So that I cannot help feeling, in reading President Edwards' representations
of the way in which
Christ's righteousness invests with its own dignity and
worth, not only the persons, but the feeblest graces of
Dr. Payne may feel that this standing of sonship given in Christ, and
revealed for faith to apprehend and enter upon, is uable to the objection that
he urges against the idea that the atonement confers legal rights; which idea,
while it has had acceptance with others, appears to him destructive of the grace
of the Gospel. And, no doubt, if the absoluteness with which God bestows a gift,
leaving it for him on whom it is bestowed simply that he should receive it and
use it according to its nature--if this takes from the free grace of God in
bestowing, the objection lies equally against anything actually given,
and as to which it is not merely the fact that God has put it in His own power
to give it if it should please Him. But Dr. Payne himself is not able so to
order his words as to escape all the objectionableness that he finds in the
language of others. As the most guarded and unexceptionable statement he can
offer of the relation of Faith to Justification, he says, "Faith justifies by
bringing an individual into that body, to every individual of which the blessing
of justification is secured by the promise, and covenant, and oath of God." (p.
322.) But wherein does the having a thing through faith "secured to me
by
No part of this system presents a more instructive
development of the working of this conception of
rectoral justice,--and of rectoral justice, not only as
distinct from fatherly love, but also from absolute
justice as contemplated by Edwards,--than the arbitrary character already
noticed as ascribed by Dr.
Payne to the relation of faith to justification. For
while the relation of faith to sanctification is recognised as a relation in the
nature of things, its relation
to justification is held to be arbitrary--and, in connexion with this distinction.
Dr. Payne objects to Dr. Russell's saying that, "the whole efficacy of faith in
the matter of justification arises from its object.'' To
this Dr. Payne objects, as embodying "the error of
forgetting that man needs a change of state as well
Dr. Payne teaches that "the judicial sentence is not revealed to the conscience, but contained in the Scriptures," that sentence being, "that all who believe in the Son of God are justified." And this he teaches both in opposition to the doctrine of the eternal justification of the elect, and to that of an act of God in reference to the individual taking place in time, according to the definition of the Assembly's Catechism, (p. 234-239.)
It accords with his conception of the relation between faith and justification
as being arbitrary, that
the justified should have no other knowledge of their
being justified than as an inference from their having
Let us trace one step further the different developments of the faith of an atonement which merely meets the demands of divine justice, either absolute, or rectoral; and of the faith of an atonement through which we have the adoption of sons.
The faith that apprehends the gift of eternal life, is eternal life commenced. The faith that apprehends the gift of the Son, utters itself in the cry, Abba, Father: Therefore, in the deepest sense, the Son of God has left us an example that we should walk in His steps. In the highest path that our spirits are called to tread, that is to say, in our intercourse with the Father of spirits, the foot-prints of Jesus are to guide us; our confidence is to be the fellowship of His confidence; our worship, the fellowship of His worship:--for sonship is that worship, in spirit and in truth, which the Father seeketh.
But if, according to the system of the earlier Calvinists, we draw near to God in the confidence of the legal standing given to us in Christ, and not as drawn to God and emboldened by the Fatherliness of the Father's heart revealed by the Son; or if, according to the system of the later Calvinists, we draw near, having mental reference to an atonement which has furnished a ground on which God may skew us mercy, and not in the light of an atonement by which we see ourselves redeemed from the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons, then is our walk with God,--if such it can be called,--no longer a being led by the spirit of Christ, neither are our spiritual steps in His foot-prints;--for our experience is no repetition of, no fellowship in His experience, nor the breathing of our new life the free breathing of the life of sonship,
I have given to this modified Calvinism a large
space, but not larger than the acceptance which it has
met with may justify. It has necessarily arisen from
the purpose with which I have noticed it, that I have
dwelt on that in it to which I object, rather than on
that in it with which I agree;--but I cannot pass on
without bearing testimony to the clearness and power
with which its teachers expose much of that which is
untenable in the earlier Calvinism, especially on the
subject of the extent of the atonement. But, as I
have endeavoured to shew, what is negative is more
satisfactory than what is positive--their breaking down
than their building up. They have shed no light
on the nature of the atonement that renders their
faith in the universality of the atonement more consistent than that of the
Arminians, with whom Dr. Owen contended; still less have they done anything
towards freeing the doctrine of the atonement from
its exclusively legal character, or that has connected it
I say "strictly adhered to." But in truth, in men's actual, living dealing with God, neither form of Calvinism, however it may have possession of the intellect, affects the spirit of Christ; whose identity as in the head and in the members abides,--whose cry, Abba, Father, is one and the same as to the nature of the confidence which that cry expresses, being alike faith in the heart of the Father, whether as that is perfect in the eternal Son who ever dwells in the bosom of the Father, or as it is quickened by Him in those to whom He reveals the Father, giving them power to be the sons of God.
But a true conception of the work of Christ must be in perfect harmony with the nature of that eternal life--the life of sonship--which is given to us in Christ. The atonement by which the way into the holiest is opened to us, must accord with what that living way is, and with what it is to draw near to God in that way. The sacrifice for sin by which the worshippers are sanctified, must accord with the nature of the worship--that worship which is the response of the Spirit of the Son to the Father: God is a Spirit; and they that worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth,--the Father seeketh such to worship Him.
The persuasion of being in some measure in that light as to the nature of the atonement in which this unity is seen; the desire to teach what I seem to myself to have been taught; the hope to be enabled of God so to do;--these are the feelings under the influence of which I am now writing.--I have dwelt so long on what others have taught, believing that it would appear that they have not made my present endeavour superfluous, and hoping so far to secure the interest of my readers, that they will at least feel that further light is desirable, whether a ray of such further light be in these pages or not.
But that no misconception may be entertained as to the sense in which I use the word "desirable," I may state here first, what light I recognise the atonement to have shed on men's minds, even while it has been, as appears to me, so imperfectly understood; and further, what there has been in the means of grace which men have been enjoying, to make up for the short coming that has been in their apprehension of the atonement, and even to neutralise practically elements of error.
As to the first point, it is clear that these two rays of divine light have been shed on the spirits of all who have believed in the atonement, in whichever of the forms of thought which we have been considering, or in whatever kindred form of thought it has been present to their minds,--viz. 1st, the exceeding evil and terrible nature of sin; and 2nd, the pure and free nature, as well as infinite greatness of the love of God. I mean that the human spirit that saw the atonement in relation to itself, has, of necessity, been filled with an awful sense of the evil of sin, and with an overwhelming sense of the love of God.
That the atonement should tell with its full power as to the latter of these, (and indeed as to both), the use of the pronoun "our," which Luther so insists on, must be known. But with some of this power, and that power increasing as the approach to personal appropriation has been nearer, must the atonement ever have been realised by human spirits. Of the cords of love by which God is felt to draw us when the atonement is believed, Gambold has said, "When we learn, that God, the very Maker of heaven and earth, in compassion to us fallen and wretched creatures, (who did no more answer the law of our creation,) and to make propitiation for our sins, came down, conversed, suffered, and died as a real meek man in this world; that by the merit of this act we might be everlastingly relieved, pardoned, and exalted to greater privileges than we had lost: what must be the effect, but an overwhelming admiration, an agony of insolvent gratitude, and prostration of our spirit in the dust before our Benefactor?"
Nor is the power of the atonement to impart an awful sense of the evil of sin less certain, and that, not only as testifying to the divine judgment on sin, but also as by the excellence of pure unselfish love which it vindicates for God, awakening in the human spirit the sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin as rebellion against God.
But further, not only have these rays of the light that is in the atonement
been reaching men's spirits even when that doctrine has been most clouded; much
also of that light of life which is in the atonement, which men from their
limited or erroneous views of its nature have failed to receive from it
directly, they have still, so to speak, had refracted to them from the writings
of those inspired teachers, who themselves were in
Thus, with the earlier Calvinists, while that legalism
which was in their views of the work of Christ,
hindered, as we have seen, their perceptions of the
relation between the atonement and the law of the
spirit of the life that is in Christ; viz. sonship, still,
the purpose of God that we should be sons of God,
was recognised as taught in the Scriptures, and adoption was both added to
justification in the system
formed, and also connected with the atonement as a
part of what Christ's work had purchased for those for
whom He had given Himself. So also of sanctification,
and of all things, in short, pertaining to life and to
godliness; they were all recognised as entering into
God's gracious purpose in Christ, and as received
through Christ,--and were also connected with the
atonement as purchased by it, though this connexion
was in an arbitrary way; the real connexion between
the atonement and the eternal life given in Christ not
being understood.
So also in the modem Calvinism, although the necessity for, and nature of the atonement, are exclusively referred to the character of God as a moral governor, bound by the obligations of rectoral justice, a large benevolence, not to say a Fatherly heart, is recognised as availing itself of the removal of the legal obstacle to its outflowing.
The history of Christianity affords many illustrations
of the divine life that abides in the disjecta membra--the fragmentary
portions of divine truth, and which so
Yet are we not on this account the less earnestly to labour to attain to the apprehension of the unity and simplicity of truth. Therefore, while we should be thankful for the power which the atonement has over men's spirits, even when only partially understood and in part misconceived of, and thankful that justification, adoption, and sanctification are recognised in men's systems, though the relation in which these stand to the atonement be artificial rather than natural, yet should we feel it desirable to attain, if it may be, to that fuller apprehension of the great work of God in Christ which will render it to us a full-orbed revelation of God, and a manifestation, not of the rectitude of the moral Governor of the universe merely, but of the heart of the Eternal Father,---connecting itself naturally with our justification, adoption, and sanctification, and all that pertains to our participation in the eternal life which is the gift of the Father in the Son.
REASON FOR NOT RESTING IN THE CONCEPTION OF THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT ON WHICH THESE SYSTEMS PROCEED.--THE ATONEMENT TO BE SEEN BY ITS OWN LIGHT.
THE idea that the Divinity of our Lord was a prerequisite to the atonement,
because it made the endurance in time of infinite penal sufferings--sufferings
therefore commensurate with the eternal sufferings which were the doom of
sin--possible, has, as we have seen, been felt repulsive; and it has been
thought a worthier conception to regard the personal dignity of Christ as giving
infinite value to His sufferings, without relation at all to their amount. Yet
the immeasurably great, if not infinite amount of Christ's sufferings is still
dwelt upon; nor is any attempt made on the ground of the dignity of the sufferer
to weaken the impression which the sacred narrative had hitherto been felt to
give of what was endured by the man of sorrows, and more especially of the awful
and mysterious agony in the garden and on the cross. Faithfulness to the
inspired record is not alone the explanation of this. The awful conceptions of
the Saviour's sufferings which have from the beginning entered into men's
thoughts of the atonement, have been so manifestly at the foundation of the
apprehensions of the divine wrath against sin, and the divine mercy towards
sinners, which the faith of the atonement has quickened in men, that it could
not but be felt, that to lower these conceptions would be to lessen the power of
the atonement on human spirits. But the truth is, that however much it may be
felt that the dignity of the sufferer gave infinite
But there is a further and a still more important
thought which these details, on which (in much reverence of spirit, I believe,
and love to Him who was
their hope) these men of God have ventured, seem to
me fitted to suggest. What I have felt--and the
more I consider it, feel the more--is, surprise that
the atoning element in the sufferings pictured, has
President Edwards seems to have put this question to himself, "Christ being what He was, how could God, when imputing the sins of the elect to Him, lay the weight of these sins upon Him and punish Him for them, subjecting Him to the infinite suffering which was their due?" And he has answered thus:--"Christ being infinitely holy, God was able to cause Him to feel the awful weight of the sins of the elect by revealing their sins to Him in the spirit--so bringing Him under a weight and pressure of these sins to be measured by His holiness;--thus God laid the sins of the elect on Christ:--and again, Christ loving the elect with a perfect love, God was able,--by bearing in upon Christ's spirit the perfect realisation of what these objects of His love were exposed to suffer,--to make, through His love to them, their conceived-of suffering, real, infinite suffering to Him." In this way God is represented, not only as punishing the innocent for the guilty, but as, in doing so, availing Himself of a capacity of enduring pain which consisted in the perfection of holiness and love,
--pain endured by holiness through being holiness, and by love through being love, being represented as the punishment inflicted.
Now, while it is easy to realise that the sin of those whom He came to save, and the misery to which through sin they were obnoxious, being present to the spirit of Christ, these would press upon Him with a weight and affect Him with an intensity of suffering, proportioned to His hatred to sin and love to sinners; and while in respect of the suffering thus arising, the sufferer is seen to be a sacrifice,--and a sacrifice in which if we meditate upon it, it seems to me that we may see atoning virtue;--yet it seems to me impossible to contemplate the agony of holiness and love in the realisation of the evil of sin and of the misery of sinners, as penal suffering. Let my reader endeavour to realise the thought:--The sufferer suffers what he suffers just through seeing sin and sinners with God's eyes, and feeling in reference to them with God's heart. Is such suffering a punishment? Is God, in causing such a divine experience in humanity, inflicting a punishment? There can be but one answer.
Reflecting on this answer, and seeing it to be impossible to regard
suffering, of which such is the nature, as
penal, I find myself forced to distinguish between an
atoning sacrifice for sin and the enduring as a substitute
the punishment due to sin,--being shut up to the
conclusion, that while Christ suffered for our sins as an
atoning sacrifice, what He suffered was not--because
from its nature it could not be--a punishment. I say,
I find myself shut up to this conclusion, and that I am
obliged to recognise a distinction between an atonement
for sin and substituted punishment--a distinction, the
necessity of which might have been expected to force
itself upon the attention of those who, in endeavouring
Reader, permit me to ask you to pause here and consider what the question is to which I have led your mind. It is not a question as to the fact of an atonement for sin. It is not a question as to the amount of the sufferings of Christ in making atonement. It is not a question as to the elements of these sufferings. It is not so even between me and those who believe in the imputation of our sin to Christ in the strictest sense. Even they introduce no element into His consciousness which amounted to His being in His own apprehension the personal object of divine wrath. The question to which I have led you is this: The sufferings of Christ in making His soul an offering for sin being what they were, was it the pain as pain, and as a penal infliction, or was it the pain as a condition and form of holiness and love under the pressure of our sin and its consequent misery, that is presented to our faith as the essence of the sacrifice and its atoning virtue?
The distinction on which this question turns appears to me all-important in
our inquiry into the nature of the atonement, and we shall be greatly helped by
keeping it steadily in view; for my conviction is, that the larger and the more
comprehensive of all its bearings our thoughts of the atonement become, the more
clear will it appear to us, that it was the spiritual essence and nature of the
sufferings of Christ, and not that these sufferings were penal, which constituted
their value as entering into the atonement made by the Son of God when He put
away sin by
It has been in the free consideration of the actual elements of the sufferings of Christ as these have been represented by men who had themselves quite another conception of the subject, that the important distinction between an atonement for sin, and substituted punishment, has now been arrived at; and so, it is in the way of studying the atonement by its own light, and meditation of what it is revealed to have been, that I propose to proceed in seeking positive conclusions as to its nature, its expiatory virtue, and its adequacy to all the ends contemplated. And surely this is the right course in order that untested preconceptions may not mislead us; for even as to the abstract question--"What is an atonement for sin?'' it is surely wise to seek its answer in the study of the atonement for sin actually made, and revealed to our faith as accepted by God.
But before proceeding thus to consider the atonement made by Christ for the sins of men by the light that shines in itself, there is a ray of light on the nature of atonement for sin afforded to us by an incident in the history of the children of Israel, which claims our attention because of the marked way in which it is recorded, viz. the staying of the plague by Phinehas.
As compared with any other light that the old
testament Scriptures shed on the subject of atonement,
this incident has the special importance of not being a
mere instituted type, but a reality in itself Phinehas
had no command to authorise what he did, or promise
to proceed upon. That which he did was a spontaneous
expression of feeling. But that feeling was so in accordance with the mind of
God, that God acknowledged it
When I speak of the light of the atonement itself,
I mean, the atonement as accomplished; I do not
mean the atonement as foretold merely and typically
prefigured. For, however the typical sacrifices of the
Mosaic institutions intimated the necessity for an atonement--and in some sense
its form, they did not, for
they could not, reveal its nature. After we have traced
and recognised the points in which the types prefigured
the antitype, we have still to inquire and to learn by
the study of the antitype itself, what the reality is of
which such and such things were the shadow. In the
type all was arbitrary and of mere institution. The
perfection required in the victim--a perfection according to its own physical
nature--had no relation
whatever to sin, but as the type of that moral and
spiritual perfection in the antitype, of which sin is the
negation and the opposite. In no real sense did the
confession of the sins of the people over the victim, thus
selected as physically perfect, connect these sins with
it, or lay them upon it; for in no real sense could it
bear them. Therefore, while that confession indicated
It may seem superfluous to insist upon this inadequacy in the type to reveal that which, from the nature of things, can only be learned from the antitype. But how often have the points of agreement between the type and antitype been dwelt upon, as if to see that agreement was to understand the atonement, although the fullest recognition of that agreement leaves the questions still to be answered,--Why must He who is to be the atoning sacrifice for sin, be Himself the Holy One of God? How does His being so qualify Him for bearing our sins? In what sense could they be, and have they been laid upon Him? Being laid upon Him, how is the shedding of His blood an atonement for them? How is His moral and spiritual perfection so connected with, and present in His bearing of men's sins, and in His tasting death for every man, as that "we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins," because He, "through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God"?
These questions are not answered by tracing the points of agreement between
the type and the antitype, and therefore the seeming progress made in the
That light of the atonement itself, in which the
Apostle wrote, pervades the whole argument of the
Epistle to the Hebrews. But the first principle and
essence of his reasoning is contained in these verses of
the tenth chapter, 4 to 10. ''For it is not possible that
the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin.
Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith, Sacrifice and offering thou
wouldest not, but a body
hast thou prepared me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had
no pleasure. Then said I,
Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of
me,) to do thy will, O God. Above when He said.
Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering
Let us then receive these words, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God," as the great key-word on the subject of the atonement. The passage in full, as it is in the 40th Psalm, is, "I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart. I have preached righteousness in the great congregation. Lo, I have not refrained my lips, O Lord, thou knowest. I have not hid thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation: I have not concealed thy lovingkindness and thy truth from the great congregation," 7-11; and I quote the context of the psalm because it brings out so clearly, that the will of God contemplated is that will which immediately connects itself in our thoughts with what God is, that will, the nature and character of which we express when we say, "God is good,"--or, explaining what we mean by good, say, "God is holy, God is true, God is just, God is love." This expression of the purpose of the Son of God in coming into this world, is therefore coincident with His own statement of His work when in the world--the way, that is, in which He fulfilled that purpose,--viz., "I have declared thy name, and will declare it."
We have therefore to trace out the fulfilment of this purpose, Lo, I come to do thy will. In what relation to God and to man did it place the Lord as partaking in humanity?--especially, in what relation to men's sins and the evils consequent upon sin to which they were subject? How did it imply His having all men's sins laid upon Him,--His bearing them as an atoning sacrifice,--His being an accepted sacrifice,--His obtaining everlasting redemption?
It will make our task simpler--in considering Christ's doing of the will of God,--if we remember the relation of the second commandment to the first, as being "like it;" that is to say, that the spirit of sonship in which is the perfect fulfilment of the first commandment, is one with the spirit of brotherhood which is the fulfilment of the second. Loving the Father with all His heart and mind and soul and strength, the Saviour loved His brethren as Himself. He, the perfect elder brother, unlike the elder brother in the parable, sympathised in all the yearnings of the Father's heart over His prodigal brethren; and the love which in the Father desired to be able to say of each of them. My son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found; in
Him equally desired to be able to say, My brother was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. President Edwards, in tracing out the fitness and suitableness of the mediation of our Lord, dwells upon His interest in the glory of God with whom He was to intercede, and because of which He could propose nothing derogatory to it; and His love to those for whom He was to intercede, because of which He felt so identified with them that what touched them touched Him. There is something which surely commends itself to us in this recognition of love as that which identifies the Saviour with those to whom He is a Saviour, and this, as Edwards traces it out, both in His own consciouness and in the Father's thoughts of Him as the mediator. May we not go further and say, that as love was thus a fitness for the office, so it necessitated the undertaking of the office, moving to the exercise of this high function, as well as qualifying for it? And seeing love to all men as that law of love under which Christ was, must we not both wonder and regret, that his deeply interesting thoughts in this region did not lead Edwards to see, that by the very law of the spirit of the life that was in Christ Jesus He must needs come under the burden of the sins of all men--become the Saviour of all men, and, loving them as He loved Himself, seek for them that they should partake in His own life in the Father's favour,--that eternal life which He had with the Father before the world was?
When God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to accomplish our
redemption, the Apostle says He sent Him as "'a sacrifice for sin." (
The active outgoing of the self-sacrificing love in
which the Son of God wrought out our redemption
presents these two aspects,--first, His dealing with
men on the part of God--and, secondly, His dealing with God on behalf of men.
These together constitute the atonement equally in its retrospective and
prospective bearing. Therefore it will be necessary to
RETROSPECTIVE ASPECT OF THE ATONEMENT
THE atonement considered in its retrospective aspects is--
I. Christ's dealing with men on the part of God.
It was in our Lord the natural outcoming of the life of love--of love to the Father and of love to us--to shew us the Father, to vindicate the Father's name, to witness for the excellence of that will of God against which we were rebelling, to witness for the trustworthiness of that Father's heart in which we were refusing to put confidence, to witness for the unchanging character of that love in which there was hope for us, though we had destroyed ourselves.
This witness-bearing for God, and which was according to that word of the Prophet--"I have given him for a witness to the people," was accomplished in the personal perfection that was in Christ--His manifested perfection in humanity--that is to say, the perfection of His own following of the Father as a dear child, and the perfection of His brotherly love in His walk with men. His love and His trust towards His Father, His love and His longsuffering towards His brethren--the latter being presented to our faith in its oneness with the former--were together what He contemplated when He said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
This witness-bearing for the Father was a part of
the self-sacrifice of Christ. The severity of the pressure of our sins upon the
Spirit of Christ was necessarily
greatly increased through that living contact with the
Not that His task in doing the Father's will, "not hiding His righteousness
within His heart,'' but "declaring His faithfulness and His salvation," was
altogether cheerless: on the contrary, the Man of sorrows could speak to the
chosen companions of His path, those who knew Him most nearly, of a peace which
they had witnessed in Him--nay, of a joy, a peace and a joy as to which He could
expect that they would receive as the intimation of a precious legacy to be told
that these He would leave with them,--could even expect that the prospect of
having these abiding with them would reconcile them to that tribulation which
was to come to them through their relation to Him. That which He had presented
to their faith would not have been a true and successful witnessing for the
Father, had this not been so;--it would have been less than that of the
Psalmist, ''O taste and see that God is good." Whatever sorrow may have been
seen as borne by the Son of God in confessing His Father's name in our sinful
world--and this could not have been but in sorrow--yet must a joy deeper than
the sorrow have been present, as belonging to that oneness with the Father which
that living confession implied; and to have hidden that joy would have been to
have marred that confession,--leaving imperfect that condemnation of sin which
is
But not less important as an element of that declaration, not less essential to its perfection, were the sorrows of the Man of sorrows, of which also they were the chosen witnesses. It has been said, "If God should appear as a man on this sinful earth, how could it be but as a man of sorrows?" The natural outward expression of Christ's inward sorrow from the constant pressure of our sin and misery on His spirit--a pressure under which, as God in our nature, with the mind of God in suffering flesh He could not but be--would of itself have been enough to justify the appeal to those who saw Him nearly, "Look, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow?" But to the vindication of the name of God, and to the condemnation of the sin of man, that actual meeting of the eternal love with the enmity of the carnal mind, which took place when Christ came to men in the Father's name--in the fellowship of the Father's love, was necessary; and, therefore, however much it added to Christ's suffering as bearing our sins, it was permitted; and the Father ordered the path in which He led the Son so as to give full and perfect development and manifestation to the self-sacrificing life of love that was in Christ, fulness and perfection to His declaration of the Father's name.
We have been prepared for recognising our Lord's
honouring of the Father in the sight of men, as an
If we at all realise the cost to Christ, we can have no difficulty in
contemplating as included in the expression, "a sacrifice for sin," what Christ
endured in this witnessing for God. But I am anxious that the way in
which the sufferings of Christ now before us entered into the atonement, and not
the fact only that they did enter into it, may be distinctly understood,--that
it was as being necessary to the perfection of His witness-bearing for the
Father. For, while these sufferings have also received a place in the atonement,
in the systems which have been considered above as forms of Calvinism, it has
been on the entirely different ground that they were a part of what our Lord
endured in bearing the punishment of our sins; and I have already urged the
impossibility of regarding as penal the sorrows of holy love endured in
realising our sin and misery--the impossibility of believing that He who said,
"Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because men
But apart from the objection to our regarding the
sufferings of Christ now contemplated as penal, presented by the very
nature of these sufferings, is there
any reason to feel, that they would be a more fittmg
element in the atonement had they been penal, than as
being, what we know they were, the perfecting of the
Son's witnessing for the Father? The distinction between penal
sufferings endured in meeting a demand of
divine justice, and sufferings which are themselves the
expression of the divine mind regarding our sins, and
a manifestation by the Son of what our sins are to the
Father's heart, is indeed very broad: and I know that
the habit of thought which prevails on the subject of
the atonement is such as will cause minds, under the
power of that habit, to think it more natural to connect
remission of sins with sufferings having the former,
than with sufferings having the latter character. But,
independent of the necessity which the nature of the
sufferings which we are considering impose upon us to
refuse to them the former character--while we know
that they certainly had the latter--is not the habit of
mind which creates any difficulty here, delusive? We
are accustomed to hear it said, that the law which men
had violated must be honoured, and the sincerity and
consistency of the lawgiver must be vindicated. But
what a vindicating of the divine name, and of the character of the lawgiver, are
the sufferings now contemplated, considered as themselves the manifestation in
humanity of what our sins are to God, compared to that
to which they are reduced if conceived of as a punishment
II. But Christ's honouring the Father in the sight of men, which was His
dealing with men on the part of God, is only one aspect of His mediatorial work.
We have to consider also His dealing with God on behalf of men. And this,
indeed, is the region in which penal suffering should meet us, if penal
suffering had entered into the atonement. We cannot conceive of the Son of God
as enduring a penal infliction in the very act of honouring His Father. But when
we contemplate Him as approaching God on behalf of man,--when we contemplate Him
as meeting the divine mind in its aspect towards sin and sinners, and as dealing
with the righteous wrath of God against sin, interposing Himself between sinners
and the consequences of that righteous wrath,--we feel, that here we have come
to that which men have contemplated when they have conceived of Christ as
satisfying divine justice in respect of its claim for vengeance upon our sins,
and that here was the place for outcoming of wrath upon the Mediator, and penal
infliction, if such there had been,--and, as such there has not been, that here
is the place in which we should find that dealing of the Mediator with the
divine wrath against sin which has had the result which men have referred to His
assumed bearing of the punishment of sin; and which, being understood, will be
felt to
I say, "all that was according to truth in these expressions," for there was truth in them, though mingled with error--how much error, the separating of the truth will best shew. But the wrath of God against sin is a reality, however men have erred in their thoughts as to how that wrath was to be appeased. Nor is the idea that satisfaction was due to divine justice, a delusion, however far men have wandered from the true conception of what would meet its righteous demand. And if so, then Christ, in dealing with God on behalf of men, must be conceived of as dealing with the righteous wrath of God against sin, and according to it that which was due: and this would necessarily precede His intercession for us.
It is manifest, if we consider it, that Christ's own long-suffering love was the revelation to those who should see the Father in the Son, of that forgiving love in God to which Christ's intercession for men would be addressed; and so also, I believe, does Christ's own condemnation of our sins, and His holy sorrow because of them, indicate that dealing with the aspect of the divine mind towards sin which prepared the way for intercession.
That oneness of mind with the Father, which towards man took the form of
condemnation of sin, would,
in the Son's dealing with the Father in relation to our
sins, take the form of a perfect confession of our sins.
This confession, as to its own nature, must have been
a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on
the sin of man. Such an Amen was due in the truth
of things. He who was the Truth could not be in
humanity and not utter it,--and it was necessarily a first
In contending "that sin must be punished with an infinite punishment," President Edwards says*, that "God could not be just to Himself without this vindication, unless there could be such a thing as a repentance, humiliation and sorrow for this (viz., sin), proportionable to the greatness of the majesty despised,"--for that there must needs be, "either an equivalent punishment or an equivalent sorrow and repentance"--"so," he proceeds, "sin must be punished with an infinite punishment," thus assuming that the alternative of "an equivalent sorrow and repentance" was out of the question. But, upon the assumption of that identification of Himself with those whom He came to save, on the part of the Saviour, which is the foundation of Edwards' whole system, it may at the least be said, that the Mediator had the two alternatives open to His choice,--either to endure for sinners an equivalent punishment, or to experience in reference to their sin, and present to God on their behalf, an adequate sorrow and repentance. Either of these courses should be regarded by Edwards as equally securing the vindication of the majesty and justice of God in pardoning sin. But the latter equivalent, which also is surely the higher and more excellent, being a moral and spiritual satisfaction, was, as we have now seen, of necessity present in Christ's dealing with the Father on our behalf. Therefore, to contend for the former also would be to contend for two equivalents. This of course Edwards had no intention of doing. For,
*Satisfaction for Sin, Ch. II. 1-3.
God against them, and holy sorrow because of them,
which were due--due in the truth of things--due on our
behalf though we could not render it--due from Him
as in our nature and our true brother--what He must
needs feel in Himself because of the holiness and love
which were in Him--what He must needs utter to the
Father in expiation of our sins when He would make
intercession for us.
