17 The Atonement

The Atonement By Rev. G. W. Samson, D. D., New York

“And not only so, but we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the atonement.”—Romans 5:11. For two reasons, this text is often conscientiously rejected as a statement presenting the gospel doctrine which the word “Atonement,” as now used by theologians, implies. In the first place, the word here translated “atonement” in the original Greek means “reconciliation.” In every case but this the Greek noun is rendered “reconciliation,” and the corresponding verb, as in the verse preceding our text, is always translated “reconciled.” The word “reconciliation” does not present the full idea of what is now included in the doctrine characterized as the Atonement. For this reason the text seems to be objectionable as setting forth the doctrine to be considered. In the second place, the old English meaning of the word used by our translators has changed since their day. Its old meaning was the same as that now implied in the word reconciliation. The old Saxon word “atone,” as its composition implies, means “at-one.” The verb is causative in signification, meaning “to set at-one.” So, too, the noun “atonement” meant, when our translation was made, “the setting at-one,” or “that which sets at-one.” Now, this changed meaning of the word—as those accustomed to encounter opponents to the gospel doctrine always observe — this changed meaning of the word atonement is so radically fixed in the mind of those trained to erroneous views of the Gospel doctrine, that it is impossible, humanly speaking, to make them see “the truth as it is in Jesus.” For this reason, again, many evangelical Christians and Bible students have avoided the use of this passage as setting forth the Gospel doctrine. For two reasons, in the present survey, this text is chosen: first, because of the New Testament term itself; and second, because of the doctrine involved both in the word and in its connection. As to the word Atonement here employed, though but once found in the New Testament, it is often met in the Old Testament, in the version used for nearly three centuries by English readers. The people cling to the English translation; they will quote it, and even when the translation can be shown by scholars to be in terms now obsolete or incorrect, common readers will be led by the version in their hands. Here, however, the translation is correct. It gives truly the meaning of the original. The change in the meaning of the word, moreover, is but partial. In the many cases in the Old Testament where the words “atone” and “atonement” are met it means all that is now involved in the term as used by evangelical theologians. Yet more, the English translators who had employed the word in the Old Testament in its comprehensive meaning, doubtless had reasons, in this single passage of the New Testament, to depart from their own ordinary New Testament translation, and to insert the word “atonement” instead of “reconciliation.” Such was the comprehensiveness which Paul in this connection himself threw into the word, that fidelity to the inspired writer’s thought demanded that here, and here alone, the comprehensive Old Testament word “atonement” should be introduced. And this fact suggests an added and controlling guide to the preacher, who should first find and then should thoroughly unfold the truth, not of the word alone, but of the word in its connection with other words, by which the Divine Spirit presents connected truth. As to the doctrine, though not fully found in the word, it is found in the statement wherein Paul used the word. The word “atonement” here employed does mean, both in the inspired original and in the old English, “reconciliation.” But the very idea of reconciliation implies former alienation, and some effective means by which that alienation is brought to an end. Reconciliation is but a result of something beforehand accomplished; it is an effect which mind before language was framed. We most, therefore, first, carefully note at every point of our consideration the meaning of the words in the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures which God himself chose in which the most clearly to present his truth to man. We must also, second, carefully consider the meaning of words in our English tongue, into which that original divine revelation is translated; for if, as readers of the Word, we attach differing ideas to the meaning of the Word we read, that Word will no longer be to us a divine revelation.

Most of all, if the word of God is the revelation of his own distinct idea of each truth belonging to our duty to him and to his redemption for us, no mind can hope to attain “the truth as it is in Jesus,” except it be under the guiding and enlightening influence of the Divine Spirit. As Christ taught, “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God,” so Paul taught, “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit.” “God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit.”

