The attraction of the cross : designed to illustrate the leading truths, obligations and hopes of Christianity

Front matter

ie hc ota gi sD ha a ee a a es ee retbreres ee pi ee = ———

Spring, Gardiner, 1785-1873 The attraction of the cross

THE

CHAPTER II. GHAERLE he Tir

Tue Cross AN EFFECTIVE PPoPpITIATION FOR SIN, . . .. . 43

CHAPTER, LV:

THE Cross THE ONLY PROPITIATION, SG sia a tae: eee

CHAPTER V.

THe ACTUAL PURPOSE OR THE'CROSS, «§ « - oe oe ew lO

GHAPTER VI.

PoeeC Roses ACCRSSIULE TO ALL, uaise). oh ce ee ee a | BE

CALA PRE Rv EE

Tuer Cross A CoMPLETED JUSTIFICATION,;. . ..... . 103

CHAPTER VIII.

PATS IN THE CROSS, Peete Os eee ee ow tance We 120

CHAPTER IX:

THE INQUIRING SINNER DIRECTED TO THE CRoss, .... . 189

CHAPTER Xx:

Se

Contents

CHAPTER XI.

Ture GREATNESS OF SIN No OBSTACLE TO SALVATION BY THE ‘i ee ee

CHAPTER XII.

Chapter IV. The Cross The Only Propitiation

Ir is a truth universally received among Christians, that there is no other propitiation for sin except that offered by the Son of God on the Cross. The Scriptures dwell on this truth with such frequency and force, that it cannot be considered in any other ght than as one of the primary truths of the Christian revelation. They instruct us that ‘‘ there is no other name given under heaven whereby we must be saved but the name of Christ ;” that ‘‘ no other foundation can any man lay, than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ ;’? and that, this propitiation rejected, ‘‘ there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin.”’ There can be no doubt that in instances not a few, the want of clear, impressive and strong views of this one truth lies at the foundation of great doctrinal and _practical errors. The same high importance belongs to the priestly office of Christ, that belongs to his prophetic and regal offices. It is not more true that his Spirit is the only infallible Teacher, and that no human traditions, and no decisions of men, may supersede his unerring instructions—that he himself is the sole and only King in Zion, and that none may share with him the honors and prerogatives of his throne—than that he is the only propitiation—himself the altar—himself the Priest—himself the sacrifice—himself the “‘ author and finisher”? of the whole work.

It is easy to conceive of a less atonement than this stupendous offering. It might have been the offering of some mere man, exalted above his fellows, and pure and stainless; it might have been some exalted and holy seraph ; it might have been some super-angelic nature ; or it might have been some family, or tribe, or province, who should have been appointed and given their consent to die in the place of the fallen. Either of these would have been a sacrifice infinitely inferior to that which was made by ‘‘ God manifest in the flesh.”? Such are the greatness and glory of the second Person in the ever-blessed and adorable Godhead, that none hesitate to beleve that it had been unspeakably desirable that he should have been spared the degradation of our nature, and the agonies of the Cross, if there could have been any less sacrifice. Had there been any other thus ‘‘ mighty to save,”? by none would such a substitute have been hailed with greater joy, or more intense delight, than the Eternal Father himself, who appointed his own Son to this fearful service. Looking over the universe he had made, to see who, among them all, was competent thus to bring salvation to a lost race, ‘“‘he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor ; therefore his arm brought salvation unto him, and his righteousness sustained him.’? The Saviour himself would not have sought and acccepted this high trust, could it have been conducted to safe and honorable issues by another; nor was it except in view of the inefficacy of all other sacrifices, that he said, ‘* Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O God!?? It had been impious in another to have proposed himself for such a service. No other than the uncreated

