Vicarious
Atonement
W.G.T. Shedd
Atonement as Substitutionary
The atonement of Christ is represented in Scripture as
vicarious. The satisfaction of justice intended and accomplished by it is
for others, not for himself. This is abundantly taught in Scripture: �The
Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for (anti)1
many� (Matt. 20:28); �this is my body which is given for (anti)2
you� (Mark 10:45). In these two passages the preposition
anti3
indisputably denotes substitution. Passages like �Archelaus reigned in the
room (anti)4
of his father Herod� (Matt. 2:22), �an eye for an eye� (5:38), and �will he
for a fish give him a serpent?� (Luke 11:11) prove this.
In the majority of the passages, however, which speak of
Christ�s sufferings and death, the preposition
hyper5
is employed: �This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for (hyper)6
you� (Luke 22:19�20); �the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will
give for the life of the world� (John 6:51); �greater love has no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends� (15:13); �Christ died
for the ungodly; while we were yet sinners Christ died for us� (Rom. 5:6�8);
�he delivered him up for us all� (8:32); �if one died for all then all died�
(2 Cor. 5:14�15); �he made him to be sin for us� (5:21); �being made a curse
for us� (Gal. 3:13); �Christ gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice
to God� (Eph. 5:2, 25); �the man Christ Jesus gave himself a ransom for all�
(1 Tim. 2:5�6); Christ �tasted death for every man� (Heb. 2:9); Christ
�suffered the just for the unjust� (1 Pet. 3:18).
The preposition
hyper,7
like the English preposition for,
has two significations. It may denote advantage or benefit, or it may mean
substitution. The mother dies for her child, and Pythias dies for Damon. The
sense of �for� in these two propositions must be determined by the context
and the different circumstances in each instance. Christ lays down the
proposition: �Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his
life for (hyper)8
his friends� (John 15:13). The preposition
hyper9
here may mean either �for the benefit of� or �instead of.� In either case,
the laying down of life would be the highest proof of affection. The idea of
substitution, therefore, cannot be excluded by the mere fact that the
preposition
hyper10
is employed, because it has two meanings. In 2 Cor. 5:20�21
hyper11
is indisputably put for
anti:12
�Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by
us; we pray you in Christ�s stead (hyper
christou),13
be reconciled to God. For he has made him who knew no sin to be sin for us (hyper
hēmōn).�14
In Philem. 13
hyper15
is clearly equivalent to
anti:16
�Whom I would have retained with me, that in your stead (hyper
sou)17
he might have ministered unto me.� In 2 Cor. 5:14 it is said that �the love
of Christ constrains us, because we thus judge that if one died for all (hyper
pantōn),18
then all died (pantes
apethanon).�19
Here, the notion of substitution is plain. If Christ died in the room and
place of the �all,� then the �all� are reckoned to have died. The vicarious
atonement of Christ is regarded as the personal atonement of the believer.
It would be nonsense to say that �if one died for the benefit of all, then
all died.�
There is also abundant proof from classical usage that
hyper20
may be used in the sense of
anti.21
Magee (Atonement,
diss. 30) quotes the following: Xenophon (Anabasis
7.4) relates that the Thracian prince Seuthes asked Episthenes if he would
be willing to die instead of the young lad who had been captured in war (ē
kai ethelois an, hō episthenes, hyper toutou apothanein).22
The same use of
hyper23
is seen in Xenophon�s
Hellenica
and On Hunting;
Plato�s
Symposium 180 and 207; Euripides�
Alcestis
446, 540, 732 compared with 155�56, 698, 706, 715�17. In the first three
lines anti24
is employed, and in the remainder
hyper25
in respect to the same subject, showing that classical usage allows their
being interchanged. Demosthenes (Concerning the
Crown) says, �Ask these things, and surely I
shall do them for (hyper)
you.�26
Winer (Grammar,
383 [ed. Thayer]) remarks that �hyper27
is sometimes nearly equivalent to
anti�28
(see especially Euripides,
Alcestis
700; Thucydides 1.141; Polybius 3.67; Philem. 13). De Wette on Rom. 5:7
says: �Hyper29
can signify �in place of�; 2 Cor. 5:20.� Baur (Paul
the Apostle, 168) says: �Although in many
passages the expression �to die for� (apothanein
hyper) means only �to die for the benefit of
another,� nevertheless, certainly in Rom. 4:25; Gal. 1:4; Rom. 8:3; 1 Cor.
15:3; 2 Cor. 5:14, the concept of substitution, at least in substance, ought
not to be rejected.�30
The meaning, therefore, of
hyper31
must be determined by the context. Since both classical and New Testament
usage permit its being employed to signify either benefit or substitution,
it is plain that it cannot be confined to either signification. It would be
as erroneous to assert that it uniformly means �for the advantage of� as to
assert that it uniformly means �in the place of.� The remark of Magee (Atonement,
diss. 30) is just:
The word
for
or the Greek words
anti,32
hyper,33
dia,34
peri,35
of which it is the translation, admitting different senses, may of course be
differently applied, according to the nature of the subject, and yet the
doctrine remain unchanged. Thus it might be proper to say that Christ
suffered instead of us (anti
hēmōn),36
although it would be absurd to say that he suffered instead of our offenses
(anti
tōn hamartēmatōn hēmōn).37
It is sufficient if the different applications of the word carry a
consistent meaning. To die �instead of us� and to die �on account of our
offenses� perfectly agree.38
But this change of the expression necessarily arises from the change of the
subject. And, accordingly, the same difficulty will be found to attach to
the exposition proposed by these writers (Sykes and H. Taylor): since the
word for,
interpreted �on account of,� i.e., �for the benefit of,� cannot be applied
in the same sense in all the texts. For although dying �for our benefit� is
perfectly intelligible, dying �for the benefit of our offenses� is no less
absurd than dying �instead of our offenses.�
In the light of these facts, it is easy to see why the
New Testament writers employ
hyper39
so often, rather than
anti,40
to denote the relation of Christ�s death to man�s salvation. The latter
preposition excludes the idea of benefit or advantage and specifies only the
idea of substitution. The former may include both ideas. Whenever,
therefore, the sacred writer would express both together and at once, he
selects the preposition
hyper.41
In so doing, he teaches both that Christ died in the sinner�s place and for
the sinner�s benefit.
Vicariousness implies substitution. A vicar is a person
deputized to perform the function of another. In the case under
consideration, the particular function to be performed is that of atoning
for sin by suffering. Man the transgressor is the party who owes the
atonement and who ought to discharge the office of an atoner; but Jesus
Christ is the party who actually discharges the office and makes the
atonement in his stead. The idea of vicariousness or substitution is,
therefore, vital to a correct theory of Christ�s priestly office. Man the
transgressor would make his own atonement, if he should suffer the penalty
affixed to transgression. So far as the penalty is concerned, retributive
justice would be satisfied if the whole human race were punished forever.42
And if God had no attribute but retributive justice, this would have been
the course that he would have taken. A deity strictly and simply just, but
destitute of compassion for the guilty, would have inflicted the penalty of
the violated law upon the actual transgressor. He would not have allowed a
substituted satisfaction of justice, and still less would he have provided
one. It is important to notice this fact, because it shows the senselessness
of a common objection to the doctrine of vicarious atonement, namely, that
it is incompatible with mercy. If God, it is asked, insists upon satisfying
justice by allowing his Son to suffer in the place of sinners, where is his
mercy? The ready answer is that it is mercy to the criminal to permit the
substitution of penalty and still more to provide the substitute after the
permission. If God had no compassionate feeling toward the sinner, he would
compel the sinner himself to satisfy the demands of the law which he has
transgressed. But in permitting and still more in providing a substitute to
make that satisfaction which man is under obligation to make for himself,
God manifests the greatest and strangest mercy that can be conceived of, for
the vicarious atonement of Christ is the sovereign and the judge putting
himself in the place of the criminal. (See supplement 6.2.1.)
It is important, at this point, to mark the difference
between personal and vicarious atonement. (a) Personal atonement is made by
the offending party; vicarious atonement is made by the offended party. The
former is made by the sinner; the latter is made by God: �our great God and
Savior, Jesus Christ� (Titus 2:13 Revised Version). If a citizen pays the
fine appointed by the civil law, he satisfies justice for his own civil
transgression. If the murderer is executed, he atones for his own crime
before the human law, though not before the divine. And when a sinner
suffers endless punishment, he personally satisfies eternal justice for his
sin. (b) Personal atonement is given by the criminal, not received by him;
but vicarious atonement is received by the criminal, not given by him. This
is indicated in the scriptural phraseology. In Rom. 5:11 it is said that the
believer �receives the atonement� vicariously made for him by Christ. If he
had made an atonement for himself, he would have given to justice the
atonement, not received it. (c) Personal atonement is incompatible with
mercy, but vicarious atonement is the highest form of mercy. When the sinner
satisfies the law by his own eternal death, he experiences justice without
mercy; but when God satisfies the law for him, he experiences mercy in the
wonderful form of God�s self-sacrifice. (d) Personal atonement is
incompatible with the eternal life of the sinner, but vicarious atonement
obtains eternal life for him. When the sinner suffers the penalty due to his
transgression, he is lost forever, but when God incarnate suffers the
penalty for him, he is saved forever.
Vicarious atonement in the Christian system is made by
the offended party. God is the party against whom sin is committed, and he
is the party who atones for its commission. Vicarious atonement,
consequently, is the highest conceivable exhibition of the attribute of
mercy: �Herein is love, that God sent his Son to be the propitiation for our
sins� (1 John 4:10). For God to remit penalty without inflicting suffering
upon God incarnate would be infinitely less compassion than to remit it
through such infliction. In one case, there is no self-sacrifice in the
Godhead; in the other there is. The pardon in one case is inexpensive and
cheap; in the other, costly and difficult of execution.
The Socinian objection that vicarious atonement is
unmerciful because it involves the full and strict satisfaction of justice
has no force from a trinitarian point of view. It is valid only from a
Unitarian position. If the Son of God who suffers in the sinner�s stead is
not God but a creature, then of course God makes no self-sacrifice in saving
man through vicarious atonement. In this case, it is not God the offended
party who makes the atonement. The trinitarian holds that the Son of God is
true and very God and that when he voluntarily becomes the sinner�s
substitute for atoning purposes, it is very God himself who satisfies God�s
justice. The penalty is not inflicted upon a mere creature whom God made
from nothing and who is one of countless millions; but it is inflicted upon
the incarnate Creator himself. The following extract from Channing (Unitarian
Christianity) illustrates this misconception:
�Unitarianism will not listen for a moment to the common errors by which
this bright attribute of mercy is obscured. It will not hear of a vindictive
wrath in God which must be quenched by blood or of a justice which binds his
mercy with an iron chain, until its demands are satisfied to the full. It
will not hear that God needs any foreign influence to awaken his mercy.� The
finger must be placed upon this word foreign.
The trinitarian does not concede that the influence of Jesus Christ upon
God�s justice is an influence �foreign� to God. The propitiating and
reconciling influence of Jesus Christ, according to the trinitarian,
emanates from the depths of the Godhead; this suffering is the suffering of
one of the divine persons incarnate. God is not propitiated (1 John 2:2;
4:10) by another being, when he is propitiated by the only begotten Son. The
term foreign in
the above extract is properly applicable only upon the Unitarian theory,
that the Son of God is not God, but a being like man or angel alien to the
divine essence.
This fallacy is still more apparent in the following
illustration from the same writer: �Suppose that a creditor, through
compassion to certain debtors, should persuade a benevolent and opulent man
to pay in their stead? Would not the debtors see a greater mercy and feel a
weightier obligation, if they were to receive a free gratuitous release?� (Unitarian
Christianity). Here, the creditor and the
debtors� substitute are entirely different parties. The creditor himself
makes not the slightest self-sacrifice in the transaction, because he and
the substitute are not one being, but two. Consequently, the sacrifice
involved in the payment of the debt is confined wholly to the substitute.
The creditor has no share in it. But if the creditor and the substitute were
one and the same being, then the pecuniary loss incurred by the vicarious
payment of the debt would be a common loss. Upon the Unitarian theory, God
the Father and Jesus Christ are two beings as different from each other as
two individual men. If this be the fact, then indeed vicarious atonement
implies no mercy in God the Father. The mercy would lie wholly in Jesus
Christ, because the self-sacrifice would be wholly in him. But if the
trinitarian theory is the truth, and God the Father and Jesus Christ are two
persons of one substance, being, and glory, then, the self-sacrifice that is
made by Jesus Christ is not confined to him alone, but is a real
self-sacrifice both on the part of God the Father and also of the entire
Trinity. This is taught in Scripture: �God [the Father] so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son� (John 3:16); �he spared not his own Son,
but delivered him up for us all� (Rom. 8:32); �[the triune] God commends his
love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us�
(5:8).43
Though it was God the Son and not God the Father who
became incarnate and suffered and died, it by no means follows that the
first person of the Trinity made no self-sacrifice in this humiliation and
crucifixion of the incarnate second person. He gave up to agony and death,
his �dear� and �beloved� son. He passed the sword, as Zech. 13:7 says,
through �the man who was his fellow.� Such Scriptures imply that the
redemption of sinful man caused God the Father a species of sorrow: the
sorrow of �bruising and putting to grief� (Isa. 53:10) the Son of his love;
the Son who is �in the bosom of the Father� (John 1:18). The self-sacrifice,
therefore, that is made by the Son in giving himself to die for sinners
involves a self-sacrifice made by the Father in surrendering the Son for
this purpose. No person of the Godhead, even when he works officially, works
exclusively of the others. The unity of being and nature between Father and
Son makes the act of self-sacrifice in the salvation of man common to both:
�He that has seen me has seen the Father. I and my Father are one� (John
14:9; 10:30). �The mediator,� says Augustine (On
the Trinity 4.19), �was both the offerer and
the offering; and he was also one with him to whom the offering was made�
(see South, sermon 30).
And this does not conflict with the doctrine that the
divine essence is incapable of suffering. Divine impassability means that
the divine nature cannot be caused to suffer from any external cause.
Nothing in the created universe can make God feel pain or misery.44
But it does not follow that God cannot himself do an act which he feels to
be a sacrifice of feeling and affection and insofar an inward suffering.
When God gave up to humiliation and death his only begotten Son, he was not
utterly indifferent and unaffected by the act. It was as truly a sacrifice
for the Father to surrender the beloved Son as it was for the Son to
surrender himself. The Scriptures so represent the matter: �God so loved the
world that he gave his only begotten Son�; �God spared not his own Son, but
freely gave him up.� When the Father, in the phrase of the prophet, �awoke
the sword against the man who was his fellow,� he likewise pierced himself.
Vicarious atonement, unlike personal atonement, cannot be
made by a creature: �None of them can by any means redeem his brother nor
give to God a ransom for him� (Ps. 49:7); �shall I give my firstborn for my
transgression?� (Mic. 6:7); �what shall a man give in exchange for his
soul?� (Matt. 16:26). This is acknowledged in the province of human law. No
provision is made in human legislation for the substitution of penalty. In
the case of capital punishment, one citizen may not be substituted for
another; in the case of civil penalty such as fine or imprisonment, the
state cannot seize an innocent person and compel him to suffer for the
guilty. And even if there should be a willingness upon the part of the
innocent to suffer for the guilty, legislation makes no provision for the
substitution. The state would refuse to hang an innocent man, however
willing and urgent he might be to take the place of the murderer. The state
will not fine or imprison any but the real culprit.
The reason for this is twofold. First, each citizen owes
duties toward man that could not be performed if he should assume the
obligations of another citizen. There are debts to the family, to society,
and to the commonwealth, of which these would be defrauded, if the life or
property of one person should be substituted for that of another. Second,
each individual owes duties toward God which would be interfered with by the
substitution of one man for another within the sphere of human relations.
And the state has no right to legislate in a manner that interferes with
God�s claims upon his creatures.
The instances in pagan or Christian communities in which
there seems to be substitution of penalty are exceptional and irregular.
They are not recognized as legitimate by pagan authorities and still less by
Christian jurists. When, as in the early Roman history, an individual
citizen was allowed to devote himself to death for the welfare of the state,
this was an impulse of the popular feeling. It was not regularly provided
for and legitimated by the national legislature. It was no part of the legal
code. And human sacrifices among savage nations cannot be regarded as parts
of the common law of nations.
That vicarious atonement cannot be made by a created
being within the province of divine law will be made evident when we come to
consider the nature of Christ�s substituted work. At this point, it is
sufficient to observe that if within the lower sphere of human crimes and
penalties one man cannot suffer for another it would be still more
impossible in the higher sphere of man�s relations to God. No crime against
man is of so deep a guilt as is sin against God; and if the former cannot be
expiated by a human substitute, still less can the latter be.
It should be remembered, however, that the reason why a
creature cannot be substituted for a creature for purposes of atonement is
not that substitution of penalty is inadmissible, but that the creature is
not a proper subject to be substituted, for the reasons above mentioned.
Substitution is sometimes allowed within the province of commercial law. One
man may pay the pecuniary debt of another, if this can be done without
infraction of any rights of other parties. If, however, it cannot be, then
vicarious payment is inadmissible. A man would not be permitted to take
money due to one person to pay the debt of another. A man is not allowed in
the State of New York to leave all his property to benevolent purposes if he
has a family dependent upon him.
Atonement as Suffering and
Forgiveness as Its Result
The priestly office of Christ cannot be understood
without a clear and accurate conception of the nature of atonement.
The idea and meaning of atonement is conveyed in the
following statements in Lev. 6:2�7 and 4:13�20:45
�If a soul sin and commit a trespass against the Lord, he shall bring his
trespass offering unto the Lord, a ram without blemish, and the priest shall
make an atonement for him before the Lord, and it shall be forgiven him.�
This is individual atonement for individual transgression. �If the whole
congregation of Israel sin and are guilty, then the congregation shall offer
a young bullock for the sin, and the elders of the congregation shall lay
their hands upon the head of the bullock, and the bullock shall be killed,
and the priest shall make an atonement for them, and it shall be forgiven
them.� This is national atonement for national transgression. Two
particulars are to be noticed in this account. (a) The essence of the
atonement is in the suffering. The atoning bullock or ram must bleed,
agonize, and die. And he who offers it must not get any enjoyment out of it.
It must be a loss to him, and so far forth a suffering for him. He must not
eat any of the trespass offering. The sin offering must be wholly burned:
�skin, flesh, and dung� (Lev. 16:27). In harmony with this, our Lord lays
stress upon his own suffering as the essential element in his atonement:
�The Son of Man must suffer many things� (Luke 9:22; Matt. 16:21); �that
Christ would suffer� (Acts 3:18; Luke 24:26). Christ refused the anodyne of
�wine mingled with gall� that would have deadened his pain (Matt. 27:34).46
(b) The forgiveness is the noninfliction of suffering upon the transgressor.
If the substituted victim suffers, then the criminal shall be released from
suffering. In these and similar passages, Hebrew
kāppar,47
which in the Piel48
is translated �to make an atonement,� literally signifies �to cover over� so
as not to be seen. And Hebrew
ṣmlaḥ,49
translated �to forgive,� has for its primary idea that of �lightness,
lifting up,� perhaps �to be at rest or peace� (Gesenius
in voce). (See supplement
6.2.2.)
The connection of ideas in the Hebrew text appears, then,
to be this: The suffering of the substituted bullock or ram has the effect
to cover over the guilt of the real criminal and make it invisible to the
eye of God the holy. This same thought is conveyed in the following: �Blot
out my transgressions. Hide your face from my sins� (Ps. 51:19); �you have
cast all my sins behind your back� (Isa. 38:17); �you will cast all their
sins into the depths of the sea� (Mic. 7:19). When this covering over is
done, the conscience of the transgressor is at rest.
These Hebrew words, however, are translated in the
Septuagint by Greek words which introduce different ideas from �covering�
and �resting.� The word
kāppar50
is rendered by
exilaskomai51
(to propitiate or appease), and the word
ṣmlaḥ52
is translated by
aphiēmi53
(to release or let go). The connection of ideas in the Greek translation
appears, therefore, to be this: By the suffering of the sinner�s atoning
substitute, divine wrath at sin is propitiated, and as a consequence of this
propitiation the punishment due to sin is released or not inflicted upon the
transgressor. This release or noninfliction of penalty is �forgiveness� in
the biblical representation. This is conceded by the opponents of the
evangelical system. Says Wegscheider (Institutes
�140): �Forgiveness or pardon of sins, in the common and biblical usage, is
the abolition of the penalty contracted for sins and the restoration of
divine benevolence toward the sinner.�54
In the Lord�s prayer, the petition for forgiveness is
aphes hēmin ta opheilēmata
hēmōn55
(Matt. 6:12). Christ assures the paralytic that his sins are forgiven, in
the words
apheōntai soi hai hamartiai sou56
(9:2). The preaching of the gospel is the preaching of the �release of sins�
(aphesis
hamartiōn;57
Acts 13:38).
It is highly important to notice that in the biblical
representation �forgiveness� is inseparably connected with �atonement,� and
�remission� with �propitiation.� The former stands to the latter in the
relation of effect to cause. The Scriptures know nothing of forgiveness or
remission of penalty in isolation. It always has a foregoing cause or
reason. It is because the priest has offered the ram that the individual
transgression is �forgiven,� that is, not punished in the person of the
individual. It is because the priest has offered the bullock upon whose head
the elders have laid their hands that the national sin is �forgiven,� that
is, not visited upon the nation. Without this vicarious shedding of blood,
there would be no remission or release of penalty (Heb. 9:22). Not until the
transgression has been �covered over� by a sacrifice can there be �peace� in
the conscience of the transgressor. Not until the Holy One has been
�propitiated� by an atonement can the penalty be �released.� Neither of
these effects can exist without the antecedent cause. The Bible knows
nothing of the remission of punishment arbitrarily, that is, without a
ground or reason. Penal suffering in Scripture is released or not inflicted
upon the guilty because it has been endured by a substitute. If penalty were
remitted by sovereignty merely without any judicial ground or reason
whatever, if it were inflicted neither upon the sinner nor his substitute,
this would be the abolition of penalty, not the remission of it.
According to the biblical view, divine mercy is seen more
in the cause than in the effect, more in the �atonement� for sin than in the
�remission� of sin, more in �expiation� than in �forgiveness,� more in the
vicarious infliction than in the personal noninfliction. After the
foundation has been laid for the release of penalty, it is easy to release
it. When a sufficient reason has been established why sin should be
pardoned, it is easy to pardon. It is the first step that costs. This is
taught by St. Paul in Rom. 5:10: �If when we were enemies we were reconciled
to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved
by his life.� The greater includes the less. If God�s mercy is great enough
to move him to make a vicarious atonement for man�s sin, it is certainly
great enough to move him to secure the consequences of such an act. If God�s
compassion is great enough to induce him to lay man�s punishment upon his
own Son, it is surely great enough to induce him not to lay it upon the
believer. If God so loves the world as to atone vicariously for its sin, he
certainly so loves it as to remit its sin.
In looking, therefore, for the inmost seat and center of
divine compassion, we should seek it rather in the work of atonement than in
the act of forgiveness, rather in the cause than in the effect. That
covenant transaction in the depths of the Trinity, in which God the Father
commissioned and gave up the only begotten as a piacular oblation for man�s
sin and in which the only begotten voluntarily accepted the commission, is a
greater proof and manifestation of divine pity than that other and
subsequent transaction in the depths of a believer�s soul in which God says,
�Son, be of good cheer, your sin is forgiven you.� The latter transaction is
easy enough, after the former has occurred. But the former transaction cost
the infinite and adorable Trinity an effort and a sacrifice that is
inconceivable and unutterable. This is the mystery which the angels desire
to look into. That a just God should release from penalty after an ample
atonement has been made is easy to understand and believe. But that he
should himself make the atonement is the wonder and the mystery: �Hereby
perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us� (1 John
3:16).
Atonement as Objective
It follows from this discussion that atonement is
objective in its essential nature. An atonement makes its primary impression
upon the party to whom it is made, not upon the party by whom it is made.
When a man does a wrong to a fellow man and renders satisfaction for the
wrong, this satisfaction is intended to influence the object not the
subject, to produce an effect upon the man who has suffered the wrong not
the man who did the wrong. Subjective atonement is a contradiction. Atoning
to oneself is like lifting oneself.58
The objective nature of atonement is wrought into the very phraseology of
Scripture, as the analysis of the biblical terms just made clearly shows. To
�cover� sin is to cover it from the sight of God, not of the sinner. To
�propitiate� is to propitiate God, not man.
The Septuagint idea of �propitiation,� rather than the
Hebrew idea of �covering over,� is prominent in the New Testament and
consequently passed into the soteriology of the primitive church and from
this into both the Romish and the Protestant soteriology. The difference
between the two is not essential, since both terms are objective; but there
is a difference. Hebrew
kāppar59
denotes that the sacrificial victim produces an effect upon sin. It covers
it up. But the corresponding Septuagint term
hilaskomai60
denotes that the sacrificial victim produces an effect upon God. It
propitiates his holy displeasure. When St. John (1 John 2:2; 4:10) asserts
that �Jesus Christ the righteous is the propitiation (hilasmos)61
for our sins� and that God �sent his Son to be the propitiation for our
sins,� the implication is that the divine nature is capable of being
conciliated by some propitiating act. This propitiating act under the old
dispensation was, typically and provisionally, the offering of a lamb or
goat as emblematic of the future offering of the Lamb of God; and under the
new dispensation it is the actual offering of the body of Jesus Christ, who
takes the sinner�s place and performs for him the propitiating and
reconciling act.
The objective nature of atonement appears, again, in the
New Testament term
katallagē62
and the verb
katallassein.63
These two words occur nine times in the New Testament with reference to
Christ�s atoning work (Rom. 5:10�11, 15; 2 Cor. 5:18�20). In the Authorized
Version,
katallagē64
is translated �atonement� in Rom. 5:11; but in the other instances
�reconciliation� and �reconcile� are the terms employed. The verb
katallassein65
primarily signifies �to pay the exchange or difference� and secondarily �to
conciliate or appease.� The following from Athenaeus (10.33) brings to view
both meanings of the word: �Why do we say that a
tetradrachma katallattetai,66
when we never speak of its getting into a passion?� A coin is �exchanged� in
the primary signification; and a man is �reconciled� in the secondary. Two
parties in a bargain settle their difference or are �reconciled� by one
paying the exchange or balance to the other. In like manner two parties at
enmity settle their difference or are �reconciled� by one making a
satisfaction to the other. In each instance the transaction is called in
Greek katallagē.67
The same usage is found in the Anglo-Saxon language. Saxon
bot,
from which comes the modern boot,
denotes, first, a compensation paid to the offended party by the offender;
then, second, the reconciling effect produced by such compensation; and,
last, it signifies the state of mind which prompted the boot or
compensation, namely, repentance itself (Bosworth,
Anglo-Saxon Dictionary).
The term reconciliation
is objective in its signification. Reconciliation terminates upon the
object, not upon the subject. The offender reconciles not himself but the
person whom he has offended, by undergoing some loss and thereby making
amends. This is clearly taught in Matt. 5:24: �First, be reconciled to your
brother (diallagēthi
tō adelphō).�68
Here, the brother who has done the injury is the one who is to make up the
difference. He is to propitiate or reconcile his brother to himself by a
compensation of some kind. Reconciliation, here, does not denote a process
in the mind of the offender, but of the offended. The meaning is not: �First
conciliate your own displeasure toward your brother,� but, �First conciliate
your brother�s displeasure toward you.� In the Episcopalian order for the
holy communion, it is said: �If you shall perceive your offenses to be such
as are not only against God, but also against your neighbors; then you shall
reconcile yourselves unto them: being ready to make restitution and
satisfaction, according to the uttermost of your powers, for all injuries
and wrongs done by you to any other.� The biblical phrase
be reconciled to your brother
agrees with that of common life in describing reconciliation from the side
of the offending party, rather than of the offended. We say of the
settlement of a rebellion that �the subjects are reconciled to their
sovereign,� rather than that �the sovereign is reconciled to the subjects�;
though the latter is the more strictly accurate, because it is the sovereign
who is reconciled by a satisfaction made to him by the subjects who have
rebelled. In Rom. 5:10 believers are said to be �reconciled to God by the
death of his Son.� Here the reconciliation is described from the side of the
offending party; man is said to be reconciled. Yet this does not mean the
subjective reconciliation of the sinner toward God, but the objective
reconciliation of God toward the sinner. For the preceding verse speaks of
God as a being from whose �wrath� the believer is saved by the death of
Christ. This shows that the reconciliation effected by Christ�s atoning
death is that of divine anger against sin. Upon this text, Meyer remarks
that �the death of Christ does not remove the wrath of man toward God, but
it removes God�s displeasure toward man.� Similarly, De Wette remarks that
�the reconciliation must mean the removal of the wrath of God; it is that
reconciliation of God to man which not only here, but in Rom. 3:25; 2 Cor.
