The Orthodox Doctrine, as to the Nature of the Atonement, Proved from What the Scriptures Teach as to the Nature and Grounds of Justification
As the ninth argument in support of the truth of our doctrine as to the nature of the Atonement, I cito the clear and indubitable teachings of the Scriptures as to the nature of JUSTIFICATION and the grounds upon which it proceeds. For the ends of my argument, I shall define and establish by Scripture the true doctrine of justification, first on that side on which it immediately antagonizes the Moral Influence Theory as to the nature of the Atonement, and secondly, on that side on which it refuses to coalesce with the Governmental Theory of the same.
I. Those who hold that the entire design and effect of the vicarious sufferings of Christ was to produce a moral influence upon the sinner, and thus to reconcile man to God instead of propitiating God in behalf of man, must, of course, hold justification to be a divine work, effecting, by appropriate means, a subjective change in the moral condition of the individual. Judged from their point of view, it must signify to make inherently or personally just or morally good.
In opposition to all heretics of this class, as well as in opposition to the Papists, the Evangelical Protestant
Church has always maintained, with an overwhelming weight of scriptural evidence, that that justification which God effects, of which Christ’s sacrifice is the meritorious ground, and the people of Christ the subjects, is not an infusion of grace effecting a subjective change in moral condition, but a declarative act pronouncing the believer to be forensically just, and thus effecting a change of legal relation, and not a change of moral character. This principle was the precise truth, the distinct and forceful enunciation of which, made the great Reformation of the Seventeenth Century what it was to the men of that and of all subsequent generations. It has been proved over and over again by such conclusive scriptural references as the following.
1. The common sense in which our English word to justify is used and understood in all secular speech and literature, is to declare a man to be in the right — never to make or to constitute him inherently so. To justify is to assert or to vindicate his innocence; it is to pronounce him to be in fact innocent, or clear of all the claims of that law or standard of conduct or character by which he is tested. This is not only the theological usage of the term, but the sense in which it is universally used in the common intercourse of life. The Latin words justificatio and jmtifico were never used by classical writers, but were newly-coined terms of ecclesiastical writers for the purpose of expressing theological ideas, and hence neither their etymology nor their usage can throw any additional light upon this subject.
2. The word which the Holy Ghost has diosen to express the ti uth he intends to reveal on this subject is
lu classical Greek this word has substantially the same usage which the word to justify, by which it is translated in the New Testament, has in English. Suidas’ Lexicon — “dtxatouv, to justify, has two senses: 1, punire; 2,justum censere. So Herodotus, &c.?’ Liddll & Scott’s Lexicon — “dtxatoco: 1, to hold as riyht or fair, to think right or fit; 2, to do a man justice; hence (a) to condemn, punish, and (6) to make just, hold guiltless, justify, N. T.”
3. The Hebrew word piv, in the vast majority of instances translated by the authors of the Septuagent by the Greek word dtxatoco, and in our version by the English word to justify, is always used in the sense of thinking or pronouncing just, acquitting, and never in the sense of making good by the exercise of a moral influence. Job ix. 20: “If I justify (p”tt) myself, mine own mouth shall condemn me; if I say I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.” Job xxxii. 2: The wrath of Elihu was kindled against Job, “because he justified (piv) himself rather than God.’7 Deut. xxv. 1: “Then shall they [the judges] justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.” Prov. xvii. 15: “He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are an abomination to the Lord.” See also Isa. v. 23; Ex. xxiii. 7; and Ps. li. 4.
4. The word dtxatoco occurs thirty-nine times in the New Testament, and in every case, without a single exception, it signifies to esteem, to pronounce, or to treat as righteous, and never once to make or constitute personally, inherently righteous. Sometimes the word is used to ‘declare the fact that a person is inherently righteous, as Luke vii. 29: “And all the people that heard him, and the publiaans justified God;” and Matt.