One had ‘‘ power to lay down his life and take it again 3” no other had any worthiness or merit beyond that which he himself owed to the law which man had violated ; no other had the rank and dignity that could impart the adequate consideration and value to his sacrifice; no other could have borne the mighty burden which omnipotent justice must have laid upon him for the expiation of human guilt. If God, in human nature, himself sunk under it, what created intelligence was adequate to the burden? The redemption of our race had been hopeless and utterly impossible by any less sacrifice. To look for such a sacrifice only leaves the appalling question unanswered, ‘‘ How can man be just with God ?” Humanity and Deity, therefore, personally united in the great Immanuel, constituted the sacrifice. What can give worth to his death, render him a complete and _all-sufficient Saviour, effectively reconcile the claims of justice and mercy, and spread the ‘‘ glory that excelleth ” over the great work of his redemption; if not God in human nature voluntarily submitting to an ignominious and painful death, in order to satisfy the justice of his own law, and thus reveal “the grace that bringeth salvation ?”? This is a point too plain for argument, and is merely submitted to our inspection. Is not this a marvelous procedure? Can created minds, or the uncreated mind, conceive of a greater, or more effective propitiation? Can unsearchable wisdom furnish one more wise; infinite love one more touching; omnipotent power one more difficult to be accomplished ; inflexible justice one which it is more sure to sanction; or heavenly grace one by which it can secure more or greater triumphs? What greater purposes can be accomplished by an expiatory sacrifice than are accomplished by the Creator thus attaching himself to a creature; power thus uniting itself with weakness; heaven with earth; God with man: encountering that storm of wrath which discharged itself on the Cross, for the long thought of and settled purpose of bearing the penalty incurred by apostate man ?

If then there may not bea less propitiation for sin than that which Christ has made, and cannot be a greater, there is but this one sacrifice. Let us then consider somewhat more at length the practical importance of this truth. It is a truth which enters deeply into the whole theory and practice of a pure Christianity. Religion in the world, religion in the heart, lives or dies with the one great expiation for sin. It is by this one offering that men are saved, in opposition to the notion that they are saved without any propitiation at all. This great article of the Christian faith meets with no more subtil or rigorous opposition than from the unchristian thought that this redemption is needless. The foolishness of God is wiser than the reasoning pride of men. Without the presumption of deciding what the God only wise may or may not perform, it is enough that he has taught us, ‘that although ever willing and ready to forgive, he does so in a way that best comports with the honored claims of justice. It is impossible, with the utmost stretch of human ingenuity, to evade the force of the instructions of the Bible on this subject. With those to whom this part of our subject is applicable, the question is not whether there be one propitiation for sin, or many, but whether there be forgiveness with God as an arbitrary act of mercy, without any satisfaction to justice.

If God be true, and his decisions meet a ready response in the claims of conscience, one complete and all-sufficient sacrifice there must be, else there is no foundation for human hope. Men who reject the death of Christ as the propitiation for human guilt,@dopt another religion than that revealed in the Gospel. They have not the religion of heaven; they love not its truths; they partake not of the spirit of its song; they have no supreme honors for its redeeming God and King. How the man can be kept from sinking into despair, who deliberately and pertinaciously disbelieves the one sacrifice of the Lamb of God, is more than God has revealed. ‘To do this is to deny the “‘ Lord that bought him, and bring upon himself swift destruction.”” The only terms of reconciliation between God and man were fulfilled on the Cross. That God will be merciful to sinners in some way which has no respect to the great Mediator, is a most delusive and ruinous notion, if the God of Heaven be just. The sympathies of heaven and earth may be enlisted for the transgressor of the divine law; but if there be no propitiation for his offences, if he has not this one hope, this one name of Jesus to rest upon, he cannot be restored to the favor of an offended God. If the death of Christ as a true and proper sacrifice for sin be taken from the Bible, of all books is that book of God the most unintelligible, and the most full of perplexity. The sacred pages teach us that ‘‘ we have forgiveness of sins through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ;” nor is there a descendant of fallen Adam who, in any age of the world, or in any clime has found peace to the troubled conscience, hope to the sinking heart, elsewhere.

