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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2024 10:57:21 GMT -5
Hugh Martin on the Atonement
CHAPTER I: ATONEMENT AND THE COVENANT OF GRACE
IF we would investigate the very doctrine of Atonement which God's Word sets forth,
—avoiding arbitrary and capricious speculations, and illegitimate and useless trains of thought,
—it must be laid down at the outset, as a proposition of transcendent importance,—
That the Doctrine of the Atonement ought to be discussed and defended as inside the Doctrine of the Covenant of Grace.
I. It will not be denied nor doubted that the doctrine of the Covenant of Grace is a larger category than the doctrine of the Atonement. It is wider; comprehending the Atonement within its provisions; affording to it also both explanation and support. Now it surely is extremely injudicious and impolitic for defenders of the faith to discuss any scriptural doctrine, and particularly to profess to do so fully and exhaustively, outside of any greater category to which the doctrine properly and natively belongs. For by doing so they place it in a position of unnecessary danger, and
assign to themselves a greater difficulty in defending it than
Scripture assigns to them. They rob it of the illustration, and they rob it of the protection, which the higher category affords. They deprive it of the benefit of scriptural considerations in the light of which their defense might be comparatively easy, and would be found, indeed, presented to their hand; and, by the isolated position to which they have consigned it, they give advantages to the enemy which the abler and more acute of their number are not slow to seize. For instance: The plausible objection against a truly expiatory sacrifice, to the effect that it is unjust that the innocent should suffer that the guilty may escape, is seen to be a mere misrepresentation when the doctrine of the Covenant has been put forward as explaining and conditioning the Atonement; the objection losing all its plausibility in the light of Christ's covenant- headship and responsibility, and of the covenant oneness with Him of those whose sins He expiates by dying in their stead and room.
Moreover, by this impolitic and unscientific procedure, theologians place themselves under the necessity—or at least subject themselves to the strong temptation—of betaking themselves to general and abstract reasoning to an extent that is extremely riskful, and for which not the doctrine but themselves are responsible. We have no desire to exclude all abstract reasoning from the discussion of those great scriptural themes which must ever exercise all earnest minds and are found to fascinate so many. Abstract reasoning is in many cases eminently serviceable in showing the thorough consistency of theological truth with philosophy and science truly so called. And the wise defenders of the faith will be forward to show that there is no incongruity, and indeed no want of mutual support, between theology, the Queen of Sciences, and her many handmaids in every department of solid thought and legitimate investigation. And when a great ultimate scriptural truth is set forth in its own magnificent
proportions, and on its own appropriate evidence, it is one of the worthiest exercises of the human intellect to show that it conflicts with nothing that the intellect of man has discovered or trustworthily accepted. This is to assign to theology its own proper sphere, and to leave theology in its own unaided majesty. But it is a totally different thing when a scriptural doctrine, isolated from the place which it holds in the great scheme of revelation, has been inadequately discussed—as in such a case inadequately discussed and still more inadequately defended it must inevitably be
—it is a totally different thing in such a case to introduce abstract and philosophical discussion in order to supplement a deficiency which theology herself, when rightly questioned, is found to have abundant materials at hand to supply. This is not to illustrate the harmony of philosophy and theology, thereby providing some confirmation of theological truth from philosophical considerations. It is, in so far, to turn theology into a philosophy—a very different matter indeed, and a course of procedure against which theologians would always do well to be upon their guard. The science of theology is perfectly competent within her own sphere for discharging all the duty which lies to her hand. She is under no necessity to confess inadequacy of materials in her own proper department for her own proper work: and when she is tempted to feel under any such necessity, it must be either because she has carried her investigations and efforts outside her own proper sphere, or has not exhausted the materials within it.
II. Remarkable instances of the truth and value of these considerations are to be met with in Dr CUNNINGHAM'S magnificent work on Historical Theology. Two in particular occur to us. The first is his sagacious declinature to receive help in establishing the fundamental truths of Calvinism from the doctrine of what is called philosophical necessity. He wisely declines binding up the validity of a purely theological demonstration with the fate or the foundations of a philosophical theory. But the second instance is more directly in point to our present purpose, because in it we have this great theologian discarding a philosophical or metaphysical defense of divine truth, and falling back for the only real and satisfying defense of it upon the doctrine of federalists. It occurs in his chapter on the Bondage of the Will. He has been considering the objection—so ready to be raised against the doctrine of man's total inability to will any spiritual good accompanying salvation—to the effect, namely, that such inability would be incompatible with responsibility. And he has subjected to a very searching and very beautifully acute investigation the distinction that has so often been relied upon in answering this objection—the distinction between natural and moral inability. Admitting this distinction as a real distinction, and in its own place important, he expresses himself as dissatisfied with it, as not affording any real answer to the objection, or solution of the difficulty. He says:—"I am not persuaded that any solution meets the difficulty of asserting that man is responsible for his sins and shortcomings notwithstanding his inability to will and to do what is good, except by showing that he is responsible for his inability." And to provide this answer—which his subtlety and sagacity and ingenuousness all combined to lead him to see and acknowledge to be fairly desiderated—he falls back on the covenant oneness of the race in Adam. "We are satisfied," he says, "that the principle which contributes more fully than any other to furnish an
answer to the objection—an explanation of the difficulty—is just the scriptural doctrine which leads us to regard man in his whole history, fallen and unfallen, or the whole human race collectively in their relation to God, as virtually one and indivisible, so far as regards their legal standing and responsibilities,—to contemplate the whole history of the human race as virtually the history of one and the same man, or, what is substantially and practically the same thing, to regard the inability of will to anything spiritually good— which can be proved to attach to man de facto—as a penal infliction, a punishment justly imposed upon account of previous guilt—the guilt, of course, of Adam's first sin imputed to his posterity." "And
with respect to the difficulty about responsibility, the substance of our position in answer to the objection is just this: That man is responsible for not willing and doing good, notwithstanding his inability to will and to do good, because he is answerable for that inability itself, having, as legally answerable for Adam's sin, inherited the inability, as part of the forfeiture penally due for that first transgression."
It is in this manner that divine truths are most convincingly established and successfully defended,—when placed, that is, in their due order and in their right relations of subordination to each other: and an illustrious instance of this, such as that which we have now given, ought not to be without its due weight with us. For instance: Let the objection to the Atonement about punishing the innocent and allowing the transgressors to escape, be referred back upon the Covenant of Grace, precisely as Dr CUNNINGHAM refers back upon the covenant of works the asserted incompatibility
between inability and responsibility; and how easily is it rebutted.
Bring in, that is to say, the scriptural doctrine which teaches us to regard Christ and the Church collectively in their relation to God, as virtually one and indivisible, so far as regards their legal standing and responsibilities; and the objection is not merely seen at once to be false, but to be irrelevant and inept. It requires no answer, in the light of the covenant oneness of Christ and His members: it simply disappears. We have before us "virtually the history of one and the same man,"—the Second Man, the last Adam. The death of Christ is then seen to be the real infliction of the originally threatened curse. No one considered as innocent suffers, and no one continuing guilty escapes. Righteousness and Peace are seen to kiss each other, and Justice goes before Him to set us in the way of His steps.
The objection, in this light, we have said, disappears. And that is true. But it reappears as an utterly unanswerable objection to the scheme of those who deny the doctrine of satisfaction for sin, and yet acknowledge the historical facts of Christ's sinlessness and His death on Calvary. For unless these facts are denied, or are accounted for as the theology of the Covenant of Grace accounts for them, then Christ did die precisely under the character of one in every sense and in every light innocent; and if His death was thus beneficial to sinners without being vicarious—if it issues in their good without having been suffered in their stead—then sinners, still considered as guilty, do escape by means of it. That the innocent suffer and the guilty escape thereby, is an assertion not merely without ground, but without meaning, when made against a vicarious sacrifice such as that which is explained and safe-guarded by the Covenant of Grace. But it carries in it all its plain meaning, and rests on unanswerable grounds, when affirmed against any theory that admits that Christ was a truly righteous man, that He truly died, and by dying did not effectually expiate sin, but merely give a display of God's character, or bring into play some influence to act beneficially on the destinies and character of men. The doctrine of the Covenant, and of the covenant oneness of Christ and His people, enables us not merely to rebut but to retort the objection; and the unity of plan or principle on which the scriptural doctrine is thus both established, on the one hand, and defended, on the other, is at once very glorifying to the truth of God, and most satisfactory to the intellect of man.
III. A correct and comprehensive scheme of federal theology, in fact,commends itself very powerfully to every logical mind by the readiness with which it may be brought to bear on the exposure of the various aberrations that have manifested themselves on the doctrine of the Atonement. Take, for instance, Dr WARDLAW'S erroneous views, and place them in the light of the federal theology: they are immediately robbed of all their plausibility.
Dr WARDLAW* held the notion of a universal, unlimited, or indefinite atonement, undertaken literally for all men, and accomplishing as much for every human being as for any. And being a believer in the doctrines of election and of the necessity of the Spirit's regenerating grace, he held that the sovereign purpose of God comes in afterwards, in the order of nature, to determine to whom the Atonement shall be rendered actually fruitful of saving
results. This, of course, is to acknowledge, in some sense, intentionally at least, a covenant of grace. But it is a covenant conditioning not Christ's work, but merely the Spirit's. Of such a covenant, however, the Scriptures contain not a single trace. The covenant which we deduce, by a large and satisfactory induction of particulars from Holy Scripture, is a covenant with Christ, concerning Christ's own work,—its nature, its objects, its beneficiaries, its rewards. And it is a covenant with the Spirit, only because it is a covenant with the CHRIST—the immeasurably
Anointed One of God, anointed of the Holy Ghost, and endued with power to give the Spirit to as many as the Father hath given Him. To dislocate here, is to derange everything. To place Christ and His work outside this covenant, in order to give His redemption the aspect of larger graciousness and indefinite relations to all men universally, is to pervert the entire doctrine of the Covenant,—to turn aside, at its very fountain-head, that river the streams whereof make glad the city of God.
Moreover, under pretense of enlarging the aspects of Grace, it achieves most effectually a precisely opposite result. For, to bring in a covenant of grace in order to limit the application and circumscribe the effectual results of an atonement in its own nature and accomplished merit unlimited, is surely one of the most perverted and perverting schemes that could be adopted. To introduce a covenant of any kind as an instrument of limitation of a
mercy, and of the actual blessings of a mercy, already in the field without limit, is surely too offensive to expect acceptance with thoughtful and generous minds—unless indeed very overwhelming evidence can be presented of its being verily the Divine method, clearly and unmistakably revealed to us. But to introduce a covenant of grace, as an instrument for the limitation of grace, is at once an insult to the human understanding and a travesty of the Divine wisdom. In any such view of its action and intent, it must assuredly cease to be called a covenant of grace. The grace is all in the prior arrangement or achievement, which it has been agreed on this scheme to call the Atonement; and the covenant is a covenant circumscribing the grace into limits narrower than its own. It is, therefore, a covenant, not of grace, but of alarming judgment.
Nay, more: it is a covenant of reasonless, arbitrary and capricious judgment. For it is utterly vain to call in, in arrest of this condemnatory criticism, any reference to the sovereignty of God.
The Divine sovereignty is legitimately referred to at the earlier stage, as arranging a real Covenant of Grace—grace true and pure and simple—taking action from the first to provide and accept and apply a definite and complete atonement for the full and free and sure salvation of the lost and guilty. Sovereignty is in its true place there and then: and its action there and then may be defended against all cavils whatsoever by the answers which the Spirit of God has provided against them: "May I not do what I will with my own?" "Who art thou, O man, that repliest against God?" For, from that point of view, and at that stage in the order of nature, sinners are contemplated as sinners simply,—in the eye of Divine justice guilty
and righteously exposed to the wrath of God, helpless to relieve themselves from it, and with nothing as yet achieved by Heaven for their relief. And the question, Why is not atonement provided for all? is answered by the question, Why is atonement provided for any? To fall back on the Divine sovereignty here is perfectly legitimate, and indeed inevitable. But to fall back on the Divine sovereignty at a later stage, as Dr WARDLAW'S capricious scheme of doctrine does, is utterly useless and unwarrantable. For if the sovereignty of God is called in at the later stage, at which a universal and unlimited atonement is seen, so to speak, to have already taken the field, then sinners must be viewed, not as simply sinners now,
but as sinners whose sin has been atoned for—whatever, on this scheme, that may mean. And a covenant coming into play at such a stage, to exclude, in point of fact, vast multitudes from all beneficial effects of an atonement, which, in its own nature, had as beneficial bearings on them as on any and all of those who are ultimately to be saved,—a covenant such as this, it is utter folly to call a covenant of grace. It is not a covenant of grace in any sense, but a covenant of judgment; and not a covenant of sovereignty, but of arbitrary and reasonless and terrific judgment. The objection, therefore, in deference to which a definite, effectual, and sure atonement is disparaged and set aside in favor of one that is indefinite and
unlimited,—and from all the benefits of which, whatever these may be, an imaginary covenant interposes to exclude vast numbers of its beneficiaries,—reappears against the erroneous doctrine itself in a form the most aggravated and offensive, with relevancy which it is impossible to deny, and with a force which it is impossible to rebut.
IV. A correct application of the doctrine of the Covenant is, in like manner, eminently serviceable in refuting the argument for an indefinite atonement based on the alleged necessity of providing a foundation for a universal gospel call. For—not to speak of the very obvious consideration that the command of God is sufficient warrant to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature"—any intellectual difficulty that reverential minds may feel on this point should be allayed, if not indeed removed, by observing the relation in which the Gospel Call stands to the Covenant of Grace.
That relation is very intimate. The gospel call comes forth from the covenant, and summons sinners into it. It is a voice from within the
covenant, addressed to those that are without, with the view of bringing them within. Its administration is itself one of the stipulations of the covenant: "Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knewest not" (Isa. 55:5). And its success is equally guaranteed by the covenant: "And nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee, because of the Lord thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee" (idem). Such is the covenant intercommunion of the Father and the Son concerning the gospel call, stipulating that it shall be given, and that when given it shall
not be without success. And it is, as it were, fresh from rehearsing and recording what he hath been a witness to between the Father and the Son concerning the gospel call, that the Spirit turns to us and ministers it to us, shining fresh in the light of covenant Divine counsels concerning it:—"Seek ye the Lord while he may be found; call ye upon him while he is near" (see vers. 6–13). It is therefore a sure source of inevitable error to overlook the relations between the call and the covenant; and, more particularly, it must most manifestly derange all scriptural and correct views, to seek for the call a basis broader than the covenant supplies. The call is a voice from within the covenant, summoning sinners to come within its
gracious bond. Of course, therefore, it is a universal call. The one thing which it takes for granted is that sinners are out side the covenant. This is all that is requisite to render them fit subjects for its gracious proposal and authoritative requirement. It is, of course, therefore, a universal call, because it is a call addressed to those that are without. Is there any inconsistency between this and the fact that it calls them to come within the covenant, itself therefore coming from within, and resting on grounds not wider than those on which the covenant rests? Could it call sinners into the covenant if itself rested on grounds outside the covenant? Whatever is without the covenant, outside its limits—as an indefinite, unlimited atonement is—has nothing to do with the gospel call; can impart to it no validity, no strength, no enlargement; can constitute for it no real basis or foundation. An indefinite atonement, therefore, as pleaded for by some in the interests of the freeness of the gospel
call, is one of the most self-contradictory and self-negativing devices that can be imagined.
Besides, it ought to be ever borne in mind that in the giving of the gospel call the preachers of the gospel are ambassadors, and ambassadors merely. We are ministers. We give the call ministerially. He who really calls is Christ. And when Christ, by His ambassadors, and in His instituted ordinances, gives forth the gospel call, it is a glorious exercise of His kingly office. But Christ executes His kingly office by covenant. The exercise of His kingly office cannot possibly be placed on any wider, broader, more
gracious foundation than the Covenant of Grace. Not any more, therefore, can the gospel call. For, as we have said, the solitary thing which it takes for granted is that sinners are not inside—not yet interested in—this blessed covenant or constitution; that they are aliens from the blessed kingdom of which it is the charter. It is, therefore, in its essential nature obviously a universal call. It is so because it is a call to the covenant. What possible contradiction or want of harmony can there be between this and the fact that the call comes from within the covenant,—resting, therefore, on
foundations as broad, neither more nor less, as those on which the covenant itself rests? For my part, I do not see what it is that is supposed to require, or even permit of reconciliation. On the contrary, to make the Call proceed upon grounds broader than the Covenant, and on considerations not contained within it, is, in my opinion, to create a necessity for reconciling and harmonizing to an extent and of a kind which it will be found in strict reason utterly impossible to meet. The Call itself is destroyed in all the intrinsic worth and in all the professed design of it, as a call to the Covenant, and to all its free grace and sure and saving blessings, if it be a call coming from any quarter but the Covenant itself—be it even from
Christ, if it be not from Christ as the covenant-head. It is in fact simply impossible to regard it as resting on any grounds, or as based
on any considerations, save those which the Covenant embraces.
These considerations have been somewhat abstract as well as miscellaneous. But we propose to resume the subject in the following chapter, treating it in a somewhat more directly scriptural manner. For we should like to commend the federal theology to the younger preachers and students of our Churches. It seems to us to have fallen too much out of view; for what reason it is not easy to see. It is a noble category of revealed truth. It is a thoroughly scientific generalization, commending itself by the ease with which it ranges, in their right positions and relations to each other, the
great leading truths of the Word of God as these bear on the redemption that is in Christ: and it is unrivalled as an instrument of defense against the various attacks that are at present being made on the doctrine of Christ's sacrifice as a true expiation of the sins of His people. We can compare it, in a strategic point of view, to nothing more aptly than to the lines of Torres Vedras in the old Peninsular campaign,—affording both a base of operation for forward movement, and an impregnable protection against hostile assault. Nor is it only or chiefly in a controversial point of view that
we value the federal theology. The exposition of it adapts with the greatest ease, and with uniform acceptability, to the instruction of those who have believed the Gospel. It is always welcome to the children of God. And we should not like to see the day in Scotland when the least acceptable of candidates for the office of the ministry should be he who expounds most explicitly and richly the doctrine of the Covenant of Grace.
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2024 10:59:09 GMT -5
CHAPTER II: ATONEMENT AND THE FEDERAL THEOLOGY
IT is scarcely possible to exaggerate the advantages of grounding the exposition and defense of the Scriptural theory of the Atonement on a sound and comprehensive doctrine of the Covenant of Grace. This is a doctrine—the doctrine of the Covenant—which even the best and safest of our German theologians entirely overlook. It is, of course, unnecessary to say that it is a doctrine wholly unknown to British writers of the type of Maurice and Jowett. And what between the attempt to answer the latter class of writers on their own ground, and the study of the German authors—on the part even of such as peruse them for the sake of what is valuable in their learned and laborious productions
—it has come to pass, we fear, that the federal theology is at present suffering a measure of neglect which does not bode well for the immediate future of the Church amongst us.
It is with the view, if we may, of counteracting this present tendency, that we would respectfully submit some considerations fitted to commend the study of the federal theology to our younger preachers, as well as to the members of the Church generally.
It is quite possible that, in attempting this, we may be met by the objection that the doctrine of the Covenant of Grace is old fashioned.
Well; it can hardly be very old-fashioned yet. There are not many congregations of the Church that, if questioned on the subject, would as yet feel themselves driven to give an answer analogous to what Paul once got from "certain disciples" at Ephesus: "We have not so much as heard whether there be any" Covenant of Grace!
On the contrary, the pious eldership, and the patriarchal piety of the Church generally, are familiar with the doctrine of the covenants,
and are not insensible of the great extent to which their own vitality and vigor are bound up with the intelligent appreciation of it.
We venture to say that, in very many districts of the Church, our probationers and younger ministers could not take a course more fitted to commend them to the love, esteem, and gratitude of our pious people, than just to expound to them—to use a well- remembered phrase of Dr CUNNINGHAM'S—"the provisions and arrangements of the Covenant of Grace."If there is a feeling abroad, to the effect that the standard of the preaching of the Disruption
ministry is not being maintained by the race that is succeeding them, it might be well to inquire whether the explanation of this be not found in the direction we have indicated. The preaching of the Disruption ministers was largely leavened, or rather was pervadingly characterized, by the large place assigned in it to the covenants—those great schemes of the Divine dispensation with mankind. And the consequence was, that the intelligent hearers acquired large views of Divine truth; could perceive the relations subsisting between different departments thereof; could refer a
topic to its proper place in the system; and could accordingly realize themselves to be conscious of growing in knowledge—of acquiring real power to make attainments and advancement in spiritual things. But if the federal theology should fall into neglect, there is reason to fear that the materials of pulpit instruction will be destitute of that compactness and connection, apart from which conscious advancement in knowledge on the part of the people is impossible. The topics handled will be disjointed and isolated.
Progressive instruction will cease to be realized, and perhaps cease to be aimed at. The next step will be that it will cease to be desired.
The production of evanescent, sentimental impression will be the object mainly in view on the preacher's part, and mainly desired by the people.
The duty of the pulpit to nourish up an intelligent Christian people in "the words of knowledge and understanding" will be forgotten. And it will be quite true then that the federal theology will be "old-fashioned." It is not yet true. On the contrary, the doctrine of the Covenant is eminently acceptable with our pious and intelligent people,—with precisely the class of people whose voice is entitled to be heard, whose edification our ministry is bound very specially to seek, and whose tastes and wishes may most legitimately and most safely be considered. These are the people
among whom a young minister may expect to find loving, sympathizing, personal friends, to encourage his heart and hold up his hands. These are they who will be ready to lighten his burdens, cheer him in his difficulties, countenance and help on his plans for usefulness, and be examples in his flock in every grace of godliness.
To pretermit their edification—on the plea that what style of pulpit ministration edified and nourished them in earlier days is "old fashioned"
now—were suicidal; and every sensible and kindly hearted young pastor will instinctively feel it to be so. Certain forms and phrases may indeed become old-fashioned; and a brother is not to be held in bondage in that respect. By all means let them be remodeled, Wherever that is necessary, to suit the literary tastes of the day, and to fall in fittingly with whatever is truly valuable in modern refinement.
If the substance is scriptural the form may be altered to suit any age: the material being in that case as solid gold, it can always be minted in any really current coin of the realm of letters. The preacher, or writer who cannot trust his powers to do that much, has no right to refer to modern culture at all. Modern culture has evidently done little for him.
The real question is this: Is the theology of the covenants a real and natural category of Divine truth? Is it Scriptural? And is it comprehensive, and permanently valuable? If not: if, as some would seem to think, it were merely a temporary development, adopted by theologians in their transition to something better, larger, more vital, and more powerful: if it be "old-fashioned" in the sense of being antiquated and effete: by all means let it take its course to oblivion. There can be no great wisdom, in such a case, and there can be as little success, in attempting to arrest it.
Those, however, who entertain that opinion are bound to show that the progress of theological science has really replaced the federal theology with
something better, something more satisfactory and scientific. And it is because we believe it impossible to show this, that we would earnestly advocate its continued culture and promulgation.
It will not be supposed that we would advocate the use, from age to age, of any stereotyped pharology. On the contrary, we believe the federal theology to be a scheme of thought so instinct with vitality as to be independent of particular phrases and formulas, and thoroughly adaptable to the utmost of variety and elasticity that truly free Christian thought can demand. Had we not this deep conviction, we would not think it worth our while to detain on it the attention of our readers or ourselves. The key-note of the federal theology, as we take it, is UNION WITH CHRIST. Though it took
shape, as a formal scheme of doctrine or exposition, later than the days of Calvin, it is virtually—through the great predominance and ruling power in the "Institutes" of the idea of "union with Christ"—the leading thought in Calvin's theology; far more so than any or even all of the "five" celebrated "points." And if this is true; if the heart and soul of this theology is found in the union and communion of Christ and His people; then is it so full of vital power that it will adopt into its service all fresh forms of literary effort and all valid products of literary culture,and will go on to create more for itself when these are done. We advocate no tame reproduction of old and worn-out forms of speech. It is the solid riches of Divine truth we would conserve, and the highest attainments of the Church of God as the heir and expositor thereof. And we are very sure that one of these very highest attainments has been the great scheme of
thought which is known as the doctrine of the Covenant of Grace.
Part First
Doctrine of the Covenant directly Scriptural
It may seem unnecessary to say that this is a doctrine which has express verbal warrant in Holy Scripture. We have been led to this topic in connection with the doctrine of the Atonement; and, it may be in point, therefore, to call to mind the significant phrase, "The blood of the everlasting covenant" (Heb. 13:20). Surely that single Divine form of speech is sufficient to set forth an organic connection between the Covenant of Grace and the sacrifice of Jesus. Take again the memorable promise: "As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water" (Zech. 9:11); and our Lord's own affecting utterance in instituting the sacrament of the Supper: "This cup is the new covenant in my blood." Surely these Divine expressions are very express; and they are sufficient to show that no man discusses the doctrine of Christ's death who severs it from the considerations presented by the Covenant of Grace. It is the "blood" that maketh "atonement;" but in this case the "blood" is the "blood of the Covenant." Men may therefore discuss as long as they please an abstract theory, of an abstract atonement; but if they give not heed to this atonement which the Covenant of Grace conditions and
explains, they are not any more dealing with true theology, than men should deal with real astronomy who should speculate on central forces in the abstract and pretermit the actual law of gravitation—the law of the inverse square of the distance—which rules in the starry heavens.
It is scarcely necessary to refer to the express assertion of the covenant between the Father and the Son in the proposition: "The counsel of peace shall be between them both" (Zech. 6:13). Our Lord is designated at once the "Mediator of the Covenant" (Heb. 8:6; 12:24), and the "Surety of the Covenant" (Heb. 7:22). Nay, He is represented as the substance of the Covenant:"I the Lord have called Thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep Thee, and give Thee for a covenant of the people, for a light to the Gentiles" (Isa. 42:6; 49:8). The work of Christ is thus in express terms affirmed to be a covenant work—a work having immediate respect to a covenant. The work of the Spirit is spoken of in similar connection with a covenant: "As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord; My Spirit that is upon thee, and my words that are in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and forever" (Isa. 59:21). When the Lord invites lost sinners to Himself, it is in terms like these: "Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your souls shall live, and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, even the sure mercies of David" (Isa. 55:3). When, moved by such entreaties, sinners ask the way to Zion, with their faces thitherward, it is with the mutual exhortation: "Come, and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten" (Jer. 1:5). When, after entering on this blessed relation with God, they would express their full satisfaction with it in the midst of all life's troubles and afflictions, they are wont to say: "Though my house be not so with God; yet He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered inall things and sure: this is all my salvation, and all my desire" (2 Sam. 23:5). For in the midst of all troubles by which their sins are chastised and their spirit chastened, the Lord sustains their faith by the gracious declaration: "My covenant will I not break, nor alter the word that hath gone out of my mouth" (Ps. 89:34). And when
grieved in the view of the "cruelty" that obtains in the "dark places of the earth," the Church's strongest appeal to God on their behalf isthis: "Have respect unto Thy covenant" (Ps. 74:20).
These are some of the more express verbal assertions of the reality and fact of a Covenant of Grace. Intelligent piety is familiar with them as with household words; and we quote them simply to show that the federal theology is no product of mere human ingenuity—no merely artificial structure—but a Scriptural theme, tterminology of which is directly furnished by Scripture itself. It is no roundabout result of mere theologising, but one of the immediate data of Divine inspiration.
Part Second
Doctrine of the Covenant Scriptural by Large Induction
But apart even from such direct verbal sanction from the Divine word, the federal theology may be justified as the inevitable result of a large and complete induction of particulars from Scripture. It is impossible to systematize accurately concerning the work of Christ and of His Spirit, in the redemption and salvation of men, without landing in substantially the doctrine of the Covenant of Grace. Even although Holy Scripture did not lead the way so expressly and verbally as we have seen that it does, scientific or Baconian induction of particulars would bring us substantially to the great scheme of the federal theology. The many instances which Scripture gives of intercommunion between the Father and the Son, are
found, when combined, to carry in them all the elements and characteristics of a covenant.
The closing chapters of the "Gospel according to Isaiah" are peculiarly rich in passages which cannot be intelligently appreciated without leading to this conclusion. The authority of the Father appoints certain duties to the Son: the Father's love and faithfulness guarantee to the Son certain promises of support, countenance, comfort, victory. The Son undertakes the duties assigned, and appeals to the promises relating to them. The Father re-stipulates to bestow certain rewards in return for the obedient and faithful discharge of the duties enjoined: and "for the joy therein set before Him, the Son endures the cross, despising the shame." What could be more definite in this light than the closing verses of the memorable fifty-third chapter of Isaiah? "When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the
transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."
It is not possible to read passages like these without seeing that there are far more abundant Scriptural elements from which to conclude the existence of a Covenant of Grace between the Father and the Son, than even of a covenant of works between God and Adam. In fact it is more from what is partly the analogy and partly the antithesis of the two covenants, when set forth in the mutual light which they reflect on each other, that the covenant of works becomes manifest, than in any very express or abundant evidence of
its own alone. So certain is this, that it will uniformly be found that the theology which is meager in reference to the Covenant of Grace, is still more so as to the covenant of works. The first Adam was but "the type of him that was to come," the shadow of the "last Adam."
And where the "last Adam" is little recognized as a covenant head, there can be little reason or inducement to recognize the "first" in that light either. It is in Christ pre-eminently that the doctrine of covenant takes fullest shape; and apart even from express verbal
affirmations of it, we find that it is continually subsumed in Holy Scripture's descriptions of His work in the days of His flesh, and of His reward in His risen glory.
On no scheme whatever that shall be true to the leading contents of Scripture, concerning the work of the incarnate Redeemer, can we possibly avoid coming to the conclusion that He acts according to a covenant with the Father. Whatever Christ did, He designed to do; and whatever He designed to do, He designed because He had been designated to do it. He had been "sanctified," and "sealed," and "sent" into the world. He continually averred, in this view, that He "did nothing of Himself." He was acting by commission; and that
not merely in general, but by commission reaching to every detail of speech and action alike. He did the "works of His Father." He spake his "Father's words." "Whatsoever He spake, and whatsoever He did," it was "as the Father had given Him commandment." He had been designated therefore by no isolated decree, by no individual or separate oracle, but by regular, full, complete covenant. Under no other category or instrument than that of compact, fœdus, covenant, is it possible to bring all the fulness, circumstance, detail, history, order, and fruit of His work. We are simply shut up to the theory of an "everlasting covenant." Such a covenant is, indeed, in terms averred; and that is a great satisfaction to the reverential theological mind. But even if it had not been averred, we are, on principles of induction precisely analogous to those of true Baconian philosophy,
simply shut up to the theory of the federal theology.
Nor does this result fail with us in subsequent application. Whether we make use of it analytically or synthetically, we find it to be the largest category of Christology that is either necessary or possible. We find it embracing all Christ's work, and all inspired expositions of it. It accounts for all the phenomena which it professes to explain. It explains all Christ's history, as the incarnate Son of God; all His interposition, as the Saviour of men. It embraces alike the impetration of redemption and the application of it. It expounds Christ's complete office, and the office and work of the Spirit. It gives doctrinal significance to what were otherwise mere external history; for it places the outward movements of Christ's career on earth in their true relations with the eternal purpose of the Godhead, and the eternal destinies of men. And in its completeness—involving, as it does, its aspects and bearing towards the covenant clients, as well as towards the covenant head—it is the formal, definite, tangible instrument and charter by means of which faith
comes into sure and pleadable possession of Christ himself, and of all the benefits of His redemption.
Alike in reference, therefore, to doctrine and to spiritual life, it is suicidal to sever the Atonement of Christ from the Covenant of Grace. The demands alike of theology and of faith require a different treatment. Against an Atonement isolated from the Covenant, endless objections may be brought, and endless work laid to the hands of theology in answering them. The abstract doctrine of an abstract atonement, it may be found difficult, perhaps impossible, to defend against the keen-witted opponents with whom we have in these days to deal. But it is a most instructive fact that the vast multitude of these objections derive their plausibility, if not their power, just from overlooking those characteristics of the
actual atonement which the Covenant of Grace attributes to it; and the defenders of the truth should learn from this the lesson, to decline, as a matter which in no respect concerns them, the defence of any doctrine of atonement, save the Atonement of the Son's Covenant with the Father. The presentation of it in this, its own true light, will carry it clear, without a conflict, of the greater number ofthe assaults that are made upon it, and will immediately reveal, without an argument, the hollowness and shallowness of the many
pitiful theories of Christ's death which litterateurs would substitute in its room.
Part Third
Doctrine of the Covenant necessary if we would Formulate the
Relation between Christ and His People
How are we to formulate and establish the relation subsisting
between Christ and His people, as Redeemer and redeemed, unless
we fall back upon the doctrine of the Covenant? Some relation, it is
evident, must be acknowledged as subsisting between Christ and
those on whose behalf He dies, else we do not even come within
sight of the idea of a vicarious sacrifice. The possibility of real
atonement absolutely postulates and demands a conjunction
between Him who atones and those for whom His atonement is
available. This is beyond the need of proof. And as there is an
absolute and obvious necessity for some conjunction or relation, so
in searching for the conjunction or relation which actually subsists,
our search cannot terminate satisfactorily till we reach and
recognize the covenant oneness. The same reason that demands a
relation, remains unsatisfied till it meets with this relation.
(1.) For, in the first place, it will not meet the necessities of the case
to refer to the union between Christ and His people which is
effected in their regeneration by the agency of the Holy Spirit and
the instrumentality of that faith which is His gift. This, no doubt, is
all-important in its own place. The Divine scheme is, that all fulness
dwells in Christ: that all the treasures of knowledge and of wisdom
are hid in Him: that all spiritual blessings for the Church of God are
treasured up in Him: that no saving gift or grace or blessing is given,
so to speak, past Him, or out of Him: all are given in Him. Hence an
actual conjunction with Him, by the indwelling of His own Spirit
and the embracing action of our faith, is indispensable to our
enjoying "the redemption which is in Christ," or any of the blessings
of His purchase.
But the question is not, What conjunction between Christ and a
sinner is requisite in order to that sinner obtaining the benefits of
His redeeming work? The question is, What conjunction between
Christ and the sinner is requisite in order to that redeeming work
being undertaken and achieved by Christ on his behalf? We are not
in search of a relation that shall justify the application of Christ's
redemption, but of one that shall justify the impetration of it. And
that evidently must be a relation anterior to the actual, personal,
spiritual conjunction that is established in regeneration.
(2.) Nor, in the second place, are the necessities of the case met by a
reference to the Incarnation. No doubt this also is an invaluable
relation—an indispensable element of conjunction—between the
Redeemer and the redeemed. That a union should subsist between
Christ and His people, such as is implied in their possession of a
common nature, is of vital moment. "Forasmuch then as the
children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also himself likewise
took part in the same, that through death He might destroy him that
had the power of death, and deliver them who through fear of death
were all their lifetime subject to bondage.… 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" (Heb. 2:14–18). Yet, vitally important as this is, unless we
are to be satisfied with a relation which Christ holds alike to the
saved and the unsaved, we cannot rest satisfied with the Incarnation
as fully answering the kind of conjunction which we are seeking
between those who are actually redeemed and Christ as specifically
their Redeemer. Even in the very heart of the passage last quoted a
very significant phrase occurs, as if expressly designed to guide us
past so erroneous an idea. "For verily He took the seed of Abraham."
He took the seed of "Abraham,"—not of Adam. In His own person
He is to be regarded as "the Seed of the woman,"—not the seed of
the man. And in His work—in the whole work of which His
Incarnation is the foundation and commencement—"He taketh
hold," not of Adam's, but Abraham's seed. There is, therefore, a
conjunction between Him and His people, which His possession,
along with them, of a common nature does not exhaust nor express.
There must be some other relation, anterior even to the
Incarnation, constituting, indeed, a ground and reason even for it
also.
For we are in search of a relation that shall constitute a justifying
ground for Christ's whole work. But His Incarnation is part of His
work. That He should "humble Himself, and take upon Him the
form of a servant, and be found in fashion as a man,"—this is a part,
and a great part, of what the Son of God undertook on our behalf. To
assign this, therefore, as that conjunction between Christ and His
people which we are in search of, is to assign a part of Christ's work
as a ground or justifying reason of the rest of it, or rather of the
whole of it. And that obviously overthrows the initial terms of our
inquiry. For if the Incarnation is part of the work He undertook on
His people's behalf, the question returns, What relation or
conjunction subsists between Christ and His people which renders
it fit and congruous and righteous that He should accomplish for
them the work for which He became incarnate, and should for them
become incarnate in order to accomplish it?
(3.) Nor is it sufficient to say, in the third place, that the relation is
that of suretyship and substitution. This undoubtedly is a great step
in advance. Only let the ground thus taken up be secured. Let the
inquiry be pressed to the uttermost; let it be exhausted. All truly
scientific investigation searches on and on, till it arrives at
somewhat of which no further explanation can be given or is
required. Theology as a science meets this canon, and then claims a
right to rest. Let us then still inquire.