I have said that in approaching the dealing of Christ with God on behalf of men, we approach the region in which we should have met penal infliction as endured by Christ for our sins, had such infliction entered into the atonement; and, as it has not, where we should see that, whatever else it was, which has been Christ's dealing with God's righteous wrath against our sins. What I believe that dealing to have been, I have, I trust, expressed with sufficient clearness,--while I have laboured more to illustrate the nature of this expiation by confession of our sins, than the intensity of suffering to the soul of Christ thus made an offering for sin, which it involved.
Yet is it needful that we should, in realising the elements of these
sufferings, endeavour to realise also their intensity,--that it was according to
the perfection of the divine mind in the sufferer, and the capacity of suffering
which is in suffering flesh. And this meditation, as I trust the reader will
feel, is a very different thing from weighing the sufferings of Christ in scales
against the sufferings of the damned. That belongs to the following out
of the conception of the Son of God
And I may here refer to what has been urged by some as a reason for holding
that the sufferings of Christ were penal, viz. that otherwise there is no
explanation of the sufferings of one who was without sin, as endured under the
righteous government of God. Do we never see suffering that we must explain on
some other principle than this? Surely the tears of holy sorrow shed over the
sins of others--the tears, for example, of a godly parent over a prodigal child,
are not penal, nor, if shed before God in prayer, and acknowledged in the
merciful answer of prayer in God's dealing with that prodigal, are they
therefore to be conceived of as having been penal. But the fact is, that the
truth that God grieves over our sins, is not so soon received into the heart as
that God punishes sin,--and yet, the faith that He so grieves is infinitely more
important, as having power to work holiness in us, than the faith that He so
punishes, however important. But there is much less spiritual apprehension
necessary to the faith that God punishes sin, than to the faith that our sins do
truly grieve God. Therefore, men more easily believe that Christ's sufferings
shew how God can punish sin, than that these sufferings are the divine feelings
in relation to sin, made visible to us by
And with this distinction, how much light enters the mind! We are now able to realise that the suffering we contemplate is divine, while it is human; and that God is revealed in it and not merely in connexion with it; God's righteousness and condemnation of sin, being in the suffering, and not merely what demands it,--God's love also being in the suffering, and not merely what submits to it. Christ's suffering being thus to us a form which the divine life in Christ took in connexion with the circumstances in which He was placed, and not a penal infliction, coming on Him as from without, such words as, ''He made His soul an offering for sin"--"He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself,"--"By Himself
He purged our sins," grow full of light; and the connexion between what He is who makes atonement, and the atonement which He makes, reveals itself in a far other way than as men have spoken of the divinity of the Saviour, regarding it either as a strength to endure infinite penal suffering, or a dignity to give adequacy of value to any measure of penal suffering however small. Not in these ways, but in a far other way, is the person of Christ brought before us now as fixing attention upon the divine mind in humanity as that which alone could suffer, and which did suffer sufferings of a nature and virtue to purge our sins. By the word of His power all else was accomplished, by himself He purged our sins,--by the virtue that is in what He is; and thus is the atonement not only what was rendered possible by the incarnation, but itself a development of the incarnation.
Luther says, that all sin of man, and the eternal righteousness of God, being met in Christ in mutual opposition, the one of these must prevail; and it must be the righteousness, for it is divine and eternal. His conception seems to have been:--sin being there present calling for judgment, and righteousness for life, the righteousness, being divine, must triumph. When, in explaining this presence of sin, he speaks of the consciousness that was in Christ in relation to man's sin, as if it were, with reference to all the sin of man, identical in nature with what in measure the perfectly awakened sinner feels as to his own sin, Luther certainly seems to lose the sense of the personal separation from sin of that Holy One of God, in whose inner being all the sin of humanity was thus realised. And yet I venture to think, that he only seems to do so, and that his meaning has not been beyond that sense of man's sin, and what is due to it, and of the righteousness of
God's judgment upon it, of which I have spoken above. At all events, the view now taken of the way in which the Saviour met and dealt with the Father's wrath against sin, may be expressed in language akin to that of Luther, and we may say that the divine eternal righteousness in Christ used confession of the sinfulness of sin, as the weapon of righteousness in its conflict with sin calling for judgment; and so, that righteousness prevailed. The divine righteousness in Christ appearing on the part of man, and in humanity, met the divine righteousness in God condemning man's sin, by the true and righteous confession of its sinfulness uttered in humanity, and righteousness as in God was satisfied, and demanded no more than righteousness as in Christ thus presented.
It might be too bold to assert that this was Luther's meaning. But at all
events,--and this alone is important,--I believe this to be a conception
according to the truth of things, and that the feelings of the divine mind as to
sin, being present in humanity and uttering themselves to God as a living voice
from humanity, were the true atonement for the sin of humanity,--the "equivalent
sorrow and repentance" of which the idea was in the mind of Edwards, though the
fact of its realisation in Christ he did not recognise. But, though Edwards saw
not that the equivalent sorrow and repentance, of which the thought passed
before his mind, was actually present in these sufferings of Christ which he was
considering, yet am I thankful that the conception of such an equivalent as the
alternative to infinite punishment has been recognised by him. For he is the
great teacher of a demand for infinite punishment as implied in the essential
and absolute justice of God; and, as I have said above, in his dealing with
absolute justice and righteousness on the subject of the
That due repentance for sin, could such repentance indeed be, would expiate guilt, there is a strong testimony in the human heart, and so the first attempt at peace with God, is an attempt at repentance,--which attempt, indeed, becomes less and less hopeful, the longer, and the more earnestly and honestly it is persevered in,--but this, not because it comes to be felt that a true repentance would be rejected even if attained, but because its attainment is despaired of,--all attempts at it being found, when taken to the divine light, and honestly judged in the sight of God, to be mere selfish attempts at something that promises safety,--not evil, indeed, in so far as they are instinctive efforts at self-preservation, but having nothing in them of the nature of a true repentance, or a godly sorrow for sin, or pure condemnation of it because of its own evil; nothing, in short, that is a judging sin and a confessing it in true sympathy with the divine judgment upon it. So that the words of Whitefield come to be deeply sympathised in, "our repentance needeth to be repented of, and our very tears to be washed in the blood of Christ."
That we may fully realise what manner of an equivalent to the dishonour done
to the law and name of God by sin, an adequate repentance and sorrow for
sin
I have said that my hypothetical, and indeed impossible case, and that case which the history of our redemption actually presents, differ only in respect of the personal identity of the guilty and the righteous. And, to one looking at the subject with a hasty superficial glance, this difference may seem to involve all the difficulties connected with imputation of guilt and substituted punishment. Yet it can only so appear to a hasty and superficial glance. For, independent of the higher character of the moral atonement supposed, as compared with the enduring as a substitute a penal infliction, this adequate sorrow for the sin of man, and adequate confession of its evil implies no fiction--no imputation to the sufferer of the guilt of the sin for which He suffers; but only that He has taken the nature, and become the brother of those whose sin He confesses before the Father, and that He feels concerning their sins what, as the holy one of God, and perfectly loving God and man. He must feel.
In contemplating our Lord as yielding up His soul to be filled with the sense
of the Father's righteous condemnation of our sin, and as responding with a
perfect Amen to that condemnation, we are tracing what was a necessary step in
His path as dealing with the Father on our behalf. His intercession presupposes
this expiatory confession, and cannot be conceived of
I have endeavoured to present Christ's expiatory
confession of our sins to the mind of the reader as
much as possible by itself, and as a distinct object of
thought, because it most directly corresponds, in the
place it occupies, to the penal suffering which has been
assumed; and I have desired to place these two ways
of meeting the divine wrath against sin, as ascribed to
the Mediator, in contrast. But the intercession by
which that confession was followed up, must be taken
into account as a part of the full response of the mind
of the Son to the mind of the Father,--a part of that
utterance in humanity which propitiated the divine
mercy by the righteous way in which it laid hold of
the hope for man which was in God. "He bare the
sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." In the light of that
true knowledge of the
heart of the Father in which the Son responded to the
Father's condemnation of our sins, the nature of that
condemnation was so understood that His love was at
liberty, and was encouraged to accompany confession
by intercession:--not an intercession which contemplated
effecting a change in the heart of the Father, but a
confession which combined with acknowledgment of the
righteousness of the divine wrath against sin, hope for
man from that love in God which is deeper than that
wrath,--in truth originating it--determining also its
nature, and justifying the confidence that, its righteousness being responded
to, and the mind which it expresses
shared in, that wrath must be appeased.
Therefore, when we would conceive to ourselves that Amen to the mind of the Father in its aspect toward us and our sins, which, pervading the humanity of the Son of God, made His soul a fit offering for sin, and when we would understand how this sacrifice was to God a sweet-smelling savour, we must consider not only the response which was in that Amen to the divine condemnation of sin, but also the response which was in it to the divine love in its yearnings over us sinners. In itself, the intercession of Christ was the perfected expression of that forgiveness which He cherished toward those who were returning hatred for His love. But it was also the form His love must take if He would obtain redemption for us. Made under the pressure of the perfect sense of the evil of our state, this intercession was full of the Saviour's peculiar sorrow and suffering--a part of the sacrifice of Christ: its power as an element of atonement we must see, if we consider that it was the voice of the divine love coming from humanity, offering for man a pure intercession according to the will of God, offering that prayer for man which was alike the utterance of love to God and love to man--that prayer which accorded with our need and the Father's glory as seen and felt in the light of the Eternal love by the Son of God and our Brother.
We do not understand the divine wrath against sin, unless such confession of
its evil as we are now contemplating is felt to be the true and right meeting of
that wrath on the part of humanity. We do not understand the forgiveness that is
in God, unless such intercession as we are now contemplating is felt to be that
which will lay hold of that forgiveness, and draw it forth. It was not in us so
to confess our own sins; neither was there in us such knowledge of the heart of
the Father. But, if another could in this act for us,--
I know that the adequacy of the atonement to be a
foundation for the remission of sins cannot be fully
apprehended, or the righteousness of God in accepting
it as a sacrifice for sin be fully justified, apart from its
prospective reference to the divine purpose of making
PROSPECTIVE ASPECT OF THE ATONEMENT.
I HAVE said above, that the atonement is to be regarded as that by which God has bridged over the gulf which separated between what sin had made us, and what it was the desire of the divine love that we should become. Therefore its character must have been determined as much by the latter consideration as by the former; and, on this ground, I have complained of the extent to which the former consideration, rather than the latter, has been taken into account in men's recognition of a need be for an atonement.
Yet an atonement such as they contemplate, and consisting in substituted punishment, might allowably be so regarded, being like the paying of a pecuniary debt, at least as to the definite relation of the payment to the debt, the latter determining the former without direct reference to the ulterior results involved in the debt's being paid. But such an atonement as that which the Son of God has actually made, cannot be contemplated but as in its very nature pointing forward to the divine end in view.
Accordingly, I have not been able now to enter
freely upon the subject of that intercession for transgressors, which the
prophet mentions as an element in
the atonement, because that intercession cannot be
conceived of as limited to the remission of past sins,
but must necessarily have had reference to what Christ,
in His love to us, loving us as He did Himself,
desired for us. So also the confession of our sin, in
response to the divine condemnation of it, must, when
offered to God on our behalf, have contemplated prospectively
All views of the work of Christ, of course, imply that its ultimate reference
was prospective. Whether conceived of as securing, in virtue of a covenanted
arrangement the salvation of an election from among men, or as furnishing, in
reference to all men, a ground on which God may extend mercy to them, the work
of Christ has equally been regarded as what would not have been but with a
prospective reference. But on neither of these views is the justification of
God's acceptance of the propitiation itself, bound up with the question of the
results contemplated. On the one view, the penal infliction is complete in
itself as a substituted punishment; the righteousness wrought out is complete in
itself as conferring a title to eternal blessedness, irrespective of results to
be accomplished in those in the covenant of grace. On the other view, a
meritorious ground on which to rest justification by faith is furnished, which
is complete in itself, irrespective of any effect which is anticipated from the
faith of it. But, what I have now been representing as the true view of the
atonement, is characterised by this, that it takes the results contemplated into
account in considering God's acceptance of the atonement. Not that the moral and
spiritual excellence of the work of Christ, could have been less than infinitely
acceptable to God, viewed simply in itself;--but that its acceptableness in
connexion with the remission of sins, is only to be truly
This direct reference to the end contemplated, which distinguishes the view of the atonement now taken, as compared with those other systems in which that reference is more remote, I lay much weight upon. It explains, as they cannot otherwise be explained, those expressions in Scripture in which the practical end of the atonement is connected so immediately with the making of the atonement,--as when it is said, that "Christ gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity,"--that ''we are redeemed from the vain conversation received by tradition from our Fathers, by the precious blood of Christ,"--that "Christ suffered for us, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." Men have been reconciled by the seeming necessity of the case to the idea that such language is employed, because these are the ultimate and remote consequences of that shedding of Christ's blood, which, it is held, immediately contemplated delivering us from the punishment of sin by His enduring it for us. But I regard as a great scriptural argument in favour of the view now taken of the atonement, that it represents the connexion between these results and Christ's suffering for our sins as not remote, but immediate. While, as to the internal commendation of the doctrine itself, my conviction is, that the pardon of sin is seen in its true harmony with the glory of God, only when the work of Christ, through which we have "the remission of sins that are past," is contemplated in its direct relation to "the gift of eternal life."
The elements of atonement, which have now been considered in relation to the remission of sins, contemplated in their relation to the gift of eternal life, teach us how to conceive of that gift. The atonement having been accomplished by the natural working of the life of love in Christ, and having been the result of His doing the Father's will, and declaring the Father's name in humanity, we are prepared, as to the prospective aspect of the atonement, to find that the perfect righteousness of the Son of God in humanity is itself the gift of God to us in Christ--to be ours as Christ is ours,--to be partaken in as He is partaken in,--to be our life as He is our life, instead of its being, as has been held, ours by imputation;--precious to us and our salvation, not in respect of what is inherent in it, but in respect of that to which it confers a legal title; or, according to the modification of this conception,--the transference of righteousness by imputation being rejected,--our salvation in respect of effects of righteousness transferred for Christ's sake to those who believe in Him.
Abstractly considered, and viewed simply in itself, the divine righteousness
that is in Christ must be recognised as a higher gift than any benefit it can be
supposed to purchase. In the immediate contemplation of the life of Christ, seen
as that on which the Father is fixing our attention when He says of Christ,
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased," it cannot be questioned,
that the choice being offered, on the one hand, to partake in this divine
righteousness, or, on the other, either to have it imputed to us, and on account
of such imputation, to have a title to any supposed rewards of righteousness,
or, to have these rewards without such imputation transferred to us, there could
be no hesitation what choice to make. Apart altogether from the difficulties
involved in the
I may be reminded, that the reward of righteousness, thus placed in contrast with the divine righteousness itself, and assumed to be a lower thing, includes spiritual benefits, includes sanctification, and that this in effect is a participation in the mind and life of Christ, and might be spoken of as substantially righteousness imparted,--the purchase of righteousness imputed, or, according to the modification of the doctrine, a part of God's gracious dealing with us on the ground of Christ's righteousness; and, however this is a complication altogether foreign to the simplicity that is in Christ, I thankfully recognise the degree to which the elements of righteousness,--all that God delights in,--holiness, truth, love, may be the objects of spiritual desire, and be welcomed as a part of the unsearchable riches of Christ, even in connexion with this system, and when not seen simply as the elements of the eternal life given to us in Christ our life, and in respect of which He is "made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption."
But, a righteousness imparted as that to which a
right has been conferred by a righteousness imputed;--divine favour and
acceptance first resting upon us, irrespective of our true spiritual state, and
then a
spiritual state in harmony with that favour, bestowed
as an expression of that favour;--a right and title to
heaven made sure, irrespective of a meetness for heaven,
and then that meetness--the holiness necessary to the
enjoyment of heaven--bestowed upon us as a part of
In tracing, in their prospective relation to the gift of eternal life, the elements of atonement now considered in relation to the remission of sins, we shall find the simplicity that is in Christ delivering us from all this perplexity, and confusing complication; while the immediate and direct occupation of our spirits with eternal life itself as salvation, will favour our intelligent apprehension of that gift, and strengthen us in the faith that God has given it, and also in the faith of the remission of our sins as seen in connexion with it,--the glory of God in the gift of eternal life in His Son, shedding back its light on the Father's acceptance of the Son when He made His soul an offering for sin.
I would recall here the illustration which I have offered above, of the conception which I have sought to convey of the atoning virtue of Christ's expiatory confession of man's sin, viz. the supposition that all the sin of man had been committed by one human spirit, and that that spirit, preserving its personal identity, and retaining the memory of what it had been, should become perfectly righteous. Had such a case been possible, how would the righteous God deal with such a spirit? In the language of Luther, sin and righteousness being thus met in one person, which would prevail? Would the absolute repentance and sorrow for the past sin, which is necessarily implied in the present righteousness, be an atonement for that past sin, and leave the righteous God free to receive that present righteousness with the favour due to it, or would justice still call for vengeance? This would be a perplexing dilemma, on the assumption of the correctness of the theory of divine justice that represents that attribute of God as a necessity of the divine nature which necessitates the giving to every spirit that which is righteously due to it,--which, in this case, would imply the necessity both to punish the past sin and reward the present righteousness, and this forever--an impossible combination. The great advocate of that theory has, however, as we have been, recognised a principle which would extricate him from this dilemma, when he recognises as alternatives an infinite punishment, or an adequate repentance; and he therefore would have consented to the answer assumed above to be clearly the right answer in the case supposed.
I go back on this illustration, because, while stating
it formerly, I felt embarrassed, so far as the supposition
was one of present righteousness as well as of past sin.
In order to the completeness of the parallel between
I admitted, in representing Christ's confession of our sin as accounted of to
us, that I might, on a superficial view, seem to be stating what was open to the
same objections that I have recognised as valid against the doctrine of penal
infliction endured by Christ as bearing our sin by imputation; and I offered, in
reply, the broad distinction between a state of mind in Christ which implied no
legal fiction, no relation to our sins but what was necessarily the result of
His being in our nature in the life of love,--a mind which, call it an
atoning confession of our sin, or riot, was most certainly a
confession of our sins which must have been present in His intercession for
us,--the broad distinction between this and the infliction on Christ, by the
Father, of penal suffering, because, by imputation. He was accounted guilty of
our sins. This distinction, if clearly before the mind, is too palpable not to
satisfy. But, still, that identifying of Christ with us, and that giving to us,
so to speak, the benefit of what He was in humanity, which is implied in
representing His confession of our sins as an element in the atonement, is not,
as I have
Yet, thus to speak of Christ's righteousness, will as readily recall the doctrine of imputation of righteousness, as the place given to Christ's confession of our sins might that of imputation of sin. How wide apart the two conceptions are, and what the true vindication of the divine counsel in this dealing of the Father with Christ, as with the one man who bears the weight of all men's sins upon His spirit, atoning for them by confessing them before the Father in a divine righteousness in humanity, which the Father receives on behalf of all men as the righteousness of humanity; this we shall understand in the light of the relation of the atonement to the gift of eternal life.
When we consider humanity in the light shed upon
it by the life of Christ in humanity, we see together
revealed to us the great evil of its condition as possessed
by us sinners, and its great capacity of good as that
capacity is brought out by the Son of God. Now, this
is not the same thing with seeing the same person first
sinful and then righteous; nor is the problem which
it presents the same exactly, as in that hypothetical
case:--but, still, what we are thus contemplating involves a closely analogous
question for the determination
of the righteous Lord who loveth righteousness. As
the dishonour done to God in humanity cries out
against it, so does the honour done to God plead in
its favour,--not in the way, certainly, of an off-set in
respect of which the honour may cover over, gild over,
the dishonour,--and so humanity be regarded with acceptance as one whole; not
thus,--although the honour
be divine as well as human, while the dishonour is
simply human,--but not thus, but as the revelation
This high capacity of good pertaining to humanity, is not indeed to be
contemplated as belonging to us apart from our relation to the Son of God. For
though in one sense it is quite correct to speak of the righteousness of Christ
as the revelation of the capacity of righteousness that was in humanity, a
capacity that remained to man although hidden under sin;--in truth, humanity had
this capacity only relatively, that is, as dwelt in by the Son of God,--and
therefore, there was in the righteousness of Christ in humanity no promise for
humanity apart from the Son of God's having power over all flesh to impart
eternal life. We cannot, therefore, see hope for man in the righteousness of
Christ, apart from the contemplation of this power as possessed by Christ.
Therefore, there must be a relation between the Son of God and the sons of men,
not according to the flesh only, but also according to the spirit,--the second
Adam must be a quickening spirit, and the head of every man be Christ. But if we
see this double relation as subsisting between Christ and men, if we see Him as
the Lord of their spirits, as well as a partaker in their flesh,--that air of
legal fiction, which, in contemplating the atonement, attaches to our identification
with Christ and Christ's identification with us, so long as this is contemplated
as matter of external arrangement, will pass away, and the depth and reality of
the bonds which connect the Saviour and the saved will bear the weight of this
identification, and fully justify to the enlightened
And this, indeed, is infinitely far; and yet, some vague feeling, corresponding to this truth of things,--some vague feeling of the standing which the human spirit needs to find in another than itself--not having it in itself--and which God has given to men in Christ, has been present, working in men's minds, and commending to them the system of imputation with all its moral repulsiveness and intellectual contradiction;--insomuch that one truly knowing his own dependance on Christ, feels more sympathy and unity with those who in the spirit cherish that dependance,--though conceiving of it intellectually in the erroneous form which it has in the system of imputation,--than with those whose sense of the moral and intellectual objectionableness of that system, is connected with the taking of a standing of independent self-righteousness before God. For, as to all whose trust is truly in Christ, and in the Father's delight in Him, spiritually apprehended, I am assured that, however I may seem to them--as to many such I shall seem,--touching the apple of their eye,--I am not touching that which is their life.
I proceed to consider, in relation to the gift of eternal life, the two aspects in which we are contemplating the life of love in the Son of God, in His making His soul an offering for sin.
I. The atonement by which Phinehas stayed the plague, prepared us for recognising the vindication of the divine righteousness in the Son's honouring the Father in the sight of man as a necessary step in the manifestation of mercy, and we see a true element of propitiation for the sin of man in Christ's glorifying God in humanity. Yet, in studying the manner of Christ's witnessing for the Father, we have the conviction continually impressed upon us, that this revealing of the Father by the presentation to us of the life of sonship has as its object our participation in that life of sonship, and so our participation in that knowledge and enjoyment of the Father, and that inheriting of the Father as the Father, which fellowship in the life of sonship can alone bring.
Let us mark how immediate was the relation of this hope for man to what
Christ was suffering in making His soul an offering for sin. He knew that that
life of love which was then in Him a light condemning the darkness from which He
was suffering, was yet to overcome that darkness and take its place. His own
consciousness in humanity witnessed within Him that humanity was capable of
being filled with the life of love. The more perfectly He realised that these
were His brethren whose hatred was coming forth against Him, the more did He
realise also that hatred was not of the essence of their being,--that there was
hope in giving Himself for them to redeem them from iniquity,--that there was
hope in suffering for them the just for the unjust--hope that He would bring
them to God. How manifestly has the joy of this hope underlain all His sorrow!
It was, indeed, the joy that was set before Him, for which He endured the cross,
despising the shame. He bore the contradiction of sinners against Himself, not
only in the meekness and patience
I know we more frequently refer to these words,
as the precious record of the perfection of that forgiveness of his enemies,
which was in Him, who, by His
life and death, as by His precepts, has taught us to
forgive our enemies, to love them, to pray for them,--and in this view the
record is precious. But, there is
important light in the footing on which He puts His
prayer for forgiveness to them, viz., "for they know
not what they do." Had the full power of light been
expended on them, and without result, there would
have been no room to pray for them, because there
would have been no possibility of answering the prayer.
But, let us thankfully hear Him who knew what is in
man, thus praying; and let us mark how to the close
He was sustained in making His soul an offering for
sin, by the consciousness in His own humanity of a
knowledge of the Father which, being partaken in, had
power to redeem humanity. "I have declared thy
name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou
Therefore was the consciousness of having glorified the Father on the earth, the foundation of the prayer, that the Father would glorify Him in the exercise of the power over all flesh to give eternal life to as many as the Father should give to Him,--to all who, having heard and been taught of the Father, should come to the Son; and we know that while walking in His sorrowful path, with the hope of being the channel of eternal life to those for whose sins He was making atonement, the comfort was granted to Him of being
able to say of some, that the light that was in Him had in some measure been received by them; that in a true sense, however small the measure, they "were not of the world, even as He was not of the world;" that His revealing of the Father by being in their sight the Son honouring the Father, had not been in vain; that, at least, it had quickened so much life in them as in Philip could say, "Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us;" that in truth, though they so little understood what His living ministry of love had accomplished in their spirits as not to understand Him when He bare testimony to it, still, a great result had been accomplished, for that He could say, "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know," though they themselves were so little aware of this as to rejoin, ''Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?"
Thus, a measure of present comfort of the nature
of the joy set before Him, was granted to our
Lord even in the time of His making His soul an
offering for sin. Thus are we to conceive of Him as
contented to be through suffering made perfect as the
Captain of our salvation,--welcoming all which He
was receiving fitness to be to us the channel of eternal
life. " For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also
might be sanctified through the truth." For, He welcomed that ordering of His
path by the Father, which
had reference to the development of the life of love
that was in Him, according to all the need of man;
not withholding His face from shame and spitting, when
opening His ear as the learner, that in Him we might
have all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; though
a Son, yet learning obedience by the things which He
suffered, that being made perfect. He might become
the author of eternal salvation unto all that obey Him;
submitting to be tempted in all points as we are
It is certain that the atonement has its right interest to us, and quickens in us the hope which it has been intended to quicken, only when that interest and that hope are one as to nature and foundation with what were present in the mind of Christ in making the atonement. We must be in the light of His honouring of His Father's name in all that He presented in humanity to the faith and spiritual vision of men. And this honouring was not only universal as to the outward form of his life, but went to the depth of the inner man of the heart, to the full extent of making His life in humanity a "serving of the living God." "I do nothing of myself: as I hear, I judge,"--"My works are not mine, but His that sent me,"--"The Father who dwelleth in me. He doeth the works."--"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,"--"The Son doeth nothing of Himself; but whatsoever the Father doeth, the same doeth the Son likewise,"--"Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God." So deep was the honouring of the Father in humanity by the Son,, when "through the Eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God."
Nor is it by what He presented in Himself as under His Father's guidance
alone, that the Son of God reveals to us the Father. He vindicates the name of
the Father, and condemns our sin as rebellious children, by all that we see the
Father to be to Him through His following God as a dear child walking in love. I
have,
I have said above that we are to understand that
He who is the revealer of God to man is also the revealer of man to Himself.
Apart from Christ we know
not our God, and apart from Christ we know not ourselves: as, indeed, it is also
true, that we are as slow
to apprehend and to welcome the one revelation as the
other,--as slow to see man in Christ, as to see God in
Christ. We have seen how much loss even earnest,
and deep thinking, and holy men have suffered through
not looking upon the life of love in Christ as the revelation of the Father;--how
it has thus come to pass
that, looking upon Christ's love to men merely as the
fulfilment for man of the law under which man was,
they have dwelt on that fulfilment, and enlarged on the
circumstances which prove how perfect it was, and yet
have not read the heart of God--the love of God to all
I have said above that the Son alone could reveal the Father--for, indeed,
manifested sonship can alone reveal fatherliness, being that in which the desire
of that fatherliness is fulfilled,--which therefore reveals that desire by
fulfilling it. Thus are we to understand the voice of the Father saying of the
Son, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"--which voice, when
heard in our hearts, is that drawing of the Father through which we come to the
Son. And in this light are we to receive the words, "hear ye Him," which
One has spoken of difficulty in joining, in anticipation, "himself and glory in one thought." The greater difficulty is to join ourselves and eternal life in one thought now,--although God has already in Christ so connected us in the very truth of things. But, as I have said, we are alike slow of heart to receive Christ's revelation of ourselves, and to receive His revelation of God,--to believe that God has given to us eternal life in His Son, and to believe that God is love.
I know, indeed, that the difficulty felt in believing
Let us understand it. The difficulty of believing the revelation of man that
is in Christ, and the difficulty of believing the revelation of God that is in
Christ, is one difficulty. To believe that God is love, as this is
revealed by His manifestation of love to us, is to believe that love,
as ascribed to God in relation to man, means, that desire for man which is
fulfilled in the humanity of Christ, and can in that alone be satisfied.
Therefore, those general conceptions of the divine mercy and benevolence which
are formed when God is contemplated only as so feeling for our misery and
Let us not think of Christ, therefore, simply as revealing how kind and compassionate God is, and how forgiving to our sins, as those who have broken His righteous law. Let us think of Christ as the Son who reveals the Father, that we may know the Father's heart against which we have sinned, that we may see how sin, in making us godless, has made us as orphans, and understand that the grace of God, which is at once the remission of past sin, and the gift of eternal life, restores to our orphan spirits their Father, and to the Father of spirits His lost children.
