The Bible and the Blood: The Philosophy of the Atonement
From the fact of the atonement, we turn now to look at some indications of God’s plan in the atonement, or the philosophy of the plan of salvation.
Three rules of Scripture study are of great importance and consequence: Search, Meditate, Compare. Search, because the truth in Holy Scripture lies often under the surface. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” That which is in the Scriptures for our highest education, instruction and consolation, is not superficially to be picked up or gleaned; it has to be dug for, like veins of gold that yield only to the pickaxe. Meditation is bringing the whole nature, mind and heart, sensibilities, conscience and will, into such a prayerful and receptive frame, as to open up the entire being to the illumination of the Spirit. Comparison is that of which particularly this chapter treats, putting scripture teachings side by side that each may throw light on the other.
While the Bible does not present truth, crystallized into a system, it does contain truth in substance, and furnish material for a system — not as stone in the structure, but as stone in the quarry. The value of thus collating, and comparing spiritual things with spiritual, is found in the constant discovery of unsuspected correspondences, coincidences, and mutual adaptations. The stone is found to be hewn and shapen, ready to be carried to the site of the building, and there put together without the need of axe, or any iron tool to adjust the various blocks to their decreed place; so that one is enabled to build up a system of truth, out of Biblical materials, and according to what is evidently a preconceived divine plan.
A mythical story is told of Michael Angelo and “The Sleeping Cupid,” that he dug up, in different localities, certain fragments of the sculptor’s chisel, which, being put together, proved to be all parts of one original statue, broken and scattered in the time of revolution and war. In some such way, those who search the Holy Scriptures, meditate upon them, and compare spiritual things with spiritual, often reach surprising results.
It becomes us to tread with unsandalled feet on
ground so holy as the philosophy of the atonement, searching the scriptures, if haply we may find there any indications that God Himself has given of the principles that underlie atonement for sin. Some of the problems that confronted God with regard to man’s redemption, we can scarcely understand at all because of sensibilities dulled by habitual contact with evil. Familiarity with sin involves the loss of all true conception of its enormity and deformity. Yet there can be no high value placed upon the work of Christ until there is some apprehension of the desperation and degradation of man’s fallen state, and the utter corruption of his nature.
There are several aspects of sin which, obviously, must be considered and met in a redemptive plan, and which, in part, have already been considered:
Sin is transgression, and transgression demands penalty.
Sin is guilt, and guilt demands expiation.
Sin is character, and character demands renewal.
Sin is slavery, and slavery demands emancipation.
Sin is ruin, and ruin demands rebuilding.
Sin is war against Almighty God, and this demands the vindication of God’s honour and holiness. There must be on His part no complicity
with sin, in a lax fashion of pardoning.
These are a few indications of the tremendous moral problems that confronted the great Lawgiver. Nothing short of Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Love were equal to forming a scheme that should at once save the sinner from sin, and save God from compromise and complicity with it.
In the Bible at least a few intimations are given as to the way in which all these necessary factors in the problem were met.
First, sin is transgression of the law. “Who His Own Self bare our sins in His Own Body on the tree.” “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.”
Again, sin is guilt, and guilt must be expiated: “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
And, again, sin is character; it involves the nature: “Except a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away; behold all things are become new.”
Sin is slavery: “The law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of
sin and death.” “Stand fast, therefore, in the
liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, and be not entangled again in the yoke of bondage.
Sin is ruin: “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy (or undo) the works of the Devil.”
And, finally, sin is war against Almighty God, and God has no complicity with the enmity of the sinner against Him and His government; and we read, in that crowning verse in the third of Romans: “To declare, I say. His righteousness, that He might be just, and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.” God declares all the great ends sought in redemption to be fulfilled in His plan of Salvation.
Perhaps some further hints may be found as to the way in which those ends are fulfilled, by first inquiring as to the basal conceptions, lying at the foundation of redemption.
First of all, there must be a legal satisfaction to
a broken law. A death penalty was attached to
sin, from the beginning: “The soul that sinneth,
it shall die,” crystallizes in proverbial form that
first threat and warning: “In the day that thou
eatest thereof, dying, thou shalt die.” Here we
touch the basis of the whole system, both of
retribution and redemption. The broken law
of God must be honoured and maintained; the death penalty must be executed; there must be satisfaction to the principles of divine justice, law and government. Upon the upholding of the sanctions of the law, all government ultimately depends both for its purity and permanency.
