6th. The Ethical Theory of the Atonement…

6th. The Ethical Theory of the Atonement

In propounding what we conceive to be the true theory of the atonement, it seems desirable to divide our treatment into two parts. No theory can be satisfactory which does not furnish a solution of the two problems: 1. What did the atonement accomplish? or, in other words, what was the object of Christ’s death? The answer to this question must be a description of the atonement in its relation to holiness in God. 2. What were the means used? or, in other words, how could Christ justly die? The answer to this question must be a description of the atonement as arising from Christ’s relation to humanity. We take up these two parts of the subject in order.

Edwards, Works, 1:609, says that two things make Christ’s sufferings a satisfaction for human guilt: (1) their equality or equivalence to the punishment that the sinner deserves; (2) the union between him and them, or the propriety of his being accepted, in suffering, as the representative of the sinner. Christ bore God’s wrath: (1) by the sight of sin and punishment; (2) by enduring the effects of wrath ordered by God. See also Edwards, Sermon on the Satisfaction of Christ. These statements of Edwards suggest the two points of view from which we regard the atonement; but they come short of the Scriptural declarations, in that they do not distinctly assert Christ’s endurance of penalty itself. Thus they leave the way open for the New School theories of the atonement, propounded by the successors of Edwards.

Adolphe Monod said well: “Save first the holy law of my God,—after that you shall save me.” Edwards felt the first of these needs, for he says, in his Mysteries of Scripture, Works, 3:542—“The necessity of Christ’s satisfaction to divine justice is, as it were, the centre and hinge of all doctrines of pure revelation. Other doctrines are comparatively of little importance, except as they have respect to this.” And in his Work of Redemption, Works, 1:412—“Christ was born to the end that he might die; and therefore he did, as it were, begin to die as soon as he was born.” See John 12:32—“And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself. But this he said, signifying by what manner of death he should die.” Christ was “lifted up”: 1. as a propitiation to the holiness of God, which makes suffering to follow sin, so affording the only ground for pardon without and peace within; 2. as a power to purify the hearts and lives of men, Jesus being as “the serpent lifted up in the wilderness” (John 3:14), and we overcoming “because of the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:11).

First,—the Atonement as related to Holiness in God.

The Ethical theory holds that the necessity of the atonement is grounded in the holiness of God, of which conscience in man is a finite reflection. There is an ethical principle in the divine nature, which demands that sin shall be punished. Aside from its results, sin is essentially ill-deserving. As we who are made in God’s image mark our growth in purity by the increasing quickness with which we detect impurity, and the increasing hatred which we feel toward it, so infinite purity is a consuming fire to all iniquity. As there is an ethical demand in our natures that not only others’ wickedness, but our own wickedness, be visited with punishment, and a keen conscience cannot rest till it has made satisfaction to justice for its misdeeds, so there is an ethical demand of God’s nature that penalty follow sin.

The holiness of God has conscience and penalty for its correlates and consequences. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 216—“In old Athens, the rock on whose top sat the Court of the Areopagus, representing the highest reason and the best character of the Athenian state, had underneath it the Cave of the Furies.” Shakespeare knew human nature and he bears witness to its need of atonement. In his last Will and Testament he writes: “First, I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting.” Richard III, 1:4—“I charge you, as you hope to have redemption By Christ’s dear blood shed for our grievous sins, That you depart and lay no hands on me.” Richard II, 4:1—“The world’s Ransom, blessed Mary’s Son.” Henry VI, 2d part, 3:2—“That dread King took our state upon him, To free us from his Father’s wrathful curse.” Henry IV, 1st part, 1:1—“Those holy fields, Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter Cross.” Measure for Measure, 2:2—“Why, all the souls that are were forfeit once; And he that might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy.” Henry VI, 2d part, 1:1—“Now, by the death of him that died for all!” All’s Well that Ends Well, 3:4—“What angel shall Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath Of greatest justice.” See a good statement of the Ethical theory of the Atonement in its relation to God’s holiness, in Denney, Studies in Theology, 100-124.

Punishment is the constitutional reaction of God’s being against moral evil—the self-assertion of infinite holiness against its antagonist and would-be destroyer. In God this demand is devoid of all passion, and is consistent with infinite benevolence. It is a demand that cannot be evaded, since the holiness from which it springs is unchanging. The atonement is therefore a satisfaction of the ethical demand of the divine nature, by the substitution of Christ’s penal sufferings for the punishment of the guilty.

John Wessel, a Reformer before the Reformation (1419-1489): “Ipse deus, ipse sacerdos, ipse hostia, pro se, de se, sibi satisfecit”—“Himself being at the same time God, priest, and sacrificial victim, he made satisfaction to himself, for himself [i. e., for the sins of men to whom he had united himself], and by himself [by his own sinless sufferings].” Quarles’s Emblems: “O groundless deeps! O love beyond degree! The Offended dies, to set the offender free!”

Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:98—“When I was in the hand of the Holy Spirit, under conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of the justice of God. Sin, whatever it might be to other people, became to me an intolerable burden. It was not so much that I feared hell, as that I feared sin; and all the while I had upon my mind a deep concern for the honor of God’s name and the integrity of his moral government. I felt that it would not satisfy my conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly. But then there came the question: ‘How could God be just, and yet justify me who had been so guilty?’... The doctrine of the atonement is to my mind one of the surest proofs of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Who would or could have thought of the just Ruler dying for the unjust rebel?”

This substitution is unknown to mere law, and above and beyond the powers of law. It is an operation of grace. Grace, however, does not violate or suspend law, but takes it up into itself and fulfils it. The righteousness of law is maintained, in that the source of all law, the judge and punisher, himself voluntarily submits to bear the penalty, and bears it in the human nature that has sinned.

Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 221—“In conscience, man condemns and is condemned. Christ was God in the flesh, both priest and sacrificial victim (Heb. 9:12). He is ‘full of grace’—forgiving grace—but he is ‘full of truth’ also, and so ‘the only-begotten from the Father’ (John 1:14). Not forgiveness that ignores sin, not justice that has no mercy. He forgave the sinner, because he bore the sin.” Kaftan, referring to some modern theologians who have returned to the old doctrine but who have said that the basis of the atonement is, not the juridical idea of punishment, but the ethical idea of propitiation, affirms as follows: “On the contrary the highest ethical idea of propitiation is just that of punishment. Take this away, and propitiation becomes nothing but the inferior and unworthy idea of appeasing the wrath of an incensed deity. Precisely the idea of the vicarious suffering of punishment is the idea which must in some way be brought to a full expression for the sake of the ethical consciousness.

“The conscience awakened by God can accept no forgiveness which is not experienced as at the same time a condemnation of sin.... Jesus, though he was without sin and deserved no punishment, took upon himself all the evils which have come into the world as the consequence and punishment of sin, even to the shameful death on the Cross at the hand of sinners.... Consequently for the good of man he bore all that which man had deserved, and thereby has man escaped the final eternal punishment and has become a child of God.... This is not merely a subjective conclusion upon the related facts, but it is as objective and real as anything which faith recognizes and knows.”

Thus the atonement answers the ethical demand of the divine nature that sin be punished if the offender is to go free. The interests of the divine government are secured as a first subordinate result of this satisfaction to God himself, of whose nature the government is an expression; while, as a second subordinate result, provision is made for the needs of human nature,—on the one hand the need of an objective satisfaction to its ethical demand of punishment for sin, and on the other the need of a manifestation of divine love and mercy that will affect the heart and move it to repentance.

The great classical passage with reference to the atonement is Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith is Jesus.” Or, somewhat more freely translated, the passage would read:—“whom God hath set forth in his blood as a propitiatory sacrifice, through faith, to show forth his righteousness on account of the pretermission of past offenses in the forbearance of God; to declare his righteousness in the time now present, so that he may be just and yet may justify him who believeth in Jesus.”

EXPOSITION OF ROM. 3:25, 26.—These verses are an expanded statement of the subject of the epistle—the revelation of the “righteousness of God” (= the righteousness which God provides and which God accepts)—which had been mentioned in 1:17, but which now has new light thrown upon it by the demonstration, in 1:18-3:20, that both Gentiles and Jews are under condemnation, and are alike shut up for salvation to some other method than that of works. We subjoin the substance of Meyer’s comments upon this passage.

“Verse 25. ‘God has set forth Christ as an effectual propitiatory offering, through faith, by means of his blood,’ i. e., in that he caused him to shed his blood. ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι belongs to προέθετο, not to πίστεως. The purpose of this setting forth in his blood is εἰς ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ, ‘for the display of his [judicial and punitive] righteousness,’ which received its satisfaction in the death of Christ as a propitiatory offering, and was thereby practically demonstrated and exhibited. ‘On account of the passing-by of sins that had previously taken place,’ i. e., because he had allowed the pre-Christian sins to go without punishment, whereby his righteousness had been lost sight of and obscured, and had come to need an ἔνδειξις, or exhibition to men. Omittance is not acquittance. πάρεσις, passing-by, is intermediate between pardon and punishment. ‘In virtue of the forbearance of God’ expresses the motive of the πάρεσις. Before Christ’s sacrifice, God’s administration was a scandal,—it needed vindication. The atonement is God’s answer to the charge of freeing the guilty.

“Verse 26. εἰς τὸ εἶναι is not epexegetical of εἰς ἔνδειξιν, but presents the teleology of the ἱλαστήριον, the final aim of the whole affirmation from ὂν προέθετο to καιρῷ—namely, first, God’s being just, and secondly, his appearing just in consequence of this. Justus et justificans, instead of justus et condemnans, this is the summum paradoxon evangelicum. Of this revelation of righteousness, not through condemnation, but through atonement, grace is the determining ground.”

We repeat what was said on pages 719, 720, with regard to the teaching of the passage, namely, that it shows: (1) that Christ’s death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute in God which demands the atonement in his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God’s justifying the believer. It is only incidentally and subordinately that the atonement is a necessity to man; Paul speaks of it here mainly as a necessity to God. Christ suffers, indeed, that God may appear righteous; but behind the appearance lies the reality; the main object of Christ’s suffering is that God may be righteous, while he pardons the believing sinner; in other words, the ground of the atonement is something internal to God himself. See Heb. 2:10—it “became” God = it was morally fitting in God, to make Christ suffer; cf. Zech. 6:8—“they that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country”—the judgments inflicted on Babylon have satisfied my justice.

Charnock: “He who once ‘quenched the violence of fire’ for those Hebrew children, has also quenched the fires of God’s anger against the sinner, hotter than furnace heated seven times.” The same God who is a God of holiness, and who in virtue of his holiness must punish human sin, is also a God of mercy, and in virtue of his mercy himself bears the punishment of human sin. Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 98—“Christ is not only mediator between God and man, but between the just God and the merciful God”—cf. Ps. 85:10—“Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other,” “Conscience demands vicariousness, for conscience declares that a gratuitous pardon would not be just”; see Knight, Colloquia Peripatetica, 88.

Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the Atonement, 219, 304—“The Atonement 1. has Godward significance; 2. consists in our Lord’s endurance of death on our behalf; 3. the spirit in which he endured death is of vital importance to the efficacy of his sacrifice, namely, obedience.... God gives repentance, yet requires it; he gives atonement, yet requires it. ‘Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift’ (2 Cor. 9:15).” Simon, in Expositor, 6:321-334 (for substance)—“As in prayer we ask God to energize us and enable us to obey his law, and he answers by entering our hearts and obeying in us and for us: as we pray for strength in affliction, and find him helping us by putting his Spirit into us, and suffering in us and for us; so in atonement, Christ, the manifested God, obeys and suffers in our stead. Even the moral theory implies substitution also. God in us obeys his own law and bears the sorrows that sin has caused. Why can he not, in human nature, also endure the penalty of sin? The possibility of this cannot be consistently denied by any who believe in divine help granted in answer to prayer. The doctrine of the atonement and the doctrine of prayer stand or fall together.”