Christ undertakes the work of Calvary, the death of the cross, for
His people, because He stands towards them in the relation of a
surety—a surety on their behalf to the offended Lawgiver and Judge.
Be it so: but what shall justify His occupying that relation? What
renders it fit, proper, righteous, that He should be accepted as
standing in that relation towards them, and in that relation
suffering for them? To this also it is not difficult to reply. He is their
surety, because He is their substitute. He acts on their behalf,
because He stands in their room. One only question now remains;
and there can be no possibility, as there should be no inducement,
to evade it. The relation of a substitute justifies the suretyship; what
shall justify the substitution?
It is to this at last that the question must really be narrowed. The
exact hinge and whole stress of the inquiry is here. And we can
attain no satisfaction on this point, no sufficient answer to this
question, and therefore no satisfactory conclusion to our whole line
of investigation, till the doctrine of the everlasting Covenant
oneness comes into view. That is the great underlying relation. That
is the grand primary conjunction between the Redeemer and the
redeemed, which alone bears up, and justifies, and accounts for all
else in respect of relation which can be predicated as true
concerning them. "Both He that sanctifieth and they that are
sanctified are ALL OF ONE: for WHICH cause He is not ashamed to
call them brethren" (Heb. 2:11). His substitution is a good reason
for His suretyship. Covenant oneness is, if possible, a still better
reason for His substitution. For now is the vicariousness of His
sacrifice not merely brought to light, but vindicated. It is not merely
true that He suffers for us; it is also true that we suffer in Him. And
the latter of these propositions justifies the truth and righteousness
of the former. He is substituted for us, because He is one with us—
identified with us, and we with Him.
Moreover, the especial aspect of this oneness as a Covenant oneness
must be apprehended and kept in view. In contemplating the
oneness, we must contemplate it as covenanted. For, in order to
complete our exclusion of unsatisfactory solutions of the problem,
we must observe,—
(4.) In the fourth place, that it is not enough to consider this
oneness as decreed; we must consider it as specially and expressly
covenanted: not merely as decreed by the sovereign authority of the
Godhead, but covenanted between the eternal Father and the
eternal Son.
To trace the oneness between Christ and His people to a Divine
decree may honor the Godhead: but does it honor the Trinity in
Godhead? On the contrary, it refuses recognition of the Trinity,
precisely in that grand manifestation in which the doctrine of the
Trinity—the truth of the distinct personalities of the Divine persons
—is most especially to be recognized. There is no revelation of the
Trinity in Godhead comparable to that which is afforded by the
Covenant of Grace. To "us men, and" in "our salvation," the doctrine
of the Trinity is commended, as at once revealed and precious, as
placed in clearest evidence in the distinct actings of the persons of
the Godhead in that Divine compact which is the spring and
fountainhead of our eternal hopes. And even "to the principalities
and powers in heavenly places," it is probable, "there is made known
by the Church" and her covenanted salvation, in the most eminent
possible demonstration, the subsistence of three persons in the one
Divine Being. To be satisfied, therefore, with regarding Christ's
oneness with His people as simply decreed and not covenanted,
would be a very grave mistake; a mistake for which indeed there can
be no excuse, as there can surely be no intelligible temptation.
Moreover, it were to pretermit the due recognition of the
voluntariness of Christ's susception and entire accomplishment of
the work given Him to do. And still further, it were to overlook the
splendid evidence of love as the great originating principle and
motive of His redemption. There is a certain aspect of coldness
about a mere decree. Practically, in the mind's view, it comes too
closely to be identified, in point of impression, with the idea of cold,
dead, impersonal fate. Unitarianism is ever doomed to have this
practical outgoing. It is in Trinity that provision is seen for the vivid
warmth of personality and personal love; and especially in the
covenant of Trinity for man's redemption. There are distinct
personal actings of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Spirit, in
the Covenant. There are distinct actings of the will of the Father,
and of the will of the Son in that oneness that is constituted
between Christ and His people, and which justifies and bears up all
that is achieved for their salvation. And these actings of will are
actings of love. Hear the overflowings of love from Christ's heart, as
His achievements for His people are by Himself referred back upon
the loving deed by which the Father made them over to Him to be
His own:—"O righteous Father, Thine they were, and Thou gave
them Me, and I have kept them." He means to say: Therefore, for
that reason, have I kept them; even as I would keep that love-gift of
Thine, which I did so willingly and lovingly receive. Identified, by
loving covenant between Himself and the Father, with the people
given unto Him; truly representing them, because identified in
covenanted oneness with them; He becomes their competent and
acceptable substitute and surety,—His substitution in every light
most justifiable in the eye of law most stringent and of
righteousness inexpugnable. And the vindication of His vicarious
sacrifice of Himself for their salvation, is set on high in the
intelligent and joyful convictions of the poor and needy, beyond the
possibility of any sinister and false philosophy endangering it.
While the Divine Head of the Church has, in His great goodness,
long kept these views before men's minds in Scotland, we cannot
but cherish a deep sympathy—we would say pity, but that the word
might be considered invidious, while no such feeling is in our heart
—towards many earnest and noble minds in Germany, evidently
inquiring with the greatest ardour after the truth as it is in Jesus
Christ, but baffled because the covenant oneness between
Redeemer and redeemed has not yet come into their field of vision.
It is the doctrine of the Covenant that they need. No wonder that, in
ignorance of this great guiding principle, to a beautiful and so love worthy spirit as that of ULLMANN,
"substitution" should seem an
arbitrary and capricious thing; and that to many others "imputation"
should be obnoxious, as a mere make-believe and legal fiction, with
which they cannot accredit the God of truth. Moral instinct, the
dictates of pious feeling, and Holy Scripture all combine to convince
them that "the judgment of God must be according to truth." That
moral axiom—that sacred spiritual postulate—they feel they must at
all hazards conserve. And they are right. Any doctrine of Atonement
or of justification that should impugn it, is thereby necessarily
demonstrated to be false. But let Christ and His people be federally
one, by the sovereign authority and love of the Father, and by the
voluntary covenanted acceptation of the Son. In that case, legal
fiction, make-believe, arbitrariness and caprice, are at the furthest
possible remove from the Divine Covenant transaction of our
redemption,—alike from the basis of it, and from all the fruits of it.
"Christ bears the sins of many," because, in His covenanted
indentification with these "many," their sins are sinlessly and truly
His sins. And unto the same "many sons and daughters" of the
Covenant, the Father imputes the righteousness of the Son,
because, in their covenant oneness with the Son, His righteousness
is undeservedly but truly their own righteousness. And all
throughout, "the judgment of God is according to truth."
But we must bring this train of thought to a close.
We have proved that the doctrine of the Covenant is a directly
Scriptural category: that it is the result of a large induction of
particulars, conducted on the same canon as that to which all true
science must be amenable: and that it is at once a most searching
and indeed conclusively satisfactory instrument of investigation,
and a most powerful instrument alike of exposition and defence. We
should have been glad to show how the doctrine of the Covenant
bears on spiritual life, as well as theological accuracy; how it
touches the interests of spiritual life at every point; how it is
absolutely indispensable to give validity—to give any real
trustworthiness—to what, in modern phrase, is called the "Christian
consciousness," being indeed the Divine and perfect charter or
standard to which "Christian consciousness" must perpetually refer
itself, alike for its existence, and its verification, and its utterances,
if it is to have any right to speak at all. But we must pause. May the
doctrine of the Covenant of Grace—of the federal oneness of Christ
and His people—long remain enshrined in the heart's core of
Scottish piety! In the noble Vaterland, too, may it soon become
widely known and acceptable! "I will sing of the mercies of the Lord
for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all
generations. For I have said, Mercy shall be built up for ever: thy
faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very heavens. I have made a
Covenant with my Chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant,
Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all
generations."
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2024 11:02:28 GMT -5
CHAPTER III: ATONEMENT AND CHRIST'S PRIESTLY OFFICE
THE doctrine of the Covenant of Grace is an impregnable wall of
circumvallation round the scriptural theory of the Atonement. So,
likewise, is the doctrine of Christ's Priesthood. And to her divinely
constructed defences Zion's attention is divinely called.
"Let Mount Zion rejoice. Walk about Zion, and go round about her:
tell the towers thereof. Set your heart to her bulwarks" (Ps. 48:11–
13, marg.). Carry not her interests and crown jewels outside these
bulwarks, but let your defence be carried on within. "Great is the
Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God" (ver. 1). Those
who praise Him there—within the city, within the bulwarks—need
not be afraid, whosoever may "assemble;" for lo! they shall "pass by
together." Show them Zion's bulwarks, till they "marvel and are
troubled and haste away." And adventure not the ark down amongst
the Philistines outside.
It is on this principle that, in explaining and defending the doctrine
of the Atonement, we would affirm and maintain a proposition
bearing on the Priesthood of Christ analogous to that which we have
already illustrated in reference to the Covenant of Grace, namely,—
That the Doctrine of the Atonement ought on no account to be
discussed apart from, or outside the category of, Christ's Priestly
Office.
Men may discuss, as long as they please, arbitrary philosophies of
the abstract idea of atonement; but if it be professed to investigate
the scriptural doctrine of the Atonement of Christ—of the death of
the Son of God—we must demand, as essential to the status
questionis, that it be set forth as embraced within the category of
His Priesthood. So clearly does Holy Scripture, on the very face of it,
bear out the reasonableness of this demand, that no conceivable
objection can be taken to it, save such as would resolve into a
refusal to make Scripture the supreme arbiter in the discussion: and
with those who should take that position, we have of course in this
matter nothing to do,—except, indeed, to move the previous
question.
Now, in handling the topic of Christ's Priesthood, with the view of
showing what light it casts on the status questionis, and on the
argument concerning the Atonement, there are, in the first place,
some preliminary considerations to be attended to. In the second
place. the intrinsic idea of the nature of the office has to be kept in
view. And in the third place, the immediate and inevitable
characteristics which the very nature of the office must impart to
Christ's death will be seen to be such as greatly to relieve the
argument on the Atonement from the necessity of dealing at any
great length,—or indeed with any very great degree of
respectfulness,—with the false views and objections which are being
paraded in opposition to it.
Part First
Preliminaries concerning Priesthood
As to what is merely preliminary, we lay it down,—
I. In the first place, that the Priesthood is a real office—a real office,
definite and specific. This is of some importance,—more so, indeed,
than may at first appear. For the noble word "Priesthood" has been
misappropriated and misapplied, even so as greatly to deface it of its
intrinsic and peculiar import. There is a certain literary slang abroad
—we must be pardoned for our inability to find any better
designation for it—which talks of the "priests of literature;" of the
"priests of science;" of man as the "interpreter and priest of nature:"
and we have even some recollection of hearing those who meant no
harm talking in the pulpit concerning Adam, in his unfallen state, as
the "priest of Eden." If men, for the purpose of giving factitious
force and grandeur to their language, will persist in translating
words from a region of thought in which they are in their proper
place, into another into which they cannot be imported without
being thereby stripped of all their specific and intrinsic meaning, it
may be difficult to hinder them. But it becomes necessary at least to
see to it that these abused and misappropriated symbols of exact,
and definite, and important thought be not in their own native
realm attenuated into the meaninglessness to which they
degenerate when made to figure in a region of themes altogether
alien to their import. The idea of priesthood—if priesthood is to
have any real and definite meaning at all—can have no place
whatever in science, or literature, or nature, or any such realm. It
belongs to the realm of grace, presupposing sin and the Divine
design to overcome and remove sin. And for my part, I would as
soon think of transferring the language of Geometry and Algebra to
Botany, and talk of the hypotenuse of a flower, or the square root of
a tree, or the differential cöefficient of a convolvulus, as speak of the
priesthood of nature or of letters.
Nor is it merely on the score of incongruity and paralogism that this
ought to be avoided. The great evil is, that it tends to reduce the idea
of priesthood to the utmost vagueness, and to impress men with the
notion that they have some intelligent apprehension of what they
are talking of, while they have none. The word becomes a mere
figure of speech, a free and easy use of which is to be made without
any definite inquiry into what, even as a figure of speech, it means.
Accordingly, there are those who affirm that, though Christ is no
doubt in Scripture called a priest, yet it is only figuratively. Among
the many memorable utterances of the elder Marcus Dods, few are
more memorable than the answer which he gives to this absurd
affirmation. "If the great 'High Priest of our profession' was only
figuratively a priest, assuredly those priests who only exercised
those delegated powers which they received from Him could be no
more; and consequently, there never was a real priest in existence.
The very word, upon this supposition, stands in the unprecedented
situation of having a figurative application without ever having had
a real literal meaning."
Priesthood is an office—a real office, very definite and peculiar. It is
an office embracing very definite and specific duties, demanding
special and peculiar qualifications, and not to be entered on save at
the special call and appointment of God. "No man taketh this
honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.
Even so Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but
He [glorified him] who said unto him, Thou art my Son, this day
have I begotten Thee. As he saith also in another place, Thou art a
priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec" (Heb. 5:4–6).
II. But, secondly: It is not enough to maintain that Christ's
Priesthood is a real and veritable office; it must be regarded and set
forth as pre-eminently the office—the foundation office—which
Christ as a Redeemer executes. Besides being a Priest, our Lord is a
Prophet and a King; and He is both these, not incidentally,
occasionally, or by the way, but by office. He is officially the
Prophet, and officially the King, of Zion. Nevertheless, His
Priesthood is a more fundamental office than these—its necessity,
its duties, and the discharge of these duties lying closer to the heart
of His interposition for our salvation than aught that pertains to
either of the other offices which He fulfils. The Divine Spirit does
not affirm that His appointment either to His prophetic or His
kingly office "glorified" Him. But the affirmation is expressly made
of His appointment to the sacerdotal office: "God glorified Him to
be made an high priest" (Heb. 5:5). To inaugurate Him into the
office of prophet or of king, we read not that the dread solemnity of
the Divine oath was had recourse to. "But the Lord hath sworn and
will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of
Melchisedec" (Ps. 110:4). Four times is this remarkable oracle
quoted in terms in the New Testament (Heb. 5:6, 11:20, 7:17, 7:21).
And four times is the unique peculiarity of the interposal of the oath
commented and reasoned on, and made a fountain of precious and
irrefragable inference. It is with great emphasis, and with strong
argument of consolation to the heirs of promise that Paul avers how
"God interposed Himself by an oath" (Heb. 6:17, marg.). And it is
with great frequency, and with resistless demonstration of the
perpetuity, the intransferableness, and the perfection of Christ's
Priesthood, that he points to the oath as conferring unparalleled and
unapproachable glory upon that blessed office of our Mediator. "Not
without an oath was He made priest" (Heb. 7:20). "Those priests
without an oath, but this with an oath" (ver. 21). "The law made
them; but the word of the oath maketh the Son" (ver. 28). Surely we
may well "conclude," with Calvin, "that the Priesthood of Christ is
invested with great importance, seeing that it is ratified by the oath
of God. And in fact it is the very turning-point on which our
salvation depends."
To assign the position of primacy among Christ's offices to His
Priesthood, is not to disparage the other offices. On the contrary, it
is to honour them, and to prepare the way for the display of their
real import and bearings.
For, as a Prophet, it is Christ's duty and office to reveal to the
Church precisely the import and glory of His Priesthood—to reveal
His Priesthood in its presuppositions, its actings, and its fruits. The
character of God, His sovereignty, His holiness and justice, His law,
His claims—these on the one hand: and on the other hand, man's
sin, his guilt, his liability to eternal death, and his utter impotence
under the sentence thereof, and under the bondage of spiritual
death: such are the presuppositions of the Priesthood. God's longsuffering; His grace,
and love, and loving purpose, and loving choice
of an elect number as His own; His reconcilableness: a true and
proper propitiation achieved; sin expiated; an actual reconciliation
effected; free access to God's throne opened up: these are partly the
immediate causes, and partly the direct actings, of the Priesthood.
Pardon of sin; justification in righteousness; peace with God; the
Holy Ghost as the Spirit of regeneration and of adoption, with every
gift and grace of love Divine, even all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places: these are the fruits of Priesthood. But all that is contained in
these various enumerations, it is Christ's duty as a Prophet to
unfold by His word and Spirit to the Church. They are, however, as
we have said, just the presuppositions, causes, actings, and fruits of
His Priesthood. The Priesthood, therefore, is at once the foundation,
and provides the subject-matter of Christ's office as a Prophet.
It holds the same place of priority and importance relatively to the
kingly office. The sceptre which He wields as a King, He earned as a
Priest. The throne on which He now sits is the reward of His so
acceptable discharge of His priestly office. And He shall bear the
glory, and shall sit and rule upon His throne; and He shall be a
Priest upon His throne (Zech. 6:13). It is the throne of God and of
the "Lamb."
If, then, Christ's interposition for our salvation is accomplished in
the way of office; if the office which rules and determines all else
connected with His interposition be the Priestly office; and if,
moreover, the core and culmination of this interposition of Christ
be His death on Calvary; could any course be imagined more
extraordinary and suicidal than that, in expounding and defending
the doctrine of Christ's death, we should consent to isolate it, and to
discuss it apart from the doctrine of His Priesthood? Even the most
distant preliminary observations that can be made upon the topic, if
only relevant, must be conclusive on the question that has now
been put.
This will become still more manifest when we make closer advance
upon the topic, and consider the real nature and design of the
priestly office.
Part Second
The Intrinsic Nature of Priesthood
Let us consider the intrinsic nature of the office of Priesthood.
And here we have scriptural definition to guide us, as nearly
mathematically exact as the nature of the topic admits of. "Every
high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things
pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for
sins" (Heb. 5:1). What success can we have in discussing any theme
if we neglect our definitions? And if the theme be scriptural, where
shall we find reliable definitions if we neglect those which Scripture
expressly provides? Looking, then, to the very full description of
priesthood given in the inspired deliverance just quoted;—besides
the two considerations, first, That the priest must possess the
nature and be related to the race for whose welfare he interposes,—
he must be "taken from among men;" and secondly, That he must
possess the call and ordination of God,—"every high priest is
ordained;"—there are the three following things implied in it:—
I. Priesthood rests on personal relation. He is "ordained for men."
That is a law of the office; fundamental, indeed, and essential to the
nature and constituting idea of it. "Every high priest is ordained for
men." His office is absolutely groundless, meaningless, and void,
save as he is related to and acts "for men." He is an ordained agent
on behalf of men—instead and on behalf of individual persons. For
it cannot be a general and indefinite relation to mankind, to the race
—to humanity in the mass, as some speak—that is intended. No
doubt the priest must be related to humanity—to human nature
generally. But whatever demand arises from the nature and design
of his office in that direction, is met by the prior portion of this
definition, which says that he is "taken from among men." That
exhausts all that has to be said of his general relation to the race.
Something far more express and definite—something thoroughly
distinct and additional—is indicated in the affirmation that he is
"ordained for men." Most obviously individual men, particular
persons, are here indicated; and special personal relation to them.
He is ordained expressly for them. He takes office for them; and he
will take action for them. And his action will be complete and
effectual; for, though taken from among men, the last Adam is "the
Lord from heaven," and his work is perfect.
II. The action which he takes has God for its object. Priesthood and
all its direct and immediate actings are directly and immediately
towards God. He is ordained "in things pertaining to God"—τὰ πρὸς
τὸν θεὸν—things towards God. The whole aspects and bearing of
priesthood are towards God. It looks and it acts God ward. Its
immediate object is God. While it deals with the things of God, it
deals with them, not in their aspects towards man, but in their
bearings on God himself,—on God's sovereignty, and character, and
claims, and law. Its object, we repeat, is God. It propitiates God; it
intercedes to God. It satisfies God's justice; it pacifies God's wrath;
it secures God's favour; it seals God's covenant love; and gives effect
to God's eternal purpose and grace. Herein it is conspicuously
distinguished from the prophetic and kingly offices of our Lord.
These, in their several actings, have not God for their immediate
object, but mainly the souls of His people. Christ executes the office
of a Prophet by revealing to us, by His Word and Spirit, the will of
God for our salvation. Christ executes the office of a King in
subduing us to Himself, in ruling and defending us; and when the
kingly office takes wider action, it is in restraining and conquering
all His and our enemies. There is no possible excuse, therefore, for
confounding the sacerdotal office with either the prophetic or the
kingly.
III. While priesthood thus acts in personal relation, in relation to
and on behalf of individual persons; and while it acts directly
towards God as its object; its primary and immediate acting is
offering. To act as a priest is to offer. "He is ordained for men, in
things pertaining to God, that he may offer" (Heb. 5:1). And again:
"He ought to offer" (Heb. 5:3). And again: "Every high priest is
ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity
that this man have somewhat also to offer" (Heb. 8:3).
This, then, is the action which Christ has to take, when He takes
action as a Priest. He has to "offer." He has to offer "to God;" for all
priestly action is God ward. He has to offer "for men"—in personal
relation to, and on behalf of, individual men personally and
individually. Moreover, the offering is "for sins:" "He ought to offer
for sins" (Heb. 5:2). Not for sin; but "sins:" not sin in the abstract,
impersonally, unrelatedly, and in the general; but "sins," actual and
individual sins. What sins? What sins, but those of the persons for
whom He acts as having been ordained for them?
Combine these positions,—adding the ideas of Christ's spotless
personal holiness, and of His perpetual intercession,—and we have
the full doctrine of the Priesthood, and in and under it, the full
doctrine of the Atonement, which cannot be separated from it
without being shorn of its glory and left almost defenceless:
—"Christ executeth the office of a priest, in His once offering
Himself a sacrifice without spot to God, to be a reconciliation for
the sins of His people; and in making continual intercession for
them."
Part Third
Pointing the Argument from Priesthood
Without expanding these elements of thought on the fundamental
ideas and intrinsic nature and immediate action of the Priesthood,
let us now consider what immediate and inevitable characteristics
they impart to the death of Christ—our object being to show how
they relieve the argument on the Atonement from the necessity of
dealing at any length with the various false doctrines that are in
vogue. For if it be true, in the first place, that Priesthood rests on
personal relation; in the second place, that its whole action is
immediately towards God; and in the third place, that its immediate
action is real action, not mere suffering, but real action, and that
action offering: then we are prepared to take preliminary and
effectual protest against a whole host of heretical ideas, to the effect
that they are not even entitled to a hearing,—far less to be permitted
to obstruct, or to be acknowledged as able so much as even to touch,
the argument of orthodox evangelical doctrine on the Atonement.
I. Does Priesthood rest on personal relation—insomuch that apart
from this idea we have formed no scriptural notion of the office?
Then immediately all Socinian ideas of Example and Martyrdom; all
Neo-Socinian, Maurician ideas of Self-denial, Self-sacrifice, Self surrender,
and so forth; YOUNG'S notion of Moral Influence; and
BUSHNELL'S theory of a Govermental Display;—all these motley
attempts at explanation of the death of Christ must disappear
immediately. None of them, nor all of them put together, come
within sight of the doctrine, or even the idea, of Priesthood. Let
them see real priesthood, and like the "assembled kings" of the
Psalmist, when they "see it, they pass by together; they are troubled
and haste them away." In none of them can we descry the element
of office. In none of them still less the office of priesthood. For in
none of them is there room for personal relation, without which, to
the constituting notion of priesthood there is not even an approach.
No doubt Example, Martyrdom, Moral Influence, Governmental
Display, may all have bearings on persons. Personal results may in
the end be accomplished. And hence personal relations may be said
in the end to be established towards those whom Example,
Influence, etc., may have beneficially affected. But it is not personal
relations ultimately as the result, but personal relations ab initio to
start with, that are the postulate of Priesthood. Moreover, such
beneficial relations, as a final result, however splendidly
accomplished, could not generate office,—office, which is
desiderated not as an end but as a means, a means without whose
provision and presence from the outset the end is unattainable. Far
less could they generate priestly office. But indeed it is not requisite
to insist on the specific office of priesthood in order to put the
heterogeneous phalanx of heresies to flight. The barest and vaguest
idea of office in the general is enough. Is Example an office? Is
Martyrdom an office? Is Self-denial an office? Is Moral Influence an
office? Is a man an office-bearer because he is exemplary, selfdenying,
morally influential? How the question covers these
theories with confusion! "Are all apostles?" said Paul. Are all officebearers?
may we also say. Yea, truly: all at least are bound to be so,
if self-sacrifice and self-denial be ex officio. There can be no "taking
from among men" in that case. There can be no inaugurating of
representatives to act "for men" in these things. Christ's office of
Priesthood proposes to relieve men of the obligation to eternal
death. It is an insult to a man's moral nature to propose to relieve
him of the duty of being morally exemplary, or morally influential.
Obligations of that nature are incumbent upon all men; and they are
in transferable. In the nature of things they cannot be delegated to
representatives. They carry in them nothing official, and it is
impossible that their obligations or actings could be framed into an
office.
But it is not only this motley crowd of miserable substitutes for the
Atonement of the Lord Jesus that the first principle of priesthood is
fitted to expose and overthrow. It is equally effective in setting aside
the theory of universal or indefinite atonement. If the atonement of
Christ falls under the category of His Priesthood, it is impossible it
can be impersonal, indefinite, unlimited; for the priesthood is not.
In order to its very constitution, it pre-requires personal relation;
and the same must be true of the Atonement, unless the Atonement
transpires outside the limits and actings and conditions of the
priesthood. The priesthood is "for men," and for "sins." Not for
mankind in the general, but "for men,"—particular men. And not for
sin in the general, but "for sins,"—particular sins. The personal
relation of the priest is a relation to particular persons, with especial
reference to their particular sins; or, more briefly, it is a relation to
these persons considered as sinners. A general reference or relation
is out of the question. When indefinite and general relation is
contended for, then the antithesis must be brought out between the
two phrases—antithetical precisely in order to the expiscation of
this very point—the two phrases, "Taken from among men," and,
"Ordained for men." Whatever of general relation to humanity can
be legitimately predicated, is affirmed in the first of these phrases.
The fact of Christ's own humanity exhausts what is true in respect
of general relation or general reference. The Priest is the man Christ
Jesus: taken from among men; raised up out of the people. His
office is special, not general, unlimited, and indefinite. It is "for
men,"—for persons, for particular individual persons: and for every
individual person on whose behalf it is not effectual unto actual and
complete salvation, for him it was either not undertaken, or for him
it has failed.
The pre-requisite of personal relation to particular persons is
indispensable in all real priesthood whatsoever. It is true of "every"
priest that is taken from among men. Any "general reference"
contradictory to this, or in addition to this—except simply
community of nature, secured by his being taken from among men
—violates the very first principle of the office. We see the presence
and action of this principle most clearly in the Levitical priesthood.
The priests of Levi were chosen for, or in lieu of, the first-born; and
they were ordained for, or in room and on behalf of men, even for
the Israel of God collectively and individually. They acted for
individuals; and besides such action, they had no priestly action
whatsoever, no official duty to discharge. The introduction of a
"general reference" into the theory of their office is an absurdity.
The success of their priestly actings was complete, and also
cognisable, just because it was for particular persons.
Indefiniteness, generality, vagueness, unlimitedness, universality,
are ideas with which no theory of their office can possibly cohere.
To admit any such idea, is to render the action of their office
impalpable, and the result of it untraceable. But its action is most
palpable, and its results can be most easily traced, while they are
seen to have been in every instance complete, and absolutely
successful. For whomsoever a Levitical priest sacerdotally officiated,
he was completely successful—completely successful in averting the
evil, or procuring the privilege, which his official action
contemplated And if the same thing is not admitted concerning the
priesthood of Christ, then we are logically landed, in the first place,
in this most offensive result, That Christ's Priesthood is relatively
inferior to that of Levi; and, in the second place, in this prodigious
paralogism also,—that is, if the Levitical priesthood was typical of
Christ's,—namely, That uniform and complete success in the one is,
by Divine wisdom, erected into a type and symbol of extensive
failure in the other!* The moment we take up with the theory of a
"general reference" of the Atonement—the moment we abandon the
elemental principle of individual personal relations—we close
against ourselves the very gate of entrance into the scriptural
doctrine of priesthood, and the glorious realm of truth into which it
leads.
II. Is the action of priesthood directly and immediately towards
God? Has it God for its immediate object? Then this again
effectually and at once precludes even a hearing for the vast
majority of false theories of the Atonement; for they do not even
pretend to present God as the object of what action they
acknowledge in the death of Christ. And very obviously Example,
and Martyrdom, and Self-Denial, and Governmental Display, and
Moral Influence, are not "towards God." Martyrdom may be from
God; but it is towards, and upon, the sufferer. Example surely is not
offered to God, but to men. Self-denial has not God for its object,
but ungodliness and worldly lust. And Moral Influence—shall it be
exerted upon God? Or shall a Display of the Principles of His own
Government be given to the Almighty himself? It requires not
profound study to refute theories like these. The student who has
learned the first clause of his first definition, will find it a sword to
cleave them lifeless, and a spade to bury their remains.
But it is often said,—You ought to deal gently with these views,
erroneous though they be, seeing that there is, more or less, a
measure of truth in them all.
Let us adjust this matter, or at least indicate how it ought to be
adjusted. For we must take occasion, from this very common plea in
mitigation, additionally to glorify the truth of God, and additionally
to strip these "other gospels "of men of their plausibilities. We lay
down the following positions:—
In the first place; there is not only no measure of truth in these
theories, but they are wholly false and deadly, when presented, as
they are presented, as adequate expositions of the doctrine of
Atonement, explanations of the reason and design of the death of
Jesus. It must not be forgotten that they are given forth, severally
and all of them, as satisfactory solutions of the question, What is
the intrinsic nature, the constituting conception, of Christ's sacrifice
on the cross? They profess to exhibit the fundamental idea and the
primary design of Atonement. And in this light they are, beyond the
possibility of doubt, each of them "another gospel;" and as such,
though proclaimed by the angels of heaven, they are liable to the
Anathema of Inspiration.
In the second place; there is no measure of truth in them, even
though they should be put forth as partial answers to the question
which they profess to solve. They have no right to stand as even a
portion of the truth concerning the doctrine of the intrinsic nature
and immediate object and design of the Atonement. There is not
even an element of truth in them that will co-ordinate with that
doctrine as maintained by the whole Catholic Church of God. That
doctrine is itself either the truth, or it is a baseless fabric. Assuredly
it has in it no room for these theories, as forming with it parts of
one whole. Claiming to rank with it in any such light,—which in
point of fact they never do,—they would be seen immediately to be
false.
And in the third place; regarded as secondary and subordinate
results of the Atonement,—not entering into its intrinsic nature and
explanatory of its immediate design, but as mere secondary and
subordinate results,—even in this light, the contents of these
theories are not truth and fact, but merely unrealised and
unrealisable ideas, mere conceptions which the theories themselves
can never embody as realities. And in this sense also, as in every
other, there is no measure of truth in them. They never can be
translated into truth and fact; they never can emerge from dreamland,
from the region of the ideal and of mere conception; till they
are acknowledged as not of the essence and constituting idea of
atonement, but only as the secondary and subordinate outcome
thereof. The fundamental notion and essence of atonement, as
embodied in the priestly work of Christ, is the offering of Himself
unto God a sacrifice and a reconciliation for the sins of His people.
It is His substitutionary oblation of Himself, bearing the curse and
bringing in righteousness, thereby satisfying Divine justice, and
reconciling us unto God. It is from such atonement as this—
atonement in its unique and specific meaning, in its peculiar and
essential idea, and in its complete achievement by Christ, acting
herein as an high priest "for men," offering "for sins"—it is from,
and only from, such atonement as this, that these theories derive
into them that measure of truth which they themselves, by
attempting to supplant their own parent thought, turn into
falsehood and deadly error. And this might be shown, to edification,
in full detail. We can do little more than hint the line of thought.
(1.) It was by the atonement of a substitutionary sacrifice for sin,
satisfying Divine justice, that Christ had scope for that
unmurmuring patience by which He left us an "Example" that we
should follow His steps (1 Pet. 2:21–24).
(2.) It was by dying a substitutionary and atoning death that He
underwent "Martyrdom" as a witness for the truth (John 18:37).
(3.) It was in setting His face as a flint to go to Jerusalem, there to
fill up with antitypical reality all Jerusalem's priestly services, by
offering Himself without spot to God a curse-bearing sacrifice for
sin, that He denied Himself and took up His cross, and commended
"Self-denial" to His followers.
(4.) It was when He proffered Himself to the sword of offended
justice, awakened against Him, according to His own covenant
arrangement, by the Father, that He illustrated "Self-surrender."
(5.) With Him "Self-sacrifice" was specifically sacrifice for sin, a
satisfaction and a reconciliation.
(6.) There is indeed in His Cross a "Governmental Display." It
"declares the righteousness of God for the remission of sins;" but
only because Christ is there "set forth a propitiation through faith in
His blood" (Rom. 3:25). And it declares, manifests, displays the love
of God; but only in that God "sent forth His Son to be the
propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).
(7.) A "Moral Influence," also, undoubtedly flows from the cross of
Jesus. But it is a fountain of moral influence;—and moral influence
without spiritual power were needlessly exerted on men dead in
trespasses and sins;—it is a fountain both of Moral Influence and of
regenerating energy to turn us unto righteousness, only because He
there gave Himself in justice-satisfying substitution, "the just for
the unjust, that He might bring us unto God" (1 Pet. 3:18).
Secure the intrinsic and essential nature, and the primary and direct
design, of the atoning death of Christ, and all the secondary results
—flitting otherwise as mere shades in dream-land, vainly claiming
the reality of fact—become real and true, and are secured. But when
they claim to be of the essence of atonement, they fight against
their own realisation. It is the same with all secondaries in relation
to their primary. Happiness, followed as a primary object of pursuit,
is unattainable. Duty, followed as a primary, brings happiness in its
train. And in like manner, all good in these theories—all good
conception or idea in them—remains ideal and unattainable, until
based on the doctrine of substitution and satisfaction which to their
own ruin they would supplant. They are like the second intended
row of stones for a building which is never suffered to have a first
row or foundation; like the second month of a year, that shall have
no first month or beginning. In the hands of those who plead them
as explanations of the cross, they are at the best but "airy nothings;"
"their local habitation," and only home of life—their source of truth,
reality, and power—is just that same old doctrine which they malign
and would subvert. As if sunbeams should revile the sun!
III. But now, thirdly: Is the action of Priesthood real action; not
mere suffering or endurance, but real action; and that action,
offering? Then, without bringing out the nature of this action more
fully,—without even asking what the exact and intrinsic nature of
this action is,—we may see that it bears very powerfully, though
perhaps not so patently, upon all the false theories which have
passed under our review. For these theories, if probed, will be found
to have no room in them for the idea of action in the death of
Christ. Their advocates contemplate Christ's death, not as action,
but exclusively as suffering. It is a providential event; to which
Christ is subjected; not a priestly action which Christ achieves. They
recognise His passive endurance; not His priestly agency. They see
that He suffered: they see not that He "offered."
I maintain that on this single ground alone they are fatally
incapacitated from discussing the doctrine of Christ's atoning death,
and rightfully precluded even from a hearing in the discussion. Did
Christ merely suffer in His death? Was His own agency not
concerned in it? Then, was He not a Priest on Calvary, but merely a
Lamb? And if so, the question at once arises, Who offered up this
Lamb of God, the eternal Son of God, a sacrifice upon the cross?
Either the Father, or the Spirit, was the Priest; neither of whom was
ever "taken from among men," or "ordained for men, to offer." Or,
there was no Priest. For assuredly no creature could be admitted to
the honour of offering up the Only-begotten of the Father.* And in
any case, in this view, Christ's death occurs outside His Priesthood;
and if that be true, His death can be nothing to us.
I refuse to believe in the cross of Christ as a mere passive
endurance. And I refuse to discuss the doctrine of His death under
any such restriction of its marvellous, peculiar, and transcendent
glory. I deny that His God glorifying agency was overborne before
He died, leaving Him a mere victim to causes and means of death,
aside from His own active will and power offering Him to God. I
deny that on His cross all His duty turned at last into patience, and
became negation. It was His duty to die: and He discharged His
duty. It never was any other man's duty to die: therefore, do not rob
Him of a glory all His own. "It is appointed unto all men once to
die;" appointed as a destiny,—never, save to Him, as a duty. It is
indeed our duty to endure death with faith and patience. But it is
the patience, the faith, that is in our case the duty, not death. Death
cannot be our duty. We do not act in dying; we are acted on, and we
endure it. Christ acted in dying. It was His duty to die—His official
duty. Official action was in it—priestly agency. He "dismissed His
Spirit." He "gave Himself." Herein is His love: herein also is His
power: herein the triumph and transcendent glory of His victory
over death. He is an unquelled, unconquered, conquering agent in
offering Himself up to God. It is true He suffers—suffers the just for
the unjust. Men are killing Him; and Satan tempting and
tormenting Him. The Father bruises Him:—"It pleased the Lord tobruise Him," and to say,
"Awake, O sword, against Him." He endures
the Cross. He suffers death. He dies a sufferer. So much the more
wondrous is the truth that He dies a conquering agent in dying. He
trembles; but He does not faint. He does not swoon, but agonize.