5:18�19; Col. 1:21; Eph. 2:16 is referred to the atoning death of Christ.�69
The priestly work of Christ is also represented in
Scripture under the figure of a price or ransom. This, also, is an objective
term. The price is paid by the subject to the object: �The Son of Man is
come to give his life a ransom (lytron)70
for (anti)71
many� (Matt. 20:28); �the church of God which he has purchased (peripoiēsato)72
with his own blood� (Acts 20:28); �the redemption (apolytrōsis)73
that is in Jesus Christ� (Rom. 3:24); �you are bought (ēgorasthēte)74
with a price� (1 Cor. 6:20); �Christ has redeemed (exēgorasen)75
us from the curse� (Gal. 3:13); �redemption through his blood� (Eph. 1:7;
Col. 1:14); �who gave himself a ransom (antilytron)76
for all� (1 Tim. 2:6). The allusion in the figure is sometimes to the
payment of a debt and sometimes to the liberation of a captive. In either
case, it is not Satan but God who holds the claim. Man has not transgressed
against Satan, but against God. The debt that requires canceling is due to a
divine attribute, not to the rebel archangel. The ransom that must be paid
is for the purpose of delivering the sinner from the demands of justice, not
of the devil. Satan cannot acquire or establish legal claims upon any being
whatever.
Some of the early fathers misinterpreted this doctrine of
a �ransom� and introduced a vitiating element into the patristic
soteriology, which however was soon eliminated and has never reappeared.
They explained certain texts which refer to sanctification as referring to
justification. In 2 Tim. 2:26 sinful men are said to be �taken captive by
the devil at his will.� In 1 Tim. 1:20 Hymenaeus and Alexander are
�delivered unto Satan.� In 1 Cor. 5:5 St. Paul commands the church to
�deliver over� the incestuous member �to Satan for the destruction of the
flesh.� In these passages, reference is had to the power which Satan has
over the creature who has voluntarily subjected himself to him. The sinner
is Satan�s captive upon the principle mentioned by Christ in John 8:34:
�Whosoever commits sin is the servant (doulos)77
of sin�; and by St. Paul in Rom. 6:16: �Know not that to whom you yield
yourselves servants (doulous)78
to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin unto death or
of obedience unto righteousness?� There is in these passages no reference to
any legal or rightful claim which the devil has over the transgressor, but
only to the strong and tyrannical grasp which he has upon him. This
captivity to Satan is related to the work of the Holy Spirit, more than to
the atoning efficacy of Christ�s blood; and deliverance from it makes a part
of the work of sanctification, rather than of justification. This
deliverance is preceded by another. In the order of nature, it is not until
man has been first redeemed by the atoning blood from the claims of justice,
that he is redeemed by the indwelling Spirit from the captivity and bondage
of sin and Satan.
When, therefore, the efficacy of Christ�s death is
represented as the payment of a ransom price, the same objective reference
of Christ�s work is intended as in the previous instances of �propitiation�
and �reconciliation.� By Christ�s death, man is ransomed from the righteous
claims of another being than himself. That being is not Satan, but God the
holy and just. And these claims are vicariously met. God satisfies God�s
claims in man�s place. God�s mercy ransoms man from God�s justice.
We have thus seen from this examination of the scriptural
representations that Christ�s priestly work has an objective reference,
namely, that it affects and influences the divine being. Christ�s atonement
�covers sin� from God�s sight. It �propitiates� God�s wrath against sin. It
�reconciles� God�s justice toward the sinner. It �pays a ransom� to God for
the sinner. None of these acts terminate upon man the subject, but all
terminate upon God the object. Christ does not �cover sin� from the sinner�s
sight. He does not �propitiate� the sinner�s wrath. He does not �reconcile�
the sinner to the sinner. He does not �pay a ransom� to the sinner. These
acts are each and all of them outward and transitive in their aim and
reference. They are directed toward the infinite, not the finite; toward the
Creator, not the creature. Whatever be the effect wrought by the vicarious
death of the Son of God, it is wrought upon the divine nature. If it
appeases, it appeases that nature; if it propitiates, it propitiates that
nature; if it satisfies, it satisfies that nature; if it reconciles, it
reconciles that nature. It is impossible to put any other interpretation
upon the scriptural ideas and representations. A merely subjective
reference, which would find all the meaning of them within the soul of man,
requires a forced and violent exegesis of Scripture and a self-contradictory
use of the word atonement.
At the same time, revelation plainly teaches that the
author of this atoning influence and effect upon the divine being is the
divine being himself. God propitiates, appeases, satisfies, and reconciles
God. None of these are the acts of the creature. In all this work of
propitiation, reconciliation, and redemption, God himself is the originating
and active agent. He is therefore both active and passive, both agent and
patient. God is the being who is angry at sin, and God is the being who
propitiates this anger. God is the offended party, and he is the one who
reconciles the offended party. It is divine justice that demands
satisfaction, and it is divine compassion that makes the satisfaction. God
is the one who holds man in a righteous captivity, and he is the one who
pays the ransom that frees him from it. God is the holy judge of man who
requires satisfaction for sin, and God is the merciful Father of man who
provides it for him. This fact relieves the doctrine of vicarious atonement
of all appearance of severity and evinces it to be the height of mercy and
compassion. If it were man and not God who provided the atonement, the case
would be otherwise. This peculiarity of the case is taught in Scripture. In
2 Cor. 5:18�19 it is said that �God has reconciled us to himself (heautō)79
by Jesus Christ� and that �God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto
himself (heautō).�80
The statement is repeated in Col. 1:20: �It pleased the Father through the
blood of Christ�s cross to reconcile all things unto himself.� According to
this, in the work of vicarious atonement God is both subject and object,
active and passive. He exerts a propitiating influence when he makes this
atonement, and he receives a propitiating influence when he accepts it. He
performs an atoning work, and his own attribute of justice feels the effect
of it. Says Augustine (On the Trinity
4.14.19): �The same one and true mediator reconciles us to God by the
atoning sacrifice, remains one with God to whom he offers it, makes those
one in himself for whom he offers it, and is himself both the offerer and
the offering.� Similarly, Frank (Christian
Certainty, 352) remarks that �freedom from
guilt is possible for man, because it has been provided for by God, and this
provision rests upon a transaction of God with himself, whereby as other
[i.e., as Son] he has made satisfaction to the claims of his own justice
upon the sinner.�
This doctrine of Scripture has passed into the creeds and
litanies of the church. In the English litany there is the petition: �From
your wrath and from everlasting damnation, Good Lord, deliver us.� Here, the
very same being who is displeased is asked to save from the displeasure. The
very same holy God who is angry at sin is implored by the sinner to deliver
him from the effects of this anger. And this is justified by the example of
David, who cries, �O Lord, rebuke me not in your wrath, neither chasten me
in your hot displeasure� (Ps. 38:1); and by the words of God himself
addressed to his people through the prophet, �In my wrath I smote you, but
in my favor have I had mercy upon you� (Isa. 60:10). The prophet Hosea (6:1)
says to the unfaithful church: �Come and let us return unto the Lord: for he
has torn, and he will heal us; he has smitten, and he will bind us up.� In
Zech. 1:2�4 Jehovah is described as �sore displeased� and yet at the same
time as exhibiting clemency toward those with whom he is displeased: �The
Lord has been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say unto them,
Thus says the Lord of hosts, Turn unto me, says the Lord of hosts, and I
will turn unto you, says the Lord of hosts.� �The Lord said to Eliphaz, My
wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends. Therefore take
unto you seven bullocks and seven rams and offer up for yourselves a burnt
offering, lest I deal with you after your folly� (Job 42:7�8). Here, the
very same God who was displeased with Job�s friends devises for them a
method whereby they may avert the displeasure. Upon a larger scale, God is
displeased with every sinful man, yet he himself provides a method whereby
sinful man may avert this displeasure. This is eminently the case with the
believer. �When,� says Calvin (3.2.21), �the saints seem to themselves to
feel most the anger of God, they still confide their complaints to him; and
when there is no appearance of his hearing them, they still continue to call
upon him.� Says Anselm (Meditation
2), �Take heart, O sinner, take heart! Do not despair; hope in him whom you
fear. Flee to him from whom you have fled. Boldly call on him whom you have
haughtily provoked.�81
The doctrine of vicarious atonement, consequently,
implies that in God there exist simultaneously both wrath and compassion. In
this fact is seen the infinite difference between divine and human anger.
When God is displeased with the sinner, he compassionately desires that the
sinner may escape the displeasure and invents a way of escaping it. But when
man is displeased with his fellowman, he does not desire that his fellowman
may escape the displeasure and devises no way of escape. Divine wrath issues
from the constitutional and necessary antagonism between divine holiness and
moral evil. Divine compassion springs from the benevolent interest which God
feels in the work of his hands. The compassion is founded in God�s paternal
relation to man; the wrath is founded in his judicial relation to him. God
as a Creator and Father pities the sinner; as a judge he is displeased with
him. Wrath against sin must be both felt and manifested by God; compassion
toward the sinner must be felt, but may or may not be manifested by him.
Justice is necessary in its exercise, but mercy is optional. The righteous
feeling of wrath toward sin is immutable and eternal in God, but it may be
propitiated by the gracious feeling of compassion toward the sinner, which
is also immutable and eternal in God. God the father of men may reconcile
God the judge of men. Whether this shall be done depends upon the sovereign
pleasure of God. He is not obliged and necessitated to propitiate his own
wrath for the sinner, as he is to punish sin; but he has mercifully
determined to do this and has done it by the atonement of Jesus Christ. By
the method of vicarious substitution of penalty, God satisfies his own
justice and reconciles his own displeasure toward the transgressor. That
moral emotion in the divine essence which from the nature and necessity of
the case is incensed against sin, God himself placates by a self-sacrifice
that inures to the benefit of the guilty creature. Here, the compassion and
benevolent love of God propitiate the wrath and holy justice of God. The two
feelings exist together in one and the same being. The propitiation is no
oblation ab extra:82
no device of a third party or even of sinful man himself to render God
placable toward man. It is wholly ab intra:83
a self-oblation upon the part of the deity himself, in the exercise of his
benevolence toward the guilty, by which to satisfy those constitutional
imperatives of the divine nature which without it must find their
satisfaction in the personal punishment of the transgressor or else be
outraged by arbitrary omnipotence.
Upon this point, Augustine (Tractates
on the Gospel of John, ex. 6), remarks:
It is written, �God commends his
love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.� He
loved us, therefore, even when in the exercise of enmity toward him we were
working iniquity. And yet it is said with perfect truth, �You hate, O Lord,
all workers of iniquity.� Wherefore, in a wonderful and divine manner, he
both hated and loved us at the same time. He hated us, as being different
from what he had made us; but as our iniquity had not entirely destroyed his
work in us, he could at the same
time, in everyone of us, hate what
we had done and love what he had created. In every instance it is truly said
of God �You hate nothing which you have made; for never would you have made
anything, if you had hated it.�
Calvin, after quoting the above from Augustine, remarks
(2.16.3) that
God who is the perfection of
righteousness cannot love iniquity, which he beholds in us all. We all,
therefore, have in us that which deserves God�s hatred. Wherefore, in
respect to our corrupt nature and the consequent depravity of our lives, we
are all really offensive to God, guilty in his sight, and born to the
damnation of hell. But because God is unwilling to lose that in us which is
his own, he still finds something in us which his benevolence (benignitas)
can love. For notwithstanding that we are sinners by our own fault, we are
yet his creatures; though we have brought death upon ourselves yet he had
created us for life.
Turretin (Concerning the
Truth of Christ�s Satisfaction 1.1)
distinguishes between �compassion� and �reconciliation.� Because God is
compassionate in his own excellent and perfect nature, he can become
reconciled toward a transgressor of his law. If he were inherently destitute
of compassion, he would be incapable of reconciliation. Compassion is a
feeling, reconciliation is an act resulting from it. The former is inherent
and necessary; the latter is optional and sovereign. If God were not
compassionate and placable, he could not be propitiated by the sacrifice of
Christ. An implacable and merciless being could not be conciliated and would
do nothing to effect a reconciliation. God is moved by a feeling of
compassion and a benevolent affection toward sinners, prior to and
irrespective of the death of Christ: �When we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us� (Rom. 5:8). The death of Christ did not make God compassionate and
merciful. He is always and eternally so. But God�s holy justice is not
reconciled to sinners unless Christ die for their sin. The compassion is
prior in the order of nature to the death of Christ; the reconciliation of
justice is subsequent to it: �Before the death of Christ, God was already
compassionate (misericors)
and placable. This moved him to provide salvation and redemption for man.
But he was actually reconciled and propitiated, only upon the condition and
supposition of that death of Christ which was required by eternal justice.�
In this manner, compassion and wrath coexist in God. Says
Turretin (as above):
To us indeed it seems difficult to
conceive that the same person who is offended with us should also love us;
because, when any feeling takes possession of us we are apt to be wholly
engrossed with it. Thus if our anger is inflamed against anyone, there is
usually no room in us for favor toward him; and on the other hand, if we
regard him with favor, there is often connected with it the most unrighteous
indulgence. But if we could cast off the disorders of passion and clothe
ourselves in the garments of righteousness, we might easily harmonize these
things with one another. A father offended with the viciousness of his son
loves him as a son, yet is angry with him as being vicious. A judge, in like
manner, may be angry and moved to punish, yet not the less on this account
inclined by compassion to pardon the offender, if only someone would stand
forth and satisfy the claims of justice for him. Why then, should not God,
who is most righteous and benevolent, at once by reason of his justice
demand penalty and by reason of his compassion provide satisfaction for us?
Turretin quotes in proof of this view the following from
Aquinas (3.49.4): �We are not said to have been reconciled as if God began
to love us anew (de
novo), for he loved us with an eternal love.
Rather, we are said to have been reconciled because through this
reconciliation every cause of hatred was removed, on the one hand through
the cleansing of sin, and on the other hand through the compensation of a
more acceptable good (acceptabilioris boni).�84
He also remarks: �The Scholastics say that God loved the human race insofar
as he himself made that nature, but he hates it insofar as men have brought
guilt on themselves.�85
In all that is said, consequently, respecting the wrath
of God, in Christian theology, it is of the utmost importance to keep in
view the fact that this wrath is compatible with benevolence and compassion.
This is the infinite difference in kind between divine and human anger. At
the very moment when God is displeased, he is capable of devising kind
things for the object of his displeasure: �While we were yet sinners Christ
died for us� (Rom. 5:8). And at the very instant when guilty man is
conscious that divine wrath is resting upon him, he may address his
supplication for a blessing to the very being who is angry with his sin and
may pray: �From your wrath, good Lord, deliver me.� And the great and ample
warrant and encouragement for men to do this is found in the sacrifice of
the Son of God. For in and by this atoning oblation, divine compassion
conciliates divine wrath against sin. In the death of the God-man,
�righteousness and peace, justice and mercy, kiss each other� (Ps. 85:10).
The mercy vicariously satisfies the justice; divine compassion in the
sinner�s stead receives upon itself the stroke of divine wrath; God the
Father smites God the Son, in the transgressor�s place: �Awake, O sword,
against the man that is my fellow, says the Lord of hosts� (Zech. 13:7).86
This subject is elucidated still further by noticing the
difference between the holy wrath of God and the wicked wrath of man: �The
wrath of man works not the righteousness of God� (James 1:20). When man is
angry at man, this feeling is absolutely incompatible with the feeling of
compassion and benevolent love. Selfish human anger and benevolence cannot
be simultaneous. They cannot possibly coexist. When a man, under the impulse
of sinful displeasure, says to his brother �Raca� or �you fool� (Matt.
5:22), when he feels passionate and selfish wrath, he cannot devise good
things for his brother man. On the contrary, he devises only evil things. He
plots his neighbor�s destruction. The wrath of the human heart is not only
incompatible with benevolence, but is often intensely malignant. It is even
increased by the moral excellence that is in the object of it. Holiness in a
fellow creature sometimes makes wicked human anger hotter and more deadly.
The Jews gnashed their teeth in rage at the meekness and innocence of
Christ. �The hatred of the wicked,� says Rousseau (Confessions
9), �is only roused the more from the impossibility of finding any just
grounds on which it can rest; and the very consciousness of their own
injustice is only a grievance the more against him who is the object of it.�
�They hated the one whom they injured,�87
says Tacitus. This kind of wrath requires complete eradication before
compassion can exist. �Better it were,� says Luther (Table
Talk: Of God�s Works), �that God should be
angry with us than that we be angry with God, for he can soon be at a union
with us again, because he is merciful; but when we are angry with him, then
the case is not to be helped.�
Still further elucidation of this subject is found in the
resemblance between the holy wrath of God and the righteous anger of the
human conscience. The sinful feeling of passionate anger to which we have
just alluded is an emotion of the heart; but the righteous feeling of
dispassionate anger to which we now allude is in the conscience. This is a
different faculty from the heart.88
Its temper toward sin is unselfish and impartial, like the wrath of God. And
this feeling can exist simultaneously with that of benevolence. When a man�s
own conscience is displacent and remorseful over his own sin, there is no
malice toward the man himself, �for no man ever yet hated his own flesh�
(Eph. 5:29). At the very moment when a just and righteous man�s conscience
is offended and incensed at the wickedness of a fellowman, he can and often
does devise good things toward him. The most self-sacrificing
philanthropists are those whose conscience is the most sensitive toward the
moral evil which they endeavor to remove and whose moral displeasure against
sin is the most vivid and emphatic. It is not the sentimental Rousseau, but
the righteous Calvin who would willingly lay down his life, if thereby he
could save men from eternal retribution. The conscience of Rousseau was dull
and torpid, compared with the keen and energetic conscience of Calvin; but
the desire of the latter for the spiritual and eternal welfare of sinful men
was a thousand times greater than that of the former, supposing that there
was in Rousseau any desire at all for the spiritual and eternal welfare of
man. When St. Paul says respecting Alexander the coppersmith, �The Lord
reward him according to his works� (2 Tim. 7:14), he gives expression to the
righteous displeasure of a pure conscience toward one who was opposing the
gospel of Christ and the progress of God�s kingdom in the earth. It was not
any personal injury to the apostle that awakened the desire for divine
retribution in the case, but a zeal for the glory of God and the welfare of
man. Could St. Paul by any self-sacrifice on his own part have produced
repentance and reformation in Alexander, he would gladly have made it. As in
the instance of his unbelieving Jewish kindred, he would have been willing
to be �accursed from Christ� for this purpose (Rom. 9:3). But when a profane
man angrily says to his fellowman: �God damn you,� this is the malignant
utterance of the selfish passion of the human heart and is incompatible with
any benevolent feeling.89
We find, then, that in the exercise of Christ�s priestly
office the agency is wholly within the divine nature itself. The justice and
the mercy, the wrath and the compassion, are qualities of one and the same
eternal being. It follows, consequently, that the explanation of the great
subject of divine reconciliation lies in the doctrine of the Trinity. The
doctrine of vicarious atonement stands or falls with that of the triune God.
If God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons, each one
of them really objective to the others, then one of them can do a personal
work not done by the others that shall have an effect upon the Godhead. And
if God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are also one undivided being in
nature and essence, then this effect, whatever it be, is not limited and
confined to any one of the persons exclusive of the others, but is
experienced by the one whole undivided nature and essence itself. The
Godhead, and not merely God the Father or God the Son or God the Spirit, is
reconciled to guilty man by the judicial suffering of one of the persons of
the Godhead incarnate. The Son of God is a person distinct from and
objective to the Father and the Spirit. Hence, he can do a work which
neither of them does. He becomes incarnate, not they. He suffers and dies
for man, not they. And yet the efficacy of this work, which is his work as a
trinitarian person, can terminate upon that entire divine nature which is
all in God the Father and all in God the Spirit, as it is all in God the
Son. �Christ,� says Frank (Christian Certainty,
366), �experienced as a [vicarious] sinner both subjection to God and
rejection by God; but yet as one who can call the God who has rejected him,
his God, and who while the wrath of God goes forth upon him and delivers him
up to the punitive infliction, nevertheless can pray: �Not my will, but
yours be done.� �
Atonement as Subjective
Before leaving the subject of vicarious atonement, it is
in place here to notice its relation to the soul of man. For, while Christ�s
atonement has primarily this objective relation to the divine nature, it has
also a secondary subjective relation to the nature of the guilty creature
for whom it is made. The objective atonement is intended to be subjectively
appropriated by the act of faith in it.
In the first place, the priestly work of Christ has an
influence upon the human conscience similar to that which it has upon divine
justice. Man�s moral sense is pacified by Christ�s atonement. Peace is
everywhere in Scripture represented as the particular effect produced by
faith in Christ�s blood: �Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace
with God� (Rom. 5:1); �we are made nigh to God by the blood of Christ, for
he is our peace� (Eph. 2:13�14); �having made peace through the blood of his
cross� (Col. 1:20); �peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you� (John
14:27); �the peace of God passes all understanding� (Phil. 4:7).
The human conscience is the mirror and index of the
divine attribute of justice. The two are correlated. What therefore God�s
justice demands, man�s conscience demands. �Nothing,� says Matthew Henry,
�can pacify an offended conscience but that which satisfied an offended
God.� The peace which the believer in Christ�s atonement enjoys, and which
is promised by the Redeemer to the believer, is the subjective experience in
man that corresponds to the objective reconciliation in God. The
pacification of the human conscience is the consequence of the satisfaction
of divine justice. God�s justice is completely satisfied for the sin of man
by the death of Christ. This is an accomplished fact: �Jesus Christ the
righteous is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world� (1 John 2:2).
The instant any individual man of this world of mankind believes that divine
justice is thus satisfied, his conscience is at rest. The belief of a fact
is always needed in order to a personal benefit from it. Belief is not
needed in order to establish the fact. Whether a sinner believes Christ died
for sin or not will make no difference with the fact, though it will make a
vast difference with him: �If we believe not, yet he abides faithful: he
cannot deny himself� (2 Tim. 2:13). Unbelief cannot destroy a fact. Should
not a soul henceforth believe on the Son of God, it would nevertheless be a
fact that he died an atoning death on Calvary and that this death is an
ample oblation for the sin of the world. But it must be remembered that the
kind of belief by which a man obtains a personal benefit from the fact of
Christ�s death is experimental, not historical or hearsay. A man may believe
from common rumor that the death of Christ satisfies divine justice for the
sin of the world and yet experience no benefit and no peace from his belief,
even as a blind man may believe from common rumor that there is a mountain
in front of him and yet have none of the pleasing sensations and personal
benefits that accompany the vision of it. The blind man may have no doubt of
the fact that there is a mountain before him; he may even argue to prove its
existence and still have all the wretched sensations of blindness and obtain
no personal advantage from his hearsay belief. And a sinful man may have no
skeptical doubt that the death of Christ on Mount Calvary has completely
expiated human guilt and may even construct a strong argument in proof of
the fact and still have all the miserable experience of an unforgiven
sinner, may still have remorse and the fear of death and the damnation of
hell. The belief by which men obtain personal benefit, namely, mental peace
and blessedness, from the fact of Christ�s atonement involves trust and
reliance upon Christ. A man may believe Christ and yet not believe on him.
Christ himself marks the difference between historical or hearsay belief and
experimental faith in Matt. 13:13�15: �Seeing, they see not; and hearing,
they hear not, neither do they understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy
of Isaiah, which says, By hearing you shall hear and shall not understand;
and seeing you shall see and shall not perceive.� Whenever there is an
experimental belief of the actual and accomplished fact of Christ�s
atonement, there is a subjective pacification of the conscience
corresponding to the objective reconciliation of divine justice. But this
subjective effect of Christ�s death is neither the primary nor the whole
effect of it. It presupposes the objective satisfaction or propitiation. In
this instance, as in all others, the object is prior to the subject and
determines its consciousness.
Second, the subjective appropriation of Christ�s
atonement is the evidence and test of genuine repentance. An unselfish godly
sorrow for sin is shown by a willingness to suffer personally for sin. In
Lev. 26:41, 43 the truly penitent are described as �accepting the punishment
of their iniquity.� The criminal who complains of punishment or resists it
or endeavors to escape from it evinces by this fact that he cares more for
his own happiness than he does for the evil and wickedness of his act. If he
were certain of not being punished, he would repeat his transgression. There
is of course no genuine sorrow for sin in such a temper. If, on the
contrary, a wrongdoer approves of and accepts the punishment denounced
against his crime and voluntarily gives himself up to suffer for his
transgression, he furnishes the highest proof of true sorrow. He does not
make his own happiness the first thing, but the maintenance of justice. With
Angelo (Measure for Measure
5.1), he says:
So deep sticks it in my penitent
heart,
That I crave death more willingly
than mercy;
�Tis my deserving, and I do
entreat it.
With the penitent thief, he says, �We are in this
condemnation justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds� (Luke
23:41). Says Dorner (Christian Doctrine
1.302):
No one can deny that true
penitence includes the candid acknowledgment of actual desert of punishment
and that the denial of this desert and the unwillingness to suffer
punishment and to surrender to the disgrace of justice is the most certain
proof of a mere semblance of penitence. And it is not essentially different,
when repentance and the resolution to live a better life are put in the
place of that suffering which constitutes satisfying atonement and gives a
title to remission of sin. Such views are a poisoning of penitence, which,
in order to be genuine, must stand the test of being ready to suffer
punishment and approve of the retribution of justice.
The first impulse consequently of true penitence is to
make a personal atonement. This distinguishes penitence from remorse, the
godly sorrow from the sorrow of the world (2 Cor. 7:10). Mere remorse has no
desire or impulse to suffer and make amends for what has been done. Its
impulse and desire is wholly selfish, namely, to escape suffering. Remorse
leads to suicide, penitence never. The suicide�s motive is to put an end to
his misery. He supposes that he will be happier by dying than by continuing
to live. This was the motive of the impenitent Judas.90
But the broken and contrite heart is willing to do and to suffer anything
that would really satisfy God�s holy law. This is taught in Ps. 51:16: David
in his genuine sorrow for his great transgression says: �You desire not
sacrifice, else would I give it.� He perceives that any expiation which he
could make for his sin would be unequal to what justice requires; but this
does not render him any the less ready to make it if he could. And when the
true penitent perceives that another competent person, divinely appointed,
has performed that atoning work for him which he is unable to perform for
himself, he welcomes the substitution with joy and gratitude. Any aversion,
therefore, to Christ�s vicarious atonement evinces that there is a defect in
the supposed sorrow for sin. The lust of self is in the experience. The
individual�s happiness is in the foreground, and divine holiness is in the
background. And the positive and deliberate rejection of Christ�s atonement,
upon the same principle, is absolute and utter impenitence. A hostile and
polemic attitude toward the blood of Christ as atoning for human guilt is
fatal hardness of heart. Christ refers to it in his awful words to the
Pharisees: �If you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sins�
(John 8:24). Impenitence shows itself both in unwillingness to make a
personal atonement for sin and to trust in a vicarious atonement for it.
(See supplement 6.2.3.)
Christ�s Sufferings as Penal
Substitution
It becomes necessary now to consider the question how the
suffering of Christ meets the requisitions involved in the case of
substitution of penalty or vicarious atonement. We have seen that suffering
is the inmost essence of an atonement. The sacrificial victim must agonize
and die. Without shedding of blood there is no remission of penalty. Even in
cases where physical suffering does not take place, a suffering of another
kind does. A citizen within the province of civil law is said to make amends
for his fault when he pays a fine and suffers a loss of money as the
compensation to civil justice. What, then, is suffering?
Suffering is of three kinds: (1) calamity, (2)
chastisement, and (3) punishment or penalty.