Guided, then, by human experience, with prayer that we may be enlightened by the Divine Spirit’s influence, we are to consider—

I. The nature of the Atonement, as consisting in its three provisions: Reconciliation, Propitiation, and Expiation; which secure Justification. As the word of God to man is in man’s language, already framed as the expression of human ideas, Divine Providence has ordered that the efforts of ambitions popular leaders to impose and impress their own conceptions upon other minds should the more clearly illustrate his truth. Thus the “oppositions of philosophy, falsely so-called,” Paul declares, were made, at the Greek cities of Ephesus and Corinth, the occasion of a fuller consideration and presentation of the gospel truth. This has, in our day and land, been witnessed in the case of Dr. Bushnell of Hartford, Conn. Observing in his youth that” no doctrine of the Atonement” yet presented had “received the consent of the Christian world,” he sought, in two discourses delivered in the year 1848—one at the Harvard and the other at the Yale Divinity School,—to show that the “Atonement” is a “reconciliation” of man to his Maker, such as an offending man makes to his fellow. After years of added study it was perceived by Dr. Bushnell that this view implied nothing on the part of the Divine Being; but that it was simply a change in man. He was now convinced that reason taught that some new affection must necessarily be awakened in the divine mind. Recalling, therefore, the closing half of his first volume, he added, as a second element of the Atonement,” propitiation of the Divine Being.” This idea he found everywhere in the philosophic religions of the world; as in India, Greece and Rome. This idea of “propitiation” he explained by Jonathan Edwards’ statement that “God’s love and pity fixed the idea of man’s sin and its penalty in his mind as if he had been really they.” Thus the Atonement to Dr. Bushnell was, first, “reconciliation” in man, and second, “propitiation” in God. But while he found, as he admits, in the Greek language, words implying “expiation” and “expiatory sacrifice,” and while he also found that such sacrifices have, in all ages before Christ’s day, both among nations the most cultured and the most rude, been always offered, failing to recognize th.at human reason, always and everywhere, has felt the need of “expiation,” as well as of propitiation and reconciliation, he denied that the New Testament teaches that in Christ’s Atonement an “expiatory sacrifice” is provided. Contrary to Bushnell’s forced conclusion, the Christian experience, as well as the honest intelligence of most readers of the New Testament, has recognized that the clearly-stated expiatory sacrifice of Christ is that which manifests to the intelligent universe God’s love. This expiation is the essential provision of the Divine Atonement. The gospel doctrine of the Atonement, indeed, makes these three provisions, and in their inverse order, to enter into the nature of the Divine Atonement: There is, first, an “expiation,” reconciling the universe to God’s government; there is, second, a “propitiation,” reconciling in the divine character “righteousness and love;” and there is, third, a “reconciliation” in man, removing the condemnation for past sin, and begetting a new life of love to God and his service. And all these secure man’s “justification;” .so that, though sinful, he is accounted to be righteous.