And "agony" is action to the uttermost. This is the glory of His
triumph. Leave this out of view,—put aside His priestly agency and
priestly action in His death,—suppose His agency and action to have
been, ere death, exhausted, leaving room for passive sufferance and
patience merely; and you cannot "glory in the Cross," nor teach the
Church of God to glory in it. You leave the glory of Christ's triumph,
and the evidence of Christ's love, deep buried in the shame of
Calvary, and in the grave of Golgotha. And it is not any glory in the
resurrection that can in that case reflect back upon the Cross, and
light it up with a glory not originally and intrinsically there. If He
died a mere passive victim, He did not die a victor: and no
subsequent glory can in that case redeem what in that case was
defeat. But He died a triumphant agent. He prevailed against death
to live until He said, "'Tis finished," and then to die, not merely
voluntarily, but by positive priestly action, giving Himself to God.
The Cross itself is glorious; not from the subsequent resurrection
and enthronement, but glorious from itself. It is itself a chariot of
triumph. There is more agency and power in Christ's cross, than in
all His work as Creator of the universe. There is as much spiritual
glory in the Cross of Calvary, as in the throne of the Lamb in
heaven. Christ crucified is—not after, but in being crucified—the
Power of God. And He is the Power of God, because He is the Priest
of God. It is His priestly duty to die—a duty unparalleled and
unapproachable. He falters not in the discharge of it. Official agency
is in His sacrificial priestly death. "He offered Himself." "He loved
the Church, and gave Himself for it."
Ah! these are views of Christ's glorious priestly work—very simple,
yea, on the very surface of it—which will not consist with even a
hearing to those many representations which really evacuate His
office altogether. We commend them to the students and younger
ministers and preachers among our readers. We would not presume
to instruct brethren of our own or of longer standing in the
ministry. But those lately entered, or entering, on the duty of
preaching the gospel of a veritable Sacrifice for sins, may perhaps
kindly accept a word of exhortation. Probe deep into the simplest
elemental principles of Christ's priestly office. They are capable of
being preached in continually fresh variety of combination, such as
may often give them, in your people's view, the aspect almost of
startling but safe originality. Shall it ever be said that you forsook
them as old-fashioned? That you gave them up, as having at last
become platitudes in your hands? What! Instinct with the power of
the eternal purpose of the Father; beautiful in the hands and in the
love of Messiah; and shining in the light of the Eternal Spirit; how
can they ever become platitudes? Baptize them evermore afresh in
the light of the throne of God and of the Lamb; and bring them back
afresh to your people with somewhat of the rhythm ringing through
them of the ceaseless song of the angels and of the elders,—of the
ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands:
—"Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power be unto Him that
sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever."
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2024 11:04:59 GMT -5
CHAPTER IV: CHRIST'S PRIESTLY ACTION IN HIS DEATH
IN the preceding chapter we have vindicated the position, That the
defenders of the orthodox evangelical doctrine of the Atonement
ought never to consent to discuss that doctrine outside of the larger
category of the priesthood of Christ. Our closing train of thought in
illustrating that position we feel inclined to resume and consider at
somewhat greater length. We lay it down:—
That the Doctrine of the Atonement ought not to be discussed apart
from the idea of Christ's Priestly ACTION in His death.
For we are deeply persuaded, that the refusal to discuss or
contemplate the doctrine of Christ's death, except as that priestly
action which Holy Scripture abundantly reveals it to have been,—
while it is obviously the most effective method of establishing and
defending the doctrine itself,—is at the same time the true way to
take legitimate and conclusive preliminary objection to the vast
majority of false representations of Christ's death, to the effect of
their not being entitled even to a hearing. Let it simply be shown of
any particular aberration from the catholic doctrine of the death of
Christ, that there is no room in it for anything more than suffering,
mere passive endurance; that it has no explanation to afford of the
idea, and indeed no room in it for the idea, that Christ in His death,
besides being acted on, was in that very transaction an agent, an
offerer, a priest—an official agent, triumphantly discharging
positive, official, active duty,—and we are immediately exempted at
the outset from any necessity of further discussion, and entitled
preliminarily to dismiss out of court all such perversions of the
doctrine of the catholic Church of Christ. For they are flagrant
perversions. Holy Scripture is so clear, so abundant,—so express,
varied, and emphatic,—in its assertions of Christ's death being a
transaction in which His own agency was concerned, that those who
deny this, or make no account of it, cannot be considered as merely
erring in scriptural interpretation, but must be regarded as rejecting
Scripture as the rule of faith. With such, of course, we are entitled
and bound to refuse to discuss the doctrine of the Atonement. The
question of the "Rule of Faith" is that to which all discussion with
such opponents must be relegated.
Part First
Reasons why this truth has been much overlooked
At the same time, while it is undoubtedly true that Scripture is most
clear and abundant in its revelation of the truth that Christ's death
was priestly action, we have a strong conviction that there are, or
may be, not a few who acquiesce in the sound and scriptural
doctrine of the Atonement, but have not given to the simple
proposition which affirms the action of Christ in His own death that
attention to which it is gloriously entitled. We are so familiar with
the plain statement that Christ was at once the Sacrifice and the
Priest,—"He offered up Himself,"—that we think we have fully
mastered its contents, while we may have done little more than
skim the surface.
That it must contain great depths of truth should be obvious from
the fact that it presents a consideration absolutely unparalleled, and
singular, and unique. That the man Christ Jesus should both suffer
death,—and such a death, under the curse of the divine law, and
with all conceivable aggravations of woe, and agony, and shame; and
also that He should sinlessly, yea, obediently and officially, have an
active hand in His death,—and such a death; ought at once to strike
us as passing all comprehension, and as entitled to that thoughtful,
prolonged, and reverent contemplation which might enable us,
under the teaching of the Spirit of truth, to place the fact before our
understandings with the most exact accuracy of thought we can
attain, and with the fullest completeness that we can grasp. There is,
indeed, good reason to think that the severe mental exercise for
which there is in this simple familiar truth such manifest scope, is
precisely what has led many minds to pass it by without any attempt
to fathom it. That "Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures," they are content to believe. But that in this transaction
of the death at Calvary He combined the two apparently
antagonistic attitudes of suffering and offering;—suffering unto
such extent and such intensity as would have quelled all the active
powers, not to say the patience, of any but a Divine person; and
offering also in such activity, and such unquelled and excelling
triumphant action, as if no suffering were making drain upon His
active powers at all;—this is the apparent paradox in the death of
Christ which many, we fear, have far too lightly considered. And yet,
how, without profound consideration and appreciating admiration
of it, they can intelligently "glory in the Cross," it is impossible to
see.
That the simple but profound truth on which we are desirous of
insisting should have been, at least to some extent, overlooked by
many whose views of the Atonement are not incorrect, may in some
measure be easily accounted for. Apart from the demand for
severely accurate mental action, which the nature of the subject
makes on all who would attain to exact theological knowledge of its
various elements, several phrases have acquired a currency
unfavourable to clearness and comprehensiveness. Among these we
may notice what we have long thought the unhappy and not very
intelligible expression—"Christ's active and passive obedience." No
doubt, with explanations, the phrase may be allowed; and, without
question, it is with these explanations that sound writers have used
it. It has been employed to express the fact, that in Christ's life and
death as our surety, there meet the endurance of the penalty of the
law and the inbringing of a positive righteousness. But it may be
safely doubted whether the phrase "passive obedience" naturally
indicates anything that can be properly called obedience at all; and
the use of it in well-known English history is not favourable to the
probability of its suggesting very accurate ideas theologically.
Moreover, if there is anything in Christ's interposition for our
salvation that may be supposed to be called "passive" obedience, as
in express contradiction to "active" obedience, it must be His death:
and where this impression prevails, it obviously countenances, and
indeed suggests, the idea that His death was exclusively passive—
that His own activity or agency is not to be recognised in it.
Then the phrases, "Our Lord's Passion," and "The Passion Week,"
lead obviously in the same direction. Used exclusively, and used as
adequate and complete expressions for the death of Christ, and for
that ever-memorable period of His closing sufferings and crowning
work as our Redeemer, they evidently concentrate attention
disproportionately, and indeed alone, on that aspect in which Christ
appears as the piacular victim, or the Lamb of Sacrifice; presenting
to the mind no suggestion of the great truth that in His "passion"
He was an official, and obedient, and triumphant agent.
The Paraphrase also—the forty-fourth—which represents "the pale
ensigns" of death as overspreading the cheeks and the "trembling
lips" of our Lord, while life forsook His closing eyes and His
drooping head," does most manifest injustice to the condition of our
Lord's person on the cross, and is clearly most injurious to the
scriptural representations that "He cried with a loud voice" and
"gave up the ghost"—dismissed His Spirit. The impression which
such phrases are fitted to make upon the mind is just this, and
nothing more,—that our Lord unmurmuringly endured
inconceivable sufferings,—that He was being subjected to death as
the penalty due to sin. All which is true. But they also suggest the
idea, that whereas formerly He had been engaged in positive duty,
going about doing good, the time for positive and active duty was
now passed, and the time for simply suffering had come.
We must never cease to affirm that this representation of the Cross
is most inadequate. It exhibits the Cross as the emblem and scene
of patience merely, while it conceals those glorious and glorifying
aspects of it in which it is seen to be an altar of priestly agency, a
throne of powerful action, and a chariot of victory and triumph. It
represents Christ's activity as subdued and overborne, or at least as
in abeyance. It pretermits the grand consideration—which direct
Scriptural assertions place before us, and which an adoring
appreciation of the constitution of Christ's person, and the intrinsic
nature of His work necessitate—that Christ's actual forthputting of
power, and His official, and obedient, and positive agency, never
were, and could not be, overborne and subdued; but that, on the
contrary, they prevailed to put forth their energy, and their grandest
energy, precisely against an inconceivable combination of agencies
and instruments naturally fitted, had that been possible, to subdue
and overbear them. Earth, and hell, and heaven: earth's rulers and
her rabble; her kings, and priests, and soldiers, and malefactors
assailing Him; her Jews and Gentiles; her dumb creatures even;
earth's forests furnishing wood; earth's streams refusing water;
earth's bitternesses mingled in vinegar and gall; earth's curse
embodied in her thorns, in mockery and pain to crown Him; earth's
"founded" steadfastness refusing to support Him, and her
firmament to shine upon Him: hell's utmost force and fury gathered
up against Him: heaven's sword devouring Him, and heaven's God
forsaking Him:—earth, and hell, and heaven thus in conspiring
action against Him, unto the uttermost of heaven's extremest
justice, and earth's and hell's extremest injustice:—what is the glory
of the Cross, if it be not this; that with such action conspiring to
subdue His action, His action outlasted and outlived them all, and
He did not die subdued and overborne into dying, He did not die till
He gave Himself in death? Emmanuel a mere sufferer in His death!
Ὁ λόγος ὁ τοῡ σταυροῡ ἡ δύναμις θεοῡ. "The Logos of the Cross is
the Power of God" (1 Cor. 1:18).
Part Second
Direct scriptural evidence of this truth
We may notice briefly some of the more obvious Scriptural
assertions of this truth,—as well as some of the less obvious
implications of it, which, when duly considered, are frequently even
more instructive.
Among some of the more obvious testimonies to the doctrine that
the death of Christ was an action of His priestly office, may be
reckoned the assertion of Isaiah (53:12), that "He poured out His
soul unto death;" the phrases frequently used by the Apostle Paul,
that "He loved the Church, and gave Himself for it" (Eph. 5:21), and,
specialising this love and loving service to the individual believer,
"He loved me, and gave Himself for me" (Gal. 2:20); and again,
"Christ also hath loved us, and (παρέδωκεν) hath delivered Himself
for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour"
(Eph. 5:2); and again, "When He had by Himself purged our sins"
(Heb. 1:2). The doxology of John: "Unto Him that loved us and
washed us from our sins in His own blood" (Rev. 1:5). The frequent
expressions of the Lord himself: "The Son of Man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for
many" (Matt. 20:28):—and, very specially, His ever-memorable
account of Himself as the Good Shepherd, "The Good Shepherd
giveth His life for His sheep:" So solicitous is our Lord on this point,
that He repeats it again and again, in the strongest and most
emphatic terms, positive and negative alike: "No one taketh it from
me; I lay it down of myself." And so powerfully does He bring out
the idea of His own agency being concerned in His death, that He
places it on a level with the agency He should put forth in His
resurrection, and represents obedient action equally in the two
cases as constituting jointly what His Father's commandment had
enjoined upon Him, and what His Father's love and approbation
rested in so complacently: "Therefore doth my Father love me,
because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No one
(οὐδεις̀) taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself,—at my own
instance, of my own will, by my own deed. I have power to lay it
down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment
received I of my Father" (John 10:11, 18).
How clearly is the forthputting of positive power implied in all these
various expressions; as it is, also, with such emphatic iteration in
the prophecy of Daniel, which went before concerning the
"Anointed most Holy," that He should "finish transgression, and
make an end of sin, and make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring
in everlasting righteousness" (Dan. 9:24). "Nor yet that He should
offer Himself often, for then must He often have suffered since the
foundation of the world; but now once, in the end of the world, hath
He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Heb. 9:25,
26):—an utterance of inspiration which fearlessly presents the
sacrifice of the Cross as an offering in suffering, and as suffering in
offering, doing justice alike to both aspects of the truth, together
constituting one truth indissoluble, its unique singularity arising
from a combination of what, in none but the God-man, could be
combined.
For is it not thoroughly unique and singular, and altogether
transcendently glorious? "I lay down my life that I might take it
again: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it
again." The death of Christ is not less glorious than His
resurrection, nor is there less of His own glorious power in it. Nay,
it would seem no hard thesis to maintain,—that Emmanuel hath put
forth and glorified His power, more in dying than in rising again.
For, if there be truth, as there is both truth and wondrous beauty, in
Professor MACLAGAN'S figure of the empty scabbard bound upon
the warrior's person, while the unsheathed sword is in his hand,—
the fine conception by which that great divine illustrates that in the
state of the dead, Emmanuel's body and His soul remained each in
union with His Godhead: then it remains to ask;—Is there the
action of greater power and prowess in the gentle ease with which
that warrior, the battle being fought and won, returns the sword to
its sheath; or in the prior, princely, peerless act in which,—what
shall I say?—in which, having girt thy sword upon thy thigh, O Most
Mighty, thy right hand, teaching terrible things, flashed it forth for
victory!
How dishonourable, to imagine that the body of the Word made
flesh was, in death, torn and reaved away from Him! How
melancholy, even to have indistinct views of the glorious truth that
it was not so! Alike in death and after death, both the soul and the
body of Emmanuel were in His own power. In the very grave, His
deadbody was in His own power, for it was in His own person,—in
union indissoluble with His Godhead. So likewise, of course, was
His soul,—united still as ever, with His Godhead. And here, in death,
was a check to death, such as that last enemy had never hitherto
received. Here are a human soul and a human body of the self-same
person, thoroughly separated from each other, precisely as in the
case of a deadmere man,—verifying the assertion therefore that this
Man, though not a mere man, is nevertheless a dead man,—and all
death's claims are therefore satisfied: while, notwithstanding, His
disembodied soul and dead body remain in a certain glorious union
with each other still, through the intermedium of that Godhead
with which, in the person of the Son, who is this dead Christ, they
are each of them in immediate and direct union, although
thoroughly severed from each other. Here is an element of victory
over death to which perhaps adequate attention has not always been
given. And it is reproduced in its measure, in the victory of every
dying believer, every member of the body of Christ. For "the souls of
believers, being at death made perfect in holiness, do immediately
pass into glory, and their bodies being still united to Christ do rest
in their graves till the resurrection." The soul and the body of the
believer, separated from each other in death, remain still united
indirectly, through the intervention of the person of Christ, to which
each of them is directly united by the Spirit. Yet how shall these
glorious mysteries be con served, if we overlook Christ's own action
in His death?
Part Third
Implicit scriptural evidence
But, perhaps, the most instructive Scriptural evidences of this great
truth are those which require a little thought to disclose their
import and their force. Amongst such we may notice:—
I. In the first place, the remarkable saying of Paul to the Romans
(5:9), "Being now justified by His blood." What can this imply, but
that in the blood or death of Christ we are to recognise, not merely
such endurance as satisfies the penalty of the law, and procures the
pardon of sin, but such obedience also, such positive righteousness,
as secures the complete justification of the sinner's person?
Without a perfect and positive objective righteousness, justification
is impossible. The announcement of it would be the announcement
of an unreality; and, with God, this simply could not be. And hence,
if to the "blood" or death of Christ our "justification" is to be
attributed, it can only be because in His blood a true obedience is
couched,—in His death, the crowning activity of His sacerdotal work
is to be recognised.
II. The same thing is obvious when Paul, to the Hebrews (9:14), says
that "The blood of Christ, who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered
Himself without spot to God, purges the conscience from dead
works to serve the living God." In fact, there are several testimonies
to the same effect in this one illustrious utterance. The activity of
Christ in His death is expressly affirmed in the usual priestly phrase
—"He offered Himself." Our attention is expressly called, moreover,
to the great truth that it was precisely this which the Eternal Spirit
furnished Him with grace and power to achieve, and to achieve in all
the faultlessness—"without spot"—and all the moral beauty, which
rendered it of sweet-smelling savour unto God. And over and above
these more obvious assertions, we have the implication that
obedience is couched in the blood of Jesus, in the fact that it
"purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God."
Had the Apostle's deliverance stopped short of this—attributing to
Christ's blood power only to "purge the conscience," we might have
regarded that atoning blood as couching in it merely a removal,
because an endurance, of the curse. But when we find its action on
the conscience not exhausted without embracing the
communication of power and right to "serve the living God," we see
that it procures and conveys not merely deliverance from the dread
and shame of guilt, but acceptance for the believer's "service," and à
fortiori, therefore, acceptance for his person. And what is this but
complete justification, such as rests, and can rest only, upon a
perfect, positive righteousness—an "obedience unto death?"
III. And this reminds us to point out the true meaning of the
inspired expression into the use of which the train of thought so
naturally leads us:—He "became obedient unto death." Here,
"death" is evidently a limit to the obedience of Christ. But is the
obedience to be considered as exclusive of the limit, or inclusive of
it? We doubt not that many read this saying of Paul's as if it implied
that Christ was obedient up to the limit of His death, but not in
death, and as including death in His "obedience." Making no
allowance for the singular peculiarity of Christ's person as God man,
they read this phrase as if it could be applied, pari passu, to a
mere man, and as if it were synonymous in import with the
exhortation to the believer, "Be thou faithful unto death." But Christ
was not merely positively obedient up to the point at which death's
work upon His person began, but obedient up to the point at which
death's utmost action on His person terminated; Himself with a
loud voice, and as a conqueror, "dismissing His spirit." To have
faltered in His obedience, or resigned His positive agency, a hair's breadth short of this,
would have been to abandon all the active
obedience He had hitherto wrought; to leave it behind Him on this
side of Calvary; and to fail to bring His righteousness safely through
the ordeal of the Cross.
IV. Strength through the Eternal Spirit to offer Himself to God—
strength to carry His righteousness safely through the ordeal of the
cross to the throne within the veil, "perfecting" it in and by positive
and victorious priestly agency in death—was precisely what Jesus
prayed for in His agony, and obtained.
It is impossible in any other light than this, as the real tenor and
issue of His prayer, to understand the Apostle's very solemn and
memorable description of it: "Who in the days of His flesh, when He
had offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and
tears, unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was
heard in that He feared: though He were a Son, yet learned He
obedience by the things which He suffered; and being made perfect,
He became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey
Him" (Heb. 5:7–9). These three verses, it is to be feared, have been
too often read apart from the verse that precedes and from the verse
that follows them. Yet, by these two verses, this description of our
Lord's agony of prayer is shut in between two explicit assertions of
His priesthood. It is heralded with quotation of the divine oath by
which Christ was called to the priestly office: "As he saith also in
another place, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of
Melchisedec" (ver. 6). And it is not completed without a reiteration
of the truth that this agony of prayer, and its answer, and the fruit of
its answer, all belong to our Lord's priestly duty and activities:
"Called of God an high priest, after the order of Melchisedec" (ver.
10). Why re-affirm so expressly, and so soon, the priestly dignity
and glory of our Lord? What is the meaning of thus so solicitously
guarding and hemming in, on the right hand and on the left, these
prayers and supplications, and strong crying and tears of
Emmanuel, with allusions, we were about to say, but rather with
reiterations, of the one strongest possible assertion of Christ's
priesthood which the Holy Spirit had put on record, and which is
fortified even with the oath of God: "The Lord hath sworn and will
not repent, Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of
Melchisedec" (Ps. 110:4)? What, but to convince us that we utterly
misread and misconceive the whole design and issue of these
prayers of Christ, unless we recognise them as priestly prayers,
offered in the discharge of priestly duty, and contemplating and
conserving the unsubdued maintenance of His priestly service and
activity. In bringing His glorious priestly service to "perfection," He
knew that He had to meet death—death armed with its "sting,"
which is "sin," and borne home with that "strength" which it derives
from the "law." It is not indeed affirmed that He prayed to be saved
from death. But it is implied. Why otherwise is God here designated
as "Him that was able to save Him from death?" He might as well
have been designated from any of His attributes, or any of His
works,—as, for instance, "Him that created the stars of heaven,"—if
we be not given to understand that Jesus selected this designation
because He prayed for that which it sets forth God as able to give,—
salvation from death. And for this unquestionably, therefore, we are
to understand that Jesus did pray. And "He was heard." He did not
indeed pray to be saved from dying. In the early progress of His
agony in the garden He had said, "Father, if it be possible, let this
cup pass from me." But the Apostle here, in writing to the Hebrews,
is summing up the tenor and substance of the prayer—not, surely,
excluding that in which the suppliant's soul finally rested, or giving
merely the preliminary conflict through which it passed on to the
subject-matter of the final supplication. And, moreover, it is
expressly said by Paul, that whatever Jesus here prayed for He
obtained. In the self-same petition, made to "Him that was able to
save Him from death," we are told, "He was heard—heard in that He
feared."
What, then, does it inevitably follow that He must have prayed for,
if He prayed to be saved from death, and yet prayed not to be saved
from dying? What but for strength actively to die; to die in the
active service of His office, and not as the down-borne victim of
death; to die as a Priest—"a Priest for ever"—a Priest in death itself;
His priestly action uninterrupted in death, yea, triumphing in death
—an offerer as well as a sufferer—an obedient official agent in the
very article of death itself. In precisely this was He heard: "He was
heard in that He feared: though He were a Son, yet learned He
OBEDIENCE by the things He suffered." And in this inherency and
forthputting of obedient offering in patient suffering—in this
combination of piacular patience and priestly power—in thus
prevailing to act upon His own person after death could no more act
upon Him, and so to die, not by death's will, but by His own,
offering Himself to God: in this "being made perfect"—being thus
and hereby "made perfect, He became the author"—not passively
the occasion and the means, but the author—"of eternal salvation to
all them that obey Him."
V. Consider the final petition of Gethsemane, which constitutes the
substance and whole aim of the prayer, in respect of which,
therefore, He was answered when He was heard in that He feared.
"Not my will, but thine, be done." Does this mean, Thy will be done
upon me? Or does it not rather mean, Thy will be done by me? Can
any one who knows either the scriptural doctrine or the subsequent
history have any hesitation as to which of these interpretations is to
be placed on our Lord's believing and obedient utterance, "Thy will
be done?"
(1.) Take the doctrine of Scripture concerning this "will of God."
"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" (Heb. 5:5–7). I come "to do thy will." It is
no passive endurance of God's will to which He is in death to be
subjected. It is an active performance of it. Nor is it His active
performance of duty during His life on earth, as contradistinguished
from His sufferings at its close, that this doing of God's will can
indicate. It is precisely and exactly His sacrificial death to which it
most clearly and immediately applies. For that "will" of God which
He is to "do," is that same service by which He is to replace the
offerings and sacrifices which are disparaged and set aside to make
room for the sacrifice of the Son of God. To bring this out
unmistakably is the design of the emphatic and otherwise
unnecessary repetition in the verses which immediately follow:
—"Above, when he said, Sacrifice, and offering, and burnt-offerings,
and offerings for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure
therein (which are offered by the law); then said I"—manifestly
concerning that offering in which the Lord hath pleasure—"Lo, I
come to do thy will, O God" (ver. 8, 9). In the death of Christ, there
was the action of Christ; there was the doing of the will of God.
But this is not the whole amount of God's "will" in the death of
Christ, namely, that He should actively offer Himself. It was in the
will of God also that Christ's offering of Himself should be
vicarious, and should therefore absolutely and unconditionally
secure the consecration and salvation of His people. "By the which
will"—Paul therefore adds most emphatically—"by the which will we
are sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ once for all"
(ver. 10). That was the full, complete "will of God" which Jesus
"came to do:"—to offer Himself; and, by the offering of Himself, to
sanctify, or consecrate, and render acceptable unto God, those
whom the Father had given to Him.
(2.) Look now—as so singularly confirmatory of the doctrine—to the
history of what immediately followed the prayer of Gethsemane; a
history in which the answer to the prayer, "Thy will be done,"—Thy
will be done by me,—may be read as in a brilliant mirror.
Immediately after the prayer in the garden, "a band of men and
officers from the chief priests and Pharisees cometh thither, with
lanterns, and torches, and weapons," to apprehend Him. He has to
provide for the "doing" of the Father's will in both its aspects; first,
as respects the placing in a clear light His own voluntary agency in
offering Himself; and secondly, as it respects the deliverance of His
disciples thereby. Accordingly, "He went forth and said unto them,
Whom seek ye? They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith
unto them, I am he. And Judas also that betrayed him stood with
them. As soon as he had said unto them, I am he, they went
backward and fell to the ground." He is not to be captured: He is to
surrender. For He is not to suffer merely, but to offer Himself in
mortal woe. An emanation of His divine majesty therefore goes
forth with power to fell His captors to the ground. They shall be
made to feel, and Judas, who stands by, shall be made to see—is it
not for that very reason that we are told that "Judas which betrayed
Him stood with them?"—that the traitor's wickedness in betrayal
was superfluous, and the captors' power and efforts useless against
one who is "doing" the will of God, and giving Himself unto death as
He will soon also give Himself in death. "The Good Shepherd giveth
His life." This is the will of God concerning Him—that "will" which
He came "to do."
But there is another part of the will of God to be provided for. "The
Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep." If Christ is now "to
do" the will of God in its completeness, He has to bring into play
that other side of it which Paul doctrinally presents when he says,
"By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Christ once for all." Jesus has not only to offer Himself, but to
offer Himself for the sheep. Accordingly, "Then asked He them
again, Whom seek ye? And they said, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus
answered, I have told you that I am he: if therefore ye seek me, let
these go their way; that the saying might be fulfilled which He
spake, Of those whom Thou hast given me I have lost none" (John
18:7–9).
Is not the prayer of Gethsemane answered? Has not the suppliant
been heard—heard in that He feared? Is He not strengthened—"to
do Thy will, O God?"
It was right that on the platform of visable events the personal will
and powerful agency of Christ himself should thus far be seen in the
transactions that immediately preceded His death. In His actual
death itself, indeed, the same palpable representation of His
spontaneous action and priestly agency could not, from the nature
of the case, be given. His body was subjected to restraint—restraint
from which His covenant-duty suffered Him not to free Himself,
even at the taunting cry, "If Thou be the Son of God, come down
from the cross: If He be the Christ, let Him save Himself." And the
crowning activity of His office was spiritual and of the soul. But in
the unseen spiritual world, while His body was hanging on the
Cross, He was "pouring out His soul unto death," in spontaneous
action of His own, as self-instigated, self-sustained, self-controlled
as was that of Aaron when he brought the goat on which Jehovah's
lot fell, and offered him as a sin-offering, and the goat on which the
lot fell to be the scape-goat, he presented alive before the Lord to
make an atonement with him, and let him go for a scape-goat into
the wilderness. No priest "standing daily ministering and offering
often times" was ever more free from cöercion in his office, or so
gloriously active in discharging it, as "this Man when He offered one
sacrifice for sins." Nor did "this Man, after He had offered one
sacrifice for sins, for ever sit down on the right hand of God" a more
free and more powerful agent than when He offered that sacrifice
which earned Him the throne. We speak of His "doing" and His
"dying." His dying was His grandest doing. The light and evidence of
His active obedience, instead of paling on the Cross, shines out
there most brilliantly of all,—shining down the darkness of death,
and of the frown of incensed justice, till the dark frown passes off
from the face of the Eternal Judge, and the light of a Father's
countenance is lifted on the obedient Son in the moment of His
saying, "Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit." The Father's
will is done. It is done by the Eternal Son, through the Eternal
Spirit. Consentient actings of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost fill the
death of Christ with action and with power unparalleled and
transcendent; and the Logos of the Cross is the power of God.
And now, in all this, have we misread the Cross of Christ? Have we
been unduly "glorying in the cross?" Have we attempted to
surround it with a dignity and power and victory and majesty—we
are weighing every word we pen: Have we attempted to surround it
with a dignity and power and victory and majesty, and priestly
energy, and kingly might, and brilliant revelation of unconquered
eternal life from the "Prince of Life" in His obedience unto death,
which do not intrinsically belong to it? If we have, let it be shown
where we have erred, and let the unauthorised excess of glory be
repudiated and removed. But if we have not, then may we not most
warrantably say, If any man come unto you and bring not this
doctrine, bid him not God speed?
Part Fourth
Pointing the Argument from Christ's Priestly Action
How the line of thought we have pursued may be pointed into an
argument for immediately and powerfully exposing all false and
defective views of the Atonement, it is scarcely necessary to
indicate,—the polemic use of this great truth being so direct and
obvious.
SOCINIANISM stands self-condemned by refusing it. Socinianism
does not acknowledge that Christ was a priest in His death, or prior
to His resurrection,—and, even then, a priest only metaphorically.
Mr ROBERTSON of Brighton, has denied all agency of Christ's own
in His death, in language of such violence and horror and
blasphemy, as almost silences all comment from the lips of piety for
ever. He has dared to say of the everlasting Son of the Father: "He
approached the whirling wheel of this world's evil, and was torn in
pieces!"
Mr MAURICE denies it by affirming that Christ's death was only
self-sacrifice, self-surrender, self-denial. If it was this sort of
sacrifice, and not a propitiatory sacrifice and offering for sin, then
Christ's own action cannot be recognised in it. Such sacrifice is
passivity, pure and simple. Action of His own in it there could not
possibly be,—save such as would resolve into suicide.
BUSHNELL makes the death of Christ a Governmental Display. Be
it granted, for argument's sake. But governmental display is not
action, though it may be the result of action. Of what action, in this
case, is it the result? Will Bushnell find any? Will he reexamine his
own book, and his own mind, and see what room he has left in his
theory for the truth, that, in dying, Christ not merely suffered but
did the will of God? It is needless to say that He did that will of God
which appointed Him to make a display of the principles of God's
moral government. What did He do to achieve that display? And
Bushnell must simply answer, He suffered death. Yes; suffered.
That is all that he can predicate. He must fall over into the theory of
mere suffering, mere passivity; denial of priestly action, and à
fortiori, of priesthood; mere passivity, which ignores the victory of
the Cross, accepts, defeats, and canonises the shame.
YOUNG explains Atonement by the notion of Moral Influence. Be it
so again, for argument's sake. But the exercise of moral influence—
was that the intrinsic nature of any agency of Christ's own, in virtue
whereof it could be said, He dismissed His spirit, He poured out His
soul? It might follow, as result, from His exemplary patience in
suffering death; but it could not be identical with, nor explain, the
never-to-be-rëexemplified deed by which He "gave Himself." There
is neither explanation nor room in this theory for priestly agency on
the Cross at all.
Others—to make the Atonement indefinite and universal, save as
special grace may subsequently apply it to the elect—tell us that
Christ's death, or Christ by His death, removed legal bars. The
argument with such as speak thus might be long; but it may be
short. I ask them, Was "removing of bars" the immediate and
intrinsic action of Christ's person in dying on the Cross? Was this
the action in and by which Emmanuel died? Did He die in and by
removing bars? No, they will say: for they must reverse the terms:
"He removed legal bars by dying." Precisely: they are speaking of
result—the result of His death. But I demand a scriptural, doctrinal
description of the very and immediate act of Christ in His dying, and
in His doing the will of God in and by His death. And, with the
Scripture in our hands, the demand which a searching theology will
never fail thus to make, is met,—the question answered. There was
immediate action of Christ in His death; and it was official and
public action. Private, or personal, or individual it could not be; for
in that case His holiness was at once a legal bar to divine justice
smiting Him in death, and a moral bar to His unauthorised parting
with His life Himself. It was public and official action. He was not
merely charged with a cause, but with an office, and with a people in
that office to personate; not merely with a cause to maintain, but
with the interests of a people whom He should represent, and
redeem by representing them. His action was priestly and
representative action; representative of persons—of persons
definitely, numerically, individually known:—"I know my sheep."
And the representative priestly action in itself was simply what
Jesus adds:—"And I lay down my life for the sheep." That is not
result; result never can in the nature of things express the intrinsic
causal action. That is not result: it is Christ's immediate dying
action itself. And it is Redemption—not removal of bars. The very
and immediate action of Christ in dying for His people is
intrinsically their redemption. He offers Himself to God for them a
sacrifice for their sins; and herein He offers them to God with
Himself. And it cannot be too emphatically affirmed, or too
gratefully believed, or too resolutely contended, that this is their
redemption—their redemption, efficacious, complete, and infallible.
While mere "removal of bars" is a mockery, and the theory thereof
leaves utterly unanswered the question, What did Christ do in
dying? It recognises no action, and consequently no priestly action,
in the Cross. It overthrows the Priesthood of our Lord
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2024 11:07:34 GMT -5
CHAPTER V: ATONEMENT AND
INTERCESSION:
I. THE DIRECT ARGUMENT
THEOLOGY is robbed of her regalia, and of her finest glories, when
the positive priestly agency of Christ in His death fails to be
recognised. To vindicate, in that case, the all-sufficiency of knowing
Christ precisely as "Christ crucified," becomes impossible. "Glorying
in the Cross" implies that we recognise it as the life-centre of
redeeming action, and the life-centre of the exercise of all Christ's
offices as our Redeemer. How the prophetic and kingly offices have
each of them its root and rise in the priestly office we have already
seen; and hence if the priestly action of our Lord in His death is
denied or dishonoured, His action as a Prophet and His action as a
King are à fortiori denied and dishonoured simultaneously. The
dying Redeemer cannot be recognised as exercising in His death the
offices of a Prophet and a King by those who fail to see Him acting
as a Priest. If He is not acting as a Priest, He is not acting at all; and
in that case, possibly, His death may become a means of instruction,
and may ground a claim to a kingdom; but the dying Redeemer is
not, in and by dying, fulfilling the duties of a Prophet, and a King.
But Christ crucified—Christ precisely in being crucified—is not a
mere occasion of enlightenment and of instruction: He is an
Instructor; and He is acting His office. He is not a revelation only,
but a Revealer. He is not merely a speculum—to use the language of
Polhill. He is not, in His death, a mere mirror, a text-book, an
objective instrument of instruction. He is, and He is acting as, the
Instructor and Prophet of the Church.
The Spirit, in testifying of the sufferings of Christ, hath very
expressly said so. In the twenty-second Psalm,—of which Messiah's
soul took infeftment, as all His own in death, by audibly exclaiming
in its opening verse, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?"—we hear Him, as they part His garments and cast lots on His
vesture (ver. 18), and as His "soul" gains dominion in the prayer of
faith over the "sword," and His "darling" deliverance from "the
power of the dog" (ver. 20), saved "from the lion's mouth, and from
the horns of the unicorns" (ver. 21);—we hear Him thus in death,
and in His triumph over death, and because thereof, asserting His
discharge of His prophetic office:—"I will declare thy name unto my
brethren" (ver. 22). According to His prayer "unto Him that was able
to save Him from death" (Heb. 5:7), He is saved from death before
He dies. He shall die, not beneath the hand of death, but in His own
powerful priestly action,—in the sun-light of eternal life. And now,
His Priesthood's triumphant power being vindicated, His first care,
before He gives Himself in death, is to vindicate His Prophetic duty:
"I will declare thy name unto my brethren," while He asserts, also,
His high priestly guidance of His Father's worship, as Head and
Leader of the many priests whom He is sanctifying while He
sanctifies Himself: "In the midst of the Church will I sing praise
unto thee" (ver. 22). Most appropriately, therefore, does Paul, to the
Hebrews, quote this glorious utterance of the Cross (Ps. 22:21; Heb.