See on the whole subject, Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 272-324, Philosophy of History, 65-69, and Dogmatic Theology, 2:401-463; Magee, Atonement and Sacrifice, 27, 53, 258; Edwards’s Works, 4:140 sq.; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 214-334; Owen, on Divine Justice, in Works, 10:500-512; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:27-114; Hopkins, Works, 1:319-368; Schöberlein, in Studien und Kritiken, 1845:267-318, and 1847:7-70, also in Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.: Versöhnung; Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 3:713, and 8:213; Macdonnell, Atonement, 115-214; Luthardt, Saving Truths, 114-138; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 605-637; Lawrence, in Bib. Sac., 20:332-339; Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre; Waffle, in Bap. Rev., 1882:263-286; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:641-662 (Syst. Doct., 4:107-124); Remensnyder, The Atonement and Modern Thought.

Secondly,—the Atonement as related to Humanity in Christ.

The Ethical theory of the atonement holds that Christ stands in such relation to humanity, that what God’s holiness demands Christ is under obligation to pay, longs to pay, inevitably does pay, and pays so fully, in virtue of his two-fold nature, that every claim of justice is satisfied, and the sinner who accepts what Christ has done in his behalf is saved.

Dr. R. W. Dale, in his work on The Atonement, states the question before us: “What must be Christ’s relation to men, in order to make it possible that he should die for them?” We would change the form of the question, so that it should read: “What must be Christ’s relation to men, in order to make it not only possible, but just and necessary, that he should die for them?” Dale replies, for substance, that Christ must have had an original and central relation to the human race and to every member of it; see Denney, Death of Christ, 318. In our treatment of Ethical Monism, of the Trinity, and of the Person of Christ, we have shown that Christ, as Logos, as the immanent God, is the Life of humanity, laden with responsibility for human sin, while yet he personally knows no sin. Of this race-responsibility and race-guilt which Christ assumed, and for which he suffered so soon as man had sinned, Christ’s obedience and suffering in the flesh were the visible reflection and revelation. Only in Christ’s organic union with the race can we find the vital relation which will make his vicarious sufferings either possible or just. Only when we regard Calvary as revealing eternal principles of the divine nature, can we see how the sufferings of those few hours upon the Cross could suffice to save the millions of mankind.

Dr. E. Y. Mullins has set forth the doctrine of the Atonement in five propositions: “1. In order to atonement Christ became vitally united to the human race. It was only by assuming the nature of those he would redeem that he could break the power of their captor.... The human race may be likened to many sparrows who had been caught in the snare of the fowler, and were hopelessly struggling against their fate. A great eagle swoops down from the sky, becomes entangled with the sparrows in the net, and then spreading his mighty wings he soars upward bearing the snare and captives and breaking its meshes he delivers himself and them.... Christ the fountain head of life imparting his own vitality to the redeemed, and causing them to share in the experiences of Gethsemane and Calvary, breaking thus for them the power of sin and death—this is the atonement, by virtue of which sin is put away and man is united to God.”

Dr. Mullins properly regards this view of atonement as too narrow, inasmuch as it disregards the differences between Christ and men arising from his sinlessness and his deity. He adds therefore that “2. Christ became the substitute for sinners; 3. became the representative of men before God; 4. gained power over human hearts to win them from sin and reconcile them to God; and 5. became a propitiation and satisfaction, rendering the remission of sins consistent with the divine holiness.” If Christ’s union with the race be one which begins with creation and antedates the Fall, all of the later points in the above scheme are only natural correlates and consequences of the first,—substitution, representation, reconciliation, propitiation, satisfaction, are only different aspects of the work which Christ does for us, by virtue of the fact that he is the immanent God, the Life of humanity, priest and victim, condemning and condemned, atoning and atoned.

We have seen how God can justly demand satisfaction; we now show how Christ can justly make it; or, in other words, how the innocent can justly suffer for the guilty. The solution of the problem lies in Christ’s union with humanity. The first result of that union is obligation to suffer for men; since, being one with the race, Christ had a share in the responsibility of the race to the law and the justice of God. In him humanity was created; at every stage of its existence humanity was upheld by his power; as the immanent God he was the life of the race and of every member of it. Christ’s sharing of man’s life justly and inevitably subjected him to man’s exposures and liabilities, and especially to God’s condemnation on account of sin.

In the seventh chapter of Elsie Venner, Oliver Wendell Holmes makes the Reverend Mr. Honeywood lay aside an old sermon on Human Nature, and write one on The Obligations of an infinite Creator to a finite Creature. A. J. F. Behrends grounded our Lord’s representative relation not in his human nature but in his divine nature. “He is our representative not because he was in the loins of Adam, but because we, Adam included, were in his loins. Personal created existence is grounded in the Logos, so that God must deal with him as well as with every individual sinner, and sin and guilt and punishment must smite the Logos as well as the sinner, and that, whether the sinner is saved or not. This is not, as is often charged, a denial of grace or of freedom in grace, for it is no denial of freedom or grace to show that they are eternally rational and conformable to eternal law. In the ideal sphere, necessity and freedom, law and grace, coalesce.” J. C. C. Clarke, Man and his Divine Father, 387—“Vicarious atonement does not consist in any single act.... No one act embraces it all, and no one definition can compass it.” In this sense we may adopt the words of Forsyth: “In the atonement the Holy Father dealt with a world’s sin on (not in) a world-soul.”

G. B. Foster, on Mat. 26:53, 54—“Thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and he shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels? How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” “On this ‘must be’ the Scripture is based, not this ‘must be’ on the Scripture. The ‘must be’ was the ethical demand of his connection with the race. It would have been immoral for him to break away from the organism. The law of the organism is: From each according to ability; to each according to need. David in song, Aristotle in logic, Darwin in science, are under obligation to contribute to the organism the talent they have. Shall they be under obligation, and Jesus go scot-free? But Jesus can contribute atonement, and because he can, he must. Moreover, he is a member, not only of the whole, but of each part,—Rom. 12:5—‘members one of another.’ As membership of the whole makes him liable for the sin of the whole, so his being a member of the part makes him liable for the sin of that part.”

Fairbairn, Place of Christ in Modern Theology, 483, 484—“There is a sense in which the Patripassian theory is right; the Father did suffer; though it was not as the Son that he suffered, but in modes distinct and different.... Through his pity the misery of man became his sorrow.... There is a disclosure of his suffering in the surrender of the Son. This surrender represented the sacrifice and passion of the whole Godhead. Here degree and proportion are out of place; were it not, we might say that the Father suffered more in giving than the Son in being given. He who gave to duty had not the reward of him who rejoiced to do it.... One member of the Trinity could not suffer without all suffering.... The visible sacrifice was that of the Son; the invisible sacrifice was that of the Father.” The Andover Theory, represented in Progressive Orthodoxy, 43-53, affirms not only the Moral Influence of the Atonement, but also that the whole race of mankind is naturally in Christ and was therefore punished in and by his suffering and death; quoted in Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 269; see Hovey’s own view, 270-276, though he does not seem to recognize the atonement as existing before the incarnation.

Christ’s share in the responsibility of the race to the law and justice of God was not destroyed by his incarnation, nor by his purification in the womb of the virgin. In virtue of the organic unity of the race, each member of the race since Adam has been born into the same state into which Adam fell. The consequences of Adam’s sin, both to himself and to his posterity, are: (1) depravity, or the corruption of human nature; (2) guilt, or obligation to make satisfaction for sin to the divine holiness; (3) penalty, or actual endurance of loss or suffering visited by that holiness upon the guilty.

Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 117—“Christ had taken upon him, as the living expression of himself, a nature which was weighed down, not merely by present incapacities, but by present incapacities as part of the judicial necessary result of accepted and inherent sinfulness. Human nature was not only disabled but guilty, and the disabilities were themselves a consequence and aspect of the guilt”; see review of Moberly by Rashdall, in Jour. Theol. Studies, 3:198-211. Lidgett, Spir. Princ. of Atonement, 166-168, criticizes Dr. Dale for neglecting the fatherly purpose of the Atonement to serve the moral training of the child—punishment marking ill-desert in order to bring this ill-desert to the consciousness of the offender,—and for neglecting also the positive assertion in the atonement that the law is holy and just and good—something more than the negative expression of sin’s ill-desert. See especially Lidgett’s chapter on the relation of our Lord to the human race, 351-378, in which he grounds the atonement in the solidarity of mankind, its organic union with the Son of God, and Christ’s immanence in humanity.

Bowne, The Atonement, 101—“Something like this work of grace was a moral necessity with God. It was an awful responsibility that was taken when our human race was launched with its fearful possibilities of good and evil. God thereby put himself under infinite obligation to care for his human family; and reflections upon his position as Creator and Ruler, instead of removing only make more manifest this obligation. So long as we conceive of God as sitting apart in supreme ease and self-satisfaction, he is not love at all, but only a reflex of our selfishness and vulgarity. So long as we conceive him as bestowing upon us out of his infinite fulness but at no real cost to himself, he sinks before the moral heroes of the race. There is ever a higher thought possible, until we see God taking the world upon his heart, entering into the fellowship of our sorrow, and becoming the supreme burdenbearer and leader in all self-sacrifice. Then only are the possibilities of grace and love and moral heroism and condescension filled up, so that nothing higher remains. And the work of Christ himself, so far as it was an historical event, must be viewed, not merely as a piece of history, but also as a manifestation of that Cross which was hidden in the divine love from the foundation of the world, and which is involved in the existence of the human world at all.”

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:90, 91—“Conceive of the ideal of moral perfection incarnate in a human personality, and at the same time one who loves us with a love so absolute that he identifies himself with us and makes our good and evil his own—bring together these elements in a living, conscious human spirit, and you have in it a capacity of shame and anguish, a possibility of bearing the burden of human guilt and wretchedness, which lost and guilty humanity can never bear for itself.”

If Christ had been born into the world by ordinary generation, he too would have had depravity, guilt, penalty. But he was not so born. In the womb of the Virgin, the human nature which he took was purged from its depravity. But this purging away of depravity did not take away guilt, or penalty. There was still left the just exposure to the penalty of violated law. Although Christ’s nature was purified, his obligation to suffer yet remained. He might have declined to join himself to humanity, and then he need not have suffered. He might have sundered his connection with the race, and then he need not have suffered. But once born of the Virgin, once possessed of the human nature that was under the curse, he was bound to suffer. The whole mass and weight of God’s displeasure against the race fell on him, when once he became a member of the race.

Because Christ is essential humanity, the universal man, the life of the race, he is the central brain to which and through which all ideas must pass. He is the central heart to which and through which all pains must be communicated. You cannot telephone to your friend across the town without first ringing up the central office. You cannot injure your neighbor without first injuring Christ. Each one of us can say of him: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4). Because of his central and all-inclusive humanity, he must bear in his own person all the burdens of humanity, and must be “the Lamb of God, that” taketh, and so “taketh away, the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Simms Reeves, the great English tenor, said that the passion-music was too much for him; he was found completely overcome after singing the prophet’s words in Lam. 1:12—“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is brought upon me, Wherewith Jehovah hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.”