Calamity does not refer to sin and guilt. It is a kind of
suffering that befalls man by the providence of God for other reasons than
disciplinary or judicial. Calamitous suffering, however, it should be
noticed, occurs only in a sinful world. Consequently, it is never found
isolated and by itself alone. It is associated either with chastisement (as
when a calamity falls upon a child of God) or with punishment (as when it
falls upon the impenitent sinner). Calamity is therefore rather an element
in suffering than the whole of the suffering. When, for illustration, some
of the Galileans had been cruelly put to death by Pilate (Luke 13:1�5), our
Lord distinctly told those who informed him of this fact that these
Galileans �were not sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered
such things.� They were sinners, but not the worst of sinners. In other
words, he taught them that the whole of this suffering was not penal. As
sinners, they deserved to suffer; and some of this suffering was for their
sins. But as they were not greater sinners than other Galileans, they did
not deserve a suffering that was so much greater than that of the Galilean
people as a whole. A part of this extraordinary suffering, therefore, was
calamity, not punishment. As such, it had no reference to the guilt of the
Galileans. If it had, it would have been a proof that they �were sinners
above all the Galileans.� Our Lord then repeats and emphasizes the same
truth by an allusion to the fall of the tower in Siloam upon some of the
inhabitants of Jerusalem. This event did not prove that these few persons
were sinners �above all men that dwelled in Jerusalem.� There was,
therefore, a calamitous as well as a penal element in this fall of the
tower. The same doctrine is taught by the extraordinary sufferings of the
patriarch Job. Job�s friends contended that these were all and wholly penal.
They inferred that Job had been guilty of some extraordinary sin which
merited this extraordinary punishment, and they urged him to confess it. The
patriarch, though acknowledging himself to be a sinner and deserving to
suffer for sin (Job 42:5�6), was not conscious of any such extraordinary act
of transgression as his friends supposed he must have committed and cannot
understand why he should have been visited with such enormous afflictions.
Both he and they are finally informed by God himself, out of the whirlwind,
that the extraordinariness of the suffering is due to the will of God; that
it is of the nature of calamity, not of penalty. Jehovah resolves the
mystery in the uncommon treatment of Job into an act of almighty power by an
infinitely wise being who gives no reason for his procedure in this instance
(Job 38�41). Elihu, the youngest of the speakers, seems to have had an
intimation in his own mind that this was the true explanation of the dark
problem: �I will answer you that God is greater than man. Why do you strive
against him? For he gives not account of any of his matters� (33:12�13).
The second species of suffering is chastisement. This is
spoken of in Heb. 12:6: �For whom the Lord loves, he chastens (paideuei).�91
Chastisement and punishment are distinguished from each other in 1 Cor.
11:32: �When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not
be condemned with the world.� The purpose of chastisement is discipline and
moral improvement. The reason for it is not secret and unknown, as in the
case of calamity. It is adapted to reform. It is administered by parental
affection, not by judicial severity. It is the form which suffering assumes
within the family. The parent does not cause the child to feel pain for the
satisfaction of justice, but for personal improvement. The suffering does
indeed remind the child of his guilt and is suggestive of penalty, but it is
not itself penal. Family discipline is not of the nature of retribution.
Hence analogies drawn from the family do not apply to the
civil government and still less to divine government, when guilt and
retribution are the subjects under consideration. Guilt and retribution are
not res domi;92
they are not family affairs. The family was not established for the purpose
of punishing criminals, but of educating children. Because a human father
may forgive a child, that is, may forego the infliction of suffering for an
offense, without any satisfaction being rendered for him by a substitute and
without any reference to the claims of law, it does not follow that the
state can do this or that the supreme ruler can. Within the sphere of family
life, there is nothing judicial and retributive. There is, therefore, no
analogy between the two spheres. There can be no legitimate arguing from a
sphere in which the retributive element is altogether excluded, such as that
of the father and the child, over into a sphere in which the retributive is
the prime element, such as that of God the just and man the guilty. It is
metabasis eis
allo genos.93
A parent is at liberty in case he judges that in a particular instance the
child will be morally the better for so doing to forego chastisement
altogether. He can pass by the transgression without inflicting any pain at
all upon the child. But the magistrate has no right to do this in the
instance of crime against the state. He must cause each and every
transgression to receive the penalty prescribed by the statute. Furthermore,
since chastisement has no reference to crime, it is not graduated by justice
and the degree of the offense, but by expediency and the aim to reform.
Sometimes a small fault in a child may be chastised with a severe
infliction, and a great fault with a mild one. The object not being to weigh
out penalty in exact proportion to crime, but to discipline and reform the
character, the amount of suffering inflicted is measured by this aim and
object. A very slight offense, if there is a tendency frequently to repeat
it on the part of the child, may require a heavy chastisement, so that the
habit may be broken up. And on the other hand, a very grave offense which is
exceptional in its nature and to which there is no habitual tendency on the
part of the child, may be best managed with a slight infliction of pain or
even with none at all. A rebuke merely may be better adapted to promote the
reformation of the offender. All this is illustrated in God�s dealings with
his own children. A Christian of uncommon excellence to human view sometimes
experiences a great affliction, while one of less devoutness, apparently, is
only slightly afflicted or perhaps not at all. This difference is not caused
by the degree of demerit in each instance, but by what the divine eye sees
to be required in each case in order to the best development of character.
Now the relation of a believer to God is like that of the
child to the earthly father. Man enters into God�s heavenly family by the
act of faith in Christ. All the suffering that befalls him in this sphere is
therefore of the nature of chastisement, not of punishment or retribution.
It is not intrinsically endless and hopeless, as divine retribution is: �I
will visit their transgression with the rod; nevertheless my loving-kindness
I will not utterly take from him�; �he will not always chide; neither will
he keep his anger forever� (Ps. 89:31�34; 103:9; Jer. 10:24). The penalty
due to the believer�s sin has been endured for him by his Redeemer, and
therefore there is no need of his enduring it. Justice does not exact
penalty twice over. Consequently, whenever the believer suffers pain from
any cause or source whatever, he is not suffering retributive punishment for
purposes of law and justice, but corrective chastisement for purposes of
self-discipline and spiritual improvement:
epi to sympheron94
(Heb. 12:10). This suffering, though for the present moment not joyous but
grievous, yet after it has been submissively endured, works out the
peaceable fruit of righteousness (12:11). Even death itself, which is the
climax of suffering, is not penal for a believer. Its sting, that is, its
retributive quality, is extracted (1 Cor. 15:55�56). Suffering is penal when
it is intended and felt to be such and is chastisement when it is not so
intended and felt. God intends a benefit, not a punishment, when he causes a
believer in Christ to suffer the pains of dissolution; and the believer so
understands it. He feels that it is fatherly discipline. When a penitent
believer dies, God supports and comforts the departing soul; but when an
impenitent unbeliever dies, the soul is left to itself without support and
comfort from God. The tranquilizing presence of God converts death into
chastisement; the absence of such a presence makes it penalty. (See
supplement 6.2.4.)
The relation of a rebellious and unbelieving man to God
is like that of a rebellious citizen to the state. All that such a citizen
can expect from the government under which he lives is justice, the due
reward of his disobedience. The state is not the family, and what is
peculiar to the one is not to the other. The disobedient citizen cannot
expect from the magistrate the patient forbearance and affectionate tuition
which the disobedient child meets with from a parent with a view to his
discipline and moral improvement. The citizen is entitled only to justice,
and if he gets it in the form of the righteous punishment of his crime he
must be silent. No man may complain of justice or quarrel with it. To do so
is an absurdity, as well as a fault. By creation, man was within the circle
both of divine government and the divine family. Holy Adam was at once a
subject and a child. By apostasy and rebellion, he threw himself out of the
circle of God�s family, but not out of the circle of God�s government.
Sinful man is invited and even commanded to reenter the divine family when
he is invited and commanded to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for the
remission of his sins. But so long as he is an unbeliever, he has not
reentered it and is not an affectionate or �dear� child of God. The
phraseology in Jer. 31:20 (Ephraim is �my dear son�); Eph. 5:1 (�be
followers of God as dear children�); Rom. 8:16�17 (�the Spirit itself bears
witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children
then heirs�); Gal. 3:26 (�you are the children of God by faith in Christ
Jesus�); and Matt. 5:9 (�the peacemakers shall be called the children of
God�) is not applicable to men indiscriminately, but only to believers. The
childhood and the fatherhood in this case is special, because it is founded
in redemption.
There is a providential fatherhood and childhood spoken
of in Scripture which is not sufficient to constitute fallen man a member of
God�s heavenly family. In Acts 17:28 all men are called the �offspring� of
God; and in Mal. 2:10 the question is asked: we not all one father?� This
providential fatherhood and childhood is founded in creation. This is proved
by a second question in 2:10, which follows the one already cited and
explains it: �Has not one God created us?� And in Acts 17:26 the reason
given why all nations are the offspring of God is that they are �made of one
blood� by their Creator. Creation is a kind of paternity. In Job 38:28�29
this is extended even to the inanimate creation: �Has the rain a father? Or
who has begotten the drops of the dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? And
the hoary frost of heaven, who has gendered it?� In Deut. 2:27 idolatrous
Israel is represented as �saying to a stock, You are my father; and to a
stone, You have brought me forth.� In acknowledging a false God to be their
maker, they acknowledged him to be their providential father. In accordance
with this, God says to a wicked generation �whose spot is not the spot of
his children,� who are not �dear� children in the special sense: �Do you
thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is not he your father
that bought you? Has he not made you and established you?� (Deut. 32:6). Our
Lord teaches (Matt. 7:11) that �evil� men have a �father in heaven� and
explains this fatherhood by God�s readiness to bestow �good things� in his
general providence. This association of paternity with creation and
providence is found also in secular literature. Plato (Timaeus
9) says that �to discover the Creator and Father of this universe is indeed
difficult.� Horace (Odes
1.12) speaks of �the Father of all, who governs the affairs of men and
gods.� Creation, together with providence and government which are
necessarily associated with creation, is a solid basis for this kind of
paternity. It implies benevolent care and kindness toward its objects, and
these are paternal qualities. God�s providential and governmental goodness
toward all his rational creatures is often referred to in Scripture: �Your
Father which is in heaven makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and
sends rain upon the just and the unjust� (Matt. 5:45); �he left not himself
without witness, in that he did good and gave us rain from heaven and
fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness� (Acts 14:17).
The fact, then, that God creates man after his own image
a rational and immortal being, that he continually upholds him and extends
to him the blessings of a kind and watchful providence, and still more that
he compassionates him in his sinful and guilty condition and provides for
him a way of salvation�all this justifies the use of the term
father in reference to God
and the term child
in reference to man. But the fatherhood and childhood, in this case, are
different from those of redemption and adoption. The former may exist
without the latter. God as the universal parent, while showing providential
benevolence and kindness to an impenitent sinner, �filling his mouth with
food and gladness� all the days of his earthly existence, may finally punish
him forever for his ungrateful abuse of paternal goodness, for his
transgression of moral law, and especially for his rejection of the offer of
forgiveness in Christ. And this lost man is still, even in his lost
condition, one of God�s �offspring.� Abraham, speaking in the place of God,
calls Dives in hell a child of the universal parent: �Son, remember that you
in your lifetime received your good things� (Luke 16:25). And Dives
recognizes the relationship when he says, �Father Abraham, have mercy on me�
(16:24). The providential fatherhood of God is thus shown to be consistent
with the punishment of a rebellious son. It is also consistent with the
refusal to abate the merited punishment. Dives asks for a drop of water to
cool his tongue and is refused. Dives was an impenitent man. He did not
confess his sin or implore its forgiveness. He only asked for deliverance
from suffering. He lacked the spirit of the prodigal son and of the penitent
thief. He did not say, �Father, I have sinned and am no more worthy to be
called your son; make me as one of your hired servants. I am in this
condemnation justly. I am receiving the due reward of my deeds.�
The universal fatherhood and childhood may exist without
the special, but not the special without the universal. There may be
creation, providence, and government without redemption, but not redemption
without the former. A man may experience all the blessings of God�s general
paternity without those of his special, but not the blessings of God�s
special fatherhood without those of his general. Christ speaks of those who
are not God�s children in the special sense, when he says, in reply to the
assertion of the Jews that �we have one Father, even God�: �If God were your
Father, you would love me. You are of your father, the devil� (John
8:41�44). St. John refers to the same class in the words �in this the
children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil� (1 John 3:10).
When men universally are commanded to say �our Father who
is in heaven,� they are commanded to do so with the heart, not with the lips
merely. They have no permission to employ the terms of the family from the
position of a rebel. Says Christ, �Why call me Lord, Lord, and do not the
things which I say?� (Luke 6:46). In like manner God says, �A son honors his
father: If I be a father, where is my honor?� (Mal. 1:6). The fact of the
providential fatherhood, as previously remarked, is not sufficient to
constitute fallen men members of God�s heavenly family. Unfallen man was a
member of the heavenly family merely by the fatherhood of creation and
providence; but after his rebellion and apostasy this ceased to be the case.
Redemption was needed in order to restore him to membership. The whole human
family is not now God�s heavenly family. Only a part of it are the dear
children of God. Those only are members of God�s family who are members of
Christ, �of whom the whole family in heaven and earth [the church above and
below] is named� (Eph. 3:15). All others �are bastards and not sons� (Heb.
12:8).95
The third species of suffering is punishment. This is
pain inflicted because of guilt. The intention of it is the satisfaction of
justice. Retributive justice is expressed in the saying �an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth.� This is the lex talionis96or
law of requital.97
Our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, did not abolish this law, but placed
its execution upon the proper basis. �That which was addressed to the
judges,� says Calvin (Henry, Life
1.287), �private individuals applied to themselves, and it was this abuse
which our Lord Jesus Christ would correct.� The private person may not put
out the eye of him who has put out an eye, but the government may.
Retribution is not the function of the individual. It belongs to God and to
the government, which is ordained of God: �Dearly beloved, avenge not
yourselves; for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the
Lord� (Rom. 12:19). This retributive function is delegated by God to the
magistrate: �For he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon
him that does evil� (13:4). When the private individual takes the
lex talionis98
into his own hands, it is revenge. Christ forbade this. When God or the
government administers it, it is vengeance. Christ did not forbid this. The
former is selfish and wrong; the latter is dispassionate and right.
That particular amount and kind of suffering which is
required by the law of requital is punishment. Its primary aim is the
satisfaction of justice, not utility to the criminal. The criminal is
sacrificed to justice. His private interest is subservient to that of law
and government, because the latter is of more importance than the former.
Even if he derives no personal benefit from the retribution which he
experiences, the one sufficient reason for it still holds good, namely, that
he has voluntarily transgressed and deserves to suffer for it. Both the
quantity and the quality of the suffering must be considered, in order to
penalty. In the first place, the amount of the suffering must be
proportionate to the offense. To take human life for a petty larceny would
be unjust. To take money as an offset for murder would be unjust. In the
second place, suffering must be intended as penal and felt to be penal in
order to be penal. It must have this retributive quality. Two men might
suffer from God precisely the same amount of suffering, and in one case it
might be retribution and in the other chastisement, because in the one case
his intention was the satisfaction of law, in the other the correction of
his child. Physical death in the case of a wicked man is penal evil, because
it is designed as a punishment on the part of God and is felt to be such by
the man. God grants no comfort to the wicked in his death; the sting is not
extracted, and death is remorseful and punitive. But the very same event of
death and the same suffering in amount is chastisement and not punishment
for a believer, because it is accompanied with inward strength from God to
endure it and is known to be the means of entrance into heaven.
The sufferings of Christ the mediator were vicariously
penal or atoning because the intention, both on the part of the Father and
the Son, was that they should satisfy justice for the sin of man. They were
not calamity, for their object is known. The reason for calamitous suffering
is secret. And they were not disciplinary, because Christ having no sin
could not pass through a process of progressive sanctification. Scripture
plainly teaches that our Lord�s sufferings were vicariously retributive;
that is, they were endured for the purpose of satisfying justice in the
place of the actual transgressor: �Christ has once suffered for sins, the
just for the unjust� (1 Pet. 3:18); �Christ was made a curse for us� (Gal.
3:13); �Immanuel was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our
iniquities� (Isa. 53:5); �Jesus our Lord was delivered for our offenses�
(Rom. 4:25); �he has made him to be sin [a sin offering] for us, who knew no
sin� (2 Cor. 5:21); �he is the propitiation for our sins� (1 John 2:2);
�behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world� (John 1:29);
�he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all� (Rom. 8:32).
With this, compare 2 Pet. 2:4: �He spared not the angels that sinned, but
cast them down to hell.� Penalty in the case of Christ was vicarious; in
that of the fallen angels was personal.
The penal and atoning sufferings of Christ were twofold:
ordinary and extraordinary. The first came upon him by virtue of his human
nature. He hungered, thirsted, was weary in body, was sad and grieved in
mind, by the operation of the natural laws of matter and mind. All that
Christ endured by virtue of his being born of a woman, being made under the
law, living a human life, and dying a violent death belongs to this class.
The extraordinary sufferings in Christ�s experience came upon him by virtue
of a positive act and infliction on the part of God. To these belong, also,
all those temptations by Satan which exceeded in their force the common
temptations incident to ordinary human life. Through these Christ was caused
to suffer more severely than any of his disciples have. And that this was an
intentional and preconceived infliction on the part of God, for the purpose
of causing the sinner�s substitute to endure a judicial suffering, is proved
by the statement that �Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to
be tempted of the devil� (Matt. 4:1). These severe temptations from Satan
occurred more than once: �The devil departed from him for a season� (Luke
4:13). But still more extraordinary was that suffering which was caused in
the soul of Christ by the immediate agency of God in the garden and on the
cross. That agony which forced the blood through the pores of the skin and
wrung from the patient and mighty heart of the God-man the cry, �My God, why
have you forsaken me!� cannot be explained by the operation of natural laws.
There was positive desertion and infliction on the part of God. The human
nature was forsaken, as the words of Christ imply. That support and comfort
which the humanity had enjoyed, in greater or less degree, during the life
of the God-man upon earth was now withdrawn utterly and entirely. One
consequence of this was that the physical suffering involved in the
crucifixion was unmitigated. Christ had no such support as his confessors
have always had in the hour of martyrdom. But this was the least severe part
of Christ�s extraordinary suffering. The pain from the death of crucifixion
was physical only. There was over and above this a mental distress that was
far greater. This is indicated in the terms employed to describe the
spiritual condition of Christ�s soul, in the so-called agony in the garden:
�He began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy and says unto them, My soul
is exceeding sorrowful unto death� (Mark 14:33�34). The words
ekthambeisthai99
and adēmonein100
imply a species of mental distress that stuns and bewilders. This mental
suffering cannot be explained upon ordinary psychological principles, but
must be referred to a positive act of God. Christ was sinless and perfect.
His inward distress did not result from the workings of a guilty conscience.
The agony in the garden and on the cross was not that of remorse; though it
was equal to it. Neither was it the agony of despair; though it was equal to
it.101
The positive agency of God, in causing a particular kind
of suffering to befall the mediator which could not have befallen him by the
operation of natural causes, is spoken of in Isa. 53:5�6, 10: �He was
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The Lord
has laid on him the iniquity of us all. It pleased the Lord to bruise him.�
And again in Zech. 13:7: �Awake, O sword, against my shepherd and against
the man that is my fellow, says the Lord of hosts; smite the shepherd.� This
language teaches that the incarnate second person of the Trinity received
upon himself a stroke inflicted by the positive act of another divine
person. The Son of God was bruised, wounded, and smitten by God the Father,
as the officer and agent of divine justice; and the effects of it appear in
that extraordinary mental distress which the mediator exhibited,
particularly during the last hours of his earthly life: �While he was
buffeted, scourged, and nailed to the cross, we hear nothing from him; but
like a lamb before the shearers, he was mute. But when God reached forth his
hand and darted his immediate rebukes into his very soul and spirit, then he
cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!�102
The nature of this suffering is inexplicable, because it
has no parallel in human consciousness. The other forms of Christ�s
suffering are intelligible, because they were like those of men. Thirst,
hunger, weariness, grief at the death of a friend, were the same in Christ
that they are in us. But that strange and unique experience which uttered
itself in the cry �My God, why have you forsaken me?� belongs to the
consciousness of the God-man. Only he who occupied the actual position of
the sinner�s substitute can experience such a judicial stroke from eternal
justice, and only he can know the peculiarity of the suffering which it
produces. Suffering is a form of consciousness, and consciousness can be
known only by the possessor of it. (See supplement 6.2.5.)
There are some particulars respecting this positive
infliction upon the mediator which must be carefully noted. Though the
Father �smote,� �wounded,� and �bruised� the Son, he felt no emotional anger
toward the person of the Son. The emotional wrath of God is revealed only
against personal unrighteousness, and Christ was holy, harmless, undefiled,
and separate from sinners. The Father smote his �beloved Son, in whom he was
well pleased� (Matt. 3:17). At the very instant when the Father forsook the
Son, he loved him emotionally and personally with the same infinite
affection with which he had loved him �before the world was.� When it is
said that Christ experienced the �wrath of God,� the meaning is that he
experienced a judicial suffering caused by God. The �wrath� of God in this
instance is not a divine emotion, but a divine act by which God the Father
caused pain in Jesus Christ for a particular purpose. This purpose is
judicial and penal, and therefore the act may be called an act of wrath.
�The wrath of God is his will to punish�103
(Anselm, Why the God-Man?
1.6). In Rom. 13:4 the infliction of suffering by the magistrate upon the
criminal is denominated an act of �wrath�: �He is the minister of wrath.�
But the magistrate has no emotional anger toward the criminal. God the
Father could love the Son, therefore, at the very instant when he visited
him with this punitive act. His emotion might be love, while his act was
wrath. Nay, his love might be drawn forth by this very willingness of the
Son to suffer vicariously for the salvation of man. �We do not admit,� says
Calvin (2.16.11), �that God was ever hostile or [emotionally] angry with
him. For how could he be angry with his beloved Son in whom his soul
delighted? or how could Christ by his intercession appease the Father for
others, if the Father were incensed against him? But we affirm that he
sustained the weight of divine severity; since being smitten and afflicted
of God, he experienced from God all the tokens of wrath and vengeance.� Says
Witsius (Covenants
2.6.38):
To be the beloved Son of God and
at the same time to suffer the wrath of God are not such contrary things as
that they cannot stand together. For, as Son, as the Holy One, while obeying
the Father in all things, he was always the beloved; and indeed most of all
when obedient to the death of the cross; for that was so pleasing to the
Father that on account of it he raised him to the highest pitch of
exaltation (Phil.
2:9); though as charged
with our sins he felt the wrath of God burning not against himself, but
against our sins which he took upon himself.
Second, the Son of God understands the judicial
infliction which he undergoes, in this sense. God the Son knows that the
blow which he experiences from God the Father is not for sin which he has
himself committed. The transaction between the two divine persons is of the
nature of a covenant between them. The Son agrees to submit his person,
incarnate, to a penal infliction that is required by the attribute of
justice. But this attribute is as much an attribute of the Son as it is of
the Father. The second trinitarian person is as much concerned for the
maintenance of law as is the first. The Son of God is not seized an
unwilling victim and offered to justice by the Father. The Son himself is
willing and desires to suffer. �I have,� he says, �a baptism to be baptized
with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished� (Luke 12:50). This
explains the fact that Christ everywhere represents himself as voluntarily
giving up his life: �No man takes my life from me; I lay it down of myself�
(John 10:18). In some instances he employs his miraculous power to prevent
his life from being taken because �his hour was not yet come.� But when the
hour had come, though in the full consciousness that �twelve legions of
angels� were at his command, he suffers himself to be seized by a handful of
men, to be bound, and to be nailed to a cross. So far as the feature of mere
voluntariness is concerned, no suicide was ever more voluntary in the manner
of his death than was Jesus Christ.
Christ�s Active and Passive
Obedience
A distinction is made between Christ�s active and passive
obedience.104
The latter denotes Christ�s sufferings of every kind�the sum total of the
sorrow and pain which he endured in his estate of humiliation. The term
passive is used
etymologically. His suffering is denominated �obedience� because it came by
reason of his submission to the conditions under which he voluntarily placed
himself when he consented to be the sinner�s substitute. He vicariously
submitted to the sentence �the soul that sins, it shall die� and was
�obedient unto death� (Phil. 2:8).
Christ�s passive or suffering obedience is not to be
confined to what he experienced in the garden and on the cross. This
suffering was the culmination of his piacular sorrow, but not the whole of
it. Everything in his human and earthly career that was distressing belongs
to his passive obedience. It is a true remark of Edwards that the blood of
Christ�s circumcision was as really a part of his vicarious atonement as the
blood that flowed from his pierced side. And not only his suffering proper,
but his humiliation, also, was expiatory, because this was a kind of
suffering. Says Edwards (Redemption
2.1.2):
The satisfaction or propitiation
of Christ consists either in his suffering evil or his being subject to
abasement. Thus Christ made satisfaction for sin by continuing under the
power of death while he lay buried in the grave, though neither his body nor
soul properly endured any suffering after he was dead. Whatever Christ was
subject to that was the judicial fruit of sin had the nature of satisfaction
for sin. But not only proper suffering, but all abasement and depression of
the state and circumstances of mankind [human nature] below its primitive
honor and dignity, such as his body remaining under death, and body and soul
remaining separate, and other things that might be mentioned, are the
judicial fruits of sin.
Christ�s active obedience is his perfect performance of
the requirements of the moral law. He obeyed this law in heart and in
conduct, without a single slip or failure. He was �holy, harmless, and
undefiled� (Heb. 7:26). Some theologians confine Christ�s atonement to his
passive obedience, in such sense that his active obedience does not enter
into it and make a part of it.105
Since atonement consists in suffering and since obedience of the divine law
is not suffering but happiness, they contend that Christ�s active obedience
cannot contribute anything that is strictly piacular or atoning. This would
be true in reference to the active obedience of a mere creature, but not in
reference to the active obedience of the God-man. It is no humiliation for a
created being to be a citizen of divine government, to be made under the
law, and to be required to obey it. But it is humiliation for the Son of God
to be so made and to be so required to obey. It is stooping down when the
Ruler of the universe becomes a subject and renders obedience to a superior.
Insofar as Christ�s active obedience was an element in his humiliation, it
was an element also in his expiation. Consequently, we must say that both
the active and the passive obedience enter into the sum total of Christ�s
atoning work. Christ�s humiliation confessedly was atoning, and his
obedience of the law was a part of his humiliation. The two forms of
Christ�s obedience cannot therefore be so entirely separated from each other
as is implied in this theory which confines the piacular agency of the
mediator to his passive obedience.
But while there is this atoning element in Christ�s
active obedience, it is yet true that the principal reference of the active
obedience is to the law as precept, rather than to the law as penalty. It is
more meritorious of reward than it is piacular of guilt. The chief function
of Christ�s obedience of the moral law is to earn a title for the believer
to the rewards of heaven. This part of Christ�s agency is necessary, because
merely to atone for past transgression would not be a complete salvation. It
would, indeed, save man from hell, but it would not introduce him into
heaven. He would be delivered from the law�s punishment, but would not be
entitled to the law�s reward: �The man which does the things of the law
shall live by them� (Rom. 10:5). Mere innocence is not entitled to a reward.
Obedience is requisite in order to this. Adam was not meritorious until he
had obeyed the commandment, �Do this.� Before he could �enter into life,� he
must �keep the commandment,� like every subject of divine government and
candidate for heavenly reward. The mediator, therefore, must not only suffer
for man, but must obey for him, if he would do for man everything that the
law requires. Accordingly, Christ is said to be made of God unto the
believer �wisdom� and �sanctification� as well as �righteousness� and
�redemption� (1 Cor. 1:30). Believers are described as �complete� in Christ
(Col. 1:10); that is, they are entitled to eternal blessedness as well as
delivered from eternal misery. Christ is said to be �the end (telos)106
of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes� (Rom. 10:4). This
means that Christ completely fulfills the law for the believer; but the law
requires obedience to its precept as well as endurance of its penalty.
Complete righteousness is conformity to the law in both respects: �By his
obedience shall many be made righteous� (Rom. 5:19); �by his knowledge shall
my righteous servant justify many� (Isa. 53:11); �the Lord our
righteousness� (Jer. 23:6); �in the Lord have I righteousness� (45:24; Rom.
8:4; Phil. 3:9; 2 Cor. 5:21).
The imputation of Christ�s active obedience is necessary,
also, in order to hope and confidence respecting the endless future. If the
believer founds his expectation of an eternity of blessedness upon the
amount of obedience which he has himself rendered to the law and the degree
of holiness which he has personally attained here upon earth, he is filled
with doubt and fear respecting the final recompense. He knows that he has
not, by his own work, earned and merited such an infinite reward as �glory,
honor, and immortality�: �We cannot by our best works merit eternal life at
the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion between them and the
glory to come� (Westminster Confession 16.5).107
But if he founds his title to eternal life and his expectation of it upon
the obedience of Christ for him, his anxiety disappears. (See supplement
6.2.6.)
A distinction is made by some theologians between
�satisfaction� and �atonement.� Christ�s satisfaction is his fulfilling the
law both as precept and penalty. Christ�s atonement, as antithetic to
satisfaction, includes only what Christ does to fulfill the law as penalty.