2:10–12), in proof that the Captain of Salvation was "made perfect
by suffering." He sees the perfect and irrefragable grounding of all
Christ's office, as our Redeemer, and the triumphant action of all its
function, in the Cross; while he assigns Him a title of victory—"the
Captain of Salvation"—which brings into view, as His victory by
death cannot fail to do, His Kingly office also very specially. For by
death He destroyed him that had the power of death. By the Cross
He spoiled principalities and powers, triumphing over them, and
making a show of them openly (Heb. 2:14; Col. 2:15). He not merely
suffered, so as to found a claim to a kingdom; but in active offering
He triumphed as a King.
It appears, then, that the evidence and glory of all the offices of
Christ are obscured, when His death is represented as what He
merely suffered, instead of that which He actively achieved. Nor is
the evil to be redressed by insisting, however emphatically, that He
suffered voluntarily. It is not enough to say that His death was
voluntary. However strongly that may be put, it can import no more
than that He suffered with His own will. But He not merely suffered
with His will,—"led as a lamb to the slaughter, and, as a sheep
before her shearers is dumb, opening not His mouth" (Isa. 53:7). He
offered by His will, as a Priest "pouring out His soul unto death"
(Isa. 53:12). And to conceal this dying action of Messiah is to cloud
the evidence of all His offices—to segregrate and seclude them all
from the Cross—to cut them off from the very spring and life-centre
of their action. How deplorable and desperate, therefore, must be
the the exigencies of those views of the Atonement which
necessitate conclusions or consequences such as these!
We might, at great length, in this manner investigate and expose the
deranging influence of false and defective views of the Atonement
on our most fundamental conceptions of all the offices of Christ.
But we prefer restricting the investigation within the limits of the
Priestly office. We proceed, therefore, to lay down and defend the
following position, namely,—
That Theology must demand a Doctrine of Atonement that shall
ground a valid and Scriptural Doctrine of the Intercession.
It will be easy to show that this most legitimate demand cannot be
met, except in the view of the Catholic doctrine, that the Atonement
is a definite, true, proper, and perfect propitiatory sacrifice and
offering for the sins of the elect. And we are the more anxious to
conduct this argument with some care and accuracy, because we are
strongly convinced that, if logically and clearly put, it should have a
good deal of weight with those who desire to be in accord with
sound theology generally, and yet feel tempted to desiderate some
aspect of universality in the Atonement inconsistent with its
infallible efficaciousness for all for whom it has been offered.
Systematic theology has been accustomed to establish, first a
Scriptural doctrine of the Atonement, and then pass on to the
doctrine of the Intercession. Unquestionably this is the direct and
natural order of the discussion. And we shall adopt it in the first
instance, to show how naturally, and with what ease, we reach a
true and consistent theory of the Intercession by simply pursuing
the train of thought we have been prosecuting on the Atonement,
considered as priestly action on the part of our Lord. But while we
are the thorough advocates of systematic theology and of its wellestablished methods, we would not hold ourselves in bondage to
them. And, in particular, on the present theme, we think the method
may be, with considerable advantage, reversed. Instead of arguing
from the nature of the Atonement to the Intercession, we may argue
back from the Intercession to the Atonement, to show what its
nature and extent must be: not, of course, by reasoning in a circle,
but by first establishing—apart from the doctrine of the Atonement
—certain positions that must hold good in reference to the
Intercession, and then inquiring what light the demonstration, thus
far conducted, casts on the nature of the Atonement. We propose,
then, to examine both the direct and the inverse arguments,—as in
the light of this explanation we may be allowed to call them.
In the first place, however, there are certain preliminary
considerations equally applicable and preparatory to the conduct of
both these arguments, because they justify that assertion of a
relation between the Atonement and the Intercession which is
implied in arguing from the one to the other, in whatever order the
argument is taken. To these, therefore, we must, in the first
instance, briefly solicit attention.
Part First
Atonement and Intercession Interblended
I. First of all, we lay it down that the Intercession unquestionably
pertains to the Priestly office. For it meets all the requirements of
the definition or description of priesthood given by Paul in such
orderly fashion when he says: "Every high priest taken from among
men is ordained for men, in things pertaining to God, that he may
offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins" (Heb. 5:1). The Intercession
of Christ, we say, exactly meets all these requirements.
First: Our Lord is "ordained" to intercede. Christ glorified not
Himself to be made an Intercessor in particular, any more than to
be made a High Priest in general. His intercession is authorised. It
is official duty assigned to Him by the supreme authority of
Godhead, and undertaken by Him in the Covenant or "Counsel of
Peace." In a word, He glorified Him to be made an Intercessor, who
said unto Him, in the oracle of the second Psalm: "Ask of me, and I
will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost
parts of the earth for thy possession."
Secondly: The Intercession meets the priestly requirement of being
"ordained for men." It is representative action; it is grounded on
personal relation; it contemplates personal interests—the interests
of persons definitely designated and known. There is scarcely a
Scriptural affirmation of this function which does not speak of it as
representative and founded on personal relation. "Christ is entered
into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us"
(Heb. 9:24). "He is able to save unto the uttermost them that come
unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for
them" (Heb. 7:25). "He made intercession for the transgressors"
(Isa. 53:12). "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It
is Christ that maketh intercession for us" (Rom. 8:34). "We have an
advocate" (1 John 2:1). "Thine they were, and thou gavest them me"
(John 17:6). "Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me be
with me" (John 17:24). "And another angel came and stood at the
altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much
incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon
the golden altar which is before the throne" (Rev. 8:3). The function
is evidently grounded on personal relation, and its action is
evidently on behalf of persons and their personal interests.
Thirdly: It is "in things pertaining to God"—τὰ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν; things
towards God. It is directed towards God; it has God for its object.
Nothing can be plainer than this in the Intercession of Christ. It is
directed towards the supreme Godhead; and nothing can be more
plainly or more intensely priestly than that characteristic. It is the
one fundamental distinction between the other offices and the
sacerdotal. The Priesthood is a function "in things towards God"
(Heb. 2:17; 5:1); while the objects of His Prophetic and Kingly
functions are the souls of His people whom He enlightens, governs,
and protects.
Fourthly: The Intercession meets also the closing requirement of
the definition of priesthood; "That He may offer both gifts and
sacrifices for sins." In His intercession, as in His atonement, Christ
is an offerer; His action is the action of offering. He offers or
presents Himself—Himself a lamb as it had been slain—Himself in
exaltation, as on Calvary He had offered Himself in suffering. The
Father exclaims at His advent to the heavenly throne: "Who is this
that hath engaged his heart to approach unto me? saith the Lord"
(Jer. 30:21); and the efficacy of His approach and offering is the
bond of certainty to the everlasting covenant, and its glorious allembracing promise: "And ye shall be my people, and I will be your
God" (ver. 22). For, concerning this approach, Jesus had said, "And
now, O Father, I come to thee,"—I come unto Thee through sacrifice
and death, to appear in the presence of God for them. And when He
comes, He offers "gifts and sacrifice." For there is "given" unto the
angel of the covenant "much incense"—the incense of His own
infinite merits, given to Him, in the sense of being owned, admitted,
and acknowledged by divine justice in its infinite value and
meritoriousness—"that He should offer it with the prayers of all
saints" (Rev. 8:3).
Thus every possible requirement, to the most minute feature, is
found to meet in the Intercession of our Lord, assigning to Him
therefore beyond dispute a function of His sacerdotal office.
II. The Atonement and the Intercession being thus comprehended
in the category of one and the same office—justifying of course
some kind of argument from the one to the other—it is not
wonderful that we find them constantly in juxtaposition, in distinct
and various Scriptural assertions. Of these none is more remarkable
than that of the apostle John: "We have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, who is also the propitiation for
our sins" (1 John 2:1, 2). The same connection—indicating how
thoroughly the Intercession belongs to the category of the priestly,
the representative, the judicial, and the "things towards God"—is
evident in the answer to the challenge, "Who shall lay anything to
the charge of God's elect? Who shall condemn?" The answer, drawn
first from the Atonement, is not held to be complete till the
Intercession is brought into view: "It is Christ that died; yea, rather,
that is risen again; who is even at the right hand of God: who also
maketh intercession for us." Then, nothing can be finer in this view
than to see how the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah—the very rubric, so
to speak, of vicarious offering—culminates in the Intercession,
riveting therein the great propitiatory offering to the throne of God
on high: "Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and
he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out
his soul unto death; and he was numbered with the transgressors;
and he bare the sins of many, and made intercession for the
transgressors." Well may the next utterance of the Spirit of
inspiration be: "Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth
into singing, and cry aloud" (Isa. 54:1).
The same intimate connection between the Atonement and
Intercession is seen by considering how and by what Christ entered
into heaven as an intercessor; for if we enter into the holiest and
draw near by the blood of Jesus, and by a new and living way
through the veil, that is to say, His flesh, it is because He hath
consecrated or initiated this way for us (Heb. 10:19, 20). By His
body and by His blood, separated in His atoning sacrifice, in His
own act of offering Himself,—thereby did He go unto God, as an
Intercessor. For "Christ being come, an high priest of good things to
come, first, by a greater and a more perfect tabernacle, not made
with hands, that is to say, not of this building [but by His own body,
namely]; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but, secondly, by
His own blood, He entered in once into the holy place" (Heb. 9:11,
12).
It may seem superfluous to dwell on this at such length. But if we
are to argue from the nature of the Atonement to the true doctrine
of the Intercession, or from the doctrine of the Intercession to the
nature and extent of the Atonement, it is desirable in the first
instance to place very prominently before our minds the intimate
relation that subsists between them.
III. For this reason we must proceed a step further. We have seen
that neither Paul, nor Isaiah, nor John, having spoken of the
Atonement, imagines that he is introducing a generically new thing
when he introduces a reference to the Intercession. They are, in
their theology, manifestly most intimately related, and, in fact,
homogeneous. But this is not all. Scripture warrants us to affirm
something more than very intimate connection. That does not
exhaust the Scriptural representation. And, indeed, it seems
impossible to exhaust the profound truth on this point without
betaking ourselves to the language of paradox. Nor need that excite
surprise; for in all the more profound departments of thought, the
occurrence of paradox is a primâ facie evidence of accuracy rather
than of error. The paradox to which we seem in this case to be
driven would be something like this: The essence of the
Intercession is Atonement; and the Atonement is essentially an
Intercession. Or, perhaps, to put the paradox more mildly: The
Atonement is real,—real sacrifice and offering, and not mere passive
endurance,—because it is in its very nature an active and infallible
Intercession; while, on the other hand, the Intercession is real
intercession,—judicial, representative, and priestly intercession, and
not a mere exercise of influence,—because it is essentially an
Atonement or substitutionary oblation, once perfected on Calvary,
now perpetually presented and undergoing perpetual acceptance in
heaven.
Now this will become evident if we can adduce one passage of
Scripture which attributes the whole of our salvation to the
Atonement, and another which attributes the whole of our salvation
to Intercession. And such passages will easily occur to every one
familiar with the Scriptures. As to the former: "By his one offering
he hath for ever perfected them that are sanctified" (Heb. 10:14). As
to the latter: "He is able to save unto the uttermost those that come
unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for
them" (Heb. 7:25).
On reading these utterances of Inspiration, it is natural, or rather
inevitable to ask,—If our salvation, even unto its "perfection," is
secured by the "one offering," what need of the Intercession? and, if
our salvation, even "unto the uttermost," is secured by the
Intercession, what need of the Atonement? How, or on what
principle, can the Offering and the Intercession thus apparently
mutually exclude and ignore each other? The answer is, that
apparently they mutually exclude each other, because they do really
mutually and reciprocally include each other. The offering by which
alone we are perfected is not the passive endurance or suffering of
the cross, but that active priestly offering of the cross which is
prolonged without suffering into the function of the Intercession.
And the Intercession, by which alone we are saved, even to the
uttermost, is just the perpetual presentation of the "continual
burnt-offering" of Calvary, which, as an active offering subsists in
perpetuity, and belongs to eternity, while the suffering of the cross
belongs to history and the past, and the Atonement, had it been
mere suffering, would have belonged to the past too. All this seems
to be too evident to require that we should insist upon it, and, even
before we touch our argument, whether the direct or the inverse, it
must be obvious how strong a preliminary light it in beginning to
throw on the truth of the co-extensiveness of Christ's two functions
as a Priest.
For as in the typical Dispensation, so in Christ the Antitype. The two
altars of Sacrifice and of Incense were combined and correlative
instruments of official action to the priest in the one complete office
of his priesthood; and they constituted component and
indispensable factors of one complete act of sacrificial worship. The
same functionary, or office-bearer, transacted at both: he transacted
for the self-same person or persons: the blood of the self-same
sacrifice that he had slain and offered on the one altar, he sprinkled
or put upon the horns of the other. To dislocate or derange this coordination would be to negative his official action in its intrinsic
import, to annihilate the gracious results of his priestly
intervention, and indeed to evert his office utterly. His action at the
altar of Atonement was pre-requisite to his approach to the altar of
Incense; and the successful achievement which signalised his action
at the latter revealed beyond the possibility of doubt the nature and
efficacy of the services which he had accomplished at the former;
while only in virtue of the two, in their combination and synthesis,
was Aaron's priesthood a real priesthood at all.
And what, then, shall we say of any and all of those schemes of
thought on the Atonement which, ignoring the priestly action of
Christ on Calvary, and taking account of His sufferings only,
derange the whole doctrine of type and antitype? For on such a
scheme Aaron, who was never called as a priest to suffer, could be
no type of Christ, and Christ no antitype of Aaron; but Aaron's
priesthood must be owned to have been real, and Christ's to be
merely figurative. Aaron was no sufferer at either altar: he was an
offerer at both. In respect of suffering, at the altar of sacrifice, the
slain animal was the type of Christ, the Lamb of Cod, that beareth
away the sin of the world. But at both altars Aaron was the type of
Christ; and as an offerer both in sacrifice and intercession, Christ is
the antitype of Aaron. As in the type, therefore, so in the antitype;
the two functions of propitiation and intercession interblend and
interpenetrate each other, as constituting the indispensable factors
of one complete priestly redeeming transaction unto the glory of
God in the highest. The propitiation transpires in the energy of
intercession; and the Intercession is transacted in the merit of
propitiation. In offering Himself He offered up supplications with
strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from
death, to sustain Him through the Eternal Spirit to offer Himself to
God, and by obedience in the things which He suffered to make Him
perfect, and the Author of eternal salvation. So that in the vital
power of His offering in death, we see the energy of prayer; while
the intercession in like manner is in the merit of the one offering in
which alike the Captain of Salvation, and they also that are
sanctified, were for ever perfected (Heb. 2:10; 10:14). A more
complete interblending cannot be imagined; and no doctrine of
Atonement can be correct which does not provide for recognising it,
or which is not amenable to the conditions and considerations
which it must necessitate and enforce.
Part Second
Transition from Atonement to Intercession
We are now in circumstances to see how theology effects the
transition from a true doctrine of Atonement to a clear and
consistent conception of the Intercession. And, following in the line
of thought we have been pursuing, that transition is natural and
easy.
Let it be admitted that, in the death of Christ, we have not a mere
infliction of the penalty of the law on an unmurmuring sufferer, but
an active and vicarious oblation of Himself as a propitiatory
sacrifice for the sins of those for whom, as a representative and
priest, Christ is now acting; let the idea of active obedience and
oblation on the cross be that on which we fasten, in contemplating
the sacrifice of Calvary; and we are already in possession of the
fundamental and constituting notion of the Intercession. For we
have only to consider the sufferings—amidst which this active
priestly service prevails to maintain its energy, and through the
ordeal of which it achieves its triumph—as passing away. We have
only to remove the veil of shame, the cloud of ignominy, the burden
of the curse; or rather we have only to look on and see these
triumphantly removed by our High Priest's quenchless power in
giving Himself to God, as He exclaims, "It is finished," "Father, into
thy hands I commit my spirit:" and the priestly duty which we thus
perceive that death, instead of interrupting, only perfects and
glorifies into a true and proper and complete propitiation, instead of
being suspended by His atoning death, passes over through that
death of Atonement, and is prolonged precisely into what Scripture
calls the Intercession. Every active principle that was in operation in
Emmanuel's soul on the Cross passes over without a break, and
blends into the permanent function of Intercession. His
acknowledgment of His representative relationship, and His
unflinching resolution to abide by it;—His forthputting of priestly
energy;—His love to His Father;—His love to His people, collectively
and individually (Eph. 5:25; Gal. 2:20);—His delight in the
everlasting covenant;—His loyal recognition of the Divine law, both
in the rectitude of its commandment, and in the moral necessity of
its curse, as He, like none else, has by willingly enduring it, said
Amen to the curse;—His love of righteousness and hatred of
iniquity (Ps. 45:7):—in a word, as we have said, every active
principle that was at work in His oblation, when through the Eternal
Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God, continues
uninterruptedly through death in operation still; and acting in the
ever-living person of Emmanuel, the true God and Eternal Life,
considered still as a Priest, a Priest for ever, after the order of
Melchisedec, this, in the essence of it, is the Intercession. There is
nothing intrinsically new needing to be inaugurated. No generically
different function has now to be assumed. The priestly activities of
His spirit have simply to be prolonged, liberated from the
concealing clouds and depressing burdens of His estate of
humiliation, and glorified by His resurrection, ascension, and
session at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens in His estate
of exaltation and reward: and without the introduction of any
fundamentally new idea, we have the essence of the Intercession in
the activity of the victorious oblation of the Cross. We say in this we
have the essence of the Intercession. And that being gained and
conserved, the secondary aspects of the Intercession come quite
naturally and easily into view.
(1.) Thus, in the first place: Introduce the idea of an accuser and an
accusation. The Intercession then becomes an Advocacy: "We have
an advocate with the Father." Accusation is in the category of the
judicial So is that intercession into which we have seen that a true
propitiatory oblation so directly and so simply blends. And its
judicial aspect is only somewhat more plainly brought out when it
asserts for itself the action of advocacy.
An instance of the intercessor acting as an advocate, we have in the
history of Simon Peter: "Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have
you that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee that
thy faith fail not" (Luke 22:31, 32); and another in the case of
Joshua the high priest, "standing before the angel of the Lord, and
Satan standing at his right hand to resist him. And the Lord said,
The Lord rebuke thee, Satan; the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem,
rebuke thee: is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" (Zech. 3:1,
2.)
(2.) Again: Introduce the idea of the dangers, wants, necessities, and
sorrows of His people; and the Intercession appears as a Ministry of
sympathy and loving care: "For we have not an high priest which
cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities; but was in all
points tempted like as we are, yet without sin: For in that he himself
hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to succour them that are
tempted" (Heb. 4:15; 2:18). This sympathy and care of the
Intercessor for His afflicted Church is represented in vision to the
prophet Zechariah, as going forth in a supplication for Jerusalem in
her captivity,—and Him the Father heareth alway: "The Lord
answered the Angel that talked with me with good and comfortable(3.) Once more: Introduce the idea of the Church as a spirtual body
organised for the worship of God; and the Intercession appears as
Headship of Worship—worship conducted under the immediate and
supreme responsibility of the High Priest of Zion, who hath
condescended to say of himself and of his people, "We know whom
we worship" (John 4:22). In this headship and ministry of worship,
"there is given unto him much incense that he should offer it with
the prayers of all saints" (Rev. 8:3). Nor does he disdain to lead the
praises also of the Church, saying: "In the midst of the Church will I
sing praise unto thee" (Ps. 22:22; Heb. 2:12). It is thus that the
Church of God constitutes a royal priesthood, acting in the
fellowship and concert of the heavenly ministry of her great High
Priest within the veil. Having this great High Priest over the house
of God, she draws near with a true heart. Having Jesus, the Son of
God, who as a great High Priest has passed into the heavens, she
comes boldly to the throne of grace. She enters Heaven by faith and
prayer and song. Heaven is her only Temple now: and she worships
there among the wing-veiled choirs of the Seraphim and "before the
gods" (Ps. 138:1). She is infinitely independent, therefore, of the
earthly ornaments and "beggarly elements" of a ritualistic service.
The King of glory, the Divine Mediator of her prayers and Leader of
her songs, is "for beauty and for glory, for excellency and for
comeliness" both to her and to her services too. Who is this King of
glory? The Lord of hosts: He is the King of glory. Lift up your heads,
O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors!
Part Third
Pointing the direct Argument from Intercession
Each of these secondary aspects of the Intercession opens up trains
of thought which belong, in their details, more to the field of
homiletics than to that of systematic theology. But it is good to see
how the true foundation of them rests in a correct apprehension of
what the real essence of the Intercession is: and that, we have seen,
is reached by bringing into prominence the active obedience of
Christ in His propitiation for our sins.
But as to all the other theories of the Atonement—all more or less
antagonistic to that which we have been attempting to vindicate—
how are they to find their way to any consistent theory of the
Intercession? We believe they must all stand condemned by the
confusion and perplexity which they introduce into our conceptions
of Christ's whole priestly office; and, more particularly, by the
hopeless gulf of separation which they interpose between the
Atonement and Intercession of our Lord Self-denial—self-sacrifice—
sacrifice as a "law of being!"—example—martyrdom—moral
influence—governmental display—"removal of bars"—"opening of
doors:" take any, take all the ever-shifting aspects of the chameleon
phantasmagoria by which men rack their invention to evade the
glory of the Cross: and by what theological alchymy, by what
spiritual Rosicrucianism, will you transmute them into a ministry of
Intercession? We have already classed them all together, under one
common feature by which they are all alike distinguished, however
in other respects they may differ: they make no account of Christ's
activity in His death. The moment that that is admitted it is seen to
be inevitable that Christ must have acted as a representative of
persons, and offered Himself in priestly duty an oblation and
propitiation for their sins unto their unconditional and infallible
salvation. There is no room for universality here, other than the
universality of the Catholic Church invisible, on whose behalf Christ
prolongs His oblationary priestly service into an ever-living ministry
of Intercession. The Intercession, therefore, and the Atonement are
on this view most manifestly co-extensive; and the whole scheme of
thought is traversed by making the one more limited or unlimited
than the other.
But now, take the death of Christ as mere suffering, and how is any
valid idea of intercession to be developed out of that? How is the
transition to be made? Considered as mere suffering, there is no
continuity possible to admit of any transition. Christ's death, in that
light, is a pause; and a new beginning has to be found, if any priestly
intercession is to be affirmed. If He was a priest before, His
priesthood by such a death meets a check—nay, is brought to an
end. He dies out of His office, as Aaron did, if He does not die into a
more manifestly triumphant exercise of it. And in that case His
office must require to be constituted anew.
Some, indeed, would seem quite willing to accept that conclusion,
and willing to regard the resurrection of our Lord as the occasion on
which His office was reconstituted and resumed. But in that case
they must imagine that by His resurrection His person was
reconstituted as well as His priestly office—that, in rising from the
dead, He resumed His body into union with His person. As if His
dead body in the grave had not continued in union with His
Godhead, which is the seat of His personality, as much as His
disembodied spirit did!—His body and soul, each united
indissolubly with His Godhead, though separated in death from
each other. Was the Word made flesh a second time?
But apart from that: where is there a single syllable in Holy
Scripture to indicate the inauguration, after Christ's death, of any
official function whatsover, priestly, or kingly, or prophetic? Yet this
is inexorably necessary if an intercession consequent upon
atonement is to be acknowledged, and that atonement was a mere
endurance. You cannot frame the suffering of death into a living
ministry of intercession. You may look upon it as an argument, but
no ingenuity can transchange it into a ministry. If suffering
therefore was all, then, when it passes away, a wholly new thing
must come into play, if there is to be anything called advocacy or
intercession. But recognise offering in suffering: the suffering may
pass away, but the living attitude of offering continues, yea, "ever
liveth," and henceforth carrieth in it for evermore the boundless
merit that was in the suffering which is past: and the priestly
offerer, whose priestly activity has never for a moment been
suspended, presents Himself before the throne, both "a Lamb as it
had been slain"—in that attitude an objective plea—and also a high
priest, the living minister who presents the plea; able to save unto
the uttermost them that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever
liveth to make intercession.
We have almost been betrayed already into the inverse argument—
that which leads over from the only admissible conception of the
Intercession to the true character and idea of the Atonement which
in the order of nature must have preceded it. But that argument is
so interesting and instructive, that in order to avoid such extreme
condensation as would be unfavourable to clearness, we must
devote a fresh chapter to the consideration of it.
words" (chap. 1:13)
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2024 11:14:29 GMT -5
CHAPTER VI: ATONEMENT AND INTERCESSION:
II. THE INVERSE ARGUMENT
IF the transition from the Atoning Sacrifice to the Intercession is
such as we have attempted to establish; if the Intercession is simply
the same official action carried forward in its triumph from the field
of suffering and humiliation into that of exaltation and heavenly
glory,—fundamentally the same priestly activities being in operation
still; what evidence is there that these priestly activities have in the
moment of their triumph, and because of it, been narrowed and
contracted from the wide limits, or rather the want of limits, of an
indefinite and universal atonement into an intercession, which, on
all hands, is admitted to concern those only who are ultimately
benefited and saved by it? Surely this is a question which may well
give pause to the advocates of an unlimited atonement. We may
well ask them to produce from Scripture some indication of this
strange result, if not some justifying reason for a restriction so
curious and ungracious occurring in Christ's priestly function in the
very moment of its victory. Assuredly it would be extremely strange,
if exactly when the priestly work of Christ passes through its one
terrible ordeal of the Cross, it should emerge with its limits
enormously contracted;—if henceforth, in its dignity and triumph, it
should be far narrower in its relations and actings than when it had
to contend with circumstances of conflict, and shame, and woe.
Strange, if,—whereas, while it was clouded and burdened with the
darkening and crushing curse due to sin, it had equal regard to all
who were in that same condition,—now, when it is liberated from
the burden, and has emerged from the cloud, vast multitudes, to
whom an interest in the conflict had been assigned, are excluded
from all interest in the victory! Does this look like a triumph of
grace? Does a king count a campaign glorious from which he
emerges with a narrower national territory than before?—We
profess ourselves unable to see wherein this simple illustration
does injustice to the doctrine we are criticising.
There is, in fact, no escape from the awkward predicament in which
that doctrine is thus landed, except by denying that the relation
between Atonement and Intercession is such as we have
represented, and by finding some other bridge of transition by
which to pass over from the one to the other. What that may be, we
profess ourselves incompetent to discover. The advocates of
universal atonement, we are persuaded, will find it difficult alike to
discover or invent; and we trust, in the meantime, to show reason to
preclude all argument in any such direction. And this we hope to
accomplish by inverting the argument which connects the
Atonement and the Intercession, and by showing what features an
intercession that is worthy of the character of God, must postulate
in that atonement with which it professes to be related, and on
which it professes to be based.
Resigning, then, all benefits from what we may believe we have
established concerning the true nature of the Atonement; and
beginning with such simple affirmation of Christ's Intercession as
that of Paul, when he says, that "He maketh intercession for us;" let
us see how, from this starting-point, we reach by another route the
Scriptural theory of a proper and definite propitiation for sin.
The most general conception we can form of Intercession is that of
an intervention, or interposition, or beneficent ministration,
designed for the procurement and bestowal of advantages not
otherwise to be obtained, or not otherwise so readily or so fully. If it
be admitted that they are not otherwise to be obtained at all—and in
the present case that ought clearly to be the assumption—the
argument is rendered so much the easier. Coming nearer to the
point, and seeking a more distinct and specific conception of the
actual Intercession of our Lord, it would seem that there are only
two alternative ideas of its exact nature possible. Either, first, Christ
exercises influence with God; or, secondly, He presents a plea,
which, according to God's own appointment, He has officially
brought into existence as a ground or reason, in virtue of which it is
consistent with righteousness for God to bestow blessings which
could not otherwise be bestowed.
These seem to be the two alternatives; and they are to be considered
as contrasted and mutually exclusive of each other. No doubt, in
vague use of language, the presentation of such a plea as that
contemplated in the second alternative might be called, in a sense,
an exercise of influence. But it would be an improper use of the
phrase. And, at all events, the phrase is used here as excluding a
very precise predicament which is contrasted with what the vague
idea of influence implies. We shall attempt to show that the first of
these views of the Intercession is inadmissible, being wholly
unworthy of the Divine character; that we are therefore shut up to
the second alternative idea of the Intercession; and we shall then
show that all the false and defective views of the Atonement have
this common feature, that they fail to provide such a plea or ground
as the only admissible idea of Intercession demands, and that they
shut up their advocates to the inadmissible theory of mere
influence.
Part First
Intercession considered as an Exercise of Influence
The idea that Christ's intercession is not the presentation of a
righteous objective plea, but the exercise of a subjective influence, is
one which we must resolutely repudiate, and which, with that view,
we most relentlessly examine and expose. We would account this
unnecessary, were it not that we mean to show that such a view of
the Intercession is logically the inevitable landing-place of all
erroneous doctrines of the Atonement. But, in order to render it
plain that that alone is conclusive evidence of their erroneousness,
we shall not consider it superfluous to follow out this false view of
the Intercession to its inevitable and fatal consequences.
Those who regard Christ in His Intercession as exercising some
influence with the Father are, of course, shut up to the dilemma
that the Father was either antecedently willing, or antecedently
unwilling, to bestow whatever this influence is exerted to procure.
And it seems to matter little which horn they elect.
I. Is it said that the Father, apart from, and prior to, this exercise of
influence on the part of the Son, is unwilling? Then—
(1.) Such a relation as this implies may be consistent with the
nature and character of created finite beings—diverse in will, and
deficient or limited in goodness, power, and wisdom; but it is
destructive of our idea of Divine persons. The Father and the Son,
with the Holy Spirit, are three persons in the unity of the Godhead,
of one substance, power, and eternity. The Incarnation of the
eternal Word is without prejudice to this, the inviolable constitution
of the Godhead; so also is His office, in all its range, and every one
of its functions or actings. It is inconceivable that He should assume
any office or position that could prejudice the great truth which, in
the days of His flesh, and while exercising His office, He sedulously
affirmed: "I and my Father are one." God is "of one mind, and who
can turn Him?" But if God the Son could turn the mind of God the
Father, then God is not of one mind, neither are the Son and the
Father one.
(2.) Such Influence is inconsistent with the idea of office,
authorisation, and appointment. It is inconceivable that the
unwilling Father should appoint His Son to the office of rendering
Him willing to do that which He is antecedently unwilling to do.
Such procedure is not only inconceivable in the case of Divine
persons, but in the case even of rational created beings. An
intercession of mere influence, therefore, represents the Son, the
man Christ Jesus, as glorifying Himself to be made an Intercessor.
But this is in flagrant contradiction to the general allegation of the
Holy Spirit, that "no man taketh this office upon him, save he that is
called of God, as was Aaron," as well as the express application of
that indispensable requisite to this Divine Intercessor in particular:
"So Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest, but he
that said unto him, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee"
(Heb. 5:4, 5). Surely it is unnecessary to affirm that Christ's
covenant appointment to the priesthood, proves that the Father was
willing to bestow all that should be sued out by the priestly
Intercessor, and required no influence, and, indeed, no intercession,
to render Him willing.
(3.) Such Influence is derogatory to the Divine goodness,
beneficence, and mercy. It presupposes the Divine Father as
needing to be mollified, pleaded with, and prevailed upon, to
entertain placable disposition and merciful designs towards His
creatures. Whatever ideas of salvation, as something good and
merciful, it can contemplate, it represents them as not originating
with the Godhead, but as requiring to be urged upon God's notice,
His acceptance, His concurrence, and His will. This is the view of
the Divine character which many opponents of the doctrine of the
Atonement charge that doctrine with countenancing. Against that
doctrine it is groundlessly and slanderously alleged. Of their own
views it is a necessary consequence. And we shall prove that, when
we show that their views shut them up to this Influence theory of
the Intercession.
(4.) Such Influence is derogatory to the Divine justice. It is a dictate
of the moral sense of mankind that the action of justice is deranged
when personal influence is admitted to have play in affecting its
administration. It is one of the plainest and most obvious forms of
the corruption of justice. It is only when justice is not traversed,
and, indeed, is not concerned, that even among finite creatures
personal influence is considered as admissible. There is nothing of
which the Minister of Justice is more jealous to purge himself, than
just the idea that he could be supposed open to such influence on
the part of others, or willing to exercise it himself. When the
sentence of condemnation which has been passed is sought to be
cancelled, it is not by the exercise of personal influence on the
Monarch, but because the interceding Minister of State urges that,
since the trial, evidence of innocence has come to light, or doubt at
least has been thrown upon the guilt imputed. If it be otherwise, the
nation feels that the fountain of justice has been corrupted. And if
this could be imagined to be possible in the administration of God,
"then how should God judge the world?" (Rom. 3:6.)
II. But suppose, now, on the other hand, that God is antecedently
willing to avert the evils which this Intercession is designed to
deprecate, and to bestow the blessings which it is designed to solicit
and procure.
This, no doubt, conserves the Divine origination and appointment of
the Intercession. For, on this supposition, it may be consistently set
forth as originating in the love of God, and as appointed by the
Divine authority. But if the Intercession is fundamentally an
exercise of influence, the Divine willingness, though it may account
for its origin and appointment, militates fatally against its necessity
and real serviceableness. If the Intercession is the presentation of a
righteous ground and plea which the Intercessor has brought, and
was appointed to bring, into existence, and which enables the Divine
Judge and Sovereign righteously to do what, without the existence
of that ground or plea, He mercifully desired to do, but could not do
consistently with justice: then there is no derogation from, or
impeachment of, either the justice or beneficence of God, but rather
the reverse; while the wisdom of God suffers no reflection on the
charge of bringing forward an evolution that is superfluous and
unnecessary. On such a view of the Intercession all is plain. But
where is the wisdom of conceding only to the exercise of influence
that which God is antecedently desirous of bestowing? and where
the wisdom of appointing the exercise of an influence, the exercise
of which the very supposition represents as unnecessary?
It is said that such an appointed intervention is requisite to prevent
evil effects that would follow were the intervention of the
Intercessor dispensed with? That is perfectly intelligible and
relevant if the Intercession be of that nature which we advocate, and
of that necessity which such an Intercession implies. In that case,
on the supposition of no Intercession, evil effects would indeed
follow,—to such extent, and of such kind, as proves that, without the
Intercession, the beneficent willingness of God can take no
accomplishment. Traversing of the righteousness of the Divine
administration; violation of the principles of the Divine
government; dishonour to the Divine law; inevitable
misrepresentation of the Divine character; and disorganisation of
the moral universe;—all these evil effects must follow, from sin
being passed by without Atonement and Intercession, such as those
we plead for. But to advocate the necessity of an Intercession of
mere Influence in order to prevent evil consequences following
from the fact of God bestowing blessings which it requires no new
ground or plea to be brought into existence to enable Him
righteously to bestow, is simply absurd.
What are the evil consequences to be dreaded on such an
assumption, and which an Intercession of Influence must be
brought in in order to avert? Is it that men will be in danger of
taking wrong views of the Divine character? And if so, how will this
Intercession rectify them?
Let us consider. As to what aspect of the Divine character, or what
department of the Divine administration, will there be false views
likely to arise? Will it be in reference to the Divine justice? That
cannot be. At least it ought not to be; for the supposition is, that it is
antecedently perfectly just on the part of God to act as He
antecedently, in His beneficence, desires to apt. And if the reality of
the case, as it is thus supposed to be, does not prevent men from
taking false views in this direction, the intervention of an
intercession of influence will not prevent them; for as it does not
profess to render God's procedure more just, so neither can it have
the very slightest effect in more fully manifesting its justice.
Or again, is it in the direction of the Divine beneficence that false
views are likely to arise, and an intercession of influence must
intervene to prevent them? Surely such an intervention is a very
awkward expedient in the case supposed. Its obvious and inevitable
tendency must be the very reverse of what this theory attributes to
it. The supposition is that there is a complete, antecedent,
beneficent desire and will on the part of God—that there is nothing
in that direction to prevent the direct and immediate bestowment of
saving blessings. Surely, then, the inbringing of any ministry of
influence,—the suspension, indeed, of the beneficent action of the
Divine will upon any intermediate agency of any sort whatsoever,
and more particularly on a ministry of influence, which must be
utterly unreal, except in so far as it pleads with and prevails on God
to exercise His beneficent desire and will,—cannot but cloud the
evidence of precisely the Divine beneficence itself, and just promote
those false views of the Divine character in reference thereto, which
it is pretended to foreclose and prevent.