I have dwelt above on the difference between a
filial standing and a legal standing. I have spoken
also of what Christ's being our example in the life of
faith implies as to the footing on which we are to draw
near to God, and the nature of the confidence which
Christ desires to quicken in us. Yet I feel it necessary
thus to insist upon the faith of the sonship in humanity, which is revealed in
Christ, as the necessary
supplement and complement of the faith of the fatherliness, revealed to be in
God: and I must often recur to
this because, in truth, my hope of helping any out of
the perplexities and confusions which I feel to prevail on
In speaking of that which he had come to experience through knowledge of the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested in the Son--that experience into the fellowship of which he desired to bring others, the Apostle says, ''And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." "Father" and "Son" here do more than indicate persons: they indicate that in these persons with which the fellowship is experienced. Eternal life is to the Apostle a light in which the mind of fatherliness in the Father, and the mind of sonship in the Son, are apprehended and rejoiced in. This teaching as to the nature of salvation is the same which we receive from the Lord Himself when He says, "This is eternal life, to know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent;" as also when He says, "If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
Let the reader think of this, and take his own experience to this light. To
me it appears, that the temptation to stop short of the light that shines to us
in the communion of the Son with the Father in humanity is strong, and greatly
prevails. But this light is the very light of life to us; for this communion is
the gift of the Father to us in the Son. In the experience of this communion in
our nature and as our
I have already referred to President Edwards' legal representation of the righteousness of Christ, assumed to be imputed in faith, as perfected in His obedience unto death, and that of which God manifested His acceptance when He raised Christ from the dead. But the testimony to the Saviour was deeper and higher. Christ was declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead. The righteousness then acknowledged was none other than what the Father had previously borne testimony to when He said, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;"--on the sonship, the life of sonship that was in Christ, was attention thus fixed, and not on the legal perfection of the righteousness which it fulfilled. How then can we think of the Father's testimony to the Son as other than a commending of sonship to us, or think of the Father's delight in the Son otherwise than as what justifies His imparting the life of sonship to us?
Let us in this light regard Christ's being delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. The offences for which He made expiation were ours,--that expiation being the due atonement for the sin of man--accepted on behalf of all men. His righteousness, declared in His resurrection from the dead, is ours--the proper righteousness for man, and in Him given to all men: and that righteousness is NOT the past fact
of legal obligation discharged, but the mind of sonship towards the Father; for in the beloved Son is the Father seen to be well pleased, and in our being through Him to the Father dear children will it come to pass that the Father will be well pleased in us.
II. All that we thus learn as to the prospective reference of the atonement in considering Christ's own manifested life in humanity as His witnessing for the Father to men, is confirmed, and further light shed upon it, when we consider with the same prospective reference the atonement as the Son's dealing with the Father on our behalf.
We cannot conceive of our Lord's dealing with the Father on our behalf
without passing on to its prospective reference. We could not formerly speak
freely of that intercession for sinners which the Prophet has conjoined with His
bearing of their sins, because that intercession could not be conceived of as
stopping short of the prayer for our participation in eternal life, to which the
expiatory confession of our sins, and prayer for the pardon of our sins
necessarily led forward, and in connexion with which alone they could have
existed. We now approach the subject of this dealing of Christ with the Father
in the light of Christ's own perfection in humanity, and connect His laying hold
of the hope for man which was in God with the Father's testimony that He was
well pleased in the Son. What we have thought of Christ as necessarily desiring
for us, was the fellowship of what He Himself was in humanity. This, therefore,
was that which He would ask for us; and we can now understand that He would do
so with a confidence connected with His own consciousness that in humanity
He abode in His Father's love and in the light of His countenance. Thus would
His own righteousness be
And this is the right conception of Christ pleading His own merits on our behalf. Our capacity of that which He asked for us was so implied in these merits, and the Father's delight in these merits so implied His delight in their reproduction in us, that the prayer which proceeds on these grounds is manifestly according to the will of the Father--to offer it is a part of the doing of the Father's will--to offer it in the faith and hope of an answer is a part of the trust in the Father by which He declared the Father's name, and is to be contemplated as completing that response to the mind of the Father towards us in our sin and misery, which was present but in part in the retrospective confession of our sin.
And these--the confession and the intercession--so harmonise, are so truly each the complement of the other, that we feel in passing from the one to the other our faith in the Father's acceptance of each confirmed by seeing it in connexion with the other; that is to say, we more easily believe in the Father's acceptance of Christ's expiatory confession of our sins when we see that confession as contemplating our yet living to God--our partaking in eternal life; and we more easily believe in the gift of eternal life to those who have sinned, when we see it in connexion with that due and perfect expiation for their past sin.
It is in the dealing of the Son with the Father on our behalf, thus in all its aspects before us, that the full light of the atonement shines to us. In the life of Christ, as the revelation of the Father by the Son, we see the love of God to man--the will of God for man--the eternal life which the Father has given to us in the Son--that salvation which the gospel reveals as the
Apostle knew it when he invited men to the fellowship of it as fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. Proceeding from this contemplation of the light of eternal life as shining in Christ's own life on earth, to consider the Son in His dealing with the Father on our behalf, and contemplating Him now as bearing us and our sins and miseries on His heart before the Father, and uttering all that in love to the Father and to us He feels regarding us--all His divine sorrow--all His desire--all His hope--all that He admits and confesses as against us--all that, notwithstanding. He asks for us, with that in His own human consciousness, in His following the Father as a dear child walking in love, which justifies His hope in making intercession--enabling Him to intercede in conscious righteousness as well as conscious compassion and love,--we have the elements of the atonement before us as presented by the Son and accepted by the Father, and see the grounds of the divine procedure in granting to us remission of our sins and the gift of eternal life. We are contemplating what the Son, who dwells in the bosom of the Father, and whom the Father heareth always, offers to the Father as what He knows to be according to the Father's will, which, receiving the Father's acknowledgment as accepted by Him, is sealed to us as the true and perfect response of the Son to the Father's heart and mind in relation to man, the perfect doing of His will--the perfect declaring of His name.
In the light of what God thus accepted when Christ through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, we see the ultimate ground--the ultimate foundation in God--for that peace with God which we have in Christ. I say the ultimate ground in God for that peace with God which we have in our Lord Jesus
Christ; for, while the immediate ground is the atonement thus present to our faith, that is to say, the purpose as fulfilled which our Lord expressed, when coming to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, He said, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God;" yet clearly it is that eternal will itself which He thus came to do, and which by doing it the Son has revealed, even that name of God which the Son has declared, which is itself the ultimate peace and rest of our spirits.
In this full light of the atonement our first conviction is, that in this divine transaction in humanity, through which we have the remission of our sins and the gift of eternal life, there has been nothing arbitrary. We see a righteous and necessary relation between the remission of our sins and Christ's expiatory confession as the due and adequate confession of them--a perfect expiation in that it was divine,--perfect in relation to us in that it was human. We see a righteous and necessary relation between the gift of eternal life and Christ's righteousness; God's delight in that righteousness in humanity justifying to us the Son's offering it, and the Father's accepting it on behalf of man to be the righteousness of man.
We see further that what is thus offered on our
behalf is so offered by the Son and so accepted by the
Father, entirely with the prospective purpose that it is
to be reproduced in us. The expiatory confession of
our sins which we have been contemplating is to be
shared in by ourselves: to accept it on our behalf was
to accept it as that mind in relation to sin in the fellowship of which we are
to come to God. The righteous
trust in the Father, that following Him as a dear child
walking in love, which we have been contemplating as
Christ's righteousness, is to be shared in by us: to accept
it on our behalf as the righteousness of man, was to
In the light of the atonement this is seen clearly; and the light, as our
eyes become able to bear it, reconciles us to itself. We soon are thankful that
what God has accepted for us in Christ, is also what God has given to us in
Christ. As to our past sins, we not only see that the atonement presented to our
faith is far more honouring to the righteous law of God against which we had
sinned, than any penal infliction for our sins, whether endured by another for
us, or endured by ourselves in abiding misery, could have been; but are further
able to accept, as a most welcome part of the gift of God in Christ, the power
to confess our sins with an Amen to Christ's confession of them, true and deep
in the measure in which we partake in His Spirit. We are contented and thankful
to begin our new life with partaking in the mind of Christ concerning our old
life, and feel the confession of our sins to be the side on which the life of
holiness is nearest to us, the form in which it naturally becomes ours, and in
which it must first be tasted by us: for holiness, truth, righteousness, love,
must first dawn in us as confessions of sin. So we welcome the fellowship of the
mind in which Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man, as the
first breathing of that life which comes to us through His death. As to our
interest in the righteousness of Christ, we not only soon see that the
acceptance of that righteousness on behalf of man, with the purpose of imparting
it to man, is more glorifying to the divine delight in righteousness than any
other conception that has been entertained, but also feel the confidence toward
the Father which we cherish
And thus we are in a light in which all drawing of us by the Father to the Son,--that is to say, all testifying to our spirits by the Father of our spirits that He has given to us eternal life in His Son,--comes to us as the personal application to ourselves of that eternal will of God which we have seen revealed in Christ's dealing with the Father on our behalf. This drawing is felt to accord with, and to be interpreted by, the offering of the Son, and the acceptance of that offering by the Father; and as our faith realises the work of atonement,--Christ's confession of our sins, Christ's presentation of His own righteousness in humanity in relation to us, and the Father's acceptance of both on our behalf,--we are more and more able to understand and to believe the testimony of God in the Spirit, that God has given to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son.
In proportion as the light of the divine counsel
thus strengthens to us, and in proportion to the growing awakenedness of our
spirits to the proper consciousness of God's offspring and realisation of what
the
divine fatherliness must be,--what it must desire,--what alone can be satisfying
to it,--we come to see the
work of redemption in the light of our ultimate and
root relation to God as the Father of spirits, with
whom abides the fountain of life. We see that, however we had departed from God,
our true well-being
continued to be, and must ever continue to be, so
bound up in what God is to us in Himself, and what
the aspect of our mind is towards Him, as that nothing
I have noticed above how much we may deceive ourselves if we expect that light from the typical sacrifices under the law which can only be shed upon us by the antitype itself. But there is an error from which these services might have saved men, which yet has been fallen into. What these services present to us as the picture of God's spiritual kingdom, is, a temple and a worship, --the participation in that worship being the good set forth,--disqualification for that worship the evil,--and sacrifices, and participation in these sacrifices, the means of deliverance from that evil and participation in that good. Not to deliver from punishment, but to cleanse and purify for worship, was the blood of the victim shed. Not the receiving of any manner of reward for righteousness, but the being holy and accepted worshippers, was the benefit received through being sprinkled with the victim's blood. In the light of this centre idea of worship, therefore, are we to see the sprinkling of all things with blood, and the remission of sins to which this related.
Accordingly, when we pass from the type to the antitype, we find worship the
great good set forth to us--that worship in spirit and in truth which the heart
of the Father craves for,--that worship which is sonship,--the response of the
heart of the Son to the heart of the Father. We find the disqualification for
worship to be not a mere fact of guilt, but the carnal mind which is enmity
against God,--the law in man's members warring against the law of his mind, and
bringing him
Thus we are taught the strictly moral and spiritual relation of the sacrifice to the worship,--we see the fitness of the blood shed to fit the spirits which shall be washed in it to partake in that worship,--we see the mind of Christ, which is in that blood, to be that mind in the light of which and in the fellowship of which the worshipper will cry, Abba, Father. Finally, we see why the High Priest and head of this worship is the Son of God; and why His relation to the worshippers is not "the law of a carnal commandment,"--not a mere institution or arrangement, but a spiritual relation, viz., "the power of an endless life,"--so that He is their High Priest in that He is their life.
All this, while it accords with the place of sacrifices under the law, is to
us, when we see it in the light
of our relation to God as the Father of our spirits, of
the nature of necessary truth, that is to say, we see
that that access to God which shall indeed be to us a
way into the holiest, must accord with the spiritual
constitution of our being, with the nature of holiness,
and with the nature of the separation from God which
sin causes; therefore, that no permission or authority to come to God can be of
any avail to us, apart
from the mind in which alone he who has sinned can
Permission to draw near to God, seen thus in the light of the mind in which to draw near,--that is to say, the remission of our sins seen in connexion with Christ's confession of our sins,--this is the way of life open before us; yet is that way to our faith altogether a part of the gift of eternal life. Though the right feelings for us to cherish,--though the only suitable feelings in which to approach to God,--though, in truth, the only feelings in which the consciousness of having sinned can coexist with the experience of communion with God,--these feelings altogether belong to the Son of God,--to the Spirit of sonship,--and are possible to us only in the fellowship of the Son's confidence in the Father's fatherly forgiveness, being quickened in us by the faith of that fatherly forgiveness, as uttered in God's acceptance of Christ's confession and intercession on our behalf.
I have above insisted upon the importance of the difference between a legal
standing and a filial standing, and on the necessity, in considering the nature
of the atonement, of keeping continually in view, that in redeeming us who were
under the law the divine purpose was that we should receive the adoption of
sons. This necessity is becoming, I trust, more and more clear as
To speak of an atonement as due to the fatherly
heart of God is foreign to our habits of mind on the
subject of atonement. Yet I believe, that in proportion as we see the expiation
that is in Christ's confession of man's sin to be that which has truly met the
demand of the divine righteousness, we must see that the filial spirit
that was in that confession, and which necessarily took into account what our
being rebellious children was to the Father's heart, constituted the perfection
of the expiation. This is no uncalled for refinement of thought. The pardon
which we need is the pardon of the Father of our spirits,--the way into
the holiest which we need is the way into our Father's
heart; and therefore, the blood of Christ which hath
consecrated such a way for us, must have power to
cleanse our spirits from that spiritual pollution which
And this consideration manifestly confirms the view now taken of the atonement. In proportion as it is seen that that which expiates sin must be something that meets a demand of the divine righteousness, the superiority of a moral and spiritual atonement, consisting in the right response from humanity to the divine mind in relation to sin, becomes clear. But that superiority is surely rendered still more unequivocal when, from the conception of God as the righteous ruler, we ascend to that of God as the Father of spirits. It is then that we fully realise that there is no real fitness to atone for sin in penal sufferings, whether endured by ourselves or by another for us. Most clearly to the Father's feelings such sufferings would be no atonement; and yet are not these the feelings which call for an atonement,--is it not to them that expiation is most righteously due?
And I would ask some attention to this question, because I know that weakness
has been supposed to be introduced into our conceptions of the divine requirements,
by giving prominence to the idea that God is our Father. Those who have this
impression, and who fear the weakening of our sense of the divine authority,
through giving the root place in our system to our relation to God as the Father
of our spirits, would say, "It is the righteous ruler and judge who calls for an
atonement, not the Father; the Father would receive us without an atonement."
Certainly, such an atonement as they have before their minds, in saying this,
would be no response to any demand that we can ascribe to the Father's
heart,--as neither, indeed, I believe would it be to any demand which, in the
light
But this associating of moral weakness, and, as it were, easiness, with the idea of the fatherliness that is in God, is altogether an error; neither should any place be given to it. "If ye call on the Father, who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear." The Father's heart did demand an atoning sacrifice. Is not this clear, if the worship in relation to which the victim's blood was shed, is, indeed, sonship? The Father's heart did demand the shedding of blood in order to the remission of sins, because it demanded blood in which justice would be rendered to the fatherliness which had been sinned against, and which, therefore, would have virtue in it to purge our spirits from their unfilial state, and to purify us in respect of the pollution that attaches to us as rebellious children.
We might, indeed, say, that the Father's heart
asked for an atonement for our sin, simply on the
ground that it desired us back to itself, and therefore,
desired a living way of return for us, and one related
in its nature to the nature of our departure, in order
that our return might be--a real return; and that such
a way could only be that which was opened by the Son
of God, when He confessed the sins of God's rebellious
children as the Son, who abides ever in the bosom of
the Father, alone could: for He, indeed, alone could
know the exceeding sinfulness of our sins, and feel
regarding them in that mind, the fellowship of which
would be to us our purgation from them. But this
moral and spiritual impossibility of our returning to
the Father of our spirits, except on such a path as this
which Christ has opened for us through the rent veil of
His flesh, and in the power of that endless life in
What I thus labour to impress on the mind of my reader is, that the necessity
for the atonement which we are contemplating, was moral and spiritual, arising
out of our relation to God as the Father of spirits; and not merely legal,
arising out of our being under the law. In truth, its existence as a legal
necessity, arose out of its existence as a moral and spiritual
Therefore, it is altogether an error to associate weakness and easiness with the fatherliness of God, and severity and stern demand with His character as a moral governor. What severity, what fixedness of righteous demand has to be calculated upon, is to be seen as first in the Father, and then in the moral governor, because in the Father. And, although there had been in the universe but one moral being related to God as each of us is, and though God should be contemplated in His dealing with that individual being as acting exclusively as the Father of that spirit, seeking to realise the yearning of His fatherly heart in relation to that spirit,--the necessity for the atonement would, as respected that individual, have been still what it has been; nor could the fulfilment of the Father's desire for that one man have been possible, otherwise than through the opening of that fountain for sin and for uncleanness which is presented to our faith in the shedding of Christ's blood. And I never expect to see the real righteous severity of God truly and healthfully realised, and the unchangeable and essential conditions of salvation apprehended, and hope cherished only in being conformed to them, until the blood of Christ is thus seen in its direct relation to our participation in eternal life.
So far is it from being the case, that giving the
root place to our relation to God as the fountain of life
"No man cometh unto the Father but by me,"--these words raise us up to a
region in which there is, there can be, nothing arbitrary. A sovereign Lord and
moral governor, appointing laws and enforcing them by the administration of a
system of rewards and punishments, may be contemplated as severe and uncompromising
in the exercise of his righteous rule,--but he may also be thought of as
merciful and considerate of individual cases; and the outward and arbitrary
nature of the rewards and punishments which he is believed to dispense makes his
awarding the former on easier terms, and withholding or mitigating the latter
according to circumstances,--and, it may be, under the influence of mercy,--what
can be supposed, and what, in thinking of God as such a governor and Lord, and
of ourselves as the subjects of His rule, we can
I have spoken of a way into the holiest as what must have its nature
determined by the nature of holiness; so a way to the Father must have its
nature determined by the nature of fatherliness. These are two aspects of one
spiritual reality; a reality, reader, which we must steadfastly contemplate, to
the certainty and fixedness of which we must be reconciled,--a reality in the
light of which we must see the free pardon of sin and redeeming love, and all
the divine mercy to us sinners which the gospel reveals. In that lower moral
region to which I have referred, in which men are not dealing with the Father of
spirits, but with the moral governor of the universe, (but whose moral
government, while thus not illumined by the light of His fatherliness, is never
understood,) we may be occupied with the punishment of sin and the rewards of
righteousness, in a way that permits us to connect the atonement directly with
the idea of punishment and reward, and invests it simply with the interest of
that desire to escape punishment and to be assured of happiness, which may, even
in the lowest spiritual state, be strong and lively in us. But if we will come
to the atonement, not venturing in our darkness to predetermine anything as to
its nature, but expecting light to shine upon our spirits from it, even the
light of eternal life; if we will suffer it to inform us by its own light why we
needed it, and what its true value to us is, the punishment of sin will
fall into its proper place, as testifying to the existence of an evil greater
than itself, even sin; from which greater evil it is the direct
object of the atonement to deliver us,--deliverance from punishment being but a
secondary result. And the reward of righteousness will be raised in our
conceptions
The atonement, thus seen by its own light, is not what in our darkness we desired; but it soon reconciles us to itself, for it sets us right as to the true secret of well being. A spiritual constitution of things that would have been more accommodating to what we were through sin, we soon see as precluded alike by the nature of God, and the nature of man in its relation to the nature of God,--a relation, to violate which would not be the salvation, but the destruction of man. We, indeed, see ourselves encompassed by necessities, instead of flexible, compromising; weak tendernesses; but they are necessities to which we are altogether reconciled, for we are reconciled to God. One has said, "It is a profitable sweet necessity to be forced on the naked arm of Jehovah." That "no man cometh to the Father but by the Son" is the great and all-including necessity that is revealed to us by the atonement. But, as combined with the gift of the Son to us as the living way to the Father, we rejoice to find ourselves shut up to "so great salvation."
FURTHER ILLUSTRATION OF THE FIXED AND NECESSARY CHARACTER OF SALVATION AS DETERMINING THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT AND THE FORM OF THE GRACE OF GOD TO MAN.
I HAVE said that the character of the Mosaic institutions, as commented upon
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, ought to have saved us from the direct connecting
of the atonement with the subject of rewards and punishments, and more
especially from that direct connecting of forgiveness through the blood of
Christ with exemption from punishment which has so prevailed, seeing that the
blood of the victim was intended to purify and cleanse for participation in
worship. In this light as to the relation of the sacrifice to worship, and
seeing the worship typified to be that worship which is sonship, we see how
perfectly that which our Lord taught in saying, "No man cometh unto the Father
but by me"--meaning to fix the attention of His disciples on what He Himself was
in their sight, as the revealer of the Father by the manifested life of
sonship,--accords with the elements of confidence in drawing near to God, which
the Apostle enumerates in exhorting men to "draw near in the full assurance of
faith, having their hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and their bodies
washed with pure water." That our Lord and the Apostle must have contemplated
the same thing as the due and accepted worship we cannot doubt. But it is only
when we understand, that the shedding of the blood of Christ had direct
reference to our relation to God as the Father of our spirits, and to the
opening of a way in which we as
The doctrinal form of thought which the language
of the Apostle presents, would probably have been more
difficult of apprehension to the disciples, who had yet
to learn that "it behoved Christ first to suffer and
afterwards to enter into His glory," than even their
Lord's language as to their own favoured position as
the chosen companions of the path of Him who could
say, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
Yet, afterwards, they could look back and see the
identity of what they subsequently learned, with what
had been presented to their faith in their personal
acquaintance with Christ. These disciples, indeed,
knew not then the form which the work of redemption
must take in being perfected, but they had received
under the Lord's personal ministry that spiritual teaching, for the want of
which, no familiarity with the full
record of the finished work of Christ can compensate,
and in the absence of which, our study of that record
never is safe; for already they were fit subjects for that
high testimony from their Lord, "They are not of the
world, even as I am not of the world;" they had received the Son as coming to
them in the Father's name,
and that was quickened in them which was according to
the truth of our relation to God as the Father of our
spirits. Their attraction to their Master was, that they
felt that He "had the words of eternal life;"--their cry
This unity of their recollections of the Lord as they knew Him so nearly, with the light that afterwards shone to them in His blood shed for the remission of sins, and in His relation to them as the High Priest over the house of God, is illustrated to us by that opening of the first Epistle of John which has already engaged our attention. The fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, which the Apostle had entered into in receiving the knowledge of eternal life, we have already noticed. This divine fellowship he proceeds at the 5th verse to speak of as calling Him to declare to men as the divine message--the Gospel--"that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." This statement in the connexion in which it is made has clearly the same fixedness of character, as respects the terms of grace and the way of salvation, which we have seen in the Saviour's own words, "No man cometh unto the Father but by me." For, he adds, "If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another." This is, indeed, but the same spiritual law or necessity elsewhere declared in the words, "there is no communion between light and darkness." But the experimental character of the. Apostle's language as used by one claiming to have the fellowship with God of which he speaks--fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus
Christ, claiming through knowledge of Christ both to
know that God is light, and to be walking in that light,
and making His own experience in this spiritual region
known to us with the purpose and hope of our coming
into the fellowship of it, and so being saved;--this
brings the truth that "there is no communion between
light and darkness"--very near to us--very home to us:
the felt unity of what the disciples came to know,
when they came to understand that 'it behoved Christ
to suffer, and afterwards to enter into His glory,' with
what had been presented to their faith in the life of
Christ, and what their Lord had commended to them
as the light of life when He said, "I am the way, the
truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father,
but by me," coming fully out in the words which follow,
''If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have
fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus
Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." Not surely--what I fear these
words too often suggest--a cleansing
having reference to our exposure to the punishment of
sin, but a cleansing having reference to the pollution of
sin itself. Not, therefore, a cleansing spoken of in a
legal sense, and as something over and above the spiritual
cleansing implied in walking in the light of God
and having fellowship with God, but a cleansing having effect in that
fellowship, and which is referred to as
explaining that fellowship, explaining how it comes to
pass in a way that gives the glory of that fellowship to
the blood of Christ in which such cleansing power is
found. For we cannot doubt that the power to cleanse
which here the words, "the blood of Jesus Christ His
Son cleanseth from all sin," declare, is the same that is
contemplated where it is said, "If the blood of bulls
and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the
unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how
So he proceeds to speak of Christ as our advocate with the Father, and the
propitiation for our sins: "My little children, these things write I unto you,
that ye sin not," for he has been shutting them up to a salvation which is
walking in the light of God, and is fellowship with God. And, that they may feel
the reasonableness of proposing to them "that they sin not," he reminds them
that "if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous;" and that "He is the propitiation for our sins." Of course, if any
man sin and then find comfort in remembering that he has an advocate with the
Father, this implies, that with the thought of that advocate will rise the
thought of the pardon of sin; but it is clear that the pardon of sin is here
rather implied than expressed, for the value and use of the advocate directly
contemplated is His value to those who are called "not to sin;" therefore
is the "righteousness" of the advocate that on which attention is fixed: for He
is made of God unto us righteousness, and righteousness is in Him for us
as
And He is the propitiation: for propitiation is not a thing which He has accomplished and on which we are thrown back as on a past fact. He is the propitiation. Propitiation for us sinners,--reconciliation to God,--oneness with God abides in Christ. When we sin, and so separate ourselves from God, if we would return and not continue in sin we must remember this. For it is in this view that the Apostle, writing to us "that we sin not," reminds us of the propitiation--not a work of Christ, but the living Christ Himself; and so he proceeds--"Hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments;" the direct effect of knowing Christ the propitiation for sin being keeping Christ's commandments. And because of the power to keep Christ's commandments, which is ours in Christ as the propitiation for our sins, the Apostle, in words similar to those which he had just used with reference to the claim to fellowship with God who is light, adds, "He that saith I know Him," that is Christ the propitiation for our sins, "and keepeth not His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth His word, in him verily is the love of God perfected,"--the end of this gift of love accomplished. "Hereby know we that we are in Him. He that saith he
abideth in Him ought himself also to walk even as He walked."
We need not then be uncertain what the reference is in which the "righteousness" of the Advocate with the Father is here contemplated, or doubt that, by abiding in Christ is here meant, that abiding in which the branch receives the sap of the vine, that it may bear fruit. And yet I know that this directness of relation between knowing Christ as the propitiation for our sins, and walking as He walked, some may deny, and that, retaining that meaning for the word "propitiation" which the conception of an atonement as substituted penal suffering has given to it, it may be said that it is as a motive to gratitude, because of the deliverance from punishment through the sufferings of Christ, that a moral power is here ascribed to Christ's being the propitiation for our sins. The impression of directness in this matter, that is, of direct dealing with sin itself as the evil, and of recognition of Christ as the deliverer from sin, which not only the verses I have quoted, but the whole Epistle gives, is, however, so strong that I cannot but hope that, in spite of associations of old standing, I may not in vain have directed the reader's attention to it.
And, with a similar hope, though with the same knowledge that deep-rooted
associations stand in the way, I would now take the reader to a parallel passage
in the Epistle to the Hebrews. I refer to the 2nd chapter, verses 17, 18,
"Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that
He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to
make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself hath
suffered being tempted. He is able to succour them that are tempted." To succour
us when we are tempted, is
I know that this view of making reconciliation for
our sins as being the ministering to us a present help,
according to our spiritual need,--enabling us to be at
peace with God spiritually, and therefore, truly,--enabling us to worship God,
who is a spirit, in spirit and
in truth--is not that usually taken. And that thus to
interpret Christ's making reconciliation by the reference made to His experience
of our conditions as what
has qualified Him for this office of an High Priest, is
as great a departure from prevailing associations with
the sacred language, as there is in the view just taken
of what is taught when Christ is said to be the propitiation for our sins. Yet
there is no case in which
there is to my mind a more painful illustration of the
If the interpretation of the expressions, "propitiation" and "reconciliation,"
now adopted in harmony with the view taken of the nature of the atonement,
commends itself to the reader, he will be prepared to receive a corresponding
interpretation of the expression "peace," as applied to Christ, when He is said
to be "our peace,"--making it equivalent to His claim to being the only "way to
the Father."
In the teaching by which the Saviour comforted the disciples in the near
prospect of His being taken from them, we find Him, in words referred to
already, encouraging them by the prospect of passing through the trials that
awaited them in the fellowship of the inward consolation by which they had seen
their Lord Himself sustained in all they had seen Him pass through. "Peace,"
says He, "I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." That He could speak to
them of His own peace, has been already noticed, as a part of the perfection of
His witnessing for the Father. That He could promise to them the fellowship of
that peace which He thus claims as His own, has been also already noticed as one
of the forms in which He made them to know that the life of sonship which they
witnessed in Him, was in Him the Father's gift to them. If they were to be sons
of God in spirit and in truth, the peace of the Son in following the Father as a
dear child, would be their portion also. Further, as they were to live the life
of sonship, not as independent beings, following the example of the Son of God,
but as abiding in the Son of God, as branches in the true
The parallelism of the 2nd chapter of the Epistle
to the Ephesians, with the portion of the 10th chapter
of the Epistle to the Hebrews, considered above, is
obvious. The language of the temple service is not so
closely adhered to, nor is salvation so exclusively contemplated as the
condition of true and accepted worship; for with the idea of "a holy temple," is
united
Looking more closely into the passage, there is a
complication foreign to our present purpose introduced
by the mention of Jew and Gentile. This has arisen
from its being an Epistle to Gentiles. But we see that
the Apostle is taking us deeper than the distinction
I will not anticipate that tracing of the atonement
in connexion with the actual history of our Lord's work
to its close on the cross which I contemplate, and by
which, I hope, the view I am presenting of the nature
of the atonement will be felt to be illustrated and confirmed. In no view of the
atonement can the crucifixion be separated from the previous life of which it
was the close. Yet, it is only the view now taken that identifies the peace to
which our Lord was conscious throughout His own life on earth, and which He
promised to His disciples, with the peace which He fully accomplished and
vindicated for humanity in that death
on the cross, which was the perfecting of the Lord's
work of redemption, the perfected fulfilling of the
And thus was the atonement adequate to whatever victory of Christ on our
behalf is implied in His leading our captivity captive, when "through death
destroying him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and delivering
them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage,"
While, therefore, that formal literal meeting of the demands of the law which men have seen in Christ has been to them the spoiling of the power of the devil, because it was a meeting of the law seen simply as the law; in the light in which we are now contemplating the work of redemption, it is the Son's dealing in humanity directly with the Fatherliness that is in God--and so dealing with the violation of the law in relation to the ultimate desire of the heart of the Father, who gave the law--by which we see ourselves, who were under the law, redeemed, that we might receive the adoption of sons; this true doing of the Father's will by the Son, and not a mere literal fulfilling of the law, being the spiritual might by which our captivity is seen to be led captive.
