The Substitutionary Work of Christ
“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” — i Peter iii. 18.
‘HRIST suffered!” That is the key-note. These believers were suffering — suffering for well-doing. Suffering for conscience’ sake. And they were in heaviness through manifold trials. So the Apostle reminds them that Christ also suffered. How sweet is that little word also! Ceesar was wont to cheer his troops by addressing them as soldiers. Such is the force of this word. Are you homeless? Christ also had not where to lay his head. Are you poor? Christ also for our sakes became poor. Are you tempted? Christ also hath suffered, being tempted.
But Christ’s sufferings are unique! Though He was righteous, He suffered as no other one has for sins; for it is clearly taught here that He suffered as a substitute, “the Just for the unjust.”
It is quite true, as we are so often told, that the death of the Lord Jesus has had a great raoral effect upon men, revealing the love of God, teaching the law of self-sacrifice, showing how keenly sin makes itself felt in the holy sensitive nature of eternal love. But, besides this subjective side of our Saviour’s death, there is another, an objective one. He has not only done something towards men, softening and moving them to thoughts of unselfishness, and deeds of heroism, to which otherwise they must have been for ever strangers; but He has done something also toward the satisfaction of the great laws of the Divine nature, which make for righteousness. And if He had not done the latter, his work in the former had been in vain. It was not enough to touch men, there must be a public reparation made to that violated law, of which both Scripture and conscience speak. So only could penitent sinners be accepted.
It is not necessary that men should understand the philosophy of the Atonement in order to be saved by it. No doubt, thousands have been saved by it who had an erroneous conception of its true significance, in some or even many of its aspects. Certainly our comfort and assurance become stronger in proportion to the clearness and Scripturalness of our views about the death of our Saviour. Still, our salvation does not depend on the accuracy of our intellectual conceptions; but on our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as a Saviour, who through death and resurrection has acquired the power to save unto the uttermost all that come unto God by Him, their great High Priest.
The substitutionary character of the death of Christ is woven into the texture of Scripture, as the cross into a venerable minster. You cannot eradicate it without destroying the edifice which it underlies. Men must distort the plain meaning of words, ere they can succeed in its elimination from the sacred page.
As we study the Levitical law, we find substitution in every sacrifice. What else is implied in the care to have a stainless victim; in the imposition of hands; in the confession of guilt on the innocent head; in the death of the guiltless, while the guilty goes to his home free? What other truth is taught in the constant reiteration of phrases like that which accosts us in these words — phrases caught from the lips of the Master Himself, who spoke of his life being given a ransom for majiy 1 What else can explain the marvellous arguments of the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians? If only the masses of Christian people would read the Bible for themselves, instead of reading so many books about the Bible, they would be compelled to admit that the Scriptures are unanimous in attesting the substitutionary character of the sufferings of Jesus. He died for us. He bore our guilt and shame, our curse and penalty. He took to Himself the penal consequences of human sin, and put them away for ever.
But, in proclaiming this doctrine, let us avoid certain misstatements.
(i) Let us beware of representing God as loving men only in consequence of Chrisfs death. — This is as illogical as it is unscriptural. For it is one of the postulates of all true thinking — that God is; that God is the same; that God is the same Infinite Being, the I AM, the same in the yesterday of the past, and in the to-morrow of the future, as in the to-day of the present. But if the death of Christ be represented as having pacified an inexorable and avenging Deity, causing Him to love those who else must have withered under his relentless hate, it makes Him other than He was, and the Divine nature must have suffered a change, which is unthinkable and inadmissible.
The death of Christ is due to the love of God. God gave his Son because He so loved the world. The cross is the expression of a love which is older than the oldest star; more ancient than the most venerable elder who stands in the zenith light of heaven; long as eternity, vast as infinity, deep as the being of God. In this was manifested the love of God, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
(2) Let us also beware of making too great a division in the Divine govern)ne?it between Gods righteousness and his love. — There is no collision in God. The nature of God is not defined as righteousness, but as love. If it had been defined as righteousness, it is doubtful if love could have been included. But being defined as love, righteousness is of course included. And there is no collision in God between the two, for his righteousness is a fruit and offspring of his love. He must be righteous, because He is love. He loves; and, therefore, as the Judge of all the earth. He must do right.
