Christ's Sufferings Were Strictly and Definitely Vicarious

I present, as my fifth argument, that large class of Scriptures which teach that Christ’s sufferings were vicarious; that is, that he suffered, in the strict sense of the word, as the Substitute of his people — not merely for their advantage, but strictly in their room and stead.

Bushnell has lately written a remarkable work, the logic of which may be judged of from the relation sustained by its title to its doctrine and design. It is entitled “Vicarious Sacrifice,” and its design is to prove that the sufferings of Christ were not vicarious, but simply philanthropic — in sympathy with men and for their benefit. “The true conception is that Christ, in what is called his vicarious sacrifice, simply engages, at the expense of great suffering, and even of death itself, to bring us out of our sins themselves, and so out of their penalties; being himself profoundly identified with us in our fallen state, and burdened in feeling with our evils.” ...” Love is a principle essentially vicarious in its own nature, identifying the subject with others, so as to suffer their adversities and pains, and taking on itself the burden of their evils.’7... “Motherhood, friendship, patriotism, are all vicarious.”... “The eternal Father 14 161 before Christ, and the Holy Spirit coming after, and the good angels both before and after, all alike have borne the burdens, struggled in the pains of their vicarious feeling for men; and then, at last, now Christianity comes in to its issue, in begetting in us the same vicarious love that reigns in all the glorified and good minds of the heavenly kingdom.”... “What we call the vicarious sacrifice of Christ is nothing strange as regards the principle of it — no superlative, unexampled and therefore unintelligible grace. It only does and suffers, and comes into substitution for, just what any and all love will, according to its degree.”*

Thus, the only distinction between the relation sustained by the sacrifice of Christ to our salvation, and that sustained by the sympathies and sufferings of our mothers and pastors, is one not at all of kind, but solely of degree. The sufferings of Christ on the cross sustain precisely the same relation to our sins as do the prayers and tears of our mothers as they intercede for our salvation. Angels, the Father himself, and the Holy Ghost, all are wounded for our transgressions, and suffer, the just for the unjust, and give their lives ransoms for many in the same sense that Christ did, and to the same effect — only as they severally differ in degree. Now it stands to reason that, as certainly as pantheism is atheism, does this generalizing of vicarious suffering, which of right is the sole, inalienable and glorious function of the “one Mediator between God and man,” amount only to a direct and absolute denial of the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice, and to the affirmation that the sufferings of Christ were mere incidental concomitants of his phi- * Bushnell on Vicarious Sacrifice, pp. 41-53.

lanthropic interpositions in man’s- behalf. We disprove this denial of the vicarious character of the sufferings of Christ by proving that the Scriptures assert in many ways that they are vicarious.

There are several forms of expression which essentially present the same great principles, but with variations. His sufferings are said to be vicarious. He himself is said to have been the Substitute of his people, and a Ransom for them, that is, in their stead. He is also said to have been their Representative before God, and the one Mediator between God and man. We have before seen that Christ was accurately prefigured by the bleeding sacrifice upon the altar, and by the high priest who brought the blood near to God within the veil. He was in like manner prefigured, at the same time, by the slain goat upon the altar, and by the living goat carrying away the expiated sins of the people into the wilderness. His office as Mediator included the functions at once of Prophet, Priest and King, and yet not one of his personal types embraced, in one person, more than two of these, as David and Ezra. The reason for this, of course, lay in the fact that the type was finite and transient, while the antetype was infinite and eternal. He was at once God, and priest, and bleeding sacrifice, dead and alive again for evermore, offerer and offering. When we say, therefore, that our blessed Lord is, in the strict sense of the word, our Substitute or our Ransom, we do not mean that for any single moment these relations exhaust all the relations borne or functions dis-. charged by his infinite person. At the very same moment he is God, whose justice demands propitiation; and Priest, offering himself a sacrifice; and the sacrifice, offered to satisfy that justice. Let it be distinctly understood, then, that when we say that Christ was the Substitute of his people, and his sufferings, in the strict sense of the word, vicarious, we affirm this to be true of him viewed in his function as a sacrifice. When we say that he is the Representative, WTC affirm this to be true of him as the second Adam or federal Head, undertaking and discharging all the obligations of the broken law in our stead. When we say he is our Mediator, we affirm that to be true of him as our High Priest, as he is ordained for man in the things pertaining to God (ra xpbz rbv dsov).

The place we occupied was “under the law/7 We were placed under it at the creation, and perfect obedience made the condition of our well-being. By our fall in Adam we became at once incapable of obeying the demands of the law and subject to its unrelaxable penalty. The law remains over us, therefore, as an inexorable taskmaster, demanding the impossible, and as the organ of immutable justice, demanding our death. Christ, being a divine Person, was of course himself the norm and fountain of all law, and incapable of being subjected to any personal conditions of life; yet, as the Theanthropic Mediator in behalf of his elect, he “was made under the law,” that is, transferred to that position, “that he might redeem them that are under the law.” Gal. iv. 4, 5. The place he took, therefore, was our law-place. In taking our law-place he necessarily assumed our legal responsibilities; for example, obedience as a condition of life, and suffering as a penal consequent of disobedience. And he did this “to redeem them that are under the law;” that is, all he did in our place was for our sake.