Turning to the Hebrew of the Old Testament, we find that the word to “atone “is one from which our Saxon word “cover,” both in form and meaning, is derived. This word is used about one hundred and: forty times in the Old Testament; and thus often used it presents the leading idea in the nature of the Atonement. That idea, end and result accomplished for believing men is to “cover” the sins of which the sinner has been guilty. It is the thought of David, when, after his great guilt was revealed to him in the virtual murder and adultery which brought the great stain and formed the great crime of his life, he wrote the thirty-second and fifty-first Psalms; exclaiming, at the opening of the former, “Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.” It was not enough for David that he was assured of “forgiveness;” he wished his sin “blotted out from the book of remembrance.” Further than this, as the Apostle Paul, quoting in Romans 4:8 the added expression in Psalms 32:2, plainly teaches, it is the demand of human conscience and of divine truth, that in order to be “covered” and “blotted from remembrance” sin should “not be imputed” to the sinner; that it should not be charged to his account. This, yet again, leads to a further demand that man, the sinner, should be actually justified from his transgression (the vital idea of the nature of the Atonement which runs through the whole history of religions experience as recorded in the Old and New Testament, and as witnessed in the history of Christian converts in every age and land. Job, the earliest patriarch whose experience is recorded, since his age indicates (Job 42:16) that he must have lived some generations before Abraham, is a striking example of this demand. Divine revelation had declared as to Noah, who lived some generations earlier than Job, these three facts; First, that he “found grace in the eyes of the Lord;* second, that he was “a just man and perfect in his generation;” and third, that “he walked with God.” The meaning of the word just here must, as Paul and Peter both teach, refer to his “justification by faith” from sin against God (Genesis 6:8-9; Hebrews 11:7; 2 Peter 3:7). The full explanation of what is thus briefly stated as to Noah is found in Job. Job is repeatedly designated by the divine pen and voice as “a perfect and upright man” (Job 1:1-8; Job 2:3). Yet when his friends declare that he must have been “unjust,” even towards his fellow-men, Job, in defending himself from the charge, (Job 9:2), asks: “But how should a man be just with God?” Irritated into murmuring utterances by the persistent charges of his friends, young Elihu perceived at the close of the discussion that Job, even as to his sin against God, “had justified himself rather than God” (Job 32:2). In his reply the Divine Being declares that Job had exalted first his own “wisdom,” (Job 38:2), and second his “purity” (Job 40:2; Job 40:8). Both these, when reproved by the Divine voice, Job humbly confesses (Job 42:4; Job 42:2-5). His sincere repentance and faith are accepted, and his justification is declared by God (Job 42:6-8); and in this extended description the fullest as well as the earliest illustration of “justification by faith” seen in Christian experience is given for all time. Yet again in the brief record of Abraham Paul saw and repeatedly presented the same idea as fundamental in the nature of the Atonement, (Genesis 15:6; Galatians 3:6; Romans 4:3-22); while in all the redeemed from Abel to David, he declares that the same faith was illustrated (Hebrews 11:2-3). The fullest and most enrapturing view of “justification” as the essential feature in the result of the Atonement is presented by the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. He first shows that all men are sinners; because, first, from nature, without revelation, they have “known” God, the reality and the penalty of sin, and the duty of repentance and faith in God; because, second, though knowing all this, the heathen had become vile in appetite and brutal in passion, the Jews had been insincere and hateful in spirit, while “all men had sinned,” in that the most virtuous had “come short of the glory of God.” Indeed, he declares that every human being, from the first of our race, had sinned so perfectly “in the similitude of Adam’s transgression” that all were as hopelessly lost as our first parents were. Hence the necessary provision for man’s redemption was one by which (Ch. 3) “the righteousness of God in the remission of sins that are past” might be made clear; so that all the universe might see that God “might be just and yet the justifier of him that believed in Jesus.” The special presentation of this accomplished result is found in the eighth chapter of this epistle. Having stated again (Romans 8:1), “there is now, therefore, no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus,” the Apostle proceeds to explain how this fact can be true. Declaring that sinful man is “not willingly “—that is, not of his own choice— “subject to vanity,” or to the weak, erring, sinful condition inseparable from his earthly and bodily life, but that he has thus been created “by reason of him who hath subjected him in hope”—that is, that Christ might show his glory and grace in redeeming him—the Apostle presents the following questions and responses: “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth! Who is he that condemneth ?ⁿ Can any of the angels, he seems to imply, beings that never sinned, and who might regard it unjust that a sinful being should be treated as if sinless—can any angel condemn man? Have they, he seems further to imply, suffered at all by man’s sin? And then, suspending, apparently, his reply till these thoughts may have been pondered, he responds to his own expressed question, “Who is he that condemneth?” “It is Christ, that died” for man, if any one, that has any right to condemn! Assuredly man must himself be satisfied—indeed all heaven must confess, after such a presentation, that “God may be just and yet justify the ungodly who believe in Jesus;” and .who, with Paul, can say, “He gave himself for me.”

Through all the history of Christian experience this view, substantially, has been conceived when peace and rest in Jesus have first been felt. In every age and land, from the day of Paul’s conversion, Christian converts have conceived that Christ is both their substitute and surety; that he assumes as his own the responsibility of their past sin and of their future righteousness. It was this that the converted Brahmin had conceived, whose experience Dr. Duff, of the Scotch Presbyterian Mission at Calcutta, described. Dissatisfied with the religion of the Vedas, he had studied next the Buddhist, and then the Mohammedan faith. Still at unrest, he heard of the Christian faith, and came to Dr. Duff to be instructed in it. A month’s reading of the Scriptures and of Scotch theology brought no satisfying light. One day, however, in poring over Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, a new idea—that which we have traced—broke upon his mind. Perfectly enraptured, he went to his instructor to state his new conception. “And why,” asked Dr. Duff, “were you not satisfied with the Koran, which on every page declares that God is merciful and can forgive sin?” “Oh,” exclaimed the converted Brahmin,” “I was not satisfied to be forgiven through the mercy of God. I wanted to see how God could be just and yet justify the ungodly.”