This deliverance wrought out for all humanity,--the peace accomplished on the
cross,--is, in respect of
But to this order men do not easily conform. There is a state of mind in which it will be asked, "If the relation of the atonement to our participation in the life of Christ be thus direct and immediate,--if it be such as necessitates our giving a moral, a spiritual meaning, as distinguished from a mere legal meaning, to the expressions, 'peace with God,' 'reconciliation with God,' 'propitiation for sin,'--if the immediate and only natural reflection in seeing the pardon of our sins as the gospel reveals it, be, that we are free to draw near to God, to join in the services of the true sanctuary, and in the spirit of sonship to have communion with our heavenly Father,--if Christ's suffering for us, the just for the unjust, thus simply suggest the purpose of bringing us to God,--then is the gospel to us sinners the good news which it claims to be? The wrath of God has been revealed against all unrighteousness of men; we are sinners under condemnation,--our first need is pardon, as a discharge from the sentence upon us. Granting that our true well-being is to be ultimately found in peace and reconciliation in the spiritual sense of the words, have we not at first need of peace and reconciliation in a legal sense? Our fears of wrath may not be holy feelings, or what pertain to the divine life in man; but are they not natural, allowable, nay, right feelings in us sinners? And if they are, are they not to be taken account of and must not this be done in the first place?"
I have said above, that what of severity is in the moral governor of the universe, has its root in the heart of the Father of spirits. We cannot, therefore, believe in an atonement that satisfies the heart of the Father,--we cannot believe in blood shed for the remission of our sins, which has power to purge our spirits for that worship which is sonship,--and yet be uncertain whether, partaking in the fruit of such an atonement, and joining in this worship, we are still exposed to the righteous wrath of God. If an atonement be adequate morally and spiritually, it will of necessity be legally adequate. If it be sufficient in relation to our receiving the adoption of sons, it must be sufficient for our redemption as under the law. To think otherwise would be to subordinate the gospel to the law, and the love of the Father of spirits to His offspring to that moral government which has its origin in that love. We are not under the law, but under grace. Let us receive this gracious constitution of things in the light of the love that has ordained it. Let us understand that He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Let us conform to this purpose of God,--let us receive the righteousness of God in Christ, and be the righteousness of God in Him,--let us be reconciled to God, and we shall find all questions as to our exposure to the wrath of God to have been fully taken into account in that divine counsel which we have welcomed, for we shall understand the experience of the Apostle,--"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world." Surely Philip was right when he said, "Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us." Surely we do not know to what we are listening when we are listening to the testimony of God concerning
His Son, viz., that ''God has given to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son," if we can answer, "But if we receive this life to be our life, will that be enough for us; shall we not need something besides, to save us from the wrath to come?" Oh, my brother, "there is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear." If you are "reconciled to God by the death of His Son," how shall you not be "saved from wrath through Him?" It is, indeed, unbelievable--no man can believe--that receiving Christ as our life, we can feel that His blood does indeed cleanse from all sin, in relation to that worship of God which is in spirit and in truth; but that we cannot feel secure as engaged in this worship, unless that blood of Christ, under the power of which our spirits have come by faith, speak to our consciences of penal sufferings, endured for us, and so assure us that the law has no claim against us.
But the difficulty felt is not that of persons seeing the subject from this
point of view. One once said to me, when urging on him the evidence for the
universality of the atonement, in opposition to his own faith of an atonement
for an election only,--"Were I to believe that Christ died for all, it would
destroy the peace which I have in the faith of the atonement, for this is my
peace,--He suffered, therefore I shall not suffer." This was the same idea which
we have seen urged on Arminians by Dr. Owen, in that dilemma which appears
unanswerable, on the assumption that the atonement was the enduring of penal
suffering by Christ as our substitute. Yet, however inconsistently, and though
not in the strong form,--"He suffered, therefore I shall not suffer,"--many feel
as if they were less obnoxious to suffering, because of the penal suffering
which they assume to have been endured by Christ, even when their faith in the
universality of the
This state of mind only exists through not seeing our relation to God as a moral governor, in its true subordination to our relation to Him as the Father of our spirits. I have asked, "Can the moral governor remain unsatisfied if the Father of spirits is satisfied?" The converse of this question is, "Can the moral governor be satisfied while the Father of spirits is not?" To suppose that peace can ever be justifiable on the ground, "He suffered, therefore I shall not suffer," is to answer this question in the affirmative,--it is to suppose that when Christ suffered, the just for the unjust, the direct end was that the unjust should not suffer. Now, we cannot doubt the pain which the exposure of the unjust to suffering was to God, or the desire of His heart to save them from suffering; but we must not forget that the original reason for connecting sin and misery still continued,--that that connexion was not arbitrary,--that the wrath of God revealed against all unrighteousness of men was not a feeling that has passed, or could pass away,--no revelation of the unchanging God could. Therefore, when the just suffered for the unjust, it was with the direct purpose of bringing the unjust to God,--that is, bringing the unjust to the obedience of the just, leaving the connexion between suffering and injustice, or sin, undissolved, the righteousness of that connexion being unchanged.
Here we are met by another necessity, corresponding to that already dwelt on
as declared in the words, "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." But
I have said that the atonement reconciles us to the spiritual necessities, the laws of the kingdom of God which it reveals. We should in our darkness be willing to lose the Father in the moral governor, if we could think of the moral governor in a way that would permit to us the feeling of security under His government; and all the demand that we should make on the fatherliness of the Father of our spirits, would be for such mercy as would qualify His moral government and modify it in accommodation to what we feel ourselves to be. But in the light of the atonement which reveals the Father to us in the Son, we bless God that not our wishes in our darkness, but God's own fatherliness and our capacity of sonship have determined the nature of the grace extended to us. Nor would we now desire to see one terror that is connected with sin separated from it, or one token of the divine displeasure against it withdrawn. For Christ's sufferings have revealed to us the nature, and the depth, and the righteousness of God's wrath against sin,--what our sins are to His heart, and what that mind in relation to sin is to which it is His sole desire in the matter to bring us, and which mind is His gift to us in Christ, in whom it is revealed. Therefore, the pardon of sin in any other sense than the revealing, and the opening to us of the path of life, is now to us as undesirable as, in relation to the moral government of the Father of spirits, it is inconceivable.
To some whose serious thoughts are occupied with the punishment of sin as an object of terror, rather than with the sin itself on which it is God's mark, this tone may seem high, and, it may be, even presumptuous, and in relation to themselves, unfeeling; more like the self-congratulation of the pharisee, than the humility of the publican, and sounding like self-righteousness, however it may be but that "giving of thanks at the remembrance of God's holiness" of which the psalmist speaks. Others again, entirely occupied with their own newly-discovered and dimly-apprehended exposure to divine wrath, will not venture to judge those on whom they look as more in the light of God than themselves, or to doubt that their professed sympathy in the mind of God towards sin, may be genuine, and consistent with humility, but they are still disposed to say, "Shew us something more suited to our present position, some ground of safety to rest upon--to trust to at once; and then teach us to worship, and direct us to the provision for doing so in spirit and in truth; for doubtless such worship belongs to Christianity."
As to the first of these states of mind, the misconstruction of confounding
the righteousness of faith with self-righteousness, is not strange to those who
are the
subjects of it; nor, as to the second, is the temptation
to seek a ground of peace in relation to God's law,--thinking only of the
lawgiver, and not thinking of the
Father of spirits, what any one can have difficulty in
understanding, who knows how much religious earnestness exists which has no
deeper root than the sense
of our dependence on God as our sovereign Lord, the
judge of all the earth. But whether judging the spirits
of those who preach the true gospel of peace to them,
or withholding from judging, the feeling of awakened
sinners "that the ground taken is too high for them,"
So that however awful our sense of all secondary evils that come in the train of men's alienation, or high our conception of the secondary good that will follow on their being reconciled to God, we must forbid all direct dealing with wrath and judgment as if these might be first disposed of, and then attention turned to other considerations. We have here to do with PERSONS,--the Father of spirits and His offspring. These are to each other more than all things and all circumstances. We know that the desire of the Father's heart is toward His offspring,--that it goes forth to them directly,--that it is not a simple mercy pitying their misery,--that it seeks to possess them as dear children. We know that to be restored to Him, and to possess Him as their Father, is to these alienated children themselves not merely a great thing, but every
14--2
The peace-speaking power of the blood of Christ
But, apart from the fact that the shedding of the blood of Christ had its
direct reference to the perfecting of the conscience, and the reconciling us to
God truly and spiritually as the Father of our spirits, is not the idea of a
direct immunity from judgment, the idea of a ground of peace in the thought of
judgment which may be contemplated by us as ours, so to speak, antecedent to our
being reconciled,--a legal reconciliation to be rested on antecedent to a
spiritual reconciliation,--inconsistent with giving our alienation from God its
true place as the great evil and what must be directly dealt with?--And is there
not, however terrible the thought, yet is there not in the very sense of
gratitude for the mercy which is believed to be in such a direct deliverance
from wrath to come, a source of delusion as to our true interest, our true
well-being? Does it not tend to confirm in us the tendency to lose the Father of
our spirits in the moral governor, and so to misunderstand,
Nor is there any room for feeling as if some lower ground should be taken at first, and in tenderness to newly-awakened sinners. We cannot too soon present the Father to them. We cannot too soon lay their weakness on the everlasting arms of the Eternal Love. To furnish them, in accommodation to their darkness, with any ground of confidence towards God, other than what the Son has revealed as the heart of the Father, would be to seal them in that darkness, and to counter act the end of that revelation. No doubt the words, "No man cometh unto the Father but by me," which reveal that fixed constitution of things to which our vague hope of salvation must conform, or cease, were spoken to the chosen companions of our Lord's path, and towards the close of His personal ministry, but they express the manner of Gospel which had breathed from His life all along. And so these gracious words to all the "weary and heavy laden"--"Come unto me, and I will give you rest," are both spoken in immediate reference to what He had just declared, "No man knoweth the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal Him,"--clearly teaching that the promised rest would be found in knowledge of the Father; and, more, are followed by the clear intimation that in their participation of Himself as their life, participating in what He was, was the Son to be to men the channel of this rest-giving knowledge of the Father
--"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls."
The nature of that hope which was in God for man, and which the atonement has
brought within the reach of our spirits, has indeed been necessarily determined
by our ultimate and primary relation to God as the Father of our spirits. And we
must take all our preconceptions to this light, and more especially those
thoughts of God as the moral governor of the universe, in which the divine
fatherliness has been left out of account, and to which is to be referred men's
listening to the gospel simply as those who were under the law, and not as God's
offspring. When the Apostle argues,
I formerly complained of a subordinating of the
gospel to the law. I am now contending for the due
subordinating of the law to the gospel. When the
Apostle says, "If there had been a law given which
could have given life, verily righteousness should have,
been by the law," it seems to me that he is speaking in
the light of the subordination of the law to the gospel,
for he is recognising the giving of life as what must be
the end of God; and, therefore, that our being taken
from under the law, and placed under grace, has been
in order that we should be alive to God. Therefore
righteousness would not have been by faith any more
than by the deeds of the law, had it not been because
of the life which in faith is quickened in us. "He that
believeth hath passed from death unto life." It is in
this view of faith that God the Father of spirits is just
in justifying the ungodly who believe. These words I
have considered before; but, at the point at which we
now stand, it seems to me that we are contemplating,
as the justifying element in faith, not only not an imputation, but
that which is the most absolute opposite of an imputation, viz.,
life from the dead.
Although the expression "justification by faith" be
associated in our mind with all preaching of the atonement, the teaching of
Luther is that alone of all the
forms of thought on this subject considered above with
which that expression really harmonises, for he alone
have we found teaching that it is faith itself which God
recognises as righteousness: and how excellent a manner of righteousness faith
is in Luther's apprehension,
and how righteous it is in God to count it righteousness,
But the glory given to God in faith must be in proportion to the depth and fulness of the apprehension of what God is which faith embraces, and to which it responds. In proportion, therefore, as God is revealed by the atonement, and as, in consequence, he that believes is in the light of what God is, and by his faith trusts and glorifies God as He is, in that proportion is the righteousness of faith enhanced and exalted. "No man hath seen God at any time. The only-begotten Son, who dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." He that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father, and he who, seeing the Father in the revelation of Him by the Son, hath faith in Him as the Father, attains the highest form of faith,--a faith which is the fellowship of the Son's apprehension of the Father--indeed, is sonship,--and utters itself in the cry, Abba, Father. This is its nature; this, whatever its measure.
But, when the subject of justification by faith takes this form in our thoughts, we have no longer any difficulty in recognising faith as ''the highest righteousness;" for how can we otherwise conceive of that which is the fellowship of Christ's own righteousness, the righteousness given to us in the gift of Christ, who is "made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption"?
I have intentionally kept before the reader's mind
With this same purpose have I above entered as I have done into the questions connected with justification; and if I have appeared to forget, as I have not for a moment done, the distinction made between justification and sanctification, it is that I have hoped that the real spiritual truth that is in justification being once seen, the subject would take its right form in the mind of itself. That "righteousness" as a part of what Christ is said to be "made of God unto us," has come to be dealt with on a principle entirely distinct from that on which men have dealt with "wisdom," and "sanctification," and "redemption," has been owing to the exigencies of a legal system; but such an error has been possible only because it has not been seen that these are all alike elements of the eternal life which we have in Christ. For Christ is all these to us just in that He is our life, nor otherwise than as living by Him are we "righteous" any more than we can otherwise be "wise," "holy," "redeemed," that is, free men,--free with the liberty wherewith the Son of God maketh free.
Nothing, indeed, has done more to confirm the mind in that tendency to seek
in the atonement what will come directly between us and the punishment
of sin, instead of seeking in it the secret and the power of returning to
God,--recognising sin and all misery as what are together left behind in
returning to God,--than the distinction made between justification and
sanctification, when justification is connected with a demand in the mind of our
judge which may be met in an arbitrary way, as by imputation or imagined
transferred fruits of righteousness, while sanctification is recognised as
having its necessity in the truth of things, in that without holiness no man
shall see God: as if righteousness
As to the supposed necessity for God's imputing
righteousness, that He may see us as perfectly righteous, why must our
participation in Christ's righteousness be the meeting of a demand for
perfection,
any more than our participation in His holiness, or
His wisdom, or the freedom that is in Him? All is
perfect in Him, and He, and His perfection, belong to
us; but all in the same sense. But, when the righteousness contemplated is
understood to be the righteousness of faith, of faith in the Father's heart as
revealed by the Son,--of the faith, therefore, by which the life of sonship is
quickened and sustained,--this demand for a legal perfection is seen to be
altogether foreign to that with which we are occupied. The
feeblest cry of the spirit of sonship is sure of a response
in the Father's heart, being welcome from its own very
nature, as well as for that of which it is the promise,
as it is also the fruit: for it both comes from and grows
into the perfect sonship which is in Christ. Confidence
is of the essence of this cry,--hope in the fatherliness
towards which is its outgoing. Reader, say, does it not
jar with this cry, does it not mar its simplicity, its truth,
to be required to pause and say, "I would cry to my
Father,--I see His heart towards me, the Son reveals
it, but I must remember that, to be justified in drawing
near with confidence, I must think of myself as clothed
by imputation with a perfect righteousness, because the
Father of my spirit must see me as so clothed in order
that He may be justified in receiving me to His
fatherly heart?" Would not this thought mar the
simplicity of the child's cry--would it not indeed altogether change the essence
of the confidence cherished?
But the thought of the righteousness which God has
I have now asked, why should the divine demand
for righteousness in men, which God has Himself met
and provided for by the gift of Christ, giving us in
Him all things pertaining to life and to godliness,
making us complete in Him,--why should this demand
of the divine mind for righteousness be seen as met on
another principle than that on which the demand for
holiness is met? All these demands are truly, fully met.
Christ came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil. But if,
in connexion with all that varied perfection in humanity
which is in the Son of God, all humanity may be dealt
with, and is dealt with, by God, the preciousness of
that perfection shedding its own glory over all humanity, and being ever to the
heart of the Father a promise for all humanity, and if the heart of the Father
waits in hope for our "growing up into Him in all
things, which is the head even Christ," (
That nothing artificial, but something the deep reality of which is proved in
the consciousness of the individual justified, is contemplated in the beginning
of the 8th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, it is impossible to doubt. The
misery recorded in the close of the 7th chapter is not more real, more a matter
of consciousness, than the salvation for which thanks are
But the conditions of true peace of conscience must
always be the same; and therefore, although the first
verse of the fifth chapter is so quoted, we must believe
that that in Christ, in respect of which thanks are rendered that "there is no
condemnation to them who are
in Christ Jesus," is present to the mind of the Apostle
when he speaks of "peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ" in connexion with "being justified by
faith." This language, indeed, occurs in immediate
connexion with that reference to the glory given to
God in the faith of Abraham, which sheds such clear
light on the righteousness of God in recognising faith
I have illustrated above the distinction between the righteousness of faith
and self-righteousness, and the way in which faith excludes boasting, while
introducing
I have sought for justification by faith this self-evidencing character, not fearing by this to open the door for a self-righteous and presumptuous confidence,--believing that the true confidence alone can preclude the false in all its measures and forms. The Amen of faith,--the being reconciled to God,--peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,--these, in meekness and lowliness, are known in the light of the atonement. For that light of eternal life harmonises us with itself, and so with God,--and in it, it is impossible to trust in self,--it is impossible not to trust in God,--it is impossible to doubt that this trust in God is true righteousness,--it is impossible to doubt that God is just in being the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.
THE INTERCESSION WHICH WAS AN ELEMENT IN THE ATONEMENT CONSIDERED AS PRAYER.
IN recognising at the outset a need-be for the atonement, I sought to
separate between what is sound and true in the feelings of awakened sinners, and
what is to be referred to their remaining spiritual darkness. At the same time I
have desired that we should be in the position of learning from the atonement
itself why it was needed, as well as how it has accomplished that for which it
was needed. The error which in its grossest form has amounted to representing
the Son as by the atonement exercising an influence over the Father to make Him
gracious towards us, (but which, even when such a thought as this would be
disclaimed, has still led to seeking in the atonement a ground of confidence
towards God distinct from what it has revealed as the mind of God towards man,)
has become very manifest in the light of the nature of the atonement as a
fulfilling of the purpose of the Son, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God,"--His
''declaring of the Father's Name." In the light of that will as fulfilled,--that
Name as declared, our faith has been raised to the Eternal Will itself thus
revealed, to the Unchanging Name thus declared: as the Apostle speaks of those
that believe in Christ as those ''who by Him do believe in God, who raised Him
from the dead, and gave Him glory; that our faith and hope might be in God."
We are so much in the way of looking on the work of Christ as the acting out of a pre-arranged plan, that its character as a natural progress and development, in which one thing arises out of another, and is really caused by that other, is with difficulty realised. Yet we must get deliverance from this temptation,--the painful temptation to think of Christ's work as almost a scenic representation,--otherwise we never can have the consciousness of getting the true knowledge of eternal realities from the atonement. All light of life for us disappears from the life of Christ unless that life be to us a life indeed, and not the mere acting of an assigned part. Unless we realise that in very truth Christ loved us as He did Himself, we cannot understand how near an approach to a personal feeling there has been in His feeling of our sins, and of our misery as sinners. Unless we realise that His love to Himself and to us was the love of one who loved the Father with all His heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, we cannot understand the nature of the burden which our sins were to
Him, what it was to His heart that we were to the Father rebellious children,
or how certainly nothing could satisfy His heart as a redemption for us, but
that we should come to follow God as dear children in the fellowship of His own
sonship. Unless we contemplate His sense of our sin, and His desire to
accomplish for us this great salvation, as livingly working in Him and
practically influencing Him, we cannot understand how truly He made His soul an
offering for sin, when, receiving into Himself the full sense of the divine
condemnation of sin. He dealt on behalf of man with the ultimate and absolute
root of judgment in God, presenting the expiation of the due confession of sin,
and in so doing at once opening for the divine forgiveness a channel in which it
could freely flow to us,--and for us a way in which we could approach God. And,
finally, unless we apprehend the encouraging considerations by which the love of
Christ was sustained in making this expiatory offering,--unless we have present
to our minds His faith in the deep yearnings of the Father's heart over men His
offspring, joined with His own conscious experience in humanity, which testified
that these yearnings could be satisfied--unless we conceive to ourselves how
naturally and necessarily these thoughts took the form of prayer, laying hold of
that hope for man which was in God,--unless, as it were, we hear the intercession
thus made for man, and see the grounds on which it proceeds, we cannot
understand what is made known to us of the Name of God by the success of this
pleading on our behalf,--we cannot see how this appeal to the heart of the
Father becomes in being responded to the full revelation of the Father to us,
and that in proportion as we apprehend the nature and grounds of that intercession,
and realise that it has been perfectly responded to, we know the grace
wherein
But the faith that makes this history a reality to
our spirits, while difficult as to every part of this realisation, is most
difficult when we are occupied with that
intercession of Christ which is the perfecting element
in the atonement,--making it literally an offering. It
is not so difficult to realise how to the perfect holiness
and love which were in Christ our sins should be so
heavy a burden,--nor is it difficult to realise His intercourse with the Father
while He bore our sins on His
spirit, as that response to the Father's mind concerning
them which has now been represented as an expiatory
confession of our guilt. We also easily see how the
Saviour's own conscious experience in humanity, doing
His Father's commandments, and abiding in His love,
would both determine the character of the redemption
which He would seek for us, and be an element in His
hope towards God for us,--a hope which He would
cherish in conscious oneness with His Father. But when
we consider Christ's hope for man as taking the form
of intercession,--and see that His knowledge of the
Father's will is so far from suggesting an inactive waiting in the expectation
that all will necessarily be as the
Father wills, that on the contrary, that knowledge only
moves to earnest pleading and entreaty,--the hope cherished seeking to realise
itself by laying hold in a way
of prayerful trust on that in the heart of the Father by
What I have now been attempting has been to see and trace the atonement by
its own light, viz., the light of the life which was taking form in it according
to the words, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." Proceeding
in this way the intercession of Christ has presented itself as a form which His
love must naturally take. That it would take the form of desiring for
us what His intercession asked for us, was quite clear. But we could not
conceive of that desire as cherished in conscious weakness and dependence on the
Father, and yet in conscious oneness with the Father, without conceiving of it
as uttering itself to the Father in prayer. With all the weight of all
our need upon His spirit--bearing our burden--that He should cast
But though all this is felt by us to be natural, and
what arises out of the life of love which was in Christ,
yet, approaching it not by this path, but by the path of
meditation on Christ as the gift of the Father,--meditation on all that interest
in us which Christ's love is feeling, and under the power of which it is
interceding, as
already in the Father and already desiring to impart all
that Christ is asking for us--nay, as having really be
stowed it in the gift of Christ--the difficulty of which I
have spoken suggests itself. We ask, how has this intercession been necessary?
We ask, how Christ should have felt it necessary? A Christian philosopher of our
own
But let us try to approach this great and fundamental fact in the history of
our redemption really from God's side. Let us try to realise what we are
contemplating when we are rising to the contemplation of that
There is nothing scenic or dramatic in this. Were
such its nature it would be valueless. It would be
We may indeed go further back: we may contemplate the mere capacity of
redemption that was in humanity as a cry,--a mute cry, but which still entered
into the ear and heart of God; we may contemplate the gift of Christ as the
divine answer to this cry,--but it is not the less true that when Christ, under
our burden and working out our redemption, confesses before the Father the sin
of man, and presents to the Father His own righteousness as the divine
righteousness for man, and the Father in response grants to men remission of
sins and eternal life, that confession which humanity could not have originated
but which the Son of God has made in it and for it, and that righteousness
It is the tendency to deal with God as a fate, and
with the accomplishment of the high designs of His
grace for man simply as the coming to pass of predetermined events, which is the
real source of our difficulty in regard to prayer as a law and power in the
kingdom of God, whether we think of it contemplating
its place in the history of our redemption as the intercession of Christ, or as
an element in our own life of
sonship through Christ. In consequence of that tendency, "asking things
according to the will of God" comes to sound like asking God to do what He
intended to do,--a manner of prayer for which we have no light,--as it is a
manner of prayer, indeed, which would be felt to be superseded by that very
light as to the future which would make it possible. But God
is not revealed to our faith as a fate, neither is His
will set before us as a decree of destiny. God is revealed to us as the living
God, and His will as the
desire and choice of a living heart, which presents to us,
not the image or picture of a predetermined course of
events, to the predestined flow of which our prayer is
to be an Amen, but a moral and spiritual choice in
relation to us His offspring, to which our prayer is to
respond in what will be in us the cry of a moral and
spiritual choice. That knowledge of the Father which
the prayer of Christ implied,--the knowledge of the
Son who dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, was not
the knowledge of a certain future, predestined and sure
to be accomplished, but was the knowledge of the unchanging will of the Father
concerning man,--a will
which in all rebellion is resisted, in all obedience of
And it is not merely in order that we may not come short in our realisation
of the large place which prayer must have in our personal religion, if, when we
attempt
THE ATONEMENT, AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE DETAIL OF THE SACRED NARRATIVE.
REGARDING the atonement as the development of the life that was in Christ, I have now considered its nature in the light of that life,--and the unity of a life has, I trust, been felt to belong to the exposition offered. But the life of Christ had an external history, and took an outward form, from the successive circumstances in which our Lord was placed, from the manger to the cross, according to the divine ordering of his path. And while this history can only be understood in the light of that inward life of which it has been the outward form, the contemplation of the outward form must help our understanding of the inward life; and if the view taken of the nature of the atonement be the true view, must both confirm it and illustrate it.
We are thus prepared to find the outward course of
life appointed for the Son of God, as that in which He
was to fulfil the purpose of doing the Father's will, determined by the divine
wisdom with special reference
to that purpose. Another condition, also, we expect
to find fulfilled in the circumstances in which the Son is
seen witnessing for the Father, viz., that they shall accord
with the testimony of the Father to the Son. The
witnessing of the Son for the Father would have manifestly been incomplete as to
us without the Father's
seal to it. But this sealing was an essential part of
the divine counsel,--not only that outward testimony,
however solemn and authoritative, which was in the
This, therefore, is the aspect in which we are to contemplate the actual history of the work of redemption. We are to contemplate it as the Son's witnessing for the Father by the manifestation of sonship towards
God and brotherhood towards men, in circumstances which divine wisdom ordained with reference to the perfection of that manifestation, and which we are to see in the light of the Father's testimony to the Son.
As our Lord "increased in wisdom and in stature," so the elements of the atonement gradually developed themselves with the gradual development of His humanity, and corresponding development of the eternal life in His humanity. The sonship in Him was always perfect sonship. At no one moment could He have said more truly than at another, "The Son doeth nothing of Himself; but whatsoever things the Father doeth, the same doeth the Son likewise." But submitting at once, both to the Father's inward guidance, "opening His ear as the learner, morning by morning," and to His outward guidance, "not hiding His face from shame and spitting," Christ's inward life of love to His Father and love to His brethren was constantly acted upon by the circumstances appointed for Him, receiving its perfect development through them: so that, tracing our Lord's life as thus a visible contact with men, while an invisible abiding in the bosom of the Father, and endeavouring to realise the bearing and operation of outward things upon His inward life, we may expect the light of the atonement to shine forth to us with increased clearness, as the light of that life which is the light of men.
We are not told much of the course of our Lord's
life before He entered on His public ministry; we may
say we have its general character in the words. He
"increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favour
with God and man." His doing of the Father's will,
His following God as a dear child, had then that
attraction in the eyes of men, which goodness often has,
while it commends itself to men's consciences without
When, however, our Lord entered on His public ministry, and the words which
He spake, and the miracles which He wrought, constrained men to attend to and
consider the demand which He made for His Father, and the condemnation on men
which that righteous demand implied,--we see the darkness soon disturbed by the
light, and beginning to manifest its enmity to the light. Yet neither was this
universal--and not only did some attach themselves to Him as immediate disciples
and followers, but many more rejoiced in His teaching; and the response which
His testimony had in their hearts, commanded an outward acknowledgment of Him,
which indeed was so general and so strong, that those in whom enmity was most
moved, were restrained as to the manifestation of their ill will by "the fear of
the people." How superficial the hearing was with which the great multitudes
that followed Him listened to His words, we know, both from His own care to warn
them of the cost of discipleship, (
It was however but a brief time, much briefer than
the previous period of private life, in which the favour
of men was conjoined with the favour of God; and it
was followed by another distinctly marked period, of
which the character is the patient endurance of all the
full and perfected development of the enmity, which the
faithfulness of the previous testimony for the Father's name had awakened. This
last is much the briefest
division of our Lord's life on earth; and its darkest portion is to be measured
by days, or rather by hours: as
if He who spared not His own Son, but gave Him to
We cannot doubt the importance of that portion of the fulfilment of the
purpose, "Lo I come to do thy will," which constitutes the private life of our
Lord, antecedent to His entering upon His public ministry. The scantiness of the
record is no reason for doing so. We know how that scantiness has been attempted
to be compensated by fictitious narratives, intended to meet the natural desire
to know more of what was so large a proportion of our Lord's whole life on
earth. But this has been a part of the error, of not seeing that that life
itself, and that life as it abides in His being who lived it, and
not the mere written record of that life, is our unsearchable riches
which we have in Christ. When the promise is fulfilled to us, that the Comforter
would take of that which is Christ's, and shew it unto us, this acting of the
Comforter is not limited to what is recorded. He takes from the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge, stored up for all humanity in the humanity of the Son of
God,--revealing the life of Him who "was in all points tempted like as we are,
yet without sin," in its relation to our individual need, with that minuteness
of application of which that life, thus revealed to us in the Spirit, is
capable, but of which no written record could be capable. How many a little
child, remembering that Jesus was once a little child, and grew in wisdom, and
in stature, and in favour with God and man, and looking to Him for help
according to the need felt in seeking to follow God as a dear child, and be in
obedience to those related to him as Joseph and Mary were to the child Jesus,
has found his trust met, and felt no want of "a gospel of the infancy of Jesus."