The one offering of Christ is also the only hope of men in distinction from the many sacrifices of the pagan world. ‘There are few expressions of the perfect impotence of the human mind to devise for itself a satisfactory religion more significant than those combined efforts of a darkened understanding and an erring conscience, by which men in pagan fands have endeavored to reinstate themselves in the favor of God, and restore those peaceful and happy communications with him which have been disturbed and broken off by sin. It would seem as though the soul of man had not lost all impressions of what it once was ; that there still clings to it the instinctive and indestructible thought of its high origin and its ultimate destination; and that there is still to be found in it a confused, and yet in some sort an irrepressible, seeking after God. It is a wanderer, an exile; yet in seeking to find its way back to its native skies, it only plunges deeper into the dark wilderness. From the brutal savage who prostrates himself at the feet of some hideous idol, to the more cultivated nations who worship the sun; from those primitive ages which offered to the Creator the fruits of their harvest fields, to those more degraded nations whose worship consists in acts of obscenity and blood; all give evidence that rather than live and die without any religion, they choose one that is ever so false and absurd. The great principle of human nature on which natural religion is founded would seem to be conscious guilt, and the consequent fear of the divine displeasure.

Costly and cruel sacrifices ever have been, and are now, heaped upon the altars of the pagan world, and their shrines are sprinkled with the blood and stained with the gore of men. To all these unnatural, ineffectual and sinful sacrifices, the Scriptures oppose the one divinely authorized and effectual sacrifice of the great Redeemer. This one offering meets every demand that can be made upon it by the intelligence, the guilt, the fear, the misery, the instinctive cravings of man as an immortal being. These ten thousand other sacrifices do but add guilt to guilt, and agony to agony; and while they do violence to every natural feeling of the human heart, give neither inward comfort nor outward reformation. Before the Cross the fables of Paganism disappear; incertitude is banished by the certainties of a true faith. The corruptions of men are reformed, their spirit is regenerated, by this one offering. Human reason finds an object here worthy of its inspection, and the more she studies it the more does she find employment for her largest intelligence—with more and still more gratified attachments does she exclaim, ‘‘O, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! The heart, everywhere else sterile and empty, is here filled with the love and the fullness of God ; and the wearied conscience, which elsewhere finds not a place for the sole of her foot to rest upon, here finds the ark of mercy. All other religions are the devices of men—this the device of heaven’s unsearchable wisdom and love. Itstands one and alone. All other religions are lost and swallowed up in the fullness of its light, the plenitude of its pardons, the power of its holiness. Truth, pardon, and holiness, the three things so essential to the happiness of man, and which natural religion, restive and disappointed, has so long sought in vain, are found in this one propitiation of the God-man Mediator, himself alone filling the mighty chasm sin has made between man and God.

This one offering also supersedes the multiplied and repeated sacrifices of the Jewish ritual. The Jewish ritual was a burdensome religion. The first seven chapters of Leviticus are employed in giving a general account of the different kinds of sacrifices which God commanded to be offered ; and these constituted by no means the whole of the offerings under that grevious and costly economy. Yet was it a ritual to which the Jews had been for so many centuries accustomed—one which was attended with so much outward splendor, and to which they were so strongly wedded—that it was then, and is still, worn and

*u dilapidatad as it is, the great obstacle to the introduction and prevalence of Christianity among that bigoted people. It was their great snare to apostacy after they became Christians; and it was to admonish them against this besetting danger—besetting them wherever they were scattered abroad—that important portions of the New Testament were written.

The sacrifices of the Hebrew economy accomplished the design for which they were intended; but they were never intended to be real atonements for sin. There were great and obvious defects in them which were remedied only by the high and exalted character of the great High Priest of the Christian dispensation, and the perfection and efficacy of his sacrifice. No angelic ministration could conduct the Church of God to her heavenly inheritance ; angels were but the servants of Christ, their true and only Lord. Nor could Moses; who was himself but a menial in God’s house, compared with Christ the Son and heir. Nor could Aaron, with his long succession of priests and costly and bloody sacrifices. ‘They were all imperfect and sinning men, ‘‘ compassed with infirmity,’’? and, by ‘‘ reason thereof, ought, as for the people so also for themselves, to offer for sins.”’ Christ was ‘‘holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, who needeth not daily, as those High Priests, to offer up sacrifice first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people ; for this he did once when he offered up himself.”’ They were ‘‘many priests,’’ because they were ‘‘ not suffered to continue by reason of death;’’ but Christ, ‘¢ because he continueth forever, hath an unchangeable priesthood, and is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him,” in all places, ba all times, under all dispensations.