While sin is thus expiated, and the believing sinner is justified, human nature recognizes that the Divine Being must be “propitiated.” It was this that Dr. Bushnell, by years of thoughtful study—proceeding backward from the first perceived element of the Atonement, the sinner’s “reconciliation “—traced in man’s religious history. It was ever and fearfully prominent in the history of the Greeks, in whose language the Old Testament was studied at Christ’s day, and in whose tongue, also, the New Testament truth could be most fully presented. When, in the Iliad of Homer, the Grecian heroes embarking for the conquest of Troy are driven back by a storm, they are told that one of their chief deities must be “propitiated” by the sacrifice of the most lovely daughter of their commanding general. How fearfully expressive, how forcibly instructive, the history of such sacrifices! Let no one dare to treat with scorn the sacrifice of Christ Jesus on the cross; for in that act of scorn this agonizing demand of human reason and conscience will also be treated with contempt! Man needs a “propitiation” with God; and this, the Old and New Testament fully teach, is provided by Christ Jesus our Lord.

It was the deep conviction that” propitiation “was needed that caused “the horror of great darkness” to come over Abraham when, immediately after the declaration that “his faith was counted to him for righteousness,” like many a Christian convert in later times, he showed a still distrustful craving for some visible proof of God’s acceptance of him, and asked, “Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit” thy promise? (Compare Genesis 15:6; Genesis 15:8; Genesis 15:12.) It was the agony of anxiety that God should be propitiated which made Moses “quake with great fear” when, having irreverently dashed the two tables written with God’s finger, as he saw the people of Israel besotted in their drunken and idolatrous dance, and then, going back to meet the offended and aggrieved God whose servants he and they ought to have been, he thus addressed the people: “Ye have sinned a great sin. But now I will go up unto the Lord. Peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.” This agony of yearning for “propitiation” with God breaks forth again immediately on his reaching the presence of the Almighty, as he utters the prayer, “O, this people have sinned a great sin! Yet now, if thon wilt forgive their sin—and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.” (Exodus 32:31-32.) The same need prompts the first exclamation of David’s penitential prayer (Psalms 51:1): “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness.” It is this very word “propitious” that is on the heart and tongue of the publican in his prayer, “God be merciful,” or as the original Greek word means, “God be propitious to me a sinner;” and it is in answer to this prayer for “propitiation” that Jesus declares that the pleading penitent” went down to his house justified.” Everywhere in the New Testament as well as in the Old, in the words of the Apostles as well as of Jesus, “propitiation” is the second need of man the sinner, and the second provision of the Gospel. As Paul, in the words nigh our text (Romans 3:25) says of Jesus, “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation,” so John, in the closing record of the inspired New Testament (1 John 2:2), declares “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” The fact that “reconciliation” with God is the third element required in the “Atonement” is too plain to need extended confirmation from the Scriptures. As we have noticed, it is the essential idea in the old English word “atonement” employed in our text, which is a literal translation of the Greek term here used by the Apostle Paul. It is the final result, and hence, so far as human duty is concerned, the essential element for man’s practical regard in the Atonement. Man’s personal effort of mind and heart is concerned when Paul, on behalf of all succeeding Christian heralds, writes (2 Corinthians 5:18-21): “All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation, to-wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” But, to give emphasis to the fact that it is only so far as human duty is concerned that “reconciliation” is made prominent in the divine statement as to the Atonement, the great Apostle immediately adds, as the means by which this reconciliation of the world to himself is secured, “Not imputing their trespasses unto them.” Setting forth then the agency by which this means is provided, Paul adds: “For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” It is the “expiation” securing “propitiation,” and this permitting “justification,” that makes “reconciliation” possible.

Hence our text is worthy the prominence given it, since while the “reconciliation” of man to God is the special element here implied in the word “atonement,” that very “reconciliation “is “received” from God, through the “propitiation” which reconciles in him his righteousness and love, and by means of the “expiation” which reconciles the intelligent universe to the divine character and government.