Let the divine favour, testified as resting upon that first portion of our
Lord's life, sanctify
As to our Lord's personal ministry, its distinguishing character is to be
seen in this, that that ministry
was the outcoming of the life of sonship. By this character of a life
was His ministry distinguished from that
of all who were only "teachers sent from God." In
this respect was it that He spake as never man spake.
What He spake, as what He did, was a part of what
He was. His words were spirit and life, and not a
mere testimony concerning life. As now in the inner
man of our being, when the Son of God is known
as present in us claiming lordship over our spirits,
there is a testimony of the Father to the Son in the
Spirit, which in calling Jesus Lord we are welcoming,
so we cannot doubt that then in Judea the man Jesus,
in His living witnessing as the Son for the Father,
had a testimony of the Father borne to Him, which
men heard according as they welcomed the teaching
of God. This testimony was a testimony to what He
was, to the life that was shining forth in His deeds and
words. And the unconscious sense of this has manifestly gone beyond the
intelligent recognition of it; so that we find men unable to resist the
authority and
Unless we realise this, and that that was presented to men's faith, if they could receive it, which pertained to one who could say, in reference to His own conscious life, "I am the light of the world," we cannot enter into that immediate presenting to men of what He Himself was as the Gospel, which we have seen in the words, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest . . . Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls." And in that testimony as to who are "blessed," with which the discourse which we call the Sermon on the Mount opens, we are to recognise the same thing. All these declarations as to the blessedness of the several conditions of spirit which our Lord there specifies, are rays of the light of the life that was in Him; and will be such to us, being heard as utterances of that life,--utterances of Christ's own consciousness in humanity, a part of His confessing the Father before men, being testimonies in humanity to the blessedness of sonship in doing the Father's will.
Accordingly the whole discourse keeps the Father before us. The foundation of every counsel is our filial relation to God. All is in harmony with the prayer which He teaches, putting the words, ''Our Father," in our lips, and adding, as the first petitions which we are to present, the expression of an interest in the Father's "name" and "kingdom" and "will,"--an interest which, if these petitions are to proceed from unfeigned lips, must imply our participation in that life of sonship which is presented to us in Him who teaches us so to pray.
Nor are we to leave out of accont in contemplating our Lord's ministry as giving glory to the
Father in being manifested sonship, that not only was this in our nature and in our circumstances, but that the consciousness of its being so, and the full knowledge of the amount of the demand made on us when called to learn of Him, is distinctly expressed,--the knowledge that to call on us to follow Him, is to call upon us to take up the cross. When we in very truth betake ourselves to Him as to that high-priest who is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," and who "in that He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, is able to succour us when we are tempted," we then learn to value the tone of full conscious entering into the amount of the demand which He makes upon men in calling upon them to hate their life in this world, which pervades our Lord's teaching equally with the consciousness of being Himself living that life in the Father's favour which He is commending.
But that life of which our Lord's ministry was thus the living outcoming, in the consciousness of which He testified who are blessed, in the consciousness of which He declared to the weary and heavy laden what is the true rest,--speaking to us also in all this as our very brother,--that life needed, in order to its perfect development, as the light of life to us, to have the depth of its root in God--its power to overcome the world--the nature of its strength and victory--the weight of the cross which it bore in suffering flesh--revealed, as even the living teaching of the Lord's ministry did not reveal it. Therefore was that hour and power of darkness permitted which the closing period of our Lord's course presents, in which sonship towards the Father and brotherhood towards man have had their nature manifested and their power displayed to the utmost.
As the time drew near, the Lord prepared the disciples for this hour and
power of darkness. "And Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples
apart in the way, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son
of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they
shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, and
to scourge, and to crucify Him; and the third day He shall rise again." (
"I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be
accomplished,"
In this awfully intense prayer we have to mark its alternative nature, and that the latter part was as truly prayer as the former: the former uttering the true and natural desire to which He was conscious as contemplating that which was before Him in the weakness and capacity of suffering proper to suffering flesh; the latter uttering the desire of the spirit of sonship, being that which was deepest, and to which the other, while consciously realised, was perfectly subordinated.
After being offered the third time, our Lord's
prayer was answered, and the mind of the Father, which
was the response to His cry, was revealed to Him in the
Spirit, He was not to be spared the dreaded hour. The
cup was not to pass from Him; and therefore, in that
truth of sonship in which He had said, ''Nevertheless
not as I will, but as thou wilt," the Father's will was
welcomed, the bitter cup was received from the
Father's hand as the Father's hand, and in the strength
of sonship the Lord drank it. "And He cometh the
third time, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and
The precise point of time at which the anticipated hour and power of darkness had its commencement is thus clearly indicated,--the moment in which the cup, in reference to which He had prayed, was put into our Lord's hand--the moment at which the baptism began, as to which He was straitened until it should be accomplished. And I ask attention to this, because the record clearly separates between the actual experience which these expressions, "hour,"--"cup,"--"baptism," refer to, and the agony in the garden, in which that experience was only anticipated, being still the subject of the prayer, if it were possible, that it should not be, as well as of the prayer that if the Father so willed, it should be.
The history of the hour and power of darkness, now come, follows, and is
given with a fulness of detail commensurate with its importance; while it is
widely separated from all recorded suffering of man from man by the preternatural
circumstances that accompanied it; circumstances which, in their awfulness,
accorded with that relation which the sufferings of the sufferer bore
HOW WE ARE TO CONCEIVE OF THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST, DURING THAT CLOSING PERIOD OF WHICH SUFFERING WAS THE DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER.
THE sufferings of Christ during the hour and power of darkness have been dealt with in two quite opposite ways.
I. They have been regarded in their simply physical aspect; and aid to the imagination and the heart in realising their terrible amount has been eagerly sought in pictured representations or picturing words; and thus a lively feeling of the pain endured by our blessed Lord, under the hands of wicked men, has been cherished as a help in measuring the evil of our sins and our obligations to the Saviour. I am not afraid to regard all that was attained of knowledge of the sufferings of Christ in this way as only a knowing Christ after the flesh, and therefore what had no virtue to accomplish any spiritual development in men,--no virtue to impart a true knowledge of sin, or to raise the spirits of men into the light of what our sins are in the sight of God,--what they are to the heart of God. Feelings of a strong and solemn, as well as tender character, have, doubtless, been thus cherished; and, doubtless, the element of gratitude has been present: yet there was not, for there could not be, in images of physical suffering anything of the nature of spiritual light,--however such light may have been present along with them, being received otherwise.
II. But there has been manifested also, and this especially recently, a
tendency to deal with the detailed
Of such other cases it is not difficult to find many recorded that would bear the comparison; cases in which the cruellest tortures have been submitted to with such fortitude and patience of endurance as, if this way of viewing the subject had been admissible, would excuse the sneer of the infidel. Indeed, dealing with the sufferings of the Saviour on this principle, those who have done so have escaped from justifying that infidel sneer only by referring the language of our Lord, in relation to the cup given Him to drink, to an apprehension of what the cup contained, altogether unrelated to His being delivered into the hands of sinful men. Nay, because of its seeming to shut us up to the view which they have taken of what that cup contained, viz., that it was filled with the wrath of God, the concession has been willingly made of the alleged disproportion between our Lord's agony in the garden of Gethsemane, in looking forward to the coming hour and power of darkness, and those sufferings which the history of that hour records.
And here let me say that I entirely feel that our Lord's physical sufferings
viewed simply as physical sufferings, and without relation to the mind that was
in the sufferer, could not adequately explain the awful intensity of the
feelings which accompanied His prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. But, on the
other hand, apart altogether from the insuperable objection that presents itself
on other grounds to the conception that
While John records the words already quoted as addressed to Peter, "The cup which my Father gives me to drink shall I not drink it." Matthew gives these--"Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?" words which, as well as all else, suggest, not a wrath coming forth from the Father, but a power of evil which the Father permitted to have its course. We cannot indeed doubt what the impression on the disciples as to that to which their Lord was subjected, must have been; and accordingly, after our Lord's resurrection, in that interview of touching tenderness with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, when He joined Himself to them and said, "What manner of communications are these which ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?"--their sad thoughts were "concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to death, and have crucified Him." On these events were their minds going back, and on these events did He give them light. "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets,
He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the
things concerning Himself."
But both the errors now noticed,--the minute dwelling on the physical suffering as such, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the turning away from it altogether, for the explanation of the intensity of our Lord's agony in the garden, and seeking that explanation in the assumption that the wrath of the Father was the bitterness of the cup given to the Son,--both these very opposite errors have alike originated in the root error of regarding our Lord's sufferings as penal, and so being occupied with their aspect as sufferings merely, when they were truly a moral and spiritual sacrifice, to which the sufferings were related only as involved in the fulness and perfection of the sacrifice.
In St.
The later occasion of His speaking of His anticipated sufferings to His
disciples already quoted, is also
For, indeed, although this period of which the distinctive character is suffering in connexion with a permitted hour and power of darkness, is so clearly marked off to us; yet had the disciples been, as we have seen, before this time taught to see their Lord as bearing the cross, and to understand that they were called to take up the cross and follow Him. And now, when they were taught to associate a deeper meaning than it had yet to them, with their Lord's cross, it was still as that cross which they would have themselves to bear in following their Lord, that they were to contemplate it.
The continuity of the life of sonship, therefore, is
unbroken in the transition to this third and last period,
the character of the Father's dealing with the Son as
what related to the development of that life, is unchanged, and the interest of
the progress of that development to us as the development of the life given to
us in the Son of God, and which we are ourselves to
partake in, is unaltered. We are to meditate on the
details of our Lord's sufferings with that personal reference to ourselves, and,
therefore, with that expectation of light as to their nature, which is justified
by the words, "Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the
baptism that I am baptized with."
If we ponder these words well, they will indeed give a
peculiar character to our consideration of the cup given
the Son of God to drink; and realising in their light
something of the depth of our calling as a call to fellowship in Christ's
sufferings,--as in the light of the transfiguration we may realise something of
the high hope set before us,--we shall, in our ignorance of the forms of trial
which our Father's love may yet take in accomplishing in us the good pleasure of
His goodness, feel it needful to fall back, as we may peacefully do, on
the
The faithfulness of our Lord's personal ministry and the unclouded light of His life, had been already the realisation in humanity of a loving trust in the Father, and a forgiveness towards men, which were a victory of sonship and brotherhood in the sight of God of great price. But the extent to which sonship could trust the Father, the extent to which the true brother could exercise forgiving love, had to be further manifested,--or, rather, this life of love had to be further developed; and if we enter into the reason for Christ's suffering at all through being exposed to the enmity of the carnal mind to God, instead of being protected from its malice by "twelve legions of angels," we can see how it should please the Father to bruise Him, and put the Son of His love to grief, such as the restraint put upon the power of the wicked up to a certain point had not permitted. We can see how it was fit that He should be exposed to suffer at the hands of wicked men, what would be a measure at once of man's rejection of God, "This is the Son, let us kill Him, and the inheritance shall be ours," and of the forgiving love of Him who could die for His enemies; and we can see how as a revealing of the Father this must take place in the power of the life of sonship, that is to say, in the strength of the Son's conscious oneness of mind with the Father, in the strength of the life which is in the Father's favour.
Therefore, in following the path of the Son as the Father orders it, and keeping our ear open to the voice which says, "This is my beloved Son," we can, without feeling it a contradiction to that voice, contemplate the coming to the Son of "the hour and power of darkness."
17—2
But we should feel very differently if called to believe
in any outcoming of the Father's mind towards the
Son, or any aspect of His countenance towards Him
that did not accord with the words, "This is my beloved
Son." For this we should feel quite unprepared. When
Satan was permitted to try Job, it was with this reservation, "but save his
life." In our Lord's case, it is
the higher life, the life in the Father's favour, that we
are prepared to see untouched. That He should die,
by the grace of God tasting death for every man,--so
dying as through death to destroy him who had the
power of death, that is the devil, we can understand,
seeing in this the triumph of the eternal life. Whatever can have been contained
in the permission of an
hour and power of darkness, we can believe to have
entered into the divine counsel, because anything that
these words can express could only prove the might of the
eternal life;--for nothing simply permitted--nothing
external to God Himself--nothing that was not in the
divine aspect towards Christ, could reach that life to
touch it as a life in God's favour, or suspend its flow
from God. But the wrath of God as coming forth
towards Christ, would be indeed the touching of that
very life in the Father's favour, whose excellence and
might was to be proved at so great a cost. Accordingly
we have seen that it was as a cup from the Father's
hand that Christ received the cup given Him to drink,
and that the unbroken sense of the Father's favour was
expressed in the rebuke to the unbelieving, though
affectionate zeal of Peter, "Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father,
and He shall presently
give me twelve legions of angels?" And, most conclusive of all, we have the
revelation of the nature of
the strength in which the anticipated trial was met, and
in which doubtless it was victoriously borne, in the express
We can understand, then, the permission of an hour and power of darkness, as what could only prove the might of the eternal life presented to our faith in the Son of God. We do not so easily understand the measure of the proof which such an hour was fitted to be. And it is here that the error and shortcoming have been, which have permitted the comparison of our Lord's sufferings during the hour and power of darkness, with the ordinary case of man's suffering at the hands of man.
The actual treatment to which our Lord was subjected is but one of two
elements in His suffering; and it has surely been a grave error to leave the
other element, which, is indeed, the important element, out of account. We may
find cases where the physical infliction and the indignities offered have been
as great or greater, but how shall we calculate the infinite difference that the
mind in which Christ suffered has made? That mind, indeed, made Him equal to
what He had to bear, for its might was the might of the eternal life which is in
God's favour; but this great might was not the might of mere power, nor was it
that the life of sonship imparted an insensibility to His humanity, or that
because of the light of God which belonged to it, it made all that He had to
encounter to be to Him as nothing. On the contrary, the very opposite of all
this was the truth. It was not a might of power at all, but the might of
realised perfect weakness, whose only strength was the
strength of faith. It was not a bearing of the things that came upon
Him
If we are not turned away from meditating on this subject in the light of the life itself which we are seeing tried and triumphing, and do not unwisely occupy ourselves with the record of physical sufferings, as if we were called on to look at what could be known according to the flesh,--until the unsatisfactory result cast us upon the opposite error of supposing that our Lord's agony in the garden could not really have its explanation in His anticipation of what the hour and power of darkness would be to Him,--we shall find even our ordinary experience of human suffering as connected with man's inhumanity to man, giving a right direction to our thoughts.
We are familiar with the fact, that unkindness affects quite differently a
meek, gentle, loving spirit, and a proud, independent, self-relying spirit. The
comparative ease with which some men encounter all manner of ungracious and
unbrotherly treatment at the hands of others in the conflict of life, is because
they meet pride and unbrotherliness in the strength of pride and unbrotherliness.
This too often passes for manliness;--and it would be unjust to say that it may
not often be combined with, and upheld by, the instinctive feeling of manhood,
and of what is due to oneself. But assuredly the state of mind, as a whole,
tends to make the apparent victory not so much a victory as an insensibility.
The evil treatment experienced does not really, in these cases, cause the pain
it would cause to that brotherliness in which it should be met, and which, being
recognised, has always a witness in men's consciences as the right and highest
way of meeting injuries; though the pride that hinders a man from feeling it
himself, makes him slow to give another credit for it. But it is surely not
difficult to see that, if our feeling of what is due to ourselves be free from
pride, and only commensurate with our feeling of the love due from us to
others,--if our sense of manhood be in harmony with the true and pure feeling of
the oneness of all flesh, and if the claim of others on love from us be felt to
be altogether untouched by failure in love on their part,--being
discharged by us in the reality of a love that, notwithstanding such failure,
loves them still,--loves them as we love ourselves, making their sin our burden,
as well as also their unkindness to be felt as the disappointing response of
hatred to love; then must unkindness be to us, so minded, a suffering and trial
just commensurate with the measure of the unkindness to which we are subjected,
on the one
But it is not alone the amount of suffering implied in the treatment to which our Lord was subjected, that we must fail to estimate aright, unless we see that suffering in the light of the life that was in Him. It is still more as to the nature of that suffering that we shall err. This we feel the moment we turn from contemplating it as physical infliction on the part of men, and physical endurance on the part of Christ, to contemplate it in its spiritual aspect as the form of the response of enmity to love.
There is surely very special instruction for us here in the fact that shame--indignity--is so marked a character of the injuries inflicted on Christ. I need not illustrate this point. The Apostle speaks of "the shame of the cross," as if the great victory through the faith of the joy set before our Lord was victory over that shame: and, both in the historical narrative, and in the related Psalms, indignity and contumely, that is to say, all that would most touch that life which man has in the favour of man, and which strikes more deeply than physical infliction, because it goes deeper than the body,--wounding the spirit,--is the most distinguishing feature of the evil use made by sinful men of the power that they received over the Son of God when He was betrayed into the hands of sinners.
All along, the relation of the cross to shame was ever present to our Lord's mind. It is against the consequences of being "ashamed of Him and of His words," as the opposite of "confessing Him before men," that His warnings are given. He knew in His own honouring of the Father as bringing upon Him, as its consequence, dishonour to Himself from men, the shame of which He spake, according to the words,
''The reproaches of them that reproached thee, fell upon me."
How related the shame, against which He warned
men; was to their laying down their life in this world,
so that, being content to bear it, was identical with
being contented to lay down that life, our Lord plainly
declares, when preparing men for the sacrifice that
would be implied in becoming His disciples. So the
desire of the honour which is the correlative of that
shame, is represented by Him as hindering the faith
to which He called men,--"How can ye believe, which
receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour
that cometh from God only?" (
What are we taught by all this in relation to the cup of suffering which our Lord received from His Father's hand? For the shame that was an ingredient in that cup would not have the place it has if it were not peculiarly the occasion of suffering to the suffering Saviour.
Here we feel that, notwithstanding all our great,
our sinful bondage, to what others think of us, a
bondage of which the measure is never known until
we attempt to assert our freedom, as the strength of
an iron fetter is not known until the attempt is made
to break it, still we little realise what the shame to
which our Lord was subjected was to His Spirit. And
this is the case partly because our own bondage in this
matter, however real, and however excused by us to
ourselves because of its universality all around us, never
has the sanction of conscience, never is what we can
confess before God, or confess to ourselves without a
certain sense of degradation. How different the feeling with which a man says,
"I must do as others do,"
from that with which he says, "This is the will of God.
I must do it." The former obedience is, I say, felt to
I have already had occasion to quote that which is
said in reference to our Lord's early life at Nazareth,
that He grew in favour with God and man. In the
book of
Lord, the true brother of every man, desired this response of heart from every man; and the refusal of it, the giving of contempt instead of favour, and scorn instead of that accord of true brotherhood, which would have esteemed Him, as was due to Him, as "the chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely," was as a death to that life which desired the favour thus denied.
No doubt, as it was, that favour was withheld on grounds that quite strengthened the Son of God, to submit to the loss of it. He "came in His Father's name, and they received Him not." No doubt it was thus peculiarly an ingredient in His bitter cup, which He was enabled to drink in the strength of sonship; but it was not the less on that account bitter to the heart of perfect brotherhood. He was able to bear the loss of the life that is in man's favour, in the strength of the higher life which is in the Father's favour. But in itself that loss was bitter in proportion to the pure capacity of life in brotherhood, which was in Him.
God is not the author of confusion, but of order. In giving us two commandments,
He has not placed us under two masters. The first commandment is absolute, and
its requirements reach to the whole extent and circle of our being, leaving
nothing to the man that it does not claim for God; the second our Lord says
is like unto it, and, coming after so extensive a first commandment, would be
what we could not meet with obedience, had not "likeness" amounted to such a
relation to the first, as that obedience to the second commandment must flow out
of obedience to the first. Therefore, as the strength to obey the second
commandment must be in that love to God which is the obeying of the first
commandment, when the obedience of that second commandment is not followed by
its due response from those in relation
As to our fleshly experience in this matter,--our experience of life in the favour of others,--it is but too clear, that, though the desire of that favour has a true root in humanity, yet not love, but selfishness, renders that desire the occasion of the bondage to which we are conscious. But in Christ's case the love to men to which men made so evil a response--that very love itself was what demanded that coming to them in His Father's name because of which they refused Him. His so coming to them was true love to them, as well as faithfulness to His Father,--the true brotherhood, which, while seeking men's favour, seeks their good still more than their favour. Therefore, if we would understand the forgiveness which, by giving occasion for its exercise, our Lord's sufferings during the hour and power of darkness developed in Him, we must see that His love was forgiving injuries which were, in the strictest sense, injuries against itself,--injuries sustained by the love as love, and not merely touching Him against whom they were directed in some more outward and lower part of His being, some inferior capacity of suffering.
But still more, even the element in our Lord's
sufferings that is most purely physical, is not what our
own physical experiences prepare us to understand.
There is no doubt that it was part of the perfect truth
of our Lord's consciousness in humanity, to have felt
President Edwards, in speaking of the elements of our Lord's sufferings,--and in this others have followed him,--speaks of that vision of evil which he supposes to have pressed on our Lord's spirit, as "unaccompanied by counterbalancing comfortable considerations and prospects." His object being simply to inquire what elements of suffering could accord with our Lord's holiness, in trying to conceive to Himself what God could use to fill full a cup of penal suffering, he was led thus to suppose holiness in Christ subjected to what would give it pain, and that pain left unmitigated by the presence to His spirit of what would, to the holiness thus pained, be counterbalancing comfort. That for the joy set before Him our Lord endured that which He endured, does not accord with this conception. While, as I have already said, 1 do not believe that the question was at all as to the way in which most suffering could be accumulated on the sufferer.
But there was a reason, though not this, why our Lord, having taken suffering flesh, and being subjected to suffer in it under an hour and power of darkness, should prove its full capacity of suffering. For He was to manifest to the utmost the power and courage of love, refusing the favour of man when that follows not the favour of God; as well as the forgiveness of love, when those who can kill the body, but after that have no more that they can do, put forth that power in enmity;
Among the comparisons which have been so unwisely permitted of our Lord's sufferings under this hour and power of darkness, with what others have suffered, the sufferings of His own martyrs have been mentioned. As to the sufferings of martyrs, suffering in His spirit and sustained by His strength, they are obviously a part of the fulfilment of the word, "Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with:" but, unless we are prepared to claim for them the life of love, in the fulness in which it was present in Him from whom it has flowed in them, we cannot conclude as to the comparative amount of their sufferings from the external circumstances of suffering in which we see them.
But, apart from this, though His church be called to fill up what is behind
of Christ's sufferings, and though the counsel of God in that Christ is the
vine, we the branches. He the head, we the members, implies that, in a sense,
and an important sense, there is that behind which remains to be filled up; yet
in suffering, as in all else, there was a fulness and perfection in Christ
Himself, of which we severally receive but a part. Accordingly, measures of
comfort under sufferings, even to the extent of partially neutralising these
sufferings, have been often granted to martyrs, though not to their Lord. Nay,
even in more ordinary cases of physical suffering, as a cup which our Father may
give us to drink, while it is good for us, though children, to learn obedience
by the things which we suffer, yet it is sometimes our Father's will, in seasons
of suffering, to reveal in the spirit so much of His glory in Christ as
neutralises the physical suffering. Thus David Brainerd, to whom a very unusual
measure of physical pain was appointed, sometimes when that pain was most acute,
had granted to him, along with it, a
I believe these thoughts as to the elements of our Lord's sufferings as
suffered at the hands of men, and as to the weakness of suffering flesh in which
He bore them, are true, and will help us to realise the trial to which forgiving
love in the Son of God was put, and the mind of love in which He endured the
trial, the manner of the victory of love. This it concerns us to know, because
it is with this same love as in Him towards ourselves, and as, alas! tried by
our sins, that we have to do. This it concerns us to know, also, because it is
this same love as in us through participation in Him as our life, that we are
called to manifest towards others, and for the developing of which in us, it may
be the Father's will that we shall have a personal experience of drinking of our
Lord's cup and being baptized with His baptism even in outward form of trial,
which, if it comes to us, we, without this light, are ill prepared to welcome.
In thinking of what has been, and may yet be, of literal conformity to the
sufferings of Christ, and in considering the probable history of any attempt to
persecute for Christ's name, or to constrain men to deny Christ,--an hour and
power of darkness coming to the church towards the close as to her Lord,--it is
a solemn thing to think that of the
THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST, IN WHICH THE ATONEMENT WAS PERFECTED, CONSIDERED IN THEIR RELATION, 1ST, TO HIS WITNESSING FOR GOD TO MEN, AND 2DLY, TO HIS DEALING WITH GOD ON BEHALF OF MEN.
I. THESE sufferings were the perfecting of the Son's witnessing for the
Father, being the perfected manifestation of the life of love as sonship
towards God and brotherhood towards man.
The trial of our Lord's love to men, and its triumph in the prayer on the
cross, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,"--and the trial of
His love to the Father, and trust in the Father, of which the final and
perfected expression was these words in death, "Into thy hands, O Father, I
commend my spirit,"--were accomplished together by one and the same elements.
The power of the life of sonship and of conscious oneness with the Father in His
mind towards His brethren, to enable Christ to abide in love, and overcome evil
with good, is in truth that which we have now been contemplating. The sense of
His Father's fatherliness was the strength in which He manifested this
perfection of brotherhood. For that perfection of brotherhood was just His
following of the Father as a dear child,--and all He suffered in this path came
to Him as doing His Father's commandments, and abiding in His love; and thus was
the Father in all this glorified in the Son. The very words, "Father,
forgive them," testify how within the light of the Father's love and
favour the Intercessor abode while suffering,--finding in that favour strength
The outward history of the hour and power of darkness we have detailed to us by the Evangelists. We have not, however, much from them to help us to see that "hour" as from Christ's side. But there is a portion of Scripture, one of the Psalms, which is usually received as having this special interest to us, and which therefore is taken in supplement of the gospel narrative; and our Lord's own partial quotation of this psalm on the cross, as well as its own contents, seem to justify our so receiving it. I refer to the 22nd psalm, which I shall now venture to use in this way--being the more desirous to do so, because, while I believe that it is altogether confirmatory of the view now taken of the cup given our Lord to drink,--I mean especially as a permitted trial of the faith of the Son in the Father, and not an expression of wrath in the Father towards the Son,--the first words of the psalm, as quoted by our Lord, have been the words chiefly rested upon as the intimation to us of our Lord's having been the object of such wrath,--an interpretation which seems to me a violent straining of these words, taken alone; but which, if we take them as a part of the psalm, and to be understood in harmony with it, is altogether untenable, being indeed directly opposed to the tone and character of the psalm, as a whole. Its concluding verses, by the largeness of the reference to men, connect this psalm with the character of the crops as a trial of the love of brotherhood in Christ. But the first and larger portion of it places the suffering
Saviour before us as an individual sufferer, drinking the bitter cup given Him to drink, and uttering the trial of faith which He is experiencing in drinking it.
The psalm opens with a cleaving appropriation on the part of the Sufferer, of God as His God: "My God, my God." He asks God, His God, why He leaves Him in the hands of the wicked, and interposes not on His behalf, delaying to answer His prayer: "Why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the voice of my roaring? O my God, I cry in the day-time, but thou hearest not; and in the night-season, and am not silent." He refuses any explanation of this silence that would be dishonouring to God: "But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel." He refers to God's former justifying of faith in the case of others of old: "Our fathers trusted in thee; they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered. They trusted in thee, and were not confounded." But the acknowledgment of God is delayed in His case as it had not been in theirs, and the delay is exposing the sufferer to contempt and scorn, and the bitter reproach that His professed trust in God has been a delusion, or a false pretension: "But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn. They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver Him: let Him deliver Him, seeing He delighted in Him." Therefore does the tried one go back on that which God has been to Him,--therefore does He fall back on the faithfulness of God, as the "faithful Creator:" "But thou art He that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's
.
breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb. Thou
art my God from my mother's belly." Thus His faith
is strengthened, and the prayer, the delay in answering
which has been the subject of the opening question, is
renewed; for His hope in God, His God, is not let go: "Be not thou far from me;
for trouble is near; for
there is none to help." The trouble is very great. The
outer circle of His being is possessed by His enemies.
He turns from it to that inner region, where God's
nearness is to be known, for elsewhere there is no help:
"Many bulls have compassed me; strong bulls of Bashan
have beset me round. They gaped on me with their
mouths, as a ravening and roaring lion." And this is
while the depths of the utter and absolute weakness of
humanity are proved by the Sufferer as by one cast
entirely upon God, and who puts not forth one effort on
His own behalf, nor gives place to one movement of
self-relying energy or self-dependent strength of the
flesh: "I am poured out like water, and all my bones are
out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the
midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a
potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and
thou hast brought me into the dust of death." Thus low
in suffering at the hands of the wicked is He brought.