xi. 19: “Wisdom is justified of her children.” But in the great majority of instances it is evident that it was used in the sense of pronouncing and treating a person as just, not intrinsically, but in relation to the demands of law as a covenant or condition of life and favour. That is, in the simplest words possible, it is a declaration that all the claims of the law are satisfied. Thus Gal. ii.’ 16: “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law; for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Gal. iii. 11: “But that no man is justified by the law, in the sight of God, it is evident.” See also Acts xiii. 39; Rom. v. 7-9; 1 Cor. vi. 11. If Christ died as God’s medium of moral influence upon the sinner, and not as propitiating Mediator in behalf of men with a justly offended God, then to justify must mean to make just, to sanctify. What sense, in that case, can be put upon those passages which speak of our being “justified/7 that is, sanctified, “without the deeds of the law?” What meaning can be imported into such phrases as, “By the deeds of the law no flesh can be sanctified ‘” (Rom. iii. 20), or, “Christ is become of no effect unto you, who are ‘sanctified’ by the law; whosoever of you are ‘sanctified’ by the law, are fallen from grace” (Gal. v. 4), or, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, ... to declare at this time his righteousness, in order that he [God] might be holy, and the ‘sanctifier’ of him which believeth in Jesus.”*
*”ThatBnshnell shall say, as he does on page 420, that he has established his point, that 6iK<u6u is not used in a declarative or judi-
5. The phrases, “to justify” and “justification” are in the Scriptures constantly used as the opposite “of” to condemn” and “condemnation” “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God ihsitjustifieth: who is he that condemnethf Rom. viii. 33, 34. “Therefore, as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.” Rom. v. 18. See also Rom. viii. 1; and John iii. 18. Now the phrase “to condemn” mmt be taken in a legal sense. Therefore, “to justify” must be legal also. The opposite of “to sanctify” is to pollute, but the opposite of “to condemn” is to justify.
6. The same truth is established by the character of the terms which in Scripture are used interchangeably with dixatoco to bring out the full sense of Christian justification. These are such as, “To impute righteousness without works;” “to forgive iniquities;” “to cover sins;” “not to impute or charge sin to account.” Rom. iv. 6-8. “Justified by his blood;” “saved from wrath;” “being sinners and yet reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” Rom. v. 9, 10.
7. The same truth is proved by Paul’s argument as to the gratuitous character of justification, Rom. iii. 27, 28 and iv. 3-5: “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay; but by the law of faith.... Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Now to him that
cial sense, but means to make morally good, “in a manner that leaves no room for dispute,” is an exhibition of the very insanity of self-conceit. So far from the word in Scripture always having that sense, it never has it.” — Princeton Revieu’, April, I860.
worketh, is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that jtistifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” But if justification be only setting a man subjectively right, making him to be good in fact, why should “aanctification” by works be a ground of boasting any more than “sandification” by faith? It is easy to understand how a man can be forensically just without works, on the credit of the works of a “surety.” But what mortal can construe in thought the thing meant by saying that a man is personally holy without works of righteousness? How can faith be counted for “sanctification” in the case of a man who has no works, but believes in a God who “sanctifies” the ungodly?
8. The sense in which Paul used the terms in question is put beyond all doubt by the nature of the objections which he introduces into his Epistle to the Romans as likely to be made to his doctrine. The question whether, being justified by grace, we should continue in sin in order that grace might abound, is both obvious and plausible, if the phrase, “being justified,” be taken in the forensic sense attributed to it by the Protestant Church in all its branches. That is, will not the free, gratuitous acquittal of the sinner, without either obedience or punishment on his part, inevitably lead to licentiousness? But the question whether, being “sanctified” by grace, we shall continue in sin that grace may abound, has not even a decent appearance of plausibility, because utterly devoid of sense.
This doctrine, that justification is forensic, and that it is based upon imputed righteousness, was the watchword of the glorious Reformation — the one word of power which dissolved the venerable power of the Papacy, awakened the people from the sleep of ages, introduced the new world of modern history, and the stupendous career of progressive liberty and civilization which has issued from it. The state of the world as a whole, to day, when compared with all the past, is a witness to its truth. All the achievements of modern Christianity, in all departments, are a monument to its value. Yet Bushnell says of this, “articula stantis, vel cadentisecelesicB, I could more easily see the Church fall than believe it.”* The presumption appears overwhelming that Protestantism is right, and that Popery, Soeinianism and the nondescript genus of Bushnells and Youngs, are wrong.