Father Damien gave his life in ministry to the lepers’ colony of the Hawaiian Islands. Though free from the disease when he entered, he was at last himself stricken with the leprosy, and then wrote: “I must now stay with my own people.” Once a leper, there was no release. When Christ once joined himself to humanity, all the exposures and liabilities of humanity fell upon him. Through himself personally without sin, he was made sin for us. Christ inherited guilt and penalty. Heb. 2:14, 15—“Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same; that through death he might bring to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage.”

Only God can forgive sin, because only God can feel it in its true heinousness and rate it at its true worth. Christ could forgive sin because he added to the divine feeling with regard to sin the anguish of a pure humanity on account of it. Shelley, Julian and Maddolo: “Me, whose heart a stranger’s tear might wear, As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone; Me, who am as a nerve o’er which do creep The Else unfelt oppressions of the earth.” S. W. Culver: “We cannot be saved, as we are taught geometry, by lecture and diagram. No person ever yet saved another from drowning by standing coolly by and telling him the importance of rising to the surface and the necessity of respiration. No, he must plunge into the destructive element, and take upon himself the very condition of the drowning man, and by the exertion of his own strength, by the vigor of his own life, save him from the impending death. When your child is encompassed by the flames that consume your dwelling, you will not save him by calling to him from without. You must make your way through the devouring flame, till you come personally into the very conditions of his peril and danger, and, thence returning, bear him forth to freedom and safety.”

Notice, however, that this guilt which Christ took upon himself by his union with humanity was: (1) not the guilt of personal sin—such guilt as belongs to every adult member of the race; (2) not even the guilt of inherited depravity—such guilt as belongs to infants, and to those who have not come to moral consciousness; but (3) solely the guilt of Adam’s sin, which belongs, prior to personal transgression, and apart from inherited depravity, to every member of the race who has derived his life from Adam. This original sin and inherited guilt, but without the depravity that ordinarily accompanies them, Christ takes, and so takes away. He can justly bear penalty, because he inherits guilt. And since this guilt is not his personal guilt, but the guilt of that one sin in which “all sinned”—the guilt of the common transgression of the race in Adam, the guilt of the root-sin from which all other sins have sprung—he who is personally pure can vicariously bear the penalty due to the sin of all.

Christ was conscious of innocence in his personal relations, but not in his race relations. He gathered into himself all the penalties of humanity, as Winkelried gathered into his own bosom at Sempach the pikes of the Austrians and so made a way for the victorious Swiss. Christ took to himself the shame of humanity, as the mother takes upon her the daughter’s shame, repenting of it and suffering on account of it. But this could not be in the case of Christ unless there had been a tie uniting him to men far more vital, organic, and profound than that which unites mother and daughter. Christ is naturally the life of all men, before he becomes spiritually the life of true believers. Matheson, Spir. Devel. of St. Paul, 197-215, 244, speaks of Christ’s secular priesthood, of an outer as well as an inner membership in the body of Christ. He is sacrificial head of the world as well as sacrificial head of the church. In Paul’s latest letters, he declares of Christ that he is “the Savior of all men, specially of them that believe” (1 Tim. 4:10). There is a grace that “hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men” (Tit. 2:11). He “gave gifts unto men” (Eph. 4:8), “Yea, among the rebellious also, that Jehovah God might dwell with them” (Ps. 68:18). “Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected” (1 Tim. 4:4).

Royce, World and Individual, 2:408—“Our sorrows are identically God’s own sorrows.... I sorrow, but the sorrow is not only mine. This same sorrow, just as it is for me, is God’s sorrow.... The divine fulfilment can be won only through the sorrows of time.... Unless God knows sorrow, he knows not the highest good, which consists in the overcoming of sorrow.” Godet, in The Atonement, 331-351—“Jesus condemned sin as God condemned it. When he felt forsaken on the Cross, he performed that act by which the offender himself condemns his sin, and by that condemnation, so far as it depends on himself, makes it to disappear. There is but one conscience in all moral beings. This echo in Christ of God’s judgment against sin was to re-echo in all other human consciences. This has transformed God’s love of compassion into a love of satisfaction. Holiness joins suffering to sin. But the element of reparation in the Cross was not in the suffering but in the submission. The child who revolts against its punishment has made no reparation at all. We appropriate Christ’s work when we by faith ourselves condemn sin and accept him.”

If it be asked whether this is not simply a suffering for his own sin, or rather for his own share of the sin of the race, we reply that his own share in the sin of the race is not the sole reason why he suffers; it furnishes only the subjective reason and ground for the proper laying upon him of the sin of all. Christ’s union with the race in his incarnation is only the outward and visible expression of a prior union with the race which began when he created the race. As “in him were all things created,” and as “in him all things consist,” or hold together (Col. 1:16, 17), it follows that he who is the life of humanity must, though personally pure, be involved in responsibility for all human sin, and “it was necessary that the Christ should suffer” (Acts 17:3). This suffering was an enduring of the reaction of the divine holiness against sin and so was a bearing of penalty (Is. 53:6; Gal. 3:13), but it was also the voluntary execution of a plan that antedated creation (Phil. 2:6, 7), and Christ’s sacrifice in time showed what had been in the heart of God from eternity (Heb. 9:14; Rev. 13:8).

Our treatment is intended to meet the chief modern objection to the atonement. Greg, Creed of Christendom, 2:222, speaks of “the strangely inconsistent doctrine that God is so just that he could not let sin go unpunished, yet so unjust that he could punish it in the person of the innocent.... It is for orthodox dialectics to explain how the divine justice can be impugned by pardoning the guilty, and yet vindicated by punishing the innocent” (quoted in Lias, Atonement, 16). In order to meet this difficulty, the following accounts of Christ’s identification with humanity have been given:

1. That of Isaac Watts (see Bib. Sac., 1875:421). This holds that the humanity of Christ, both in body and soul, preëxisted before the incarnation, and was manifested to the patriarchs. We reply that Christ’s human nature is declared to be derived from the Virgin.

2. That of R. W. Dale (Atonement, 265-440). This holds that Christ is responsible for human sin because, as the Upholder and Life of all, he is naturally one with all men, and is spiritually one with all believers (Acts 17:28—“in him we live, and move, and have our being”; Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”; John 14:20—“I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you”). If Christ’s bearing our sins, however, is to be explained by the union of the believer with Christ, the effect is made to explain the cause, and Christ could have died only for the elect (see a review of Dale, in Brit. Quar. Rev., Apr., 1876:221-225). The union of Christ with the race by creation—a union which recognizes Christ’s purity and man’s sin—still remains as a most valuable element of truth in the theory of Dr. Dale.

3. That of Edward Irving. Christ has a corrupted nature, an inborn infirmity and depravity, which he gradually overcomes. But the Scriptures, on the contrary, assert his holiness and separateness from sinners. (See references, on pages 744-747.)

4. That of John Miller, Theology, 114-128; also in his chapter: Was Christ in Adam? in Questions Awakened by the Bible. Christ, as to his human nature, although created pure, was yet, as one of Adam’s posterity, conceived of as a sinner in Adam. To him attached “the guilt of the act in which all men stood together in a federal relation.... He was decreed to be guilty for the sins of all mankind.” Although there is a truth contained in this statement, it is vitiated by Miller’s federalism and creatianism. Arbitrary imputation and legal fiction do not help us here. We need such an actual union of Christ with humanity, and such a derivation of the substance of his being, by natural generation from Adam, as will make him not simply the constructive heir, but the natural heir, of the guilt of the race. We come, therefore, to what we regard as the true view, namely:

5. That the humanity of Christ was not a new creation, but was derived from Adam, through Mary his mother; so that Christ, so far as his humanity was concerned, was in Adam just as we were, and had the same race-responsibility with ourselves. As Adam’s descendant, he was responsible for Adam’s sin, like every other member of the race; the chief difference being, that while we inherit from Adam both guilt and depravity, he whom the Holy Spirit purified, inherited not the depravity, but only the guilt. Christ took to himself, not sin (depravity), but the consequences of sin. In him there was abolition of sin, without abolition of obligation to suffer for sin; while in the believer, there is abolition of obligation to suffer, without abolition of sin itself.

The justice of Christ’s sufferings has been imperfectly illustrated by the obligation of the silent partner of a business firm to pay debts of the firm which he did not personally contract; or by the obligation of the husband to pay the debts of his wife; or by the obligation of a purchasing country to assume the debts of the province which it purchases (Wm. Ashmore). There have been men who have spent the strength of a lifetime in clearing off the indebtedness of an insolvent father, long since deceased. They recognized an organic unity of the family, which morally, if not legally, made their father’s liabilities their own. So, it is said, Christ recognized the organic unity of the race, and saw that, having become one of that sinning race, he had involved himself in all its liabilities, even to the suffering of death, the great penalty of sin.

The fault of all the analogies just mentioned is that they are purely commercial. A transference of pecuniary obligation is easier to understand than a transference of criminal liability. I cannot justly bear another’s penalty, unless I can in some way share his guilt. The theory we advocate shows how such a sharing of our guilt on the part of Christ was possible. All believers in substitution hold that Christ bore our guilt: “My soul looks back to see The burdens thou didst bear When hanging on the accursed tree, And hopes her guilt was there.” But we claim that, by virtue of Christ’s union with humanity, that guilt was not only an imputed, but also an imparted, guilt.

With Christ’s obligation to suffer, there were connected two other, though minor, results of his assumption of humanity: first, the longing to suffer; and secondly, the inevitableness of his suffering. He felt the longing to suffer which perfect love to God must feel, in view of the demands upon the race, of that holiness of God which he loved more than he loved the race itself; which perfect love to man must feel, in view of the fact that bearing the penalty of man’s sin was the only way to save him. Hence we see Christ pressing forward to the cross with such majestic determination that the disciples were amazed and afraid (Mark 10:32). Hence we hear him saying: “With desire have I desired to eat this passover” (Luke 23:15); “I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50).

Here is the truth in Campbell’s theory of the atonement. Christ is the great Penitent before God, making confession of the sin of the race, which others of that race could neither see nor feel. But the view we present is a larger and completer one than that of Campbell, in that it makes this confession and reparation obligatory upon Christ, as Campbell’s view does not, and recognizes the penal nature of Christ’s sufferings, which Campbell’s view denies. Lias, Atonement, 79—“The head of a clan, himself intensely loyal to his king, finds that his clan have been involved in rebellion. The more intense and perfect his loyalty, the more thorough his nobleness of heart and affection for his people, the more inexcusable and flagrant the rebellion of those for whom he pleads,—the more acute would be his agony, as their representative and head. Nothing would be more true to human nature, in the best sense of those words, than that the conflict between loyalty to his king and affection for his vassals should induce him to offer his life for theirs, to ask that the punishment they deserved should be inflicted on him.”

The second minor consequence of Christ’s assumption of humanity was, that, being such as he was, he could not help suffering; in other words, the obligatory and the desired were also the inevitable. Since he was a being of perfect purity, contact with the sin of the race, of which he was a member, necessarily involved an actual suffering, of an intenser kind than we can conceive. Sin is self-isolating, but love and righteousness have in them the instinct of human unity. In Christ all the nerves and sensibilities of humanity met. He was the only healthy member of the race. When life returns to a frozen limb, there is pain. So Christ, as the only sensitive member of a benumbed and stupefied humanity, felt all the pangs of shame and suffering which rightfully belonged to sinners; but which they could not feel, simply because of the depth of their depravity. Because Christ was pure, yet had united himself to a sinful and guilty race, therefore “it must needs be that Christ should suffer” (A. V.) or, “it behooved the Christ to suffer” (Rev. Vers., Acts 17:3); see also John 3:14—“so must the Son of man be lifted up”—“The Incarnation, under the actual circumstances of humanity, carried with it the necessity of the Passion” (Westcott, in Bib. Com., in loco).

