IV. CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS PENAL.

The result of our discussion thus far may be summed up in the following statements: That the Atonement is related to God, inasmuch as it removed from his mind an obstacle to the bestowal of renewing and forgiving grace upon sinners; that it effected this removal by meeting in some way the claims of divine righteousness, and thereby exhibiting that righteousness; and that it met those claims, in great part at least, by the voluntary death of Christ, which death he suffered as the penalty due to men for their sins.

It will be seen

that these different statements are strictly harmonious; that the first is explained by the second, and the second by the third, and indeed that they are so bound together by the Scriptures as to form a threefold cord not easily broken. But the last statement, especially, has met with so much opposition from good men that it calls for yet further consideration. We propose, therefore, to devote a little space to a confirmation of it; yet without looking beyond the Scriptures for evidence; for if the authority of the Bible is admitted by our readers, that evidence will be conclusive, while, if it is not, the doctrine of the Atonement will be likely to share the same fate in their minds with every other doctrine peculiar to Christianity. For

ourselves the authority of the Bible is supreme, and the Bible teaches, we believe, that Christ suffered death as the penalty due to men for their sins. What that death was, how much pain of body and anguish of soul it involved, and what was the spiritual process by which this anguish was experienced, may be reserved for another occasion. Our present task is to justify the third statement given above by additional evidence from the Word of God.

And, first, by simply putting together the two facts, that death is the penalty of sin and that Christ must needs die in order to save sinners, we are led at once to the statement in question, and, especially, when we bear in mind the emphasis with which the necessity of Christ's death is taught by the Scriptures. For the Saviour said to his disciples, "The Son of man must suffer many things and be put to death; ""The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of men; which is written must be fulfilled in me, was reckoned with transgressors;" and the Epistle to the Hebrews declares that "every high-priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices;" from which, as Christ was a high-priest, the conclusion naturally follows: "Wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer." And this

1 Mark viii. 31; Luke ix. 44; xxii. 37.

"That,

and he

necessary offering the epistle goes on to describe as "his own blood," or "himself offered without spot unto God." In perfect agreement with these sentences is the whole tenor of apostolic teaching, and, especially, the meaning of the two ordinances which the Saviour delivered to his disciples. They both commemorate his death, not his incarnation, nor his holy life, nor his agony in the garden, ——— but his death, as the central and controlling fact of his mediatorial work. For this he came into the world, "not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and give his life a ransom for many." For this God, the Father, "spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." And what we claim is, that the singular emphasis laid by the sacred writers upon the death of Christ for sinners, when put side by side with the biblical doctrine of death being the divinely ordained penalty of sin, confirms our statement that his death was strictly vicarious, and was borne by him as the punishment due to those for whom he suffered.

And, secondly, the circumstance that the death of Christ is spoken of as being the death of those for whom he suffered, justifies the statement in question. If we give to the words which he employs their usual meaning, Paul writes to the Corinthians thus: "If Christ died for all, then

1 Heb. viii. 3; ix. 12-14.

1

all died. And the only natural explanation of this language is, that, inasmuch as the death of Christ was the punishment due to them for their sins, the claims of righteousness were met, at least conditionally, by his death; in the person of their representative and substitute they had suffered the penalty for sin prescribed by the law, and it only remained for them to accept the act of their substitute in humble faith. Weighty objections forbid any other interpretation of the apostle's language. And thus explained, it agrees with his subsequent declaration in the same chapter, that God "made him who knew no sin to be sin for us; that we might become the righteousness of God in him." An exceedingly forcible expression! In himself, as seen by the clear eye of his own perfect consciousness, Christ was sinless; yet on behalf of sinful man "he was made," not a sin-offering, nor a sinner, but, more emphatic still, "sin itself, the representative as it were of sin, the one on whom all sin was laid; that is, of course, in its destructive consequences as evil and punishment." (De Wette.) « We must remember," says Usteri on this passage, "that Paul looked upon death as the penalty of sin, and therefore the death of the sinless Christ must appear to him an assumption of our punish

12 Cor. v. 15.

ment. Thus, at all events, we have found the representation of the death of Christ as vicarious to be Pauline.” And Bernhard Weiss remarks on the same words of Paul: "It is here said expressly, that the treatment of the sinless as a sinner was the means whereby the treatment of sinners as sinless was made possible, and thus the new righteousness was procured on which the salvation of man depends. But the specific doom of the sinner is death, and hence the apostle rests the constraining power which the love of Christ exercises upon the judgment, that "if one died for all, then all died." The death of Christ, suffered for the salvation of men, holds as a substitute for the death of all; his treatment as a sinner makes their treatment as righteous possible, since they need not suffer again the death which he has suffered for them, and in this great act of beneficence done for them lies the constraining power of his love to them. Without such a vicarious death, the penalty of their own death could not have been remitted; for the law of God hangs the curse over all its transgressors, and this provision of the divine law must be fulfilled. From the language of the apostle's letter to the Corinthians we pass naturally to that which he uses in writing to the Galatians : "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law,