Perhaps it may be replied, that the design of this Intercession of
Influence is to prevent men taking, in a sense, too large views of the
goodness of God; to avert the danger of their confounding the
Divine bene ficence and placability with mere facility, and there by
putting in peril those affections of holy awe and veneration with
which we ought always to contemp ate the Great Supreme. False
views of God in that direction are indeed very dangerous, and very
natural to the evil heart of unbelief; and their effectual prevention is
a real problem which it concerns any holy gospel of salvation really
to solve. In the case supposed, it is, however, utterly impossible to
see how an Intercession of mere influence can solve it. For, on the
supposition, the antecedent willingness of God to bestow
forgiveness and salvation,—without any new ground or plea being
brought into existence to render such forgiveness righteous, and to
declare God's righteousness therein,—does either constitute and
present good ground for those views of His character which the
Intercession is supposed to be brought in in order to prevent, or it
does not. Take then the two alternatives in their order.
If it does constitute and present good ground for such views, how
can an intercession of influence prevent the intelligent from seeing
it? or rather, how can it cause men who see it to shut their eyes to
what they see? Such an intercession does not in the least alter, or
pretend to alter, the ground there is for taking the view of God's
character concerned. It only represents influence as being exerted
with God to do exactly what it is admitted constitutes and presents
good ground for men entertaining a particular view of the Divine
character. And yet it is pretended that such an exercise of influence
is introduced precisely to prevent men from seeing the true nature
of that which it is introduced to accomplish! That is to say, It is an
intercessory influence with God, intended to have a blinding
influence on men! It is hardly possible to imagine illogical
bewilderment going farther.
But we have the other supposition to deal with—namely, that God's
willingness to bestow forgiveness without an intercession of
righteous representative priestly action, such as we plead for,
constitutes and presents no ground for those views of the Divine
goodness, which in that case are truly erroneous and false, but
which men nevertheless will be in danger of adopting. If so, why
introduce an intercession of influence? What possible object can it
serve? It is not in things towards God—τὰ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν—that any
ministry here is necessary or can be serviceable: it is in things
towards man. Men are, by the supposition, taking views of the
Divine character for which there is no real ground. Let them be
dealt in the matter. Why desiderate an Intercession to deal with
God? Let those who are taking groundless and false views of God be
enlightened. It is not any ministry to harmonise God's procedure
with man's foolish notions that is either necessary or possible; but a
ministry of instruction on the hearts and intellects of men, to
harmonise their views with the realities of the case, and to deliver
them from views of God, for which His procedure affords no real
ground. A prophetic ministry towards man, not a priestly ministry
towards God, is what is needed; not an influence exerted on Him,
but an influence on those who are misunderstanding Him and His
ways. An Intercession of Influence towards God is, in all the
bearings of the case, an impertinence that reflects at once with
dishonour on the character of God, and the scheme and idea of it
with insult on the intelligence of man.
Part Second
Intercession Considered as the Presentation of a Plea
Turning now from the idea that the Intercession of Christ is an
exercise of subjective influence with the Father, let us consider it as
the presentation rather of an objective plea.
Such a plea must evidently have reference to the things pertaining
to God. The Intercessor is an "ordained" office-bearer "in things
pertaining to God" (Heb. 5:1); a merciful and faithful high priest "in
things pertaining to God" (Heb. 2:17). On these "things" the
intercession and its plea must have direct and immediate bearing, if
that intercession be embraced, as we have seen it is embraced, in
the priestly office. What, then, are "the things pertaining to God"—
the deep things of God which the Spirit searcheth? (1 Cor. 2:10.)
They are the Divine nature and perfections, particularly the holiness
and justice of God; the Divine Sovereignty, with its purposes and
designs of grace and love; the Divine law, in its subject-matter, its
obligations, and its sanctions; and the Divine government, in its
interests, requirements, and stability. These are the things
pertaining to God; the things towards God—τὰ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν—the
things which we see when we are looking out directly towards God.
And the Intercessor's plea must be to the effect, that He has, by
Divine appointment, and through the accomplishment of the work
given Him to do, arranged and disposed these Divine things into
such order that the antecedent and gracious purposes of God's
sovereign love may now he accomplished without the interests of
the Divine perfections, law, or government suffering thereby; yea,
and that all these interests now require the accomplishment of
God's purposes of love.
It is manifest that an intercessory plea of this nature is worthy of
the Divine glory, and worthy of Divine recognition, as a valid ground
and justifying reason for new Divine procedure. For the Intercessor
is not now resting His success on the idea of any power or influence
that He may possess with the Father. Nor does this conception
represent Him as soliciting the Father to give weight to
considerations that existed apart from, and prior to, His priestly and
intercessory work itself. It is the introduction and presentation of a
consideration, a plea, a ground altogether new; which existed not at
all prior to, or apart from, that very priesthood in which He is now
acting at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens;
and it professes to be, objectively, and in itself alone, a complete and
perfect ground, pleadable judicially and in court of law, and
competent and entitled to carry all issues that the Intercessor craves
and expects because of it,—its power and efficacy in no respect
supplemented by, or requiring to draw upon, the personal influence
of Him who pleads it.
I do not, of course, mean to say that the relation of infinite and
ineffable love between the Eternal Father and the Eternal Son does
in no respect affect or enter into this ministry of Intercession. Far
from it. It is remarkable that when two Divine utterances or oracles
(Ps. 2:7, and Ps. 110:4) are, by the inspired writer to the Hebrews (v.
5), quoted as constituting or announcing Christ's priesthood, or
glorifying Him to be made an high priest, it is not that which makes
mention in explicit terms of His Priesthood, but that which declares
His Sonship, that is quoted first: "He glorified Him to be made an
high priest who said unto Him, Thou art my Son, this day have I
begotten Thee; as He saith also in another place, Thou art a priest
for ever, after the order of Melchisedec." And it is also true that
Jesus, in His intercessory prayer in the seventeenth chapter of
John, makes explicit mention of His Father's love: "For Thou
lovedst me before the foundation of the world." But in this
reference to the love which His Father had for Him before the world
began,—when He was "daily His delight, rejoicing always before
Him, rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth,"—Jesus is very far
from seeking to supplement, by an appeal to personal influence, the
force of a plea admitted to be in itself deficient, and requiring to be
enforced by a consideration which it does not itself embody and
contain. It does itself contain that consideration. It does itself shine
radiantly in the glory of that relation of ineffable love between the
high contracting parties in the counsel of peace. In that love the
counsel or covenant between them took its rise. In the Father's love
to the Son, the appointment of the Son to His priestly office
originated; and in that appointment the Father's love was expressed.
It was of the Father's love that the Son was designated to a work so
glorious, that it should in itself alone carry in it perfect and all sufficient
ground for the righteous execution of purposes of love to
a people whom no man can number. Here is the due place for the
Son's interest with the Father, and in His Father's love—even that
He should be set up from everlasting in the love that the Father had
for Him from before the foundation of the world, and designated,
and in due time sealed and sent into the world, on the work of
establishing a perfect ground and plea for the obtaining, not by
influence, but in righteous certainty and title, all saving blessing for
those whom the Father's love had given to Him. Not to be put forth
in the way of influence is the Son's interest with the Father, so as to
dispense with an objective plea, or supplement a plea confessedly
deficient; but in the very line and action of dispensing with
influence, and bringing into existence a plea which is independent
of influence, being in itself alone gloriously complete.
Part Third
Element of a valid Intercessory objective Plea
In the things, then, pertaining to God, with which the Intercessor's
plea is concerned—and in reference to which He urges the relevant
and valid consideration that He has disposed them into an order or
arrangement rendering the salvation of His people becoming, and
righteous, and necessary—let us make a selection. Let us consider
the aspect of the Divine nature and perfections towards sin,—which
is the wrath of God; and the sanction of the Divine law,—which is its
curse on the breakers thereof. The Intercessor presents Himself
before God on our behalf, as "Jesus who hath delivered us from the
wrath to come" (1 Thess. 1:10). Also He presents Himself before
God as having "redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a
curse for us, that the blessing might come upon us, that we might
receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Gal. 3:13, 14). By
these two considerations (which indeed run into one), "Christ
executeth the office of a priest, in making continual intercession for
us," by representing that He hath "once offered up Himself a
sacrifice to satisfy Divine justice and reconcile us unto God"
(Shorter Catechism, Quest. 25).
I. Consider, in the first place, the bearing of the Intercession on the
removal of the Wrath of God.
The essential consideration here is, that the wrath of God to be set
forth as the necessary aspect or expression of the Divine nature and
perfections towards sin. It originates not in the will of God; for, in
that case, the same will of God might set it aside or depart from it
without satisfaction or pacification—without appeasement or
atonement at all. But it originates from the Divine nature, and that
necessarily. On the supposition of sin, the Divine nature, and
particularly the Divine holiness, assumes necessarily the aspect of
wrath.—There are some recent evasions of this position.
(1.) MR MAURICE represents the wrath of God as the aspect which
Divine Love assumes towards iniquity. But it may be safely left to
the moral sense of mankind to say whether the Divine Love, act
how it may, is the proper recompense of iniquity. And it may be
safely left to the common sense of all who understand human
language, to say whether those are treasuring up for themselves any
conceivable aspect and action of Love, who are declared to be
"treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the
righteous judgment of God;" and whether Love, under any possible
form or modification, can be understood as threatening to "render
indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, to every soul of man
that doeth evil" (Rom. 2:3–9). Wrath is not beneficence; it is justice.
It would be frightful to imagine wrath acting in the freeness of free
beneficence, and not in the stringency of stringent justice. The
universe were one vast hell of suspense and horror, if God's wrath
could alight elsewhere than where it is deserved. "They that do such
things are worthy of death" (Rom. 1:32). Wrath is vengeance—
righteous vengeance, and recompense. "For we know Him that hath
said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the
Lord" (Heb. 10:30). Hence substitution, atonement, satisfaction are
conceivable. If wrath is love, they are inconceivable,—except as
calamities. If the wrath of God is Divine love "burning on" against
the unholy for their purification, a Substitute bearing it in my stead
is no Saviour, no friend. He is a foe,—fraudulently interposing to
intercept, and to deprive me of, my only possible and real salvation.
Most intelligible and most natural, in this light, is the outcry against
the doctrine of substitution.
(2.) It is thought by some that a transition may be effected from the
Divine love to the Divine wrath, by help of the term "Jealousy." And
that there is something in this may, perhaps, be granted, if the idea
of the Divine jealousy be used carefully as a transition, and no
attempt be made to employ it as an equivalent or explanation. We
cannot enter fully into the line of thought which opens up to us
here; but one or two guiding principles may be laid down.*
In the first place; it is to be remembered that in such references to
the jealousy of God, as that in Exod. 20:5, "I the Lord thy God am a
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children
unto the third and fourth generation;"—He is speaking to a
redeemed, and covenant people. The recognition of the covenant is
in the very preface to the law as thus given at Sinai: "I am the Lord
thy God, that hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, and out of
the house of bondage." Nor is this lost sight of, or set aside to make
room for the introduction of the idea of jealousy. It is re-affirmed in
the very sentence which affirms the jealousy; "I the Lord thy God
am a jealous God." The jealousy—whatever it may imply—is
introduced in vindication of the Divine glory among a people whom,
as a people, God hath loved and chosen as His own. And for this
reason it seems to follow that it cannot throw much light on the
aspect which the Divine nature and perfections assume towards
those who have no interest in the covenant. For it raises a question
which it does not answer; "If these things be done in the green tree,
what shall be done in the dry?"
In the second place; it is to be borne in mind that in its plain and
unsophisticated meaning, jealousy is love vindicating its right in the
beloved, by the help of anger. Anger shall be called in, in last resort,
rather than that right be resigned. In this view, jealousy, even while
it is "the rage of a man" (Prov. 6:34), is "cruel as the grave," just
because, and so long as, and only so long as—"love is strong as
death" (Cant. 8:6). It is, in short, a special manifestation of love; and
the strength of love is the measure of the strength of jealousy.
Jealousy, so to speak, is,—when purged at least from elements of
base suspiciousness,—a powerful compliment to the object beloved.
In the nature of the case, jealousy is compelled to deal with primâ
facie grounds of suspicion; but when it is the honourable passion
we have spoken of, it deals with these grounds not with the view
and hope of proving them, but of explaining, dissipating, and
disproving them. It is in that view a noble passion; and shallow
natures are incapable of manifesting it, and incapable of
appreciating or appeasing it. They have not enough of love to do so.
And now, in the third place; if Jealousy is thus Love itself,
vindicating its right in the beloved by the aid even of anger, so long
as retention of the beloved and regaining of reciprocal love is
conceived to be possible; it remains to ask whether it must not
utterly expire when despair of success supervenes? The
compliment, as we have ventured to call it, will then be paid no
more. An entirely different passion or emotion takes place. Jealousy
is designed to be restorative and recuperative; and is therefore a
means to an end. But, the end despaired of, the reason for jealousy
is gone. The desire now is for redress or retribution—which is itself
of the nature of an end, and not a means to an end.* And it is an end
of an entirely distinct character from that which the entertainment
and expression of jealousy aims at securing. It implies the entire
resignation of love, and of love's beneficent desires. It is wrath: and
the Christian is forbidden to cherish it.
But, in the fourth place, is he forbidden to cherish it, because in its
own nature it is evil, and averse from the nature of God? Par
otherwise. It is incompetent to man, just because it is competent to
God, and to God alone. "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but
rather give place unto wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I
will repay, saith the Lord" (Rom. 12:19). The quotation here,—"it is
written"—is from the song of Moses, where God is introduced as
speaking not concerning His covenant people, but concerning His
enemies and theirs. "To me belongeth vengeance and recompense;
their foot shall slide in due time" (Deut. 32:35). And the reason
given for vengeance against them, is such as to prove that
vengeance is entirely different from jealousy. Rather, jealousy, in
respect to His people, is given as the reason for vengeance on their
enemies,—so entirely different are the two attributions. "For the
Lord shall judge his people and repent himself for his servants,
when he seeth that their power is gone" (ver. 36). The quotation,
therefore, by the Apostle in writing to the Romans is admirably in
point. He admonishes to abstinence from wrath and self-redress,
because the Judge Supreme hath given special promise to interpose
and Himself effect what righteousness requires. The passage is
again quoted to the Hebrews in confirmation of the terrible truth
that, as there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin when the blood of
the covenant has been counted an unholy thing, so there remaineth
nothing but "a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery
indignation, that shall devour the adversaries" (Heb. 10:27). "For we
know Him that hath said, Vengeance is mine; I will recompense,
saith the Lord" (ver. 30).
However, therefore, the idea of Jealousy may be serviceable as a
transition from the idea of love to that of wrath or vengeance, it is
obvious that it cannot be employed as an explanation of wrath or
vengeance, far less as an equivalent; unless, indeed, it be used in a
sense entirely different from that which renders a special word—the
word "jealousy"—necessary; in a sense, that is, which substantially
identifies it with the word "wrath." And, of course, in that case, the
ethical and theological investigation is in no respect expedited; but
left precisely as it was, or rather left in greater darkness than before.
Refusing on this legitimate ground, to identify jealousy and wrath;
and leaving the question of the relations between them, and the
transition from the one to the other, open for investigation, we are
in circumstances to reiterate that—
(3.) Wrath is the aspect of the Divine Holiness towards sin. It is not
therefore under the origination of the Divine will, as aspects and
actings of love, in their very nature free, must be; but the necessary
aspect which the Divine nature and perfections cannot but assume.
Of course the actings or forthputtings of Divine wrath are at the
disposal of the Divine will; for the Divine will and the Divine nature
are ever in harmony. And the necessity of the Divine wrath against
sin is moral, not physical; its action not being like that of gravitation
and physical forces, but ever, as we have said, under the disposal or
executive of the Divine will; else, in that case again, long-suffering
and forbearance, and therefore salvation, would be impossible. Still,
it is originally in the nature of God, and not in the will of God, that
the seat and spring of wrath in its various actings must be found;
and it is essentially necessary to attend to this, if we would be in
circumstances to vindicate the very attribute of Love itself.
For, strange as it may at first sight appear, it is nevertheless true
that the moral necessity of wrath, which the doctrine of priesthood
presupposes, is the indispensable and valid vindication of the love
of God. To some, this may seem a hazardous, as it may be an
unexpected, affirmation. But it is of easy demonstration. For
suppose the wrath of God against sin were voluntary, in the sense of
not being morally necessary and inevitable. Conceive of an infinite
Being entertaining and cherishing unnecessary anger—anger which
no inherent and unchangeable perfection of his nature, and no
demands arising from his moral relation to the creatures of his
hand and power, render it absolutely inevitable that he should
entertain and cherish; but he could, on the contrary, lay it aside,
simply if he pleased. Consider him as needing to be pleaded with
and prevailed upon to resile from it, and to refrain from the
expression and action of it to which it tends. Conceive him as still
further refusing so to resile from it, and to refrain from giving
expression to it, till it has been appeased by something called
atonement or satisfaction. Is it conceivable that this could consist
with Love? Is not such unnecessary anger identical with that
pleasure in the death of the sinner, which God has condescended to
repudiate with abhorence, and by an oath: "As I live, saith the Lord,
I have no pleasure in the death of the sinner?" Is not such a view of
God's character precisely that which the heathen attribute to a
supposed divinity, when in reality "they sacrifice to devils and not to
God?" And—even in the most mitigated view of this huge
misrepresentation of the wrath of God—if it were anything less than
morally absolutely necessary, how is it possible to account for a
Divine appointment of an intercessor to avert it? It is precisely
because God absolutely cannot avert it from the sinner, without its
being borne by a substitute, who, to every effect concerned,
becomes judicially one with the sinner, and shall, in due time, make
the sinner consciously, spiritually, by faith, and of choice truly one
with Him, as his living vine, or living head;—precisely for this very
reason it is that there is scope, and there is seen to be scope, in
God's glorious nature for that Love in which the substitution, and
the intercession grounded on it, take their rise. "God commendeth
his love to us;" decketh it out in beauty, and arrayeth it in evidence
overwhelming; "in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for
us." And "herein is love, not that we have loved God, but that he
hath loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for Our sins."
So intimately are the two doctrines of Divine wrath and Divine love
bound up together. Together they stand or fall. The Intercessor
pleads that He has been able to make them stand,—able to illustrate
and glorify them both. And His plea is to this effect: That in
prosecution of His Father's and His own eternal purpose of love, He
has, as the substitute of His people, and in a oneness with them
which meets every requirement of unsearchable wisdom, borne the
wrath which their iniquities had entailed as recompense inevitable;
and now He claims to be recognised of God as "Jesus who delivers
them from the wrath to come." Him the Father therefore heareth.
And the decree goeth forth to deliver them: "Save from going down
to the pit, for I have found a ransom."
II. Consider now the bearing of the Intercession on the removal of
the Curse of the Law.
The curse differs from the wrath, not fundamentally, but formally.
It is indeed the same thing regarded from another point of view.
When the relation of acknowledged sovereignty and subjection
between the Lawgiver and His responsible creature has been
deranged by the entrance of sin, the Divine nature, which presented
the aspect of complacency and approbation towards the creature
while holy, presents now the aspect of displacency and wrath
towards the sinner; and simultaneously, and as an equivalent
reading of this now changed relation on the side of the other party
concerned, the creature appears in the attitude of a curse,—for it is
originally the concrete, the Herem of the Old Testament,—a devoted
thing, devoted to destruction. Or, more particularly, and still more
formally exact. The Divine nature, has expressed itself in the Divine
law, which is the reflection of God's nature, and the formal
expression of His authority. The relation has been formulated in
moral law, and the curse is formally its penalty or sanction.
Transferring, therefore, the substance and spirit of what has been
already said concerning the wrath of God to this side of the relation,
and clothing the same considerations in the formal expressions
which this simply altered point of view and judicially formulated
expression of it may render necessary, we should have substantially
the same train of thought to follow out as before. And that, of
course, it is unnecessary to repeat.
In a word or two, however, it may be shown that fundamentally the
same principles re-appear; and more especially, we may briefly
indicate how the same consideration of moral necessity attaches to
the curse of the law, as to the wrath of God. For absolute moral
necessity is the all-explaining and all-justifying consideration which
must be attended to in contemplating the curse of the law, and
seeking to understand the nature of the Intercession as it bears
upon it. The whole inquiry into the nature of the Intercession and
Atonement, or in other words, the Priesthood of Christ, is
immediately deranged and perplexed, unless it be clearly
apprehended that on the pre-supposition of sin, the Divine curse
becomes absolutely certain and inevitable. A correct idea of sin as
sin,—that is, as transgression of the law,—and a correct idea of that
law of which sin is the transgression, will at once deliver the mind
from all vague ideas of the possibility of God's curse being
contingent or arbitrary, or optional. Any such notion is utterly
inconsistent with—immediately and completely fatal to—the
fundamental conception of moral law and moral obligation. Heaven
and earth may pass away. The Creator of heaven and earth, clothed
in created nature, and standing in the room of sinful creatures, may
tremble as the curse of the law approaches to claim Him in His
responsibility for the guilty. The omnipotent God, in the person of
the beloved Son, beloved before the foundation of the world, may
exclaim, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." But
not one jot or tittle of the law, either on the side of its curse or its
commandment, can pass away till all be fulfilled. For neither on the
one side nor on the other—neither on the side of its requirement
nor of its sanction—is there the slightest element of the optional
and arbitrary in that law of God which is holy and just and good. It
is the expression of God's nature, which cannot change; and of
God's authority, which must ever vindicate the inviolability of His
nature. Nor can the possibility of its being suspended, or varied or
abrogated, on the side of the curse be imagined, any more than on
the side of the commandment. The Moral Law is the balance of the
moral universe; and it matters not whether the right arm or the left
be tampered with. In either case the result is the same: the moral
balance is destroyed. And how then shall God weigh the actions of
men? "How shall God judge the world?"
It is one of the shallowest imaginable thoughts, that the obligation
of the curse of the law could be relaxed, and the obligation of its
commandment still retained These are not in reality two
obligations, but one. A balance—to use again that simple figure—has
two arms: it has but one equilibrium. Even so the moral law has a
commandment for our observance, and a curse for our
disobedience. But it has not two obligations, that one might be
tampered with and the other nevertheless remain intact. He who,
disobedient, should plead off from liability to the curse, is, whether
he is conscious of it or not, pleading off from the authority of the
commandment. It is the one indivisible obligation of the law which
he is seeking to cast off: and his success would be nothing less than
the dethronement of the Moral Ruler of the universe.
To see this, look at the exculpating pleas which our first parents put
forward to shield them from the curse of death which their
disobedience had entailed: "The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat:"
"The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me, and I
did eat." Against what do these pleas in extenuation really strike?
Against what side of the Divine law are they consciously and
intentionally directed? Against the law on the side of its penalty or
sanction. They are designed to insinuate the element of possible
contingency into the obligation of the law on the side of its curse,
without affecting explicitly to tamper with the obligation of its
commandment. The guilty pair mean to deny the absolute and
unconditional moral necessity of the curse, and to admit its
righteousness only conditionally; the condition being that
disobedience shall have been perpetrated in the absence of
temptation. Temptation—in effect they say—shall bar the infliction
of the curse. Had we fallen untempted: had the serpent not beguiled
me: had the woman not given to me: had we disobeyed under no
temptation to disobey: our punishment would have been righteous;
our mouth would have been stopped, and we ourselves brought in
guilty before God. But, as it is, our mouth is not stopped. We plead
temptation in bar of sentence from the Judge.—And is this an
attempt to shake the stability of the Divine law only on one side? As
soon move one arm of the balance and think the other will remain
at rest. This is an attempt to overthrow moral obligation,—the
obligation of the law in its precept, just as much as in its penalty.
To convince us of this, if indeed it be not intuitively obvious, let
those pleas of exculpation which the fallen pair put forward after
their fall be transferred in imagination to the period preceding it.
They are precisely as much in point there, clothed with precisely the
same relevancy and force there, before their disobedience, as after
it. They tamper with the obligation of the law there exactly to the
same effect, to provide for a possible disobedience still
contemplated, as for an actual disobedience that has arisen. Simply
change their form to suit the altered supposition: but do you change
their spirit, or drift, or real design? I will obey, says Eve, provided
the serpent do not beguile me. And I will obey, says Adam, provided
the woman whom Thou gavest to be with me do not give unto me.
The admission of relevancy in these pleas in this form would not be
more detrimental to the law than in the form and at the time they
were actually urged. The reason is, that in both eases alike they
overthrow the one indivisible obligation of the law itself. For to
plead a bar against the moral necessity of the curse, is to plead a bar
against the authority of the commandment. It is really to dethrone
the Lawgiver, and to say, "Who is the Lord that he should reign over
us?"
The plea, therefore, of a righteous and effectual Intercessor must
contain in it at least this element; namely, a practical admission of
the holy, moral necessity of the curse, and that in a representation
of the fact that the Intercessor has endured and exhausted the curse
in His own person, and in His clients' stead, having been made a
curse for them; that He hath not made void but established the law,
—made of a Woman, made under the law, and having now
redeemed them that were under it. An objective plea like that, is
independent of influence to give it power. It is perfect in itself; and
with Divine justice it has in itself power to prevail. It is relevant;
and it is complete. The triumphant cry of the Cross may with
confidence be uttered over it and applied to it—"It is finished." By
His one offering Christ has for ever perfected them that are
sanctified. The plea, in its own power, carries all that the Intercessor
claims.
III. And now we must here also prominently insist again on the
truth with which we have already become familiar; namely, that
Christ was actively an officebearer, and priest, and offerer of
Himself in His death; actively, in the inconceivable baptism of fire
and final ordeal of death—His wrath enduring, curse-bearing death
—fulfilling the whole law of God which is love; love, in His case, to
God forsaking Him; love to men while crucifying Him. This brings
into view, as the completing element of His one perfect plea, that
perfectly tested positive and complete righteousness in which He
urges that His people shall now be held justified in His person—in
Him their priest and representative and head.
And,—if in the minds of any of my readers the idea still remains,
that in denying for Christ's intercession the conception that it acts
in the way of personal influence with the Father, I have done
injustice to the relation of love and loving interest, and ineffable
acceptability that subsists between the Father and the Son of His
love,—here is the place in which, and the consideration by which,
this idea may be finally obviated. Far from doing injustice to the
interest and acceptability which the beloved Son must be supposed
to have with the Father, we are now in circumstances to insist that
it all enters into the objective plea, and is in no respect required to
be put forth as subjective influence. For when we say that Christ's
righteousness—and the Father is well pleased for His righteousness'
sake, for He hath magnified the law and made it honourable—when
we say that Christ's righteousness enters as an element into the
intercessory plea; or, rather, that as a righteousness perfected in the
ordeal of His wrath-enduring, curse-bearing death and offering on
the Cross, it is the one complete and indivisable plea which, as
Intercessor, He urges at His Father's throne; we are not surely to
dissociate His acceptable righteousness from His acceptable person.
That may not and cannot be. It is Christ's person as God-man,
—"ordained for men," and as having perfectly fulfilled all
righteousness,—which is the righteousness of saints. "Christ" it is,
that "is of God made unto us righteousness" (1 Cor. 1:30). "Christ" it
is, that "is the end of the law for righteousness" (Rom. 10:4). "Thou
lovest righteousness, and hatest iniquity; therefore God, thy God,"—
thy God in that covenant which thou hast established and fulfilled
—"hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows"
(Ps. 45:7). Christ needed no work assigned Him to give Him loveinterest,
or love-influence, with the eternal Father. "The Father
loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand" (John 3:35).
His love-interest with the Father is the source and origin of the
covenant given Him to fulfil, and the honourable and glorious work
given Him to do. But it needed a covenant of peace and a work of
redemption, if He was to embody all His love-interest, all His
acceptability in the Father's sight, in an objective plea which should
need no influence to give it prevalence with the Father. And this
He achieved in His obedience unto death, in His fulfilment of all
righteousness in His people's room: and this He now pleads in His
Intercession that He has achieved. The righteousness of Christ is
the righteous Christ himself. There enters into the plea which He
presents, all the righteousness, all the well-pleasingness, all the
acceptability that is in His person. He himself as God-man: His
Divine and human natures in perfect harmony with each other—His
entire person, therefore, in inconceivably glorious conformity with
the nature of God—for the nature of God is the very seat of His
personality, and His human nature subsists in His one Divine
person, as the most glorious image of that Divine nature which it
has been given to any created nature to express, and to it alone to
enshrine: this glorious and gloriously constituted person, having
offered Himself bearing the Divine wrath and burdened with the
Divine curse—now lightened of the last rack of both, by righteous
and complete endurance of them; beloved of the Father because He
fulfilled the commandment to lay down His life and take it again:
this matchless person of God-man, in all the moral worth of all His
doings in the flesh, and of all His sufferings, and of all His graces,
and all His gracious thoughts, and all His holy virtues; in the full
assemblage of all His spiritual excellencies and aspects of loveliness
and love-worthiness in the Father's sight: this is the righteousness
of saints. And this is the Intercessor's plea.
It is independent of Influence: for all that could, consistently with
the unity of Godhead, and the glory of Divine persons, be imagined
under the conception of Influence, is already engrossed and
embodied in it.
Part Fourth
Pointing the Inverse Argument from Intercession
Though it be like coming down from Pisgah to do superfluous and
inglorious battle in the plains, we must pass in brief review, beneath
the light of such an Intercession as we have now been considering,
the various schemes of thought on the Atonement which we have
often already seen to be so untenable.
And yet it seems almost like relentless controversial persecution of
them to ask,—What foundation do they lay for an intercession?
what work do they assign to Christ, as, in Scriptural language, He
maketh intercession for us? Since not one of them professes to read
in the death of Christ an atonement made for definite and
designated persons; and since, nevertheless, Christ's intercession is
for particular persons particularly, even for those who are
ultimately saved,—for Him the Father heareth always, and He prays
not for the world, but for those who have been given to Him out of
the world; how can these atonements, when urged as pleas, become
specificated or pointed to bear upon the individual persons
concerned? To present a plea is not to alter it. It cannot be changed
by the mere circumstance of urging it. If it do not in itself carry the
conclusion pretended, and that in reference to the particular person
or persons indicated, the mere urging of it cannot infuse into it a
relevancy and force that were not there before. The theory
inexorably indispensable in such a case, is the theory of Influence.
Christ exerts His influence to enforce the plea, and by influence He
carries what the plea itself does not pretend to carry or conclude. In
this light it is really, so far as our argument is concerned, a matter of
no moment what the particular defective or false view of the
Atonement we are examining may be. Nor does it matter how truly
it may be able to plead that it provides for some intercession which
is not merely and exclusively one of influence. That may or may not
be true; it boots not. Does it provide for an Intercession wholly
distinct from, and independent of, Influence? Does it provide for an
Intercession that is wholly representative, judicial, priestly, and
which rests for its success and prevalence wholly on the objective
plea, as in and by itself alone concluding for and carrying all that the
Intercessor craves, and the Intercession is designed to procure? If
not: if it provides merely some semblance or some fraction of a
plea; a ground or consideration which falls short of moral and
judicial perfection, and falls short therefore, of absolutely perfect
power or prevalence; if, after all, the personal influence of the
Intercessor must come in to render it prevalent and effective: then
it is on personal influence that this intercession really turns and
hinges. It must take its character from—its essence must consist in
—that which renders it successful, which alone renders it of any real
worth. And, therefore, it is in reality an intercession of mere
influence. And that we have shown to be utterly indefensible and
inadmissible.
We need scarcely particularise.
What imaginable connection is there between Atonement and
Intercession on the theory of Example or of Martyrdom? "I have
shown them an Example, and ratified the evidence of truth by
Martyrdom. Therefore keep, through thine own name, those whom
thou hast given me!"
Or on the theory of MAURICE? "I have submitted to Self-sacrifice,—
to a death of Self-denial. Therefore forgive and sanctify the
particular persons whom now I designate and point out!"
Or on the wild dream of ROBERTSON? "I have fallen a prey to that
'law of being,' vicarious sacrifice,—'approaching the whirling wheel
till I was torn in pieces.' Therefore——!" Therefore—what? Abrogate
the law of being? Or?—Stop the wheel!
Or what connection is there on the scheme of BUSHNELL? "I have
given a Display of the principles of thy Government, suitable and
applicable to every human being. Therefore on some men, on
certain persons, let thy Government bear in leniency and mercy!"
Or on that of YOUNG? "I have finished a work fitted and designed
to exert a Moral Influence on sinners. Therefore let me have
influence with God!"
Or what connection is there on the scheme of DR BALMER? "I have
achieved an undertaking which bears on the welfare of each and
every one of the human race precisely and exactly as it bears on any.
Therefore I plead that it shall be made to have a wholly different
bearing on some from that which it shall have on others!"
Are these such reasonings as men will dare to put into the lips of
the Wisdom and Logos of God? If not,—then let them own that the
Atonement of the Everlasting Son of the Father, who through the
Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, is no vague,
indefinite, impersonal, haphazard redeemability, preparatory merely
to redemption; but very and efficacious redemption itself, even "in
His blood who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of
every creature:" and that His Atonement being definite and perfect,
and final and infallible,—for "It is finished,"—His intercession is the
perpetual presentation of it before the throne of the Majesty in the
heavens, and the presentation therein of a plea most relevant and
efficacious, infallibly securing all grace for those whom God hath
given to Him, even so that "none of them is lost." Let us all own
this, with personal and appropriating faith; for "whosoever will, let
him come, and take of the water of life freely." Let us then hold fast
the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. And
let us, with the spirits of the blest on high, fall down in faith and
gratitude before the throne of God and of the Lamb, saying: "Thou
art worthy, O LAMB, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and
strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing: for Thou wast slain,
and hast REDEEMED us to God by Thy blood."
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Post by Admin on Jan 15, 2024 11:20:49 GMT -5
CHAPTER VII: ATONEMENT AND REMISSION
WE lay down another proposition in reference to the conditions
under which the subject of this volume should be studied
The Doctrine of the Atonement ought not to be discussed apart
from a correct view of the exact immediate Object or Design of the
Atonement, to secure, namely, the Remission of sins.
This is not the only object or design of the Atonement of Christ.
There are other objects accomplished by it, and, of course,
designedly accomplished. Some of these are less immediate than
the remission of sins,—of the nature, that is, of a more ultimate
end: the great last end, of course, namely, the advancement of the
glory of God; as also the "gathering together in one of all things in
Christ, both of which are in heaven, and which are on earth" (Eph.
1:10). There are less immediate ends also, not in the sense of their
being more ultimate, but more subordinate: very specially, for
instance, the removal of the middle wall of partition between Jews
and Gentiles, the "abolition in His flesh of the law of
commandments in ordinances, that He might reconcile both [the
commonwealth of Israel and the aliens therefrom] unto God in one
body by the Cross" (Eph. 3:11–17). Moreover, there are objects or
designs of Christ's death, more exactly co-ordinate with the
Remission of sins, such as Redemption and Reconciliation: "He
gave Himself for us that He might redeem us" (Titus 2:14); and
"Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He
might bring us unto God" (1 Peter 3:18), so that "when we were
enemies, we were reconciled unto God by the death of His Son"
(Rom. 5:10). So that a complete investigation of the more
immediate and exact design of the Atonement would require us to
prosecute the lines of thought opened up by each of the words,
Remission, Reconciliation, and Redemption. In making a selection,
however, we fasten on the idea of Remission. And in doing so, we
cannot imagine that our choice is fitted either to derange or limit
the question, when we bear in mind that in the blessed ordinance of
the Supper, our Lord took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to the
disciples, saying, "This is My blood of the new testament, which is
shed for many for the remission of sins."
There is not one of those manifestly most reasonable canons or
conditions of discussion of this subject which we have already laid
down, that the opponents of the Westminster doctrine of the
Atonement will not be found habitually violating. And the same
thing is true in the present instance also. They will not face
consideration of the exact immediate design of the Atonement. They
take up with the most general term that they can find in Scripture as
descriptive of the design of Christ's death—the term "salvation;" and
not examining and explaining it in the light of the more definite and
precise ideas which the terms remission, redemption, reconciliation,
suggest, they give to the idea of salvation a vagueness for which
they themselves, and not the Scriptures of God, are responsible; and
many of them are found in the end making it equivalent to mere
salvability. Indeed they cannot possibly escape from the
overwhelming temptation thus to attenuate its meaning, if their
purpose is to render the Atonement impersonal and indefinite and
universal, unless they are prepared to accept the doctrine of
universal salvation. This has been demonstrated by so many writers
on this subject, that I can add nothing to the demonstration. Piety
will always maintain, without an argument, that when our Lord is
called our "Saviour," it is not meant that He is the author of
salvability, but the "Author of eternal Salvation" (Heb. 5:9). And
logic will maintain, by an argument the simplest possible, that if the
redemption purchased by Christ is merely salvability; and if we are
made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ by the
effectual application of it to us by His Holy Spirit; then we are
thereby made par takers merely of salvability: and so, after all that
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have done for us, we are only salvable
still!
The Nature of the Atonement, its Necessity, and its Object, are
topics which, when logically treated, are found to run very much
into one. For, if we can come to a clear understanding, in the first
instance, of the Object which the Atonement is primarily designed
to accomplish, the Nature of it will inevitably come into view, on the
plain principle that it must be fitted and adapted to the attainment
of the Object contemplated; while its Necessity will become obvious
on the equally plain principle, that to the production of an effect the
suitable casual efficiency is indispensible.
