THE
ATONEMENT
Atonement: IN TYPE, PROPHECY, AND
ACCOMPLISHMENT.
CHAPTER I.
The Need to
be Met.
THE cross of Christ is the central fact in the history of
man. To it all former ages pointed on; from it all future ones take shape and
character. Eternity, no less than time, is ruled by it: Christ is the "Father
of Eternity." (Isa. ix. 6, Heb.) The new creation owns Him as last Adam, of
whom the failed first man was but the type and contrast. The wisdom, the grace,
and the glory of God are displayed, for the ceaseless adoration of infinite
hosts of free and gladsome worshippers, in this work and its results.
The
doctrine of atonement is thus the centre and heart of divine truth. Unsoundness
here will be fatal to the character of all that we hold for truth, and in exact
proportion to the measure of its unsoundness. Again, all fundamental error
elsewhere will find, of necessity, its reflection and counterpart in some false
view of atonement, if consistently carried out. Thank God, this is often not
the case, because the heart is often sounder than the creed; but this, while
admitted fully, scarcely affects, for a Christian, the seriousness of such a
consideration.
In taking up this subject for examination, we must remember
the gravity of such a theme; one in which a mere critical spirit will be as
much at fault as out of place; where we must be, not judges, but worshippers,
yet thoroughly alive to the importance of testing by the Word of God every
thing presented. The blessedness of a devout and believing contemplation of the
work to which we owe our all will be at least proportionate to the gravity of
error as to it: while our preservative from this will be found, not in neglect
or slight treatment of so great and important a truth but in deeper, more
attentive and prayerful consideration.
Here, too, we have to avoid, as
elsewhere, the opposite dangers of an independent and a weakly dependent
spirit. We dare not call any man master, for One is our Master, even Christ. On
the other hand, and for that very reason, we dare not despise His teaching,
even were it from the babe. There is need continually to remind ourselves of
this, simple as it surely is. For while the multitudinous voices of christendom
rebuke our belief in the authority which they claim, we cannot doubt that the
Spirit of truth has been communicating truth in proportion to the simplicity of
the faith that trusted Him. We may listen to and gain by teachers just in the
measure that we realize the apostles words, that we have an unction from
the Holy One, and need not that any man teach us.
Let us take up, then, the
great subject before us, and see reverently what we may be able to learn from
Scripture as to it, not refusing to consider along with this, as it may seem
profitable, current views, not for controversy on a theme so sacred; testing
for the gold and not the dross. The failure of others, where we may have to
judge they fail, should surely only serve the purpose of making us cling more
humbly, but not less confidently, to the Hand that alone can lead us safely.
Just as the works of God need the Sustainer still, so does the word of
revelation still need the Revealer.
Before we come to consider the fact and
truth of atonement, we have need, first of all, to consider the necessity that
exists for it. That it was absolutely necessary, Scripture settles decisively
for him that will listen to it. "For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the
wilderness, so MUST also the Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth
on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Nothing can be
plainer, nothing more authoritative, than such an announcement from the lips of
Him who came into the world to meet the need that He declares. Whatever is
implied in that lifting up of the Son of Man - the cross, most assuredly - was
necessary for mans salvation: and that the cross was an atonement, or
propitiation, for our sins, I need not pause to insist on now.
But while
the necessity of the cross is thus put far beyond dispute for all such as I am
writing for at this time, it is still needful to inquire, "What is the nature
of that necessity?" It is to our need that God reveals Himself, and as meeting
it, while more than meeting it, that He has glorified Himself forever; and to
know His grace, we must know the state to which it answers. It is thus that
through repentance we come to faith in the gospel. Scripture alone gives the
knowledge, in any adequate way, even of mans condition; it is well if we
do not resist Gods judgment when He has given it.
Man is a fallen
being: "all have sinned"; and all are "by nature children of wrath." In the
order of statement, in that epistle which takes up most fully what we are, as
prefatory to the unfolding of that salvation which is its theme, the first is
insisted on first, and as if wholly independent of the other. Men excuse their
sins by their nature, with how little truth their own consciences are witness;
for what they excuse in themselves they condemn in another, and especially if
it be done against themselves. God has taken care that within us we should
carry a voice which sophistry can never completely silence, and which asserts
our responsibility, spite of our natures, for every sin of our hearts or lives.
In that day to which conscience ever points, "the day when God shall judge the
secrets of men by Jesus Christ," He "will render to every man according to [not
his nature, but] his deeds." And for which of his deeds could he excuse himself
with truth by the plea that he could not help it? Surely not for one. The
free-will of which man boasts comes in here to testify fearfully against him.
His nature, whatever its corruption, is not, in the sense in which he pleads,
prohibitory of good or obligatory to evil. Conscience, anticipating the
righteous judgment of God, refuses to admit the validity of such a plea. It is
the intuitive conviction of every soul that sins, that for that sin it is
justly liable to judgment.
On this ground it is that the law brings in -
every man for his own sins - "all the world guilty before God." In all that
part of Romans, from the first to the middle of the fifth chapter, in which
this as to man is taken up, the apostle will raise no question as to his nature
- speaks as yet no word of Adam or the fall. Before he can bring it forward at
all, it must be absolutely settled that as all have sinned, so "all have come
short of the glory of God." That which for Israel the impassable vail of the
holiest declared, is what is affirmed by the gospel as to all, without
exception. It is upon this common basis of judgment lying upon all, that
justification for the ungodly is proclaimed to all.