Secondly, such satisfaction is provided by substitution. Some are needlessly afraid of that word, substitution; yet, redemption, as taught in the Bible, is certainly based on this principle, — an innocent victim takes the place of the guilty — a penalty is borne vicariously to vindicate law and justice; the offending party, through the substitution of a life for a life, escaping that eternal death which would otherwise have been his portion. From the first hint of this redemptive scheme, in the earlier books of the Bible, the careful reader may trace, from Abel’s altar on, this principle of substitution systematically carried out. The first martyr came to God, bringing a lamb from his flock, and offering that lamb as a sacrifice for sin. Thus understood, Abel’s offering affords the most satisfactory explanation of the language used by God to Cain, when his “countenance fell:” “Why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt not thou be accepted? And if thou
doest not well, behold, the sin-offering croucheth at the door.” i. e., a sin offering avails for you as for Abel; and you may, in the same way, “be accepted” by the substitution of the innocent victim for the guilty sinner.” In the offering of the Paschal Lamb, and on the great Day of Atonement, the same essential and important lesson is explicitly taught.
Yet further on in the Old Testament, we are taught that redemption is not only by satisfaction to a broken law, and by substitution of the innocent for the guilty, but that it is on the principle of representation which is a step in advance even of substitution.* Though these terms are not scriptural, they answer the purpose, as equivalents, briefly to convey or express the scriptural truth.
The principle of representation is first clearly enunciated in Exodus xxviii: 38-43, a passage so significant as especially to need study.
Aaron — undoubtedly the typical representative of the great High Priest that has passed into the heavens — is bidden, when he comes into the holiest place of all, to wear, bound upon the forefront of the mitre, the holy crown with the inscription, “Holiness to the Lord,” indicating absolute surrender to God and perfect holiness, realized of
* Isaiah Liii. 171 course only in his great anti-type, Jesus Christ himself. The thirty-eighth verse reads: “And it shall be always upon his forehead, that they (the people, the children of Israel) may be accepted before the Lord.” Very significant is this change of pronouns.: “always upon his forehead, that they may be accepted.” As he goes into the Holy of Holies, he represents the people. Christ, the great High Priest of whom Aaron was only the type, goes into the Holiest of all, “appearing in the very presence of God for us,” and His Holiness, which is always before the face of God, is the ground of the acceptance of all believers; His presence before God being perpetual, that their acceptance with God may be equally perpetual.
The forty-third verse of this same chapter presents the complimentary truth, that, if they, the parties so represented, failed to conform to the regulations which God had established, they should “bear their own iniquity and die for it.” Here is the dread alternative. The sinner who rejects the substitution, satisfaction and representation of Jesus Christ, bears his own iniquity and dies for it. But he who takes refuge in Jesus Christ is “accepted in the beloved,” and the perfection of his Substitute is the perpetual pledge of his own acceptance. Such provisions of grace are surpassingly wonderful!
Still further on, a thought additional to all the rest, is presented — that this redemption is inseparable from regeneration. The Holy Spirit of God supplements and complements the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross — Christ expiating penalty, and cleansing guilt; the Holy Spirit, changing the very nature, and so implanting the germ of a holy character. Not only an imputed righteousness, but an imparted righteousness, belongs to the scheme of redemption: first, the believer is, through Jesus Christ, clothed with God’s righteousness, as a garment, displacing his own “righteousnesses which are as filthy rags;” and then, underneath this garment of a vicarious righteousness, the Holy Ghost divinely works in the believer, both to will and to do, so that a divine righteousness, in a sense, becomes his own possession; and when he finally appears before the glory of God, and the searching eye of Omniscience falls upon him, and the light more piercing than all other that ever shone, beats upon him like the sun in noontide splendour, even God Himself shall see no spot nor wrinkle nor blemish nor anything rebukable or reprovable in His sight.* Such
* Compare Colossians i: 22. Jude 24, final perfection for a penitent and believing sinner would be incredible but for the declaration of the Lord Himself.