The work of Dr. John Young, of Edinburgh, entitled the “Light and the Life of Men,” is, as far as the present writer knows, the most thorough, able and honest of all the modern essays in advocacy of the Moral Influence Theory of Redemption. In his chapter on Justification, in the face of all the facts above given relating to the uniform usage of the Hebrew, Greek and English words involved in the question at issue, he claims that the analogies of the English language demand that we should substitute the word “to righten,” in place of the word “to justify,” as the English equivalent of the Greek dtxatba). As we have in Greek olxatoz, dixatoauvr dcxMcofjia and dtxaeoco, so we would have in English the uniform class of words, right, righteous, righteousness or •iyhtness; and to righten or rectify, or set rig Jit.
But the only advantage Young gains in favour of his argument by this substitution results from the * “Vicarious Sacrifice,” p. 439.
fact that his newly-coined term ato righten,” having no established usus loquendi, is necessarily ambiguous. The word may with equal propriety be understood either in the sense of Tightening a man subjectively, that is, making him inherently good, or of Tightening the man forensically, or vindicating his claim to be regarded and treated as standing in a right relation to the divine law. The entire plausibility of Young’s argument in the chapter in question results from this ambiguity of Iris chosen word. His theory of the nature of Christ’s work demands that “to righten” shall mean to make a man subjectively right. On the other hand, as I have shown, the Scripture usage of the words pi¥ and dexaeoa), which are used by the Holy Ghost in the Old and New Testaments, to express his mind upon the nature of this “Tightening,” demand that they be represented by an English equivalent which, like the word to justify, means precisely to pronounce a man to be just in the eye of law — to be free of all legal demands. The newly-invented term may be convenient to veil the real issue involved, but it is impotent to avoid it. Sense, candor, and a Hebrew and a Greek Concordance of the two Testaments, will settle this question both speedily and finally.
II. The advocates of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement, while they agree with us that justification is, as above shown, a forensic act, yet, nevertheless, are forced to differ from us as to the nature of justification in the following particulars.
1. As Christ, according to tneir view, did not suffer strictly in the law-place of his people, and as their sins were not really imputed to him, and as he did not die with the purpose of expiating the sins of any particular individuals, but to put all men generally into a salvable state, it follows that his righteousness is not imputed to the believer, and that it is only in some sense the occasion, but not at all the strict judicial ground, of our justification.
2. As Christ’s righteousness is not imputed to the believer as the ground of his justification, it follows that that justification cannot be an act of God as Judge, pronouncing his judgment according to the fact that the man is righteous — that is, free of all unsatisfied claims of law, and entitled to the covenant rewards of righteousness; it can only be a mere executive pardon pronounced by God as King, remitting the penalty due to sin.
3. As justification is mere pardon, as it is a sovereign and not a judicial act, and since it is not founded on imputed righteousness, it follows that it must proceed upon a relaxation of law by sovereign prerogative — an exercise of prerogative in this case wisely guarded from abuse by the governmental device of an atonement. This wise relaxation of the claims of law, in which all the interests of God, of the moral universe and of the sinner are reconciled and provided for, involves two things; (1) the admission of the sufferings of Christ, in themselves of incomparably less value, in the place of the real penalty of the law; and (2) the admission of faith and evangelical obedience, in the place of that perfect obedience which the law demands as the ground of the sinner’s j notification. The first relaxation prepares the way for the second, and renders it consistent with the good of the moral universe. This makes faith the ground and not the mere condition of salvation, and assimilates the Governmental Theory, as to all essential points, with the Arminian Soteriology.
In opposition to this view of the nature of justification, the Scriptures fully support the truth of the doctrine common to all the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, including the following points.
1. Justification is not mere pardon executed in virtue of his kingly prerogative, but it is a judgment pronounced by God as Judge, to the effect that the believer is in all respects free of the claims of law as a covenant of life.
2. The ground upon which justification proceeds is neither the sovereign prerogative of God, nor the faith nor gracious obedience of the believer accepted in view of Christ’s exemplary suffering, but it is the all-perfect righteousness of Christ, which, in the just judgment of God as a matter of fact, belongs to the believer by the terms of the covenant and for the purpose of justification, and which hence fulfils, in the rigour of justice, all the demands of the law upon us.