Now, the question has frequently been asked, and will probably
continue to be asked so long as the world standeth, and men are
thoughtful as to their prospects for a world to come,—Why should
not God remit the sins of men without an Atonement?
It seems to us that a good deal of satisfaction on this question may
be obtained from the remarkable and unqualified proposition laid
down by the writer to the Hebrews: "Without shedding of blood is
no remission" (chap. 9:22). No doubt, at first sight, this seems
merely to allege a fact, without assigning a reason. It seems to
intimate nothing more than the historical truth, that in point of fact
God never has remitted the sins of men without shedding of blood.
But if emphasis is placed on the word Remission, and if a true idea
is entertained of the transaction which that word represents, the
proposition, "without shedding of blood is no remission," will be
found not merely to allege a fact, but also to assign a reason for that
fact—to embody not only the historical verity, but the underlying
principle which justifies it, and which only needs to be carefully
investigated and apprehended to furnish a satisfactory answer to the
question,—Why should not God remit the sins of men without an
Atonement?
For, when the inspired writer affirms that without shedding of
blood is no remission, it is as if he had said:—You may imagine a
forgiveness without shedding of blood, if you will; you may
conjecture, or conjure up, some other scheme or principle of
pardon; you may conceive of God as dealing with the sinner, and
delivering him from the punishment due to his iniquities, without
these iniquities being expiated,—without the penalty incurred by
them being exacted,—without the law of which they are
transgressions being relieved from the stain of dishonour which
they had cast upon it,—without any costly sacrifice, any solemn
propitiation, any priceless ransom. But whatever this transaction
concerning sin might be, it would not be remission. Granting that it
were quite possible for God to let the sinner off; to wipe out, by a
mere arbitrary decree, and without any satisfaction to divine justice,
the debt which the sinner had contracted; to cease from His anger
towards His enemies, and return to a state of friendship; to say,
Your sins be forgiven you, you have nothing now to fear;—all this,
"without shedding of blood," without any sacrifice, or atonement, or
expiation: still, all this, whatever it might amount to, does not
amount to remission. Call it what you please; be it what it may; it is
not remission. It may be held up as an equivalent for it; it may be in
room and lieu of it; it may be all that multitudes care to inquire
after, or have ever felt the need of, or troubled themselves to seek.
But, however possible it might be on God's part, however
satisfactory it might be on their part, it is not remission. It may look
like it. It may seem to carry with it all that the unenlightened have
any thought of when thinking of remission; but real remission it is
not. Without shedding of blood it is not remission.
What the enlightened conscience of an anxious inquirer longs for, is
remission—remission of sin. And what is that? It is removal of guilt;
removal of liability to the wrath of God; removal of criminality or
ill-desert. It is a sentence of "Not Guilty;" for "God will by no means
clear the guilty" (Exod. 34:7). It is a recognition of blamelessness
before the Holy One of Israel; a position and relation towards God,
therefore, in which His wrath would be undue, unrighteous,
impossible. That would be Remission. And the memorable
announcement, "without shedding of blood is no remission,"
intimates, not so much that God will not grant this without
shedding of blood, as that, whatever God might without shedding of
blood grant, it would not be this, but something far short of this,
something very different from this. In the very nature of the case, it
would not be remission.
It is evident that this consideration opens up to us a thoroughly
legitimate train of thought, at once emancipating us from all a priori
speculations as to what is abstractly possible or impossible for Him
who is past finding out, and leaving to us the far plainer task of
investigating the conditions under which alone, from the nature of
the case, the very definite idea of a true remission can be realised:
while it is equally evident that, by attacking the problem, or
approaching the question, from this point of view, we blend very
much into one topic the three ideas of the Object, the Nature, and
the Necessity of the Atonement. Choosing this, then, as our line of
thought; renouncing, that is to say, all vague questions as to
whether God could not have done some good to miserable man
without the death of His Eternal Son as a propitiatory sacrifice upon
the cross; and seeking a guiding light in a definite and precise idea
of what is implied in remission, we will be in circumstances to enter
on some valid investigation of the Scriptural doctrine of the nature
and necessity of the Atonement.
There seem to be three aspects of the idea of Remission, conspiring
to prove that it is not realisable apart from Atonement, or
Satisfaction, or Propitiatory Sacrifice:—
I. Remission of sin is an act competent only to the Divine Lawgiver
and Judge, and which, therefore, must quadrate with Divine justice.
But without shedding of blood there is no such act of the Divine
Judge.
II. Remission of sin is an act competent only to the Divine
Sovereign, and is expressive of special Divine mercy and love. But
without shedding of blood there is no evidence of such Divine love
and mercy.
III. Remission of sin is an act competent only to the Divine Lord of
the conscience acting as such, giving security, peace, and honour to
the conscience. But without shedding of blood, there is no such act
as that.
Let us take these three views of Remission of Sin. First, It is an act
of the Divine Judge; Second, It is an act of Divine love; Third, It
gives peace to the conscience, and calls forth purity and honour in
the moral nature. But remove the shedding of blood: suppose sin
dealt with, and pardoned without the shedding of blood, without an
atoning sacrifice: and all these characteristics, or features, of true
remission are gone:—no transaction of Divine justice; no gift or
evidence of Divine love; nothing to pacify the conscience, or to
purify and pique to holy honour the paralysed moral sense.
We proceed to show that such are the results of supposing sin
forgiven without the shedding of blood.
Part First
Remission and Law
Remission—true, valid remission of sin—is an act of the Divine
Judge, in His judicial capacity, acting in law and by rule of justice.
For God to deal with sin at all, whether to punish or to pardon, is to
deal with that which is "transgression of the law" When God deals
with sin, His dealings, like His judgments, must be according to
truth. He must deal with sin as sin. He must deal with it as what it
is, not as what it is not. And sin is transgression of the law. But to
deal with that which is transgression of the law is to act as the
Lawgiver and Judge. Who can remit sin but God only? And when He
remits sin, He is dealing with the sinner as his most high Lord and
rightful Lawgiver, taking cognisance of his disobedience to the
Divine law and dealing righteously concerning it.
There are some who would strip the Almighty God altogether of the
office and function of a Lawgiver and Judge. For their part they
prefer a more genial view of the relation between God and His
creatures. They prefer regarding Him as a Father. And when they
see Him dealing with sin in the way of punishing it, they tell us it is
in fatherly affection, seeking to correct and chasten and purify His
children,—not in execution of vengeance, not to satisfy justice, not
to inflict a penalty. Any view of God's procedure concerning sin that
would represent God as acting in the rigid justice of a Judge, whose
immediate function is not to benefit the offender, but uphold the
law, they represent as harsh, as attributing implacability to God, as
robbing Him of the beneficence of His nature, as contradicting the
heavenly declaration that "God is love."
(1.) But the human Conscience testifies that God is a Lawgiver, a
Ruler, a Judge. And guilty conscience testifies that I have offended
against Him, revolted from Him, injured Him in His claims,
repudiated His authority, in that very office and capacity. My most
plain and ordinary and commonplace sense of sin is, that I have
refused God as my Lawgiver; that I have said, I will not have Him to
reign over me; that I have not made His law the rule of my will. My
conscience, in accusing me as a sinner, does not depone primarily
that I have rejected a Father's benevolent advice; but that I have
rejected a Lawgiver's rightful authority—that I have done that which
God said, "Thou shalt not do." Even if it testifies that I have
despised His beneficence and wronged Him as a Father, it testifies
that as a Judge He is clothed with right and power to compel redress
of the wrongs which, as a Father, He hath sustained. The very office
of conscience is to testify of God as a Judge.
(2.) Or, turning from the dictates of Conscience to the scheme of
Providence. Can any man face the facts of Providence, and maintain
that God uniformly punishes sin as a Father, that He only seeks to
correct and benefit His erring children, never as a Judge avenging
on His enemies the insults offered to His majesty and law? Did the
fire that fell from heaven on the cities of the plain chasten, purify,
and sanctify their debased inhabitants? Did it not rather avenge the
quarrel of the Almighty Judge, vindicate His righteousness,
maintain the rigour of His law, and condemn the wicked in an
overthrow, making them examples of Divine wrath till the end of
time, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire? Did the exterminating
waters of the deluge demonstrate the Fatherly beneficence of God?
or did they not really express the righteous indignation of an
insulted Lawgiver? Conscience and the course of Providence
demonstrate that God is clothed with the office of a Ruler and a
Judge.
(3.) And the Constitution of Society confirms the demonstration.
For there is such a thing as human law—authoritative
commandment among men, with penalty annexed for disobedience.
There is the human judge, whose office it is to maintain the honour,
and apply the action of law, where disobedience has been
perpetrated. There is the solemn scene of the court-room of sacred
justice,—the tribunal, the bench, the bar, the criminal, the
prosecutor, the judge, the jury; the indictment read; the relative law
appealed to; the fact admitted or proven; the penalty pronounced,
and, at last, with all the rigour and remorselessness of fate, exacted.
Law, government, condemnation, penalty,—are realities among
men. And the question is, How does that come to pass? Whence
came they? Are they relics of barbarism,—to be purged away before
advancing civilisation? Or are they component parts of honourable
institutions, to be perfected as civilisation progresses? Let the
breathless interest of millions tell, as they watch some noted trial in
their native country, while the outraged sense of righteousness and
honour thrills from north to south, from shore to shore, and
reverential expectation waits the issue, thanking God that impartial
justice, with even balance, and with flashing sword, has her
inviolable temple in the land! Yes; it is not one of man's
corruptions, but a relic of his greatness and moral glory; it is not of
human invention, it is of Divine origin, that justice and judgment,
and the sacred office of the judge, have their dwelling among men.
But if God is not a judge, it is impossible to account for the
existence of that noble and solemn office on earth at all. God might
as well create the faculties of sight and hearing in men, without
Himself being possessed of ability to see and hear, as He could put
it into men's hearts to maintain judgment in human government, if
He were not a lawgiver and judge Himself. "He that formed the eye,
shall He not see? He that formed the ear, shall He not hear?" He
that clothed man with the office of the judge, and with authority to
execute judgment; must not justice and judgment form the
habitation of His own throne? Must He not Himself be the judge of
all the earth? For what can the office be among men, or how could it
ever have originated, were it not a reflection, a derivation, from the
same office in God? Nor is it without a flood of light on this theme
of sacrifice, as juridical, retributive, and expiatory, that when God
did first delegate His function of judgment to man, it was in
language which has since been consecrated to the service of the
doctrine of propitiation:—"By man shall His blood be shed" (Gen.
9:6).
And acting in this office, what can come beneath God's cognisance,
waiting His decision concerning it, if not sin?—sin, which is the
transgression of His law, the refusal of His Lordship over us, the
rejection of His commandment and authority.
Be it observed then, that in whatever way God may deal with sin, it
is as a Judge that He has to deal with it. It is as the righteous
Lawgiver, the rightful Ruler of all the universe. It is in no private
capacity. It is in the broad public relation in which He stands to all
the universe—the great upholder of law and government. If He
executes vengeance on sin, it is in this capacity that He does so. If
He remit sin, it is in this capacity that He remits it,—as the
administrator of eternal justice. His act in doing so will be an act of
high, public, sovereign state; a judicial procedure; an act in
administration of justice.
But if sin be forgiven without shedding of blood, there is not the
shadow of any such act. The Divine law has been violated, yet no
order taken that it be honoured. Divine justice offended, yet no
procedure adopted to satisfy it: the authority of God assailed yet no
vindication of it achieved: sentence of death incurred, yet not
inflicted: a curse entailed, but never executed: a fearful threatening
uttered, yet braved and scorned, and proved to be worthy of
contempt by its being set aside unfulfilled. It is not even pretended
on this scheme, that remission of sin is an act of God, acting as a
public lawgiver and judge. He is supposed, as it were, to have a
private meeting with the sinner, and to tell him not to be afraid, for
He means not to prosecute him for his sin at all, not to bring him
into judgment, not to demand a trial. He simply lets the sinner off,
and simply lets his sin pass. So benevolent is He said to be, that He
seeks no satisfaction to justice,—a step declared to imply
implacability and harshness. He will quash all legal and terrible
procedure. He will quietly resile from His claims, and be silent
considerately concerning His injuries.
But whatever this might be, it is not Remission. It is not the
thorough, authoritative, conclusive removal of guilt; for that can be
the act of the judge alone. But is he acting as a judge, who arbitrarily
sets aside the law and all its penalty; silences the lord high
prosecutor, dismisses the witnesses, disbands the jury, and declares
that he has made up his mind to forgive the prisoner at the bar?
Would that be an act of justice? Would it stand for a valid remission
of the criminal's offence? As little would it be Remission—as little
would it be a valid, judicial transaction on God's part—were He
"without shedding of blood," without the introduction of a sacrifice,
without demanding an atonement, without providing a propitiation,
to clear the guilty, to let the sinner off, to let sin pass unpunished.
Part Second
Remission and Love
Remission is an act of signal and Sovereign Divine Love and Mercy,
—but without shedding of blood there is no evidence of any such
attributes on God's part at all.
We conceive of Remission as a transaction of Mercy even more
readily than we regard it as an act of justice and judgment. Mercy to
the guilty—pure and profound compassion for the miserable—
matchless love even to an enemy, are what we naturally imagine to
be the moving causes with God in remitting the sins of His people.
And Scripture testifies that it is so—even "for His great love
wherewith He loveth them" (Eph. 2:4), even "according to His
loving-kindness, and according to the multitude of His tender
mercies" (Ps. 51:1). But were God to forgive the iniquities of His
people without a ransom, without shedding of blood, there would be
no such act of loving-kindness on His part—no evidence whatever of
His mercy, compassion, and love towards them.
It is confidently affirmed, indeed, that the scheme of forgiveness
without Atonement goes to magnify the Divine benevolence; while
the doctrine that God forgives no sin without a full satisfaction is
said to cloud and conceal that lovely attribute altogether.
Nevertheless it is of easy demonstration that apart from the
atonement of the cross there is no proof forthcoming that God is
merciful, while it is just the atonement which proves the mercy of
the Lord, and moreover proves it to be infinite.
For, if God comes to me, a guilty transgressor of His law, and tells
me that He means to let me off; that He means to let my sin pass;
that He cannot find it in His heart to inflict upon me the vengeance
which He threatened; and so without any more ado, I pass away,
free from judgment, free from terror: I soon begin to question
whether I am so greatly indebted to Divine beneficence as in the
first rapture of my escape I fancied. I begin to consider whether,
after all, it is any great token of God's love to me that I have just
obtained. And I argue that, if it was at God's option, at His mere
option, to cast me into hell, or save me from it, without any
expiation of my sin, or any satisfaction to His justice; if it was in His
power to free me from wrath and woe, without any claim of justice
interposing to object, or needing to be met; if there were no
imperative call of righteousness demanding my condemnation to
eternal death, but God could free me simply if He chose, and no
interests of righteousness be injured by His doing so,—why, then,
instead of arguing any wonderful benevolence on His part towards
me, that He puts forth with infinite ease His will and power to save,
the wonder would be that He should abstain from doing so. There is
really no marvellous grace, no peculiar amazing compassion, no
overwhelming evidence of personal distinguishing, peculiar love to
me, when God stretches forth His hand to save from a fate which
Divine, justice was not inflexibly assigning to me, and as to which
Divine justice can in no way object, though it be made to pass away
from me. I cannot possibly recognise any peculiar stamp, or
signature of marvellous Divine mercy, in the act which frees me
from a fate which no demands of justice assigned to me. The marvel
rather would be if God could have left me to be overtaken by it. It
would have been, in such a case, no small ground on which to rest a
charge of cruelty if He had: it is little evidence of love that He has
not.
Contrast the two cases by the aid of illustration.
(1.) I see, let us say, a wretched fellow-creature about to expiate, by
death, his offence against his country's laws. Ten thousand
onlookers around might be my obedient vassals and retainers; and a
single glance from my eye might be enough to rouse them for his
instantaneous rescue. But though it might cost me but a glance or
nod, I stand unmoved, and allow the fearful doom to fall. Is there
any evidence in this that I am a man destitute of compassion? None
whatever. An inflexible and righteous necessity, and moral and legal
necessity interposes. Justice demands the doom, and compassion
must look on inactive.
(2.) But again:—I see, let us say, a slanting tower toppling over and
falling on a little child; and no call of righteousness superseding and
paralysing the action of my compassion here, I rush forward and
snatch the little one in safety from the threatened fate. Is there any
great evidence in this that I am a man full of compassion?—that
peculiar, marvellous, ever-flowing floods of pity swell my bosom
always, and stamp my character with radiant signatures of tender
loving-kindness? Surely not. It is mere humanity, the absence
whereof were moral baseness. I would be ashamed to hear my
action lauded as any marvel of generous and special love. I would be
ashamed of my fellow-men, if I did not think that millions of them
were promptly ready to emulate and equal it at any time. Above all,
there is nothing in it to show that for this little one in special I
entertain an intense, peculiar affection—a distinguishing, endearing
love for this particular child, along with a profound and settled
interest in all that bears upon its welfare: no evidence of that
whatever.
Even so, if no inflexible necessity calls for the wrath of God on my
iniquity;—if no claims of justice, no interests of government, no
demands of law, and truth, and righteousness, are violated by my
sin going unpunished, by God clearing me though I am guilty;—if
He can, apart from atonement, avert eternal ruin from me without
violating any of the perfections of His divine nature, or any of the
provisions and requirements of His Divine government;—if He can
altogether rescue me without any satisfaction to Divine justice, or
any claim of Divine justice needing to be satisfied: then I cannot see
how I ever can come to be convinced that His averting from me that
awful, eternal, infinite ruin, in these plain and easy circumstances,
evidences, to me-ward any marvellous, or special, or tender love.
And when, over and above this, I am told that His whole nature is so
beneficent that He recoils from the sight of suffering among His
creatures; that He is too kind and merciful to visit their faults with
the damnation of hell, and may be expected at last to deal leniently
with every one whose case will at all admit of it; I begin to think
that, with a nature so constituted,—so sensitively pained by the
sight of pain in others,—it is more out of love to Himself than love
to me that He forgives my sin; more that He may Himself escape
the pain of seeing my pain, than out of any very marvellous,
amazing, personal, peculiar love to me. So little can a forgiveness
without shedding of blood demonstrate the mercy and love of God.
But view the question on the other side. I go to God as a guilty and
confessed transgressor, a violator of His holy law, an acknowledged
enemy to His authority and government. I go to acknowledge that I
have rebelled against Him. And I find Him seated on a throne high
and lifted up, and His train filleth the temple. Above it stand the
seraphim, each one having six wings; with twain they cover their
face, and with twain they cover their feet, and with twain they do fly.
I hear them worship their God and mine, saying, "Holy, holy, holy,
is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of Thy glory." I look
towards that throne whither the angelic beings bend to utter forth
their adorations: and as I gaze into the glory that enwraps itself into
the light which is inaccessible; and as I tremble before the
wondrous majesty of Godhead seated in the throne of righteous and
eternal administration, I become conscious of the infinite baseness
of doing what this great and holy God—my Lawgiver and my Lord—
hath said, "Thou shalt not do." I need no proof now that sin
deserveth God's wrath and curse. In His holy glorious presence, I
feel the sentence of death in myself. I feel that my settled neglect of
this glorious God is an offence at which all heaven may stand
aghast, and I cry, "Woe is me, for I am undone."
What a shock to all my moral nature, if in this moment of
quickened moral sensibility: what a shock and outrage: what a
hollow, trifling voice of levity and lies, breaking on my ear: were it
now proclaimed unto me:—Do not be afraid, for God can easily clear
the guilty: He can let sin pass unpunished; He will let the sinner off!
But on the other hand, how fully in accordance with all my prostrate
reverence for the character and sanctity of Godhead, if, in this
moment of my deep humiliation, the voice saith, "Holiness
becometh Thine house, O Lord, for ever: and the wages of sin is
death" (Ps. 93:5; Rom. 6:23). This ratifies the dictate of my own soul
within. It tells me,—what I again tell to God,—even that He is just in
judging and clear in speaking (Ps. 51:4); that the punishment of sin
is an absolute moral necessity; that God is righteous in taking
vengeance (Rom. 3:5).
But when justice has thus assigned to me eternal death, as no harsh,
no arbitrary, no optional decree on God's part, but the very doom
which I have myself incurred, and no discretionary act on God's part
can set it aside; and when the setting of it aside, without shedding of
blood, could never prove that God loveth me, He hath another proof
of love, which eternity will for ever celebrate, but never fully
fathom. He does not propose to tolerate my sin; to let it pass; to let
me off. He proposes to expiate my sin; to "make an end" of it; to
execute all the vengeance due to it; and then bring me near to
Himself in holy peace and fellowship for ever. Unto this end He
sends forth His own Beloved Son, to link His destiny with mine, to
link His person with mine; to take my nature into personal
subsistence in Godhead; to take my sins as His own, and bear them
in His own body on the tree, till He satisfy every demand of justice,
and destroy death and him that had the power of death. If I stand
and gaze again at that throne, and think that the coequal glorious
Son of God who sits upon it—by whom were all things made,
whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers
—is Himself freely given by the Father to me, to be in death the
ransom of my sin, my redemption, my propitiation, my bleeding
sacrifice, my blessed peace; and if I turn from that throne of glory
where my Saviour sat adored by angels, as when "Isaiah saw His
glory and spake of Him," to yon cross of shame, where He, the same
Divine Person, hung in agony and woe,—crucified by men, tempted
and tried by devils, forsaken of God, weighed down by my curse,
bearing my condemnation, yielding His life a ransom for my sin, a
price for my salvation, answering all the claims of righteousness
which made me an eternal outcast and a curse from God, achieving
my liberty from death, and Satan, and sin, and this present evil
world, and bringing in my eternal righteousness, my eternal life, my
right and title to eternal life and blessedness from God:—then I,
who erewhile did fail to see any proof of love Divine in God
forgiving sin without a sacrifice, find here at last the proof of love,
peculiar, matchless, infinitely generous, and unfathomable; and I
say, "Herein now at last is love; not that we have loved God, but that
he hath loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our
sins" (1 John 4:10).
It was no proof to me of love on God's part that He should propose
to pardon what Divine justice did not inflexibly demand should be
punished—avenged: for to punish where justice does not demand it,
savours of cruelty; while to abstain from inflicting what justice does
not demand is a poor proof indeed of any great benevolence. But in
the shedding of blood—in the sacrifice of Christ—I see the glory of
God's nature as holy, and the inflexible and righteous demand of
His justice against sin. And I see, also, a love which proposes to
remit an offence, an evil, so great that it deserves eternal woe. I see
a love so great as to provide—what justice demands—a full
satisfaction to make remission righteous. I see a love so great that
for the sake of those for whom remission is to be provided, it spares
not an object infinitely precious, infinitely lovely, love-worthy, and
beloved. And I now say, overwhelmed with the full conviction and
assurance of God's love, and the transcendency of that love—love
that unto eternity never can be surpassed or equalled—I now say,
"HEREBY perceive we the love of God towards us, in that he laid
down his life for us" (1 John 3:16).
It is the shedding of Christ's blood which proves the love of God.
For without shedding of blood there is no such transaction of
marvellous, infinite, peculiar, and sovereign love as the true and
valid remission of sin—remission in the gift and death of "God
manifest in the flesh"—implies.
Part Third
Remission and Conscience
Remission of sin is a Divine act of the Lord of the conscience, giving
security and peace to the conscience. But without shedding of blood
there is no such act.
Put this aspect of Remission at once, not into the hands of
speculative argument, but to the test of conviction and experience.
Awakened, convicted, altogether restless, I go to God concerning my
sin; and on the scheme that would administer pardon without
propitiation, God simply lets me off; He lets my sin pass.
Does this satisfy me? Does it give me security and peace? Does it
tranquillise my conscience, and give me rest? Can I, on the back of
such a transaction, take up the joyful and exulting language,
"Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully
with thee?" Most assuredly not. My conscience is not satisfied: my
case is not met: my sin is not remitted.
For, when I am aroused in conscience to seek remission of sin, what
is there in my conscience that must be met and removed? There is,
first, a dread of wrath; and, secondly, a sense of ill desert. There are
these two things;—a fear that wrath is coming, and a feeling that it
ought to come.
(1.) And first, as to the less noble and less holy dread of wrath. Does
such a scheme of pardon really, validly, wholly, and finally remove
it? It is my sin which leads me to dread the wrath of God, and I go to
God concerning it; and without shedding of blood, without
executing the penalty my sin deserves, without an expiation or a
sacrifice, God says to me, "I will clear you, though you be guilty.
Your sin is true: also it is great: but let it pass."
And so my sin is allowed to pass; and I look after it as it passes; and
I begin to ask, Whither will it go? and when may it not return? and
how can I get on such terms of confidence with God and love to
Him, as to trust Him while my sin still Subsists, while my sin that
was allowed to pass is still wandering, and may come back to find
and claim me, or be called back at any time to confront and to
condemn me? What security have I got, what guarantee does the
whole procedure afford, that God will not keep my sin in
remembrance against me; keep it to be serviceable in schooling and
taming me if I should prove refractory or disobedient; keep it as an
engine of despotism to wield upon me if necessary; a Damocles's
sword hung over me? The possibility of His doing so is not
disproved by His forgiving sin without an atonement. Nay, it is by
such a procedure rendered highly probable; for He that could say today,
"The wages of sin is death," and could say to-morrow, "The
wages of sin is not death; sin shall be forgiven without death,
without shedding of blood," may change His mind again on the day
following, and falling back on the former declaration, recall my sin
and deal with it again in all the unrelentingness I originally dreaded.
On such terms, I can have no real security and peace. And without
absolute security,—without, at least, a ground for absolute and
perfect security seen and rested on,—I can have no confidence, no
full assurance of heart towards God, no peaceful liberty, no real rest.
Nay, more: were God reserving in His own hand such an engine of
power against me, holy honourableness between Him and me would
be impossible. My intercourse with Him would be that of trembling
obsequiousness and sycophancy. My great ruling motive in all my
walk with Him would be to keep off from dangerous ground; to
avoid waking up an unfinished controversy. Soul-inspiriting
adoration would never stir my spirit. At the best I would be only
flattering God with my mouth, being in no steadfast covenant with
Him: meanly I would be labouring to avoid provoking Him to fall
back upon the power over me which, in my uncancelled,
undestroyed sin, He still reserves: my religion would be a poor and
pitiful calculation continually as to how I might best succeed in
letting God's memory and my own slumber on a painful topic.
Now is it at all wonderful that the demoralising dread of wrath
should still torment the conscience; for,—
(2.) Its sense of ill-desert is not met by such forgiveness. The evil
conscience is not merely a prophet of coming evil: it is a true
declarator of rightful penalty. It predicts that evil will come, but
only by protesting that evil ought to come. And hence, till some
arrangement be made on God's part, and apprehended and
embraced on mine, by which evil ought no more to come upon me,
—till then, conscience is unsatisfied and rest-less. But a pardon
without propitiation never professes or attempts to deal with this
demand of the conscience. In fact, it does not deal with man's
conscience or moral nature at all. It appeals to his fear of physical
evil dreaded, to his sense of satisfaction in physical evil averted. But
to the higher declaration of conscience, that sin deserves the wrath
of God, such pardon has nothing whatever to say. It leaves the
conscience as it found it.
Let sin pass, you say. Let sin pass; I and my God being face to face,
dealing concerning it. Let it pass.
No; I reply, with all the energy of my soul, and all the opposition of
conscience; let it not pass. That will not remove my dread of evil,
still less satisfy and quiet my sense of ill-desert. Let it not pass. Let
God "make an end of it." Let it be "put away," "finished," "blotted
out," annihilated. That alone will quell my fear of evil. Let it be
ended and put away by its righteous penalty being executed—
executed on my Surety and Substitute, with whom, by faith, I am
united and made one. That alone will meet my sense of right. For I
am a sinner; and I take guilt to myself—the guilt of sin, which is the
guilt of death. No scheme which prevents me from taking guilt to
myself can save me. It must demoralise me. But give me an atoning
dying Substitute and Surety; and make me so thoroughly one with
Him in God's esteem, and by the Spirit's work, and by my own faith,
as that in taking guilt to myself, I inevitably and immediately lay it
on Him; so thoroughly one with Him that I cannot possibly take
guilt to Him, but by taking guilt to myself,—which conserves His
rights, in that none can surreptitiously or impenitently seize the
salvation wrought by Him, and conserves the rights of my moral
nature too, in that my faith in my Sin-bearer is my believing
confession of sin,—that truth in the inward parts which God
desireth and which I also desire. Deal with my sin thus. And then,
but not till then, shall my soul return unto her rest. Then will I meet
my God with open face, and single eye, and frank and honourable
brow, when I know that He keepeth no engine of secret despotism
in hand against me,—which it were a devil's work to do, and a
traitor's doom to dread,—but hath spoiled the principalities of
darkness of all their power to concuss and terrify me, destroyed
unto eternity the only bond which gave me up to evil, blotting out
the handwriting of ordinances which was against me, nailing it to
His cross. Then will I meet my God in holy confidence and honour.
Then will I meet God's great and holy law with great and holy
courage, with great and holy uprightness, seeing that I am not
forgiven at the expense of its glory, but by a sacrifice that magnifies
and makes it honourable. Then will I meet my great accuser with
holy honourable triumph over him, and he shall no more scorn me
on the ground that his own doom is more righteous, and his
endurance of it more honourable to him, than is my release to me;
for my sin is not quashed and compromised any more than his, but
expiated in righteousness, which his will never be.
Deal thus with my sin. Extinguish it for ever. Make a holy, perfect
end of it. Finish my transgression. Make reconciliation for mine
iniquity. Remove my sin from me as far as the east is distant from
the west. Yea, annihilate it: as when the iniquity of Israel shall be
sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they
shall not be found. Then am I placed on terms of peace, security,
liberty, and honour with my God. All my sense of right gets fullest
scope; and all my sense of safety gets fullest satisfaction. I see that
God is righteous; I see that God is love; and I see that I am saved. I
feel my heart sprinkled from an evil conscience; dreading nothing
from His righteousness; filled with His love abundantly. This, this is
Remission now. This is true redemption now, even the forgiveness
of sins, through His blood, which is the image of the invisible. God,
the first-born of every creature, by whom were all things made,
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or
principalities, or powers. Oh! marvellous shedding of blood—"His
blood"—by which valid, and holy, and perfect, and eternal
Remission is secured. Therefore we sing, with all the heavenly
choir, a song in celebration of such Remission so obtained—"Unto
Him that loved us, and that washed us from our sins in His own
blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto the Father; unto
Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
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Post by Admin on Jan 16, 2024 13:40:47 GMT -5
CHAPTER VIII: THE COUNTERIMPUTATIONS OF SIN AND RIGHTEOUSNESS
IF the arguments by which we have attempted to establish, That
there cannot be Remission without Atonement, are admitted to be
valid, it will be seen that they establish also the converse of that
proposition, namely, That there cannot be Atonement without
Remission.
For it is not any vague and general sort of atonement that is
requisite to secure remission, but such particular and definite
atonement as cannot but secure it. The same arguments, therefore,
that are good to show the necessity of atonement in order to the
remission of sins, are equally good to show the necessity of the
remission of sins where atonement has been made: and no man is
thoroughly established in the one truth who does not see that it
inevitably involves the other. Where the necessary condition has
been met, the result follows necessarily. The atonement, which has
been proved indispensible to remission, is of such a nature as to
necessitate remission. For if it does not necessitate and secure
remission,—if it does not render remission absolutely inevitable,—
then it has secured or necessitated either nothing at all, or mere
remissibility. But we have established nothing concerning any
atonement that is necessary to remissibility; and, therefore, on this
assumption, we have established nothing concerning atonement at
all. He who will not accept the converse, or introverted form of the
proposition, cannot logically be permitted to cling to the direct and
primary form of it. He cannot be allowed to use the word remission
as meaning remission in the first half of an argument, and as
meaning remissibility in the second. And if he should say that ex
animo he now substitutes "remissibility" for "remission," he must
pari passu make an analogous substitution for "atonement,"—
whether "atonability" or not, it is for himself to say. But, at all
events, it is perfectly clear that if after having proved, That there
cannot be remission without atonement, he chooses to abandon the
idea of real and actual and true remission, toning it down now to
mean something far less than it meant when he began to show that
the securing of it demands atonement; if he speak of it now, not as
something secured, but as something that is not secured, and that is
still conditional and contingent; then he cannot possibly hold fast
by that which he proved to be indispensable for securing it, while he
himself even contends that it is not secured. He has cut the branch
on which he might have rested peacefully, and he has provided no
other to which he can safely transfer himself. If we stop short of the
belief of the efficaciousness—the unconditional and absolute
efficaciousness—of the Atonement, we raze to the foundations all
that we had established. "We build again the things that we
destroyed" (Gal. 1:18), and destroy the things which we had built.
And how this bears on the extent of the Atonement, it is not
necessary to say.
This will become evident: and at the same time it will become
evident that the objection about the innocent suffering that the
guilty may escape, is not an objection, but merely an unreasoned,
direct denial of our doctrine: if,—before closing our series of leading
propositions concerning the conditions of a correct discussion of the
subject,—we show,
That, alike, the Equity and the Efficaciousness of the Atonement are
safe-guarded and secured by the counter-imputations,—namely, of
the sins of the Covenant-clients to their Head, and the
righteousness of the Covenant-head to his Clients.
The counter-imputations—of sin to Christ, of righteousness to His
people—are nowhere in Holy Scripture brought into such close
juxta-position or related to each other by so firm a nexus, as in the
celebrated and profound sentence, "He hath made Him to be sin for
us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of
God in Him" (2 Cor. 5:21). It is reported that when some one,
startled by the idea of Christ being "made sin," suggested to Luther
that it should be rendered "made a sin-offering," Luther answered,
"No; I prefer the words as they stand, for they are more intense."
And he spoke shrewdly and well. Besides, there would be equal
reason for altering the second clause in a similar manner; and,
indeed, the exactness and point of the antithesis would require that.
So that the verse would read, "God hath made Him to be a sinoffering for us, who knew no sin, that we might be the
righteousness-offering of God in Him;" a violation of the
proposition so great and manifest as to show that it ought not to be
violated or tampered with at all. Nor is it possible to stop even here.
Consistency requires the alteration, if made at all, to go the length
of a reading so absurd as this: He hath made Him to be a sinoffering for us, who knew no sin-offering! For the word ἁμαρτία
must have one rendering, else the antithesis with which this great
theological saying is replenished, and the precision of the truth
which it is designed to teach, are lost.
It is of course true that God hath made Christ to be a sin-offering, a
sacrifice for sin; but that is not the same thing as His having made
Christ to be sin. His being made sin is by no means identical with
His being made a sacrifice for sin. It goes deeper and further back
into the problem. It is at once the preliminary and the reason for
His being made a sacrifice for sin. He is made sin, and therefore He
is made a sin-offering. It is His being made sin which justifies His
being made a sin-offering. In order that He may really and
righteously, congruously and consistently, be made a sacrifice for
sin, it behoves that He be first made sin. And this loous insignis of
the Pauline theology does not state the fact that Christ was made a
sacrifice for sin; it states a truth which is the ground and reason of
that fact. It lays the foundation for the sacrifice in a prior
transaction.
That transaction may be viewed in this light. God is seeking out and
searching for sin, that He may deal with it judicially; that He may
deal with it as the holiness of the Divine nature, and the
righteousness of the Divine law, and the justice of the Divine
government, require that it should be dealt with. The sword of
justice is seen pursuing sin, to inflict the threatened penalty of
wrath and death. Meantime, in His supreme sovereignty, God puts
forward His own Son manifest in the flesh to represent sin, to
personate sin, to stand in the room of sin. "God sends His own Son
in the likeness of sinful flesh and FOR SIN" (Rom. 8:3); that is, in
lieu or in room of sin. It is the same phrase in Heb. 10:6, though our
translators have obliterated the precision of it by supplying a word
that was not needed. "In burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou
hast had no pleasure;" correctly rendered, "In burnt-offerings, and
FOR SIN, Thou hast had no pleasure." Even so, God sends forth His
own Son "FOR SIN," in lieu or room of sin, to represent or
personate sin, so thoroughly, indeed, that Divine law and justice
pursuing sin find Christ in sin's room, and take hold on Christ; for
He is "FOR SIN," "made sin;" and thus "God, sending His own Son
for sin, condemns sin in the flesh," even in the flesh of Him who is
for sin, and in the likeness of sinful flesh. He condemns sin, in
condemning Christ; for Christ is "FOR SIN;" He is,—to use a
common and intelligible expression,—He is what is for it. He is FOR
SIN: and He is so by the authority and appointment of the sovereign
Lord and Judge himself; for God hath made Him to be sin.