The sacrifices under the Jewish dispensation were but prefigurative of the great Christian sacrifice ; the ‘ shadow of good things to come; the outline of the great. reality ; the speechless portrait of the wondrous original ; the sculptured, cold and marble statuary of the living person. They did not profess to remove guilt from the conscience, nor impurity from the heart; for ‘“‘ then they would not have ceased to be offered, because that the worshipers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.”’ ‘‘In those sacrifices there is a remembrance again of sins every year.”? They were fitted to remind men of their ill-desert and the penalty due to their transgressions. They did no more than this; ‘¢ for it was unpossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin.”? The sacrifices of the Jewish ritual must be often repeated, while the sacrifice of Christ, offered ‘‘ once for all,’’? accomplished the great object for which it was offered. ‘This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God.”? His work of propitiation was completed then, ‘‘ For by one offering, he hath forever prefected them that are sanctified.”” This was a most important lesson to be inculcated on the minds of the doubting and inconstant Jews. Their own Prophets had predicted a sacrifice which should effect the total abolition of their own sacrifices; that should “finish the transgression, make an end of sin, make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness ;”’ but this people were ‘slow of heart to believe what the Prophets had written.’? Would that they were not still slow of heart to believe both their own Prophets and their own Messiah! They are still ‘“‘ beloved for the Father’s sake,” and are yet to be gathered in; and when that day arrives and they ‘“‘come in with the fullness of the Gentiles,’ nothing will affect them more deeply than their scornful rejection of David’s Son and Lord. They will look on him whom they ‘have pierced, and mourn;”? and will see that his propititiation is the only fountain set open for sin and uncleanness. We indeed, as professed believers in the Christian faith, may suppose that this contrast between the many and repeated sacrifices of the Jewish ritual, and the one sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, has no relevancy to our character and condition. But it deserves to be engraved on our hearts as well as theirs. It involvesso many great truths and principles that are essential to Christianity, that Gentiles as well as Jews are concerned in it as one of the most cogent and convincing arguments for an humble and exclusive reliance on the one Mediator and his one sacrifice.

‘*No bleeding bird, nor bleeding beast, Nor hyssop branch, nor sprinkling priest, Nor running brook, nor flood, nor sea, Can wash the dismal stain away. ia

** Jesus, my God, thy blood alone Hath power sufficient to atone; Thy blood can make me white as snow, No Jewish types could cleanse me so.”

The sacrifice of Christ is also the one and only sacrifice in that it rebukes all the vain efforts of a self-righteous religion. No truth in the Gospel is more plainly revealed than that to every one who will accept the blessings of the Gospel, they are given freely. God freely gave his Son to die ; his Son freely offered up himself a sacrifice to unto God for us; of his rich and free grace he offers all the blessings of his great salvation without money and without price ; of grace, infinitely free, though sovereign

*

: and discriminating, the Holy Spirit gives repentance and remission of sins. It is all gift and grace from beginning toend. ‘The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”’ This is the great message of the Gospel. ‘‘ This is the testimony of God, that he hath given us eternal life, and this life isin his Son.”? Men have nothing to doin procuring, or purchasing it; nothing to do in deserving it; nothing to do in qualifying themselves to receive it. They have nothing to do, and nothing to give.forit. ‘* Who hath first given to the Lord, and it shal! be recompensed to him again; for of him, and through him, and to him, are all things.”? Men are not givers, but receivers; not purchasers and claimants, but beggars. Instead of having any merit of their own, they are eternally indebted to the divine justice, and have nothing to pay. They are ‘¢ wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked ;”? nothing relieves their poverty and wretchedness, but they are the rather perpetually accumulating and increasing, until they are made happy in the Saviour’s blessedness, wealthy in his riches, wise in his wisdom, and clothed with the pure robe of his righteousness, that the shame of their nakedness do not appear. Yet is there a strong tendency in the human mind, and an almost indomitable desire in men, to put themselves upon a series of self-sufficient efforts, to work their own way to heaven, ©