Compare John Woolman’s Journal, 4, 5—“O Lord, my God, the amazing horrors of darkness were gathered about me, and covered me all over, and I saw no way to go forth; I felt the depth and extent of the misery of my fellow creatures, separated from the divine harmony, and it was greater than I could bear, and I was crushed down under it; I lifted up my head, I stretched out my arm, but there was none to help me; I looked round about, and was amazed. In the depths of misery, I remembered that thou art omnipotent and that I had called thee Father.” He had vision of a “dull, gloomy mass,” darkening half the heavens, and he was told that it was “human beings, in as great misery as they could be and live; and he was mixed with them, and henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separate being.”

This suffering in and with the sins of men, which Dr. Bushnell emphasized so strongly, though it is not, as he thought, the principal element, is notwithstanding an indispensable element in the atonement of Christ. Suffering in and with the sinner is one way, though not the only way, in which Christ is enabled to bear the wrath of God which constitutes the real penalty of sin.

EXPOSITION OF 2 COR. 5:21.—It remains for us to adduce the Scriptural proof of this natural assumption of human guilt by Christ. We find it in 2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” “Righteousness” here cannot mean subjective purity, for then “made to be sin” would mean that God made Christ to be subjectively depraved. As Christ was not made unholy, the meaning cannot be that we are made holy persons in him. Meyer calls attention to this parallel between “righteousness” and “sin”:—“That we might become the righteousness of God in him” = that we might become justified persons. Correspondingly, “made to be sin on our behalf” must = made to be a condemned person. “Him who knew no sin” = Christ had no experience of sin—this was the necessary postulate of his work of atonement. “Made sin for us,” therefore, is the abstract for the concrete, and = made a sinner, in the sense that the penalty of sin fell upon him. So Meyer, for substance.

We must, however, regard this interpretation of Meyer’s as coming short of the full meaning of the apostle. As justification is not simply remission of actual punishment, but is also deliverance from the obligation to suffer punishment,—in other words, as “righteousness” in the text = persons delivered from the guilt as well as from the penalty of sin,—so the contrasted term “sin,” in the text,—a person not only actually punished, but also under obligation to suffer punishment;—in other words, Christ is “made sin,” not only in the sense of being put under penalty, but also in the sense of being put under guilt. (Cf. Symington, Atonement, 17.)

In a note to the last edition of Meyer, this is substantially granted. “It is to be noted,” he says, “that ἁμαρτίαν, like κατάρα in Gal. 3:13, necessarily includes in itself the notion of guilt.” Meyer adds, however: “The guilt of which Christ appears as bearer was not his own (μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν); hence the guilt of men was transferred to him; consequently the justification of men is imputative.” Here the implication that the guilt which Christ bears is his simply by imputation seems to us contrary to the analogy of faith. As Adam’s sin is ours only because we are actually one with Adam, and as Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us only as we are actually united to Christ, so our sins are imputed to Christ only as Christ is actually one with the race. He was “made sin” by being made one with the sinners; he took our guilt by taking our nature. He who “knew no sin” came to be “sin for us” by being born of a sinful stock; by inheritance the common guilt of the race became his. Guilt was not simply imputed to Christ; it was imparted also.

This exposition may be made more clear by putting the two contrasted thoughts in parallel columns, as follows:

Made righteousness in him = Made sin for us = righteous persons; a sinful person; justified persons; a condemned person; freed from guilt, or put under guilt, or obligation obligation to suffer; to suffer; by spiritual union with by natural union with the Christ. race.

For a good exposition of 2 Cor. 5:21, Gal. 3:13, and _Rom. 3:25, 26_, see Denney, Studies in Theology, 109-124.

The Atonement, then, on the part of God, has its ground (1) in the holiness of God, which must visit sin with condemnation, even though this condemnation brings death to his Son; and (2) in the love of God, which itself provides the sacrifice, by suffering in and with his Son for the sins of men, but through that suffering opening a way and means of salvation.

The Atonement, on the part of man, is accomplished through (1) the solidarity of the race; of which (2) Christ is the life, and so its representative and surety; (3) justly yet voluntarily bearing its guilt and shame and condemnation as his own.

Melanchthon: “Christ was made sin for us, not only in respect to punishment, but primarily by being chargeable with guilt also (culpæ et reatus)”—quoted by Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 3:95, 102, 103, 107; also 1:307, 314 sq. Thomasius says that “Christ bore the guilt of the race by imputation; but as in the case of the imputation of Adam’s sin to us, imputation of our sins to Christ presupposes a real relationship. Christ appropriated our sin. He sank himself into our guilt.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:442 (Syst. Doct., 3:350, 351), agrees with Thomasius, that “Christ entered into our natural mortality, which for us is a penal condition, and into the state of collective guilt, so far as it is an evil, a burden to be borne; not that he had personal guilt, but rather that he entered into our guilt-laden common life, not as a stranger, but as one actually belonging to it—put under its law, according to the will of the Father and of his own love.”

When, and how, did Christ take this guilt and this penalty upon him? With regard to penalty, we have no difficulty in answering that, as his whole life of suffering was propitiatory, so penalty rested upon him from the very beginning of his life. This penalty was inherited, and was the consequence of Christ’s taking human nature (Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law”). But penalty and guilt are correlates; if Christ inherited penalty, it must have been because he inherited guilt. This subjection to the common guilt of the race was intimated in Jesus’ circumcision (Luke 2:21); in his ritual purification (Luke 2:22—“their purification”—i. e., the purification of Mary and the babe; see Lange, Life of Christ; Commentaries of Alford, Webster and Wilkinson; and An. Par. Bible); in his legal redemption (Luke 2:23, 24; cf. Ex. 13:2, 13); and in his baptism (Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness”). The baptized person went down into the water, as one laden with sin and guilt, in order that this sin and guilt might be buried forever, and that he might rise from the typical grave to a new and holy life. (Ebrard: “Baptism = death.”) So Christ’s submission to John’s baptism of repentance was not only a consecration to death, but also a recognition and confession of his implication in that guilt of the race for which death was the appointed and inevitable penalty (cf. Mat. 10:38; Luke 12:50; Mat. 26:39); and, as his baptism was a prefiguration of his death, we may learn from his baptism something with regard to the meaning of his death. See further, under The Symbolism of Baptism.

As one who had had guilt, Christ was “justified in the spirit” (1 Tim. 3:16); and this justification appears to have taken place after he “was manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16), and when “he was raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). Compare Rom. 1:4—“declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”; 6:7-10—“he that hath died is justified from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once; but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God”—here all Christians are conceived of as ideally justified in the justification of Christ, when Christ died for our sins and rose again. 8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”—here Meyer says: “The sending does not precede the condemnation; but the condemnation is effected in and with the sending.” John 16:10—“of righteousness, because I go to the Father”; 19:30—“It is finished.” On 1 Tim. 3:16, see the Commentary of Bengel.

If it be asked whether Jesus, then, before his death, was an unjustified person, we answer that, while personally pure and well-pleasing to God (Mat. 3:17), he himself was conscious of a race-responsibility and a race-guilt which must be atoned for (John 12:27—“Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour”); and that guilty human nature in him endured at the last the separation from God which constitutes the essence of death, sin’s penalty (Mat. 27:46—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”). We must remember that, as even the believer must “be judged according to man in the flesh” (1 Pet. 4:6), that is, must suffer the death which to unbelievers is the penalty of sin, although he “live according to God in the Spirit,” so Christ, in order that we might be delivered from both guilt and penalty, was “put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit” (3:18);—in other words, as Christ was man, the penalty due to human guilt belonged to him to bear; but, as he was God, he could exhaust that penalty, and could be a proper substitute for others.

If it be asked whether he, who from the moment of the conception “sanctified himself” (John 17:19), did not from that moment also justify himself, we reply that although, through the retroactive efficacy of his atonement and upon the ground of it, human nature in him was purged of its depravity from the moment that he took that nature; and although, upon the ground of that atonement, believers before his advent were both sanctified and justified; yet his own justification could not have proceeded upon the ground of his atonement, and also his atonement have proceeded upon the ground of his justification. This would be a vicious circle; somewhere we must have a beginning. That beginning was in the cross, where guilt was first purged (Heb. 1:3—“when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high”; Mat. 27:42—“He saved others; himself he cannot save”; cf. Rev. 13:8—“the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world”).

If it be said that guilt and depravity are practically inseparable, and that, if Christ had guilt, he must have had depravity also, we reply that in civil law we distinguish between them,—the conversion of a murderer would not remove his obligation to suffer upon the gallows; and we reply further, that in justification we distinguish between them,—depravity still remaining, though guilt is removed. So we may say that Christ takes guilt without depravity, in order that we may have depravity without guilt. See page 645; also Böhl, Incarnation des göttlichen Wortes; Pope, Higher Catechism, 118; A. H. Strong, on the Necessity of the Atonement, in Philosophy and Religion, 213-219. Per contra, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:59 note, 82.

Christ therefore, as incarnate, rather revealed the atonement than made it. The historical work of atonement was finished upon the Cross, but that historical work only revealed to men the atonement made both before and since by the extra-mundane Logos. The eternal Love of God suffering the necessary reaction of his own Holiness against the sin of his creatures and with a view to their salvation—this is the essence of the Atonement.

Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 252, 253—“Christ, as God’s atonement, is the revelation and discovery of the fact that sacrifice is as deep in God as his being. He is a holy Creator.... He must take upon himself the shame and pain of sin.” The earthly tabernacle and its sacrifices were only the shadow of those in the heavens, and Moses was bidden to make the earthly after the pattern which he saw in the mount. So the historical atonement was but the shadowing forth to dull and finite minds of an infinite demand of the divine holiness and an infinite satisfaction rendered by the divine love. Godet, S. S. Times, Oct. 16, 1886—“Christ so identified himself with the race he came to save, by sharing its life or its very blood, that when the race itself was redeemed from the curse of sin, his resurrection followed as the first fruits of that redemption”; Rom. 4:25—“delivered up for our trespasses ... raised for our justification.”

Simon, Redemption of Man, 322—“If the Logos is generally the Mediator of the divine immanence in Creation, especially in man; if men are differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if the Logos is the immanent controlling principle of all differentiation, i. e., the principle of all form—must not the self-perversion of these human differentiations necessarily react on him who is their constitutive principle? 339—Remember that men have not first to engraft themselves into Christ, the living whole.... They subsist naturally in him, and they have to separate themselves, cut themselves off from him, if they are to be separate. This is the mistake made in the ‘Life in Christ’ theory. Men are treated as in some sense out of Christ, and as having to get into connection with Christ.... It is not that we have to create the relation,—we have simply to accept, to recognize, to ratify it. Rejecting Christ is not so much refusal to become one with Christ, as it is refusal to remain one with him, refusal to let him be our life.”

A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 33, 172—“When God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life, he communicated freedom, and made possible the creature’s self-chosen alienation from himself, the giver of that life. While man could never break the natural bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond, and could introduce even into the life of God a principle of discord and evil. Tie a cord tightly about your finger; you partially isolate the finger, diminish its nutrition, bring about atrophy and disease. Yet the life of the whole system rouses itself to put away the evil, to untie the cord, to free the diseased and suffering member. The illustration is far from adequate; but it helps at a single point. There has been given to each intelligent and moral agent the power, spiritually, to isolate himself from God, while yet he is naturally joined to God, and is wholly dependent upon God for the removal of the sin which has so separated him from his Maker. Sin is the act of the creature, but salvation is the act of the Creator.