According to this distinction, Christ�s atonement would be a part of his
satisfaction. The objections to this mode of distinguishing are that (a)
satisfaction is better fitted to denote Christ�s piacular work than his
whole work of redemption; in theological literature, it is more commonly the
synonym of atonement; (b) by this distinction, atonement may be made to rest
upon the passive obedience alone to the exclusion of the active. This will
depend upon whether �obedience� is employed in the comprehensive sense of
including all that Christ underwent in his estate of humiliation, both in
obeying and suffering.
Another distinction is made by some between
�satisfaction� and �merit.� In this case, �satisfaction� is employed in a
restricted signification. It denotes the satisfaction of retributive justice
and has respect to the law as penalty. Thus employed, the term is equivalent
to �atonement.� �Merit� as antithetic to �satisfaction� has respect to the
law as precept and is founded upon Christ�s active obedience. Christ
vicariously obeys the law and so vicariously merits for the believer the
reward of eternal life. Respecting this distinction, Turretin (14.13.12)
remarks that
the two things are not to be
separated from each other. We are not to say as some do that the
�satisfaction� is by the passive work of Christ alone and that the �merit�
is by the active work alone. The satisfaction and the merit are not to be
thus viewed in isolation, each by itself, because the benefit in each
depends upon the total work of Christ. For sin cannot be expiated until the
law as precept has been perfectly fulfilled; nor can a title to eternal life
be merited before the guilt of sin has been atoned for.
Meruit ergo satisfaciendo, et merendo
satisfecit.108
There is some ambiguity in this distinction, also. The
term merit is
often applied to Christ�s passive obedience as well as to his active. The
�merit of Christ�s blood� is a familiar phrase. The mediator was meritorious
in reference to the law�s penalty as well as to the law�s precept.109
Atonement and Its Necessity in
Relation to Divine Justice
Having thus considered the nature of atonement and the
sufferings of the mediator as constituting it, we proceed to notice some
further characteristics of it.
In the first place, atonement is correlated to justice,
not to benevolence. Some have maintained that retributive justice is a phase
of benevolence. They would ultimately reduce all the moral attributes to
one, namely, divine love. This theory is built upon the text �God is love.�
But there are texts affirming that �God is light� (1 John 1:5) and that �God
is a consuming fire� (Heb. 12:29). The affirmation �holy, holy, holy is the
Lord of Hosts� (Isa. 6:3) is equivalent to �God is holiness.� Upon the
strength of these texts, it might be contended that all divine attributes
may be reduced to that of wisdom or of justice or of holiness.110
The true view is that each of the attributes stands side by side with all
the others and cannot be merged and lost in any other. Justice is no more a
phase of benevolence than benevolence is a phase of justice. Each attribute
has a certain distinctive characteristic which does not belong to the others
and by which it is a different attribute. The fact that one divine attribute
affects and influences another does not convert one into another.
Omnipotence acts wisely, but this does not prove that omnipotence is a mode
of wisdom. God�s justice acts benevolently, not malevolently, but this does
not prove that justice is a mode of benevolence. God�s benevolence acts
justly, not unjustly, but this does not prove that benevolence is a mode of
justice. Divine attributes do not find a center of unity in any one of their
own number, but in the divine essence. It is the divine nature itself, not
the divine attribute of love or any other attribute, in which they all
inhere.
Accordingly, the atoning sufferings and death of Christ
are related to the attribute of justice rather than to any other one of the
divine attributes. They manifest and exhibit other attributes, such as
wisdom, omnipotence, benevolence, and compassion, nay, all the other
attributes, but they are an atonement only for retributive justice. Christ�s
death does not propitiate or satisfy God�s benevolence nor his wisdom nor
his omnipotence; but it satisfies his justice. Atonement cannot be
correlated to benevolence, any more than creation can be correlated to
omniscience. It is true that the creation of the world supposes omniscience,
but creation is an act of power rather than of knowledge and is therefore
referred to omnipotence, rather than to omniscience. In like manner,
Christ�s atonement supposes benevolence in God, but benevolence is not the
particular attribute that requires the atonement. It is retributive justice
that demands the punishment of sin. If there were in God mere and isolated
benevolence, there would be neither personal nor vicarious punishment; just
as there would be no creation if there were in God mere and isolated
omniscience. Benevolence alone and wholly disconnected from justice would
not cause pain but pleasure. It would relieve from suffering instead of
inflicting it. St. Paul in Rom. 5:7 teaches the diversity between the
attribute of justice and that of benevolence, in saying that �scarcely for a
just man will one die; yet peradventure for a benevolent man some would even
dare to die.�111
Second, an atonement for sin of one kind or the other, if
not personal then vicarious, is necessary, not optional. The transgressor
must either die himself, or someone must die for him. This arises from the
nature of that divine attribute to which atonement is a correlate.
Retributive justice, we have seen (pp. 297�302), is necessary in its
operation. The claim of law upon the transgressor for punishment is absolute
and indefeasible. The eternal judge may or may not exercise mercy, but he
must exercise justice. He can neither waive the claims of law in part nor
abolish them altogether. The only possible mode, consequently, of delivering
a creature who is obnoxious to the demands of retributive justice is to
satisfy them for him. The claims themselves must be met and extinguished,
either personally or by substitution: �Let justice fall from heaven.�112
And this necessity of an atonement is absolute, not relative. It is not made
necessary by divine decision in the sense that the divine decision might
have been otherwise. It is not correct to say that God might have saved man
without a vicarious atonement had he been pleased so to do. For this is
equivalent to saying that God might have abolished the claims of law and
justice had he been pleased to do so.
In the third place, atonement, either personal or
vicarious, naturally and necessarily cancels legal claims. This means that
there is such a natural and necessary correlation between vicarious
atonement and justice that the former supplies all that is required by the
latter. It does not mean that Christ�s vicarious atonement naturally and
necessarily saves every man; because the relation of Christ�s atonement to
divine justice is one thing, but the relation of a particular person to
Christ�s atonement is a very different thing. Christ�s death as related to
the claims of the law upon all mankind cancels those claims wholly. It is an
infinite �propitiation for the sins of the whole world� (1 John 2:2). But
the relation of an impenitent person to this atonement is that of unbelief
and rejection of it. Consequently, what the atonement has effected
objectively in reference to the attribute of divine justice is not effected
subjectively in the conscience of the individual. There is an infinite
satisfaction that naturally and necessarily cancels legal claims, but
unbelief derives no benefit from the fact.
In like manner, a personal atonement naturally and
necessarily cancels legal claims. When the prescribed human penalty has been
personally endured by the criminal, human justice is satisfied, and there
are no more outstanding claims upon him. And this, by reason of the
essential nature of justice. Justice insists upon nothing but what is due,
and when it obtains this, it shows its righteousness in not requiring
anything further, as it does in not accepting anything less. Consequently,
personal atonement operates inevitably and, we might almost say,
mechanically. If a criminal suffers the penalty affixed to his crime, he
owes nothing more in the way of penalty to the law. He cannot be punished a
second time. Law and justice cannot now touch him, so far as this particular
crime and this particular penalty are concerned. It would be unjust to cause
him the least jot or tittle of further retributive suffering for that crime
which by the supposition he has personally atoned for. The law now owes him
immunity from suffering anything more. It is not grace in the law not to
punish him any further, but it is debt. The law itself is under obligation
not to punish a criminal who has once been punished. St. Paul says
respecting grace and debt in the case of active obedience that �to him that
works is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt; otherwise work is no
more work� (Rom. 4:4; 11:6). In like manner, it may be said that �to him who
atones for sin, the legal consequence of atonement is not reckoned of grace
but of debt; otherwise atonement is no more atonement.�
This reasoning applies to vicarious atonement equally
with personal. Justice does not require a second sacrifice from Christ in
addition to the first: �Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many�
(Heb. 10:28). This one offering expiated �the sins of the whole world,� and
justice is completely satisfied in reference to them. The death of the
God-man naturally and necessarily canceled all legal claims. When a
particular person trusts in this infinite atonement and it is imputed to him
by God, it then becomes his atonement for judicial purposes as really as if
he had made it himself, and then it naturally and necessarily cancels his
personal guilt, and he has the testimony that it does in his peace of
conscience. Divine justice does not, in this case, require an additional
atonement from the believer. It does not demand penal suffering from a
person for whom a divine substitute has rendered a full satisfaction, which
justice itself has accepted in reference to this very person. By accepting a
vicarious atonement for a particular individual, divine justice precludes
itself from requiring a personal atonement from him. Accordingly, Scripture
represents the noninfliction of penalty upon the believer in Christ�s
atonement as an act of justice to Christ and also to the believer viewed as
one with Christ: �If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins� (1 John 1:9); �who shall lay anything to the charge of God�s
elect? Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died� (Rom. 8:33�34). The
atoning mediator can demand upon principles of strict justice the release
from penalty of any sinful man in respect to whom he makes the demand. And
if in such a case we should suppose the demand to be refused by eternal
justice, we should suppose a case in which eternal justice is unjust. For,
by the supposition, justice has inflicted upon the mediator the full penalty
due to this sinner and then refuses to the mediator that release of this
sinner from penalty which the mediator has earned by his own suffering and
which is now absolutely due to him as the reward of his suffering. Says
Edwards (Wisdom in Salvation
in Works 4.150):
It is so ordered now that the
glory of the attribute of divine justice requires the salvation of those
that believe. The justice of God that [irrespective of Christ�s atonement]
required man�s damnation and seemed inconsistent with his salvation now
[having respect to Christ�s atonement] as much requires the salvation of
those that believe in Christ, as ever before it required their damnation.
Salvation is an absolute debt to the believer from God, so that he may in
justice demand it on the ground of what his surety has done. (see also
Edwards, God�s
Sovereignty in
Works
4.552)
Similarly Anselm (Why the
God-Man? 2.20) asks, �Can anything be more
just than for God to remit all debt, when in the sufferings of the God-man
he receives a satisfaction greater than all the debt?� Says Ezekiel Hopkins
(Exposition of the Lord�s Prayer):
The pardon of sin is not merely an
act of mercy, but also an act of justice. What abundant cause of comfort may
this be to all believers that God�s justice as well as his mercy shall
acquit them; that that attribute of God at the apprehension of which they
are wont to tremble should interpose in their behalf and plead for them! And
yet, through the all-sufficient expiation and atonement that Christ has made
for our sins, this mystery is affected and justice itself brought over from
being a formidable
adversary to be of our party and to plead for us. (Shedd,
Theological Essays,
310�16)
It may be asked: If atonement naturally and necessarily
cancels guilt, why does not the vicarious atonement of Christ save all men
indiscriminately, as the universalist contends? The substituted suffering of
Christ being infinite is equal in value to the personal suffering of all
mankind; why then are not all men upon the same footing and in the class of
the saved, by virtue of it? The answer is because it is a natural
impossibility. Vicarious atonement without faith in it is powerless to save.
It is not the making of this atonement, but the trusting in it, that saves
the sinner: �By faith are you saved� (Eph. 2:8); �he that believes shall be
saved� (Mark 16:16). The making of this atonement merely satisfies the legal
claims, and this is all that it does. If it were made but never imputed and
appropriated, it would result in no salvation. A substituted satisfaction of
justice without an act of trust in it would be useless to sinners. It is as
naturally impossible that Christ�s death should save from punishment one who
does not confide in it as that a loaf of bread should save from starvation a
man who does not eat it. The assertion that because the atonement of Christ
is sufficient for all men therefore no men are lost is as absurd as the
assertion that because the grain produced in the year 1880 was sufficient to
support the life of all men on the globe therefore no men died of starvation
during that year. The mere fact that Jesus Christ made satisfaction for
human sin, alone and of itself, will save no soul. Christ, conceivably,
might have died precisely as he did and his death have been just as valuable
for expiatory purposes as it is, but if his death had not been followed with
the work of the Holy Spirit and the act of faith on the part of individual
men, he would have died in vain. Unless his objective work is subjectively
appropriated, it is useless so far as personal salvation is concerned.
Christ�s suffering is sufficient to cancel the guilt of all men and in its
own nature completely satisfies the broken law. But all men do not make it
their own atonement by faith in it by pleading the merit of it in prayer and
mentioning it as the reason and ground of their pardon. They do not regard
and use it as their own possession and blessing. It is nothing for them but
a historical fact. In this state of things, the atonement of Christ is
powerless to save. It remains in the possession of Christ who made it and
has not been transferred to the individual. In the scriptural phrase, it has
not been �imputed.� There may be a sum of money in the hands of a rich man
that is sufficient in amount to pay the debts of a million debtors; but
unless they individually take money from his hands into their own, they
cannot pay their debts with it. There must be a personal act of each debtor
in order that this sum of money on deposit may actually extinguish
individual indebtedness. Should one of the debtors, when payment is demanded
of him, merely say that there is an abundance of money on deposit, but take
no steps himself to get it and pay it to his creditor, he would be told that
an undrawn deposit is not a payment of a debt. �The act of God,� says Owen (Justification,
chap. 10), �in laying our sins on Christ, conveyed no title to us to what
Christ did and suffered. This doing and suffering is not immediately by
virtue thereof ours or esteemed ours; because God has appointed something
else [namely, faith] not only antecedent thereto, but as the means of it.�
(See supplement 6.2.7.)
The supposition that the objective satisfaction of
justice by Christ saves of and by itself, without any application of it by
the Holy Spirit and without any trust in it by the individual man, overlooks
the fact that while sin has a resemblance to a pecuniary debt, as is taught
in the petition �forgive us our debts,� it differs from it in two important
particulars. In the instance of pecuniary indebtedness, there is no need of
a consent and arrangement on the part of the creditor when there is a
vicarious payment. Any person may step up and discharge a money obligation
for a debtor, and the obligation ceases ipso facto.
But in the instance of moral indebtedness to justice or guilt, there must be
a consent of the creditor, namely, the judge, before there can be a
substitution of payment. Should the Supreme Judge refuse to permit another
person to suffer for the sinner and compel him to suffer for his own sin,
this would be just. Consequently, substitution in the case of moral penalty
requires a consent and covenant on the part of God, with conditions and
limitations, while substitution in the case of a pecuniary debt requires no
consent, covenant, or limitations. Second, after the vicarious atonement has
been permitted and provided, there is still another condition in the case,
namely, that the sinner shall confess and repent of the sin for which the
atonement was made and trust in the atonement itself.
Another error underlying the varieties of universalism is
the assumption that because an atonement sufficient for all men has been
made, all men are entitled to the benefits of it. This would be true if all
men had made this atonement. But inasmuch as they had nothing to do with the
making of it, they have not the slightest right or title to it. No sinner
has a claim upon the expiatory oblation of Jesus Christ. It belongs entirely
to the maker, and he may do what he will with his own. He may impute it to
any man whom he pleases or not impute it to any man whom he pleases (Rom.
9:18). Even the act of faith does not by its intrinsic merit entitle the
believer to the benefits of Christ�s satisfaction. This would make salvation
a debt which the Redeemer owes because of an act of the believer. It is only
because Christ has promised and thereby bound himself to bestow the benefits
of redemption upon everyone that believes that salvation is certain to
faith.
It is objected that it is unjust to exact personal
penalty from any individuals of the human race if a vicarious penalty equal
in value to that due from the whole race has been paid to justice. The
injustice alleged in this objection may mean injustice toward the individual
unbeliever who is personally punished; or it may mean injustice in regard to
what the divine law is entitled to on account of man�s sin. An examination
will show that there is no injustice done in either respect. When an
individual unbeliever is personally punished for his own sins, he receives
what he deserves; and there is no injustice in this. The fact that a
vicarious atonement has been made that is sufficient to expiate his sins
does not stop justice from punishing him personally for them, unless it can
be shown that he is the author of the vicarious atonement. If this were so,
then indeed he might complain of the personal satisfaction that is required
of him. In this case, one and the same party would make two satisfactions
for one and the same sin: one vicarious and one personal. When therefore an
individual unbeliever suffers for his own sin, he �receives the due reward
of his deeds� (Luke 23:24). And since he did not make the vicarious
atonement �for the sins of the whole world� and therefore has no more right
or title to it or any of its benefits than an inhabitant of Saturn, he
cannot claim exemption from personal penalty on the ground of it. Says Owen
(Satisfaction of Christ):
The satisfaction of Christ made
for sin, being not made by the sinner, there must of necessity be a rule,
order, and law constitution how the sinner may come to be interested in it
and made partaker of it. For the consequent of the freedom of one by the
sacrifice of another is not natural or necessary, but must proceed and arise
from a law constitution, compact, and agreement. Now the way constituted and
appointed is that of faith, as explained in the Scriptures. If men believe
not, they are no less liable to the punishment due to their sins, than if no
satisfaction at all were made for sinners.
The other injustice alleged in the objection relates to
the divine law and government. It is urged that when the unbeliever is
personally punished, after an infinite vicarious satisfaction for human sin
has been made, justice, in this case, gets more than its dues, which is as
unjust as to get less. This is a mathematical objection and must receive a
mathematical answer. The alleged excess in the case is like the addition of
a finite number to infinity, which is no increase. The everlasting suffering
of all mankind, and still more of only a part, is a finite suffering.
Neither the sufferer nor the duration is mathematically infinite, for the
duration begins, though it does not end. But the suffering of the God-man is
mathematically infinite because his person is absolutely infinite. When,
therefore, any amount of finite human suffering is added to the infinite
suffering of the God-man, it is no increase of value. Justice,
mathematically, gets no more penalty when the suffering of lost men is added
to that of Jesus Christ than it would without this addition. The law is more
magnified and honored by the suffering of incarnate God than it would be by
the suffering of all men individually, because its demand for a strictly
infinite satisfaction for a strictly infinite evil is more completely met.
In this sense, �Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound� (Rom. 5:20).
It is for this reason, that finite numbers, small or
great, are of no consequence when the value of Christ�s oblation is under
consideration. One sinner needs the whole infinite Christ and his whole
sacrifice because of the infinite guilt of his sin. And a million sinners
need the same sacrifice and no more. The guilt of one man in relation to God
is infinite; and the infinite sacrifice of Christ cancels it. The guilt of a
million men is infinite�not, however, because a million is a larger number
than one, but because of the relation of sin to God�and the one infinite
sacrifice of Christ cancels it. If only one man were to be saved, Christ
must suffer and die precisely as he has; and if the human race were tenfold
more numerous than it is, his death would be ample for their salvation. An
infinite satisfaction meets and cancels infinite guilt, whether there be one
man or millions.
Atonement in Its Relation to
Divine Mercy
Fourth, the vicarious satisfaction of justice is a mode
or form of mercy. It is so because it unites and harmonizes the two
attributes in one divine act, namely, the suffering of incarnate deity for
human guilt. When the Supreme Judge substitutes himself for the criminal,
his own mercy satisfies his own justice for the transgressor. This single
act is, therefore, both an exercise of mercy and an exercise of justice. It
is certainly mercy to suffer for the sinner; and it is certainly justice to
suffer the full penalty which he deserves. The personal satisfaction of
justice, on the contrary, is not a mode or form of mercy, because in this
case the Supreme Judge inflicts the suffering required by the violated law
upon the criminal himself. Personal satisfaction of justice is justice
without mercy. It is the �severity� spoken of by St. Paul in Rom. 11:22.
Vicarious atonement is both evangelical and legal�gospel
with law; personal atonement is merely legal�law without gospel. The former
is complex: both merciful and just; the latter is simple: just, not
merciful. In the legal sphere of ethics and natural religion, where personal
satisfaction rules, justice and mercy are entirely separated attributes,
unblended and unharmonized. Justice obstructs the exercise of mercy by
presenting its unsatisfied claims, and �mercy stands silent by.� There is
�no eye to pity, and no arm to save� (Isa. 59:16; 63:5). But in the
evangelical sphere of revealed religion, the two attributes are united and
harmonized: �Mercy and truth meet together; righteousness and peace kiss
each other� (Ps. 85:10). Divine mercy now satisfies divine justice, and
divine justice accepts the satisfaction. The mercy is now infinitely just,
and the justice is now infinitely merciful. The two coordinate and distinct
attributes, which outside of the gospel and apart from the
incarnation are separate�the one forbidding the
exercise of the other�are now blended; the one meeting all the demands
of the other, and both concurring in the salvation of the guilty sinner,
for whose advantage all this costly sacrifice is made by the adorable
Trinity. (See supplement 6.2.8.)
Fifth, the vicarious satisfaction of justice is the
highest mode or form of mercy because it is mercy in the form of
self-sacrifice. A comparison of the different modes of divine mercy will
show this. When the Creator bestows temporal blessings in his providence
upon the sinner; when he makes his rain to fall and his sun to shine
upon him; this is a form of mercy greatly inferior to that shown in
Christ�s atonement. There is no loss on the part of the giver involved
in the gifts of providence. They do not cost the deity any sacrifice.
Again, should we conceive it possible for God to waive the claims of law
by a word and to inflict no penal suffering upon either the sinner or a
substitute, this would be a lower form of mercy than that of vicarious
atonement, for the same reason as in the previous instance. There is no
suffering and no death undergone in the manifestation of such a species
of compassion. This would be the easiest and cheapest of all methods of
deliverance from punishment. Again, should we conceive of God, in the
exercise of ownership and sovereignty, as taking one of his creatures,
say an archangel, and making him a vicarious substitute for man, this
too would be a low species of mercy, and for the same reason as in the
previous cases. It involves no self-sacrifice upon the part of God. The
transaction does not affect anything in the divine essence. There is no
humiliation and no suffering of God incarnate. But when justice is
satisfied for man by the extraordinary method of substituting God for
man, by the method of incarnating, humiliating, and crucifying a person
of the Trinity, we see the highest conceivable form of divine compassion
and pity. It is so strange and stupendous that it requires very high
testimony and proof to make it credible.
The vicarious satisfaction of justice is then the
highest form of mercy because (a) the offended party permits a
substitution of penalty, (b) the offended party provides the substitute,
and (c) the offended party substitutes himself for the offender. The
infinite and eternal judge allows, prepares, and is a substitute for the
criminal. �How have you loved us,� says Augustine (Confessions
10.43), �for whom he that thought it no robbery to be equal with you was
made subject even to the death of the cross; for us, both victor and
victim, and victor because victim; for us, both priest and sacrifice,
and priest because sacrifice.� Aquinas (1.21.3) remarks of the
self-sacrificing pity of God: �Mercy did not abolish justice, but is a
certain fullness of justice.�113
Similarly, Wessel (Concerning the Causes of
the Incarnation, 17) describes the
vicarious atonement: �God himself, the priest himself, the victim
himself, made satisfaction for himself, from himself, to himself.�114
Pascal (Thoughts)
expresses the same truth in the remark that in the Christian redemption
�the judge himself is the sacrifice.� And Livingstone (Last
Journal, 5 Aug. 1872) cries from the heart
of Africa: �What is the atonement of Christ? It is himself: it is the
inherent and everlasting mercy of God made apparent to human eyes and
ears. The everlasting love was disclosed by our Lord�s life and death.
It shows that God forgives because he loves to forgive. He works by
smiles if possible; if not by frowns; pain is only a means of enforcing
love.�
In this fact that the vicarious satisfaction of
justice is self-sacrificing mercy, we have the answer to the objection
that if justice is satisfied there is no exhibition of mercy. There
would be none if the satisfaction were made personally by the sinner.
But when it is made vicariously by the eternal judge himself, it is the
acme of mercy and compassion. Says Westminster Larger Catechism Q. 71:
�Although Christ by his obedience and death did make a full satisfaction
to God�s justice in the behalf of them that are justified, yet inasmuch
as God accepts the satisfaction from a surety which he might have
demanded of them and did provide this surety, their justification is to
them of free grace.�
This truth is made still more evident by remarking
the distinction between mercy and indulgence. The first is founded in
principle; the latter is unprincipled. Mercy has a moral basis; it is
good ethics. Indulgence has no moral foundation; it is bad ethics.
Indulgence is foolish good nature. It releases from punishment without
making any provision for the claims of law. Its motive is sensuous, not
rational. It suffers, itself, from the sight of suffering, and this is
the reason why it does not inflict it. It costs an effort to be just,
and it does not like to put forth an effort. Indulgence, in the last
analysis, is intensely selfish. Mere happiness in the sense of freedom
from discomfort or pain is the final end which it has in view.
Consequently, the action of indulgence as distinguished from mercy is
high-handed. It is the exercise of bare power in snatching the criminal
away from merited suffering. It is might, not right. A mob exercises
indulgence when it breaks open a prison and drags away the criminal
merely because the criminal is suffering. No member of this mob would
take the criminal�s place and suffer in his stead. This would be real
mercy, and mercy in its highest form of vicarious satisfaction. Should
God deliver man from the claims of law without the substitution of
penalty, it would be a procedure the same in principle with that of the
mob in the case supposed. It would be indulgence, not mercy.
In Rom. 3:25 indulgence in distinction from mercy is
referred to. St. Paul mentions as a secondary reason why Christ was set
forth as a propitiation for sin the fact that in the history of the
sinful world of mankind God had been indulgent toward those who deserved
immediate and swift retribution. He had �passed by� and omitted to
punish. Instead of inflicting penalty, he had bestowed �rain and
fruitful seasons� upon rebellious men and had �filled their hearts with
food and gladness.� He had �suffered (eiase)115
all nations to walk in their own ways� and had �winked at,� that is,
overlooked (hyperidōn),116
�the times of this ignorance� (Acts 14:16�17; 17:30). St. Paul does not
designate this indulgent treatment of sinful men by
charis,117
the usual and proper term for forgiving mercy, but by
anochē.118
It is not mercy, but �forbearance.� It is in itself irregular and
requires to be legitimated. And it is explained and set right by the
piacular offering of the Son of God. Because the vicarious atonement of
Christ is sufficient to atone for the sins of the whole world, therefore
it is that the sins of the whole world experience the forbearance of the
Holy One; therefore it is that the whole world receives many temporal
blessings instead of swift retribution; therefore it is that God
�overlooks� the times of guilty ignorance and disobedience and delays
punishment.119
This �pretermission� of transgressions differs from
their �remission� in being only temporary. This forbearance, even though
explained and legitimated by the propitiation of Christ, is not to be
eternal. Justice will finally assert its claims, and those whose
unrepented transgressions have met with this temporary indulgence and
delay of punishment, on account of Christ�s atonement, will in the end
receive the just punishment of sin. St. Paul, in this passage, does not
say that these sins had been eternally pardoned by divine grace (charis),120
but had been only temporarily passed by through divine forbearance (anochē).121
In the sixth place, the vicarious satisfaction of
justice is the only mode of exercising mercy that is possible to a just
being. This follows from the nature of justice and its relation to other
divine attributes. If it be conceded that legal claims must be met at
all hazards and cannot be either waived in part or abolished altogether,
then it is evident that the great problem before divine mercy is how to
meet these claims in behalf of the object of mercy. The problem is not
how to trample upon justice in behalf of the criminal, but how to
satisfy justice for him. And if this problem cannot be solved, then
there can be no manifestation of mercy at all by a just being. The
penalty must be endured by the actual criminal, and the matter end here.
God is a perfectly just being and therefore cannot forever exercise mere
forbearance and indulgence toward a transgressor. The mercy of the
Supreme Being must be ethical, that is, must stand the test and scrutiny
of moral principle and righteousness. If therefore the merciful God
desires to release a transgressor from the suffering which he deserves,
he must find someone who is fitted and willing to undergo this suffering
in his place. And there is in the whole universe no being who is both
fitted and willing to do this but God himself. A creature might be
willing, but he is unfit for the office of substitute. The language of
Milton (Paradise Lost
3.209�12) respecting the transgressor is theology as well as poetry:
Die he, or justice must,
unless for him
Some other able, and as
willing, pay
The rigid satisfaction, death
for death.
Possibility of
Substitution
Respecting the possibility of the substitution of
penalty, it is to be observed in the first place that the punishment
inflicted by justice is aimed, strictly speaking, not at the person of
the transgressor, but at his sin. The wrath of God falls upon the human
soul considered as an agent, not as a substance. The spiritual essence
or nature of man is God�s own work, and he is not angry at his own work
and does not hate anything which he has created from nothing. Man�s
substance is not sin. Sin is the activity of this substance; and this is
man�s work. God is displeased with this activity and visits it with
retribution. Consequently, justice punishes the sin rather than the
sinner, the agency rather than the agent, the act rather than the
person. It does not fix its eye upon the transgressor as this particular
entity and insist that this very entity shall suffer and prohibit any
other entity from suffering for him. Justice, it is true, is not obliged
to allow substitution, but neither is it obliged to forbid it. If it
were true that the penalty must be inflicted upon the transgressor�s
very substance and person itself as well as upon the sin in his person,
then there could be no substitution. The very identical personal essence
that had sinned must suffer, and justice would be the only attribute
which God could manifest toward a sinner.