1. Justification is not mere pardon.
It is of course believed on all hands (a) that justification includes pardon of sin as one of its main elements, and (6) that this pardon in relation to the unworthy subjects of it, who are selected from the great mass of humanity neither better nor worse than themselves, is a matter of grace absolutely sovereign. Hence justification is often set forth in Scripture as pardon (Isa. Iv. 7), remission (Acts x. 43), forgiveness (Eph. i. 7), and the non-imputation of sin (Roia. iv. 8), &c. But that justification is not mere pardon is evident from the following facts.
Mere pardon is (a) the act of a sovereign waiving the claims of the law and discharging the penalty. (6.) It proceeds upon sovereign prerogative and the proprieties of governmental policy to relax the demands of law, but does not declare them satisfied, (c.) The effect of mere pardon is simply to remit the penalty; it does not advance the pardoned man to any positive favour, nor entitle him to any positive reward.
But, on the contrary, justification is a judicial act of God proceeding upon the fact that all the demands of law upon the persons concerned are satisfied, and it pronounces believers to be entitled to the rewards conditioned upon obedience to the law as a covenant of life. This is certain (1) from the uniform classical and New Testament usage of the words olxatoz, dexaeoavvy, dexalcofjia, dcxaeoco. The dixatot; was “a person observant of rules, hence observant of the rules of right,” the moral law, and hence a just man, or rectus. dcxatoa’jvrj was the character of the dtxaeoz; that in the man which conforms to and fulfils the law.* Atxatoco is to proclaim a man to be dixato$, that is, to possess a dixacoauvr], or righteousness. No person confounds in Greek any more than in English the ideas of justification and mere pardon; and the language which is uniformly used to express the one cannot, by any fair interpretation, be held to convey the other. The language necessarily suggests the function of a judge, not of a sovereign, and it implies that the law is satisfied, not relaxed, and that the person declared to be just is entitled to whatever benefits have been graciously made to depend, by covenant, upon the condition of perfect conformity to the law. * Liddell & Scott’s Lexicon.
(2.) The Scriptures declare that justification proceeds upon the ground of a righteousness. “The righteousness of the law,” “their own righteousness,” is contrasted with “the righteousness of God,” “the righteousness of faith.” The former is declared not to be, but the latter to be, the ground of justification. Hence Christ is said to be “the Lord our righteousness” (Jer. xxiii. 6), and “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. x. 3 — 6); and we are said to be the ‘’righteousness of God in him.” 2 Cor. v. 21, and 1 Cor. v. 30. Justification is paraphrased as “the imputation of righteousness without works,” and “faith” is said to be “imputed for righteousness.” Rom. iv. 6, 22. “‘They who receive the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by Jesus Christ. Therefore as by the offence of one JUDGMENT came upon all men to CONDEMNATION, EVEN so by the RIGHTEOUSNESS of one the free gift came upon all men unto JUSTIFICATION of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the OBEDIENCE of one shall many be made RIGHTEOUS.” Rom. v. 17 — 19. The essence of pardon is that a man is forgiven without righteousness. The essence of justification is that a man is pronounced to be possessed of a righteousness which fulfils the law.
(3.) According to his eternal covenant with the Father, the work of Christ secures for his people not merely pardon, but both (a) remission of the penalty due to sin, and (b) a title to the purchased possession. Eph. i. 14. Pardon effects nothing more than remission. But the promise is that “the just by faith shall live.“” Eph. iii. 11. Justification carries with it the effects or consequences of “peace with God,” “access rnd rejoicing in the glory of God,” “reconciliation with God and salvation.” Rom. v. 1-10. The blood of Christ is said to effect not only remission of sins, but also “inheritance among them that are sanctified,” and the elevation of those for whom it was shed, to be “kings and priests unto God.” Rev. i. 5, 6; Acts xxvi. 18.