"For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the
wicked have enclosed me: they pierced my hands and
my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare
upon me. They part my garments among them, and
cast lots upon my vesture." All this is permitted to the
wicked; for "they would have had no power at all, unless
it had been given them from above." All this is received
as therefore to Him from God: "Thou hast brought me
into the dust of death." But God is Himself to Him
"His God'' still; so He is only the more cast upon
God, made the more to cleave to Him: "But be not
And now we meet the returning answer of prayer,--the justification of the
Sufferer's unbroken trust,--the clearing up of God's faithfulness and truth in
the whole transaction: "Thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns. I
will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I
praise thee." His experience of God was not found to be in contradiction to
God's justification of the trust of the fathers, to which He had referred. That
of God to which they were witnesses, has been, through the divine dealing with
Him, only more deeply revealed:--as we see in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the
testimony of the cloud of witnesses, connected with that of our Lord Himself, as
"the author and finisher of faith," i. e., He whose faith perfects the
revelation of that in God which we have to trust. Therefore he proceeds, "Ye
that fear the Lord, praise Him: all ye the seed of Jacob, glorify Him: and
fear Him, all ye the seed of Israel. For He hath not despised nor abhorred the
affliction of the afflicted; neither hath He hid His face from Him; but
when He cried unto Him, He heard." Then follows the expression of the purpose,
to declare to men what in this great trial of faith He has been experiencing of
God's faithfulness, and a prophesying of the result that would follow, viz.,
universal trust in God, who had not hid His face from the afflicted, but had
heard His prayer: "My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will
pay my vows before them that fear Him. The meek shall eat, and shall be
satisfied: they shall praise the Lord, that seek Him: your heart shall live
for ever. All ends of the world shall remember
The character of this psalm as a whole is, therefore,
quite unequivocal, viz., a dealing of the Father with
Christ in which the cup of man's enmity is drank by
Him to its last drop, in the experience of absolute
weakness,--the true weakness of humanity realised,
whereby scope is given for the trust of sonship towards
the Father; and we may add, considering the reference
to men and their salvation with which the psalm closes,
the love of brotherhood to men. But trust in God, personal trust, is that of
which the trial is most conspicuous as pervading the psalm,--trust in utter
weakness,--trust
in the midst of enemies,--trust which the extremity of
that weakness and the perfected enmity of these enemies
tries to the utmost,--trust which the Father permits to
be thus tried, but trust, the root of which in the Father's
favour, has not been cut off, nor even touched by any
act of the Father, or expression of His face as if He
were turned into an enemy,--as if He looked on the
suppliant in wrath,--as if He regarded him as a sinner,
imputed sin to him. Not this, not the most distant
approach to this. Nay, on the contrary, language is
put into the mouth of the tried one that would seem to
preclude the possibility of such a misconception, as completely as if chosen for
that purpose; and the very
ground on which the exhortation is given, "Ye that
fear the Lord, praise Him; all ye the seed of Jacob,
glorify Him; and praise Him, all ye the seed of Israel,"
is, "For He hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted;
neither hath He hid His face from
him; but when he cried unto Him, He heard," leaving
no place even for that negative wrath, if the expression
be not a contradiction, which, in clinging to the idea
that the cup given to Christ was the cup of the Father's
A measure of freedom of pleading with the Father while drinking of the bitter cup, is, indeed, here recorded, which is of the same character and has the same special impress of a life upon it which the words, "if it be possible let this cup pass from me" as used in the anticipation of drinking it, have. But that we are to see here an interruption of the continuity of that life which was in the consciousness of the Father's favour, an exception to the experience of abiding in the Father's love because keeping His commandments--that a moment had arrived in which the confidence was disappointed which He had expressed when He said, "Ye shall flee every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me,"--that having said, "I lay down my life that I may take it up again, therefore my Father loveth me," the love of which He thus spoke was not His strength in dying, but that He tasted death under the Father's wrath; of this, or anything in the most distant way suggestive of this, there is no trace.
And this remains true whatever width of meaning we may give to the expression
"hour and power of darkness." Many have dwelt upon the part that he who is said
to have the power of death, viz., the devil, may have had in our Lord's
sufferings on the cross and in all this season. Considering the manner of trial
which he was permitted to be to our Lord at His entering on His ministry, there
is nothing that we need be repelled by in the thought that, in the invisible, a
part of the trial appointed for our Lord may have been a permission to him to
express his malice. But on this supposed element in the cup given Christ to
drink, I must be
If the 22nd psalm help us to conceive more truly
of what our Lord felt while suffering at the hands of
the wicked, it must, in the measure in which it does so,
add to the value to us of the words of forgiving intercession
But it is not only as indicating to us that the
interests of all humanity were involved in that suffering
and that cry of the afflicted, and in the divine response
to that cry, that the latter part of this psalm is so
important. It is still more important, as shedding
light upon the atonement by the representation made
of the way in which the happy result as to men which
is prophesied, is to be accomplished. It is the Father's
acknowledgment of the faith of the Son, which, being
made known to men, is to cause "all the ends of the
world to remember and turn unto the Lord, and all
the kindreds of the nations to worship before him."
However much the afflicted One whose cry had been
heard, was, as the Holy One of God, separated from
all men; however it might be assumed that He had
grounds to plead in prayer peculiar to Himself;
however free also He was from all that cause of fear
and hesitation in lifting up the heart to God in prayer,
which ordinary men are conscious to as sinners: still
His prayer must have been offered on a ground that
all may occupy, and from which sin need exclude none.
This is clear; otherwise, that His prayer was heard,
would not have been that Gospel to a sinful world,
which it is here set forth as being. We must believe
Thus, the Holy One of God, God's holy child Jesus, having glorified his
Father on the earth in all living righteous fulfilment of His will, now perfects
His glorifying of the Father's Name, by being seen trusting in that Name alone
when brought into the extremest need of a sure hold of God,--trusting simply in
that Name, and not raising a claim of merit on having so perfectly honoured that
Name. The sinless One is seen trusting simply in that Name which he had come to
reveal to sinners, that they also might trust in it, and be saved; and thus the
Father's response to that trust is preached as the gospel to the chief of
sinners. When one who has seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, and
who through Christ has faith and hope towards God, invites a brother sinner to
share in his joy in the Lord, to share in his confidence through Christ, it is
not an uncommon reply to be told, "But you are much better than I am. If I were
only as religious as you are, and obeyed God as you seem to do, I should cherish
hope." And when such a person
To meet this is painful and embarrassing when one
would say with the Psalmist, "O taste and see that
God is Good: blessed is the man that trusteth in
Him." But it may surely serve to clear up this matter,
and to remove all darkness from the subject of peace
with God, to consider that our Lord Himself at the last
as at the first, trusted simply and purely in the
fatherliness of the Father. "But thou art He that
took me out of my mother's womb. Thou didst make
me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts."
That which is not understood while men's conceptions
of salvation are self-righteous, whether they are still
flattering themselves with the hope that they are in
some measure succeeding in recommending themselves
to God's favour, or are less or more disturbed by the
sense of failure in this attempt, is the simple nature of
II. The sufferings of Christ, which thus perfected His witnessing for God to men, had an equally close relation to His dealing with the Father on our behalf,--giving its ultimate depth to His confession of our sins, and the excellence of a perfect development of love and faith to His intercession for sinners, according to the will of God.
The expectation as to the great results that were to follow, because "God had not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither had hid His face from Him, but when He cried unto Him He heard," with the expression of which the 22d psalm concludes, is in effect the preaching to us of the gospel that God has given to us eternal life in His Son;--for it is the declaration that the knowledge of the Son's trust in the Father will introduce us to the fellowship of that trust. But we are to learn from what we know otherwise of that cross of the Redeemer, which, in one aspect of it, this psalm so sets before us, how this should be so. It was in making His soul an offering for sin that this terrible trial of the faith proper to sonship came to Christ. He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised, for our iniquities,--that which
He suffered was the chastisement that was to issue in peace to us and His stripes were for the healing of our souls; for He suffered the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God,--bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness. In accomplishing these results, we have now seen that, in order to the perfection of the work of Christ as witnessing for God to men, it has appeared to the divine wisdom necessary to subject His love and trust towards the Father, and His long-suffering forgiveness in bearing the contradiction of sinners against Himself, to the trial of the hour and power of darkness. Nor was the bitter cup thus appointed by the Father for the Son less important to the full development of the other element in the atonement, viz., the dealing of the Son with the Father on our behalf, as confessing our sins and making intercession for us, according to the will of God.
The intercession of forgiving love in the words,
"Father, forgive them; for they know not what they
do," has already engaged our attention, as it was the
expression of Christ's own forgiveness of His enemies,--and so also a part of
His testimony for the Father,
as He says, "Love your enemies, bless them that
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray
for them that despitefully use you and persecute you;
that ye may be the children of your Father which is in
heaven." But contemplating our Lord as bearing us
on His Spirit before the Father, and dealing on our
behalf with the righteousness and mercy of God, confessing our sin with that
confession which was the due
response to the divine wrath against sin, and interceding for us according to
the hope that was for us in God;
this prayer on the cross,--"Father, forgive them; for
they know not what they do," belongs to the perfecting
It is obvious that all, by which the pressure of our sins on the Spirit of Christ was increased, and He was brought into closer contact with them, and deeper experience of the hatred of the darkness to the light, must have given a continually deepening character to Christ's dealing with the Father on our behalf;--giving an increasing depth to His response to the divine condemnation of our sin, causing that response to be rendered in deeper agony of spirit, and, at the same time, rendering His persevering intercession a casting Himself more and more on the further, and deeper depths of fatherliness in the Father. Adhering to the conception of a progressive development of the eternal life in our Lord's human consciousness, and looking at all that was appointed for Him by the Father, as adapted by the divine wisdom for the end of forwarding this development, we indeed see abundant reason for that perfected personal experience of the enmity of the carnal mind to God to which our Lord was subjected. Without this the Son could never have proved in human consciousness, as we have just been contemplating Him as doing, the forgiveness that is in love;--or the strength to overcome evil with good, which brotherly love can exercise, sustained by the faith of sonship trusting in the love of the Father; or the sufficiency that is in the Father's favour for the life of sonship, however absolutely cast upon God. And so neither without this could an adequate confession of man's sin have been offered to God in humanity in expiation of man's sin, nor intercession have been made according to the extent of man's need of forgiveness.
Therefore, though not as filling a cup of penal suffering, yet as essential to the living reality of a moral and spiritual atonement for sin, are all those painful experiences which President Edwards has so fully entered into in his illustrations of Christ's suffering for our sins, when He bore them in His own body on the tree, to be weighed equally by us also. I have already noticed the limits which Edwards has recognised as to be observed, in conceiving to ourselves the elements of the inward mental sufferings to which our Lord was subjected while the malice of the wicked was poured upon Him from without,--being thankful that he has recognised such limits; nor, as I have said above, is it to his representation of the amount of Christ's sufferings, or of their nature, that I object, but to the conception that these sufferings were penal. Assuming that idea to be precluded, as urged above, by the very nature of the sufferings endured, I am only the more anxious that we should not come short in our apprehension of the terrible reality that was in these sufferings, or of the real and necessary proportion that was between our sins and that wounding to which Christ submitted, in making His soul an offering for sin.
The peace-making between God and man, which was
perfected by our Lord on the cross, required to its reality
the presence to the spirit of Christ of the elements of
the alienation as well as the possession by Him of that
eternal righteousness in which was the virtue to make
peace. All the considerations that had a claim in the
truth of things to be taken into account must have
been taken into account: and, though God's wrath
against sin was not felt by the Son of God as coming
forth against Himself personally, as if the Father saw
Him as a sinner; yet must that wrath in the truth of
what it is, have been present to and realised by His
Let it not seem to any as if, while rejecting the conception of penal
suffering as the atonement, I were still anxious to keep the idea of suffering
before the mind; and to raise as high as possible the conception of that
suffering, as feeling a demand for suffering in the
In the full and clear apprehension of the moral and spiritual atonement made by the Son of God,--in the faith of the peace made by Him on the cross, then perfected,--but in relation to which He was all along "the blessed peace-maker," it is most surely felt that the true and perfect atonement, expiation, and satisfaction for man's sin is known; that we are in the light of it; and that that light is the light of life.
As respects what the atonement is in itself, and Christ's consciousness in
making it, we see that, if Christ had been literally, as Luther has attempted to
believe, made the reality of sin for us,--if He had been in personal consciousness
the one sinner, guilty of all the sins of all men, and, under this load of
guilt, had sought, in the strength of conscious perfect righteousness, the
Father's face; such confession of the evil of sin, such entrance into the
Father's mind regarding it, such responsive unity with the Father in the
condemnation of it, as we have been ascribing to Him as presented by Him to the
Father with reference to our sins, would have been the atonement He would have
made; and such trust in the fatherliness of the Father, as we have assumed to
have encouraged and sustained His intercession for us, would have been the
strength
As to ourselves and the light in which we see all that concerns our relation to God, in contemplating the Son's dealing with the Father on our behalf, if we understand the elements of that which we contemplate, we must feel that it is what, could we have offered it to God, was due from ourselves; and that, could we have offered it, it would have been an atonement such as no endurance of punishment could ever have been: this we must feel, though at the same time we feel that to have made it was as impossible for us as to have made ourselves divine; while yet we also see that we must partake in it, and must have its elements reproduced in us, for that these elements constitute the mind in which we who have sinned against God, and been rebellious children, must return to the Father of our spirits if we are to return at all; that Christ is indeed the way and the truth and the life; that no man can come to the Father, but by Him.
In the way opened for us into the holiest by the
blood of Christ, we see what in its own light is discerned by us to be at once
a way into the holiest, and the only way. In exercising faith
in that blood we are consciously under a cleansing and purifying power,
Finally, when from thus contemplating the atonement as accomplished by
Christ, and seeing ourselves in its light--realising how hopeless our state had
been apart from it, while conscious to the living faith and hope towards God
which the faith of it is quickening in us--we lift up our thoughts to the
Father, and consider what the great work of redeeming love has been to Him, and
hear in relation to it the testimony of the Father to the Son,--"This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him," we are, indeed, filled
with the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Seeing the Father in the
Son,--seeing the eternal, divine elements of the work of the Son in the Father,
seeing that what we are contemplating is, indeed, but the perfect doing of the
Father's will, the perfect declaring of His name--raised up by the faith of the
will of God as done,--of the name of God as declared to the apprehension of the
Eternal Will, the Unchanging Name, we understand the complacency of the Father
in the Son; we understand the excellence in
THE DEATH OF CHRIST CONTEMPLATED AS HIS "TASTING DEATH," FOR EVERY MAN;" AND THE LIGHT IT SHEDS ON HIS LIFE, AND ON THAT FELLOWSHIP IN HIS LIFE, THROUGH BEING CONFORMED TO HIS DEATH, TO WHICH WE ARE CALLED.
I HAVE nothing to add in direct elucidation of the view now taken of the nature of the atonement; but both the necessity for the perfecting of the atonement in the death of our Lord on the cross, which the fact of His death in connexion with His prayer in the garden implies, and the constant reference to the cross as suggestive of the whole work of redemption, are reasons for presenting here to the reader's attention some thoughts in relation to the death of our Lord, viewed in itself and in the light of His consciousness in passing through death, which may be profitable, and especially, practically.
The words of our Lord in death, "Into thy hands, O Father, I commend my
spirit," are given to help us to understand the life of sonship, which we are
seeing passing out of our sight, and to reveal to us in this its final triumph
the secret of its victory all along. For, in this trust in death, we are not
contemplating a new manner of faith. The perfection of its development and
measure of its manifestation only are new. The faith which this last utterance
of the voice of sonship presents to our faith, is not anything else than that
trust in the Father manifested in death, which had pervaded the Lord's whole
life; for, Christ's following of God as a dear child, walking in love, always
implied that direct
I have already spoken of the shame of the cross in its relation to that second commandment of which Christ's perfect brotherhood towards man was the fulfilment, as His sonship towards the Father was the fulfilment of the first. If we know anything of life as a meeting in the strength of sonship the call which the first commandment makes on us, and know that rejection of all independent life in self and our neighbour which this implies, our own experience will help us in endeavouring to realise the oneness of the faith in which Christ lived, seeking not His own glory, but His glory who had sent Him, with the faith in which in death He said, "Into thy hands, O Father, I commend my spirit." The Apostle speaks of "dying daily;" and, if we are attempting to "follow God as dear children, walking in love," we know that this implies such a dying daily as is possible only in a faith which is a constant commending of our spirit into the Father's hands. For lonely as death is, not less lonely is true life at its root and core,--I mean lonely as respects the creature, a being left alone with God.
But, while the faith tried and proved in our Lord's
tasting death was the same that had been tried and
proved in His whole life, yet was the trial peculiar and
extreme, and in its nature fitted to be the final trial,
Now death itself, as the close of life so lived and passed through in the
strength which the words reveal, "Into thy hands, O Father, I commend my
spirit," "was in harmony with such a life and its fitting close; for it was the
perfect manifestation and consummation of the faith in the Father, which was the
secret of that life. I say, it was the "perfect manifestation" of that faith,
because it revealed the strength in which our Lord had been able to do without
the honour which cometh firom man,--the life that is in man's favour,--and how
it was that He had not feared those whose power can go no further than to kill
the body. The life which was common to them and to Him, the life through which
they could reach Him and cause Him pain, that life had conferred upon them no
power over His spirit; for that life He had held, as He now parted with it, in
the strength and freedom of sonship. I have also said, "consummation," because
it was the perfected development of that faith. I cannot help having the words
in reference to Abraham's offering
The simplest positive idea which I am able to form of the glory given to the
Father, in saying, in death, "Into thy hands, O Father, I commend my spirit,"--I
receive in realising the nakedness of simple being, stript of all possession but
what is possessed in the heart of the Father, which is suggested to us as that
in the consciousness of which this trust is exercised. It is the most perfect
and absolute form of that experience, "I am not alone, for the Father is with
me." It takes away creation and leaves but God. It is not difficult to see the
glory given to God in this faith. Never does the Son, who dwells in the bosom of
the Father,
And we must note, that this is not said in simple naked existence, as it
might be the utterance of sonship in a spirit just awakened to the consciousness
of existence, knowing yet no possession but God, who has given it being. It is
an utterance in death. He who thus puts trust in the Father is
tasting death while doing so. It is very difficult for us, though most
desirable, to apprehend what this should add to our conception of that declaring
of the Father's name which is in Christ's death. When I think of our Lord as
tasting death, it seems to me as if He alone ever truly tasted death. And this,
indeed, may be received as a part of the larger truth, that He alone ever lived
in humanity in the conscious truth of humanity. But when I think of death as
tasted by our Lord, how little help to conceiving of His experience in dying do
any of our own thoughts, or anticipated experiences, seem fitted to yield! What
men shrink from when they shrink from death, is, either the disruption of the
ties that connect them with a present world, or the terrors with which an
accusing conscience fills the world to come. The last had no existence for Him
who was without sin; neither had the world, as the present evil world, any place
in His heart. And even as to that purer interest in the present scene, which the
relationships of life, cherished aright and according to God's intention in
them, awaken, and the trial that death may be from this cause, there was in our
Lord's case nothing parallel to it; unless that care of His mother, which He
devolved upon the beloved disciple. But, death as death, is distinct
from such accompanying
Further, as our Lord alone truly tasted death, so to Him alone had death its perfect meaning as the wages of sin, for in Him alone was there full entrance into the mind of God towards sin, and perfect unity with that mind. We have seen before, that the perfect confession of our sins was only possible to perfect holiness; and so we may see also, that the tasting of death in full realisation of what it is, that God who gave life should recall it, holding it forfeited, was only possible to perfect holiness.
How much this thought should suggest to us, as to the bitterness which belonged to the cup which Christ drank in tasting death for every man, we may not measure. Yet we can see the fitness of the presence of this element in Christ's cup of suffering, and that His perfect realisation of the relation of death to sin, naturally connected itself with the confession of the righteousness of the divine condemnation on sin, and the fulness and perfection of that confession,--the fulness of meaning of the response, "Thou art righteous, O Lord, who judgest so." For, thus, in Christ's honouring of the righteous law of God, the sentence of the law was included, as well as the mind of God which that sentence expressed. In this light are we to see the death of Christ, as connected with His redeeming those that were under the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons. Had sin existed in men as mere spirits, death could not have been the wages of sin, and any response to the divine mind concerning sin which would have been an atonement for their sin, could only have had spiritual elements; but man being by the constitution of humanity capable of death, and death having come as the wages of sin, it was not simply sin that had to be dealt with, but an existing law with its penalty of death, and that death as already incurred. So it was not only the divine mind that had to be responded to, but also, that expression of the divine mind which was contained in God's making death the wages of sin.
This honouring of the law, while it was being made to give place to that
higher dispensation to which it was subordinate from the first in the divine
purpose, being also subordinate in its own nature, has, indeed, been followed
out to its fullest measure, in that our Lord not only tasted death, but, that
that death was
In this view we see the suitableness of the awfully solemn circumstances with
which it seemed right to the Father to accompany the death of Christ. That
darkness, which the evangelists record to have been over the earth from the
sixth hour to the ninth hour, has been regarded as what in the natural world
harmonised with, and was intended to symbolize, what was taking place in the
spiritual world, when the vials of the Father's wrath were pouring out on the
Son. Minds in which this association has long found a place will not easily
receive any other explanation of that darkness, as any other explanation must be
felt to come so infinitely short of that most awful and terrible conception. Yet
in itself, and apart from this association as already in possession of the mind,
this darkness no more than accords with the presence and place of our sins as
borne on the spirit of the Redeemer, in that awful, though blessed peace-making,
the elements of which we have been considering, and which had its consummation
on the cross; while the language of the Roman centurion under the power of the
whole scene, when the baptism in the prospect of which the Lord was so
straitened received its accomplishment, "Surely this was the Son of God,"
recalls to us the testimony of the voice from heaven at His baptism by John in
Jordan, "This is my beloved Son,"--recalls this testimony to us as one with that
which reached the spirit of the centurion, making itself heard in spite of the
permitted hour and power of darkness, and prevailing over the seeming meaning of
that hour. We can, indeed, have no difficulty, apart from a fixed habit of
thought, in seeing the harmony of the darkness recorded, with the relation of
Christ's death to our sins
Realising the relation of the death of Christ to our
sins, we thus feel all that was dark and terrible in the
circumstances of His death justified to our minds; while
the peace in which He is seen tasting death, illustrates
to us the life of sonship in which He does so. But,
realising further, that He who is putting this peaceful
trust in the Father in death, is "by the grace of God
tasting death for every man," we are learning much more
than how the spirit of sonship can trust the Father
even in death, though this by itself is a most important
lesson, fitted to help us to realise the truth of our relation to God as "He on
whose being our being reposes."
This we are learning, but we are further learning how
adequate and accepted the atonement for our sins
which, in tasting death for us, the Son of God is perfecting, is in His own
consciousness before the Father.
That relation to us in which the Son of God is seen
tasting death--which relation, indeed, alone explains
His being tasting death at all--gives this largeness of
reference to the words, "Into thy hands, O Father, I
commend my spirit," as we have seen in considering
the 22nd Psalm. And so we are to connect the words
just quoted as to our Lord's personal freedom in relation to death, "Therefore
doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again,"
with the words, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone; but if it die, it bringeth
Therefore, in endeavouring to conceive of our Lord's consciousness in cherishing this hope in death in humanity, and in relation to all humanity, that is, as a hope which His death was opening up to all men, we must have before our minds the atoning elements present in that consciousness as entering into that hope; for upon this depends the measure in which the death of Christ shall be filled for us with the light of life. Faith, it is said, will be imputed to us for righteousness, "if we believe on Him who raised up our Lord Jesus again from the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification." Therefore, the faith in God by which we become righteous, must embrace our seeing our sins in the light shed upon them by the death of Christ, and our seeing our justification in the light shed upon it by His resurrection from the dead.
And the first part of this statement is presupposed in the second. We cannot
understand the ground of confidence for us in God which Christ's resurrection
from the dead reveals, unless we understand the mind of God in relation to our
sins which His death reveals, and in response to which He tasted death for us.
That ground of confidence is the heart of the Father, because with that heart
the words deal, "Into thy hands, O Father, I commend my spirit;" but the
death itself, no less than the hope in death, is an element in the
Son's revelation of the Father; and unless that revelation is seen in that
death, as well as in that hope in death, the true confidence of sonship to which
that hope in death calls, is not understood. The condemnation of our sin in that
expiatory confession of our sin which was perfected in the death of Christ, is
not less
Our being planted in the likeness or fellowship of Christ's death is, therefore, a prerequisite to our fellowship in His resurrection from the dead. For, not only was His death no substitute for our death--superseding the necessity for our dying,--but, more than this, His death, as differing from death coming as the wages of sin,--His death as a propitiation for sin, tasted in the spirit of sonship, and in unity with the Father in His condemnation of sin, that is to say, death, as tasted by Christ,--must be not only apprehended by our faith, but also spiritually shared in by us. And such participation in the death of Christ is, because of the unity that is in His life and death, necessarily implied in receiving Christ as our life; for the mind in which He died is the mind in which He lived, and that condemnation of sin in the flesh, which was perfected and fully told out in His death, pervaded His life. Therefore is our "bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus," implied in "the life of Jesus being manifested in our mortal bodies." Therefore must we, knowing Christ, and experiencing the power of His resurrection from the dead as what enables us to have faith and hope in God, have fellowship in Christ's sufferings, and be conformed to His death.
The close and direct consideration of the death of
Christ, and of His consciousness in tasting death for
every man, saying, "Into thy hands, O Father, I commend my spirit," now
attempted, may, as I have said,
V. 14, 15. And the Apostle Peter also, when he says,
"Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the
flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind.
For He that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased
from sin; that He no longer should live the rest of His
time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of
God."
How such practical, living dealing with the cross of Christ as these quotations express, will confirm us in the faith to which it belongs; how the "bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus," and "the manifestation of the life of Jesus in our mortal bodies," will progress together and deepen in intensity; how the counsel of God in connecting us with Christ as He has done, and identifying us with Him in His death, and in His resurrection from the dead, will be more and more clearly seen to be to the glory of God according as we are conforming to this gracious constitution of the kingdom of God, dead in the death of Christ, and living that life which we have hid with Christ in God,--this, in the light of the atonement as now represented, we easily understand.
But one caution my reader will here bear from me, supposing the teaching of these pages to be commending itself to his understanding, and so to be giving me some claim on his weighing what I urge--viz., that it is the conscience much more than the understanding that is concerned in a right reception of teaching, which, if true at all, is pre-eminently, and in the deepest sense, practical teaching. I shall not feel it nothing that the argument should commend itself; but this consent of the understanding is a small matter unless the conscience feel, that that is presented to it which has power to purge it from dead works, to serve the living God;--unless the spirit which has dwelt in the darkness land death of sin, see the path of life open before it, shining in the light of the divine favour; unless the orphan spirit find itself brought into the presence of its long-lost Father, who is waiting to receive it graciously, whose heart yearns to hear it cry, Abba, Father. To this result it is as necessary that the death of Christ, as filled with the divine judgment on sin, shall commend itself to the conscience, as that the life of Christ and His resurrection from the dead, revealing the hope which, when we had destroyed ourselves, remained for us in God, shall so commend itself.
And let no man deceive himself, as if it were his experience that conscience
responded to the latter revelation, and welcomed the light of life, while it
responded not to the former, nor said "Amen" to that Amen to the divine judgment
in relation to sin which was in the death of Christ, and gave it its atoning
virtue. That would be to say that light may be light, and yet not make the
darkness manifest. I have dwelt above on the fixedness of that law of the
kingdom of God which the words express,--"No
The deep and awful impression of what sin must be in the eyes of God, which men have received while contemplating the suffering of Christ for our sins as His having the vials of divine wrath poured out on Him, has been recognised above as in itself a great gain, notwithstanding the darkness in which the mind of God towards sin and sinners was left by that view, and even the positive misconception which it contained. So real a gain has that deep and awful impression on the subject of sin been, that it would be an indication of having gone out of the right path to find that we were parting with it. But, assuredly, not less profound or awful, while accompanied by a light of the glory of God not seen in that other system, is the sense of the evil and guilt of sin which is received when the sufferings of Christ become to our minds not the measure of what God can inflict, but the revelation of what God feels; that which the Son of God in our nature has felt in oneness with the Father, that into the fellowship of which He calls us in calling us to be sons of God.
I freely confess that to my own mind it is a relief,
not only intellectually, but also morally and spiritually,
to see that there is no foundation for the conception
that when Christ suffered for us, the just for the unjust.