Second, justice is dispassionate and unselfish. It
bears no malice toward the criminal. It is not seeking to gratify a
grudge against him personally, but only to maintain law and
righteousness. It inflicts pain not for the sake of inflicting it upon a
particular individual, but for the sake of a moral principle. Hence if
the sin can be punished in another way than by causing the sinner to be
punished; if the claims of law can be really and truly satisfied by a
vicarious method; there is nothing in the spirit and temper of justice
toward the sinner�s person or soul to forbid this. �The aspect of the
law upon a sinner,� says Bates (On
Forgiveness), �being without passion, it
admits satisfaction by the sufferings of another.� And the same truth is
condensed in the Schoolman�s dictum: �It is necessary that punishment be
inflicted impersonally on every sin, but not personally on every
sinner.�122
Third, the substitution of penalty is implied in
divine sovereignty in administering government. If God from his very
nature could not permit a proper person to take the place of a criminal,
but were necessitated in every single instance to inflict the penalty
upon the actual transgressor, his government would be just, but not
sovereign. He could make no changes in the mode of its
administration�which is what is meant by a sovereign government. But God
may vary the mode of administering justice, provided the mode adopted
really satisfies justice and there be no special reason in his own mind
why in a particular instance the variation may not be permitted. There
were such special reasons, apparently, in the case of the fallen angels,
but not in the case of fallen men. This exercise of sovereignty in
permitting substitution of penalty is by some Calvinistic theologians
called a �relaxation� of justice, not in respect to the penalty
demanded, but to the person enduring it. Justice relaxes its demands to
the degree of permitting a vicar to suffer for the actual criminal, but
not to the degree of abating the amount of the suffering. The vicar must
pay the debt to the uttermost farthing. Owen uses the term
relaxation in the sense
of substitution, but describes our Lord�s suffering as the strict and
full satisfaction of retributive justice (Communion
with the Trinity 1.2):
To see him who is the wisdom
of God and the power of God, always beloved of the Father; to see him, I
say, fear and tremble and bow and sweat and pray and die; to see him
lifted up upon the cross, the earth trembling under him, as if unable to
bear his weight, and the heavens darkened over him, as if shut against
his cry, and himself hanging between both, as if refused by both, and
all this because our sins did meet upon him; this of all things does
most abundantly manifest the severity of God�s vindictive justice. Here,
or nowhere, is it to be learned.
This is very different from Scotus�s and Grotius�s
�relaxation.� The latter is a relaxation in respect to the amount of the
penalty, as well as the person enduring it.
In case the administrative sovereignty of God decides
to permit and provide a substituted penalty, the following conditions
are indispensable, not by reason of any external necessity, but by
reason of an internal necessity springing from the divine nature and
attributes. First, the suffering substituted must be penal in its nature
and purpose and of equal value with the original penalty. The theory of
Duns Scotus, afterward perfected by Grotius, according to which God�s
administrative sovereignty is so extended that he can by a volitionary
decision accept a substituted penalty of inferior value, is the same in
principle with the later theory of Socinus. This scheme, denominated
�acceptilation�123
from a term of the Roman law, logically carried out is fatal to the
doctrine of vicarious atonement. For the same arbitrary sovereignty
which compels justice to be content with less than its dues can compel
it to be content with none at all. If a government has power and
authority to say that fifty cents shall pay a debt of a dollar, it has
the power to extinguish debts entirely by a positive decision of the
same kind. The principle of justice being surrendered in part is
surrendered altogether.
An illustration sometimes employed, taken from the
instance of Zaleucus and his son, contains the false ethics of the
theory of acceptilation. This Locrian lawgiver had decreed that a person
guilty of adultery should be made blind. His own son was proved to be an
adulterer. He ordered one of his son�s eyes and one of his own to be put
out (Aelian, Historical Miscellany
13.24). This was an evasion, not a satisfaction of the law. The penalty
threatened and intended to be threatened against adultery was total
blindness. In a substitution of this kind, no one was made blind. Two
eyes were put out, but not the two eyes of one man. Had Zaleucus ordered
both of his own eyes to be put out, the case would have been a proper
illustration of Christ�s vicarious atonement. As the case actually
stood, the lawgiver had principle enough to acknowledge the claims of
justice, but not principle enough to completely satisfy them. That he
was willing to lose one eye proves that he felt the claims of law; but
that he was unwilling to make himself totally blind in the place of his
son shows that he preferred to sacrifice justice to self rather than
self to justice.124
In saying that the suffering substituted for that of
the actual criminal must be of equal value, it is not said that it must
be identical suffering. A substituted penalty cannot be an identical
penalty, because identical means the same in every respect. Identity is
inconsistent with any exchange whatever. To speak of substituting an
identical penalty is a contradiction in terms. The identical punishment
required by the moral law is personal punishment, involving personal
remorse; and remorse can be experienced only by the actual criminal. If,
in commercial law, a substituted payment could be prevented, a pecuniary
debtor would be compelled to make an identical payment. In this case, he
must pay in person and wholly from his own resources. Furthermore, he
could not pay silver for gold, but gold for gold; and not only this, but
he must pay back exactly the same pieces of gold, the
ipsissima pecunia,125
which he had received. Identical penalty implies sameness without a
difference in any particular. Not only is the quantity the same, but the
quality is the same. But substituted penalty implies sameness with a
difference in some particular. And in the case before us, that of
Christ�s satisfaction, the difference is in the quality, the quantity
being unchanged. The vicarious suffering of Christ is of equal value
with that of all mankind but is not the same in kind.
Equivalency, not identity, is the characteristic,
therefore, of vicarious penalty. The exchange implied in the term
substitution is of
quality not of quantity. One kind of judicial suffering�that is,
suffering endured for the purpose of satisfying justice�is substituted
for another kind. Christ�s sufferings were of a different nature or
quality from those of a lost man.126
But there was no difference in quantity or value. A less degree of
suffering was not exchanged for a greater degree. The sufferings of the
mediator were equal in amount and worth to those whose place they took.
Vicarious penalty then is the substitution of an equal quantity, but a
different quality of suffering. The mediator suffers differently from
the lost world of sinners, but he suffers equally.
Equivalency satisfies justice as completely as
identity. One hundred dollars in gold extinguishes a debt of one hundred
dollars as completely as does one hundred dollars in silver. If the
sufferings of the mediator between God and man are of equal value with
those of the world of mankind, they are as complete a satisfaction of
justice as the eternal death of mankind would be, although they do not,
in their nature or quality, involve any of that sense of personal
wickedness and remorse of conscience which enters into the punishment of
a lost man. They get their value from the nature of the God-man, and it
is the value of what is substituted which justice looks at.
The following extract from Samuel Hopkins (System
of Doctrine in
Works 1.321) enforces
this truth:
The mediator did not suffer
precisely the same kind of pain, in all respects, which the sinner
suffers when the curse is executed on him. He did not suffer that
particular kind of pain which is the necessary attendant or natural
consequence of being a sinner and which none but the sinner can suffer.
But this is only a circumstance of the punishment of sin and not of the
essence of it. The whole penalty of the law may be suffered, and the
evil may be as much and as great, without suffering that particular sort
of pain. Therefore, Christ, though without sin, might suffer the whole
penalty, that is, as much and as great evil as the law denounces against
transgression.
Second, the penalty substituted must be endured by a
person who is not himself already indebted to justice and who is not a
subject of the government under which the substitution takes place. If
he be himself a criminal, he cannot of course be a substitute for a
criminal. And if he be an innocent person, yet owes all his own service
to the government, he cannot do a work of supererogation such as is
implied in vicarious satisfaction. An earthly state could not
righteously allow an innocent citizen to die for another, even if he
were willing so to die, because there are claims upon the person and
life of every citizen which must go undischarged if his life should be
taken. These are the claims of family, of society, of the commonwealth,
and of God. Says Owen (Person of Christ,
16):
It is impossible that by
anything a man can do well he should make satisfaction for anything he
has done ill. For what he so does is due in and for itself. And to
suppose that satisfaction can be made for a former fault, by that whose
omission would have been another fault had the former never been
committed, is madness. An old debt cannot be discharged with ready money
for new commodities; nor can past injuries be compensated by present
duties which we are anew obliged unto.
Says Anselm (Why the
God-Man? 1.20), �When you pay back
something that you owe to God you ought not to reckon this as counting
toward the debt that you owe for sin. For you owe everything to God.�127
The words of the Jewish elders to Christ respecting the Roman centurion
illustrate the point under consideration. They besought Christ to heal
his servant, saying that the centurion was worthy of such a favor: �For
he loves our nation, and he has built us a synagogue� (Luke 7:5). The
centurion had acquired merit, because as a Roman citizen he was under no
obligation to build a Jewish synagogue.
The sufferings of Christ meet all these conditions.
First, they were penal in their nature and intent, since they were
neither calamitous nor disciplinary. They were a judicial infliction
voluntarily endured by Christ for the purpose of satisfying the claims
of law due from man; and this purpose makes them penal: �It pleased the
Lord to bruise him. He was wounded for our transgressions� (Isa. 53:5,
10); �Christ was made a curse for us� (Gal. 2:13); �no man takes my life
from me, but I lay it down of myself� (John 10:17�18).
Some writers, while defending the doctrine of
vicarious atonement, object to applying the terms
penal and
penalty to Christ�s
sufferings. Magee (Atonement,
diss. 13) does so:
The idea of punishment cannot
be abstracted from [personal] guilt. Christ�s sufferings are a judicial
infliction and may perhaps be figuratively denominated punishment, if
thereby be implied a reference to the actual transgressor and be
understood that suffering which was due to the offender himself and
which if inflicted upon him would then take the name of punishment. In
no other sense can the suffering inflicted on account of the
transgressions of another be called a punishment.
Ebrard (quoted by Van Oosterzee 2.603, who agrees
with Ebrard) says: �If I endure the infliction due to another instead of
him, this suffering which for him would have had the moral quality of a
punishment has not the moral quality of a punishment for me, because I
am an innocent person. For the idea of a punishment contains, besides
the objective element of suffering inflicted by the judge, also in
addition the subjective element of the sense of guilt or an evil
conscience possessed by the guilty.� This last assertion is the point in
dispute. Does the idea of a punishment �contain, besides the objective
element of suffering inflicted by the judge, also the subjective element
of the sense of guilt?� The question is whether the simple purpose and
aim of the suffering in a given instance is sufficient to constitute it
punishment. If a person suffers with a view to satisfy the claims of
law, be he guilty himself or not, is this a �penal� suffering? Is such a
�judicial infliction,� as Magee calls it, properly denominated
�penalty?� Does the existence of the objective element alone, apart from
the subjective element, in the case of suffering for the purpose of
atonement for sin, warrant the use of the terms
penal and
penalty? There are
three reasons why it does. (a) There is no other term but this by which
to designate a suffering that is endured for the sole purpose of
satisfying justice. It cannot be denominated either calamity or
chastisement. (b) When a commercial debt is vicariously paid by a friend
of the debtor, it is as truly a �payment� as if paid personally, and the
term payment
is applied to it in the strict sense of the word. But if there is no
valid objection to denominating the vicarious satisfaction of a
pecuniary claim a �payment,� there is none to denominating the vicarious
satisfaction of a moral claim a �punishment.� (c) A third reason for the
use of the term punishment
or penalty in
this connection is found in the use of the corresponding term
atonement. No objection
is made to calling Christ�s suffering an atonement. But atonement and
punishment are kindred in meaning. Both alike denote judicial suffering.
There is, consequently, no more reason for insisting that the term
punishment be
restricted to personal endurance of suffering for personal transgression
than there would be in insisting that the term
atonement be restricted
to personal satisfaction for personal sin. But the vicarious sufferings
of Christ are as truly an atonement for sin as would be the personal
sufferings of the sinner himself and are as freely called so. It is as
proper, therefore, to denominate Christ�s suffering a vicarious
punishment as to denominate it a vicarious atonement. The objection of
Magee and Ebrard is met by the qualifying term
vicarious, invariably
joined with the term punishment
when Christ�s sufferings are denominated a punishment. No one asserts
that they were a �personal� punishment. Anselm (Why
the God-Man? 1.15)128
marks the difference by denominating the infliction when laid upon the
sinner poena129
and when laid upon the substitute satisfactio.130
Second, the vicarious sufferings of Christ were
infinite in value. In the substitution, the amount is fully equal to
that of the original penalty. A smaller suffering, an inferior
atonement, was not put in the place of a greater and superior. The worth
of any suffering is determined by the total subject who suffers, not by
the particular nature in the subject which is the seat of the suffering.
Physical suffering in a brute is not so valuable as it is in a man,
because a brute has only an animal nature, while a man has an animal
united with a rational nature. Yet the nature which is the
sensorium
or seat of the physical pain is the same in both cases. But one hour of
human suffering through the physical sentiency is worth more than days
of brutal suffering through the physical sentiency, as �one hour of
Europe is worth a cycle of Cathay.� When animal life and organization
suffer in a man�s person, the agony is human and rational. It is high up
the scale. It has the dignity and greatness of degree which pertain to
man. But when animal life and organization suffer in an ox or a dog, the
agony is brutal and irrational. It is low down the scale. It has nothing
of the worth and dignity that belong to the physical agony of the martyr
and confessor. To apply this reasoning to the case before us: When a
human nature suffers in an ordinary human person, the suffering is human
and rational but finite. No mere man�s suffering can be infinite in
value because the total subject or person is finite. Whatever a man
suffers in either of his natures, body or mind, gets its value from his
personality. Measured by this, it is limited suffering. But when a human
nature suffers in a theanthropic person, the suffering is divine and
infinite because of the divinity and infinity of such a person. The
suffering of the human nature, in this instance, is elevated and
dignified by the union of the human nature with the divine, just as the
suffering of an animal nature in an ordinary man is elevated and
dignified by the union of the animal nature with the rational. The
suffering of a mere man is human; but the suffering of a God-man is
divine. Yet the divine nature is not the
sensorium
or seat of the suffering in the instance of the God-man, any more than
the rational nature is the
sensorium
or seat of the suffering in the instance of physical suffering in the
man. A man�s immaterial soul is not burned when he suffers human agony
in martyrdom, and the impassible essence of God was not bruised and
wounded when Jesus Christ suffered the divine agony. Hence it is said
that Christ �suffered in the flesh,� that is, in his human nature (1
Pet. 4:1).
It has been objected that the sufferings of Christ,
not being endless, cannot be of equal value with those of all mankind.
But when carefully examined and strictly computed, they will be found to
exceed in value and dignity the sufferings for which they were
substituted. The suffering of the God-man during a section of time is
more exactly and mathematically infinite than would be the suffering of
the human race in endless time. The so-called infinitude of human
suffering is derived from the length of its duration, not from the
dignity of the sufferer. It is the suffering of a finite creature in a
duration that is eternal only a parte post.131
This would not yield strict eternity. The suffering of the whole human
race in an endless duration would, consequently, be only relatively
infinite. But the vicarious suffering of the God-man obtains its element
of infinitude from the person, not from the duration. And this person is
absolutely, not relatively infinite. The suffering of an absolutely
infinite person in a finite duration is, therefore, a greater suffering
in degree and dignity than is the suffering of a multitude of finite
persons in an endless but not strictly infinite time. God incarnate is a
greater being and a greater sufferer than all mankind collectively; and
his crucifixion involved a greater guilt upon the part of the
perpetrators and a more stupendous sacrifice than would the crucifixion
of the entire human family. �If,� inquires Anselm (Why
the God-Man? 2.14) of his pupil Boso,
�that God-man were here present before you, and (you having a full
knowledge of his nature and character) it should be said, Unless you
slay that person, the whole world and the whole created universe will
perish, would you put him to death in order to preserve the whole
creation?� To this question the pupil makes answer, �I would not, even
if an infinite number of worlds were spread out before me.�
Another proof that the vicarious work of Christ is of
greater value in satisfying the claims of the divine law than would be
the endless punishment of the whole human race is the fact that Christ
not only suffered the penalty but obeyed the precept of the law. In this
case, law and justice get their whole dues. But when lost man only
suffers the penalty but does not obey the precept, the law is defrauded
of a part of its dues. No law is completely obeyed if only its penalty
is endured. The law does not give its subjects an option either to obey
or to suffer punishment. It does not say to them, �If you will endure
the penalty, you need not keep the precept.� It requires obedience
primarily and principally; and then it also requires suffering in case
of disobedience. But this suffering does not release from the primary
obligation to obey. The law still has its original and indefeasible
claim on the transgressor for a sinless obedience, at the very time that
it is exacting the penalty of disobedience from him. Consequently, a
sinner can never completely and exhaustively satisfy the divine law,
however much or long he may suffer, because he cannot at one and the
same time endure the penalty and obey the precept. He �owes ten thousand
talents and has nothing wherewith to pay� (Matt. 18:24). But Christ did
both; and therefore he �magnified the law and made in honorable� (Isa.
42:21) in an infinitely higher degree than the whole human family would
have done, had they all personally suffered for their sins (cf. Edwards,
Redemption in
Works 1.406).
Third, the vicarious sufferings of Christ were not
due from him as from a guilty person. He was innocent, and retributive
justice had no claims upon him. What he voluntarily suffered could,
therefore, inure to the benefit of another than himself. The active
obedience of Christ was also a work of supererogation,132
as well as his passive obedience. For although his human nature as such
owed obedience, yet it owed only a human and finite obedience. But the
obedience which the mediator actually rendered to the moral law was not
that of a mere man, but of a God-man. It was theanthropic obedience, not
merely human. As such, it was divine and infinite. It could, therefore,
like the passive obedience of an innocent person, inure to the benefit
of another and earn for him a title to eternal life and reward. And,
last, the God-man, not being a mere creature, but also the Creator and
Lord of all things, could rightfully dispose of himself and his agency
as he pleased. He asserted this sovereign lordship over himself: �No man
takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power and
authority (exousian)133
to lay it down, and I have power to take it again� (John 10:18).
The above-mentioned grounds and reasons for the
substitution of penalty abundantly demonstrate its harmony with the
principles of law and justice; but should they still be disputed, the
whole question may be quickly disposed of by asking, Who objects?
Objections to any method of administering a government can be urged only
by some party whose rights and claims have been disregarded or trampled
upon. In the instance of the vicarious atonement of the Son of God, no
objection is raised by God the Father, for he officially proposed and
planned the method. No objection is raised by God the Son, for he not
only consents to be a party in the transaction, but to be the
sacrificial victim required by it. And no objection is raised by God the
Spirit, for he likewise is a party in the transaction and cooperates in
its execution and application. This substitution of penalty is,
therefore, a method devised and authorized by the entire Godhead. It is
a trinitarian transaction. Nothing is urged against it from this
quarter.
And when we pass from the divine being to angels and
men and ask for objections from one having real grounds of complaint,
there must be of course a dead silence. No angelic or human rights have
been interfered with. Objections to the method of vicarious atonement
from the world of mankind especially would be not merely unthankful but
absurd. That the criminal, who has no claims at all before the law which
he has transgressed and under whose eternal condemnation he lies in
utter helplessness, that the criminal in whose behalf eternal pity has
laid down its own life should object to the method, would deserve not
only no reply, but everlasting shame and contempt.
Extent of the Atonement
Having considered the nature and value of Christ�s
atonement, we are prepared to consider its extent.134
Some controversy would have been avoided upon this
subject had there always been a distinct understanding as to the meaning
of words. We shall therefore first of all consider this point. The term
extent has
two senses in English usage. It has a passive meaning and is equivalent
to value. The
�extent� of a man�s farm means the number of acres which it contains.
The �extent� of a man�s resources denotes the amount of property which
he owns. In this signification of the word, the �extent� of Christ�s
atonement would be the intrinsic and real value of it for purposes of
judicial satisfaction. In this use of the term, all parties who hold the
atonement in any evangelical meaning would concede that the �extent� of
the atonement is unlimited. Christ�s death is sufficient in value to
satisfy eternal justice for the sins of all mankind. If this were the
only meaning of �extent,� we should not be called upon to discuss it any
further. For all that has been said under the head of the nature and
value of the atonement would answer the question is the extent of the
atonement?� Being an infinite atonement, it has an infinite value.
The word also has an active signification. It denotes
the act of extending. The �extent� of the atonement, in this sense,
means its personal application to individuals by the Holy Spirit. The
extent is now the intent. The question �what is the extent of the
atonement?� now means: To whom is the atonement effectually extended?
The inquiry now is not: What is the value of the atonement? but: To whom
does God purpose to apply its benefits?135
The active signification is the earlier meaning of
the word in English literature. The following are a few out of many
instances in which �extent� means extending or putting to use:
Let my officers of such a
nature,
Make an extent [levy] upon
his house and lands.
�Shakespeare,
As You Like It
3.1
Let thy fair wisdom, not thy
passion, sway
In this uncivil and unjust
extent [attack]
Against thy peace.
�Shakespeare,
Twelfth Night
4.1
But both his hands, most
filthy feculent,
Above the water were on high
extent [extended],
And fayned to wash themselves
incessantly;
Yet nothing cleaner were for
such intent.
�Spenser,
Faery Queen
2.7
Second him
In his dishonest practices;
but when
This manor is extended
[applied] to my use,
You�ll speak in an humble way
and sue for favor.
�Massinger,
New Way to Pay Old Debts
4.1
The rule of Solon, concerning
the territory of Athens is not extendible [applicable] unto all;
allowing the distance of six foot unto common trees, and nine for the
fig and olive.
�Browne,
Cyrus�s Garden
4
The following are examples of the use of the term in
the active signification in the older theologians and doctrinal
statements:
The rest of mankind God was
pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby
he extends or withholds mercy as he pleases, to pass by. (Westminster
Confession 3.7)
According to the unsearchable
counsel of his own will, God extends or withholds favor as he pleases.
(Westminster Larger Catechism
13)
In these passages, to �extend� mercy means to
effectually apply Christ�s redemption, not merely to offer it, because
in the latter sense God does not �withhold� mercy from any man. �Is
grace impaired in its extent? We affirm it to be extended to everyone
that is or was or ever shall be delivered from the pit� (Owen,
Against Universal Redemption
4.7). Here, to �extend� grace is to actually save the soul by effectual
calling.
In modern English, the term
extent is so generally
employed in the passive signification of value that the active
signification has become virtually obsolete and requires explanation.
Writers upon the �extent� of the atonement have sometimes neglected to
consider the history of the word, and misunderstanding has arisen
between disputants who were really in agreement with each other.
Accordingly, in answering the question as to the
�extent� of Christ�s atonement, it must first be settled whether
�extent� means its intended application or its intrinsic value, whether
the active or the passive signification of the word is in the mind of
the inquirer. If the word means value, then the atonement is unlimited;
if it means applying, then the atonement is limited.
The dispute also turns upon the meaning of the
preposition for.
One theologian asserts that Christ died �for� all men, and another
denies that Christ died �for� all men. There may be a difference between
the two that is reconcilable, and there may be an irreconcilable
difference. The preposition for
denotes an intention of some kind. If, in the case under consideration,
the intention is understood to be the purpose on the part of God both to
offer and apply the atonement by working faith and repentance in the
sinner�s heart, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, then he who affirms
that Christ died �for� all men is in error, and he who denies that
Christ died �for� all men holds the truth. These two parties are
irreconcilable.
But he who asserts that Christ died �for� all men may
understand the intention signified by the preposition to be the purpose
on the part of God only to offer the atonement, leaving it to the sinner
whether it shall be appropriated through faith and repentance. The
intention, in this latter case, does not include so much as in the
former, and the preposition is narrower in meaning. When the word
for is thus defined,
the difference between the two parties is reconcilable. The latter means
by for
�intended for offer or publication�; the former means �intended for
application.�
Again, the preposition
for is sometimes understood to denote not
intention, but value or sufficiency. To say that Christ died �for� all
men then means that his death is sufficient to expiate the guilt of all
men. Here, again, the difference is possibly reconcilable between the
parties. The one who denies that Christ died �for� all men takes �for�
in the sense of intention to effectually apply. The other who affirms
that Christ died �for� all men takes �for� in the sense of value. As to
the question �which is the most proper use of the word
for?� it is plain that
it more naturally conveys the notion of intention than of sufficiency or
value. If it be said to a person, �This money is for you,� he does not
understand merely that it is sufficient in value to pay his debt, but
that it actually inures to his benefit in paying it. In the scriptural
statement that Christ �gave himself a ransom for all� (1 Tim. 2:6), if
the word for
be made to denote value, so that the text reads, Christ �gave himself a
ransom sufficient for all,� a circumlocution is introduced. The
preposition for
does not express the idea of sufficiency or value directly, but through
an explanation; but it expresses the idea of intention immediately and
without circumlocution. And this agrees better with the term
ransom, which denotes
subjective redemption rather than objective satisfaction. This remark
applies to such a text as that Christ �tasted death for every man� (Heb.
2:9), which is explained by �many sons� in 2:10. If we interpolate and
say that Christ tasted a death that is sufficient for every man, we
indeed state a truth, but we inject into the preposition
for a larger meaning
than accords with the strictly idiomatic use of it.
The distinction between the �sufficiency� of the
atonement and its �extent� in the sense of �intent� or effectual
application is an old and well-established one. It is concisely
expressed in the dictum that Christ died �sufficiently for all, but
efficiently only for the elect.�136
The following extracts from Owen (Against
Universal Redemption 4.1) illustrate it:
It was the purpose and
intention of God that his Son should offer a sacrifice of infinite
worth, value, and dignity, sufficient in itself for the redeeming of all
and every man, if it had pleased the Lord to employ it for that purpose;
yea, and of other worlds, also, if the Lord should freely make them and
would redeem them. Sufficient we say, then, was the sacrifice of Christ
for the redemption of the whole world and for the expiation of all the
sins of all and every man in the world. This is its own true internal
perfection and sufficiency; that it should be applied unto any, made a
price for them, and become beneficial to them, according to the worth
that is in it, is external to it, does not arise from it, but merely
depends upon the intention and will of God. It was in itself of infinite
value and sufficiency to have been made a price to have bought and
purchased all and every man in the world. That it did formally become a
price for any is solely to be ascribed to the purpose of God intending
their purchase and redemption by it. The intention of the offerer and
acceptor [of the sacrifice] that it should be for such, some, or any is
that which gives the formality of a price unto it; this is external [to
the sacrifice]. But the value and fitness of it to be made a price
arises from its own internal sufficiency.
In respect to the phrase
ransom price for all (1
Tim. 2:6), Owen remarks that it must be understood to mean that Christ�s
blood was sufficient to be made a ransom for all, to be made a price for
all; but that the terms ransom
and ransom price
more properly denote the application than the value of Christ�s
sacrifice. He adds that �the expression to
die for any person holds out the intention
of our Savior in the laying down of the price, to be their Redeemer.�
Atonement must be distinguished from redemption. The
latter term includes the application of the atonement. It is the term
redemption,
not atonement,
that is found in those statements that speak of the work of Christ as
limited by the decree of election. In Westminster Confession 8.8 it is
said that �to all those for whom Christ has purchased redemption, he
does certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same.� In 8.5
it is stated that �the Lord Jesus has purchased not only reconciliation,
but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those
whom the Father has given unto him.� Since redemption includes
reconciliation with God and inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, it
implies something subjective in the soul: an appropriation by faith of
the benefits of Christ�s objective work of atonement. Reconciliation and
inheritance of heaven are elements and parts of redemption and are
limited to those who have believed; and those who have believed are
those who have been called and chosen: �Faith is the gift of God� (Eph.
2:9); �you believed, even as the Lord gave to every man� (1 Cor. 3:5);
�as many as were ordained to eternal life believed� (Acts 3:48).
Accordingly the Scriptures limit redemption, as contradistinguished from
atonement, to the church. Christ �makes reconciliation for the sins of
his people� (Heb. 2:17). His work is called �the redemption of the
purchased possession� (Eph. 1:14). He is �the mediator of the New
Testament, that by means of his death they which are called might
receive an eternal inheritance� (Heb. 9:15). He �has visited and
redeemed his people� (Luke 1:68). David, addressing Jehovah, says,
�Remember your congregation which you have purchased of old, the rod of
your inheritance which you have redeemed� (Ps. 74:2). The elders of
Ephesus are commanded to �feed the church of God which he has purchased
with his own blood� (Acts 20:28). �He sent redemption unto his people�
(Ps. 3:9). �O Israel, fear not; for I have redeemed you� (Isa. 43:1).