God does not, therefore, simply pardon a sinner, passing over his sin and guilt because of a redemption by blood, but He recreates the sinner into a saint; and so, far from setting a premium on sin by a lax exercise of mercy. He actually regenerates, renews, recreates in His own image.
There is still another level of redemption, higher, if possible, than this; for the scheme of salvation which starts with satisfaction and proceeds to substitution, then to representation, and then to regeneration, ends and is consummated in eternal identification with the Redeemer.
Identification means being made one with another. Christ came down from heaven to be so far made one with the sinner in his sin, as to be entitled to take his place before the broken law; then He went back to heaven to take the believing sinner up with Him as a saint, and seat him with Himself on the throne. The Bible teaches this double identification; God becoming man, that He may be identified with man, and that, in the end, man may be identified with Him — Christ taking human nature, that He may bear man’s sins and expiate man’s guilt: Christ imparting divine nature to man that man may be forever sharer both of His holiness and of His happiness. Character ultimately makes condition.
These outlines of God’s redemption plan only touch as on the outskirts of one of the greatest themes of which the Word of God treats, the dimensions of which no human or angelic intelligence has ever yet measured or explored.* They suffice, however, to hint the great foundation principles which underlie the whole system of redemption. A few practical inferences may show the bearings of these great truths.
In the study of this subject the question naturally arises whether the moral ends of punishment are met and satisfied in such vicarious atonement. We need to ask, therefore, another preliminary question as to what the moral ends of punishment are; and all will agree that they are somewhat as follows:
(i.) Law, as a broken code, must be honoured and magnified by due infliction of penalty.
(2.) Guilt, as guilt, must be exhibited in its enormity and deformity.
(3.) The sanctions of government must be so upheld that none may sin with impunity.
*1 Peter i: 10-12.
(4.) So far as possible, forgiven offenders must be reclaimed and reformed.
(5. ) Other offenders must be deterred from similar offences.
(6.) God Himself must be vindicated as an absolutely holy God.
These points, indicated already at the outset of this discussion, in somewhat different terms, are here restated because of their bearing on the question now before us, whether the atonement, redemption by blood, based on the principles of satisfaction, substitution, representation, regeneration, identification — answers the moral ends aimed at in the punishment of sin.
There seems to be no ground for doubt that in the cross of Jesus Christ such manifestation was made of the majesty, perfection, righteousness and inviolability of the law of God, that the universe of intelligent beings saw, and yet shall see, far more, the infinite perfection of that law, and its inviolability — the impossibility of transgressing it without the exaction of penalty. The exhibition to the universe of the essential corruption and guilt of sin, was probably greater, when on the cross God’s own Son died for sin, than though every individual transgressor had suffered the full penalty in his
own person. Punishment does not in any circumstances necessarily reform offenders,* but millions of such offenders have already been melted into contrition before the cross of Jesus Christ, in whom nothing else had ever awakened penitence. Other millions of believers, on earth to-day, and more ntmierous than ever before, owe all that they are to that cross. In heathen lands, where no force of law, however stringent, o r government, however despotic, where neither prison cell nor rack of torture, could compel men to abandon their evil doing, the most abandoned sinners have bowed before the cross of Christ, subdued and transformed, and this miracle is still going on.
As to the deterring of other offenders, no one can say — so narrow are the limits of our knowledge in this life — what the cross of Christ may have to do with other worlds, possibly peopled by beings exposed to all the moral liabilities of sin, in restraining them from disobedience.
As to the vindication of God’s character from all complicity with sin, when He surrendered His Son to the cross for sinners, it was an unspeakable testimony to the fact that, with His deepest nature — the inmost heart of His Deity — He hated with eternal and unchangeable abhorrence, even the
* They gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven. Rev. xvi :10.
177 thought of evil. We grant that vicarious atonement would be immoral, and so impossible, were the substitution compulsory; but it was voluntary, as well as vicarious. The Son of God was not compelled or constrained, even by the will or authority of the Father, unwillingly to take up and bear the cross. He “offered Himself unto God” — a Lamb without spot — as a sacrifice for men. Love’s authority was the only constraint. He was driven to Calvary by no decree, but drawn by infinite sympathy and pity.