‘going about to establish their own righteousness, and not submitting themselves to the righteousness of God.” The spirit of self-righteousness usually expresses itself either by performances which are believed to be available ‘for the sinner’s salvation, or by those efforts by which men hope to make themselves so much better as to become the fit objects of divine mercy. The moral sinner who hopes to receive the favor of God by his morality, while

THE CROSS THE ONLY PROPITIATION. —§ 6g he may profess to depend on Christ alone, depends én, him in words only, and notin heart. The religious formalist, who hopes to secure the divine favor by his prayers and religious services, while he professes his dependence on Christ alone, is at heart a Pharisee, and rejects a free salvation. The anxious and inquiring sinner who confesses that he is unworthy, and feels that if he were not so great a sinner he might: find mercy, is secretly cleaving to his own righteousness, and only in another form cherishing the error, that-if he were but a better man he might have hope. Now the simple truth, clearly seen and truly felt, that there is no other sacrifice for sin except that offered by the great Mediator; that “he died unto sin once ;”’ that he ‘‘ hath once suffered for us, the. just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God ;” and that no other ground of acceptance is required, or is necessary, not only cuts up these self-righteous hopes root and branch, but shows their absurdity and wickedness. It shows their absurdity : for if salvation ‘‘ be by grace, then it is no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace ;” and ‘if it be of works, then it is no more grace, otherwise work is no more work.”’ It shows their wickedness : for it evinces: their hostility to God’s free salvation, their reluctance to be under obligation to Christ alone, — and their preference to their own wretched performances over the great work of Jesus the Lord.

It shows the secret Simony that is in the hearts of men, in that they endeavor to stipulate for that which God freely bestows ; to procure by their own well-doing what nothing but the blood of his Son could procure ; and like Simon, vainly think “‘the gift of God may be purchased with money.” The language of Christ’s one sacrifice is, that ‘it is not by works of righteousness which men have done, but according to his great mercy, that they are saved.””? Those who hope to enter into life in any other way than by Christ alone, be they ever so moral, and ever so punctual in their outward observance of religious institutions, will have a place in that same world of mourning which is prepared — for the ungodly. There is no other way of salvation for the best sinner than God has provided for the worst sinner. Men are always deceived in their true character, as well as in their hopes, when they look away from Christ to themselves. ‘‘I know, by sad experience,’’ says that wonderful man, George Whitfield, ‘‘ what it is to be lulled asleep with a false peace. Long was I lulled asleep. Long did I think myself a Christian, when I knew nothing of the Lord Jesus Christ. I used to fast twice a week. I used to pray sometimes nine times a day. T used to receive the Sacrament constantly every Lord’s day. And yet I knew nothing of Jesus Christ in my heart. I knew not I must be a new creature. I knew nothing of inward religion in my soul.”? This then is the counsel of the Mediator of the new covenant, and of that great, that solitary transaction, which veiled the heavens in mourning. ‘‘ Look unto ME and be ye saved ;’? ‘Come unto mx, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest !”’

The one offered sacrifice of Christ is likewise a truth of great importance, as condemning the error of those who flatter themselves that there will be some method of mercy devised hereafter for the final restoration of those who die in their sins. Those who are ensnared by this fatal error, adopt it on different grounds. But whatever their different theories may be, no truth in the Bible is so fatal to their delusions as the truth that it is ‘“‘by one offering that God hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.”? There are various views of the Cross that are death to the hope that in the decisions of another world no differ-