We accept fully Barnes’s definition of a substitute.* “The idea is, that the person substituted is to do or suffer the same thing which the person for whom he is substituted would have done.” This is a fair statement of the true doctrine of substitution, which necessarily involves the true doctrine of the Atonement. The advocates of the Governmental Theory are able to admit that Christ died as our Substitute only in the loose sense of having died for our sakes. On the other hand, we maintain, as is implied in the above definition, that Christ suffered as our Substitute in the strict and proper sense of having suffered in our place or stead. The truth of this position is expressly affirmed in Scripture as well as indirectly involved in many related ctoctrines.

1. We saw, under a previous head, that in the Jewish sacrifices the victim was in the most literal sene conceivable substituted for the offerer to bear the penalty due him, and thus to discharge his obligations to the law. Reconciliation was effected through propitiation, propitiation through expiation, and expiation through the substitution of life for life. Christ suffered as a sacrifice, and hence was substituted in a sacrificial sense.

2. The preposition oneft with the genitive, generally though not always, carries with it the idea of strict substitution. Caiaphas said (John xi. 50,) “It is expedient for us, that one man should die for (UTTS^y the people, and that the whole nation parish not;” that is, that one should die in the place of the nation — that is, instead

. of their death. Paul (2 Cor. v. 20) says: “We pray

you (unkf) XpcfTTOL*) in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to

* Atonement, p. 281.

God;” that is, we do in Christ’s place what he would do in person if present. Paul writes to Philemon that he sends back to him Onesimus, “whom I would have retained with me, that in thy stead (unsp crou) he might have ministered unto me in the bonds of the gospel.” Philemon 13. The same construction is habitually used to set forth the nature of Christ’s substitution for us. “We thus judge that if one died for all (uTtepndvro)v), then were all dead.” 2 Coi. v. 14. “For he hath made him to be sin for (&nsf)) us that knew no sin.” 2 Cor. v. 21. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for (u~£to) us.” Gal. iii. 13. “That by the grace of God he should taste death for (bnep) every man.” Heb. ii. 9. “For Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for (u~£f>) the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” 1 Pet. iii. 18.

3. The preposition dvrl expresses more precisely than any other word in the Greek language the exact idea of substitution in the strictest sense of the word. This is the radical and definite usage of the preposition.*

Thus it is said (Matt. ii. 22), “Archelaus did reign in Judea in the room of (dvri) his father Herod.” Again, (Matt. v. 38) “An eye for (dvrt) an eye, and a tooth for (dvri) a tooth.” And when this word is used to express the relation of Christ to those in whose behalf he acted, its sense is rendered, if possible, more precise and emphatic by association with the word Xurpov, redemptionprice. Thus (Matt. xx. 28), “The Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for many (Xurpov dvri TTO)MOV). The same is repeated in Mark x. 45; and in 1 Tim. ii. 6. Paul, after his manner, combines in one most emphatic * See Winer’s Gram, of New Test. Diction, part iii.; sec. 47.

formula, the force of all the three words most exactly expressing substitution, “who gave himself a ransom (dvT&UTpov) for (uTikp) all;” that is, gave himself to be a substitution ary ransom in the place of all. If the Holy Ghost did intend us to understand that Christ was strictly substituted in the law-place of his people, he could have used no language more exactly adapted to express his meaning. If this were not his meaning, we may well despair of arriving at the understanding of his meaning on any subject through the study of his words in any department of Scripture.

When the purpose is to express the relation which the death of Christ sustains not to the persons of his people, but to their sins, the prepositions used are nepl and uxep, with the genitive. Robinson says that 7retoebfjtapTlaz, in this connection, signifies “on account of sin, or for sin; that is, for doing away or expiating sin.” Rom. viii. 3; Heb. x. 18, 26; 1 Pet. iii. 18; 1 John ii. 2, and iv. 10. The same authority renders U7ik<t when construed with fymftncM, as indicating the “ground, motive, or occasion of the action.” 1 Cor. xv. 3. See Heb. v. 1-3, and vii. 27. This usage may give no additional force to the argument proving that Christ is our Substitute in a literal sense, which I have presented above, but it abundantly disproves the moral view of the atonement in any form it can assume. Christ died for, because of, our sins. This naturally suggests, and has, as a matter of fact, always suggested to the great majority of men, that the immediate reason of his dying was the removal of sin; not that our sin was the remote occasion which rendered his dying proper.

The advocates of the Governmental Theory maintain that Christ did not suffer the true penalty of the law: that is, he did not suffer what they would have done; that is, that he was their Substitute, while he lacked that which is essential to the idea of a substitute. It is true, as I showed above, that the person upon whom the penalty is to be inflicted being changed — one divine Person being substituted for many human persons — the law itself, on principles of essential justice, spontaneously adjusts the quality of the sufferings constituting the penalty to the quality of the victim. Sinners being the victims, the penalty includes remorse and eternal death. Christ being the substituted victim, remorse and eternal death, ipso facto, cease to be the penalty, and he, standing in our place, suffers precisely the very penalty of the law in our stead, that is, all that the law in rigour of justice demands on the account of our sins, when that account is settled in his person. In every substitution there must be a constant as well as a variable quantity. A substitute is not a different man In a different place, but a different man in the same place.