The question of nature
comes in in the second part of the epistle, in connection with the power for a
new life. It is after mans guilt, proved to be universal, is met, for all
that believe, by the precious blood of Christ, and "being justified by faith,
we have peace with God," our standing in grace, "and rejoice in hope of the.
glory of God," that the apostle goes on to compare and contrast the first Adam
and his work with Him of whom he is the type: "Wherefore as by one man sin
entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for
that all have sinned; . . . therefore as by the offence of one [or by one
offence] toward all men to condemnation, so by one righteousness toward all men
for justification of life. For as indeed by the disobedience of the one man the
many have been constituted sinners, so also by the obedience of the One the
many will be constituted righteous." (I quote this from a version more literal
than our common one, which is very faulty here.) Afterward, this corruption of
constitution is fully dealt with, and the remedy for it shown, but of this it
is not yet the place to speak.
It is evident, however, that this increases
the gravity of mans condition immensely. The apostle, following the
Lords own words to Nicodemus, calls this fallen nature of man flesh,
stamping it thus as the degradation of the spiritual being which God had
created, hopeless naturally, as the Lords words imply: "That which is
born of the flesh is flesh." The apostle states it thus: "The mind of the flesh
is enmity toward God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be; so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God."
With the
many questions which spring out of this we are not now concerned; but such are
the solemn declarations of Scripture, with which all the facts of observation
and experience coincide. For man thus guilty and alienated from God, atonement
is necessary ere there can be mercy. "Deliver him from going down into the pit"
must have this as its justification: "I have found a ransom."
The penalty
upon sin is the necessary expression of His essential holiness. He can neither
go on with sin nor ignore it; and this is a question not alone of His
government, but of His nature also. To be a holy governor, He must be a holy
God. Government would be simply impossible for God that did not represent
aright His personal character. If, then, in His government He cannot let sin
escape, it is because the holiness of His nature forbids such an escape. This
we shall find to be of very great importance when we come to the consideration
of what the atonement is; but it is important to realize from the outset. Law,
what ever its place, can never be the whole matter; while yet its enactments
must be in harmony with the deeper truth upon which it rests.
"To men it
is appointed once to die, but after this the judgment." This is the inspired
statement as to what he naturally lies under. Both these things have to be
considered in their character and meaning, for as to both of them many a
mistake has been made.
Death entered into the world by the sin of Adam. It
is not necessary to take this as applying to the lower creatures. No express
word of Scripture affirms this, and the whole web and woof of nature seems to
contradict the thought. Life, without a miracle to prevent it, must be
destroyed continually, apart from all question of carnivorous beasts or birds,
by the mere tramp of our feet over the earth, in the air we breathe, the water
we drink, the plants or fruits we consume. The herbivorous animals thus destroy
life scarcely less than the carnivorous. Scripture, too, speaks of the "natural
brute beasts" as "made to be taken and destroyed," and of "man being in honour
and understanding not becoming like the beasts that perish." But unto the world
- the human world - by one man sin entered, and death by sin; "and so death
passed upon all men [he speaks only of man], for that all have sinned." It is
the stamp of Gods holy government upon sin; the outward mark of inward
ruin.
This death which came in through sin we must distinguish from the
judgment after death, as the apostle distinguishes them in the text already
quoted. This has not always been done, and yet not to do it is to make
difficult what is simple, and to obscure not a little the perfection of the
divine ways. The sentence upon Adam was not a final sentence, but one in which
the mercy is evident amid all the severity of righteous judgment. Without the
ministration of death, sad as has been the history of the world, it would have
been much sadder; but upon this I do not now need to pause. The sentence on
Adam is sufficiently clear from what is actually passed upon him after the
transgression, and whose meaning no one can doubt: - "Until thou return unto
the ground; for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust
shalt thou return." Of the second death this may be, and is, a type, and a
warning: but no more.
Again, to confound the penalty upon sin with sin
itself would seem almost impossible did we not know that it had been really
done. It is true that mans sinful state is spoken of as death - a "death
in trespasses and sins." But unless God could inflict sin as such, which is
impossible, this would turn the penalty into a prophecy merely. The testimony
of conscience should be enough in such a case; but the words of the sentence
when actually given, as I have just now quoted them, should preclude the
possibility of doubt.
Yet here too it is a type - the outward manifestation
of the state to which it answers; for as the body without the spirit corrupts
into sensible abomination, so with man away from God.
Death is judgment; to
the natural man, how solemn an one! Smiting him through the very centre of his
sensitive being, and sending him forth from every thing he knows and values
into a gloom surcharged with the foulness of corruption, and with the terrors
of God, to which he goes forth naked and alone.
Death is judgment, but not
"the judgment." For this, the "resurrection of judgment" must have come in -
judgment claiming for this the body as well as the spirit - the whole man, in
short. And here, that separation from God, chosen by the soul itself, becomes
manifest in its true horror, and its definitive portion forever. This is the
"outer darkness," when God the light of life is withdrawn forever.
But not
in every sense withdrawn. For the second death is not only darkness, though it
is darkness. The second death is none the less the "lake of fire:" a figure
indeed, but none the less fearful because a figure: "our God is a consuming
fire." Worse than withdrawn, the light has become fire. For God cannot forget,
cannot simply ignore: where sin is, there must be the testimony of His undying
anger against it. Here, "according to the deeds done in the body," there is the
searching, discriminating apportionment of absolute righteousness.
Death
then, and after death the judgment: this is mans natural portion; these
are the two things from which he needs to be delivered. For judgment he cannot
abide; if he dream of the possibility of it, it is but a dream: "Enter not into
judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall no man living be
justified." This is what Scripture with one voice affirms. If it were but
believed, how many wrong thoughts would it not set right! how many theological
systems would it not utterly sweep away!
This, then, is the portion of man
as man: this is the burden that atonement has to lift from off him.
Go To Chapter Two
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