�He shall save his people from their sins� (Matt. 1:21). Christ is �the
Savior of his body the church� (Eph. 5:23). �He said, surely they are my
people: so he was their Savior� (Isa. 63:8). �I will save my people from
the east country and from the west country� (Zech. 8:7). See the Old
Testament passages in which Jehovah is called the Savior of Israel and
the New Testament passages in which God is called �our Savior,� that is,
of the church.
Since redemption implies the application of Christ�s
atonement, universal or unlimited redemption cannot logically be
affirmed by any who hold that faith is wholly the gift of God and that
saving grace is bestowed solely by election. The use of the term
redemption,
consequently, is attended with less ambiguity than that of �atonement,�
and it is the term most commonly employed in controversial theology.137
Atonement is unlimited, and redemption is limited. This statement
includes all the scriptural texts: those which assert that Christ died
for all men, and those which assert that he died for his people. He who
asserts unlimited atonement and limited redemption cannot well be
misconceived. He is understood to hold that the sacrifice of Christ is
unlimited in its value, sufficiency, and publication, but limited in its
effectual application. But he who asserts unlimited atonement and denies
limited redemption might be understood to hold either of three views:
(1) The doctrine of the universalist that Christ�s atonement, per se,
saves all mankind; (2) the doctrine of the Arminian that personal faith
in Christ�s atonement is necessary to salvation, but that faith depends
partly upon the operation of the Holy Spirit and partly upon the
decision of the sinful will; or (3) the doctrine of the school of Saumur
(hypothetic universalism) that personal faith in Christ�s atonement in
the first arrangement of God depended in part upon the decision of the
sinful will, but since this failed, by a second arrangement it now
depends wholly upon the work of the Spirit, according to the purpose of
election. (See supplement 6.2.9.)
The tenet of limited redemption rests upon the tenet
of election, and the tenet of election rests upon the tenet of the
sinner�s bondage and inability. Soteriology here runs back to theology,
and theology runs back to anthropology. Everything in the series finally
recurs to the state and condition of fallen man. The answer to the
question �how is the atonement of Christ savingly appropriated?� depends
upon the answer to the question �how much efficient power is there in
the sinful will to savingly trust in it?� If the answer be that there is
efficient power, either wholly or in part, in the sinful will itself to
believe, then faith is either wholly or in part from the sinner himself
and is not wholly the gift of God (which is contrary to Eph. 2:8) and
justification does not depend wholly upon electing grace (which is
contrary to 1 Pet. 1:2) and redemption is not limited. But if the answer
be that there is not efficient power in the sinful will itself, either
wholly or in part, to savingly believe, then faith is wholly the gift of
God, is wholly dependent upon his electing grace, and redemption is
limited by election, as is taught in 1 Cor. 3:5: �Who then is Paul, and
who is Apollos, by whom you believed, even as the Lord gave to every
man�; and in Rom. 9:16: �It is not of him that wills nor of him that
runs, but of God that shows mercy.� (See supplement 6.2.10.)
The difference between the Calvinist and the Arminian
appears at this point. Both are evangelical in affirming that salvation
is solely by faith in Christ�s atoning blood. This differentiates them
from the legal Socinian, who denies the doctrine of vicarious atonement
and founds salvation from condemnation on personal character and good
works. But they differ regarding the origin of faith. The Calvinist
maintains that faith is wholly from God, being one of the effects of
regeneration; the Arminian, that it is partly from God and partly from
man. The Calvinist asserts that a sinner is unconditionally elected to
the act of faith and that the Holy Spirit in regeneration inclines and
enables him to the act, without cooperation and assistance from him. The
Arminian asserts that a sinner is conditionally elected to the act of
faith and that the Holy Spirit works faith in him with some assistance
and cooperation from him. This cooperation consists in ceasing to resist
and yielding to the operation of the Spirit. In this case, the Holy
Spirit does not overcome a totally averse and resisting will, which is
the Calvinistic view, but he influences a partially inclining will.
The Calvinist contends that unconditional election
and total inability agree best with the scriptural representations and
that the Arminian really adopts them when he sings with Charles Wesley:
Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on
thee.
Conditional election is inconsistent with the
biblical texts which describe God as independent and sovereign in
bestowing faith and salvation. It is no sufficient reply to say that
plenary ability to appropriate the atonement of Christ is not attributed
to the fallen soul, but only a partial ability, that it is not contended
that sinful man can exercise faith in the atonement without any aid at
all from God, but only that he can and must contribute a certain degree
of voluntary power which if united with that of God the Spirit will
produce faith and that the exercise of this is the condition of
election. This position of partial ability or synergism comes to the
same result with that of plenary ability, so far as divine independence
and sovereignty are concerned. For it is this decision of the sinner to
contribute his quota, to �do his part� in the transaction, which
conditions the result. It is indeed true, upon this theory, that if God
does not assist the act of faith is impossible; but it is equally true,
that if the sinner does not assist the act of faith is impossible.
Neither party alone and by himself can originate faith in Christ�s
atonement. God is as dependent in this respect as man. In this case,
therefore, it cannot be said that faith depends wholly upon the divine
purpose or that redemption is regulated and limited by election.
The middle theory of partial ability and conditional
election is found in the Greek anthropology and the Semipelagian fathers
generally and is opposed by Calvin (3.24.1) as follows:
The proposition of Paul, �It
is not of him that wills nor of him that runs, but of God that shows
mercy,� is not to be understood in the sense of those who divide saving
power between the grace of God and the will and exertion of man; who
indeed say that human desires and endeavors have no efficacy of
themselves unless they are rendered successful by the grace of God, but
also maintain that with the assistance of his blessing these things have
their share in procuring salvation. To refute their views, I prefer
Augustine�s words to my own: �If the apostle only meant that it is not
of him that wills or of him that runs, without the assistance of the
merciful Lord, we may retort the converse proposition, that it is not of
[God�s] mercy alone without the assistance of [man�s] willing and
running. But it is certain that the apostle ascribes everything to the
Lord�s mercy and leaves nothing to our wills or exertions.�
Again (3.24.13), Calvin marks the difference between
Augustine and Chrysostom in the following terms:
Let us not hesitate to say
with Augustine that God could convert to good the will of [all] the
wicked, because he is omnipotent. Why then does he not? Because he would
not. Why he would not remains with himself. For we ought not to aim at
more wisdom than becomes us. That would be much better than adopting the
evasion of Chrysostom �that God draws those who are willing and who
stretch out their hands for his aid,� so that the difference may not
appear to consist in the decree of God, but in the will of man.
Luther took the same ground with Calvin:
Some allege that the Holy
Spirit works not in those that resist him, but only in such as are
willing and give consent thereto, whence it follows that free will is a
cause and helper of faith and that consequently the Holy Spirit does not
alone work through the word, but that our will does something therein.
But I say it is not so; the will of man works nothing at all in his
conversion and justification;
non est efficiens causa
justificationis sed materialis tantum.138
It is the matter on which the Holy Spirit works (as a potter makes a pot
out of clay), equally in those that resist and are averse, as in St.
Paul. But after the Holy Spirit has wrought in the wills of such
resistants, then he also manages that the will be consenting thereunto.
(Table Talk: Of
Free Will)139
In saying that Christ�s atonement is limited in its
application and that redemption is particular not universal, it is meant
that the number of persons to whom it is effectually applied is a fixed
and definite number. The notion of definiteness, not of smallness, is
intended. In common speech, if anything is �limited,� it is little and
insignificant in amount. This is not the idea when the redemptive work
of Christ is denominated a �limited� work. The circle of election and
redemption must indeed be a circumference, but not necessarily a small
one. No man is redeemed outside of the circle. All the sheep must be
within the fold. But the circle is that of the heavens, not of the
earth. The fold is that of the Great Shepherd, not that of an
undershepherd. The biblical representation is to this effect: �Yours is
the kingdom and the power and the glory� (Matt. 6:13); �Christ must
reign till he has put all enemies under his feet� (1 Cor. 15:25); �the
Lord has prepared his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over
all� (Ps. 103:21); �the tabernacle of God is with men, and they shall be
his people� (Rev. 21:3); �the angel having the everlasting gospel to
preach to every nation, kindred, and tongue� (14:6); �the voice of a
great multitude and as the voice of many waters� (19:6); the new
Jerusalem �lies foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth�
(21:16); �where sin abounded, grace did much more abound� (Rom. 5:20);
chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands upon thousands� (Ps.
68:17).
Although Christ�s atonement, in the discussion of its
value and sufficiency, can be separated from the intention to apply it,
yet in the divine mind and decree the two things are inseparable. The
atonement and its application are parts of one covenant of redemption
between the Father and Son. The sacrifice of Christ is offered with the
intention that it shall actually be successful in saving human souls
from death. It is not rational to suppose that God the Father merely
determined that God the Son should die for the sin of the world, leaving
it wholly or in part to the sinful world to determine all the result of
this stupendous transaction, leaving it wholly or in part to the sinful
world to decide how many or how few this death should actually save.
Neither is it rational to suppose that the Son of God would lay down his
life upon such a peradventure; for it might be that not a single human
soul would trust in his sacrifice, and in this case he would have died
in vain. On the contrary, it is most rational to suppose that in the
covenant between the Father and Son, the making of an atonement was
inseparably connected with the purpose to apply it: the purpose, namely,
to accompany the atoning work of the Son with the regenerating work of
the Holy Spirit. The divine Father in giving the divine Son as a
sacrifice for sin simultaneously determined that this sacrifice should
be appropriated through faith by a definite number of the human family,
so that it might be said that Christ died for this number with the
distinct intention that they should be personally saved by this death.
This is taught in Scripture: �The good shepherd lays
down his life for the sheep� (John 10:15); �greater love has no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends� (15:13); �being high
priest that year he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation;
and not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in
one the children of God that were scattered abroad� (11:51�52); �Christ
loved the church and gave himself for it� (Eph. 5:25). The annunciation
to Joseph respecting the miraculous conception described the Savior as
one who �should save his people from their sins� (Matt. 1:21).
Furthermore, in accordance with this fact of an intention to apply the
atonement at the time when the atonement is provided, we find that
believers are said to have been �chosen in Christ before the foundation
of the world� (Eph. 1:4); that they have been given to Christ by the
Father (John 10:29); that Christ knows them as so given (10:27); that he
claims them as his sheep before they have actually believed and even
before they have been born, saying, �Other sheep I have which are not of
this fold, them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and
there shall be one flock (poimnē)140
and one shepherd� (10:16). And when Paul was at Corinth, Christ
encouraged his apostle to continue his labors, notwithstanding that
little success had thus far attended them, by saying, �I have much
people in this city� (Acts 18:9).
That the atonement in the mind of God was inseparable
from his purpose to apply it to individuals is proved by the following:
1. The fact that
atonement in and by itself, separate from faith, saves no soul. Christ
might have died precisely as he did, but if no one believed in him he
would have died in vain. Hence it is said that �God has set forth Christ
to be a propitiation through faith in his blood� (Rom. 3:25). It is only
when the death of Christ has been actually confided in as an atonement
that it is completely �set forth� as God�s propitiation for sin. In like
manner, Christ is said to have been �delivered for our offenses and
raised again for our justification� (4:25). If Christ had not risen from
the dead, he could not have been believed in. A dead and buried Christ
could not have been an object of personal trust and confidence.
Consequently, although it was the suffering and death of Christ, and not
his resurrection and exaltation, that properly constitutes the atoning
sacrifice, yet this sacrifice in itself and apart from its vital
appropriation is useless. In order therefore to man�s justification,
Christ must not only be delivered to death for offenses, but raised
again from death so that he might be an object of faith. Says Owen (Justification,
9):
It cannot be said that
Christ�s satisfaction was made in such a way as to render it uncertain
whether it should save or not. Such an arrangement might be just in
pecuniary payments. A man may lay down a sum of money for the discharge
of another, on such a condition as may never be fulfilled. For on the
failure of the condition, his money may and ought to be returned to him;
whereupon, he has received no injury or damage. But in penal suffering
for crime and sin, there can be no righteous arrangement that shall make
the event and efficacy of it to depend on a condition absolutely
uncertain, and which may not be fulfilled. For if the condition fail, no
recompense can be made to him that has suffered. Wherefore the
application of the satisfaction of Christ unto them for whom it was made
is sure and steadfast in the purpose of God.
2. If in the mind of
God the death of Christ was separate from the intention to apply it,
then it would be as true that Christ died for lost angels as for lost
men; because his atonement, being infinite, is sufficient in value to
atone for their sin as well as that of mankind. When it is said that
Christ died for the sin of the world, it is implied that he did not die
for any sin but that of man. The offer of Christ�s atonement is confined
to the human race and not made to the angelic world. Now as the divine
intention accompanies the providing of an atonement in respect to the
difference between angels and men, so it accompanies the application of
the atonement in respect to the difference between elect and nonelect
men. As the atonement of Christ is not intended to be offered to the
angels though it is sufficient for them, so it is not intended to be
applied to nonelect men though it is sufficient for them.
3. If in the mind of
God the purpose that Christ should die had not been accompanied with the
purpose that his death should be effective for individuals, the former
purpose would have been an unproductive and useless one. It would have
accomplished nothing, because of man�s unbelief and rejection of the
gospel offer. But no purpose of God is unproductive and useless.
4. The analogy of the
typical atonement under the Mosaic economy shows that Christ�s atonement
is intended for application only to believers. The lamb offered by the
officiating priest was offered for the particular person who brought it
to the priest to be offered. Each man had his own lamb, and there was no
lamb that belonged to no one in particular but to everyone
indiscriminately.
5. The atoning work of
Christ in its intended application is no wider than his intercessory
work. He pleads the merit of his death for those to whom the Father
purposed to impute it and only for those: �I pray not for the world, but
for them which you have given me� (John 17:9). This was Christ�s
intercessory prayer. He here teaches that he does not discharge the
particular office of intercessor for the nonelect (the �world�) as
distinguished from those whom the Father had given him. It is logical
therefore to conclude that he does not discharge the particular office
of priest for them.
There are biblical passages which are cited to teach
unlimited redemption: Christ �tasted death for every man� (Heb. 2:9);
Christ is the �propitiation not for our sins only, but for the sins of
the whole world� (1 John 2:2); Christ �gave himself a ransom for all� (1
Tim. 2:6); the lamb of God �takes away the sins of the world� (John
1:29); �God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son�
(3:16�17). Respecting this class of passages, the following particulars
are to be noticed.
First, Scripture must be explained in harmony with
Scripture. Texts that speak of the universal reference of Christ�s death
must, therefore, be interpreted in such a way as not to exclude its
special reference: �God is the Savior of all men, specially of those
that believe� (1 Tim. 4:10); Christ �makes reconciliation for the sins
of his people� (Heb. 2:17); �Christ is the Savior of his body, the
church� (Eph. 5:23); Christ �has visited and redeemed his people� (Luke
1:68); Christ �gives his life a ransom for many� (Matt. 20:28); �Jesus
shall save his people from their sins� (1:21; cf. Ps. 74:2; 111:9; Isa.
63:8; Matt. 26:28; Heb. 9:28).
Second, the word world
in Scripture frequently denotes a part of the world viewed as a
collective whole and having a distinctive character, as we speak of the
scientific or the religious world:
1. Sometimes it is the
world of believers, the church. Examples of this use are �the bread of
God is he which gives life to the world [of believers]� (John 6:33, 51);
Abraham is �the heir of the world [the redeemed]� (Rom. 4:13); �if the
fall of them be the riches of the world� (11:12); �if the casting away
of them be the reconciling of the world� (11:15). In these texts,
�church� could be substituted for �world.�
2. Sometimes the word
world denotes
the contrary of the church: �Men of the world� (Ps. 7:14); �the world
knew him not� (John 1:10); �the world cannot hate you, but me it hates�
(7:7); �I pray not for the world� (14:17, 22, 27; 15:18�19; 16:20, 33;
17:9, 14, 16, 25; 1 Cor. 2:12; 1 John 2:15�17; 3:1; 4:5; 5:4).
3. Sometimes the term
world means
all mankind, in distinction from the Jews: �This gospel shall be
preached in the whole world� (Matt. 26:13); �the field is the world�
(13:38); �God so loved the world� (John 3:16); �by wisdom the world knew
not God� (1 Cor. 1:21); �reconciled the world unto himself� (2 Cor.
5:19); �propitiation for the sins of the whole world� (1 John 2:2).
These texts teach that redemption is intended for all races, classes,
and ages of men.
Similarly the word all
sometimes has a restricted signification, denoting all of a particular
class: �As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive� (1
Cor. 15:22). The �all� in Adam is a larger aggregate than the �all� in
Christ, because Scripture teaches that all men without exception are
children of Adam and that not all without exception are believers in
Christ: �If one died for all, than all died [with that one]� (2 Cor.
5:14). The �all� here denotes the body of believers, because it is
described as �the living� (hoi
zōntes;141
v. 15). �As the judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so the
free gift came upon all men unto justification� (Rom. 5:18). The �all�
in one instance is described (v. 17) as �receiving abundance of grace,�
but not in the other.142
In 1 Cor. 8:11 the phrase
shall the weak brother perish for whom Christ died?
(and also Heb. 6:4�10; 10:26�30) is a supposition for the sake of
argument of something that does not and cannot happen (like 1 Cor.
13:1�3; Gal. 1:8). The influence and natural tendency of the conduct
spoken of is to spiritual death. It is not said that the actual result
will be the death of the �weak brother.� On the contrary, it is said
that �God shall hold him up� (Rom. 14:4). In 2 Pet. 2:1 (�denying the
Lord that bought them�), the �false teachers� are described according to
their own profession, not as they are in the eye of God. They claim to
have been bought by the blood of Christ, and yet by their damnable
heresies nullify the atonement. Turretin explains the �purchase� in this
case, as redemption from the errors of paganism. See verse 20: �Escaped
the pollutions of the world.� Only the outward call is meant. Turretin
defends this by the use in the passage of
despotēs143
instead of
sōtēra144
and of
agorazein145
instead of
lytrousthai.146
In 2 Pet. 3:9 (�the Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that
all should come to repentance�), the will is that of decree, and the
reference is to believers only. The Greek shows this:
mē boulomenos tinas
apolesthai147��not
purposing that any [of us] should perish.� The preceding clause,
�long-suffering toward us (eis
hēmas),�148
shows that
tinas149
refers to God�s children. The true rendering of
eis metanoian
chōrēsai150
is �should go on to repentance��metanoian151
here denoting the process of sanctification or renewing (Eph. 4:23), and
chōrēsai152
a progressive motion or advance (as in Matt. 15:17; 19:12). The passage
�what could have been done more unto my vineyard?� (Isa. 5:4) does not
teach that God could not realize his desire that all men should �turn
and live.� It is not the idea of power, but of patience and
long-suffering, that is contained in this text. Calvin and Gesenius
explain: �What more was there to be done, or was I bound to do?�
(Alexander in loco).
Universal Offer of the
Atonement
The question arises: If the atonement of Christ is
not intended to be universally applied, why should it be universally
offered?
The gospel offer is to be made to every man because �
1. It is the divine
command (Matt. 16:5). God has forbidden his ministers to except any man
in the offer.
2. No offer of the
atonement is possible but a universal offer. In order to be offered at
all, Christ�s sacrifice must be offered indiscriminately. A limited
offer of the atonement to the elect only would require a revelation from
God informing the preacher who they are. As there is no such revelation
and the herald is in ignorance on this point, he cannot offer the gospel
to some and refuse it to others. In this state of things there is no
alternative but to preach Christ to everybody or to nobody.
3. The atonement is
sufficient in value to expiate the sin of all men indiscriminately; and
this fact should be stated because it is a fact. There are no claims of
justice not yet satisfied; there is no sin of man for which an infinite
atonement has not been provided: �All things are now ready.� Therefore
the call to �come� is universal. It is plain that the offer of the
atonement should be regulated by its intrinsic nature and sufficiency,
not by the obstacles that prevent its efficacy. The extent to which a
medicine is offered is not limited by the number of persons favorably
disposed to buy it and use it. Its adaptation to disease is the sole
consideration in selling it, and consequently it is offered to
everybody.
4. God opposes no
obstacle to the efficacy of the atonement in the instance of the
nonelect. (a) He exerts no direct efficiency to prevent the nonelect
from trusting in the atonement. The decree of reprobation is permissive.
God leaves the nonelect to do as he likes. (b) There is no compulsion
from the external circumstances in which the providence of God has
placed the nonelect. On the contrary, the outward circumstances,
especially in Christendom, favor instead of hindering trust in Christ�s
atonement. And so, in a less degree, do the outward circumstances in
heathendom: �The goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering of God [tend
to] lead to repentance� (Rom. 2:4; Acts 14:17; 17:26�30). (c) The
special grace which God bestows upon the elect does not prevent the
nonelect from believing; neither does it render faith any more difficult
for him. The nonelect receives common grace, and common grace would
incline the human will if it were not defeated by the human will. If the
sinner should make no hostile opposition, common grace would be
equivalent to saving grace:153
�You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you do always
resist the Holy Spirit� (Acts 7:51); �as Jannes and Jambres withstood
Moses, so do these also withstand the truth� (2 Tim. 3:8). See Howe�s
remarks on common grace (Oracles
2.2.5).
5. The atonement of
Christ is to be offered indiscriminately because God desires that every
man would believe in it. �God,� says Turretin (4.17.33), �delights in
the conversion and eternal life of the sinner, as a thing pleasing in
itself and congruous with his infinitely compassionate nature, and
therefore demands from man as a duty due from him (tanquam
officium debitum) to turn if he would
live.� Substitute in this passage �faith and repentance� for �conversion
and eternal life,� and it is equally true. It is the divine delight in
faith and repentance and the divine desire for its exercise that
warrants the offer of the benefits of Christ�s atonement to the
nonelect. Plainly, the offer of the atonement ought to be regulated by
divine desire and not by the aversion of the nonelect. God in offering
his own atonement should be guided by his own feeling and not by that of
sinful man. Because the nonelect does not take delight in faith and
repentance is surely no reason why God, who does take delight in it,
should be debarred from saying to him, �Turn, turn, for why will you
die?� May not God express his sincere feeling and desire to any except
those who are in sympathy with him and have the same species of feeling?
If a man has a kind and compassionate nature, it is unreasonable to
require that he suppress its promptings in case he sees a proud and
surly person who is unwilling to accept a gift. The benevolent nature is
unlimited in its desire. It wishes well-being to everybody, and hence
its offers are universal. They may be made to a churlish and ill-natured
man and be rejected, but they are good and kind offers nevertheless, and
they are nonetheless sincere, though they accomplish nothing. (See
supplement 6.2.11.)
The universal offer of the benefits of Christ�s
atonement springs out of God�s will of complacency: �I have no pleasure
in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his evil way
and live� (Ezek. 33:11). God may properly call upon the nonelect to do a
thing that God delights in, simply because he does delight in it. Divine
desire is not altered by the divine decree of preterition. Though God
decides not to overcome by special grace the obstinate aversion which
resists common grace, yet his delight in faith and repentance remains
the same. His desire for the sinner�s faith and repentance is not
diminished in the least by the resistance which it meets from the
nonelect nor by the fact that for reasons sufficient he does not decide
to overcome this resistance.
6. It is the nonelect
himself, not God, who prevents the efficacy of the atonement. For the
real reason of the inefficacy of Christ�s blood is impenitence and
unbelief. Consequently, the author of impenitence and unbelief is the
author of limited redemption. God is not the cause of a sinner�s
impenitence and unbelief, merely because he does not overcome his
impenitence and unbelief. If a man flings himself into the water and
drowns, a spectator upon the bank cannot be called the cause of that
man�s death. Nonprevention is not causation. The efficient and
responsible cause of the suicide is the suicide�s free will. In like
manner, the nonelect himself, by his impenitence and unbelief, is the
responsible cause of the inefficacy of Christ�s expiation. God is
blameless in respect to the limitation of redemption; man is guilty in
respect to it.154
God is only the indirect and occasional cause of it; man is the
immediate and efficient cause of it. This being the state of the case,
there is nothing self-contradictory in the universal offer of the
atonement upon the part of God. If any of the following suppositions
were true, it would be fatal to the universal offer: (a) If at the time
of offering Christ�s atonement God was actively preventing the nonelect
from believing, the offer would be inconsistent. (b) If at the time of
offering it God were working upon the will of the nonelect to strengthen
his aversion to the atonement, the offer would be inconsistent. (c) If
God were the efficient author of that apostasy and sinfulness which
enslaves the human will and renders it unable to believe in Christ
without special grace, then the offer of the atonement unaccompanied
with the offer of special grace would be inconsistent. But none of these
suppositions are true.
7. The offer of the
atonement is universal because, when God calls upon men universally to
believe, he does not call upon them to believe that they are elected or
that Christ died for them in particular. He calls upon them to believe
that Christ died for sin, for sinners, for the world; that there is no
other name under heaven given among men whereby they must be saved; that
the blood of Christ cleanses from all sin; and that there is no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. The atonement is not
offered to an individual either as an elect man or as a nonelect man;
but as a man and a sinner, simply. Men are commanded to believe in the
sufficiency of the atonement, not in its predestinated application to
themselves as individuals. The belief that Christ died for the
individual himself is the assurance of faith and is more than saving
faith. It is the end, not the beginning of the process of salvation. God
does not demand assurance of faith as the first act of faith: �Assurance
of grace and salvation not being of the essence of faith, true believers
may wait long before they obtain it� (Westminster Larger Catechism 81);
�in whom, after you believed, you were sealed with that Holy Spirit of
promise� (Eph. 1:13).155
8. The atonement is to
be offered to all because the preacher is to hope and expect from God
the best and not the worst for every man.156
He is consequently to expect the election of his hearer, rather than his
reprobation. The fact of the external call favors election, not
reprobation. The external call embraces the following particulars: (a)
hearing the word, (b) religious education by parents and friends, and
(c) common grace, experienced in conviction of sin, fear of death and
judgment, general anxiety, and dissatisfaction with this life. Upon such
grounds as these, the individual is to be encouraged to believe that
God�s purpose is to elect him rather than to reprobate him. If a person
fears that he is of the nonelect, he should be assured rather that he is
mistaken in this fear than that he is correct in it; because God has
done more for him that tends to his salvation than to his perdition.
9. The atonement is to
be offered to all men because even those who shall prove in the day of
judgment to be nonelect do yet receive benefits and blessings from it.
Turretin (16.14.11) mentions the following benefits: (a) the preaching
of the gospel, whereby paganism with its idolatry, superstition, and
wretchedness is abolished; (b) the extremes of human depravity are
restrained; (c) many temporal blessings and gifts of providence are
bestowed (Rom. 2:4; Acts 14:17); (d) punishment is postponed and delayed
(Acts 17:30; Rom. 3:25). Says Bates (Eternal
Judgment, 2):
The grace of the Redeemer is
so far universal that upon his account the indulgent providence of God
invited the heathen to repentance. His renewed benefits that sweetened
their lives (Rom.
2:4) and his powerful
patience in forbearing so long to cut them off, when their impurities
were so provoking, was a testimony of his inclination to clemency upon
their reformation (Acts
14:17). And for their
abusing his favors and resisting the methods of his goodness, they will
be inexcusable to themselves, and their condemnation righteous to their
own conscience. (See
supplement 6.2.12.)
The reasons for the universal offer of the atonement,
thus far, have had reference to God�s relation to the offer. They go to
show that the act upon his part is neither self-contradictory nor
insincere. But there is another class of reasons that have reference to
man�s relation to the offer. And these we now proceed to mention:
1. The atonement is to
be offered to every man because it is the duty of every man to trust in
it. The atonement is in this particular like the Decalogue. The moral
law is to be preached to every man because it is every man�s duty to
obey it. The question whether every man will obey it has nothing to do
with the universal proclamation of the law. It is a fact that the law
will have been preached in vain to many persons, but this is no reason
why it should not have been preached to them. They were under obligation
to obey it, and this justified its proclamation to them. Still more than
this, the moral law should be preached to every man even though no man
is able to keep it perfectly in his own strength. The slavery of the
human will to sin is no reason why the primary and original duty which
the human will owes to God should not be stated and enjoined, because
this slavery has been produced by man, not by God. In like manner faith
in Christ�s atonement should be required as a duty from every man,
notwithstanding the fact that �no man can come unto Christ except the
Father draw him� (John 6:44); that �faith is not of ourselves, but is
the gift of God� (Eph. 2:8); and that Christ is �the author and finisher
of faith� (Heb. 12:2). Man�s inability without the grace of God to
penitently trust in Christ�s atonement, being self-caused like his
inability to perfectly keep the moral law without the same grace, still
leaves his duty in the case binding upon him. The purpose of God to
bestow grace is not the measure of man�s duty. Neither is the power that
man has as fallen the measure of man�s duty. Only the power that man had
as unfallen and by creation is the measure of it.