Divine justice and Divine wrath, then, are seen searching for sin—
our sin—to execute upon it the vengeance due to sin. And in this
search Divine justice and Divine wrath inevitably find Christ; for
God hath made Him that knew no sin to be sin for us. In like
manner, and in exact counterpart of this, Divine justice and Divine
love are seen searching for righteousness—the righteousness of God
—the righteousness which God requires—which His own holy
nature and His own attribute of righteousness cannot but require.
They are seen searching for "the righteousness which God's
righteousness requires Him to require."* They are searching for it,
in order to smile upon it—to lavish on it the love, and complacency,
and favour, and blessing of God. And in searching for this
righteousness, they find us, if we are in Christ: for we are "made the
righteousness of God in him." And they own that their search has
been successful. Nor was it unnecessary. Nay, it was more than ever
necessary, from the moment that they recognised Christ as "made
sin." From that moment the demand for the "righteousness of God"
becomes imperious. The wondrous evolution by which the Son of
God is "made sin," creates an absolutely imperious and new demand
that the righteousness of God should be forthcoming, even as it
never was before. And it is met in that which is the counterpart, and
fruit, and justification of Christ "made sin,"—even in us "made the
righteousness of God."
The renowned vox signata, then, which we are considering, does not
allege that Christ has been subjected to death "for us men and for
our salvation,"—a ransom, a sacrifice, an offering for sin; but rather
the reason for that,—its ground and justifying reason; namely, His
being substituted in the room of sinners, and having their sins
imputed or reckoned to Him. And it does not allege that we are
justified unto life eternal in Christ; but the ground and reason of
that; namely, our being substituted in the eye of God's law and
justice, in the room of Christ, and our having His righteousness
imputed to us. It does not declare that Christ is made a sacrifice for
sin; but that, prior to that, and in order to that, He is made our sin.
And it does not declare that we are reconciled to God—which would
be the proper and formally exact antithesis, result, and counterpart
of His being made a sacrifice for sin; for reconciliation is the natural
and immediate fruit of sacrifice. But it declares that, as prior to our
reconciliation, and in order thereunto, we are made the
righteousness of God in Christ. In a word, it is the EXCHANGE OF
PLACES that is the direct doctrine affirmed; and it goes utterly to
enervate this profound theological proposition, and to empty it of
the specific truth which it so clearly couches and so forcibly
conveys, if we fail to read it simply as it stands. It is the two-fold
exchange of places in respect of sin and righteousness severally, and
the counter-imputations thereof, which undoubtedly it embodies
and expresses. And it expresses this in threefold antithesis. For each
clause contains an antithesis of its own—the first in terms, the
second implicitly; and the clauses, moreover, are antithetical as
between themselves. It is as if it read thus:—
He hath made Him that knew no sin
To be Sin for us:
That we (who knew no righteousness)
Might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
We do not, of course, propose to investigate either of the
antithetical clauses by itself—which would lead us into the mare
magnum of the abstract, metaphysical, juridical, and ethical
principles of imputation generally. We propose to take the two
clauses conjointly, and to review them in the light which they
reciprocally throw upon each other.Concerning these two Divine and divinely related transactions,
then:—the substitution of Christ in our room, through federal union
with us—His being made sin for us: and the substitution of us in
His room, through spiritual union with Him, founded on and
growing out of His federal union with us,—our being made the
righteousness of God in Him:—we may see, in the first place: That
the Divine authority regulates them both; and, that the Divine
power effects them both. In the second place: That they are strict
and simple, unmingled and complete imputations; and that the wills
of the parties—Christ's, namely, and ours—are in them both. In the
third place: That they irresistibly carry their contrasted and
complete effects with them; and also, that the latter transaction is
the result, the sure and inevitable result, of the former.
Part First
The Counter-imputations are accomplished by Divine Sover[/font]
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Post by Admin on Jan 17, 2024 11:23:37 GMT -5
Part First
The Counter-imputations are accomplished by Divine Sovereignty and Divine Power
I. The sovereign authority of God decrees and rules these two great
transactions. "He," even God, "hath made him to be sin." Thus
expressly is the first of them at least attributed to the Supreme. It is
not indeed affirmed in the same express and explicit terms that God
is the author of the second. It is somewhat more generally and
impersonally expressed: "That we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him." But even here the same thing is implicitly involved.
For clearly the meaning is: God designed and decreed to make us
the righteousness of God: in order to this, however, it was in God's
own righteousness requisite that Christ should be made sin: in
order that He might make us the righteousness of God, He did not
shrink from making Christ to be sin: He accomplished the one
evolution that He might bring about the other. Clearly, both are the
doing of the Lord. And it is marvellous in our eyes.
The making of Christ to be sin, is a transaction of high state and
sovereignty. It is a very singular event in the Divine government. It
could originate with—it could be designed, proposed, carried out by
—none but the Divine moral governor Himself; and by Him acting
only in His prerogative as the Absolute Sovereign of the universe.
And it affords scope for exercising and glorifying His sovereignty as
no other transaction in all the eternal history of His government can
afford. For it illustrates the singular freedom—the high range and
all-embracing sweep—of His sheer sovereign will, unto the
uttermost It proves that God's sovereignty is free, in a freedom
which could not have been conceived, and has full scope and play in
circumstances in which it could not have been believed to be
applicable. For God's holy law is absolute, and unconditional, and
unchangeable. No possible circumstances can set limits to its
action; for its very claim is to rule all circumstances whatsover. And,
save for sin and salvation, the holy universe must have for ever
believed that God's sovereign pleasure also was ruled and hemmed
in by His unconditional and everlasting law. It must have for ever
appeared impossible that God's will could act otherwise, in all
matters ethical and juridical, than as His unchangeable law should
rule. Hence, when sin entered, and death by sin, the sovereign God
must have appeared, to all His intelligent and righteous creatures,
as shut up to inflict death on all that sinned. The sphere of
sovereignty must have appeared limited by the sphere of law.
But God designed to show His sovereignty to be absolutely
unlimited,—not, indeed, in a way of violating law, or setting law
aside, but of transcending law;—not as against law, but above law;—
as not merely free within the sphere of law, but free in a sphere
comprehending law and rising about it; compassing law about on
every side with glory, and rising far above law, into a realm of higher
freedom still.
The sovereign Lord is not shut up to the course which law
prescribes—death eternal to the sinner. The freedom of His
sovereignty—the council of His will—the sphere of His good
pleasure—takes a larger range. He is not shut up to His course of
procedure, even by His own holy law. He cannot indeed proceed in
violation of it; for it is the very transcript of His own holy nature,
and He cannot deny Himself. But His nature, while it defines His
law, does not hamper or hem in His will. Honouring His law, and
acting ever in accordance with His nature and perfections, His will
goeth forth in most free, unconditioned, absolute sovereignty. And
in the action of His sovereignty, in its most free and glorious forth going,
He makes Christ to be sin for us. No law required this: no law
suggested this: no law objects to this. Against this there is no law.
To prompt to this there is no law. The everlasting law is honoured
by this, but never contemplated it. The sovereign pleasure of God,
reigning within and without the law, rises high above it. And His
counsel shall stand, and He will do all His pleasure.
Ah! well may we ask,—Why do sinful men quarrel with the
sovereignty of God, the mere good pleasure of His will? Its
unlimitedness, its absolute unconditionedness, is their only source
of hope. And its glory is made great in their salvation.
For, let it be observed that this is exclusively the sovereignty of
grace, of mercy, and of love. As high as the sovereignty of God in its
absoluteness is carried up above its former apparent range, so high
are the love, and grace, and mercy of God exalted, and seen to be of
that infinite extent and unconditioned energy, that could have been
neither manifested nor imagined apart from the redemption that is
in Christ. And now as the principalities and powers of light adore
before the glorious expansion which the sovereignty of heaven's
high King has undergone or exhibited, they see that it is grace, and
mercy, and love, that are shining bright over all former forth shining of the glory of God:
and now they say wonderingly, in mingled ecstasy and awe, as they never said or sang before,—"God is love."
And it is by the same absolute authority, the same sovereign will
and mere good pleasure of the Lord, that we are made the
righteousness of God in Christ. "He will have mercy on whom He
will have mercy, and He will have compassion on whom He will
have compassion." The imputation of righteousness to us—not
against law—must be above law. We must be "justified freely by His
grace." We cannot imagine that it should be otherwise. We cannot
imagine God, in the freest sovereignty of His will, making Christ to
be sin for us; and coming down, coming under any constraint, or
limitation, or condition, in making us to be the righteousness of
God in Him. That which shall render us the righteousness of God,
can, and must, be simply the onward movement, seeking its
intended goal, of that same most free and sovereign will of God,
which, in order to make us the righteousness of God, first made
Christ to be sin for us. Nay; if we understand the exercise, the glory,
the grand extension and expansion—as we have ventured to say—of
divine sovereignty in making Christ to be sin, we cannot possibly
desire to be made the righteousness of God, save by the exercise of
this same sovereignty of God from its now loftiest throne—its
highest regal seat of power most absolute. Who would wish His
righteousness, in the eternal judgments, to shine in any glory of
grace, less than the very uttermost of sovereign grace? Or who
desire to see this sovereignty—so glorious in love's own utmost
range, and love's own highest liberty—shorn and tamed down,
hemmed in and limited, brought in bondage, or constrained by any
conditions, just as it stretched forth its hand to grant salvation from
eternal ruin? No. Let it be that very sovereignty of God—rising to
the utmost height of its heavenly bent, and acting out, unto the
uttermost bounds, or rather in the boundlessness of freedom, its
own sweet, free, and loving will—that shall compass and convey my
salvation. And even so it acts indeed; from its absolute throne—the
"THRONE OF GRACE"—in the freest pleasure of its will. I may
tremble, it is very true, to think that my escape from everlasting
ruin is at the disposal of the mere and sovereign will of another. But
it is at the disposal of the sovereign will of Love unfathomable. And
it is at the disposal of the sovereign will of Power most absolute. My
trembling, therefore, need be none other than the trembling of
hope, succeeding the blank terror of despair. For when I tremble
before sovereign love unlimited, armed with Omnipotency to bring
salvation, I am gloriously exempted from trembling on any other
ground. And when "the floods, O Lord, have lifted up, when they
have lifted up their voice, and lifted up their waves;" when
conscience, and death, and hell, are dooming me, and claiming me, I
will not for one moment delay giving thanks that I have heard a
voice louder than theirs, and mightier than the noise of many
waters, saying from the throne of absolute power and infinite grace:
—"I will have mercy on him, sovereignly and simply if I please; I
will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have
compassion on whom I will have compassion."—Glory to God in the
highest!
II. The efficacy of Divine power is in both these transactions, as well
as the authority of Divine sovereignty. This is manifestly implied in
the language used to express them:—"He hath made Him to be sin—
that we might be made the righteousness of God." Divine power has
effected it, as well as Divine authority appointed it. It has been
powerfully accomplished in the fulness of times, as well as
sovereignly decreed in the councils of eternity.
"God sends forth His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and
FOR SIN." The initial and decisive exercise of Divine power in
making Christ to be sin, is in sending Him forth in the likeness of
sinful flesh. The Word was made flesh, that He might be made sin.
Made flesh; not sinful flesh: for it is He who knew no sin that is
made sin, and He still remains He who knows no sin: but in the
likeness of sinful flesh; the brightness of the Father's glory
concealed by the resemblance of the stain only—the express image
of the Father's person shrouded under the dark shadow of the
likeness merely—of sinful flesh. Here is the substitution: the holy
for the sinful; the just for the unjust; the innocent for the guilty; He
who knew no sin made sin.
The Incarnation of the Eternal Word is not His being made sin: but
it is the immediate preliminary in the order of nature; and it is the
proof. The eternal covenant oneness—the federal union—grounds
the representative character of Messiah and His substitution and
suretyship. Each of these relations, indeed, leans for support on that
which precedes it: suretyship justified by substitution; substitution,
by real representation; representation, by federal union or covenant
oneness. And here ultimately the series terminates and rests—rests
in the unchangeable council and will of the Sacred Three. For,
viewed by itself, the federal union is simply a decree of the Divine
will, a judgment of the Divine mind, and a covenant agreement in
the eternal Spirit between the Father and the Son. And if exegetical
and inductive examination of Holy Scripture brings this to light as a
truth revealed,—as we believe it does, though we cannot now pause
to show that,—it remains simply to resolve it into the sovereign will
of God, and to defend it by the simple and sublime affirmation: "His
counsel shall stand, and He will do all His pleasure."
But this covenant oneness between the Son of God's love, and the
people given to Him in the Counsel of Peace, needs no exercise of
Divine power for its constitution. It is constituted in Eternity by a
sovereign decision of the Divine will, and passes—in the order of
nature, that is—into a judgment of the Divine mind. And this is the
federal union. But then, unto the actual achievement of the design
which it contemplates, exercises of Divine power are needed to
constitute more than one real union, each of which must rest in and
be represented by an accomplished fact. Hence the union of the
Eternal Son to His people, in respect of His assumption of their
nature into personal subsistence with the Divine nature in His
person—which is His Incarnation. Hence, also, their union to Him,
in respect of their being created again in Him by the renewing of the
Holy Ghost—which is their regeneration.
And hence, as we have said, the Incarnation, which is not in itself
Christ's being made sin, is the immediate preliminary and the proof
thereof. If the question be asked, What shall be the sign of Christ
being made sin for us? the answer is, "This shall be the sign; you
shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a
manager" (Luke 2:12). And the two things are simultaneous. In His
assumption of our nature, He begins to be made sin. He is a sin bearer
from the virgin's womb to the sealed grave of Golgotha. His
consciousness is a sin-bearer's consciousness during all the days of
His flesh—as Dr George Smeaton, than whom no greater authority
on this theme exists, has done admirable service by so copiously
and variously demonstrating.* His being made in the likeness of
sinful flesh was indispensible to His being "for sin;" and His being
"made sin," followed inevitably on His being made in the likeness of
sinful flesh. "Because the children were partakers of flesh and
blood, He also Himself likewise took part in the same, that He
might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to
God" (Heb. 2:17). His Incarnation was the indispensible
preliminary. And by the grandest miracle of Divine power it was achieved.
Our being made in the likeness of the holiness of the Word made
flesh, the express image of the invisible God, is as indispensible to
our being made the righteousness of God, as Christ's being made in
the likeness of sinful flesh was indispensible to His being made sin.
Not indeed our consciousness of being born again, but our being
born again, born of the Spirit and the word of God, is as
indispensible in order to our having righteousness imputed to us,*
as was Christ's being born of the Spirit and the virgin to His having
sin imputed to Him. His incarnation is not in itself the imputation
of sin to Him. And our regeneration is not in itself the imputation of
righteousness to us. His being made flesh did not cancel His well
deservingness, or make Him worthy of death and the curse. And our
being made spirit—Spirit-born spirit (John 3:6)—does not cancel
our ill-deservingness, or render us worthy of the blessing and of life
eternal. The imputation of righteousness can alone entitle us to
favour (Gal. 3:21). The imputation of sin could alone subject the
Son of God to wrath. But the imputation of sin never could have
taken effect in His case had He not been made in the likeness of
men. Nor can the imputation of righteousness in our case take place
if we be not made anew in the likeness of God. He was made flesh
that He might be made sin. We are made spirit—spirit born of the
Spirit—that we may be made righteousness. He had to be partaker
of the human nature (Heb. 2:14–17): we must be made "partakers of
the Divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). Except God be born, He cannot come
into the kingdom of sin. Except a man be born again, he cannot see
the kingdom of righteousness. And Divine power—the power of the
Holy Ghost, the plenipotentiary and executant of all the will of
Godhead—achieves the Incarnation of God and the regeneration of
men, that the Son of God may be made sin, and the sons of men
made righteousness. The efficacy of Divine power is in both these
transactions.
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Post by Admin on Jan 17, 2024 11:27:39 GMT -5
Part Second
The Counter-Imputations are Simple and Complete Imputations, and accepted by the Parties
I. The two transactions are imputations,—out and out, exclusively,
imputations: pure, unmingled complete imputation of sin on the
one side: pure, unmingled, complete imputation of righteousness
on the other. And the first throws light upon the second.
"He who knew no sin is made sin." It is not indeed expressly said in
similiar terms, We who knew no righteousness are made the
righteousness of God. But it is implied. We are as destitute of
personal righteousness as He of personal sin. It is simply and
exclusively imputation on His side—our sin imputed to Him who is
holy. It is simply and exclusively imputation on our side—His
righteousness imputed to us who are sinful. And as His holiness is
no bar to our sin being imputed to Him, our sinfulness is no bar to
His holiness being imputed to us. No bar! That is the least of it. It is
His holiness which renders the imputation of sin to Him possible: it
is our sinfulness which renders the imputation of righteousness to
us necessary; while, at the same time, it is rendered possible by our
sin being imputed to Him. For our sin can no longer bar the
imputation of righteousness to us, or invalidate, or modify, or
alleviate, or impair that imputation, seeing it has been disposed of
by its imputation to Him who bears it in His own body on the tree,
and is made of God unto us righteousness. His holiness, in like
manner, does not alleviate the imputation of sin to Him; for the
imputation is so thorough, and unreserved, and unimpaired, that He
is even made sin. There is nothing confused or commingled in these
imputations on either side.
Besides, as they are imputations, pure and simple, so they are
complete. He is made all our sin, as truly as He has none of His
own; we are made all His righteousness, as truly as we have none of
ours. For it is we, wholly and completely, that are His sin; He,
wholly and completely, that is our righteousness. For us He is made
sin; in Him we are made the righteousness of God. If we are in Him,
then all our sin;—the sin of our life, and heart, and nature;—our
original sin and our actual sin; our sin that has been, is, and shall
be; the sin that dwelleth in us;—in short, the sin that we are;—this,
Christ is made for us. All of us that is sin; all on which the sword of
justice could smite and the sting of death fasten; we ourselves thus
are made over to Him as His sin. And all His righteousness;—the
righteousness of His heart, and life, and nature; His original and His
actual righteousness; the entire lovely moral beauty of His person,
His every righteous principle of thought, affection, will, desire, and
deed; the righteousness, in short, which He is;—this, we are made in
Him. All of Him that is righteousness; all of Him on which the
approbation, love, joy, and delight of the Father can rest; He himself
thus is made of God unto us righteousness. For it is whole Christ
that is "the end of the law for righteousness unto every one that
believeth."
It takes all the wondrous definiteness, and precision, and
personality out of this transaction to represent the righteousness of
saints as merely something that Christ suffered, or something in
which Christ served on their behalf. The temptation, in such a view,
is very great, to separate His suffering and His service from His
person, and to consider them as what may be contemplated and
dealt with apart from His person. The beam vanishes when cut off
from the sun from which it flows. And Christ is the sun of
righteousness, with healing in His wings. He is the Lord our
righteousness. It is He that is of God made unto us righteousness,—
He himself. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness,—Christ
himself, in His own person, with that infinite fund of righteousness
and moral excellence, the exhaustless fountain whereof is the
righteousness of saints.
The "exchange of places" carries this in it inevitably. It effects a very
perfect and complete commutation and counter-imputation. And
nothing less can meet our case. When we began to be, we began to
be sin,—conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. When He began to
be in the likeness of sinful flesh, He who knew no sin began to be
sin for us—our sin; holy, harmless, and undefiled, and separate
from sinners, yet uniting Himself to us, to be our sin, He himself,
from His beginning to be in the flesh, beginning also to be our
righteousness. The very dawn of our existence, which was in sin, He
blends with the dawn of His existence as Emmanuel, as made sin
for us. The thread of our sinful state and history and ill-deserving
destiny, even from our mother's womb, He hath conjoined with the
thread of His own from the Virgin's womb, intertwining the two in
one, Himself thus made sin for us. And keeping them conjoined in
one—not dealing violently with ours, not snapping it, not even
diverting it from its rightful destiny and outgoing, but following its
course, He hath followed it conjointly with His own, unbroken,
down into those depths of wrath, and death, and hell, in which ours
had its righteous and inevitable issue. And as, purged from our sin,
He rose from the dead, and ascended far above all heavens, still He
brought the thread of our destiny with Him, entwined still in one
with His own, and riveted it for ever to the throne of God and of the
Lamb, on which throne He now sits, made of God unto us
righteousness, we the righteousness of God in Him. Thus perfect
and complete are these imputations.
II. The will of the parties is in these transactions, also, severally,—
their full, intelligent, and joyful consent.
Christ is not made sin without His own consent; nor are we made
righteousness without ours. "When He cometh into the world"—the
world of sin,—made sin, "He saith, Lo, I come; in the volume of the
book it is written of me: I delight to do thy will, O God: thy law also
is within my heart" (Ps. 40:6; Heb. 10:7). His Incarnation, His being
made sin, is voluntary. "He made Himself of no reputation, and took
upon Him the form of a servant," as well as "was made in the
likeness of men" (Phil. 2:7). His Incarnation was the Holy Spirit's
work; but His own most active will was in it.
Our regeneration also is the Holy Spirit's work; but our own will is
in it too. Not as the grand determining power: "By grace are ye
saved; through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of
God." Grace is the determining power; the omnipotent and
resistless grace of God most high. "Thy people shall be willing in the
day of THY POWER" (Ps. 110:3). Still they are "willing." Their own
will is in their regeneration; not supreme, but subordinate: yet not
destroyed as will by being subordinated to the will of God, the grand
original archetype of man's will, as at first made in God's image, and
now renewed into it when man's is subordinated to God's will,
informed by it, actuated by it, made the intelligent consentient
engine and agent of carrying out the One Will which shall do all its
pleasure. Even thus, then, as Christ's assumption of our sin was His
own voluntary deed, so our assumption of His righteousness must
be our voluntary act too. Hence the need, and the office, and the
place of Faith. Both these high sovereign transactions of the good
pleasure of Jehovah's will, appeal to the wills of the parties
transposed mutually into each other's places. The Lord God, in the
council of His will, deals with their wills. He secures the
concurrence of their wills. He gains their full consent on either side.
And has He not in the fact of Christ's consent a wondrous leverage
to wield in calling for our consent? Shall not the fact of Christ's
consent secure ours? If He consent to pass over to the side of sin,
shall we not consent to pass over to the side of righteousness? And
have not His ambassadors a powerful screw—in a sense most
blessed and beneficent—to press upon the sinner's heart and
conscience in compassing the blessed work of shutting men up into
the faith? And how does the true glory of a profound theology come
out to view, as no dry, formal, abstract speculation; but the joyful
handmaid, yea, the loving foster-mother, of spiritual life as in all the
churches; when theology ransacks all her brightest treasures to turn
them into arguments for charming and compelling men to come in,
and frames her finest, richest theorems—refined and rich as aught
that any science has to show—into powerful motives for the
prisoner to come forth, and for them that sit in darkness to show
themselves! Shall not the consent of God's own Son to be made sin,
secure your consent to be made righteousness? His consent could
involve Him in nothing but shame, and sorrow, and wrath, and
death. Your consent brings glory, and joy, and blessing, and the life
everlasting. Shall not His consent provoke and carry yours? Nay;
shall not His consent be the model of yours? Can your consenting
will express itself more beautifully than His, "Lo, I come?" Is it not
to this "imitation of Christ" that first of all you are called? "Him that
cometh." "Come unto me." "Whosoever will let him Come." Let him
come, as I came, when joyfully, though death and hell were before
me, I said, "Lo, I come." And by thus coming,—by thus answering
the call, and imitating the consent, and twining your will into the
will of Christ, will you not fall heir to all that is implied in Christ's
consent, and make it more and more fully all your own, till making
thereby both your calling and election sure, you be able to say,
tremblingly, perhaps, but truthfully: "Lo, I come; in the volume of
the book it is written of me" also?
Part Third
The Counter-imputations are inevitably efficacious of their Results;
the second, moreover, being the Result of the first
I. Both these transactions of imputation carry inevitable and complete effects with them.
When He who knew no sin was made sin for us, condemnation,
sorrow, shame, exile, desertion, the curse, and death followed
remorselessly. These are the consequences, most sure, treading
with mighty and resistless march on the heels of the imputation of
sin. No power in all the universe can interpose to arrest them;
neither height nor depth, nor any creature, nor the creating God
himself. "Father, if it be possible!" And the Father answered Him to
never a word. For when sin is imputed, death, with its sting and
woe, comes in triumphantly. Be He even the eternal God in whose
person imputation takes place; be it even the Beloved of the Father;
be it the man who knows no sin, who is holy, harmless, and
undefiled, the chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely; sin
has entered, and death enters by sin. His Godhead hinders it not;
His relation to the Father—Oh! how near and blessed ineffably—
hinders it not. His holy beauty, from the womb of the virgin, and as
from the womb of the morning, hinders it not. His perfect love to
the Father, His Father's infinite love to Him,—and neither is
impaired or arrested for an instant of time,—hinders it not. His
perfect wondrous love for those whose very sins are imputed to Him
hinders it not. Though He be the living God manifest in the flesh;
though He be the Eternal Son; yet learns He obedience by the things
which He suffers. Made sin,—even though lovely in the Father's
eyes because He loves those whose sin He is made, and lovely on
the very ground of bearing the sin which He is made,—He is
inevitably "made a curse" (Gal. 3:13); not merely subjected to the
endurance of a curse, but in His person made a devoted thing—
made herem, a curse—even unto His hanging accursed on the tree.
And, if against considerations so powerful—against His Godhead,
His Sonship, His spotless holiness, His matchless moral beauty,
resplendent in that He consents to be made sin—if imputed sin still
prevails to carry all its consequences with terrific and resistless
march, bringing in death and hell and the curse: shall the
imputation of righteousness fail to carry all its issues? Shall they
who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness fail
to reign in life by Jesus Christ? (See Romans 5:12–21, specially
verse 17.) If the worth of Godhead in all its assembled glories and
perfections; and the love of Sonship in its ineffable, inviolable bond
of grace unto the Father's heart; and perfect loveliness of moral
beauty; and an enhanced argument of admiration in this very sin bearing of the Son of God
for sinners,—if all these considerations
bar not the curse and death from their inevitable forthgoing on our
Divine Substitute: shall any Worthlessness of ours, any alienation,
any guilt of past sin, or any present sin that dwelleth in us, bar from
us the blessing of the life eternal, if we are made the righteousness
of God? If imputation is so imperiously and absolutely triumphant
and invincible on the one side, shall it be less triumphant or
invincible on the other? The sin especially which dwelleth in us may
seem to plead against and peril the blessed results of imputation of
righteousness. But the spotless holiness which dwelt in Christ
pleaded not successfully against, nor in the slightest measure
perilled, paralysed, or put back the issues of imputed sin. Indwelling
sin may indeed make our warfare perilous—"warring against the law
of my mind" (Rom. 7:23); but a present victory tarries on our
helmet and our sword. It may give us in a measure the experience of
the poor slave and captive,—"carrying me captive to the law of sin
that is in my members" (idem); but a present freedom is ours
notwithstanding, the perfect law of liberty making us free from the
law of sin and death (James 1:25; Rom. 8:2). It may give us in a
measure the sense of deepest wretchedness,—"O wretched man that
I am" (Rom. 7:24): but a sure and perfect blessedness is still in
Christ all our own. For precisely in triumph over this profound
experience of warring, captivating, and woe-working sin that
dwelleth in us; precisely in celebration of the inevitable, the
resistlessly certain, issues of imputed righteousness, is Paul's
blessed and ever-memorable boast,—and without seeing it in this
light, we do not hear its true tone and rhythm, nor enter into half its
depth: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in
Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1).
Nor is it enough to affirm this inevitableness, notwithstanding
whatsoever hindrances may arise. The inevitableness of life and the
blessing, following in the train of imputed righteousness, is far
more grandly seen, just in the light of hindrances, so powerful we
might have thought, but so vain and ineffectual. The Sovereign
Lord, if He pleased, might sanctify us into celestial perfection in the
instant in which He makes Us the righteousness of God in Christ.
But could our confidence in the resistless, absolute, and eternal
triumph of that imputation be so great, as in evergrowing
experience and consciousness it ought now to be, when the
presence and the great power even of sin, are found incapable of
marring its perfection, or staying its marvellous and majestic issues
of blessing, and favour, and life, and the loving-kindness which is
better than life? "Iniquities prevail against me: as for our
transgressions, thou shalt purge them away" (Ps. 65:3). "Blessed is
the man to whom the Lord imputeth righteousness without works
(Ps. 32:2; Rom. 4:6–8).
The Son of God is made sin. And though His Godhead is true and is
there; though His Sonship is ineffable and inviolable; though His
holiness is unspotted; and though the blood burst forth in His
agony, and His cry is terrible upon the tree, and the earth reels and
staggers, and the sun grows black; death and the curse come on. Let
us be made the righteousness of God in Him. And though sin is true
and is here; though Satan stand at our right hand to resist us;
though our iniquities take hold on us that we cannot look up;
though the "O wretched man," be our daily cry with growing truth
and sorrow; though the dust of battle be upon us, and the damp of
death be coming; though the waters roar and are troubled, and the
hills be carried into the midst of the sea; though our house be not so
with God, and the fig-tree do not blossom, and our heart and our
flesh fail: shall any or all of these things separate us from life and
the blessing? "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded,"—I am persuaded
that that song of persuasion is the heritage of all who are made the
righteousness of God.
II. But besides affirming that these two counter-imputations carry
inevitable and complete effects with them, it remains to affirm also
that the second of the imputations is itself an inevitable effect of the
first: "God hath made Him that knew no sin to be sin for us, that we
might be made the righteousness of God in Him." This is the design
of Christ's being made sin, namely, that we might be made the
righteousness of God. The similar correlative design of Christ's
"being made a curse," is brought out in terms exactly analogous:
"Made a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come
upon us, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through
faith" (Gal. 3:13, 14). And the same thing is set forth in the more
general formula "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that,
though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye
through His poverty might be rich" (2 Cor. 8:9). This, indeed,—to
use the language of the geometrician,—is just the general theorem,
embracing numerous special cases, of which the doctrine of the
counter-imputations is perhaps the most important. For if, instead
of the general term "riches," we read "righteousness," and if, instead
of the general idea of "poverty," we take the special idea of "sin,"
then the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ stands in this, That He who
was righteous was, for our sakes, made sin, that we, through His
being made sin, might be made the righteousness of God. And
again: if for "riches," we read the "blessing," and for "poverty," the
"curse," the general theorem presents the case in Gal. 3:13, namely,
That the Blessed One is made a curse, that we might receive the
blessing. And so, if by "riches" is meant "life," and by "poverty "is
meant "death," then,—We know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that, though He was the Living One, the True God, and Eternal Life,
yet for our sakes, and in our room, He died, that we, through His
death, might have life, and might have it more abundantly. Be it in
the general case, or in any special aspect of it, the design is in this
same manner uniformly set forth, and set forth as that which is
surely and infallibly accomplished. Being God's design it is
successful,—not the design only, but the result. For the work of the
Lord is perfect, not breaking down in the middle, but reaching the
goal,—that goal, or τελος, or end spoken of, when it is said, "Christ is
the τελος of the law to every one that believeth" (Rom. 10:4).
For, as inevitably as when Christ is made sin He is made a curse,
and wrath and death assail Him; and as inevitably as when we are
made the righteousness of God, life and the blessing come upon us;
so surely, intermediately between these two inevitables, there is
another, namely, that they for whom Christ is made sin are
infallibly made the righteousness of God. He denies the counter imputations
who denies that the second follows necessarily from
the first. He misconceives the whole arrangement. For, in reality,
the counter-imputations are not so much two transactions as one.
The exchange of places is one indivisible evolution. It is not effected
in the movement of one of the parties, but in their mutual
transposition. It is a reciprocating movement; and when the
reciprocation fails, the movement ceases utterly.
Hence it follows, that in giving our consent to be made the
righteousness of God, we give our consent to the Son of God being
made sin. It is impossible to break in upon this transaction in the
middle of it. We must acquiesce in it as it is—one great and perfect
whole. We must begin with it at the beginning. For herein is that
saying true, "He that entereth not in by the door, but climbeth up
some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." Now, the cross is
the door—the gate of righteousness. For no other Christ is made of
God unto us righteousness, than Christ made sin for us.
And hence the irrefragable guarantee for the penitence of Him that
is made the righteousness of God. Blessed is he to whom the Lord
imputeth no iniquity, but imputeth righteousness without works.
But when I kept silence, my bones waxed old. Then I said, I will
confess my transgressions. I will lay my sin on Jesus. I will
contemplate Him made sin: and by confession of sin, I will
acquiesce in His being made sin, and accept Him as made sin for
me. "And thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin" (Ps. 32)—On any
other scheme than that of covenant unity and counter-imputation,
repentance and faith contradict each other.*
Hence, also, the vital and organic harmony between the justification
of him who is made the righteousness of God, and his sanctification
in all manner of holiness. For whether sanctification be regarded as
the believer's duty or God's gift, it is placed on a footing of inviolable
safety by these counter-imputations of sin and righteousness. To
him for whom Christ has been made sin, and who is therefore made
the righteousness of God, the appeal surely must come home with
resistless force of obligation when it frames itself in terms like
these: How uprightly, how gracefully, how righteously should "the
righteousness of God" conduct itself, in all holiness and
righteousness, before Him all the days of our live! And when
overwhelmed by a sense of inability to answer this appeal as its
intrinsic force demands and prompts, how blessed to bear in mind
not only that holiness is God's gift as well as our duty, but that
when we stand before Him as ourselves "the righteousness of God"
in Christ, God's own interest in God's own righteousness acting
righteously, may be heard imparting at once a guarantee of
faithfulness and a thrill of power to the voice of majesty and grace
that conveys the assurance: "I am the Lord thy God that doth
sanctify thee" (Exod. 31:13)
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Post by Admin on Jan 17, 2024 11:32:21 GMT -5
CHAPTER X: ATONEMENT, AND THE
DISTINCTIVE PECULIARITY OF MORAL
LAW
SO long as philosophy and theology shall conserve the distinctive
peculiarity of Moral Law,—as the "categorical imperative" and as the
objective charter and instrument of a strictly moral government,—
the Westminster doctrine, which is the Catholic doctrine, of
Atonement, is impregnable. And some of the Anglican litterateurs
are aware of that. Hence they confound moral with physical law,—
parading what is really an unethical view of moral law, apparently
without being aware that the notion is self-contradictory.
It is to this issue that Dr CANDLISH has, with much penetration,
run up his whole controversy with Mr MAURICE in his examination
of the once celebrated Essays. And it is unnecessary to say that he
has received, and will receive, no answer to his minute and masterly
polemic. We have seen that ROBERTSON makes even Vicarious
Sacrifice itself a "law of being;" and the same sort of language is not
altogether unknown now in Scotland, in some men's expositions of
the doctrine of the death of Christ. When the decease accomplished
at Jerusalem can be explained, apart from everything judicial either
in its appointment, its occurrence, or its fruits; it is natural enough,
and indeed it becomes requisite, that nothing judicial should be
recognised in the Moral Law, or in the moral government of the
Most High. And hence Moral Law is now no longer to be regarded as
a strict and proper commandment—objective authoritative
commandment—but as a subjective influence, moulding the nature
and doings of men, very much after the same fashion as gravitation
governs the movements of a planet, or as chemical affinities affect
the more hidden properties of matter. The distinction between Law
Moral and Law Physical, which CHALMERS, with his own
unapproachable splendours of expression and of exposition, set
forth in a work* written long before it could have been supposed
that professed theologians would confound things which differ so
radically, is thus to be obliterated. And Kant is no longer to be
allowed to stand in awe before his "categorical imperative," but shut
up to his "starry heavens" alone. This is generalisation 'with a
vengeance:' if, indeed, the word 'vengeance' do not offend them; but
I confess I cannot bring myself, here or elsewhere, to substitute for
it 'love burning on.'
The truly grand modern generalisation in physical science is the
doctrine of the Correlation of Forces and the Conservation of
Energy, † asserting as it does the ultimate identity of all physical
forces whatsoever. And as force produces and is measured by
motion, individual forces can be all made alternately to replace each
other, even to exact numerical equivalence. Thus, "Heat" is
ultimately but "a Mode of Motion;" and in a given amount is
identical with a calculable intensity of gravitation that would cause
a projectile to describe a specified parabola, or a planet a particular
ellipse.