“If you could imagine a finger endowed with free will and trying to sunder its connection with the body by tying a string around itself, you would have a picture of man trying to sunder his connection with Christ. What is the result of such an attempt? Why, pain, decay; possible, nay, incipient death, to the finger. By what law? By the law of the organism, which is so constituted as to maintain itself against its own disruption by the revolt of the members. The pain and death of the finger is the reaction of the whole against the treason of the part. The finger suffers pain. But are there no results of pain to the body? Does not the body feel pain also? How plain it is that no such pain can be confined to the single part! The heart feels, aye, the whole organism feels, because all the parts are members one of another. It not only suffers, but that suffering tends to remedy the evil and to remove its cause. The body summons its forces, pours new tides of life into the dying member, strives to rid the finger of the ligature that binds it. So through all the course of history, Christ, the natural life of the race, has been afflicted in the affliction of humanity and has suffered for human sin. This suffering has been an atoning suffering, since it has been due to righteousness. If God had not been holy, if God had not made all nature express the holiness of his being, if God had not made pain and loss the necessary consequences of sin, then Christ would not have suffered. But since these things are sin’s penalty and Christ is the life of the sinful race, it must needs be that Christ should suffer. There is nothing arbitrary in laying upon him the iniquities of us all. Original grace, like original sin, is only the ethical interpretation of biological facts.” See also Ames, on Biological Aspects of the Atonement, in Methodist Review, Nov. 1905:943-953.

In favor of the Substitutionary or Ethical view of the atonement we may urge the following considerations:

(a) It rests upon correct philosophical principles with regard to the nature of will, law, sin, penalty, righteousness.

This theory holds that there are permanent states, as well as transient acts, of the will; and that the will is not simply the faculty of volitions, but also the fundamental determination of the being to an ultimate end. It regards law as having its basis, not in arbitrary will or in governmental expediency, but rather in the nature of God, and as being a necessary transcript of God’s holiness. It considers sin to consist not simply in acts, but in permanent evil states of the affections and will. It makes the object of penalty to be, not the reformation of the offender, or the prevention of evil doing, but the vindication of justice, outraged by violation of law. It teaches that righteousness is not benevolence or a form of benevolence, but a distinct and separate attribute of the divine nature which demands that sin should be visited with punishment, apart from any consideration of the useful results that will flow therefrom.

(b) It combines in itself all the valuable elements in the theories before mentioned, while it avoids their inconsistencies, by showing the deeper principle upon which each of these elements is based.

The Ethical theory admits the indispensableness of Christ’s example, advocated by the Socinian theory; the moral influence of his suffering, urged by the Bushnellian theory; the securing of the safety of government, insisted on by the Grotian theory; the participation of the believer in Christ’s new humanity, taught by the Irvingian theory; the satisfaction to God’s majesty for the elect, made so much of by the Anselmic theory. But the Ethical theory claims that all these other theories require, as a presupposition for their effective working, that ethical satisfaction to the holiness of God which is rendered in guilty human nature by the Son of God who took that nature to redeem it.

(c) It most fully meets the requirements of Scripture, by holding that the necessity of the atonement is absolute, since it rests upon the demands of immanent holiness, the fundamental attribute of God.

Acts 17:3—“it behooved the Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead”—lit.: “it was necessary for the Christ to suffer”; Luke 24:26—“Behooved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into his glory?”—lit.: “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things?” It is not enough to say that Christ must suffer in order that the prophecies might be fulfilled. Why was it prophesied that he should suffer? Why did God purpose that he should suffer? The ultimate necessity is a necessity in the nature of God.

Plato, Republic, 2:361—“The righteous man who is thought to be unrighteous will be scourged, racked, bound; will have his eyes put out; and finally, having endured all sorts of evil, will be impaled.” This means that, as human society is at present constituted, even a righteous person must suffer for the sins of the world. “Mors mortis Morti mortem nisi morte dedisset, Æternæ vitæ janua clausa foret”—“Had not the Death-of-death to Death his death-blow given, Forever closed were the gate, the gate of life and heaven.”

(d) It shows most satisfactorily how the demands of holiness are met; namely, by the propitiatory offering of one who is personally pure, but who by union with the human race has inherited its guilt and penalty.

“Quo non ascendam?”—“Whither shall I not rise?” exclaimed the greatest minister of modern kings, in a moment of intoxication. “Whither shall I not stoop?” says the Lord Jesus. King Humbert, during the scourge of cholera in Italy: “In Castellammare they make merry; in Naples they die: I go to Naples.”

Wrightnour: “The illustration of Powhatan raising his club to slay John Smith, while Pocahontas flings herself between the uplifted club and the victim, is not a good one. God is not an angry being, bound to strike something, no matter what. If Powhatan could have taken the blow himself, out of a desire to spare the victim, it would be better. The Father and the Son are one. Bronson Alcott, in his school at Concord, when punishment was necessary, sometimes placed the rod in the hand of the offender and bade him strike his (Alcott’s) hand, rather than that the law of the school should be broken without punishment following. The result was that very few rules were broken. So God in Christ bore the sins of the world, and endured the penalty for man’s violation of his law.”

(e) It furnishes the only proper explanation of the sacrificial language of the New Testament, and of the sacrificial rites of the Old, considered as prophetic of Christ’s atoning work.

Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 207-211—“The imposition of hands on the head of the victim is entirely unexplained, except in the account of the great day of Atonement, when by the same gesture and by distinct confession the sins of the people were ‘put upon the head of the goat’ (Lev. 16:21) to be borne away into the wilderness. The blood was sacred and was to be poured out before the Lord, evidently in place of the forfeited life of the sinner which should have been rendered up.” Watts, New Apologetics, 205—“ ‘The Lord will provide’ was the truth taught when Abraham found a ram provided by God which he ‘offered up as a burnt offering in the stead of his son’ (Gen. 22:13, 14). As the ram was not Abraham’s ram, the sacrifice of it could not teach that all Abraham had belonged to God, and should, with entire faith in his goodness, be devoted to him; but it did teach that ‘apart from shedding of blood there is no remission’ (Heb. 9:22).” 2 Chron. 29:27—“when the burnt offering began, the song of Jehovah began also.”

(f) It alone gives proper place to the death of Christ as the central feature of his work,—set forth in the ordinances, and of chief power in Christian experience.

Martin Luther, when he had realized the truth of the Atonement, was found sobbing before a crucifix and moaning: “Für mich! für mich!”—“For me! for me!” Elisha Kane, the Arctic explorer, while searching for signs of Sir John Franklin and his party, sent out eight or ten men to explore the surrounding region. After several days three returned, almost crazed with the cold—thermometer fifty degrees below zero—and reported that the other men were dying miles away. Dr. Kane organized a company of ten, and though suffering himself with an old heart-trouble, led them to the rescue. Three times he fainted during the eighteen hours of marching and suffering; but he found the men. “We knew you would come! we knew you would come, brother!” whispered one of them, hardly able to speak. Why was he sure Dr. Kane would come? Because he knew the stuff Dr. Kane was made of, and knew that he would risk his life for any one of them. It is a parable of Christ’s relation to our salvation. He is our elder brother, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and he not only risks death, but he endures death, in order to save us.

(g) It gives us the only means of understanding the sufferings of Christ in the garden and on the cross, or of reconciling them with the divine justice.

Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre: “Man has a guilt that demands the punitive sufferings of a mediator. Christ shows a suffering that cannot be justified except by reference to some other guilt than his own. Combine these two facts, and you have the problem of the atonement solved.” J. G. Whittier: “Through all the depths of sin and loss Drops the plummet of the Cross; Never yet abyss was found Deeper than the Cross could sound.” Alcestis purchased life for Admetus her husband by dying in his stead; Marcus Curtius saved Rome by leaping into the yawning chasm; the Russian servant threw himself to the wolves to rescue his master. Berdoe, Robert Browning, 47—“To know God as the theist knows him may suffice for pure spirits, for those who have never sinned, suffered, nor felt the need of a Savior; but for fallen and sinful men the Christ of Christianity is an imperative necessity; and those who have never surrendered themselves to him have never known what it is to experience the rest he gives to the heavy-laden soul.”

(h) As no other theory does, this view satisfies the ethical demand of human nature; pacifies the convicted conscience; assures the sinner that he may find instant salvation in Christ; and so makes possible a new life of holiness, while at the same time it furnishes the highest incentives to such a life.

Shedd: “The offended party (1) permits a substitution; (2) provides a substitute; (3) substitutes himself.” George Eliot: “Justice is like the kingdom of God; it is not without us, as a fact; it is ‘within us,’ as a great yearning.” But it is both without and within, and the inward is only the reflection of the outward; the subjective demands of conscience only reflect the objective demands of holiness.

And yet, while this view of the atonement exalts the holiness of God, it surpasses every other view in its moving exhibition of God’s love—a love that is not satisfied with suffering in and with the sinner, or with making that suffering a demonstration of God’s regard for law; but a love that sinks itself into the sinner’s guilt and bears his penalty,—comes down so low as to make itself one with him in all but his depravity—makes every sacrifice but the sacrifice of God’s holiness—a sacrifice which God could not make, without ceasing to be God; see 1 John 4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” The soldier who had been thought reprobate was moved to complete reform when he was once forgiven. William Huntington, in his Autobiography, says that one of his sharpest sensations of pain, after he had been quickened by divine grace, was that he felt such pity for God. Never was man abused as God has been. Rom. 2:4—“the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance”; 12:1—“the mercies of God” lead you “to present your bodies a living sacrifice”; 2 Cor. 5:14, 15—“the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again.” The effect of Christ’s atonement on Christian character and life may be illustrated from the proclamation of Garabaldi: “He that loves Italy, let him follow me! I promise him hardship, I promise him suffering, I promise him death. But he that loves Italy, let him follow me!”

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D. Objections to the Ethical Theory of the Atonement

On the general subject of these objections, Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv, 2:156-180, remarks: (1) that it rests with God alone to say whether he will pardon sin, and in what way he will pardon it; (2) that human instincts are a very unsafe standard by which to judge the procedure of the Governor of the universe; and (3) that one plain declaration of God, with regard to the plan of salvation, proves the fallacy and error of all reasonings against it. We must correct our watches and clocks by astronomic standards.

(a) That a God who does not pardon sin without atonement must lack either omnipotence or love.—We answer, on the one hand, that God’s omnipotence is the revelation of his nature, and not a matter of arbitrary will; and, on the other hand, that God’s love is ever exercised consistently with his fundamental attribute of holiness, so that while holiness demands the sacrifice, love provides it. Mercy is shown, not by trampling upon the claims of justice, but by vicariously satisfying them.

Because man does not need to avenge personal wrongs, it does not follow that God must not. In fact, such avenging is forbidden to us upon the ground that it belongs to God; Rom. 12:19—“Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the Lord.” But there are limits even to our passing over of offences. Even the father must sometimes chastise; and although this chastisement is not properly punishment, it becomes punishment, when the father becomes a teacher or a governor. Then, other than personal interests come in. “Because a father can forgive without atonement, it does not follow that the state can do the same” (Shedd). But God is more than Father, more than Teacher, more than Governor. In him, person and right are identical. For him to let sin go unpunished is to approve of it; which is the same as a denial of holiness.

Whatever pardon is granted, then, must be pardon through punishment. Mere repentance never expiates crime, even under civil government. The truly penitent man never feels that his repentance constitutes a ground of acceptance; the more he repents, the more he recognizes his need of reparation and expiation. Hence God meets the demand of man’s conscience, as well as of his own holiness, when he provides a substituted punishment. God shows his love by meeting the demands of holiness, and by meeting them with the sacrifice of himself. See Mozley on Predestination, 390.

