THE
ATONEMENT
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Penalty in its Inner Meaning.
But we have now to look more particularly at the penalty
which the Lord endured for us. Penalty we have seen it was, and true
substitution; Christ dying, not upon occasion merely of our sins, but bearing
them in His own body on the tree - our iniquities laid upon Him, so that He
calls them "Mine." No words could express more plainly a real substitution.
We have seen too that in the penalty upon man there were two parts,
separable at least, if not in fact separated: the wrath of God upon sin, and
death, not the second, but what came in at the beginning through sin; and that
both parts He endured.
Death has its power in this, that it is the
removal of the sin-ruined creature out of the place for which he was created.
"Sin has reigned in death," as the expression is in Romans v. 21. It is
mans destruction by the judgment of God, as being already self-destroyed.
But the death he dies is not the death of Sadducean materialism, but
one in which the sinner abides under the judgment to which it has consigned
him. It is a condition of darkness - outer darkness - for God has finally and
forever withdrawn Himself. It is torment in the flame of necessary anger
against sin. These are the elements of a judgment which will not be altered in
character, when in the resurrection of judgment the dead stand before the great
white throne to receive the discriminate awards of the day of manifestation.
Unspeakably solemn is it to consider that the holy and beloved Son of
God, Himself knowing no sin, yet as "made sin for us," entered into that awful
darkness, and was tried by the fire of Gods wrath against it. So indeed
it was. He was the Substitute under our penalty; and endured the penalty. Ours
it was of course, not His; but He endured it, and endured it as the necessity
of holiness, to set His people free.
But there is a point here it is
important to guard, and which, guarded, will go far to preserve us from some
excesses which people have gone into with regard to substitution. We must not
confuse the Lords standing in our place to take for us our dreadful due,
with any calculation, essentially lowering as it is to the very righteousness
which it is meant to uphold, of so much suffering for so much sin. In the day
of final award it is indeed said that "the dead" are "judged out of the things
which are written in the books, according to their works" (Rev. xx. 13), and
this it is, no doubt, that has been carried back as a principle to the day of
atonement. It has been argued that if our iniquities were laid upon Him, if He
bare our sins in His body, then these must all have been counted up and
weighed, and He must have suffered so much for each one. In this case it is
plain we have just so many sins absolutely provided for, and no others. It is a
limited atonement of the most rigid kind, and of which it would be impossible
to use the language of the apostle, "A propitiation, not for our sins only, but
also for the sins of the whole world" (i Jn.2 2). For if the sins of the world
had been after this manner provided for, no one could be lost, or judged again
for what in Him had received its judgment. And this is very far from the truth
of Scripture.
A propitiation for the sins of the world means nothing
less than such a provision made for them that if the whole world turned to God
through Christ, it would find in Him a complete Saviour. But if sins needed
thus to be individually taken into account and settled, this would not be true;
if they had been thus settled, they could not in any case come up in the day of
judgment; and this is what some hold - that men will be judged for nothing but
for the refusal of grace in Christ: but this is entirely hopeless to prove from
Scripture, which declares they shall be "judged according to their works," and
that "every one shall receive the things done in his body according to that he
hath done, whether it be good or bad" (2 Cor. v. 10). And, as the Preacher
says, "God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing,
whether it be good, or whether it be evil."
"A propitiation for the
sins of the whole world" does not, then, mean such an individual settlement of
sins, nor is this needed in order for salvation. Can it, then, be needed for
"our sins" any more than for the sins of the whole world? Can we make
propitiation in the one case have a meaning which it has not in the other? This
is surely impossible to suppose in the Word of God. Its faithfulness refuses
absolutely all chameleon colours.
The sufficiency of atonement for the
whole world we must absolutely receive, or give up Scripture. It will not
suffer us to say that this is an elect world, for the "whole world" is not
elect; and here, the "ours" distinguishes believers from this world, not
includes them in it. Propitiation, then, (or atonement - it is the same word,)
is for all; and it is the same thing for all: not as actually availing, of
course, but as fully available. It has no limit to its value within the limits
of the human race.
Of how that which is available for all avails for
any, and how far it avails, I propose to consider in another chapter. Here, I
go no farther than this, that the Lord standing in the place of men took the
very penalty under which they were - died, and was made a curse: the value of
which must be measured by the infinite value of Him who did this, and the
perfection of an obedience so beyond all price.