Now, on this generalised view of Moral Law, why not find an
equivalent force, for instance, for the Fifth Commandment? We
remember, on visiting a flat of spinning jennies in Manchester some
years ago, being told by our conductor that these beautiful pieces of
machinery performed the duty of so many children. Of course he
understood himself as speaking figuratively. But that was before
Robertson had published his Sermons, or Maurice written his
Essays. Things are altered now. Why should not a disappointed
parent, being one of the merchant princes of the earth, compensate
for the distress of a domestic rebellion, by giving an order for the
equivalent number of the jennies, and putting on the exact
additional horse-power in the engine-room? And then the little
rebels might equivalate too. For if they lose the reward of "the first
commandment with promise," there are equivalent medicinal as
well as mechanical forces to make up for it, and all may be square
again by the tabulated indemnifying number of Parr's life pills! We
are quite prepared to have this called profane. But Pascal has;
rebuked that charge. So that "you see, fathers, ridícule is, in some
cases, a very appropriate means of reclaiming men from their
errors; do not then expect to make people believe that it is unworthy
of. a Christian to treat error with derision" (Provin. Lett. xi.).
But we can treat this error seriously too, and we intend to do so.
I. The application of the term Law to the uniform sequences of
phenomena, in the physical world is sufficient to show that law, in
its original signification, implies something more than the physical
world can either embody or adequately illustrate. For,
unquestionably, it is applied in such connections figuratively; on
rhetorically. It is an instance of the rhetorical figure called
personification. But personification is an attribution of ideal
personality, where it is quite understood that, real personality does
not exist. In the solar system, for instance, the sun is poetically
conceived of as a mighty monarch seated on his central throne, and
issuing his commands to the planets and satellites that move like
obedient subjects round him. But who does not see that in the
attribution of personality, in any sense, to the elements of the
material world the objects of contemplation—by an illusion to
which the mind pleasurably resigns, without deceiving, itself—are
regarded as belonging to a realm not natively and really their own?
And the very use which we make satirically of the word satellite, as
indicating slavish obedience, has no point or meaning, except as
carrying in it the accusation that the individual has abandoned his
position and prerogative as the inhabitant of a realm of personal
liberty and. moral power, and descended as it were, into that more
physical world, the elements of which fancy must lift up into a
kingdom higher than their own, before they can be conceived of as
the subjects of liberty and law. The law of elective affinity in
chemistry is another case in point. An active power of choice, or
preference, is rhetorically attributed to the bodies on substances
under consideration, while everybody understands that they are
exhibiting neither, intelligence nor will, but passively undergoing
changes necessitated in the circumstances by the nature of the
elements of which they are composed.
Now, if the application of the term Law to the uniformity of natural
sequences be thus so obviously, figurative, it is plain that its original
signification must be something different; else we may repeat here
the keen remark of Marcus Dods,—already quoted when refuting
the notion that Christ was only figuratively a priest,—that "the very
word, upon this supposition, stands in the unprecedented situation
of having a figurative application without ever having had a real
literal meaning." And indeed, when we bear in mind that figurative
meanings vanish where no primary idea is recognized,—though we
did not mean to draw on Pascal's authority again,—we really see no
reason why we should not indicate the parallel which exists between
such a case and that of the foreigner, desirous of instruction in the
English language, who, on being told that an excellent teacher was
accustomed to charge a guinea for the first quarter and fifteen
shillings for the second, declared on the spot that he saw his way
clearly to take the second quarter immediately!
Possibly, however, those whom we have in our view may attempt to
evade the force of this remark by denying that the term Law is
applied in any secondary or figurative or rhetorical sense to the
physical world. They may affirm that the physical world is the true,
proper, and primary sphere of law; and that law, in its one only real
and valid signification, is characteristic alike of all material
substances, all mechanical and chemical forces, all physiological
organizations, and all mental faculties; indeed, of all intelligent
creatures in the whole compass of their being.
Doubtless this gets quit of all rhetorical application of the term; and
prosaic sternness becomes the order of the day. Personification, on
this understanding, is of course abjured. But what if it be found that
PERSONALITY is sacrificed also?—the personality alike of man and
of God? If the only kind of law to be recognized, in relation to man,
is a generalized expression of the facts observable in the actual
conduct of his mental powers,—such as the law of the association of
ideas,—what argument have we for the personality of God, or what
materials from which to realize any strict and proper personality of
our own. When the very peculiar and unique idea of accountability
is introduced: when Moral Law is recognized as an external
objective code of duty,—a law not of man, but for man,—a law not of
his faculties, but for his obedience,—postulating, on his part, a
power of choice and a sense of responsibility, claiming to rule his
will and securing the assent of his conscience: personality, both
human and divine, is safe. For personal relation comes out now
with a clearness and intensity of which there can be no evasion. Law
of this nature recognizes my personality and appeals to it,—probably
was the means of first historically educing my personality into
conscious realization. It would be an interesting question in mental
science whether the infant spirit is ever educated into
consciousness by the mere play of intellect; or whether the first
flash of conscious personal existence is not the result of realised
moral obligation, and of the action of the will in reference thereto.
And if there be reason to suppose that historically this is true, there
would then be the corresponding metaphysical question, whether it
must not necessarily be true. But, be this as it may, it is not
essential to the point we have in hand, however it might confirm
our views. What we ask attention to is,—that law physical, law as a
mere subjective, operative principle, expressive simply of the
uniform sequences in which change takes place, whether in the
material or the mental world, neither postulates nor demonstrates
any personal relation between man and God. And, with personal
relation, personality must stand or fall. For it is against the
personality of another, and in relation thereto, that my own
personality is tested and adequately revealed and realized. To this
condition even the mysterious constitution of the Godhead as
Triune would appear to be subject. Solitary personality is what
eternity hath never witnessed. From everlasting, personality has
existed in fellowship, in personal relation.* But in such law as is
identical merely with formula of fact there is not the slightest trace
of personal relationship.
Introduce, however, the very different sort of law which is identical
with formula of obligation. Let me not merely be dealt with as
exhibiting what is, but let me be appealed to as to what ought to be.
Let my nature not merely be read as historically exhibiting
necessary and inevitable facts, but as capable of choosing, within
certain limits, what facts my history shall embody, myself
responsible in each case for the choice I make. An appeal like this
treats me as a separately subsisting individual person, and from
another living person only can it come. The "categorical imperative"
covers the personality both of man and of God. But if there is no
"Thou shalt," what becomes of the "Thou?" If there is no
"categorical imperative," where is the vocative? And if no vocative,
where is the voice—the vocans? Moral law testifies to "thee"—and
testifies from, and therefore of, "Him." "It" is the all of law physical.
Hence if law physical alone be recognized, Pantheism is the abyss
into which we are swept inexorably.
II. If, in the face of such conclusions, this abnegation of all that is
specific and peculiar in Moral Law is to be persisted in, and the
possibility of demonstrating the personality of God still asserted, we
ask the advocates of this theory to consider its bearing on the Origin
of Evil.
Of course, we do not ask them to furnish a philosophy or rationale
on that great question. We neither offer, nor demand, a solution of
the problem, Why, under the government of an almighty and
beneficent Being, should evil have been suffered to exist? But no
theology can refuse to face its existence as a fact; or refuse to speak
out, if asked to say whether it lodges and leaves the origin of that
fact with the creature or the Creator. On the unsophisticated theory
of moral law—law assertative of authority in a personal God as
Moral Ruler, and of obligation on personal beings as His subjects—
this aspect of the question presents no difficulty. In this view, man
is recognized as originally created upright;—not a being gifted with
intelligence merely, capable of elaborating mathematical and
scientific truth, and of observing and generalizing physical facts; but
endowed with personal power of choice, with the very special
faculty of will. Nor is this a mere vague power of instinctive self pleasing,
a sort of personified elective chemical affinity; but a very
definite consciousness of personal liberty and power, in which his
distinct and separately subsisting personality comes out into
inevitable manifestation, and that most over-awingly of all in the
alternative it gives him of determining whether his personal footing
with God shall be one of submission or of affected independence.
Such is his faculty of will and its scope for choice,—with conscience
behind to ratify or to reprove. Created thus, originally righteous,—
with the Moral Law from the first the law of, as well as to, his will,—
how is he now dealt with? What special act of providence does God
exercise towards him in this estate wherein he is created? The
answer is very remarkable, and bears with amazing precision on the
point in hand. As if to prevent the "categorical imperative" from
being lost sight of, or swallowed up, in the original accordance
between man's holy will and the subject-matter of the law; as if
expressly to prevent law moral from leaning over towards law
physical, as from the circumstance of this accordancy it might seem
to do; the "categorical imperative" is brought into play again, in
circumstances fitted to restore the balance, or reclaim the
dangerous bias,—brought into play with nothing in the subject matter
of its new demand priorly existing in man's nature to
correspond to it, but compelling recognition of it as in its very form,
apart from its matter, authoritative, juridical, morally
governmental; and sheer and sharp is the Law now as
commandment: "THOU SHALT not eat of it; for in the day thou
thou eatest thereof THOU SHALT surely die."
It is impossible for man, under a commandment of this nature, to
mistake his position as the personal subject of a personal Moral
Ruler. He has to deal now, not merely with a law which is at once
the law of his nature and a law to his will. His will is appealed to by
a commandment which does not find itself already existing in his
nature, as a spiritual tendency which might therefore be called the
law of his being, or, in any sense, his own law. Sharply, directly,
exclusively, is his will appealed to now by what he must see can be
called nothing but "the law of his God." And his probation, as under
law to his God, becomes manifest, simple, and conclusive. The fall
of man, under these circumstances, may leave grave questions
unsolved. But it clears up all questions anent physical evil, by
resolving it into the result of the righteous displeasure of the Moral
Ruler against the disobedience of man. It throws a flood of light
most instructively on the history of the rise of moral evil. And it
conclusively fastens the origin of all evil on the creature, and
justifies the ways of God.
But take that theory of Moral Law, the bare possibility of any
tendency toward which this most peculiar style of moral probation,
with the categorical imperative so sharply and exclusively
propounded and employed as its instrument, would appear to have
been introduced expressly to forestall and prevent. Take the theory
which makes no account of Moral Law, save as a kind of physical
law of man's higher nature, and not an authoritative commandment
to his will. And in what aspect does God in that case appear in this
matter of the fall of man, if He appear in it as a personal being at
all? Not as a righteous Moral Ruler, conducting the righteous
procedure of a very special moral probation, giving commandment
to a living personal being under His authority, endowed with liberty
and capable of choice. Not thus. But as physically experimenting on
His own creature to its ruin. The proper analogue to which is—
Galvani torturing the nerves of a frog! Only that the fall of man was
not designed for the promotion of science.
III. Let us bring this non-juridical idea of Moral Law into the light
in its bearings on that confessed disharmony in human nature of
which all men are in a measure conscious.
Of course, the first appeal to consciousness should be an appeal to
man's sense of responsibility,—not to his consciousness of having
failed concerning it. Is there that, in the constitution of man's
spiritual nature, which enables him either to originate or to
understand, with reference to any exercise of his will, the
expression "you ought" or "you ought not?" If it be admitted,
without sophistication, that there is, then an original and
ineradicable distinction is admitted between law moral and law
physical,—law of duty and law of mental states or processes. And
the absolute requirements of exact discussion are at an end.
Attempts may be made, however, to resolve the consciousness of
responsibility into something secondary and composite,—with what
success, we tarry not here to say. But take—not the mere abstract
sense of accountability, but—man's conscious experience of inward
disharmony in connection with it; and we shall find the testimony
thus afforded to Law, as strictly and distinguishingly Moral, more
varied and abundant than can possibly, with any show of reason, be
evaded. We ask any thoughtful man, on any other view of Law, to
explain, or account for, or even show the possibility of, any such
subjective disharmony or derangement as all men are conscious of,
—from the heathen who, with more or less of nonchalance, gives
expression off-hand to his semi-discontented sense of it in his
"video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor," to the saint, agonising
in his fight of faith, as his groans find utterance in the cry, "O
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me?" (Rom. 7:24).
Explain, if you can, how experiences like these can possibly be
realised as facts, or conceived of ideally, under the action of any sort
of law but what is objectively assertative of obligation? Refuse to go
beyond the recognition of such law as is identical with causal
subjective self-operating principle;—or, excluding the idea of
causality, let it be such law as is identical, if not with force, yet with
formula—formula of process and of result—be the process ever so
uniform, or the result ever so certain, in justification of your use of
this word Law in the matter at all;—how can you possibly account
for the utterance, whether of the classic heathen of Rome, or the
inspired writer to the Romans? A disharmony between a subjective
state of mind, on the one hand,—call it a law of force or of process,
or a formula, if you please,—and an objective law or code of duty, on
the other hand; this is intelligible. But its intelligibility depends on
the fundamental diversity in kind of the two laws thus seen and felt
to be in conflict. Two subjective physical laws or forces can produce
no such phenomenon. They may modify each other's action; but it is
in the way of composition or of combination, effecting a tertium
quid, distinct from the result that would flow from the action of
either separately. But the new result bears no trace of disharmony
or derangement in it. Even as under the two laws of impulse and of
gravitation—the centrifugal and centripetal forces—the planet rolls
on in its ellipse, as easily and sweetly, with as little of jolt or jagged
motion, as under the one force it would fly away equably into
limitless space, or under the other would fall with acceleration to
the centre of the sun.
Of course we do not mean to identify the heathen and the Christian
consciousness in this matter. It is by a very sharp transition that the
one passes into the other. So much the more for our present
argument. For the history of that transition and its moral
philosophy cast a very strong and very steady light on the distinctive
peculiarity of Moral Law. Assuredly, among all his schools and
schoolmasters, Paul had no conscious knowledge of any subjective
law that could have been his "schoolmaster to bring him to Christ;"
and, had no other kind of law dealt with him, he would have known
neither Christ nor sin to this hour. "I had not known sin," says he,
"but by the law" (Rom. 7:7). And it was not the law of a subjective
process; but a law objective, outside and above himself; a law that
could speak to him,—and that not merely after the fashion of an
ideal divarication of his own consciousness as on two sides of a
soliloquy, but as the voice of another than himself, speaking as one
having authority. "For I had not known lust,"—I should have been
conscious of nothing but legitimate desire,—"except the law had
said, Thou shalt not covet." Not without the "categorical imperative"
asserting its transcendency objectively, is conscience reinvigorated
to reassert its supremacy, de jure, against a subjective law of
depravity on uniform tendency to sin. Another subjective law, a.
merely diverse principle or tendency, would not meet, the case. It is
the proclamation of Moral Law that is needed. "I was alive without
the law once; but when"—not another tendency, but—"the
COMMANDMENT came, sin revived, and I died" (ver. 9). It was in
its character and aspect of commandment that Law had any fitness
to bring out to view so unmistakably this disharmony within,
quickening and precipitating the crisis to a death-struggle. The
introduction of an inward tendency, diametrically opposite to that of
sin would silently have quickened me, and proportionally sopited
sin. But, by the introduction of commandment, "sin revived and I
died." Instead of losing, sin gained ground by the commandment.
"For, sin taking occasion by the COMMANDMENT, deceived me,
and; by it slew me," "working, death in me by that which is good
that sin by the COMMANDMENT might become exceeding sinful"
(verses 11 and 13). "Wherefore the law is holy;" I speak of it as
commandment; for. of no holy tendency, alas! as yet, at this stage,
had I any consciousness to claim. I am carnal, sold under sin; I
speak of a law that is commandment, compelling recognition from
without. "The law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and just,
and good" (ver. 12). As an authoritative code of duty, it is so. Take it
as subjective principle, and how will you negative the supposed
conclusions,—groundless enough on Paul's theology,—the
conclusions which he anticipates in the questions, "What shall we
say then? Is the law sin? Was that which is good made death unto
me?" (verses 7 and 13). They are irresistible on the theory of Law
being identical with subjective tendency. It is the
interchangeableness of "Law" and "Commandment" which rebuts
them.
Surely one may almost say, "The Scripture, foreseeing" this attempt
to obliterate a vital distinction, "preached before" that distinction
with emphasis and iteration most solicitous. For in a single short
paragraph (Rom. 7:7–13), in twelve references to Moral Law, six
times it is called LAW, and six times COMMANDMENT.
No doubt, in the transition from what is practically the heathen to
what is distinguishingly the Christian consciousness, the objective
moral commandment is, in the matter of it, translated subjectively
into the inner man, and reappears now as a holy tendency as well as
a righteous code. That this takes place, or rather that this has taken
place, is manifested in that first forth-going and action of the
renewed will of which Paul speaks when he says, "I consent unto
the law that it is good" (ver. 16). But even now, not as the holy
tendency of his will, although it is all that now—"the law of my
mind" (ver. 23)—yet not as in any sense a law of his own, even of his
inward, man, does he delight in it; but after the inward man he
delights in it as specifically the law of his God: "I delight in the law
of God after the inward man" (ver. 22). And clinging to it now,
identifying all his desire and all his interest with it,—still as the
authoritative instrument of his reconciled, righteous Ruler's
government of and over him,—he can divaricate now in his own
consciousness, alike with good ground, with precious practical
design, and with great effectiveness and great effect: "Now, then, if I
do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth
in me" (ver. 17). And the righteous Lord ratifies this protest, and
gives His loyal subject the benefit thereof; for it is in behalf of His
own divine commandment and its unappellable authority that the
protest is entered.
It is not to break the thread of this argument, which we intend
immediately to resume and complete, if we pause for a moment to
inquire,—
IV. What bearing this non-authoritative view of Law may be found
to have on the doctrine and fact of the Incarnation. For, in point of
argument or of exposition, as also in point of fact, the Incarnation
must come in here to account for the possibility of Paul, or those
likeminded with him, reaching that particular stage of spiritual
experience which we have been considering. Paul himself is not
negligent to put us in remembrance of this. For these wonderful
readings or revelations that he is giving of his own intense
consciousness in connection with Sin and Law, are all professedly
explanatory of his assertion that he had "become dead to the law by
the body of Christ" (Rom. 7:4). Not without the interveniency of the
Incarnation; not apart from some determining influence from "the
body of Christ;" has he realised, or can he now explain, his own
marvellous consciousness, as he here makes it patent to the
intelligence and sympathy of the church for ever.
What this interveniency of the Incarnation may import, and how it
operates, it is not, on the Westminster doctrine of the Atonement,
difficult to explain. Accepting the fundamental beliefs of all
Christian theology, we recognise the Incarnation of the Eternal
Word as exhibiting the union of the divine and human natures in
the one divine person of the Son of God; and the immediate design
of this great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, we
believe to have been accomplished by this God-man putting Himself
in the room of those whom the Father hath given Him, under an
authoritative and unchangeable, but by them violated Moral Law, to
fulfil, as their representative, all its commandments, and endure, as
their substitute, all its curse. And hence, when His clients
intelligently and cordially appropriate this interposition on their
behalf, it is not difficult to see how,—the Law having no longer any
such claims against them as those to which it was till now
necessarily and remorselessly alive,—"that becomes dead wherein
they were held" (Rom. 7:6); and they, alive no more in terror to
claims that have been legally and fully met, become "dead to the
law," and that "by the body of Christ," even "by the body of His flesh
through death" (Col. 1:22).
But what instrumentality or efficiency towards anything like this
can possibly be ascribed to the Incarnation of God's Son, if there be
no strictly moral and authoritative juridical law? That He most
expressly felt Himself to be the subject of such Law, we must most
firmly hold, if the testimony of Scripture or the depositions of His
own consciousness are to be believed. He felt Himself, no doubt, to
be possessed of a created nature, having, impressed upon it, certain
laws of operation,—laws of intelligence and holiness alike, if you
will,—and by reason whereof nothing abnormal, whether in respect
of wisdom or of holy rectitude, could ever manifest itself in any
department of His person as "the Word made flesh." In this sense,
Love may be said to be the law of His divine nature, and Love the
law of His human nature also. And, in this respect, a spontaneous
development of Love as the Law of His human nature, as well as His
Divine, would have been exhibited, whatever object His Incarnation
might have been designed to achieve, or in whatever circumstances
He might have been placed. But was this the only kind of dealing
with Law which His history exhibits? Or was this the only kind of
Law dealing with Him, to which the averments of His own
consciousness testify? Is He not, on the other hand, most solicitous
to own that, in another and a very different sense, He is under Law;
not merely that His character presents a phenomenon of law,
however high and holy, but that He Himself is the obedient servant
and subject of law,—that He is under law to His Father? What else
mean those emphatic acknowledgments of obligation and
responsibility: "I must work the works of Him that sent me;" "I
must be about my Father's business;" "Other sheep I have, them
also must I bring?" And again; not merely, "I do always those things
that please my Father,"—fair as a beauteous flower, developing its
leaves and loveliness with fragrance acceptable to the God of love,
though with no form nor comeliness in the eyes of those of whose
nature, alas! love is far enough from being the law; not this merely,
as if exhibiting the action only of an inward subjective holy law of
His nature; it is not this merely that Jesus means when He says, "I
do always those things which please my Father,"—as if one should
gratify a friend by exhibiting tastes and tendencies, predilections or
dispositions, similar to his own. His meaning is explained when He
says elsewhere: "As my Father gave me commandment, so I do."
And "My Father gave me a commandment" defining all my ministry
or service, reaching to every word and every deed, "a commandment
what I should say and what I should do." And, if "I lay down my life
for the sheep and take it again," it is not merely because prompted
by an inward law of love, whether towards Him or towards them,
but because "this commandment received I of my Father."
Regard the Lord Jesus thus, as not only "made of a woman," but
"made under the" objective authoritative "law" of God; and the
whole ground is clear, on to the doctrines of representative
probation and of true and proper priestly sacrifice, inviolably
redemptive of all for whom this last Adam ministers in His
redeeming office.
But on the other hand, if we recognize in His character and history
nothing but the operation of a subjective law or principle of
holiness, what possibility is there for the in-bringing of anything
approaching to the idea of redemption, or what excuse for
introducing the language that expresses it? With love, the law of His
divine nature, operating now, no doubt, in His altered
circumstances somewhat differently, because operating now in His
human nature as well as His divine; yet He himself not any more
now a servant for men, or a subject under God, than He was from all
eternity; what purpose can His Incarnation be designed to serve? An
Example, is it said? Be it so. But it is an example which we are not
under obligation to follow; for the idea of obligation has been
banished; and if it be recalled to serve a purpose and to bind us now,
what example to us can He be who is Himself under no obligation,
and begins to exemplify our position by placing us under obligation,
thereby rendering it entirely dissimilar to His own? The example—
let it carefully be noted also—of an inward subjective law or
principle of love, with no coexisting inward principle or tendency of
evil in His case, set forth for the encouragement of fallen beings, all
whose subjective tendencies and principles are "only evil, and that
continually!" Oh most encouraging example?—brimful of hope, as
the cup of Tantalus; beckoning men to heaven, but giving not a drop
of water to cool the tongue!
But perhaps Sympathy is the secret that shall solve the problem of
the Incarnation. And sympathy, it would appear, is the word in this
new theologism,—warmer, confessedly, and more seductive in
sentiment, while proportionally less tangible and definite in its
statements, than the old Socinianism. What else, in fact, but
something in the line of sympathy have they left any room for
recognising in the Person and work of the Incarnate Word,—though
Dean STANLEY, in his catalogue of subject-matters of his
"Nineteenth Century Theology,"* makes mention, indeed, neither of
Christ's person nor His work, and speaks of His "nature" as if He
had either the divine or the human, but not both; or, as if the two
had been compounded into a third. But letting that pass. What can
that sympathy for man be worth which is dissociated from all
service or subjection to God? Or what can it achieve? Or how does it
operate? The Holy One in human nature, dwells with men upon the
earth. And He comes for purposes of sympathy,—He comes to
acquire and manifest sympathy. But as to law objective and
authoritative, He is not placed under it, any more than they are
under it. There is no ground for sympathy then in that respect; for
there is nothing concerning which to sympathise. As to law
subjective,—that is, inward operating principle,—in the case of the
God-man, the law of both His natures is holy love, even "all that is
of the Father;" and it operates in the unlimited fulness of the one
nature, and in all the compass of the other. As to law subjective in
fallen man, why all that is in the world is of the world, even "the lust
of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." There is,
therefore, as little ground or material of sympathy here. Antipathy,
rather, would seem to be only more sharply defined, with no higher
reconciling efficiency or instrumentality provided; for, in fact,
reconciliation of any kind, or in any sense, is utterly excluded from
this whole scheme of theological opinion. Still, sympathy is pleaded
for tenaciously; as well it may, seeing it is the last refuge, if an
explanation of the Incarnation has, in any sort, to be supplied. But
what sort of explanation does it afford? The Son of God places
Himself amidst the sorrows of men,—although not sharing with
them any position, as under broken law, such as would afford an
explanation of suffering and sorrow being either their lot or His;
and, from the parallelism thus far between His case now and theirs,
an assimilating virtue goes forth from Him which exerts a beneficial
influence on them. And so, having sympathised with them in a law
of their nature by which "man that is born of a woman is of few days
and full of trouble," He somehow,—as by a fortunate contagion,
converse to the law of infection in bodily disease,—carries them
over into sympathy with the law of His natures, which is the Law of
Love; so that the will of man, like the will of the God-man, is
brought to vibrate harmoniously with the will of God, but not any
further in subjection to it than it was before, or than Christ's will
ever was or will be.
It is hard enough to understand, surely, how this is brought to pass.
But if this is the object of the Incarnation, it is still harder to
imagine why it should be described as our "becoming dead to the
law"—the law of love—"by the body of Christ." One would rather say
that we were made alive to the law by this assimilating, quickening
influence. And while our sympathy with the mind that is in Christ
might be held to account for it, what can His "body" be supposed to
have to do with it?
At all events, if this is the kind of regeneration which, apart from all
idea of redemption proper, is to be substituted alike for the
redemption that is in Christ and the regeneration that is by the
Spirit of Christ,
V. It may be well to consider what the real Regeneration of God's
kingdom is, and how it stands connected with the contrasted kinds
of law which we have been discriminating.
Resuming, then, our analysis of the experience of Paul in his
quickened consciousness concerning Law, let us solicit attention to
the exact point of transition where be finds himself able to assert a
vital change in his consciousness and able to vindicate for himself a
new relation to Law. For that transition, we see, is very sharply
defined, when, realising a new subjective tendency or bias in his
will,—and realising it all the more clearly and keenly from the fact
of finding a thwarting influence steadily operating against it,—he
finds himself not merely assenting by enforced conviction, but
cordially consenting to the law. "For that which I do (οὐ γινώσκω), I
allow not,—I know not, I acknowledge not, I repudiate or disown;
for (ὁ θέλω) what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If
then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is
good."—καλός, beautiful, worthy of, and now securing my cordial
admiration (Rom. 7:15, 16). And this "consent unto the law" is not
an isolated or occasional volition. It is habitual; even as the
discrepancy between "what I would," and "what I do" is habitual—
that discrepancy in the light of which I read my "consent unto the
law" even more clearly than if it took easy, and unhindered, and
uniform complete effect.
This habitual consent of the will, indicating or implying a new
subjective tendency in the inward man, Paul is now justified in
calling a "law of his mind" (ver. 23). But manifestly he is still
dealing with something different from subjective laws, as this very
consent itself most clearly verifies. For if this new law of his mind,
however holy and good, is identical with the "consent," it has to be
discriminated from that to which the consent is given. The law to
which his consent, in every act of volition, is given, cannot be
identified with the law which his consent, as a habit of volition,
constitutes. He consents unto the objective law of God, as an
authoritative law to his will; and when, because of his habitual
consent, he feels warranted now in speaking of "the law of his will
or of his mind," whereas hitherto it had been enough to speak of
"the law" (though even then he called it also "the commandment"),
now he is careful to call it "the law of God" (ver. 22), as if on very
purpose to anticipate and prevent misconstruction of the new
phrase he was about to employ. Nor,—having thus paved the way
beforehand for the adoption of that phrase,—is he less careful
thereafter to exemplify the right use of it; for he does not represent
himself as henceforth serving "the law of his mind," but tells us that
"with the mind he himself serves the law of God" (ver. 25).
A most accurate moral philosopher and psychologist, as well as
theologian, was this old tent-maker of Tarsus! And it would do some
of our moral philosophers good to attend a little more to his
writings.
The notion of subjective law may, indeed, on a superficial view,
seem to fit in very nicely with the doctrine of regeneration; and may
be represented as in fact harmonising admirably with the true idea
of subjective grace, or, more properly, as being a philosophical
expression for it. But it is very far from giving a full or accurate
account of the renewal of the will; and it is a very defective reading
of what we find in the will when renewed. Regeneration, the work of
God's Holy Spirit, is the reversal of that depraved state of soul
spoken of in Scripture when it is said, "The carnal mind is not
subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." It is not a mere
plastic operation, in virtue of which a new tendency is impressed on
the affections. It is a direct and personal dealing with the will,
powerfully bringing it into distinctly recognised and conscious
subjection to the will of God. In popular expression, it is the
transfer of the Moral Law from the tables of stone to the fleshly
tables of the heart. Or, allowing the Lord himself to describe His
own work: "I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds
will I write them." That is: I will secure their intelligent
acquaintance with my law, and their cordial acquiescence in it,
dealing alike with their minds and with their hearts. But this
transfer is not of such a nature as that the law is no more to be
found outside and above the will of man. It is not as if, in searching
for it now, we should find that it had disappeared as an authoritative
code of duty, to present itself henceforth only as a formulated
expression of the facts of man's will, no longer assertative of the
requirements of God's will. On the contrary, the specifically new
thing which the Holy Ghost has secured, and indeed created, is just
a life which, so to speak, lives in the recognition of the authoritative
will of God; its own consciousness as uttered in the words, "Thy law,
O God, is within my heart," being explained by the unmistakable
periphrasis, "I delight to do thy will, O my God." The renewed will
recognises its own renewal, precisely in this very element of its
subjection to the objective authority of the Most High. A sense of
that subjection was ineradicably inlaid in the conscience before; it is
now accepted and welcomed by the heart. And it is this transference
of the objective law,—as expressive, in the matter of it, of the nature
of God,—into the inward parts subjectively; while the same law still
abides outside and above the will,—continuing in the form of it,
assertative of the authority of God: this it is which is the grand
reconciliation of obedience most stringent, with liberty most sweet
and perfect. So far as regeneration has proceeded,—and it is
perfected only in death,—the subjective law of the will, in its
renewed estate, is in exact accordance with the objective law of God
to the will. But this reconciliation is disturbed by intromitting with
either of the two factors; and it is annihilated by making one of
them do duty for both. Exactly as the constituting idea of a
sacrament is destroyed by transubstantiating the sign into the thing
signified—the sacramental tie or bond, and therefore the
sacramental idea, vanishing at the introduction of identity
It is in vain to plead that the subjective view of Moral Law presents
a higher ideal of spiritual Liberty than what we have now been
pleading for. The reverse is the fact. For the withdrawment of
objective law is really the denial of responsibility. And liberty is
infringed, when responsibility is infringed; for liberty and
responsibility are correlatives. When a man is regenerated, he is
made "willing" (Ps. 110:3,) to be under law to God, and this
correlation is thereby beautifully preserved. His obedience now is
not that of a slave; for the law of his God is within his heart in the
character of a holy tendency, as well as standing over him with its
commandment. And his obedience is not the operation of a mere
mental tendency or spiritual mechanism working out its own bias or
its own law—as the soft lulling motion of a vessel languidly drifting
with the stream, though that stream were even "the river of the
water of life." It is the obedience of a loving, loyal subject, adoring
his Lord and King, and saying, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to
do?" And this is the highest ideal of Liberty that can be framed.
It is equally vain to affirm that the subjective view of law presents a
higher ideal of Grace. For if man did not fall as under a probation, of
which law objective was the instrument and safe-guarding charter;
if he fell as the victim of a kind of physical experiment; his
restoration can carry in it nothing of the nature of grace. It must
appear rather as a reparation which he had some ground to expect,
if not indeed to claim. It is in the light only of righteous
authoritative Law, that Grace can actually appear, or even the very
idea of grace be conceived at all; and the antithesis which Paul so
con stantly presents between Grace and Law becomes utterly
unintelligible, if by Law we are to understand the formulised
expression merely of a subjective state of soul.
Moreover, on this view, regeneration makes its appearance as a
phenomenon utterly dissociated from any intelligible, personal
transaction between God and His people,—any transaction of the
nature of a reconciliation; not to speak of the still more obnoxious
transaction of a legal or forensic justification. God appears more as
an influence than as a personal being; and man is represented as at
best a kind of animal, high in instincts intellectual, sentimental, and
emotional. For it becomes difficult to conceive of God as personal, if
the assertion of His authority be suppressed; and difficult to
conceive of man as personal, if distinct submission to objective
authority on God's part is not also insisted on. For our idea of
personality is so intertwined with implicit, if not explicit,
recognition of ethical capacity and ethical relation, that, if that
element be subtracted, it is very questionable whether the idea
thereafter carries in it any self-constituting notion at all.
In thus representing regeneration as the unifying of the desires and
tendencies of an inward law in the heart with the demands of the
outward law of God, it is possible we may be charged with forgetting
that, at an earlier stage of this brief discussion, we indicated a
certain risk or danger, in man's original state, that might arise from
this very accordance,—a kind of possible tendency towards trusting
to the law of the heart, as if it would operate spontaneously and
render careful consideration of Moral Law, as expressing God's
authority, unnecessary. It is true, we spoke of this possible tendency
as accounting for the necessity of such probation as that of Eden, in
which the "categorical imperative" is introduced as clothing the
subject-matter of a requirement which could appeal to nothing
corresponding to it pre-existing in man's spiritual constitution. And
assuredly if any danger existed of law moral lapsing, in man's
regard, into the aspect of law physical, such probation was adapted
with singular precision to meet the case. But it cannot be asserted
that this danger can arise in that re-instated harmony of objective
and subjective law which it is the very function of regeneration to
establish; nor, when that harmony is complete, can subsequent
probation be required, on the ground, as in the former case, that
danger arises from its very completeness. For there is a mighty
difference between a harmony that has undergone no ordeal, like
that of Eden, and one that has been established as the very result of
an ordeal exactly similar in kind but immeasurably more intense in
degree. This difference, of course, cannot appear in a scheme which
presents a regeneration that is dissociated from whatever is specific
in redemption and reconciliation, in the strict meaning of these
terms. But it does appear very strikingly in the regeneration which
the Covenant of Grace recognises and provides. For the absolute
sovereignty of God is brought out in redemption, in the terrible and
matchless probation of the second Adam; and absolute subjection to
God as Sovereign is secured, in the reconciliation of men to God
individually, by the imperative demand for faith in Christ and
submission in Him to "the righteousness of God." It is in
indissoluble connection with this crucial instance and culminating
display of God's sovereignty on the one hand, and this conclusively
testing demand for man's submission on the other, that
regeneration is righteously granted on God's part, and intelligently
reached and realised on the part of him that believeth. The unifying
of the inward subjective law of the will, in its renewed state, with
the objective authoritative "commandment" under which the
regenerated soul delights to live, takes place with no risk to the
recognition of the "categorical imperative" in this second creation.
Nor is any subsequent institute of probation needed to prevent the
possibility of law moral lapsing into the likeness of law physical
now. "The darkness is past; and the true light now shineth." The
sovereignty of Law has been recognised and established in the
probation and righteousness of that Eternal Son of God, who
received from His Father a commandment to lay down His life for
the sheep, and who, though He were a Son, yet learned obedience by
the things which He suffered; the whole import of His Incarnation
and its object being given by Himself when He says, "I came not to
do mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me." Nor is His
representative probation, when viewed as the heritage of His people,
to be considered as their probation by proxy merely. It becomes
their own probation most truly; as truly theirs as the first Adam's
was his own, and it is immeasurably more intense and satisfactory.
For—in bringing these discussions on the Atonement of our Lord
Jesus Christ to a close,—let it be carefully observed in conclusion,
That it is impossible that Christ's righteousness can be imputed on
God's part, or on man's part appropriated, on any principle, or
scheme, or understanding that should dispense with the real
probation of men individually, in their entrance into the favour and
kingdom of God. The commandment to "kiss the Son, lest His wrath
should burn, and we perish from the way:" the commandment to
"believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," and submit in Him to the
righteousness of God; carrying in it, as that commandment
evidently does, the imperative obligation to acknowledge the
absolute righteousness of eternal death as the wages due to sin, to
look to sovereign grace as the only source of exemption from it, and
to own that grace as reigning through righteousness by the
substitution of God's dear Son under the inflicting stroke of God's
awakened and avenging sword:—this is the highest and most
conclusive possible probation. It is far keener and deeper than the
probation of Eden. When successfully endured, it opens to us the
way to the true Tree of Life. And this is that ordeal, under whose all testing fires,
Law Moral from God and law subjective in the heart
are, in regeneration, welded into a harmony which the eventualities
of even eternity itself will never prevail to disturb. The living faith of
the regenerated spirit, appropriating "the righteousness of God,"
carries in its heart an oath of allegiance to the sovereignty of God
Most High: an oath which is at once the echo and the offspring of
God's own oath of sovereignty—sovereignty alike in Law and in
Grace. And the oath of faith shall never fail unto eternity, any more
than the Divine oath original from which it springs and to which it
answers:—"I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my
mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every
knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely, shall one say, in
the Lord have I righteousness and strength" (Isa. 45:23, 24)..
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