The publican prays, not that God may be merciful without sacrifice, but: “God be propitiated toward me, the sinner!” (Luke 18:13); in other words, he asks for mercy only through and upon the ground of, sacrifice. We cannot atone to others for the wrong we have done them, nor can we even atone to our own souls. A third party, and an infinite being, must make atonement, as we cannot. It is only upon the ground that God himself has made provision for satisfying the claims of justice, that we are bidden to forgive others. Should Othello then forgive Iago? Yes, if Iago repents; Luke 17:3—“If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” But if he does not repent? Yes, so far as Othello’s own disposition is concerned. He must not hate Iago, but must wish him well; Luke 6:27—“Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” But he cannot receive Iago to his fellowship till he repents. On the duty and ground of forgiving one another, see Martineau, Seat of Authority, 613, 614; Straffen, Hulsean Lectures on the Propitiation for Sin.

(b) That satisfaction and forgiveness are mutually exclusive.—We answer that, since it is not a third party, but the Judge himself, who makes satisfaction to his own violated holiness, forgiveness is still optional, and may be offered upon terms agreeable to himself. Christ’s sacrifice is not a pecuniary, but a penal, satisfaction. The objection is valid against the merely commercial view of the atonement, not against the ethical view of it.

Forgiveness is something beyond the mere taking away of penalty. When a man bears the penalty of his crime, has the community no right to be indignant with him? There is a distinction between pecuniary and penal satisfaction. Pecuniary satisfaction has respect only to the thing due; penal satisfaction has respect also to the person of the offender. If pardon is a matter of justice in God’s government, it is so only as respects Christ. To the recipient it is only mercy. “Faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9)—faithful to his promise, and righteous to Christ. Neither the atonement, nor the promise, gives the offender any personal claim.

Philemon must forgive Onesimus the pecuniary debt, when Paul pays it; not so with the personal injury Onesimus has done to Philemon; there is no forgiveness of this, until Onesimus repents and asks pardon. An amnesty may be offered to all, but upon conditions. Instance Amos Lawrence’s offering to the forger the forged paper he had bought up, upon condition that he would confess himself bankrupt, and put all his affairs into the hands of his benefactor. So the fact that Christ has paid our debts does not preclude his offering to us the benefit of what he has done, upon condition of our repentance and faith. The equivalent is not furnished by man, but by God. God may therefore offer the results of it upon his own terms. Did then the entire race fairly pay its penalty when one suffered, just as all incurred the penalty when one sinned? Yes,—all who receive their life from each—Adam on the one hand, and Christ on the other. See under Union with Christ—its Consequences; see also Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 295 note, 321, and Dogm. Theol., 2:383-389; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:614-615 (Syst. Doct., 4:82, 83). Versus Current Discussions in Theology, 5:281.

Hovey calls Christ’s relation to human sin a vice-penal one. Just as vice-regal position carries with it all the responsibility, care, and anxiety of regal authority, so does a vice-penal relation to sin carry with it all the suffering and loss of the original punishment. The person on whom it falls is different, but his punishment is the same, at least in penal value. As vice-regal authority may be superseded by regal, so vice-penal suffering, if despised, may be superseded by the original penalty. Is there a waste of vice-penal suffering when any are lost for whom it was endured? On the same principle we might object to any suffering on the part of Christ for those who refuse to be saved by him. Such suffering may benefit others, if not those for whom it was in the first instance endured.

If compensation is made, it is said, there is nothing to forgive; if forgiveness is granted, no compensation can be required. This reminds us of Narvaez, who saw no reason for forgiving his enemies until he had shot them all. When the offended party furnishes the compensation, he can offer its benefits upon his own terms. Dr. Pentecost: “A prisoner in Scotland was brought before the Judge. As the culprit entered the box, he looked into the face of the Judge to see if he could discover mercy there. The Judge and the prisoner exchanged glances, and then there came a mutual recognition. The prisoner said to himself: ‘It is all right this time,’ for the Judge had been his classmate in Edinburgh University twenty-five years before. When sentence was pronounced, it was five pounds sterling, the limit of the law for the misdemeanor charged, and the culprit was sorely disappointed as he was led away to prison. But the Judge went at once and paid the fine, telling the clerk to write the man’s discharge. This the Judge delivered in person, explaining that the demands of the law must be met, and having been met, the man was free.”

(c) That there can be no real propitiation, since the judge and the sacrifice are one.—We answer that this objection ignores the existence of personal relations within the divine nature, and the fact that the God-man is distinguishable from God. The satisfaction is grounded in the distinction of persons in the Godhead; while the love in which it originates belongs to the unity of the divine essence.

The satisfaction is not rendered to a part of the Godhead, for the whole Godhead is in the Father, in a certain manner; as omnipresence = totus in omni parte. So the offering is perfect, because the whole Godhead is also in Christ (2 Cor. 5:19—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself”). Lyman Abbott says that the word “propitiate” is used in the New Testament only in the middle voice, to show that God propitiates himself. Lyttelton, in Lux Mundi, 302—“The Atonement is undoubtedly a mystery, but all forgiveness is a mystery. It avails to lift the load of guilt that presses upon an offender. A change passes over him that can only be described as regenerative, life-giving; and thus the assurance of pardon, however conveyed, may be said to obliterate in some degree the consequences of the past. 310—Christ bore sufferings, not that we might be freed from them, for we have deserved them, but that we might be enabled to bear them, as he did, victoriously and in unbroken union with God.”

(d) That the suffering of the innocent for the guilty is not an execution of justice, but an act of manifest injustice.—We answer, that this is true only upon the supposition that the Son bears the penalty of our sins, not voluntarily, but compulsorily; or upon the supposition that one who is personally innocent can in no way become involved in the guilt and penalty of others,—both of them hypotheses contrary to Scripture and to fact.

The mystery of the atonement lies in the fact of unmerited sufferings on the part of Christ. Over against this stands the corresponding mystery of unmerited pardon to believers. We have attempted to show that, while Christ was personally innocent, he was so involved with others in the consequences of the Fall, that the guilt and penalty of the race belonged to him to bear. When we discuss the doctrine of Justification, we shall see that, by a similar union of the believer with Christ, Christ’s justification becomes ours.

To one who believes in Christ as the immanent God, the life of humanity, the Creator and Upholder of mankind, the bearing by Christ of the just punishment of human sin seems inevitable. The very laws of nature are only the manifestation of his holiness, and he who thus reveals God is also subject to God’s law. The historical process which culminated on Calvary was the manifestation of an age-long suffering endured by Christ on account of his connection with the race from the very first moment of their sin. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 80-83—“A God of love and holiness must be a God of suffering just so certainly as there is sin. Paul declares that he fills up ‘that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ ... for his body’s sake, which is the church’ (Col. 1:24); in other words, Christ still suffers in the believers who are his body. The historical suffering indeed is ended; the agony of Golgotha is finished; the days when joy was swallowed up in sorrow are past; death has no more dominion over our Lord. But sorrow for sin is not ended; it still continues and will continue so long as sin exists. But it does not now militate against Christ’s blessedness, because the sorrow is overbalanced and overborne by the infinite knowledge and glory of his divine nature. Bushnell and Beecher were right when they maintained that suffering for sin was the natural consequence of Christ’s relation to the sinning creation. They were wrong in mistaking the nature of that suffering and in not seeing that the constitution of things which necessitates it, since it is the expression of God’s holiness, gives that suffering a penal character and makes Christ a substitutionary offering for the sins of the world.”

(e) That there can be no transfer of punishment or merit, since these are personal.—We answer that the idea of representation and suretyship is common in human society and government; and that such representation and suretyship are inevitable, wherever there is community of life between the innocent and the guilty. When Christ took our nature, he could not do otherwise than take our responsibilities also.

Christ became responsible for the humanity with which he was organically one. Both poets and historians have recognized the propriety of one member of a house, or a race, answering for another. Antigone expiates the crime of her house. Marcus Curtius holds himself ready to die for his nation. Louis XVI has been called a “sacrificial lamb,” offered up for the crimes of his race. So Christ’s sacrifice is of benefit to the whole family of man, because he is one with that family. But here is the limitation also. It does not extend to angels, because he took not on him the nature of angels (Heb. 2:16—“For verily not of the angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold of the seed of Abraham”).

“A strange thing happened recently in one of our courts of justice. A young man was asked why the extreme penalty should not be passed upon him. At that moment, a gray-haired man, his face furrowed with sorrow, stepped into the prisoner’s box unhindered, placed his hand affectionately upon the culprit’s shoulder, and said: ‘Your honor, we have nothing to say. The verdict which has been found against us is just. We have only to ask for mercy.’ ‘We!’ There was nothing against this old father. Yet, at that moment he lost himself. He identified his very being with that of his wayward boy. Do you not pity the criminal son because of your pity for his aged and sorrowing father? Because he has so suffered, is not your demand that the son suffer somewhat mitigated? Will not the judge modify his sentence on that account? Nature knows no forgiveness; but human nature does; and it is not nature, but human nature, that is made in the image of God”; see Prof. A. S. Coats, in The Examiner, Sept. 12, 1889.

(f) That remorse, as a part of the penalty of sin, could not have been suffered by Christ.—We answer, on the one hand, that it may not be essential to the idea of penalty that Christ should have borne the identical pangs which the lost would have endured; and, on the other hand, that we do not know how completely a perfectly holy being, possessed of super-human knowledge and love, might have felt even the pangs of remorse for the condition of that humanity of which he was the central conscience and heart.

Instance the lawyer, mourning the fall of a star of his profession; the woman, filled with shame by the degradation of one of her own sex; the father, anguished by his daughter’s waywardness; the Christian, crushed by the sins of the church and the world. The self-isolating spirit cannot conceive how perfectly love and holiness can make their own the sin of the race of which they are a part.

Simon, Reconciliation, 366—“Inasmuch as the sin of the human race culminated in the crucifixion which crowned Christ’s own sufferings, clearly the life of humanity entering him subconsciously must have been most completely laden with sin and with the fear of death which is its fruit, at the very moment when he himself was enduring death in its most terrible form. Of necessity therefore he felt as if he were the sinner of sinners, and cried out in agony: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Mat. 27:46).”

Christ could realize our penal condition. Beings who have a like spiritual nature can realize and bear the spiritual sufferings of one another. David’s sorrow was not unjust, when he cried: “Would I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam. 18:33). Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 117—“Is penitence possible in the personally sinless? We answer that only one who is perfectly sinless can perfectly repent, and this identification of the sinless with the sinner is vital to the gospel.” Lucy Larcom: “There be sad women, sick and poor. And those who walk in garments soiled; Their shame, their sorrow I endure; By their defeat my hope is foiled; The blot they bear is on my name; Who sins, and I am not to blame?”

(g) That the sufferings of Christ, as finite in time, do not constitute a satisfaction to the infinite demands of the law.—We answer that the infinite dignity of the sufferer constitutes his sufferings a full equivalent, in the eye of infinite justice. Substitution excludes identity of suffering; it does not exclude equivalence. Since justice aims its penalties not so much at the person as at the sin, it may admit equivalent suffering, when this is endured in the very nature that has sinned.