2. The ground upon which God pronounces the justification of sinners is not sovereign prerogative, but the all-perfect “righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone”
When we say that justification is a judicial and not a sovereign act of God, it is by no means intended by the most rigid adherent of the old Calvinism that ever lived to deny either of the following great and precious truths, (a.) That the substitution of the person of Christ in the place of his people, for the purpose of fulfilling both the precept and the penalty of the law in our place, was an act of absolute sovereignty, the only reason of which is the “counsel of his own will.” Nor (b) that the election of any individual sinner to a part in that body which Christ represents in his obedience and suffering was an act of sovereignty. Nor (c) that as far as any claims of any sort on the part of the elect sinner himself is concerned, the application of this redemptive work of Christ to him in the gift of faith, repentance and their gracious sequences is any the less absolutely and unconditionally sovereign. These principles belong fully as much to the old Calvinism as to the New England Theology. But what we do mean to affirm is precisely this: that God having, as Sovereign, admitted the substitution of Christ in the law-place of iis elect, and having sovereignly chosen a given individual to a place in their number, and having, according to his promise to the Son, but sovereignly as far as concerns the man himself, conferred upon him the gift of faith, he then proceeds as Judge to pronounce the fact that the law is satisfied with respect to that man, because of the perfect work wrought in his behalf by his Substitute. Justification is precisely this judicial decision, recognizing the believer as righteous (forensically), and providing for his being so regarded and treated for ever.
Now the foundation of this act must be the righteousness of Christ, because (1) justification has been proved above to be a forensic and judicial act, and not to be mere pardon, but a pronouncing a man to be right before the law. It must, therefore, proceed upon the ground of a righteousness of some sort — that is, upon the application to the case of that which will in the sense of strict justice satisfy the demands of law, and not the self-will of the Sovereign.
But (2) the law demands either perfect obedience, past and present, or the execution of the penalty. Consequently, “by the law can no flesh be justified,” if respect be had to their own imperfect obedience.
(3.) When the Scriptures declare that justification does not proceed on the ground of human works, they always use the words in a general sense to include works of whatever kind. This excludes, ;>f course, faith and evangelical obedience, as well as obedience to the law of the Adamic covenant. “And if it be of grace, it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise works is no more works.” Rom. xi. 6. “Now to him that w H’koth is tJie reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works/7 Rom. iv. 4 — 6.
(4.) The fact that this justification of the sinner proceeds upon the ground of Christ’s righteousness made forensically the sinner’s righteousness by imputation is directly asserted in Scripture. As we proved in a preceding chapter that the guilt or obligation to punishment attaching to our sins was charged upon Christ and expiated in his person, so we now see that the Scriptures teach with equal clearness the correlative truth that the rewardableness attaching to Christ’s righteousness is actually credited to the believer, and rewarded in the whole process of his salvation. Christ is called “the Lord our righteousness.” Jer. xxiii. 6. He is said to be “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” Rom. x. 4. He is “made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” 1 Cor. i. 30. “He was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” 2 Cor. v. 21. “Therefore as by the oifence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men to justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so BY THE OBEDIENCE OF ONE
SHALL MANY BE MADE RIGHTEOUS.” Rom. V. 18, 19. It
is often said that faith “is imputed for righteousness.” Rom. iv. 9, 22. But the specific faith which justifies is faith in or on (ec or Ixt) Christ Jesus. Acts ix. 42; xvi. ‘•$1; Gal. ii. 16. Its very essence, therefore, is trust upon him and his sin-expiating and life-purchasing merits. Its very essence consists in its self-emptying, self-denying, Christ-grasping energy. The phrase “to impute or reckon faith for righteousness” represents no thinkable idea, unless it means to reckon as the righteousness of the sinner that righteousness which his faith trusts and appropriates. The mere act of leaning will never support a fainting man, unless he leans upon some object capable of supporting his weight. In that case it is the object which is reckoned his support, and not his act of leaning. The act of leaning is the same whether a man leans upon a broken reed or upon a rock, while the results differ. The act of trusting is the same whether a man trusts a false foundation or to Christ. The difference in the result arises from the fact that the righteousness of Christ, upon which his faith reposes, is made his so far forth as to answer all the conditions and to secure all the rewards of the Covenant of Life.