We are not, therefore,
called upon to measure what is measureless, or to conceive of so many sins, or
those of so many sinners, weighed out to be atoned for by a particular amount
of suffering. Such a commercial idea (as it has been rightly called) of the
Lords wondrous work is an essential degradation of it, - not a high, but
a low estimate of the requirements of absolute holiness which were to be met
thereby. It is not that God must have so much suffering for so much sin, but
that His holiness necessitates displeasure proportioned to the evil which
awakes it. So even in the final judgment. The deeds done in the body become the
manifestation* of the person upon whom the judgment of God rests
correspondingly, but forever rests; not because, as people have wrongly
conceived, the sin itself is necessarily worthy of eternal punishment, but
because the sinner remains eternally with the character which his life
manifests.
*"We must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ"
is the true rendering of 2 Corinthians v. 30.
The error is therefore plain of making the atonement
consist in the endurance of so much agony, as if God could measure out that to
the holy Sufferer; whereas, beyond all our conception as was the agony endured,
the reality and efficacy of atonement lay in the solemn seal thus put upon the
divine estimate of sin, when Gods own beloved Son stooped Himself to
endure its dreadful penalty.
That He "bare our sins in His own body
on the tree," and that God "laid upon Him the iniquity of us all," - these and
such like passages which declare a real imputation of our sins to Christ remain
in all their solemn yet precious meaning for us. It was for these sins of ours
He suffered, and this suffering of His is that which alone removes them from
us, and removes them entirely: how perfectly, we shall see more as we proceed.
He was the true Sin-bearer - our Substitute under penalty, as we have seen. He
could not have been this had not our sins been laid on Him; but I turn from
this, which will come up before us again, to look at another question in
connection with the penalty itself.
In what we have been seeing lately,
it will be noted that of necessity it would seem it is rather wrath-bearing
than death we have been dwelling on; and it may be asked, If all this be true,
what part exactly in the penalty has death, then? If wrath could be exhausted
by the Lord before dying, if He could emerge from the darkness into the light,
and in peace say once more "Father" before he died - what need, then, even of
dying? Was death for Him the wages of sin which He had taken?
And it
is undeniable that there has been a tendency two ways, according as one class
of texts or the other has been dwelt upon, to make all atonement consist in
wrath-bearing, or - far more commonly - all consist in dying. Yet both are
plainly unscriptural, as we have sufficiently seen. What we want is to realize
the relation of these two parts to each other - to find the due place of each
in the Lords blessed work. We have been looking at the meaning of
wrath-bearing of late; and it does raise the necessary question, Why, then, His
death? Granting, as we must, the necessity of it according to Scripture, yet
why this necessity?
The answer is plain only in the realization of a
truth which has been overlooked, conspicuous as it is, by the mass of those who
have occupied themselves with the interpretation of Scripture: the setting
aside of the failed first man and the old creation, to bring in blessing under
another head and on another and higher plane altogether.
As already
said, the solemnity of death lies in this, that it is the removal of man as
failed out of the scene of his failure - the solemn sentence upon him as
unfitted for the place for which he was created. The lower creatures, indeed,
have never sinned - are incapable of it - yet they die; and men plead,
therefore, that death is natural. But they cannot persuade themselves, whose
whole nature cries out against it. The scriptural account is, "The wages of sin
is death;" and thus, "man, being in honour, abideth not; he is like the beasts
that perish" (Ps. xlix. 12).
Yes, the beasts do perish. Intended for
nothing but a temporary purpose, they enjoy life while it lasts, without a
sorrow for the past or a fear for the future. But man is not a beast: he is the
offspring of God, meant to know and enjoy communion with Him forever; and his
being levelled to the beasts is the sign of a moral, a spiritual ruin, in which
he has forgotten God, and levelled himself to them. He, like them, passes away
and is not found; his place knows him no more forever. But not like them, for
he has "thoughts" that perish with him, unfulfilled plans and purposes,
affections which cling to what they cannot hold, a dread upon his soul which
presages a hereafter such as the beast dreads not and desires not, because it
has not: "The dust returns to the earth as it was, but the spirit returns to
God that gave it."