The sufferings of a dog, and of a man, have different values. Death is the wages of sin; and Christ, in suffering death, suffered our penalty. Eternity of suffering is unessential to the idea of penalty. A finite being cannot exhaust an infinite curse; but an infinite being can exhaust it, in a few brief hours. Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 307—“A golden eagle is worth a thousand copper cents. The penalty paid by Christ is strictly and literally equivalent to that which the sinner would have borne, although it is not identical. The vicarious bearing of it excludes the latter.” Andrew Fuller thought Christ would have had to suffer just as much, if only one sinner were to have been saved thereby.

The atonement is a unique fact, only partially illustrated by debt and penalty. Yet the terms “purchase” and “ransom” are Scriptural, and mean simply that the justice of God punishes sin as it deserves; and that, having determined what is deserved, God cannot change. See Owen, quoted in Campbell on Atonement, 58, 59. Christ’s sacrifice, since it is absolutely infinite, can have nothing added to it. If Christ’s sacrifice satisfies the Judge of all, it may well satisfy us.

(h) That if Christ’s passive obedience made satisfaction to the divine justice, then his active obedience was superfluous.—We answer that the active obedience and the passive obedience are inseparable. The latter is essential to the former; and both are needed to secure for the sinner, on the one hand, pardon, and, on the other hand, that which goes beyond pardon, namely, restoration to the divine favor. The objection holds only against a superficial and external view of the atonement.

For more full exposition of this point, see our treatment of Justification; and also, Owen, in Works, 5:175-204. Both the active and the passive obedience of Christ are insisted on by the apostle Paul. Opposition to the Pauline theology is opposition to the gospel of Christ. Charles Cuthbert Hall, Universal Elements of the Christian Religion, 140—“The effects of this are already appearing in the impoverished religious values of the sermons produced by the younger generation of preachers, and the deplorable decline of spiritual life and knowledge in many churches. Results open to observation show that the movement to simplify the Christian essence by discarding the theology of St. Paul easily carries the teaching of the Christian pulpit to a position where, for those who submit to that teaching, the characteristic experiences of the Christian life became practically impossible. The Christian sense of sin; Christian penitence at the foot of the Cross; Christian faith in an atoning Savior; Christian peace with God through the mediation of Jesus Christ—these and other experiences, which were the very life of apostles and apostolic souls, fade from the view of the ministry, have no meaning for the younger generation.”

(i) That the doctrine is immoral in its practical tendencies, since Christ’s obedience takes the place of ours, and renders ours unnecessary.—We answer that the objection ignores not only the method by which the benefits of the atonement are appropriated, namely, repentance and faith, but also the regenerating and sanctifying power bestowed upon all who believe. Faith in the atonement does not induce license, but “works by love” (Gal. 5:6) and “cleanses the heart” (Acts 15:9).

Water is of little use to a thirsty man, if he will not drink. The faith which accepts Christ ratifies all that Christ has done, and takes Christ as a new principle of life. Paul bids Philemon receive Onesimus as himself,—not the old Onesimus, but a new Onesimus into whom the spirit of Paul has entered (Philemon 17). So God receives us as new creatures in Christ. Though we cannot earn salvation, we must take it; and this taking it involves a surrender of heart and life which ensures union with Christ and moral progress.

What shall be done to the convicted murderer who tears up the pardon which his wife’s prayers and tears have secured from the Governor? Nothing remains but to execute the sentence of the law. Hon. George F. Danforth, Justice of the New York State Court of Appeals, in a private letter says: “Although it may be stated in a general way that a pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed for the offence and the guilt of the offender, so that in the eye of the law he is as innocent as if he had never committed the offence, the pardon making him as it were a new man with a new credit and capacity, yet a delivery of the pardon is essential to its validity, and delivery is not complete without acceptance. It cannot be forced upon him. In that respect it is like a deed. The delivery may be in person to the offender or to his agent, and its acceptance may be proved by circumstances like any other fact.”

(j) That if the atonement requires faith as its complement, then it does not in itself furnish a complete satisfaction to God’s justice.—We answer that faith is not the ground of our acceptance with God, as the atonement is, and so is not a work at all; faith is only the medium of appropriation. We are saved not by faith, or on account of faith, but only through faith. It is not faith, but the atonement which faith accepts, that satisfies the justice of God.

Illustrate by the amnesty granted to a city, upon conditions to be accepted by each inhabitant. The acceptance is not the ground upon which the amnesty is granted; it is the medium through which the benefits of the amnesty are enjoyed. With regard to the difficulties connected with the atonement, we may say, in conclusion, with Bishop Butler: “If the Scripture has, as surely it has, left this matter of the satisfaction of Christ mysterious, left somewhat in it unrevealed, all conjectures about it must be, if not evidently absurd, yet at least uncertain. Nor has any one reason to complain for want of further information, unless he can show his claim to it.” While we cannot say with President Stearns: “Christ’s work removed the hindrances in the eternal justice of the universe to the pardon of the sinner, but how we cannot tell”—cannot say this, because we believe the main outlines of the plan of salvation to be revealed in Scripture—yet we grant that many questions remain unsolved. But, as bread nourishes even those who know nothing of its chemical constituents, or of the method of its digestion and assimilation, so the atonement of Christ saves those who accept it, even though they do not know how it saves them. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 264-267—“Heat was once thought to be a form of matter; now it is regarded as a mode of motion. We can get the good of it, whichever theory we adopt, or even if we have no theory. So we may get the good of reconciliation with God, even though we differ as to our theory of the Atonement.”—“One of the Roman Emperors commanded his fleet to bring from Alexandria sand for the arena, although his people at Rome were visited with famine. But a certain shipmaster declared that, whatever the emperor commanded, his ship should bring wheat. So, whatever sand others may bring to starving human souls, let us bring to them the wheat of the gospel—the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.” For answers to objections, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv, 2:156-180; Crawford, Atonement, 384-468; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:526-543; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 623 sq.; Wm. Thomson, The Atoning Work of Christ; Hopkins, Works, 1:321.

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E. The Extent of the Atonement

The Scriptures represent the atonement as having been made for all men, and as sufficient for the salvation of all. Not the atonement therefore is limited, but the application of the atonement through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Upon this principle of a universal atonement, but a special application of it to the elect, we must interpret such passages as Eph. 1:4, 7; 2 Tim. 1:9, 10; John 17:9, 20, 24—asserting a special efficacy of the atonement in the case of the elect; and also such passages as 2 Pet. 2:1; 1 John 2:2; Tim. 2:6; 4:10; Tit. 2:11—asserting that the death of Christ is for all.

Passages asserting special efficacy of the atonement, in the case of the elect, are the following: Eph. 1:4—“_chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without __ blemish before him in love_”; 7—“in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”; 2 Tim. 1:9, 10—God “who saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal, but hath now been manifested by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel”; John 17:9—“I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me”; 20—“Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word”; 24—“Father, that which thou hast given me, I desire that where I am, they also may be with me; that they may beheld my glory, which thou hast given me.”

Passages asserting that the death of Christ is for all are the following: 2 Pet 2:1—“false teachers, who shall privily bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master that bought them”; 1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”; 1 Tim. 2:6—Christ Jesus “who gave himself a ransom for all”; 4:10—“the living God, who is the Savior of all men, specially of them that believe”; Tit. 2:11—“For the grace of God hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men.” Rom. 3:22 (A. V.)—“unto all and upon all them that believe”—has sometimes been interpreted as meaning “unto all men, and upon all believers” (εἰς = destination; ἐπί = extent). But the Rev. Vers. omits the words “and upon all,” and Meyer, who retains the words, remarks that τοῦς πιστεύοντας belongs to πάντας in both instances.

Unconscious participation in the atonement of Christ, by virtue of our common humanity in him, makes us the heirs of much temporal blessing. Conscious participation in the atonement of Christ, by virtue of our faith in him and his work for us, gives us justification and eternal life. Matthew Henry said that the Atonement is “sufficient for all; effectual for many.” J. M. Whiton, in The Outlook, Sept. 25, 1897—“It was Samuel Hopkins of Rhode Island (1721-1803) who first declared that Christ had made atonement for all men, not for the elect part alone, as Calvinists affirmed.” We should say “as some Calvinists affirmed”; for, as we shall see, John Calvin himself declared that “Christ suffered for the sins of the whole world.” Alfred Tennyson once asked an old Methodist woman what was the news. “Why, Mr. Tennyson, there’s only one piece of news that I know,—that Christ died for all men.” And he said to her; “That is old news, and good news, and new news.”

If it be asked in what sense Christ is the Savior of all men, we reply:

(a) That the atonement of Christ secures for all men a delay in the execution of the sentence against sin, and a space for repentance, together with a continuance of the common blessings of life which have been forfeited by transgression.

If strict justice had been executed, the race would have been cut off at the first sin. That man lives after sinning, is due wholly to the Cross. There is a pretermission, or “passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God” (Rom. 3:25), the justification of which is found only in the sacrifice of Calvary. This “passing over,” however, is limited in its duration: see Acts 17:30, 31—“The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked; but now he commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent: inasmuch as he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained.”

One may get the benefit of the law of gravitation without understanding much about its nature, and patriarchs and heathen have doubtless been saved through Christ’s atonement, although they have never heard his name, but have only cast themselves as helpless sinners upon the mercy of God. That mercy of God was Christ, though they did not know it. Our modern pious Jews will experience a strange surprise when they find that not only forgiveness of sin but every other blessing of life has come to them through the crucified Jesus. Matt. 8:11—“many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven.”

Dr. G.W. Northrop held that the work of Christ is universal in three respects: 1. It reconciled God to the whole race, apart from personal transgression; 2. It secured the bestowment upon all of common grace, and the means of common grace; 3. It rendered certain the bestowment of eternal life upon all who would so use common grace and the means of common grace as to make it morally possible for God as a wise and holy Governor to grant his special and renewing grace.

(b) That the atonement of Christ has made objective provision for the salvation of all, by removing from the divine mind every obstacle to the pardon and restoration of sinners, except their wilful opposition to God and refusal to turn to him.

Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 604—“On God’s side, all is now taken away which could make a separation,—unless any should themselves choose to remain separated from him.” The gospel message is not: God will forgive if you return; but rather: God has shown mercy; only believe, and it is your portion in Christ.

Ashmore, The New Trial of the Sinner, in Christian Review, 26:245-264—“The atonement has come to all men and upon all men. Its coëxtensiveness with the effects of Adam’s sin is seen in that all creatures, such as infants and insane persons, incapable of refusing it, are saved without their consent, just as they were involved in the sin of Adam without their consent. The reason why others are not saved is because when the atonement comes to them and upon them, instead of consenting to be included in it, they reject it. If they are born under the curse, so likewise they are born under the atonement which is intended to remove that curse; they remain under its shelter till they are old enough to repudiate it; they shut out its influences as a man closes his window-blind to shut out the beams of the sun; they ward them off by direct opposition, as a man builds dykes around his field to keep out the streams which would otherwise flow in and fertilize the soil.”

(c) That the atonement of Christ has procured for all men the powerful incentives to repentance presented in the Cross, and the combined agency of the Christian church and of the Holy Spirit, by which these incentives are brought to bear upon them.

Just as much sun and rain would be needed, if only one farmer on earth were to be benefited. Christ would not need to suffer more, if all were to be saved. His sufferings, as we have seen, were not the payment of a pecuniary debt. Having endured the penalty of the sinner, justice permits the sinner’s discharge, but does not require it, except as the fulfilment of a promise to his substitute, and then only upon the appointed condition of repentance and faith. The atonement is unlimited,—the whole human race might be saved through it; the application of the atonement is limited,—only those who repent and believe are actually saved by it.