He suffered either "as by imputation unjust," or "as if
He were unjust." I admit that intellectually it is a
relief not to be called to conceive to myself a double
consciousness---both in the Father and in the Son, such
as seems implied in the Father's seeing the Son at one
and the same time, though it were but for a moment,
But while so many, as we have seen above, of those who believe in an
atonement have latterly made the same avowal on the subject of imputation, and
transferred guilt, and merit, that I now make,--to whom therefore this avowal on
my part will be no source of distrust as to the conclusions at which I have
arrived,--it is to my own mind an additional source of freedom of feeling,
besides the positive weight of the intellectual and moral difficulties involved
in the system which I am rejecting, that the conception of the nature of the
atonement which I have seemed to myself to receive in seeking to see it by its
own light, is altogether independent
But these alternatives could not be fully realised,
and their different natures considered, without the mind's
being led to that perception of the deep and fundamental distinction between the
conception of Christ's
enduring as a substitute the penalty of sin, and Christ's
It would be a suitable and satisfactory sequel to what I have now presented to the reader's attention, to examine all those portions of Scripture which are most identified in men's minds with the conception of the atonement as penal suffering endured by Christ as our substitute, and shew how much more naturally they express a moral and spiritual atonement, and how they are by the conception of such an atonement filled with light; but I must satisfy myself for the present with what I have incidentally done in this way already. Nor, assuming the view expounded to be truth, can the reader who has fully received it have difficulty in doing this for himself. Of the passages to which I refer, those as to which I would most urge the reader to engage in this task, are those in which the death of Christ is made the measure of the evil of sin; earnestly desiring as I do that His death may be that measure to our spirits, and feeling that it never can be so as God has intended, unless we are understanding our calling to die to sin in the fellowship of His death, unless to us, as to the Apostle, to "win Christ, and be found in Him, not having our own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith,"--be identified with knowing Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death."
COMPARATIVE COMMENDATION OF THE VIEW NOW TAKEN OF THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT AS TO (1) LIGHT, (2) UNITY AND SIMPLICITY, AND (3) A NATURAL RELATION TO CHRISTIANITY, AND (4) HARMONY WITH THE DIVINE RIGHTEOUSNESS.
MY conception of the nature of the atonement, and of its relation to the remission of sins and the gift of eternal life, being now before my readers, I might stop here, and leave it to receive that measure of consideration which, in the naked statement of it, it may be felt to claim for itself. If it come with that self-evidencing light to others, with which it has come to me, it will not only commend itself as the truth, but also, by its light, reveal the root of error in any erroneous view which it may find in possession of the mind. Yet I cannot conclude without pointedly directing attention to some of the aspects in which it contrasts with the system with which it will be most compared.
1. Understanding the words, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God," to be the key to the atonement, and to contemplate that Eternal Will of God, in respect of the nature of which it is true that "God is love;" and that therefore the doing of this will by Christ is to be seen in this, that love was the law of the spirit of the life that was in Him; which took form in its outcomings according to its own nature, and as the path in which the Father led Him gave it development and manifestation,--the conception of the atonement received in tracing the work of redemption, has been full of light.
For, however imperfectly I have executed the high
task which I have attempted, I hope it has been felt
Now this is an important point of contrast between what has now been taught,
and the conception of the atonement as Christ's being, in respect of the
imputation of our sins, the object of the Father's wrath; and so bearing, as our
substitute, the punishment of our sins. Whatever light may be recognised in that
system as shining from the work of Christ's as a whole, the great
central fact in it is so represented, as to remain necessarily shrouded
in darkness. But what our Lord would feel in bearing our sins as His doing so
has now been represented, we can in measure enter into; and that, too, a measure
which must enlarge, as the life of Christ progresses in us: while, as to its
fulness, as it is our blessedness, in contemplating the work of our redemption,
to be occupied with the height, and depth, and breadth, and length of a love
which passes knowledge; so is it also to an experience of suffering and
self-sacrifice on our behalf, which passes knowledge,
But the difference is immense, even the difference between light and darkness, between knowing in measure what passeth knowledge, and not knowing at all: and this, and nothing less, is the difference between, knowing, as to their nature, the elements of Christ's sufferings, being ourselves called to the fellowship of them, and knowing nothing of their nature at all. And, assuredly, whatever elements of Christ's sufferings are still held to be what we are to understand, and to share in, that special suffering which was proper to the assumed consciousness of having our sin imputed to Him, and its punishment inflicted on Him; that which is represented as the personal sense of the Father's wrath coming out on Him personally,--the wrath of God coming forth on the Son of His love: this is, and must be to us, simply darkness--a horror of darkness, without one ray of light.
The conception that Christ suffered as our substitute--so by His
suffering superseding the necessity for our suffering, itself implies
that the sufferings of His which such expressions contemplate, must remain in
the nature unknown to us; an experience in our Lord's humanity which, though it
has been an experience in humanity, we have not been intended to share in: a
conception that seems to me improbable in the bare statement of it. For an
experience of the Son of God in humanity not within reach of man's vision as
partaking in the divine nature, is to me what there is a strong presumption
against. How much that deeply-meditating believer in Christ, President Edwards,
has ventured to expect in the way of understanding the elements of Christ's
sufferings, we have seen above;
;2. The life of Christ being the light of life to us, and the atonement being the form of that life, it must needs be light, and not darkness. That which sheds light on all else must needs be light in itself, and be visible in its own light; as we not only see all things by the light of the sun, but also the sun itself. Further, that in the nature of the atonement, which imparts to it this character of light, also imparts that of simplicity and unity.
Although I have found it necessary to consider the work of Christ in the two aspects of a dealing with man on the part of God, and with God on behalf of man; and in the two references of a retrospective relation to the remission of sins, and a prospective relation to the gift of eternal life; I trust the unity and simplicity and natural character of a life has been felt to belong to all that has been thus traced. It is all grace reigning through righteousness unto eternal life. All is in harmony with the purpose, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O
God;" and is its natural development terminating in
its perfect accomplishment. An unbroken testimony
on the part of the Father to the beloved Son in whom
He is well pleased; an unbroken consciousness in the
Son as hearing the Father's voice, abiding in the
Father's love, strong in the strength of the life that is
in the Father's favour, able to drink the cup of suffering given Him to drink
because receiving it from His
Father's hand, the last utterance of His inner life in
man's hearing being the words in death, "Into thy
hands, O Father, I commend my spirit;" from first to
last the Son doing nothing of Himself all His speaking because of an inward
hearing of the Father, all His works the doing of the Father that dwelleth in
Him, all His strength the strength of faith, all His peace, all His joy,--peace
and joy in conscious oneness with the Father, all His consolation in the
prospect of desertion drawn from the assurance, that, though all forsake Him, He
is not alone, because the Father is
with Him; the bearing of the heavy burden of our sins,
accomplished in the might of a hope sustained by the
consciousness that what of pain they were to His heart,
they were also to the Father's heart; that what of
interest we were to His heart we were also to the
Father's heart: therefore His separating between us
and our sins. His intercession, "Father, forgive them;
for they know not what they do,"--a separating, an
intercession, in the assurance of the response of the
Father's righteous mercy:--in this I say is unity, and
harmony, and divine simplicity. We can trace all this
back to the purpose, "Lo, I come to do thy will."
Had it been given to us to hear the expression of
that purpose, and were it permitted to us to follow its
fulfillment with a perfect spiritual vision, all would be
seen to be in accordance with it, and to be made clear
What is thus seen endured in conscious oneness with the Father, as a necessary element in the Son's glorifying of the Father, and in the strength and with the comfort of the Father's acknowledgment, we can believe in as a cup which the Father gave the Son to drink, and which the Son welcomed from the Father's hand. But if we are asked to see the path which the Son is treading in doing the Father's will, declaring His name, as, at a certain point, passing out of the Father's favour into His wrath; and that a demand is made on us for the faith of a consciousness both in the
Father and in the Son, in their relation to each other, which would make this statement a reality: or if the conception be not that of transition,--but that we are asked to combine with the faith of a favour always resting upon the Son, the faith of a wrath from the Father as also proceeding forth upon Him; however other grounds for this faith may be urged, or whatever weight may be asserted for them--which question I am not at this moment considering--it is clear that the unity and harmony and natural character of what we have been contemplating as the fulfilment of the purpose, "Lo, I come to do thy will," is marred, and the commendation on this ground at least, of that which is presented to our faith, ceases.
3. This unity and simplicity and natural character of the atonement, contemplated as the form which the life of love in Christ took--the natural development of the incarnation--is still further commended to us by its imparting a corresponding unity and simplicity to the relation of the atonement to Christianity. If the atonement be the form which the eternal life took in Christ, that eternal life which the Father has given to us in the Son, then, as the atonement is the development of the incarnation, so is Christianity the development of the atonement; and this is only what the words, "I am the vine, ye are the branches," express.
The fitness of all the elements that have been now
recognised as present in the personal consciousness of
Christ in humanity in making His soul an offering for
sin, to enter into the experience of Christians, and be
the elements of their lives, must have been commending itself to the reader as
we have proceeded. These
elements of our Lord's consciousness as the rays of the
light of the life that was in Him, have that relation to
us and our state, that, shining in us in faith, they
Let our minds rest on this unity between the atonement and Christianity. How natural a sequel to the atonement is Christianity thus seen to be! Christ's work shared in through being trusted to, or rather trusted to with a trust which is of necessity a sharing in it. No need here to watch ourselves that we may not only trust to Christ, but also receive Him as our life; for in the light in which we are, these are but two forms of expression for one movement of our inner man. For, as I would ever keep before the reader's mind, trust in the work of Christ is, in its ultimate reference, trust in that fatherly heart in God which that work reveals, and such trust is the pulse and breath of our new life--the life of sonship.
But this natural relation of Christianity to the atonement, and which I
believe to be a part of the simplicity which is in Christ, disappears when we
would pass to Christianity from that other conception
To any seeking a clear, intelligent consciousness in religion, the complexity of this teaching appears to me to involve practical difficulties which have been unaccountably little felt. As to the sufferings of Christ, whatever sufferings of His may still be considered as what we are to share in, (and the words "if we suffer with Him we shall also reign with Him," must be held to imply that such sufferings there are,) it is clear, that sufferings assumed to have been the punishment of our sins, endured by Christ as our substitute, we cannot be intended to share in, not even though, as to their outward form and circumstances, they should be repeated in our history; for still they would not be sufferings endured as the wrath of God and the punishment of sin, inflicted on us as having the guilt of sin imputed to us. Indeed, were we to see one professing trust in Christ, suffering with this consciousness, we should feel that he was therein denying Christ, and making His death for sin of none effect. Therefore any consciousness that is ascribed to Christ, on the assumption of His being consciously bearing our sins as what the Father imputed to Him, and what drew forth the Father's wrath upon Him personally, must be excluded from what the example which Christ is to us comprises.
But even as to the righteousness of Christ as that
is conceived of, how was He in fulfilling all righteousness,
as His doing so is represented in this system, an
example to us? He is supposed as one under the law,
to be consciously engaged in meeting its demands,
The complication introduced in consequence of this departure from the simplicity of the truth, is obviously still further increased when we add to the assumed presence in Christ of the sense of an imputation of sin, the presence in us of the sense of the imputation of righteousness; a consciousness which could have had nothing corresponding with it in the consciousness of Christ.
But, in whatever way these practical difficulties in walking in the footsteps of the Son of God, in the highest sense which these words can bear, may be dealt with, the fitness of the atonement, as now contemplated, to be reproduced in us, and, on the other view of its nature, its unfitness to be so reproduced, are alike clear; and, apart from other and more fundamental aspects of the subject, I certainly feel that greater simplicity, a more natural character in the transition from the work of Christ to our calling as Christians, is a consideration to which weight is due.
4. I say ''apart from other and more fundamental aspects of the subject." For, while it certainly accords to my mind with the assumption that the true conception has been reached, that the atonement is thus seen filled with the light of the life of Christ--characterised by the simplicity and unity proper to a life--and standing to Christianity in the natural relation of the life that is in the vine to the life that is in the branches; yet these appearances are comparatively superficial, and must be delusive, however beautiful, unless the atonement which they commend is in harmony with the divine righteousness, and such as meets the demands of the eternal laws of the kingdom of God. Therefore an appeal to these must still remain.
I have already expressed my accordance with
President Edwards in his founding on the absolute
righteousness of God, and my greater sympathy with
him than with those who ascend no higher than what
they express by the words "rectoral justice." Doubtless what meets the
requirements of absolute righteousness must secure the interests of rectoral
justice; while
it is not easy to see--I cannot see--how the interests
of rectoral justice can be felt secure if the requirements
of absolute righteousness are compromised, or even are
This much I feel justified in saying, even looking at the question with exclusive reference to the honouring of the divine law. But when we consider, that the highest honouring of the law cannot be recognised as an atonement for sin apart from the prospective result contemplated,--as, indeed, but with a view to such a result an atonement could never have been,--the natural relation of the atonement to Christianity now illustrated, and which in its first aspect so commends itself to us, is seen, when more deeply considered, to be of fundamental importance.
Some, I know, are so far from feeling that a natural relation between the
atonement and Christianity is necessary, or to be looked for, that they draw
back from the attempt to trace such a relation as what they would call reducing
the work of atonement to the mere setting an example before us,--and, considering
the associations which exist with making the example of Christ the sum and
substance of Christianity, great
But, indeed, apart from this, the truth is that the
use of the expression "example" is misleading. The
relation of our participation in the atonement to the
But, it is not only that this recognition of a natural relation between the
atonement and Christianity is in itself no objection to the view which implies
it, and can only under misapprehension of what is taught, be regarded as
reducing the work of Christ to a mere
In order that the importance of this natural relation between the atonement and Christianity may be clearly seen, the relation in which the joy of God in Christians stands to his perfect delight in Christ, must be understood.
I have already had occasion to express my objection to what is held on this
subject in connexion with imputation of righteousness, or the transference of
the fruits of righteousness, assumed to be implied in justification by faith.
There has been in this matter a subverting of the natural relation of things,
which has caused much darkness. The end has been represented as valued for the
sake of the means; not the means for the sake of the end. The very excellence
inherent in the means has partly led to this. When we look at the work of
Christ, viewed simply in itself, it is seen filled with a divine glory, and a
moral and spiritual excellence is felt to belong to it so great that God alone
can perfectly appreciate it. To say that it is the Eternal Will of God
fulfilled, is to say that it is in itself infinitely acceptable to God. When,
then, the remission of our sins, and the gift of Eternal life, are preached to
us in connexion with that excellent glory to God in humanity, we feel that any
acknowledgment of it that can be, is to be looked for; and, also, that nothing
granted on the ground of it can be otherwise than safely granted, for that mercy
flowing through such a channel must be holy: so that we easily receive the
statement, that pardon of past sin, and prospective blessings, are all given to
us for Christ's sake, and because of the perfect atonement which Christ has made
for our sin, and God's perfect delight in him; and this, if we are in the light
of God in the matter, we cannot do too readily or too confidently. And yet our
lack of spiritual discernment, and of participation in the mind of God,
combined, also, I would say, with our unenlightened sense of the evil and danger
of our condition as sinners, may lead to our resting in notions of the meaning
of the expression, "for Christ's sake," which are superficial and even
erroneous. And this is
Though, in a true sense, and one which it is most important that we should apprehend, remission of sins, and the gift of eternal life, are presented to our faith as resting on the atonement, and as the redemption which Christ has accomplished for us; yet is the ultimate ground of these, and of the atonement itself in its relation to these, to be seen in God, who is to be conceived of, not as moved to give us remission of sins and eternal life by the atonement, but as self-moved to give us remission of sins and eternal life, and as giving them through the atonement as what secures that what is given shall be received, on the ground of that in God which moves Him to this grace, and in harmony with His mind in bestowing it. So that to stop at the atonement, and rest in the fact of the atonement, instead of ascending through it to that in God from which it has proceeded, and which demanded it for its due expression, is to misapprehend the atonement as to its nature, and place, and end. It has been truly said, that men have perverted creation, and, instead of using it as a glass through which to see God, have turned it into a veil to hide God. I believe the greater work of redemption has been the subject of a similar perversion. It is the commendation of the light in which Christ's doing of the Father's will, Christ's declaring of the Father's name, has now been contemplated, that, as I have said, it ever raises the mind to the Eternal Will, the Unchanging Name.
As it is thus necessary, in order that we may not misunderstand the expression ''for Christ's sake," that we ascend from the work of Christ, and through it, to that in God because of which that work has itself been, and to which, therefore, we must refer all
that springs out of it; so is it necessary that, on the other hand, we descend from the work of Christ to its results, and, viewing these as its fruits, see that work as means to an end, and, therefore, as having its ultimate value in the sight of God in the excellence of that end, and its adequacy to accomplish it. This going forward to the result is inevitable if we go back to where redemption has its origin in the divine mind. We cannot stop between. For the work of Christ, while of infinite excellence in itself, has its special value as the work of redemption in the excellence of its result. If Christ were a mere man, His excellence in Himself, could such excellence have been in a mere man, would have been enough to satisfy the mind as to God's glory in Him: but, seeing the perfection of sonship--like the perfection of fatherliness--as divine, and eternal, and, as respects the Son of God, only manifested in humanity and not then come into existence, this divine excellence in humanity in the person of Christ, is seen as in humanity with a view to results in all humanity. Therefore these results are not to be regarded as excellent in the sight of God, and justified because of that divine excellence in humanity; but rather the existence of that divine excellence in humanity is to be seen by us in the light of these results, and God's ultimate glory in it is to be seen in them. This is saying no more than what our Lord plainly teaches, when He says, "I am the vine, ye are the branches. Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit.''
Now the origin of the atonement in God, and its result in man, have been kept
constantly before the mind in the view now given of the nature of the atonement;
and any misconception of the expression "for Christ's sake" has been precluded:
as it is also obvious,
This movement in our inner being--this moulding
of us to itself--the atonement, apprehended by a true
and living faith, necessarily accomplishes; and its tendency to secure this
result, is one element in our faith, when we first believe; as also the
experience of this power in it is the great subsequent strengthening of
our faith. Ascending upwards to the mind of God,
into the light of which the atonement introduces us,
and descending again to the ultimate fulfilment of that
mind in men washed from their sins in the blood of
Christ, and made kings and priests unto God, and
reigning with Christ, we not only feel a harmony and
simplicity and beauty in the natural relation of the
atonement to Christianity, but we are also conscious to
finding in that natural relation a chief and most sure
ground for our faith in the atonement, and in remission
of sins, and eternal life, as presented to us in connexion
with it. Every time we are enabled, in spirit and in
truth, through participation in the spirit of Christ, to
confess sin before God, and meet His mind towards
sin with such a response as, in the faith of pardon and
liberty of sonship, we are enabled to give, we have a
clearer glimpse of the excellence of Christ's expiatory
confession of our sins, and of the righteousness of God
in accepting it on our behalf, to the end that we might
thus share in it. Every time we lisp, in whatever feebleness, the cry, Abba,
Father, having that cry quickened
in us by the revelation of the Father by the Son, we
see with the peculiar insight which the experience of the
THAT GOD IS THE FATHER OF OUR SPIRITS, THE ULTIMATE TRUTH ON WHICH FAITH MUST HERE ULTIMATELY REST.
THAT natural relation of the atonement to Christianity, on which so much
weight has now been laid, is the full meeting of a demand which must be more or
less felt in any deep realisation of the divine righteousness; the demand which
is so far met when those who represent our acceptance with God as turning upon
our trust in the merits of Christ's work, are I
still careful to illustrate the moral tendency of such
trust, founding systems of "Christian Ethics" on the
atonement; the demand which is recognised when those
who regard the actual imputation of Christ's righteousness as what justifies us
in the sight of God, are careful to deny the character of justifying faith to
any faith
that does not sanctify: for Luther alone have we found
setting forth the excellent righteousness which is in the
faith which justifies viewed in itself. In truth, all care
to exclude antinomianism, in whatever way that care is
expressed, is an indication of the depth and authority
of the feeling which forbids our ascribing to the righteous God any constitution
of spiritual and moral
government, which does not contemplate results in
harmony with the divine righteousness, and which has
not its justification in these results. So that, though,
in form of thought, a near approach is made to saying,
that the great husbandman values the fruitful branch,
not because of His delight in the fruit it bears, but because of His delight in
the imputed excellence of the
vine; still the real feeling of the heart is in harmony
The great and root-distinction of the view of the atonement presented in these pages, is the relation in which our redemption is regarded as standing to the fatherliness of God. In that fatherliness has the atonement been now represented as originating. By that fatherliness has its end been represented to have been determined. To that fatherliness has the demand for the elements of expiation found in it been traced. But the distinction is broad and unmistakeable between simple mercy proposing to save from evils and bestow blessings, and finding it necessary to deal with justice as presenting obstacles to the realisation of its gracious designs,--which conception is that on which the other view of the atonement proceeds; and this of the love of the Father of our spirits going forth after us. His alienated children, lost to Him, dead to Him through sin, and desiring to be able to say of each one of us, "My son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found."
Not, indeed, that supposing the only elements of the divine character
concerned in determining the nature of the atonement to have been mercy and
righteousness, the conception to which I object, would meet the requirements of
these attributes more adequately than that which I offer instead. On the
contrary, the moral and spiritual expiation for sin which Christ has made, has
dealt with the justice of God, whether contemplated
But while to reveal the Father in the Lawgiver is
that which reconciles us to the Lawgiver, the only
adequate statement of the high result accomplished, is,
that it is reconciliation to the Father,--the quickening
in us of the life of sonship. However high a conception
it is that the "disobedient should be turned to the wisdom
As to the place now recognised as belonging to the fatherliness of God in the
history of our redemption, viz., that it is the ultimate ground for
faith, I would add to what I have urged above these two considerations: 1st, It
is a special glory to God that the fatherliness, which originates our salvation,
and determines its nature--that it shall be the life of sonship--is itself
that in which the saving power resides. For, as we have seen, the Son
of God saves us by a work whose essence and sum is the declaring of the Father's
Name. A result so high, accomplished by the power over our spirits found to be
in the Name of God,--that is to say in what God is, is manifestly the
highest glory to God. No result referable to simple Almightiness could be the
same glory. That God should by a miracle change a rebellious child into a loving
child, would be no such glory to God, as that the knowledge of the fatherliness
rebelled against, should, by virtue of the excellence inherent in that
fatherliness, accomplish this result. "We love Him because He first loved us."
The power to quicken love in us is here ascribed to the love with which God
regards us, considered simply as love. For it clearly is not the meaning, that,
because God loved us. He wrought a miracle of Almighty power to make us love
Him. And do we not feel a special glory to accrue to the divine love from this,
as the history of our love to God? a special glory which vanishes, whatever
other manner of glory may be supposed to remain, the moment the fact of our
loving God is resolved into a miracle of Almighty power. 2nd, But not only is
this history of our being reconciled to God what is full of
This is a point which it is most important that we
should see clearly. Nothing extraneous to the nature of
the divine will itself to which we are to be reconciled, can
have a part in reconciling us to that will. Fear of punishment, hope of
reward, have here no place. However they may have been included in the history
of
our awakening to the importance of the relation in
which our will stands to the divine will, they must
go for nothing--they have ever been found to go for
nothing--when the soul is alone with God, feeling itself under His searching
eye, all its self-consciousness quickened by the realisation of the divine
knowledge of
its thoughts "when yet afar off." Simple earnestness,
intense desire to be safe and assured of happiness, is
then valued only at its true value; neither is itself
deceivingly supposed to generate anything better than
itself. In the light of God, all that springs from the
desire of safety and happiness, is seen to continue but
the desire of safety and happiness still; and this, though
not wrong,--nay, though in a lower sense right, as the
At how great a distance from all oneness of will with the Holy God a human spirit may still be, even when esteeming itself saved, and thanking God for salvation, is most instructively illustrated by President Edwards, in his analysis of delusive appearances of conversion which had come under his own observation, occurring under the awakening power of much urging of the importance of salvation. But, indeed, clearly understood, the statement is felt to be self-evident, that the will of God must reconcile us to itself by the power of what it is, or not at all. Therefore that the Son reconciles us to the Father by revealing the Father, is not only a way of salvation full of glory to God, but is, in truth, the only possible way. So that our salvation would have been impossible had there not been in the heart of the Father what, being revealed to us, and brought to bear on our spirits, would reconcile us to Him, making His condemnation of our sin to become our own condemnation of it. His choice for us our own free choice for ourselves, His love the light of life to us, His fatherliness the quickening of sonship in us. There being that in God which was adequate to this result, our salvation was not only possible, but the way and manner, as well as the nature of our salvation, were thereby fixed and determined.
The Apostle John says, "And we have seen and do
testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour
of the world."
Exclusive occupation with the personal dignity
claimed for the Saviour by the name "the Son of
God," has, indeed, had the general result of causing
Fatherliness in God originating our salvation; the Son of God accomplishing that salvation by the revelation of the Father; the life of sonship quickened in us, the salvation contemplated: these are conceptions continually suggested by the language of scripture if we yield our minds to its natural force; and they are conceptions which naturally shed light on each other, and which, in their combined light, and contemplated together, so illustrate the nature of the atonement, as to impart a conviction like that produced by the internal light of axiomatic truth. Our Lord complains that He had come in His Father's name, and they had not received Him: yet as coming in the Father's name must He be ultimately received; any other reception is not the reception of the Son of God by which we become sons of God. "He came unto His own, and His own received
Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to be the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name." This those understand whose deepest conviction of having found salvation in Christ is as the experience of orphans who have found their long lost Father. For, corresponding to the yearning of the Father's heart over us, while yet in our sins, is the working of the misery of our orphan state as the ultimate contradiction to the original law of our being; some measure of conscious realisation of which misery is the truest preparation for receiving the gospel, being the first yielding to the teaching of the Father drawing us to the Son, who alone reveals the Father,--that in articulate groaning of our spirits to which Philip gave expression in saying, "Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us."
It is justly held that the faith that there is a God, has a root in us deeper than all inferential argument, a root in relation to which all inferential argument is but, so to speak, complemental; owing its authority rather to that root than that root at all to it, though being what that root demands and prepares us to expect. And surely those who deal with men who are attempting to be atheists, act most wisely when they throw them back on this root of faith in God in their own inner being, instead of permitting a course of argument which allows their thoughts to run away to find without them what unless found within them will never be found at all. That this God, in whose existence we necessarily believe, is the Father of our spirits, is to be regarded as a further truth, the faith of which has a corresponding depth of root in us; and this I understand the Apostle to recognise in the use he makes, in preaching to the Athenians, of the expression as used by one of their own poets, "For we are also His offspring."
That one of their own poets had said so would have been no reason for assuming that they ought to have believed that it was so, and to have determined their manner of worshipping God accordingly, unless these words of the poet had been the utterance of a truth that was deep in all their hearts. In assuming, as I have been doing, a relation of men to God as the Father of spirits, antecedent to, and to be regarded as underlying their relation to Him as their moral governor, I have, in like manner, been calculating on a response from the depths of humanity. And it is in the hope of awakening that response into a distinct consciousness that I have proceeded in treating our relationship to God as the Father of our spirits, as the ultimate truth, in the light of which we are to see the scheme of our redemption, the Father's sending the Son to be the Saviour of the world. If we are in very truth God's offspring, if it is as the Father of our spirits that He regards us while yet in our sins, it accords with this that the Father should send the Son to save us, that the Son should propose to save us by the revelation of the Father, and that our salvation shall be participation in the life of sonship.
There is a corresponding witness of truth in the results which the faith of the atonement accomplishes. These in being the truth of sonship towards God and the truth of brotherhood toward men, deepen the conviction that it is the very truth of God that our faith is receiving.
1.
Sonship quickened in us by the revelation of the fatherliness that is in God, is
sonship in the true and natural sense of the expression. If our redemption has
its origin in the feelings with which God regards us as the Father of our
spirits, if the Son of God accomplishes our salvation by revealing the Father to
us,
I cannot recognise this truth of sonship, in what, in
connexion with the other conception of the atonement,
is held as "adoption;" of which I desire to speak plainly,
yet warily, knowing how much more difficult it is
to do justice in the choice of one's words to the faith of
others, than to one's own faith; and having, also, the
awe on my spirit of the true savour of the life of
The adoption of us as sons, as superadded to justification by faith, no element of sonship being present in the faith that justifies us, nor exercise of fatherliness contemplated as an element in the divine acceptance of us, the adoption itself a boon bestowed upon us in connexion with the imputation of Christ's merits to us,--this is a manner of sonship as to which it is obvious that the confidence with which we may so think of ourselves as sons of God, and draw near to Him expecting to be acknowledged as such, is no direct trust in a Father's heart at all, no trust in any feeling in God of which, we are personally the objects as His OFFSPRING, but is in reality a trust in the judicial grounds on which the title and place of sons is granted to us.
I know that it is held that, when in connexion with the faith that justifies,
God bestows on us the adoption of sons, He gives us also the spirit of sonship,
that we may have the spiritual reality as well as the name and standing. But the
spirit of sonship is the spirit of truth, the Son himself is the
truth--"I am the way, the truth, and the life." That the Son
should say, "I am the way"--"no man cometh unto the Father but by me,"
teaches us that sonship alone deals with fatherliness as fatherliness;
that we must come to God as sons, or not come at all. On this
co-relativeness of sonship and fatherliness, I have dwelt above. So also that He
should say, "I am the life," fixes our faith on Him as our proper
life, according to "the testimony of God, that God has given to us eternal
life, and that this life is in His Son,"--but that He should say, and say in
humanity, "I am the truth," teaches us, that not only is it the
case that to come
I have in some measure anticipated this contrast between sonship towards God, as quickened in us by the revelation to us of the Father by the Son, and sonship conceived of as added to our legal standing of justified persons, through the imputation to us of Christ's merits, when noticing above the practical difficulty of harmonising, in conscious experience, two manners of confidence, so opposite in their nature, as a legal confidence, on the ground of the imputation to us of a perfect righteousness, and a filial confidence such as the faith of a Father's heart is fitted to quicken. In truth, the assumed filial confidence, being cherished in this dependence on the legal confidence, and the fatherliness conceived of being, not a desire of the heart of God going forth towards us as His offspring, to which sonship is the true and right response, but the divine acknowledgment of a standing granted to us according to the arrangement assumed, though our conception of the mercy and grace of which we assume ourselves to be the objects may still be high, the true and simple feeling of dealing with a Father's heart is altogether precluded.