THE CROSS ,THE ONLY PROPITIATION. hi ence will be made between the righteous and the wicked ;

or that if there be a difference at first, all will at last, Pe in some unknown period of the boundless future, be gathered into the Divine Kingdom. But the truth we are considering 1 is, of all others, the most absolutly withering to this vain hope, this soul-destroying delusion. The error proceeds upon a false estimate of the great work of redemption, and of the great difficulty of saving men at all. Nothing short of the most profound and unsearchable wisdom could have devised any method of redemption. When the wicked shall stand before the Great Judge at the last day, they will be condemned for having rejected it. If, at any period thereafter, ‘‘God would pardon and save them, he must do it either on account of a greater or less atonement than that which Christ has made, or without any atonement at all. But it is certain that no greater atonement can be made than that which Christ has made, and therefore God cannot pardon and save them on account of an atonement greater than the atonement of Christ. There is no reason to believe that God will ever pardon and save them on account of a less atonement than the atonement of Christ, after he has condemned them to eternal destruction for rejecting that very atonement. And if he will not pardon and save them on account of a less atonement than the atonement of Christ, it cannot be supposed that he will pardon and save them without any atonement at all.?? These considerations would absolutely shut up every.door of hope to those who finally reject the Gospel, but for one most wondrous hypothesis; and that is, that the death of Christ itself may possibly he hereafter repeated, and those tremendous scenes of Bethlehem, Gethsemane and Calvary be acted over again.

This bold hypothesis presents a subject of very solemn and awful consideration. It must strike every mind that in originally deciding upon the death of Christ as the selected method of mercy, it was a method altogether peculiar, and above the researches of created wisdom. of the principle of substitution,’ says the distinguished Robert Hall, “be at all admitted in the operation of criminal law, it is too obvious to require proof that - it should be introduced very sparingly, only on very rare - occasions, and never be allowed to subside into a settled course. It requires some great crisis to justify its introduction—some extraordinary combination of difficulties, obstructing the natural course of justice. It requires that while the letter of the law is dispensed with, its spirit be - fully adhered to; so that instead of weakening the motives to obedience, it shall present a salutary monition, a moral and edifying spectacle. Such a method of procedure must be of rare occurrence, and to this circumstance, whenever it does occur, its utility must, ina great measure, be ascribed. The substitution of Christ in the room of a guilty race receives all the advantage as an impressive spectacle, which it is possible to derive from this circumstance. He once suffered from the foundation of the world ; nor have we the least reason to suppose any similar transaction has occurred on the theatre of the universe, or will ever occur again in the annals of eternity. It stands amid the lapse of ages and the waste of worlds, a single and solitary monument.”?

In confirmation of these thoughts, we may dwell on the following instructive passages of revealed truth: ‘* Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more ; death hath no more dominion over him: for in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.” ** Now once, in the end of the world, hath he put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is ap-— pointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many ; and unto them that look for him, he shall appear the second time without making lumself a sin-offering, unto salvation.”?> ‘By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”? ‘* This Man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down on the right hand of God.’? These are truths of deep and solemn import. The question is decided, that Christ dieth no more. Oh, who is there that desires that he should travel that bloody path again, and a second time drink of thatcup? Nor would it be of any avail to the incorrigible despisers of his salvation, if he should again bow his head and give up the ghost. They would despise him still. Their day of grace was continued long enough to try their character, and ascertain their decision ; nor was it cut short, nor were they consigned to their own place, until their decision was irrevocably formed to remain his enemies, and the fact well ascertained that no further space for repentance would avail them. There is nothing in the flames of hell to subdue an obdurate and malignant heart, but everything to excite and irritate and confirm its rebellion. Were the blessed Saviour again to | disrobe and empty himself, and descend to that fearful world, not only would they crucify him afresh, but scoff at his offered mercy, and trample it under their feet. ‘* No, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins!’ but a ** certain fearful looking for judgment and fiery indignation that shall devour the adversaries.’’? Never will Christ die again ; and never will there be any hope for those who account the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified an unholy thing. How dreadful is the condition of the man who is beyond the reach of Christ! Prize, O prize this great redemption while it is called to-day. 4 | ,