The principle of substitution is not absolutely new. In human society it has always been an admitted principle; as, for instance, in war. The story of the Napoleonic campaigns is familiar to all, how in the early wars a man was drafted, in France, and, being unable to go to the field himself, hired a substitute and paid a good price for him, who went to the war, and fell on one of the battlefields. In a subsequent draft, the same man was drafted again. He went to the recruiting office and produced his papers, proving that he had hired and paid for a substitute, who had died on the field; and the entry was accordingly made against his name: “Died in the person of his substitute on the battlefield of Rivoli.” The believer, standing
before a violated law, as one who has found in
Jesus Christ his Substitute, may claim immunity from the desert of his sin; he may boldly affirm, “I died in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, on the battlefield of Calvary, over eighteen hundred years ago.* That is salvation. That is redemption.
In America a story is told of a well known teacher of boys, in whose school the pupils themselves made rules for their own government, and attached to them what penalties they thought fit. One little fellow, however, more than once violated the law, and became liable to a flogging. He was called up, according to the rules of the boys themselves, to have the rod laid on his back. Just then the door of the school opened, and in came his elder brother, who, taking in the whole situation at a glance, said to the master: “Would you have any objection to my taking the whipping for my brother?” “Do you think, boys, the honour of the school and its laws would be sufficiently upheld?” was the teacher’s appeal. They held up their hands, whereupon the brother bared his back and took the whipping instead of the offender. The principle of substitution was again illustrated.
Another touching story is told, as to the war between Russia and Circassia in the middle of the last century. The prophet chief Schamyl, almost
* II Cor. v;15; Rom. vi:l-8.
adored by his followers, found that some one was exposing to the enemy his designs and plans; and he made a decree, which he promulgated to his followers, that if the traitor were found out, one hundred lashes on the bare back should be administered for the offence. A few days later, it was discovered, to his astonishment, that the guilty party was his own mother. He went into fasting and retirement for two days, and coming out, pallid and ghastly, ordered his mother to be brought from the tent and her back bared for the scourge. He stood by while one, two, three, four, five of those fearful lashes gashed her flesh; then he bade the executioner arrest his blows, bared his own back, and took the other ninety-five lashes on his own person, till the flesh hung in shreds. The effect, it is said, was electric — his followers were melted, and even his mother was utterly subdued, as she could never have been by mere force. This exhibition of vicarious love and of the principle of substitution and satisfaction, accomplished all desirable ends more effectively than the full penalty executed on the offender.
Thus the principle of substitution is not entirely foreign to humanity, and the beauty and power of it have been many a time acknowledged even in
the circles of society. Neither is the principle of
18o representation absolutely new. Certainly those who live under a constitutional government and have a congress or a parliament to which they elect members, ought to understand that principle as a very common one. A man sent to a legislature from any district is called a representative, because his views and acts are supposed to represent his constituency. If they find otherwise, and he does not vote according to their convictions and will, they displace him by another. The principle of representation is that someone shall be appointed by mutual consent to take another’s place. God appoints Jesus Christ to take the place of pentitent, believing sinners. They joyfully consent, and His acts become their acts, His obedience their obedience. His suffering their suffering. Their sin He represents, and atones for it. Their imperfection He represents, and makes up for it by His perfection, so that they are accepted in the Beloved, and for the Beloved’s sake. That is the principle of representation. Though it will be referred to, subsequently, it belongs to the matter now under consideration.
As to the principle of identification, in the Bible, as we have seen, the identification of the Redeemer with the redeemed is represented under the figure
of the marriage bond. There being no identity so complete as that between husband and wife in the ideal marital relation, God employs this to express Christ’s identification with the believer, both in the Old Testament and in the New. It is hinted in the first chapter of Genesis. When Adam fell asleep, and from the rib taken out of his side, God made the woman, and brought her to the man to be his “counterpart,” as the Hebrew expresses it, it was the forecast of the Church as taken out of the wounded side of Jesus Christ, bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh, to be His bride. This is a double identification; for when a man weds a woman, the woman marries the man; and he is her husband no more truly than she is his wife; there cannot be a onesided identification. If Christ is the bridegroom of the Church, the Church is the bride of Christ and, hence, where He is, she must be; His glory must be her glory; and His eternal home must be her eternal home.