It would not be consistent with love if He were to let sin go unnoticed or unpunished; or if He were to allow the moral law to fall into disuse; or if He were to permit us to set at defiance those promptings of our conscience which even we approve. Is it love, which with easy good nature suffers children to do as they list, unrebuked and unrestrained? Is it love to allow murder and lust and rapine to curse a nation of unoffending subjects without an attempt to bring the wrong-doers to justice? Is it love to a man himself to permit him to go on unchecked in a course of ceaseless evil? To ask these questions is to answer them. Love involves Righteousness, and the insistence on the maintenance of right. And in the cross of Jesus there is no variance between the attributes of God. Mercy and truth met together; righteousness and peace kissed each other
But when men demand that we should refuse to believe in substitution because God is love, and therefore as not requiring an answer to the demands of his justice, we reply that, because He is love, therefore He must be just; He must maintain his law; He must exact penalty in respect of the violation of the demands of his righteousness; He must act in the moral sphere as He ever acts in the natural, in allowing law to secure its requisitions and demands when it has been set at nought.
(3) Let us beware of dissociating the persons of the blessed Trinity in the worh of atonement. — The death of Christ is sometimes so stated as if He stepped in between God and man, and did something on the prompting of his own heart, apart altogether from the Father. And then, of course, the objection arises, Why did God make or permit the innocent One to suffer?
But it must never be forgotten that the death of the cross was the act of the whole Deity. “God was in Christ reconcihng the world unto Himself.” “Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself to God.” “My Father, which dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.” The Son did nothing of Himself: and how much less could He have wrought his greatest work apart from his Father! He was only translating into human guise and language acts and deeds which He saw his Father do.
And so in the cross we find the eternal God taking to Himself the consequences of human sin; Himself becoming the propitiation for the sin of the world; bearing it Himself; pressed under it as a cart is pressed under sheaves; and putting it away.
(Bnt iaith Cfrrtat. 139
This cannot be unjust. It would be unjust to take a good boy and make him suffer for a naughty one; but it cannot be unjust for Bronson Alcott to suffer himself the penalty which should be borne by the boys who have broken the regulations of his school. It cannot be unjust for one to substitute his life for another — else some of the noblest deeds of human history must be expunged.
Yes, reader, you may take this home as yours, and say, thankfully: God has suffered for me in the person of Jesus, the Just for the unjust. You may never have thanked Him, or availed yourself of the benefits of his death, as a man might leave bank-stock to accumulate unclaimed; you may even secure for yourself eternal condemnation by shutting out the love and light of God, and electing to live in the darkness of selfishness and godlessness. And yet it is true that out of his great love the eternal God has done something for you which He never did for angels, and which might make you blessed for ever.
(4) Lc, us beware of suggesting thai Christ has ceased to suffer. — There is a sense, of course, in which our Saviour suffered for sins once. The direct work of substitution was accomplished on the cross, and was definitely concluded when Jesus cried, “It is finished!” The Resurrection proves that the work of propitiation is an accomplished fact.
But we must not suppose that Jesus has passed into an unsuffering heaven. He still suffers in each of his members. He is crucified afresh when we yield to wilful sins. He travails in birth until his kingdom come. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. How can He be at rest, whilst his beloved are tossing in the storm, and the members of his bride are not complete? And through his sufferings blessing is accruing; they cannot be in vain: we shall see all soon; meanwhile let us bear fellowship with Him in his anguish, drinking of his cup, that we may share his glory.
We stand now on the verge of a mysterious and difficult passage; but this much is true and clear, that Christ suffered for us to bring us to God. Let us understand that, through
I40 ®bc oubstitutinnarf Mork of dljrist.
faith in Him, we are made one with Him, and stand where He does in the very presence of God. “Made nigh by the blood of the cross.” Let us in private prayer, or at the Lord’s table, remember that nothing brings us so near as those precious sufferings. And, whenever we feel estranged and distant, let us betake ourselves to the cross; and, sitting there, meditate on those wounds, till we are brought again into rapturous fellowship with our God, our Light, our Love, our exceeding Joy. And then from our sure fellowship with God we may dare to look out on all mysteries, not trying to explain God by the mystery, but the mystery by what we, in our own happy fellowship, know God to be. To whom be glory for ever!