We are thus led on to consider—

II.—The ground of the Divine Atonement: The sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, offered for man’s redemption. As the worldly-wise statements of ambitious men, step by step recognizing the full nature of the Atonement, serve to make clear its complete idea, so the sincere effort of men of earnest mind to approximate, though they cannot attain to, “the truth as it is in Jesus,” most forcibly presents the only ground of Divine Atonement; which the inspired Scriptures reveal, and which can alone meet all the demands of human reason. Here the mature and condensed statement of Channing is most instructive. In his special discourse on “Unitarian Christianity,” speaking for his New England associates, Channing says: “A difference of opinion exists among us as to * * the precise influence of Christ’s death on our forgiveness. Many suppose that the event contributes to our pardon, as it was a principal means of confirming his religion and of giving it a power over the mind; in other words, that it procures forgiveness by leading to that repentance and virtue which is the great and only condition on which forgiveness is bestowed. Many of us are dissatisfied with this explanation; and I think that the Scriptures ascribe the remission of sins to Christ’s death with an emphasis so peculiar that we ought to consider this event as having a special influence in removing punishment, though the Scriptures may not reveal the way in which it contributed to this event.” This peculiarly frank statement, indicating a mind seeking light from revelation as well as from reason indicates the way in which the human mind has in all ages been led to recognize the revealed ground of Divine Atonement. Channing’s words, both in the cited quotations and in their connection in his discourse, indicate a reference to “theories” of the Atonement which have prevailed. As each of these theories presents a “part,” and a part only, of the truth revealed in God’s “word” and in his “work,” the human mind which studies that word, the effort of the Christian inquirer who is seeking “the truth,” may be aided by recalling those theories. The theories of the Atonement which have been extensively accepted are substantially five. They are each made to grow out of the view each theorist has maintained as to the fundamental element in human “sin,” for which Atonement is made, and as to the essential nature of “Christ,” who by his death atones for sin. The elements of sin are three— error, alienation, and insubmission; and the first three different theories of the Atonement turn on the question, Which of these three elements of sin is the source of the other two? The natures attributed to Christ are two—the human and the divine; and the last two theories differ from the first three in making the divine nature of Jesus, rather than the human, give fundamental efficacy to the Atonement. And while in all ages, both before and after Christ’s coming, and among nations with and without revelation, these differences of view have existed, yet the theories, as fully elaborated, have been ascribed to Christian writers of comparatively modern times. The first, or lowest in its estimate of sin and of the Saviour, is the “Example Theory,” attributed to Socinus. According to this theory, sin is fundamentally error—” amartia” in the Greek original; lack of understanding, as was seen in Eve, who was “deceived in the transgression.” The Atonement for sin, accordingly, is the example of Christ, who, as a man, wins back the sinner from his error. The second is the “Moral Influence Theory,” now ascribed to Bushnell. According to this theory, sin is alienation—”echthra” in the Greek—or “enmity against God;” illustrated in Adam, who “was not deceived,” yet transgressed God’s command. The Atonement for sin, consequently, is Christ’s suffering morally, and only as a man, the innocent for the guilty; a suffering like that experienced by earthly parents and friends, and also by sinless angels, who grieve at the alienation of the sinful from the God whom they love; a suffering whose moral influence tends to reconcile those alienated from God, and to subdue their enmity. The third is the “Governmental Theory,” illustrated by Grotins, the founder of the modern science of International Law. According to this theory, sin is “lawlessness,” in the Greek, “anomia,” translated in the New Testament “transgression of law;” an element seen in the “pride” or “rebellion” which was “the condemnation of the devil.” The Atonement, therefore, is Christ’s sacrifice, as a human representative sent by God, of every earthly comfort; suffering every loss, and the most painful of deaths, as a substitute for man, condemned as a rebel; for, as all mankind, because of their relation to Adam, as heirs of a feudal lord, are subject to loss of property, of station, and of character, because of the guilt of an ancestor who has become a traitor, so Christ, by assuming as his own that sacrifice, makes the traitor’s guilt to be counterbalanced by his merit. The fourth theory, that called “Material Substitution,” fully wrought out by Anselm, of the Roman Church, and partially accepted by Calvin, among the early Reformers, regards the suffering of Christ, as man and God united, to be an equivalent in intensity and merit for the suffering which all mankind who are redeemed would have endured had they not been rescued from eternal misery. The fifth theory, styled that of “Moral Substitution,” makes the moral weight of Christ’s suffering, as divine and human, to be an equivalent whose moral influence reconciles angels and men to the government of God, and begets love supreme to his perfect character.