2. The offer of
Christ�s atonement for sin should be universal because it is the most
impressive mode of preaching the law. In exhibiting the nature of
Christ�s sacrifice and its sufficiency to atone for all sin, and
especially in showing the necessity of it in order to the remission of
any sin whatever, the spirituality and extent of the divine law are
presented more powerfully than they can be in any other manner. The
offer of the atonement is consequently a direct means of producing a
sense of guilt and condemnation, without which faith in Christ is
impossible.
3. The offer of the
atonement to an unbeliever is adapted to disclose the aversion and
obstinacy of his own will. This method of forgiving sin displeases him.
It is humbling. If he were invited to make a personal atonement, this
would fall in with his inclination. But to do no atoning work at all and
simply to trust in the atoning work of another is the most unwelcome act
that human pride can be summoned to perform. Belief in vicarious
atonement is distasteful and repulsive to the natural man because he is
a proud man. When, therefore, a man is informed that there is no
forgiveness of sin but through Christ�s atonement, that this atonement
is ample for the forgiveness of every man, and that nothing but unbelief
will prevent any man�s forgiveness, his attention is immediately
directed to his own disinclination to trust in this atonement and
aversion to this method of forgiveness. But this experience is highly
useful. It causes him to know his helplessness, even in respect to so
fundamental an act as faith. The consequence is that he betakes himself
to God in prayer that he may be inclined and enabled to believe
(Westminster Larger Catechism 59, 67).
S U P P L E M E N T S
6.2.1
(see p. 693).
The attempt is sometimes made to illustrate vicarious suffering in
grace by what is denominated �vicarious suffering in nature.� But
the analogy is defective. The two things are different in kind, not
merely in degree. A mother�s suffering for her child is not
substitutionary and has no reference to retributive justice. The
following points of difference are evidence: vicariousness in nature
(a) is not expiatory, that is, satisfactory of law; (b) does not
release another from the obligation to suffer penalty; (c) is
sharing suffering with another (the mother suffers with her child;
there are two sufferers); and (d) is helping another to bear
suffering (the mother assists her child to endure). Vicariousness in
grace (a) is expiatory, that is, satisfactory of law; (b) releases
another from the obligation to penal suffering; (c) does not share
suffering with another, but endures the whole of it (Christ does not
suffer together with the sinner, but �treads the winepress alone�);
and (d) does not assist the sinner to bear suffering, but suffers in
his place. When Christians �bear one another�s burdens, such
�vicariousness� as this does not release one of them from bearing
burdens. It is
community and help in enduring a common burden. Neither is suffering
because of another�as when poverty and disease are inherited by
children from their parents�the same as suffering for another�that
is, in his stead for judicial purposes.
6.2.2
(see p. 697).
Calvin teaches that forgiveness is the noninfliction of penalty upon
the transgressor. He says (3.4.30):
�What would Christ have done for us if punishment for sins were
still inflicted upon us? For when we say that he �bore all our sins
in his own body on the tree, we intend only that he sustained the
punishment which was due to our sins. This is more significantly
expressed by Isaiah, when he says that the �chastisement or
correction of our peace was upon him.� Now what is the correction (correctio)
of our peace but the punishment due to sins and which we must have
suffered before we could be reconciled to God, if he had not become
our substitute? Thus we see clearly that Christ bore the punishment
of sin that he might deliver his people from it. The passages cited
above expressly signify that God receives us into favor on this
condition, that in forgiving our guilt he remits all the punishment
that we had deserved. And whenever David or the other prophets
implore the pardon of their sins, they at the same time deprecate
the punishment, and to this they are impelled by an apprehension of
divine judgment. Again, when they promise mercy from the Lord, they
almost always professedly speak of punishments and the remission of
them.�
To the same effect
Leighton (Lord�s
Prayer)
remarks: �Sin as it is called a debt is taken for the guiltiness of
sin, which is to owe the suffering of punishment or an obligement to
the curse which the law has pronounced against sin; and because this
results immediately from sin, therefore sin is often put for the
engagement to punishment; so the apostle�s phrase (1
Cor. 15:56) may be
taken. So, then, the debt of sin being the tie to punishment which
follows upon it, the forgiving of sin can be no other than the
acquitting of a man from that curse, setting him free from his debt
or his engagement to suffer.�
To a superficial glance
the position that forgiveness of sin is the remission to the sinner
of its penalty by means of its infliction upon Christ as the
sinner�s substitute seems to favor selfishness and a mechanical view
of pardon. The person, it is objected, merely desires deliverance
from judicial suffering, and when a vicarious satisfaction of
justice is offered to him, he coldly accepts it without any real
sorrow for his transgression. It is only a mercantile transaction,
like that of the exchange and market generally, with no spiritual
affection and gratitude toward God the suffering Redeemer. But this
objection supposes that the sinner has no true conception of sin as
related to law and justice and no personal interest in the
vindication of their claims by penal satisfaction. For if he
perceived that the inmost quality of sin is its guilt or desert of
penalty, his sorrow over its commission would manifest itself in the
desire that it might be punished and in a willingness to undergo the
punishment personally, if this would meet the case. The penalty of
sin is the righteous retribution of infinite holiness. This is a
spiritual evil, and in praying for its remission or release from
obligation to endure it, because it has been endured for him by his
divine substitute, the penitent sinner has first of all in view the
character of God and the nature of justice, and not his own
self-interest as shown in a mere wish to escape pain. If he
recognizes first of all the punitive demands of righteousness and
holiness and is so desirous that they should be satisfied that he
would willing meet them by his own suffering, if this were possible,
this is the highest proof of the sincerity of his sorrow over his
disobedience. When the sinner, in the scriptural phrase, �accepts
the punishment of his iniquity� (Lev.
26:41), he
acknowledges its desert of penalty, and then pardon is for him both
�the merciful and the just� (Rom.
3:26;
1 John
1:19) release of
penalty by means of the vicarious endurance of it by his incarnate
and suffering Savior. This objection to the Old Testament idea of
pardon arises from adopting different ideas of sin and justice from
those of the Old Testament. If sin is not guilt or obligation to
punishment and if the satisfaction of justice is not inexorably
necessary, then mercy is not the vicarious endurance of punishment
for the sinner and pardon is not the remission of penalty.
This subject has obtained
from Pearson as clear and concise a statement as can be found in
theological literature. It is given in his exposition of
article 10
of the Apostles�
Creed. Well would
it have been if all parties and classes in the English church had
adopted respecting the guilt of sin and its remission by means of
Christ�s vicarious satisfaction for it the explanation of the Bishop
of Chester, of whom Burnet (History
of His Own Times)
remarks that �he was in all respects the greatest divine of his age;
a man of great learning, strong reason, and of a clear judgment. His
book on the creed is among the best that our church has produced.�
His explanation is as follows: �The second particular to be
considered is the obligation of sin, which must be presupposed to
the solution or remission of it. Now every sin does cause a guilt,
and every sinner, by being such, becomes a guilty person; which
guilt consists in a debt or obligation to suffer a punishment
proportionable to the iniquity of the sin. This obligation to suffer
penalty for sin is distinct from the commission of sin. The
commission of sin ceases with the act, but the obligation to suffer
for it never ceases. He who but once committed adultery, at that one
time sins and at no time after can be said to commit that particular
sin; but the guilt or obligation to suffer punishment for it remains
on him still, and he may be said forever to be guilty of adultery,
because he is forever liable to the wrath of God and obligated to
suffer the punishment due to adultery. This obligation to
punishment, which remains after the act of sin, is that
reatus peccati
of which the schools, and before them the fathers, spoke. The nature
of this reatus
is excellently declared by St. Augustine, when delivering the
distinction between actual and original sin: �In the case of those
persons who are born again in Christ, when they receive an entire
remission of all their sins, it is necessary, of course, that the
guilt [obligation to punishment] also of the still indwelling
concupiscence should be remitted, in order that it should not be
imputed to them for sin. For even as in the case of those actual
sins which cannot be themselves permanent, since they pass away as
soon as they are committed, the guilt or obligation to suffer
penalty yet is permanent and if not remitted will remain
forevermore; so when concupiscence [original sin] is remitted, the
guilt or obligation to suffer penalty is also taken away. For not to
have sin means this, namely, not to be deemed guilty of sin, that
is, bound to suffer punishment for it� (Augustine,
On Marriage
1.26). This debt or obligation to punishment our blessed Savior thus
taught to his disciples: �Whosoever is angry with his brother
without cause shall be liable (obnoxious or bound over) to the
judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be
liable (obnoxious or bound over) to the council; but whosoever shall
say, You fool, shall be liable (obnoxious or bound over) to
hellfire� (Matt.
5:22). So says our
Savior again: �He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit has
never forgiveness, but is in danger of (liable, obnoxious, or bound
over to) eternal damnation� (Mark
3:28�29). From all
this it appears that after the act of sin is committed and passed
by, the guilt or obligation to suffer the affixed penalty resulting
from that act remains; that is, the person who committed it
continues still a debtor to the vindictive [retributive] justice of
God and is bound to endure the punishment due unto it.
�What, now, is the
forgiveness of sin, or in what does remission of sin consist? The
forgiveness contains in it a reconciliation of an offended God,
without which God cannot be conceived to remit, and a satisfaction
unto a just God, without which God is not reconciled. The first of
these is taught in the following: �We are justified gratuitously by
his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God
has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood� (Rom.
3:24�25); �we have
an advocate with the
Father, and he is the
propitiation for our sins� (1
John 2:1); �God
loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins� (4:10).
This propitiation amounted to a reconciliation, that is, a kindness
after wrath. We must conceive that God was angry with mankind before
he determined to give our Savior; we cannot imagine that God, who is
essentially just, should not abominate iniquity. The first
affection, therefore, which we can conceive in him upon the lapse of
man is wrath and indignation. God was most certainly holily angry
with mankind before he determined to provide for them a Savior from
this anger: �God commends his love toward us in that while we were
yet sinners [and his wrath against sin existed] Christ died for us�;
�when we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the
ungodly [with whom justice was displeased]�; �when we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son� (Rom.
5:6,
8,
10).
Though it be most true that �God so loved the world that he gave his
only begotten Son� (John
3:16), yet there
is no incongruity in this, that a father should be offended with
that son [as a sinner] whom he loves [as a son], and offended with
him [in the one relation] at the very time that he loves him [in the
other relation]. Notwithstanding, therefore, that God loved men whom
he created, yet he was offended with them when they sinned and gave
his Son to suffer for their sin in their stead, that through that
Son�s suffering he might be reconciled to them. This reconciliation
[of the holy justice] of God is clearly delivered in the Scriptures
as wrought by Christ: �God has reconciled us to himself by Jesus
Christ� (2
Cor. 5:18); �we
were reconciled unto God by the death of his Son� (Rom.
5:10); �by him
reconciling all things unto himself� (Col.
1:20). In vain is
it objected that the Scripture says our Savior reconciled man to
God, but nowhere teaches that he reconciled God to man; for, in the
language of Scripture, to �reconcile a man to God� means to
reconcile God to man, that is, to cause him who before was angry and
offended with a person to be gracious and propitious to him. As the
princes of the Philistines spoke of David, �Wherewith should he
reconcile himself unto the master? should it not be with the heads
of these men?� (1
Sam. 29:4).
Wherewith shall he reconcile Saul, who is highly offended with him;
wherewith shall he make him gracious and favorable, but by betraying
these men unto him? As our Savior advises, �If you bring your gift
before the altar and there remember that your brother has aught
against you, leave there your gift before the altar and go your way,
first be reconciled to your brother� (Matt.
5:23�24); that is,
reconcile your brother to yourself, whom you have injured; render
him by your submission [and compensation] favorable unto you, who
has something against you and is offended at you. As the apostle
advises the wife that �departs from her husband to remain unmarried
or to be reconciled to her husband� (1
Cor. 7:11), that
is, to appease and get the favor of her husband. In the like manner
we are said to be reconciled unto God when God is reconciled,
appeased, and become gracious and favorable unto us; and Christ is
said to reconcile us unto God when he has moved and obtained of God
[as holy and sin hating] to be reconciled unto us; when he has
appeased his holy displeasure and restored us unto his favor.
�Nor is it any wonder God
should be thus reconciled to sinners by the death of Christ, who
�while we were yet sinners died for us,� because the punishment
which Christ who was our surety endured was a full satisfaction to
the justice of God: �The Son of Man came to give his life a ransom
for many� (Matt.
20:28). Now a
ransom is a price given to redeem such as are in any way in
captivity; anything laid down by way of compensation to take off a
bond or obligation, whereby he who before was bound becomes free.
All sinners were obligated to undergo such punishments as are
proportionate to their sins and were by that obligation captivated
and in bonds, and Christ did give his life a ransom for them, and
that a proper ransom, if that his life were of any price and given
as such. For a ransom is properly something of value given by way of
redemption to purchase that which is detained or given for the
releasing of that which is enthralled. But it is most evident that
the life of Christ was laid down as a price; neither is it more
certain that he died than that he bought us: �You are bought with a
price� (1
Cor. 6:20;
7:23).
It is the �Lord who bought us� (2
Pet. 2:1). The
price which he paid was his blood; for �we are not redeemed with
corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood
of Christ� (1
Pet. 1:18�19). Now
as it was the blood of Christ, so it was a price given by way of
compensation; and as that blood was precious, so was it a full and
perfect satisfaction. For as the gravity of the offense and iniquity
of the sin is augmented and increases according to the dignity of
the person offended and injured by it, so the value, price, and
dignity of that which is given by way of compensation is raised
according to the dignity of the person making the satisfaction. God
is of infinite majesty against whom we have sinned; and Christ is of
the same divinity, who gave his life a ransom for sinners; for God
�has purchased his church with his own blood� (Acts
20:28). Although
therefore God be said to remit our sins, by which we were bound and
captivated to his justice, yet he is never said to remit the price,
without which we had never been ransomed and redeemed; neither can
he be said to have remitted it, because he did strictly require and
receive it [from his beloved Son, from whom he did not remove the
cup of agony].
�If, then, we consider
together on the side of man the nature and obligation of sin and on
the side of Christ the satisfaction made and the reconciliation
wrought, we shall easily perceive how God forgives sins and in what
remission of them consists. Man being in all conditions [evangelized
or unevangelized] under some law [written or unwritten] of God, who
has sovereign power and dominion over him, and therefore owing
absolute obedience to that law, whensoever in any way he
transgresses that law or deviates from that rule, he becomes thereby
a sinner and contracts a guilt which is an obligation to endure a
punishment proportionable to his offense; and God, who is a lawgiver
and sovereign, becoming now the party wronged and offended, has a
most just right to punish man as an offender. But Christ, taking
upon him the nature of man and offering himself a sacrifice for
man�s sin, gives that unto God for and instead of the eternal death
of man, which is more valuable and acceptable to God than that death
could be, and so makes a sufficient compensation and full
satisfaction for the sins of man; which God accepting becomes
reconciled unto us and for the punishment which Christ endured takes
off our obligation to eternal punishment. Thus man, who by sinning
violated the law of God and by that violation offended God and was
thereby obligated to undergo the punishment due unto the sin and to
be inflicted by the wrath of God, is by the price of the most
precious blood of Christ given and accepted in full compensation and
satisfaction for the punishment that was due, restored unto the
favor of God, who being thus satisfied and upon such satisfaction
reconciled is both �faithful and just� [faithful to his promise of
mercy and just to his righteousness and holiness] (1
John 1:9) to take
off all obligation to punishment from the sinner; and in this act
consists the forgiveness of sins.�
6.2.3
(see p. 711).
The punishment for suicide, as affixed by Plato (Laws
873), is remarkably like that of the Christian church: �What shall
he suffer who slays him who of all men is said to be nearest and
dearest to him? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence
of his appointed share of life, not because the law of the state
compels him nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and
inevitable fortune which has come upon him nor because he has had to
suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from
indolence or cowardice imposes upon himself an unjust penalty. For
him what ceremonies there are to be of purification and burial God
knows, and about these the next of kin should inquire of the
interpreters and of the laws and do according to their injunctions.
Those who meet their death in this way should be
buried alone, and none
shall be laid by their side; they shall be buried ingloriously in
the borders of the twelve portions of the land, in such places as
are uncultivated and nameless, and no column or name shall mark the
place of their interment.�
6.2.4
(see p. 713).
Calvin teaches that whenever the believer suffers pain from any
cause or source whatever he is not suffering punishment for purposes
of law and justice, but corrective chastisement for purposes of
self-discipline and spiritual improvement. In
3.4.31�32
he says: �Since it highly concerns us to understand the design of
those chastisements with which God corrects our sins, and how
greatly they differ from the examples of his indignation pursuing
the impious and reprobate, I conceive it will not be unseasonable to
give a summary account of them. For the sake of perspicuity let us
call one vengeance or vindictive judgment and the other chastisement
or disciplinary judgment. In vindictive judgment God is to be
contemplated as taking vengeance on his enemies, so as to exert his
[judicial] wrath against them. We consider it, therefore, strictly
speaking, to be the vengeance of God when the punishment he inflicts
is attended with indignation. In disciplinary judgment he is not so
severe as to be angry; nor does he punish in order to destroy or
precipitate into perdition. Wherefore it is not properly punishment
or vengeance, but correction and admonition. The former is the act
of a judge, the latter of a father. For a judge, when he punishes an
offender, attends to the crime itself and inflicts punishment
according to the nature and aggravations of it. When a father
corrects his child [even] with severity, he does it not to take
vengeance or satisfaction of justice, but rather to teach him and
render him more cautious for the future. Wherever there is
vindictive punishment there is also a manifestation of the
[judicial] curse and wrath of God, which he always withholds from
believers. Chastisement, on the contrary, is, as the Scriptures
teach, both a blessing of God and a testimony of his love.�
6.2.5
(see p. 718).
Edwards (Excellency
of Christ)
thus speaks of the relation of Christ�s vicarious sufferings to
divine justice and of their being also a manifestation of pity and
compassion to the sinner: �Christ never in any act gave so great a
manifestation of love to God and at the same time never so
manifested his [compassionate] love toward those who were enemies to
God as in the act of suffering and dying. The blood of Christ that
was sweat out and fell in great drops to the ground in his agony was
shed from love to God�s enemies and his own. Never did Christ so
eminently show his regard to God�s honor as in offering up himself a
victim to revenging [avenging or retributive] justice to vindicate
God�s honor; and yet in this, above all, he manifested his [pitying]
love to them that dishonored God so as to bring such guilt upon
themselves that nothing less than his blood could atone for it.
Revenging justice then spent all its force upon him on account of
our guilt that was laid upon him; he was not spared at all; and this
was the way and means by which Christ stood up for the honor of
God�s justice. In this the diverse excellences that meet in the
person of Christ appeared, namely, his infinite regard for divine
justice and such compassionate love to those that had exposed
themselves to it as induced him thus to yield himself a sacrifice to
it.�
6.2.6
(see p. 722).
Paley (sermons on
Heb. 9:26
and
Rom. 6:1)
thus remarks upon the impossibility of man�s meriting heaven and of
his need of obtaining it through the death of Christ: �Souls which
are really laboring and endeavoring after salvation, and with
sincerity, are every hour made deeply sensible of the deficiency and
imperfection of their endeavors. Had they no ground, therefore, for
hope, but merit, that is to say, could they look for nothing more
than they should strictly deserve, their prospect would be very
unhappy. I see not how they could look for heaven at all. They may
form a conception of a virtue and obedience which might seem to be
entitled to a high reward; but when they come to review their own
performances and to compare them with that conception; when they see
how short they have proved of what they ought to have been and how
weak and broken were their best offices; they will be the first to
confess that it is infinitely for their comfort that they have some
other resource than their own righteousness. Their acts of piety and
devotion toward God are defective in principle and debased by the
mixture of impure motives. They are intermittent, cold, and languid.
That heavenly mindedness which ought to be inseparable from
religious exercises does not accompany theirs, at least not
constantly. Their thankfulness is never what it ought to be, or
anything like it. Formality is apt continually to steal upon them in
their worship. No man reviews his services toward God but he
perceives in them much to be forgiven, much to be excused. That such
imperfect services, therefore, should be allowed and accepted is an
act of abounding grace and goodness in God who accepts them; and we
are taught in Scripture that this much needed grace and goodness
abounds toward us through Jesus Christ and particularly through his
sufferings and death.
�We shall better see the
truth of this if we consider well what salvation is. It is nothing
else than, after this life is ended, being placed in a state of
happiness ineffably great, both in degree and duration; a state,
concerning which the following things are said: �The sufferings of
this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that
shall be revealed.� �God has in store for us such things as pass
man�s understanding.� It is not simply escaping punishment, simply
being excused or forgiven, simply a little compensation for the
little good we do, but it is infinitely more. Heaven is infinitely
greater than the small reward which natural religion leads the moral
pagan to expect. What do the Scriptures call it? �Glory, honor,
immortality, eternal life.� Will anyone contend that salvation in
this sense and to this extent; that heaven, namely, eternal life,
glory, honor, immortality; that a happiness such as there is no way
of describing it but by saying that it surpasses human
comprehension; will anyone contend that this is no more than what
human virtue deserves, which in its own proper nature and by its own
merit it is entitled to look forward to and to receive? The greatest
excellence that man ever attained has no such pretensions. The best
good action that man ever performed has no claim to this extent or
anything like it. It is out of all calculation and comparison and
proportion, above and more than any human works can possibly
deserve.
�To what, then, are we to
ascribe it, that such imperfect endeavors after holiness should
procure and that they will in fact procure to those who sincerely
exert them, such an immense blessing as �glory, honor, immortality,
eternal life?� The Scriptures attribute it to the free will, the
free gift, the love and mercy of God. This alone is the source and
fountain and cause of salvation, the origin from which it springs
and from which all our hopes of attaining it are derived. The cause
is not in ourselves nor in anything we do or can do, but in God, in
his goodwill and pleasure. It is in the graciousness of his original
offer of mercy. Therefore, whatever shall have moved and excited and
conciliated that goodwill and pleasure so as to have procured that
offer to be made, or shall have formed any part or portion of the
motive from which it was made, may most truly and properly be said
to be efficacious in human salvation. And this efficacy is in
Scripture attributed to the death of Christ. It is attributed in a
variety of ways of expression, but this is the substance of them
all. He is a sacrifice, an offering to God, a propitiation, the
precious sacrifice foreordained, the Lamb slain from the foundation
of the world, the Lamb which takes away the sin of the world; we are
washed in his blood, we are justified by his blood, we are saved
from wrath through him, he has once suffered for sins the just for
the unjust, that he might bring us to God. All these terms, and many
more that are used, assert in substance the same thing, namely, the
efficacy of the death of Christ in the procuring of human salvation;
and human salvation we have seen is not simply escaping punishment,
but obtaining glory, honor,
immortality, and a
blessedness such as there is no way of describing it but by saying
that it surpasses human comprehension.�
Edwards (Justification
by Faith Alone)
teaches the same truth with Paley, but in more technical terms and
in closer connection with systematic theology: �The opponents of the
doctrine of the imputation of Christ�s active righteousness suppose
that there is an absurdity in it. They say that to suppose that God
imputes Christ�s obedience to us is to suppose that God is mistaken
and thinks that we performed that obedience which Christ performed.
But why cannot that righteousness be reckoned to our account and be
accepted for us without any such absurdity? Why is there any more
absurdity in supposing that Christ�s obedience of the law is imputed
to us than that his penal satisfaction of the law is imputed? If
Christ has suffered the penalty of the law for us and in our stead,
then it will follow that his suffering that penalty is imputed to
us, that is, is accepted for us and in our stead and is reckoned to
our account as though we had suffered it. But why may not his
obeying the law of God be as rationally reckoned to our account as
his suffering the penalty of the law? Why may not a price to bring
into debt [by earning a title to life] be as rationally transferred
from one person�s account to another as a price to pay a debt [by
atoning for guilt]? There is the very same need of Christ�s obeying
the law in our stead in order to the reward, as of his suffering the
penalty in our stead in order to our escaping the penalty; and the
same reason why one should be accepted on our account as the other.
One was as requisite to answer the law�s demands as the other. The
same law that fixes the curse of God as the penalty for not
continuing in all things written in the law to do them has as much
fixed the doing these things as the antecedent of living by them.
There is, therefore, exactly the same need, from the law, of perfect
obedience being fulfilled in order to our obtaining the law�s
reward, namely, heaven, as there is of death�s being suffered in
order to our escaping the law�s punishment, namely, hell; or the
same necessity, by the law, of perfect obedience preceding life, as
there is of disobedience being succeeded by death.�
6.2.7
(see p. 726).
The expiation of sin is distinguishable from the pardon of it. The
former, conceivably, might take place and the latter not. When
Christ died on Calvary, the whole mass, so to speak, of human sin
was expiated merely by that death; but the whole mass was not
pardoned merely by that death. The claims of law and justice for the
sins of the whole world were satisfied by the �offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all� (Heb.
10:10); but the
sins of every individual man were not forgiven and �blotted out� by
this transaction. Still another transaction was requisite in order
to this, namely, the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the
sinner working faith in this expiatory offering and the declarative
act of God saying �your sin is forgiven you.� The Son of God, after
he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, �sat down on the
right hand of God� (10:12);
but if the redeeming work of the Trinity had stopped at this point,
not a soul of mankind would have been pardoned and justified, yet
the expiatory value of the �one sacrifice� would have been just the
same.
6.2.8
(see p. 729).
The standing objection of the Socinian to the vicarious satisfaction
of justice�that it presents God in the aspect of implacability and
unpaternal severity toward the sinner�falls away when it is
considered that vicarious satisfaction in distinction from personal
is the satisfaction of one divine attribute by another divine
attribute, of divine justice by divine mercy. In and by Christ�s
sufferings and death, God�s mercy meets the righteous and necessary
demands of God�s justice and thereby releases the sinner from his
own obligation to do this. Calvin (3.20.45)
directs attention to this feature in redemption: �Sins are called
debts in the Lord�s prayer because we owe the penalty of them: a
debt we are altogether incapable of discharging, unless we are
released by this remission [through Christ�s satisfaction of
justice], which is a pardon flowing from God�s gratuitous mercy when
he freely cancels these debts without any payment from us, being
satisfied by his own mercy in Christ, who has once given himself for
our redemption. Those, therefore, who rely on God�s being satisfied
with their own merits or the merits of others and persuade
themselves that remission of sins is purchased by these
satisfactions, have no interest in this gratuitous forgiveness. In
this way they do not implore God�s mercy, but appeal to his
justice.�
6.2.9
(see p. 743).
The Arminians did not carefully distinguish, as the elder Calvinists
did, between atonement and redemption. Barrow, who is Arminian, has
four sermons on �the doctrine of universal redemption asserted and
explained.� He employs the term
Savior
in his first sermon on
1 Tim.
4:10 in �the large
acceptation of conferring any kind of good. Whence God is �the
Savior of all men� as the universal preserver and upholder of all
things, as in the psalm: �You, Lord, preserve man and beast� (Ps.
36:6). If our Lord
be the Savior of all those to whom God�s truth is declared and his
mercy offered; or if he be the Savior of all the members of the
visible church; particularly, if he be the Savior of those who among
these, rejecting the overtures and means of grace or by disobedience
abusing them, shall in the event fail of being saved, then he is the
Savior of all men.� According to this loose use of the term, Christ
is the Savior of those to whom salvation is offered but not secured
by regenerating grace and who are eternally lost. Turretin (14.14)
explains �Savior� in the first part of this text in the sense of
preserver quoting
Ps. 36:6
and
Acts 17:28
and citing Chrysostom, Oecumenius, Ambrose, and Aquinas in support
of this. This explanation is favored by the phraseology
we trust in the living
God, who is the Savior of all men, specially of those that believe.
The �living God� refers more naturally to the Trinity than to the
incarnate second person, showing that in the first part of the
proposition the apostle has in mind the general providential
relations of God to man and in the second part his special
redemptive and actually saving relations. Turretin would not, with
Barrow, denominate Christ �the Savior of all those to whom God�s
truth is declared and his mercy offered and who by disobedience
abusing them fail of being saved.�
6.2.10
(see p. 744).