Such is death for man; and being such, it is the
wages of sin. Man in it, as the creature which God made for Adams
paradise, perishes forever, - is set entirely aside. Nor do I forget
resurrection when I say so. Resurrection does not restore him to this.
Jobs words are absolutely true here, without bringing in the
God-dishonouring thought of annihilation in any wise: "As the cloud is
consumed, and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up
no more: he shall return no more to his house; neither shall his place know him
any more." Gods grace may give him another and a better thing, but it
does not reverse the first judgment.
And thus it is that when the Lord
takes death for man He takes it as affirming Gods sentence upon man, by
which the old creation is set aside forever. Let this be well observed, that
whereas the wrath of God upon sin, in being undergone by Christ, is removed
(the effect of atonement is removal), it is not so with a sentence by which the
first man is set aside: if the Lord take this, it must be, not to bring him
back, but to affirm his setting aside. The effect of wrath-bearing is to put
away wrath; but the effect of the Lords dying is that with His death the
old creation is confirmed as passing away - is set aside fully, not restored.
This is the direct force of 2 Corinthians v 14-17, not well given in
our common version: "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus
judge, that if One died for all, then all died [or, have died]; and for all He
died, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him
who died for them and rose again. Wherefore, henceforth know we no man after
the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth
know we Him no more. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, [it is] new creation:
old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
This is an
important passage, and needs attentive consideration. It is a positive
statement of the meaning of Christs death as dying for all, - these "all"
being expressly shown not to be limited to "those who live," who are
distinguished from them as a class in the latter part of the fourteenth verse.
It is directly affirmed, then, of all, that if Christ died for them,
all died. Our common version has it, "then were all dead," - making it a
spiritual state; but the Greek will not admit of this, and the sense also is
quite different. The point is as to what Christs death proves men to have
been under as sentence, not in as state; for He came under our sentence as
sinners, but not into our state of sin. He died, then, for all; and so all have
died. Before God, the world is judged and passed; as the Lord Himself said of
the cross, "Now is the judgment of this world" (Jno. xii. 31). It is not a
judgment executed, of course: none could suppose that; but it is a judgment
pronounced; and a judgment pronounced is with God as it were executed, so sure
and irreversible is it. If Christ, then, died for all, all died. Sentence is
not taken away by this, but affirmed.
And this meaning is clearly
proved by what follows in Corinthians - "wherefore, henceforth know we no man
after the flesh." This is the simple and necessary result (for faith, not for
sight): if all have died, they are in the flesh no longer; we walk amid a world
where men are either alive in Christ or but as it were dead men. But not only
so: "yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know
we Him no more." Even Christ has not taken up again the life which He laid
down. He has not returned (that is,) to His former state upon earth. That is
over; and the Christ we know is One who is in resurrection in the glory of God.
An immeasurably higher condition, you say. Surely it is; but the former one is
passed away, and passed away in that which affirmed Gods sentence upon
it. Where, then, are we who live? In Christ; and "if any man be in Christ, it
is new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become
new."
Thus the sense of the passage is plain and perspicuous. And the
meaning of the Lords taking of death is very clearly set forth. Atonement
does not restore the old Adam condition, but affirms its judgment and setting
aside. For those saved by it, the darkness of distance from God who is light is
passed with the darkness upon the cross. It is thus the gospel of Luke, which
gives especially the effects of the work of Christ for the conscience, connects
them: "And it was about the sixth hour; and there was darkness over all the
land until the ninth hour; and the sun was darkened, and the vail of the temple
was rent in the midst." The vail meant darkness, in which God dwelled for man;
its rending means that "God is in the light" (1 Jn i. 7).
But With His
death the apostle Matthew takes especial care to connect what in fact did not
occur till after His resurrection: "And the earth did quake, and the rocks
rent, and the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept
arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went into the
holy city, and appeared unto many." The answer to His death is resurrection;
not the recommencement of the old Adam life, which is finally and forever set
aside.
Thus those alive in Christ are dead with Him also, and as it is
specifically stated, "dead to sin," "dead to law," "dead to the elements of the
world" - to all that makes it up, - and "not in the flesh." But to that we must
return hereafter: our present subject closes here.
Go To Chapter 24
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