Robert G. Farley: “The prospective mother prepares a complete and beautiful outfit for her expected child. But the child is still-born. Yet the outfit was prepared just the same as if it had lived. And Christ’s work is completed as much for one man as for another, as much for the unbeliever as for the believer.”

Christ is specially the Savior of those who believe, in that he exerts a special power of his Spirit to procure their acceptance of his salvation. This is not, however, a part of his work of atonement; it is the application of the atonement, and as such is hereafter to be considered.

Among those who hold to a limited atonement is Owen. Campbell quotes him as saying: “Christ did not die for all the sins of all men; for if this were so, why are not all freed from the punishment of all their sins? You will say, ‘Because of their unbelief,—they will not believe.’ But this unbelief is a sin, and Christ was punished for it. Why then does this, more than other sins, hinder them from partaking of the fruits of his death?”

So also Turretin, loc. 4, quæs. 10 and 17; Symington, Atonement, 184-234; Candlish on the Atonement; Cunningham, Hist. Theol., 2:323-370; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:464-489. For the view presented in the text, see Andrew Fuller, Works, 2:373, 374; 689-698; 706-709; Wardlaw, Syst. Theol., 2:485-549; Jenkyn, Extent of the Atonement; E. P. Griffin, Extent of the Atonement; Woods, Works, 2:490-521; Richards, Lectures on Theology, 302-327.

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2. Christ’s Intercessory Work

The Priesthood of Christ does not cease with his work of atonement, but continues forever. In the presence of God he fulfils the second office of the priest, namely that of intercession.

Heb. 7:23-25—“priests many in number, because that by death they are hindered from continuing: but he, because he abideth forever, hath his priesthood unchangeable. Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near onto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” C. H. M. on Ex. 17:12—“The hands of our great Intercessor never hang down, as Moses’ did, nor does he need any one to hold them up. The same rod of God’s power which was used by Moses to smite the rock (Atonement) was in Moses’ hand on the hill (Intercession).”

Denney’s Studies in Theology, 166—“If we see nothing unnatural in the fact that Christ prayed for Peter on earth, we need not make any difficulty about his praying for us in heaven. The relation is the same; the only difference is that Christ is now exalted, and prays, not with strong crying and tears, but in the sovereignty and prevailing power of one who has achieved eternal redemption for his people.”

A. Nature of Christ’s Intercession.—This is not to be conceived of either as an external and vocal petitioning, nor as a mere figure of speech for the natural and continuous influence of his sacrifice; but rather as a special activity of Christ in securing, upon the ground of that sacrifice, whatever of blessing comes to men, whether that blessing be temporal or spiritual.

1 John 2:1—“if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”; Rom. 8:34—“It is Jesus Christ that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us”—here Meyer seems to favor the meaning of external and vocal petitioning, as of the glorified God-man: Heb. 7:25—“ever liveth to make intercession for them.” On the ground of this effectual intercession he can pronounce the true sacerdotal benediction; and all the benedictions of his ministers and apostles are but fruits and emblems of this (see the Aaronic benediction in Num. 6:24-26, and the apostolic benedictions in 1 Cor. 1:3 and 2 Cor. 13:14).

B. Objects of Christ’s Intercession.—We may distinguish (a) that general intercession which secures to all men certain temporal benefits of his atoning work, and (b) that special intercession which secures the divine acceptance of the persons of believers and the divine bestowment of all gifts needful for their salvation.

(a) General intercession for all men: Is. 53:12—“he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors”; Luke 23:34—“And Jesus said, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”—a beginning of his priestly intercession, even while he was being nailed to the cross.

(b) Special intercession for his saints: Mat. 18:19, 20—“if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For when two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”; Luke 22:31, 32—“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail not”; John 14:16—“I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter”; 17:9—“I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me”; Acts 2:33—“Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear”; Eph. 1:6—“the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved”; 2:18—“through him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father”; 3:12—“in whom we have boldness and access in confidence through our faith in him”; Heb. 2:17, 18—“Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted”; 4:15, 16—“For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help as in time of need”; 1 Pet 2:5—“a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”; Rev. 5:6—“And I saw in the midst of the throne ... a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, having seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth”; 7:16, 17—“They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun strike upon them, nor any heat: for the lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

C. Relation of Christ’s Intercession to that of the Holy Spirit.—The Holy Spirit is an advocate within us, teaching us how to pray as we ought; Christ is an advocate in heaven, securing from the Father the answer of our prayers. Thus the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit are complements to each other, and parts of one whole.

John 14:26—“But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you”; Rom. 8:26—“_And in like manner the Spirit __ also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered_”; 27—“and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”

The intercession of the Holy Spirit may be illustrated by the work of the mother, who teaches her child to pray by putting words into his mouth or by suggesting subjects for prayer. “The whole Trinity is present in the Christian’s closet; the Father hears; the Son advocates his cause at the Father’s right hand; the Holy Spirit intercedes in the heart of the believer.” Therefore “When God inclines the heart to pray, He hath an ear to hear.” The impulse to prayer, within our hearts, is evidence that Christ is urging our claims in heaven.

D. Relation of Christ’s Intercession to that of saints.—All true intercession is either directly or indirectly the intercession of Christ. Christians are organs of Christ’s Spirit. To suppose Christ in us to offer prayer to one of his saints, instead of directly to the Father, is to blaspheme Christ, and utterly misconceive the nature of prayer.

Saints on earth, by their union with Christ, the great high priest, are themselves constituted intercessors; and as the high priest of old bore upon his bosom the breastplate engraven with the names of the tribes of Israel (Ex. 28:9-12), so the Christian is to bear upon his heart in prayer before God the interests of his family, the church, and the world (1 Tim. 3:1—“I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for all men”). See Symington on Intercession, in Atonement and Intercession, 256-308; Milligan, Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord.

Luckock, After Death, finds evidence of belief in the intercession of the saints in heaven as early as the second century. Invocation of the saints he regards as beginning not earlier than the fourth century. He approves the doctrine that the saints pray for us, but rejects the doctrine that we are to pray to them. Prayers for the dead he strongly advocates. Bramhall, Works, 1:57—Invocation of the saints is “not necessary, for two reasons: first, no saint doth love us so well as Christ: no saint hath given us such assurance of his love, or done so much for us as Christ; no saint is so willing to help us as Christ; and secondly, we have no command from God to invocate them.” A. B. Cave: “The system of human mediation falls away in the advent to our souls of the living Christ. Who wants stars, or even the moon, after the sun is up?”

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III. The Kingly Office of Christ

This is to be distinguished from the sovereignty which Christ originally possessed in virtue of his divine nature. Christ’s kingship is the sovereignty of the divine-human Redeemer, which belonged to him of right from the moment of his birth, but which was fully exercised only from the time of his entrance upon the state of exaltation. By virtue of this kingly office, Christ rules all things in heaven and earth, for the glory of God and the execution of God’s purpose of salvation.

(a) With respect to the universe at large, Christ’s kingdom is a kingdom of power; he upholds, governs, and judges the world.

Ps. 2:6-8—“I have set my king.... Thou art my son.... uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession”; 8:6—“madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet”; cf. Heb. 2:8, 9—“we see not yet all things subjected to him. But we beheld ... Jesus ... crowned with glory and honor”; Mat. 25:31, 32—“when the Son of man shall come in his glory ... then shall he sit on the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations”; 28:18—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”; Heb. 1:3—“upholding all things by the word of his power”; Rev. 19:15, 16—“smite the nations ... rule them with a rod of iron ... King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.”

Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 34, says incorrectly, as we think, that “the regnum naturæ of the old theology is unsupported,—there are only the regnum gratiæ and the regnum gloriæ.” A. J. Gordon: “Christ is now creation’s sceptre-bearer, as he was once creation’s burden-bearer.”

(b) With respect to his militant church, it is a kingdom of grace; he founds, legislates for, administers, defends, and augments his church on earth.

Luke 2:11—“born to you ... a Savior, who is Christ the lord”; 19:38—“Blessed is the King that cometh in the name of the Lord”; John 18:36, 37—“My kingdom is not of this world.... Thou sayest it, for I am a king.... Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice”; Eph. 1:22—“he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all”; Heb. 1:8—“of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.”

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:677 (Syst. Doct., 4:142, 143)—“All great men can be said to have an after-influence (Nachwirkung) after their death, but only of Christ can it be said that he has an after-activity (Fortwirkung). The sending of the Spirit is part of Christ’s work as King.” P. S. Moxom, Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan. 1886:25-36—“Preëminence of Christ, as source of the church’s being; ground of the church’s unity; source of the church’s law; mould of the church’s life.” A. J. Gordon: “As the church endures hardness and humiliation as united to him who was on the cross, so she should exhibit something of supernatural energy as united with him who is on the throne.” Luther: “We tell our Lord God, that if he will have his church, he must look after it himself. We cannot sustain it, and, if we could, we should become the proudest asses under heaven.... If it had been possible for pope, priest or minister to destroy the church of Jesus Christ, it would have been destroyed long ago.” Luther, watching the proceedings of the Diet of Augsburg, made a noteworthy discovery. He saw the stars bestud the canopy of the sky, and though there were no pillars to hold them up they kept their place and the sky fell not. The business of holding up the sky and its stars has been on the minds of men in all ages. But we do not need to provide props to hold up the sky. God will look after his church and after Christian doctrine. For of Christ it has been written in 1 Cor. 15:25—“For he must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet.”

“Thrice blessed is he to whom is given The instinct that can tell That God is in the field when he Is most invisible.” Since Christ is King, it is a duty never to despair of church or of the world. Dr. E. G. Robinson declared that Christian character was never more complete than now, nor more nearly approaching the ideal man. We may add that modern education, modern commerce, modern invention, modern civilization, are to be regarded as the revelations of Christ, the Light of the world, and the Ruler of the nations. All progress of knowledge, government, society, is progress of his truth, and a prophecy of the complete establishment of his kingdom.

(c) With respect to his church triumphant, it is a kingdom of glory; he rewards his redeemed people with the full revelation of himself, upon the completion of his kingdom in the resurrection and the judgment.

John 17:24—“Father, that which thou hast given me, I desire that where I am, they also may be with me, that they may behold my glory”; 1 Pet. 3:21, 22—“Jesus Christ; who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him”; 2 Pet. 1:11—“thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” See Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer, preface, vi—“Rev. 1:6—‘made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God and Father.’ ” Both in the king and the priest, the chief thing is power, influence, blessing. In the king, it is the power coming downward; in the priest, it is the power rising upward, prevailing with God. As in Christ, so in us, the kingly power is founded on the priestly: Heb. 7:25—“able to save to the uttermost, ... seeing he ever liveth to make intercession”.

Watts, New Apologetic, preface, ix—“We cannot have Christ as King without having him also as Priest. It is as the Lamb that he sits upon the throne in the Apocalypse; as the Lamb that he conducts his conflict with the kings of the earth; and it is from the throne of God on which the Lamb appears that the water of life flows forth that carries refreshing throughout the Paradise of God.”

Luther: “Now Christ reigns, not in visible, public manner, but through the word, just as we see the sun through a cloud. We see the light, but not the sun itself. But when the clouds are gone, then we see at the same time both light and sun.” We may close our consideration of Christ’s Kingship with two practical remarks: 1. We never can think too much of the cross, but we may think too little of the throne. 2. We can not have Christ as our Prophet or our Priest, unless we take him also as our King. On Christ’s Kingship, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:342-351; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 586 sq.; Garbett, Christ as Prophet, Priest, and King, 2:243-438; J. M. Mason, Sermon on Messiah’s Throne, in Works, 3:241-275.

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