It is surprising that the denial that faith is the effect and not
the cause of election and the new birth should have so much currency
in the face of the numerous and explicit teachings of Scripture.
Besides the passages quoted on p. 744, consider the following
description by St. Paul (Eph.
1:19�20) of divine
omnipotence exhibited in election to faith and regeneration: �The
eyes of your understanding are enlightened that you may know what is
the exceeding greatness of God�s power to us-ward who believe
according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in
[and by] Christ, when he raised him from the dead and set him at his
own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality
and authority and dominion.� Again, in his sacerdotal prayer (John
17:2), our Lord
represents the whole result of his mediatorial work as dependent
upon election: �You have given your Son power over all flesh, that
he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him.� He
also emphasizes the discrimination between the elect and nonelect by
saying (John
17:9): �I pray for
them, I pray not for the world, but for them which you have given
me.� The Redeemer does not say that he never prayed for the whole
sinful world of mankind; for he did this whenever he uttered the
supplication �your kingdom come; your will be done on earth, as it
is in heaven�; but on that particular occasion he confines his
supplications to a part of the world, namely, the elect.
6.2.11
(see p. 751).
It is important to show that the fault is man�s, not God�s, when
common grace fails of success, because it evinces that although
common grace is not the highest grade of mercy, it is nevertheless a
grade of it. It is the exercise of
compassion when nothing
but justice and retribution are due. Instead of offering pardon and
exerting a certain degree of restraining and softening influence
upon the transgressor, which is described in
Rom. 2:4,
God might make no such offer to him and leave him to the wholly
unrestrained workings of his free will. Common grace, in this way,
has a real value which is not nullified by anything in its own
nature but by the enmity and resistance of the sinful will. But in
bringing out this fact, it is important not to nullify the
distinction between common and special grace by combining common
grace with the sinner�s cooperation, whereby common is converted
into special and regenerating grace by the sinner�s agency. In
addition to the remark on p. 751 n. 153, the following statement
guards the subject still more: Again, to say that common grace would
succeed if it were not resisted by the sinner is not the same as
saying that common grace would succeed if it were yielded to by him.
�To give up the contest� is one definition of �yield.� Not
contesting at all is wholly different from ceasing to contest by
yielding. In the former case there is no resistance by the man; in
the latter, there is a resistance which is put a stop to by him.
This latter is never done except as the divine Spirit inclines and
enables him.
Owen (Dominion
of Sin and Grace
in Works
14.411 [ed. Russell]) thus describes the sinner�s action under
common grace, showing both his voluntary resistance of it and his
guilt in frustrating it: �Men who live in sin do voluntarily wrest
themselves from under the rule of the law of God and give themselves
up to be slaves unto this tyrant. Could sin lay any just claim to
this dominion, had it any title to plead, it were some alleviation
of guilt in them that give themselves up to it. But men reject the
righteous rule of God�s law and choose this foreign and unjust yoke.
Hence it follows that all men have a right in themselves to cast off
the rule of sin and to vindicate themselves into liberty. They may,
when they will, plead the right and title of the law of God unto the
rule of their souls, to the utter exclusion of all pleas and
pretenses of sin for its power. They have a right to say unto it,
Get you hence, what have I to do any more with idols? All men, I
say, have the right in themselves because of the natural allegiance
they owe to the law of God; but by reason of their own act they have
lost the power of themselves to execute this right and actually to
cast off the yoke of sin. This is the work of grace. Sin�s dominion
is broke only by grace.
�But you will say then,
Unto what end serves this right, if they have not the power in
themselves to put it in execution? and how can it be charged as an
aggravation of their sin that they do not use the right which they
have, seeing they have not power so to do? Will you blame a man that
has a right to an estate if he do not recover it when he has no
means so to do?
�I answer briefly three
things. No man living neglects the use of this right to cast off the
yoke and dominion of sin because he cannot of himself make use of
it, but merely because he will not. [Owen means that the �cannot�
has the element of �will not�in it; it is not isolated and abstract
inability, but voluntary inability.] He does voluntarily choose to
continue under the power of sin and looks on everything as his enemy
that would deliver him: �The carnal mind is enmity against God, it
is not subject unto his law nor can it be� (Rom.
8:7). When the law
comes at any time to claim its right and rule over the soul, a man
under the power of sin looks on it as an enemy that has come to
disturb his peace and fortifies his mind against it; and when the
gospel comes and tenders the way and means for the soul�s delivery,
offering its aid and assistance to this end, this also is looked on
as any enemy and is rejected, and all its offers, unto that end (see
Prov. 1:20�25;
John 3:19). This,
then, is the condition of everyone that abides under the dominion of
sin: he chooses so to do; he continues in that state of sin by an
act of his own will; he avows an enmity unto everything which would
give him deliverance; and this will be a sore aggravation of his
condemnation at the last day.
�God may justly require
that of any which it is in the power of the grace of the gospel to
enable them to perform and comply with; for this is tendered unto
them in the preaching of it every day. And although we know not the
ways and means of the effectual communication of grace unto the
souls of men, yet this is certain, that [common] grace is so
tendered in the preaching of the gospel that none go without it,
none are destitute of its aids and assistances but those alone who
by a free act of their own wills do refuse and reject it. This is
that which the whole case depends upon, �You will not come unto me,
that you may have life�; and this all unbelievers have or may have
experience of in themselves. They may know on a due examination of
themselves that they do voluntarily refuse the assistance of the
[common] grace which is offered for their deliverance; therefore is
their destruction of themselves.
�There is a time when men
lose even the right [to cast off the yoke of sin] also. He who gave
up himself to have his ear bored lost all his claim unto future
liberty; he was not to go out at the year of Jubilee. So there is a
time when God judicially gives up men to the rule of sin, to abide
under it forever; so that they lose all right to liberty. Thus he
dealt with many of the idolatrous Gentiles of old (Rom.
1:24,
26,
28)
and so continues to deal with the like profligate sinners; so he
acts toward the generality of the antichristian [infidel] world (2
Thess. 2:11�12)
and with many despisers of the gospel (Isa.
6:9�10). When it
comes to this, men are cast at law [outlawed] and have lost all
right and title unto liberty from the dominion of sin. They may
repine sometimes at the service of sin or the consequences of it in
shame and pain, in the shameful distempers that will pursue many in
their uncleanness; yet God having given them up judicially unto sin,
they have not so much as a right to put up one prayer or petition
for deliverance; nor will they do so, but are bound in the fetters
either of presumption and indifference or of dreadful despair. See
their work and ways described in
Rom. 2:5�6.
�[Though God alone knows
whom he has judicially abandoned and no man has the right to declare
a fellowman to be thus cast away, yet] the signs or symptoms of the
approach of such an irrecoverable condition are (1) a long
continuance in the practice of any known sin. The long-suffering of
God for a time waits for repentance (1
Pet. 3:20;
2 Pet. 3:9).
But there is a time when it does only endure �vessels of wrath
fitted for destruction� (Rom.
9:22), which is
commonly after long practice of known sin. (2) When convictions have
been suppressed and warnings despised. God does not usually deal
thus with men until they have rejected the means of their
deliverance. (3) When men contract the guilt of such sins as seem to
entrench on the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit; such as
proud, contemptuous, malicious reproaches of the ways of God, of
holiness, of the spirit of Christ and his gospel. (4) A voluntary
relinquishment of the means of grace and conversion unto God, which
men have heretofore enjoyed. (5) The resolved choice of wicked,
profane, unclean, scoffing society.�
The Synod of Dort (�Of
Divine Predestination�)
directs attention to the responsibility and guilt of man in
frustrating common grace: �The promise of the gospel is that
whosoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have
everlasting life. This promise, together with the command to
believe, ought to be declared and published to all nations and to
all persons promiscuously and without distinction to whom God out of
his good pleasure sends the gospel. And whereas many who are
[outwardly] called by the gospel do not repent or believe in Christ
but perish in unbelief, this is not owing to any defect or
insufficiency in the sacrifice offered by Christ upon the cross, but
is wholly to be imputed to themselves. The death of Christ is of
infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins
of the whole world.�
Bates (On
Death, chap.
6) in the same manner describes man�s resistance of common grace:
�Suppose life be continued, yet sinners that delay repentance can
have no rational hopes that
they shall sincerely
repent in time to come. For (1) saving repentance is the gift of
God; and is it likely that those who have been insensible to the
loud and earnest calls of the word, inflexible to the gracious
methods of God�s providence leading them to repentance, should at
last obtain converting grace? The gales of the Spirit are very
transient and blow when he pleases; and can it be expected that
those who have willfully and often resisted him should by an
exuberant favor receive afterward more powerful grace to overrule
their stubborn wills and make them obedient? To expect divine grace
and the powerful workings of the Spirit after long resisting his
holy excitations is both unreasonable and unrevealed. It is written
as with a sunbeam that God will graciously pardon repenting sinners
that reform their lives; but it is nowhere promised that he will
give saving repentance to those who securely continue in sin upon a
corrupt confidence that they will repent at last. Our Savior
threatens to him who neglects the improving of grace that is offered
that �that which he has shall be taken away�; yet men unwilling at
present to forsake their sins of pleasure and profit vainly hope
they shall obtain grace hereafter without any promise from God and
against the tenor of his threatenings. God has threatened that his
Spirit �shall not always strive with rebellious sinners,� and then
their state is remediless. This may be the case of many in this life
who are insensible of their misery. As consumptive persons decline
by degrees, lose their appetite, color, and strength, till at last
they are hopeless, so the withdrawings of the Spirit are gradual,
his motions are not so strong nor frequent, and upon the continued
provocations of the disobedient he finally leaves them under the
most fearful doom: �He that is filthy, let him be filthy still; he
that is unrighteous, let him be unrighteous still.� (2) Supposing
the Holy Spirit be not totally withdrawn, yet by every day�s
continuance in sin the heart is more hardened against the
impressions of grace, more averse from returning to God, and
repentance is more difficult and hazardous. (3) It is uncertain
whether God will at last hear the prayers of such as resist and
insult his Spirit in the common operations of his grace. We are
commanded to �seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him
while he is near.� The limitation implies that if the season be
neglected he will hide his face forever. Now in cases of great
moment and hazard what diligence, what caution should be used.�
Westminster Confession
5.6.6
sums up the subject of God�s withdrawing common grace after the
sinner�s resistance and abuse of it as follows: �As for those wicked
and ungodly men whom God as a righteous judge, for former sins, does
blind and harden (Rom.
1:24,
26,
28;
11:7�8), from them
he not only withholds his grace whereby they might have been
enlightened in their understandings and wrought upon in their hearts
(Deut.
29:4); but
sometimes also withdraws the gifts which they had (Matt.
13:12) and exposes
them to such objects as their corruption makes occasion of sin (2
Kings 8:12�13) and
withal gives them over to their own lusts, the temptations of the
world, and the power of Satan (Ps.
81:11�12;
2 Thess.
8:15,
32),
whereby it comes to pass that they harden themselves even under
those means which God uses for the softening of others (Exod.
8:15,
32;
2
Cor. 2:15�16).�
6.2.12
(see p. 753).
Augustine distinguishes the common from the effectual call in the
following passages: �God calls many predestinated children of his to
make them members of his only predestinated Son, not with that
calling with which they were called who would not come to the
marriage, since with that calling were called also the Jews, to whom
Christ crucified is an offense, and the Gentiles, to whom Christ
crucified is foolishness; but with that calling he calls the
predestinated which the apostle distinguished when he said that he
preached Christ, the wisdom of God and the power of God to them that
were called, Jews as well as Greeks. And it was this calling he
meant when he said, �Not of works, but of him that calls, it was
said unto Rebecca, that the elder shall serve the younger.� Did he
say, �Not of works, but of him that believes�? Rather, he actually
took this [namely, faith] away from man that he might give the whole
to God. Therefore he said, �But of him that calls�; not with any
sort of calling whatever, but with that calling wherewith a man is
made a believer� (Predestination
32). �The vessels of mercy were not so called as not to be elected,
in respect of which it is said, �Many are called, but few are
elected�; but because they were called according to God�s purpose
they are of a certainty also elected by the election of grace, as it
is denominated, not of any precedent merits of theirs, because grace
is all the merit they have� (Rebuke
and Grace 13).
�Whoever are elected are without doubt also called; but not whoever
are called are also elected. Those are elected who are called
according to God�s purpose and who are also predestinated and
foreknown� (Rebuke
and Grace 14).
22
22. ἤ
καὶ ἐθελοις ἄν, ὧ ἐπίσθενες, ὑπὲρ τουτοῦ ἀποθανεῖν
= Would you even be willing to die, O Episthenes, on his behalf?
26
26. erōtēson
toutous, mallon de egō touth� hyper sou poiēsō
(ἐρωτησόν
τούτους, μαλλὸν δὲ ἐγω τουθ᾽ ὑπὲρ σοῦ ποιήσω)
30
30. Wenn
auch in vielen Stellen das apothanein
hyper nur ein Sterben zum besten
Anderer ist, so kann doch wohl in den Stellen, Rom. 4:25; Gal. 1:4;
Rom. 8:3; 1 Cor. 15:3; 2 Cor. 5:14, der Begriff der Stellvertretung,
wenigsten der Sache nach, nicht zur�ckgewiesen werden.
32
32. ἀντί
= in place of
34
34. διά
= on account of
37
37. ἀντὶ
τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἡμῶν
38
38. WS:
The first of these statements might be either
hyper hēmōn
(ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν
= on our behalf/in our place) or
anti hēmōn
(ἀντὶ ἡμῶν
= in our place); the second might be
hyper tōn
hamartēmatōn hēmōn (ὑπὲρ
τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἡμῶν = because of our
sins) or
peri
(περί)
or dia
(διά),
but not
anti (ἀντί).
The preposition
anti
(ἀντί)
has only the one meaning of substitution: the others have more than
this meaning.
42
42. WS:
The law as precept, however, would not be satisfied. This proves
that endless punishment is not excessive punishment. It still leaves
the sinner in debt. According to strict justice, the law could
require from the lost an active as well as a passive obedience,
perfect obedience in the present and future as well as suffering the
penalty for past disobedience.
43
43. WS:
The following are the principal points of difference between
Unitarianism and Calvinism respecting the subject of Christ�s
redemption. Unitarianism contends (a) that God is inherently and
spontaneously merciful; (b) that justice is only a form of
benevolence and opposes no obstacles to the exercise of God�s
inherent and spontaneous mercy; (c) that Christ was not God, but an
exalted creature sent to announce divine mercy, set a holy example,
and proffer spiritual assistance to imitate it; it was no part of
his mission to satisfy legal claims and harmonize justice with
mercy, because there is no need of harmonizing them; and (d) that
the doctrine of vicarious atonement implies that God is not
inherently merciful, but needs to be made so by the agency of
another being, namely, Christ (Channing,
Life 1.294, 344,
349, 354). Calvinism contends (a) that God is inherently and
spontaneously merciful; (b) that justice is an attribute distinct
from benevolence, requiring satisfaction for sin and prohibiting the
exercise of mercy until this requirement is met; (c) that Jesus
Christ was incarnate God himself, who suffered vicariously for
sinners in order to satisfy the legal claims which obstructed the
exercise of divine mercy; and (d) that this vicarious satisfaction
of justice by God himself is the way in which God shows his inherent
and spontaneous mercifulness and not a means employed by a third
party, other than God, to make him merciful.
44
44. WS:
Divine wrath against sin, we have seen (p. 168), causes no
unhappiness or misery in God because of its righteousness and
legitimateness.
45
45. WS:
�It was in China that a Baptist missionary found his converts slow
to appreciate the value of Christ�s atoning blood, until the Book of
Leviticus threw light upon the sacrificial offering and showed the
relation between shedding of blood and remission� (Bible
Society�s Record, 21 Nov. 1878).
46
46. WS:
B�hr (Symbolism of the Mosaic Cultus)
denies that there is anything piacular in the levitical sin
offering. The slain victim is emblematic of self-consecration and
self-sacrifice, not of penal satisfaction. The death of the lamb or
goat teaches, not that the offerer deserves to die for his past
transgression, but that he ought to live for future consecration to
obedience. This interpretation lies under all the moral theories of
the atonement. Its inconsistency is apparent in making the shedding
of blood or death the symbol of life.
48
48. The
Piel is a Hebrew verb pattern that may express the basic meaning for
some verb roots, though it more usually indicates some
intensification of the action.
50
50. כָּפַר
= to make an atonement, cover over
54
54. Venia
sive condonatio peccatorum, ex vulgari et biblica dicendi
consuetudine, est abolitio poenae peccatis contractae, et restitutio
benevolentiae divinae erga peccatorem.
55
55. ἄφες
ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν = forgive us our
debts
56
56. ἄφεωνταί
σοι αἱ ἁμαρτίαι σοῦ = your sins are
forgiven you
58
58. WS:
If it be objected that in the statement of the doctrine of vicarious
atonement it is maintained that God atones to God (pp. 702�3), the
reply is that Jesus Christ does not make satisfaction to himself as
Jesus Christ, but to the Trinity. The incarnate Word satisfies the
justice of the Godhead. The relation of his death is therefore
objective. It has reference to the divine nature, not to his own
theanthropic personality.
59
59. כָּפַר
= to make an atonement, cover over
60
60. ἱλάσκομαι
= to propitiate
62
62. καταλλαγή
= atonement, reconciliation
63
63. καταλλάσσειν
= to conciliate, appease
66
66. καταλλάττεται
= is appeased
67
67. καταλλαγή
= atonement, reconciliation
68
68. διαλλάγηθι
τῷ ἀδελφῷ
69
69. WS:
See Magee, Atonement,
diss. 20; Owen, Vindications,
chap. 21; Shedd, Theological Essays,
265�73.
81
81. Respira,
o peccator, respira; ne desperes, spera in eo quem times. Affuge ad
eum a quo aufugisti. Invoca importune quem superbe provocasti.
84
84. Non
dicimur reconciliati quasi deus de novo amare incipiret, nam aeterno
amore dilexit, sed quia per hanc reconciliationem sublata est omnis
odii causa, tum per ablutionem peccati, tum per recompensationem
acceptabilioris boni.
85
85. Scholastici
loquntur, dilexit deus humanum genus quantum ad naturam quam ipse
fecit; odit quantum ad culpam quam homines contraxerunt.
86
86. WS: The
same principle applies to the afflictions of life. The strength
and comfort must come from the very same being who afflicts. God
is the source of affliction, and he is the God of all comfort.
God wounds, and God heals the wound. See Pascal�s letter to his
brother-in-law on the death of his own father. The same truth is
expressed in the lines of George Herbert:
Ah, my dear, angry
Lord!
Since Thou dost love,
yet strike;
Cast down, yet help
afford;
Sure, I will do the
like.
I will complain, yet
praise;
I will bewail,
approve;
And all my sour-sweet
days,
I will lament, and
love.
87
87. oderunt
quem laeserint
88
88. WS:
�La conscience est la voix de l��me, les passions sont la voix du
corps� [AG: The conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions
are the voice of the body]; Rousseau,
�mile, 4. This is borrowed from
Descartes, Passions of the Soul,
arts. 18�19.
89
89. WS:
On the difference between divine and human anger, see Shedd,
Theological Essays,
269�84.
90
90. WS:
Suicide, if the act of sanity, is ipso
facto proof of insubmission and
rebellion toward God and impenitence in sin. Socrates (Phaedo
61) contends that to take one�s own life is to defraud and dishonor
the Creator. �The gods,� he says, �are our guardians, and we are a
possession of theirs. If one of your own possessions, an ox or an
ass, for example, took the liberty of putting himself out of the way
when you had given no intimation of your wish that he should die,
would you not be displeased with him and would you not punish him if
you could?� It was upon this view of suicide that the self-murderer
was denied burial by the church in consecrated ground.
91
91. παιδεύει
= treats like a child
92
92. res
domi = matters of the home
93
93. μετάβασις
εἰς ἀλλο γένος = a change into another
kind
94
94. ἐπὶ
τὸ συμφέρον = for what is profitable
95
95. WS:
See the excellent treatise of Crawford,
Fatherhood of God.
96
96. law
of retaliation
97
97. WS:
See the explanation and defense of it by Kalisch on Exod. 21:22�25.
98
98. law
of retaliation
99
99. ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι
= to be amazed
100 100. ἀδημονεῖν
= to be distressed
101 101. WS:
Christ felt that he was forsaken of God, but not, like a despairing
person, that he was eternally forsaken. The desertion was only
temporary. The comforting presence of God returns to Christ, as is
indicated in the statement of Luke 23:46 that �Jesus cried with a
loud voice, saying, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.�
Again, the agony of Christ was not despair, because in this very cry
he says �my
God.� A despairing man or angel would say �O God� and would not
exclaim, saying, �Why have you forsaken me?� Again, Christ did not
experience despair, because he knew that the union between the
divine and human natures was indissoluble. He also knew that the
covenant of redemption between him and the Father could not fail.
His distress did not relate to either of these two particulars. It
arose (a) from his view of the nature of the curse upon sin which he
had vicariously come under; (b) because the comforting influences
from the union of the divine with the human nature were temporarily
restrained; (c) from temporary desertion of God; and (d) from
positive infliction when the �sword was awakened� against him (Owen,
Third Sacramental Discourse).
The words why have you forsaken me?
express wonder, not ignorance or unbelief or complaint. Christ well
knew why he was deserted at this hour, had perfect faith and
confidence in his Father, and was entirely submissive to his will.
But he was amazed and paralyzed at the immensity of the agony. The
word why
is not interrogative, but exclamatory. The words are equivalent to
�how you have forsaken me!� This is Hugh St. Victor�s explanation
(see Hooker 5.48). When a Christian exclaims, �Why am I so
unbelieving and sinful?� it is only another way of saying, �How
unbelieving and sinful I am!� He is not asking for information. He
well knows the reason why.
102 102. WS:
South, Sermon on Messiah�s Suffering;
Edwards, Excellency of Christ
in Works
4.189.
103 103. ira
dei est voluntas puniendi
104 104. WS:
Philippi, Active Obedience of Christ.
105 105. WS:
Piscator was the first formally to present this view. John Taylor of
Norwich went to an opposite extreme and held that active obedience
was the sole cause of man�s salvation. He denied any piacular effect
of Christ�s death and held that as a reward of Christ�s active
obedience alone the remission of sin was given to man, as the
eminent services of a soldier are rewarded by the monarch by
benefits to his family.
107 107. WS:
See on this point, Paley, sermon on Heb. 9:26, part 2.
108
108. therefore,
he merited by making satisfaction, and he made satisfaction by
meriting
109 109. WS:
Owen (Justification,
chap. 10) endorses the distinction as made by Grotius: �Whereas we
have said that Christ has procured two things for us, freedom from
punishment and a reward, the ancient church attributes the one of
them to his satisfaction, the other to his merit.� Edwards adopts
it: �Whatever in Christ had the nature of satisfaction, it was by
virtue of the suffering or humiliation in it. But whatever had the
nature of merit, it was by virtue of the obedience or righteousness
that was in it� (Redemption
in Works
1.402).
110 110. WS:
Bengel composed his Syntagma de sanctitate
(Book on holiness) to prove that all the attributes of God are
implied in Hebrew
qād��
(קָדוֹשׁ).
But he did not hold that all are holiness.
111 111. WS:
Butler (Nature of Virtue,
diss. 2) contends that �the whole of virtue does not consist in
promoting happiness.� This is the same as contending that all moral
qualities cannot be resolved into benevolence.
112 112. fiat
justitia ruat coelum
113
113. Misericordia
non tollit justitiam, sed quaedam justitiae plenitudo est.
114
114. Ipse
deus, ipse sacerdos, ipse hostia, pro se, de se, sibi satisfecit.
118
118. ἀνοχή
= forbearance
119
119. WS:
That this is the correct interpretation is proved by the use of the
preposition
dia
(διά
= on account of) in Rom. 3:25. God set forth Jesus Christ �to be a
propitiation, to declare his righteousness on account of (dia)
the pretermission of sins.� Had the act of pretermission been the final
cause or chief end of the propitiation, the preposition employed would
have been
eis (εἰς
= unto). The main and ultimate purpose of Christ�s death is always
denoted in the New Testament by
eis aphesin hamartiōn
(εἰς ἄφεσιν
ἁμαρτιῶν = unto the forgiveness of sins). The
phrase dia
paresin hamartēmatōn (διὰ
πάρεσιν ἁμαρτημάτων = on account of the
forgiveness of sins) occurs only this once in the New Testament.
122
122. Impersonaliter
poenam necessario infligi omni peccato, sed non personaliter omni
peccatori.
123
123. Shedd
makes two mistakes here: (1) He applies the label
acceptilation when what
he actually describes is an acceptation.
In an acceptilation
no payment is received and the debt is declared paid, whereas in an
acceptation
the creditor accepts some payment, but one of lesser value (e.g., fifty
cents on the dollar) to absolve the debt. (2) Socinus denied that
Christ�s death is even a partial payment of a debt, teaching instead
that God forgives out of pure mercy.
124
124. It
is significant that Socinus himself cites the case of Zaleucus but,
rather than using the story to illustrate his own view, he subjects it
to withering ridicule (see Socinus, De Jesu
Christo Servatore 3.3.251).
125
125. the
exact same money
126
126. WS:
Witsius (Covenants
1.4) finds four elements in the pains of hell: (1) privation of divine
love, (2) sense of divine hatred, (3) the worm of conscience, and (4)
despair of God�s favor. The second, third, and fourth elements did not
enter into Christ�s experience. The first did, temporarily.
127
127. Cum
reddis aliquid quod debes deo, non debes computare hoc pro debito quod
debes pro peccato. Omnia enim debis deo.
128
128. WS:
While there may be vicarious as well as personal punishment, because
punishment is suffering endured for a judicial purpose and this purpose
can be fulfilled by a substitute as well as by the criminal, there can
be no vicarious confession of sin and no vicarious repentance for it.
Confession and repentance are necessarily personal acts. The Scriptures
never represent Christ as vicariously confessing the sins of his people
or as vicariously repenting of them. Yet McLeod Campbell, while
dissatisfied with the Catholic doctrine of vicarious atonement, has set
forth the theory that Christ has made a perfect confession of human sin
and that this is an adequate satisfaction for sin. See Crawford,
On Atonement and
On the Fatherhood of God,
lect. 4.
131
131. in
the direction of what comes after (i.e., looking forward in time)
134
134. WS:
Hill, Theology,
book 4; Candlish, On Atonement
1.2; Cunningham, Historical Theology
2.323�70.
135
135. WS:
To �extend� the atonement might be understood to mean to �offer� the
atonement. But this is not the meaning in this connection. To extend, in
the sense now being considered, is not only to offer the atonement but
also to render it personally efficacious by regenerating grace.
136
136. Sufficienter
pro omnibus, sed efficaciter tantum pro electis.
137
137. WS:
Owen in his treatise against Arminianism presents �arguments against
universal redemption.�
138
138. it is
not the efficient cause of justification but only the material cause
139
139. WS: Cf.
Dabney, Theology,
580�81; Watson, Institutes
2.395�96.
142
142. WS:
As a specimen of exegesis that throws out the qualifying words and
explanatory statements of the author, consider the following from Farrar
(St. Paul
2.201): �The word all
is the governing word in the Epistle to the Romans. All�for whatever may
be the modifications which may be thought necessary, St. Paul does not
himself make them�all are equally guilty, all are equally redeemed. All
have been temporarily rejected, all shall be ultimately received. All
shall be finally brought into living harmony with that �God who is above
all and through all and in all� (Eph. 4:6).� The words of St. Paul in
Eph. 4:6 are �God who is in you all��the reference being to believers.
The uncials omit
hymin
(ὑμῖν
= in you) but the preceding verse contains it, and the succeeding verse
implies it.
143
143. δεσπότης
= lord, master
145
145. ἀγοραζεῖν
= to buy, purchase
146
146. λυτρουσθαῖ
= to redeem
147
147. μὴ
βουλόμενος τινας ἀπολέσθαι
150
150. εἰς
μετάνοιαν χωρῆσαι
151
151. μετάνοιαν
= repentance
152
152. χωρῆσαι
= to advance
153
153. WS:
To say that common grace if not resisted by the sinner would be
equivalent to regenerating grace is not the same as to say that common
grace if assisted by the sinner would be equivalent to regenerating
grace. In the first instance, God would be the sole author of
regeneration; in the second he would not be.
154
154. WS:
See Owen, Works
14.411 (ed. Russell).
155
155. WS:
Owen, Display of Arminianism
4.1.8.