But thus to think of the intercourse with God which eternal life implies, as
resting for its peace and security on another ground than its own essential
nature;--to think of sonship as cherished freely otherwise than as the natural
response to the Father's heart, to think of the Father as rejoicing in this
sonship as present in us otherwise than as the Father;--to feel that the
prodigal son feels secure in the
The natural character now claimed for the consciousness of sonship as belonging to our communion with God in Christ,--that is to say, that it shall be felt the due response to the Father's heart, and not the mere using of a privilege and right graciously conferred upon us, corresponds with, or, I should rather say, is one with, the self-evidencing character claimed above for justifying faith.
The liberty to call God Father, which we feel in the light of the revelation
of the Father to us by the Son, we in that light cannot but feel: for
in that light
How important this statement is--assuming its truth--those will feel who are acquainted with the questionings on the subject of adoption by which the most earnest and deeply exercised spirits have been most tried, while their right to call God Father has been conceived of by them as turning upon the previous question of their justification through imputation of Christ's righteousness, and that again upon the soundness of the faith from which justification has been expected. What is here taught is that to call God Father, and draw near to Him in the confidence of sonship, is simply to conform to, and walk in, the light of life which shines to us in Christ.
Assuredly that word from heaven--"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased: hear ye Him"--each man that hears is called to hear as a word
addressed to himself,--a revelation of a will in God in relation to him. This is
not to be questioned. Why is this divine sonship manifested in humanity? Why,
brother man, is our attention called to it? Why are we told of
the Father's being pleased in the Son, and in this connexion bade to "hear the
Son?" Surely the fatherliness thus presented to our faith is fatherliness in
which we are interested, for surely it is interested in us--has desires with
reference to us; and surely the sonship on which our attention is thus fixed
concerns us, yea, can be nothing else than the very condition of humanity which
these desires of the Father contemplate and seek for us. Therefore when
we
Thus are the outward preaching of the kingdom of God, and the revelation of
that kingdom within us, known in their unity, in the experience of salvation;
and the light shining in the Scriptures and the light shining in man are known
as one light,--at once universal and individual, as is the nature of light. When
I hear, in the most general reference to men, the words "God has given to us
eternal life, and this life is in His Son,"--"This is my beloved Son, in whom I
am well pleased: hear ye Him,"--I hear what connects me in my own thoughts, as
by a revelation of truth, with the fatherliness that is in God the
Father, and the sonship that is in the Son of God; and so, still, as the light
of life dawns on me, and brightens, and I become a child of light and of the
day, when I know, in my own inner being, the Father drawing me to the Son, and
the Son moving and quickening
I have been at pains, in relation to justification by faith, to shew how
faith excludes boasting; not by any artificial arrangement, nor at all by
denying to the faith itself the attribute of righteousness, but, on the
contrary,
That faith is trust in God, as He is revealed in Christ, excludes, as we have seen, boasting, and makes the righteousness of faith to be the opposite of self-righteousness;--that this faith apprehends the fatherliness of God, and that its responsive trust is sonship, this yet more and more excludes boasting. The trust of a child in a Father's heart is just the perfect opposite of a self-righteous trust; for it is a going back to the fountain of our being,--a dealing with that interest in us which was before we did good or evil; and, as cherished by us sinners towards God, against whom we have sinned, such trust deals with fatherliness as what has survived our sins; so that our trust, so far from being self-righteous, implies, commences with the confession of sin. Doubtless this trust is in itself holy--the mind of the Son; but it is not on that account less lowly,--less remote from boasting. Are we not, in cherishing it, "learning of Him who is meek and lowly in heart"?
There is, indeed, a further exclusion of boasting, in the consciousness that
it is in the Son that we are approaching the Father,--that He, who made
atonement for our sins, and brought into humanity the everlasting righteousness
of sonship, is not the mere pattern of our life, but is Himself that life in us
in which we are able to confess our sins, and to call God Father;--that He is
the vine, that we are the branches. But I feel it important that we should
realise that in
I the more insist upon this, while also desirous to fix attention on that deepest sense of dependence on Christ, which, in knowing Him as our life, our spirits prove, because I believe, that the whole attraction to conscience which has been found in the conception of an imputation of Christ's merits to us, has been its seeming fitness to secure the result of a peace with God free from self-righteousness, and which shall be really a trust in God and not in ourselves; the doing away with what Luther calls, "The monstrous idea of human merit, which must by all means be beat down;" and in reference to which he values the law as "a hammer with which to break it in pieces." This right result, essential to the glory of God in us, and to our being in harmony with the truth of things in the attitude of our spirits towards God, the truth of the life of sonship in us secures, and alone can secure.
Nay more, the life of sonship is not only the purest
and simplest trust in the heart of the Father, but its
nature is, because of the experience which it implies,
to be a continually growing trust in God. I must see a
Father's heart in God towards me before I can call
Him Father; but, in calling Him Father, the consciousness which comes with so
doing, is itself a fresh proof
to me that He is my Father, and that in so believing I
am not welcoming a cunningly devised fable; and thus
progress in the life of sonship is not the coming to have
a new ground of confidence towards God, but an experience which enables us to
"hold fast the beginning of
our confidence" more and more firmly. Experience,
in calling God Father in spirit and in truth, becomes
a source of increased freedom in doing so; not because
And, as this holds true as to our trust in the Father, so also, as to our trust in Christ as our life, all experience of life in abiding in Him as a branch in the vine, only developes into deeper consciousness the sense of dependence upon Him, shutting us up to so abiding for all expectation of well being; for the more I know what it is to be able to say, ''I live, yet not I, but Christ in me," the more simple, and absolute, and continuous will be my living by Him. The mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, being thus experimentally known as our fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, abounds, the fulfilment of God's purpose in us enlightens us more and more in that purpose, and thereby deepens our faith in it as His purpose.
I do not feel that the ground for faith, which is thus found in the experience of faith, has been sufficiently valued, especially when the object has been to save us from looking for a ground of peace in ourselves. We cannot be too jealous of looking to self, if we rightly discriminate. But beyond all question, eternal life experienced must have its own proper consciousness; and the apprehension of it as given in Christ, and the consciousness of receiving it, and being alive in it as a conscious life, must be trusted to to exclude self-righteousness, as light excludes darkness, and not otherwise.
It seems to me that Luther, notwithstanding his
Yet while Luther's teaching has all the superiority which is implied in a truer conception of what is presented to our faith, as well as the advantage of a juster appreciation of the excellent nature of faith viewed in itself, it seems to me, as compared with the teaching of the Apostles, wanting in its setting forth of that to which the gospel calls man; a defect which, in reference to the twofold revelation in Christ, the revelation of fatherliness, and of sonship, may be expressed by saying, that his preaching is more a setting forth of the fatherliness in which we are to trust, than of the sonship to which we are called. Luther keeps before the mind
God as He is revealed to be trusted in,--trusted in at this moment, by those who have never trusted in Him before; rather than the contemplated life of Christ in us, in the conscious experience of which we are to grow day by day in the assurance of faith and free life of sonship. I do not at all mean that Luther would deny the soundness of all such increase of freedom, assuming it to be indeed that which has now been spoken of, viz., increased trust in God, and in His Christ, through the experience of trusting; but that this he does not set forth or dwell on. Therefore, while the history of his own first peace in God is, most profitably for us, present in all his commending of the gospel and putting away of the law, there is still in his renewed urging of the difficulty of trusting in Christ in seasons of deep realisation of our sins, a contrast, and, to my mind, an instructive contrast, to the calm consciousness of being living the new eternal life which breathes in such words as these, "We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life."
There is a state of mind in relation to the view now
taken of the sonship quickened in us in faith, which it
is right here to notice. The character of salvation as
now represented, as what is accomplished in us by our
being "brought out of darkness into God's marvellous
light,'' it is felt difficult to harmonise with the greatness
of the change which has come to pass in those who
are saved, both as respects the condition of their own
being, and their relation to God. It is asked, "If God
is the Father of our spirits antecedent to our faith
in Christ, and that the gospel reveals Him as our
Father, how does the Apostle say--'In this are the
In consistency with this conception of the gospel, it is held that in such discourses of our Lord as that recorded in the 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, the use of the name "Father," on which I have dwelt above as a part of our Lord's coming to men in His Father's name, is not to be understood as a claim made for God, and the setting forth of the conception of God with which men ought to approach Him, but as assuming faith and justification and adoption; so that to say, "When ye pray, say. Our Father," was not to teach men what they were to believe God already to be, but what He would become if they believed: so also that to say, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy
Spirit to them that ask Him?" was not intended by our Lord to be understood as the proclaiming of a will in God to impart His Spirit to all, because He was the Father of the spirits of all flesh, but only of such a will as to those who had become His children by faith.
If it were only meant that our acting on such teaching implies faith, and that we only truly pray the Lord's prayer in the measure in which we receive the Son to reign in our hearts, there would be in this no more than a most needed warning,--seeing the great self-deception connected with the use of that prayer in a way of mere fleshly repetition of it, void of all life of sonship. But this is not what is meant; and so the parable of the prodigal son, on which so much weight has now been laid, is denied to be a preaching of the gospel, or a revelation of the interest with which God regards men--all men--while yet in their sins; its comfort being reduced to what, in consistency, can only be offered to men on the assumption that they have been adopted through faith, and are such as only need to be encouraged to return to their first love.
But while I notice this state of mind, and do so in much sympathy with the deep sense which it implies of the great issues involved in passing from death to life, I do not do so with the purpose of attempting to offer any help in relation to it, that has not been presented already in these pages. To my mind the expression of which I have made so much use--"My son was dead, and is alive again, both accords with the great change that faith implies, vindicating the strongest language in which its important results are ever expressed, and also fully recognises our original and abiding relation to God as the Father of our spirits.
But while some feel as if it were taking from the sense of salvation with which they themselves call God
Father as believing in Christ, thus to regard Him as the Father of the spirits of all flesh, others can testify, that the perfect freedom of sonship has only been attained by them in seeing the heart of the heavenly Father towards all men, to be revealed in Christ, and the life of sonship manifested in Christ to be the fulfilment of the divine purpose in themselves, because it is the fulfilment of the divine purpose in man.
I have just noticed the increased freedom in living the life of sonship, and increased assurance of being in the light of God, which comes through the actual experience of a true and living Christianity. Now, while this is, in one view, personal, it is in another view only a deeper certainty of knowledge as to the will of God in relation to all men, and the "common salvation." It is the record that God has given to us, that is, to men, eternal life, and that this life is in His Son, which he that believeth hath in himself. Therefore is the Christian a living Epistle of the grace of God.
The progress of mind often experienced in relation to the gospel is very
instructive. Some who have at one time contemplated the atonement as having
reference to an elected number, and have then felt that their own personal hold
of salvation would be weakened if Christ had died for all men, have afterwards
come to see, that they could never have felt intelligently certain that Christ
had died for them, excepting as that fact was included in the fact that He had
died for all men; and the unsatisfactory shifts had recourse to, in the attempt
to combine a free preaching of Christ with a limited atonement, have become very
palpable to them, and they have wondered how, saying, that, "though Christ had
died only for some, He was freely offered to all," could ever have been received
by them as an adequate foundation for an appropriating and personal
In thus receiving and obeying the testimony of the Father to the Son, and, in consequence, knowing the Father as the Son knows Him, and gives us to know Him, is the deepest manner of experience of that word--"The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He will shew them His covenant."
But let us be clear as to the elements of our consciousness when this is our
conscious history. We have not, by any movement of our own being, caused this
drawing of the Father; we have only yielded to it;--neither have we by any
movement of our being brought the Son thus near to us. He was thus near to us
even when we knew it not. Only under the teaching of God we have Christ revealed
in us the hope of glory. The mystery hid from ages and generations is made known
to us. Therefore, understanding the nature of the grace of which we find
ourselves the objects, we recognise it as that gracious kingdom of God within us
which the gospel proclaims. We find our feet in a large place,--we are
consciously in circumstances to receive and obey the word of Christ, "Abide in
me;" the personality of these circumstances in relation to us,
It is a remarkable and instructive fact, that the experience that the faith
of a work of Christ without us, which left us without the knowledge of a
presence and power of Christ within us, was inadequate to sustain the intelligent
purpose of living the life of sonship,--and that the recognition of a nearer
relation to Christ was needed,--has been to some the attraction of the doctrine
of baptismal regeneration; the spiritual change in our inner being, so conceived
of, seeming to
Christian baptism is into "the name of God, the Father, and the Son, and the
Holy Spirit." It relates to a gospel proclaiming that name. It is administered
to those capable of intelligent apprehension of the gospel, as believing in that
name as the true name of God, and that in the light of which they see their
relations to Him. Its administration to infants is only understandable on the
assumption that they are already interested in that name of God, and that
parents and ministers of Christ know them to be so, and are justified in
bringing them up in the faith of that name as the true name of God. But that we
should find in our baptism more than is in the name into which we have
been baptised, and that "more," that spiritual relation to Christ in
the light of which we can alone hear and respond to the call to follow God as
dear children; this is, in effect, to believe about baptism that which would
make it a contradiction of that name of God into which we are baptised. For to
say that baptism brings us into the needed spiritual relation to Christ as our
life, is to say, that we were not in it antecedently to baptism, that the grace
which the gospel reveals to our faith has not amounted to this; that is to say,
that we
I would not have risked any distraction of thought by the notice of this subject here, were it not for the preciousness in my apprehension of that sense of the need of a personal relation to Christ, with which to begin to live to God, which the doctrine of baptismal regeneration at once recognises and misdirects. As to the more usual objection to the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, viz., that it hinders the sense of the necessity of being personally alive to God as alone a condition of justifiable peace; I do not see how it is possible for any thoughtful mind to feel at rest in the contemplation of a fact of this kind, whatever it may be believed to have implied, while that fact has been common to the history of all the baptised, and has not hindered any subsequent manner or measure of evil. No man can believe that baptism has secured his salvation: at the utmost it can only be conceived of as placing the human spirit in a higher spiritual condition; which, if it implies the capacity of higher good, implies also that of greater evil--a deeper fall. And so all who believe in baptismal regeneration, whether Romanists or Protestants, would speak of it.
2. What affects the conception we form of the sonship towards God to which the gospel calls us, must in a corresponding way affect our conception of that consciousness of brotherhood with man to which we are also called. The light of truth in which I see God as my Father, is the light in which I see men as my brethren. If, on the other hand, the gospel does not reveal God to me as my Father, neither does it reveal men to me as my brethren.
I have considered above that fulfilment of the
We know when the question was put to our Lord, by one willing to justify himself by the law, "who is my neighbour?" how our Lord answered. Let us not under the gospel be found asking, "who is my brother?" or coming to conclusions as to the answer of that question which will leave us in the position of finding, that some are our neighbours who are not our brethren: for to find a neighbour who is not a brother, is to find a neighbour whom I cannot love as I love myself; for unless I can feel towards him as towards a brother, unless in the life of brotherhood given to me in Christ, I can see him with the eyes of a brother, and love him with the heart of a brother, I cannot love him in spirit and in truth as I love myself.
It thus more and more appears that the question as to the nature of the atonement is in truth nothing else than the question, 'what is Christianity?' It is so, as we have seen, as to the God-ward aspect of the eternal life given to us in Christ. It is so, we now see, as to the man-ward aspect of that life also. In contemplating the eternal life in Christ as taking the form of the atonement, the outcoming of love has been seen to be one and the same thing as sonship towards God and brotherhood towards man; and all that has been presented to our faith as entering into the work of Christ, has appeared to have been equally called for by love to God and by love to man,--a self-sacrifice which was at once devotedness to God and devotedness to man. The eternal life being unchanging in its nature, it follows, as urged above, that what it was in Christ as an atonement, it will be in us as salvation. Therefore Christ, as the Lord of our spirits, and our life, devotes us to God and devotes us to men in the fellowship of His self-sacrifice.
This He does in giving us to know God as our Father and men as our brethren. Seen in the light of God, our state of sin, and life of self, is solitary in all aspects of it. In it we are ''orphans of the heart," brotherless as well as fatherless: for in it the life of true brotherhood is as unknown in relation to man as that of true sonship is in relation to God. ''God setteth the solitary in families." This is accomplished for us spiritually in our passing from death unto life, "for by this we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death." Christ gives us to possess, not God only, but men also as our riches, the unsearchable riches which we have in Him. But, I say, in doing so He is, at the same time, devoting us to
God and to men, in the fellowship of His self-sacrifice. He thus calls us to poverty, in calling us to the true riches; calls us to have nothing, in calling us to possess all things; and thus the pearl of great price, which is given us without money and without price, while it is above all price, is yet that of which it is said, that a man must sell all that he has, that he may buy that pearl. If I am to be rich in the consciousness of having God as my Father, this must be in that entire devotion of my being to Him which is in loving the Lord my God, with all my heart, and mind, and soul, and strength. If I am to be rich in the consciousness of having men as my brethren, it must be in loving my neighbour as myself.
Here it may occur, that though to say, that Christ gives me God as my Father, has indeed a gospel sound, this is not felt equally as to the statement that He gives me men as my brethren. Yet are the gifts related, inseparably connected; their bond being the relation of the second commandment to the first. No doubt the difference, and more especially the immediate difference, between these gifts is very great in all views, but especially in this, that, by the latter, Christ lays a weight upon me, the burden of others; while, by the former. He lays my burden on God, enabling me to cast all my cares upon Him, knowing that He careth for me. Yet it is an obvious comfort here that the burden of others, which He lays upon me, being truly borne by me, becomes a part of that burden which He enables me to cast upon God.
But that we may see the whole transaction in both its parts, that which
refers to our relation to men, as well as that which refers to our relation to
God--as one grace, we must see it in the light of that word, "He that
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he
Self is essential and necessary solitude, with what
ever society and shew of social life it may encompass
itself. In the inmost circle of our being we abide
alone, until, in the death of self, the life of God is
quickened. Then God becomes the centre which self
was while yet we were as gods to ourselves, and then
the harmony of the first and second commandment is
known by us. We find that Christ, in reconciling us to
God, has reconciled us to men; and though comfort,
and peace, and joy alone come out of the former of
these results of His love, and sorrow, and vexation of
spirit, yea, fellowship in Christ's own sorrow, may come
abundantly out of its latter result, yet, even as to this
latter, the sorrow is not unmixed. If the afflictions of
Christ abound in us, our consolation, even as respects
men, shall also abound through Christ; and if men are
Self is most unwilling to die, and can gather around it so many sweetenings
of life in the form of social relations, which give a certain superficial sense
of communion of heart and mind without touching its (self's) life at the core,
that we need not marvel that the call to deny self, and take up the cross of
Christ, is resisted so long as only the sacrifice required is realised, and not
also the exceeding gain that is to come through that sacrifice; and of this gain
nothing is, I think, less anticipated than what is found in the new aspect which
our brother men will present to us, and the sense of eternal life that
accompanies that new interest of love which they will have to us in the
fellowship of Christ's love to them, and which will take the place of that
self-reference with which they were formerly regarded;--though broken, it might
be, by occasional outbursts of kindly and generous feeling--grapes, as it were,
from the land of promise tasted in the wilderness, but yet their promise not
believed. Would that these outcomings of a better nature were traced up to their
ultimate source in the depths of our being, and, instead of the passing comfort
and satisfaction which in their present form is all they usually yield, were
employed as
CONCLUSION
HAVING, in this attempt to illustrate the nature of the atonement, insisted so much on the application of the words, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men," to the whole work of Christ in making His soul an offering for sin, I am anxious not to be misunderstood as to the aspect of the subject of the atonement, in which it has appeared to me reasonable to expect it to be light to us, and not darkness; and that, in closing this volume, the reader should carry away with him a distinct conception of the limits, which, in writing, I have realised, and kept in view.
I have not attempted to divest the subject of the atonement of all mystery. I
have not cherished the hope, or, in truth, the desire, of doing so. The
self-righteousness that takes the form of a submission of faith to mysteries, I,
indeed, feel to be altogether a delusion. The assumed merit of a blind faith, in
addition to the error implied in all conception of merit on our part in relation
to God, involves the absurdity of expecting to please God by exalting one of His
good gifts, to the depreciation of another gift, equally to be traced up to the
grace of the Father of lights. Any manner of subordinating of reason to
revelation must be wrong, in which it is forgotten that we honour God in
assigning to reason its due place, as truly as we do in assigning to revelation
its due place; for to be jealous for reason is to be jealous for God, as truly
as to be jealous for revelation is to be jealous for God. If self
But as to mysteries, reason has its mysteries as well as revelation; and to shrink from mysteries, is to shrink from all deep thinking on any of the high problems of our existence. The practical question for us, as God's thinking, intelligent offspring, always is as to the limit of light and darkness; which practical question we are to entertain under the sense of this twofold responsibility; that, as it would be wrong to attempt to push beyond that limit, or to be impatient of its existence, so would it be also wrong to fix it more near to us than it is in the truth of things, or at least in relation to the dispensations of light vouchsafed to us by God. For would not this be to refuse to use some portion of the grace of God to us, and be one form of folding in a napkin and hiding in the earth a talent of which an account must be rendered?
Therefore, under the sense of a responsibility of
which the twofold aspect has appeared to me thus
unquestionable, I have now considered the elements
of the work of Christ as what His participation in
humanity, and our participation in the divine nature
through Him, seemed to place within the limit of
the light of life that shines for us in Him; while I
have simply recognised, abstaining from all attempt at
Reason has its mysteries as well as revelation, the mysteries of deepest
interest to us being, indeed, common to them both; though, inasmuch as
revelation carries us further into the region to which mystery pertains, the
sense of mystery in occupation of mind with the discoveries of revelation is
greater. But the aspect in which the atonement has now been contemplated does
not belong to the proper region of mystery at all. That region, whether as
respects reason or revelation, is the divine and the infinite; and the atonement
has now been considered simply as a transaction in humanity, contemplating
results in man, to be accomplished by the revelation of the elements of that
transaction to the spirit of man, and in a way of participation in these
elements on the part of man. It is not in this transaction, viewed in
itself, that mystery was to be expected, or could exist, but in that
relation
And this is true, whether we contemplate the personal work of Christ in making His soul an offering for sin, or His work in us in respect of which it is true, that when we live to God we must say, "Yet not we, but Christ liveth in us." The divine perfection of sonship in humanity, presented in Christ to our faith, is, in respect of its perfection, what leads us up to the mystery of the divinity of Christ as truly as His power to quicken and sustain sonship in spirit and in truth in us does. I can realise neither without feeling shut up to the faith of the divinity of the Saviour; while that faith so accords with the facts the contemplation of which thus leads directly to it, that, being received, it sheds light on them. For, believing in the divinity of Christ, we see how the atonement has that commensurateness with the infinite evil of sin, and infinite excellence of righteousness, which imparts to it its peace giving power; we see how Christ is near to us in that nearness that accords with His being our life, and has that power in relation to us which justifies the confidence that through Christ strengthening us we can do all things.
But viewed in itself, this faith has in it the deepest
mystery; but it is mystery in the region in which we
are prepared for mystery, being, first, in the manner of
being of God, and then, where the line of meeting is
between God and man. For here, also, we are prepared for mystery; and while we
expect to understand
Nor is the question of how this can be, or what the manner of the divine acting is, which it implies, the only mystery here. The faith of the divinity of the Saviour, while in one view it affords light and explanation as to the facts which constitute the gospel, in truth involves and deepens all the moral and spiritual mysteries of our existence.
I believe, as I have said, that the faith of the atonement, and the faith
that we have eternal life in Christ, is more easy to us when it rests on the
faith of the
Thus the great mystery of combined dependence and independence, as presented by our relation to God,--the mystery implied in the fact that in God we live, and move, and have our being, and yet that we may be the opposite of what God wills us to be; this is not removed, but only deepened by all the thoughts of our relation to God which are connected with our relation to the Son of God.
If we think of the matter in the way of considering how, in the nature of things, the spiritual constitution of humanity can be a reality, there is no question that a manner of nearness to God and to goodness, is suggested by the statement that "God has given to us eternal life in His Son,"--understood as implying an actual relation of our spirits to Christ as present in us--our true and proper life, which it is still more difficult to reconcile in our thoughts with the fact of what in sin men are, than even our "living, and moving, and having our being in God."
If, again, we look at the subject in relation to the divine will as a will
concerning us, the choice of God for men, in proportion as the gospel reveals
the "love" in which the law has its root, and shews the demand "for love" to be
the demand of love, the difficulty that exists in the fact of our being
other than that love desires that we should be, is increased, and reaches its
maximum of difficulty when the love, which is seen seeking our well-being, is
seen as the fatherliness that is in God, and its choice for us is seen as
participation in the life of sonship, and the provision for the realisation of
that desire, is seen in the gift to us of this eternal life in the Son.
Assuredly the mystery, the moral and spiritual mystery, is here increased in
proportion as it is seen to be a mystery thus involving infinite love. But
though increased
Doubtless it is with a sense of mystery, often altogether oppressive, that we look upon human sin and degradation, and then pass upwards to the Father of the spirits in whom the sin and degradation present themselves, and meditate on the thoughts of that Father in relation to them, and on all that our faith apprehends of what He has done, and is doing, to accomplish in them the good pleasure of His goodness. But though this mystery is greatest in the light of the gospel, it is great, very great, in the light of all those witnesses for His goodness towards men, without which God has never left Himself; and in respect of which the charge is just, that, in not being thankful, men were refusing to glorify God as God.
Some would cut this knot by saying, that all contradiction between what God is, and what God wills, is but apparent; that nothing is, or can be, other than what God wills it to be;--and that facts in the moral and spiritual region, even those that seem most contrary to the mind of God, are really related to Him just as physical facts are--hatred and love as much as cold and heat. Hatred may believe this, but love cannot. Self may believe that there is an end present to the divine mind which all moral events equally and necessarily subserve, and with reference to which it is that God wills them to be, and which it may call the divine glory. But love cannot believe that the divine glory is of this nature, or that that will, in respect of which God is love, and the manifestation of which must be His glory, can, in respect of moral beings, be fulfilled but in their loving.
The existence of a contradiction between what man is, and what God wills him to be, is indeed a mystery. The faith of the fact, however, is demanded by what is highest and deepest within us; which forbids our grasping at a seeming intellectual consistency of thought, at the expense of denying this contradiction, and accepting all the fearful moral and spiritual results which such denial involves. And even as to the intellectual relief sought, in denying that contradiction between man and God, which all ascription of goodness to God, and all hope of goodness for man alike imply, (for if evil be not contrary to the will of God, what hope of deliverance from it?) this seeming intellectual relief is but such in seeming; for it is but the removal of the contradiction, from where conscience recognises its existence, to place it in God Himself, by representing Him as what the Apostle so solemnly disclaims His being--a fountain giving forth at the same time sweet waters and bitter.
Nor can we be otherwise than thankful for the utter failure of all attempts made in this direction to solve this great moral and spiritual mystery; for its weight is nothing in comparison of what would be laid upon us by taking away the faith that God is love which involves that mystery, and representing the great First Cause as at the most only an intelligent fate. Nay, we may surely say, that what of mystery in relation to the actual facts of human existence, as it presents itself to us, the faith of love involves, the faith of love will itself enable us to submit to in the patience of hope.
But if the love of God to man presents deep mysteries, and mysteries that
deepen to our apprehension as our faith that God is love is real, having also
more
I have, therefore, felt at liberty to consider the nature of the atonement, without first considering the mysteries which encompass it. Nay, what I have just said implies, that I must have begun with this subject, had my ultimate purpose been to consider these mysteries; so that even in regard to those questions in relation to God and man, which take us most to the verge of light, the inquiry which has now engaged us attaches to itself all the interest and importance which may be felt to belong to them.
But while I hope for good only from all holy and
The reader who has accompanied me to the close of this volume, in the fair
mind, and with the patience of love, has, I trust, felt that throughout I have
simply sought to awaken a response in his own inner being,--whether in this I
have succeeded or have not,--and that I have written, not with the interest of
theological controversy, but as a man communing with his brother
THE END
Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians. By Martin Luther. London: Printed for Mathews and Leigh, Strand; by S. Gosnell, Little Queen Street. 1810.
The Works of John Owen, D.D. Edited by the Rev. William H. Goold, Edinburgh. (Vol. X.) Johnstone and Hunter, London and Edinburgh. 1852.
The Works of President Edwards, in 4 Vols. A
Reprint of the Worcester Edition, with valuable Additions, and a copious General
Index. New York: Leavitt, Trow, and
Four Discourses on the Sacrifice and Priesthood of Jesus Christ, and the Atonement and Redemption thence accruing. By John Pye Smith, D.D. F.R.S. Third Edition. London: Jackson and Walford. 1847.
Lectures on Divine Sovereignty, Election, the Atonement, Justification, and Regeneration. By George Payne, LL.D. Exeter. Second Edition. London: James Dinnis, 62, Paternoster-row. 1838.
On the Extent of the Atonement, in its Relation to God and the Universe. By the Rev. Thomas W. Jenkyn. Second Edition. London: John Snow, 26, Paternoster-row. 1837.
Discourses on the Nature and Extent of the Atonement of Christ. By Ralph Wardlaw, D.D. Fourth Thousand. Glasgow: James Maclehose, 83, Buchanan Street. 1844.
A Treatise an the Physical Cause of the Sufferings of Christ, and its Relation to the principles and practice of Christianity. By William Stroud, M.D. London: Hamilton and Adams, 33, Paternoster-row. 1847.
Institutes of Theology. By the late Thomas Chalmers, D.D. LL.D. in 2 Vols. Vol II. Published for Thomas Constable, by Sutherland and Knox, Edinburgh. Hamilton and Adams, and Co. London. 1849.
The Atoning Work of Christ. By William Thomson, M.A. Oxford.
iii v vi vii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384