Without doubt there is valuable truth in each of these several theories; but each presents only a part, though the latter a most comprehensive combining of several parts, of the entire truth demanded by reason and fully presented in revelation. Sin is error, and Christ is an example for man. Sin is alienation or “enmity,” and the moral influence of a sinless being must have an effect in winning back those “alienated from God.” Sin is the spirit of “lawlessness;” as Paul illustrates in his own case, when his heart rose in rebellion against God simply because the “law was good,” and he therefore rebelled against it; while, moreover, Christ is the divine representative, taking man’s place, as if the guilt of man’s sin were his own. Still more true is it that Christ, as divine and human, suffered as no one, nor indeed all men combined, can suffer; the physical agony and the mental anguish he endured being as much greater than man’s as his nature is greater. Yet more, and almost climactic in its comprehensive truth, is the revealed fact that in the sacrifice of Christ as God and man united, there was a moral impression on all intelligent creatures of God, human and angelic, which will at last reconcile them all to the character and government of God. And yet the essential fact revealed in the Old and New Testament as to the Redeemer and this redemption may be overlooked in the study of all, even of the last of these theories. The opening revelation by Moses teaches that before Adam was formed, his Creator, “The Lord God,” or “Jehovah God,” the manifested Divine Being, had himself assumed human nature, so that he himself was prepared to appear in human form, “walking in the garden,” and addressing the first formed pair with human voice. It is in accordance with this stated fact that Paul says (quoting Psalms 40:6 in Hebrews 10:5) that before man’s creation, Christ exclaimed, “A body hast thou prepared me “; that in that body, “a little lower than the angels,” he was introduced into the world, and the angelic were called on to worship him (Dent, 32: 43 and Hebrews 1:6, also Psalms 8:4, and Hebrews 2:7; Hebrews 2:9); that “all things were made by him and for him” (Colossians 1:16); and that all mankind, from Abel, who believed in him, already at man’s first sin revealed as the “seed of the woman,” “the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world,” should be redeemed by this one sacrifice. John, the last of the New Testament writers, is yet more explicit than Paul in these statements; that it was the “Word made flesh, by whom all things and beings were created” (John 1:2); that he is “the propitiation for the sins of the whole world,” Abel himself being specially cited as “saved by faith” (1 John 2:2; John 3:8-12); and yet more, that in the purpose of God and in the efficacy of his atonement, Christ was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The history of man’s creation, of his first sin, and of the Redeemer’s interposition in Eden, illustrated by the statements of Christ and his Apostles, is a key to the essential truth as to the ground of the Atonement, presented in the epistle from which our text is taken. All men from Adam, the Apostle teaches, have sinned under such circumstances that the statement is universally true, they “have sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.” All men, therefore, are redeemed, if saved, as was Adam; by the second Adam, the Divine Being who had before forming the first man assumed his nature; assumed the responsibility of his being placed under the circumstances which led to his fall; assumed the creation of man with the purpose of himself taking man’s nature, suffering in it all that man in any age or combination of trial could suffer; and assumed all this in order that he might not only appear to be, but might actually “be just, and the justifier of him that believes on him.” David had the conception that sin might really “not be imputed” to the sinful; while Paul teaches here that the sinner’s penalty is assumed by Christ, while “righteousness,” the righteousness of Christ, “is imputed to him who believes in him.” The ground of the Atonement is, that the Creator assumes for his creature man, whenever any human being accepts his sacrifice as made personally for him—that believing man’s Creator assumes the responsibility of his sinful condition, and of his “weak” spiritual nature while in probation upon earth. This great fact as to the Divine Atonement is on the very face of the New Testament, and even of the Old, from the time of man’s creation in Eden till John’s Gospel was penned. The history of human thought and experience makes this universal Scripture teaching both clear and entrancing. In every age, among people without revelation, just so far as men have formed a low estimate of the “exceeding sinfulness of sin,” just so far, also, they have blindly trusted to personal rites and offerings of a material nature, or to personal efforts at purity of life for the expiation of sin, for propitiation with God and for reconciliation. So, too, in every age men who have had the Old and New Testament revelation, and yet have cherished the spirit of self-justification— such men have had low estimates of the demerit of sin, and, of course, of the Redeemer Jesus and of his work for man. This may be traced in the early days of the Roman Christian emperors, when to profess Christianity secured worldly preferment; as the discussions from Arins to Pelagins indicate. It is made impressive in the seventh century; when the corruptions brought in by worldly men led to the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Mohammed, who, while admitting all the miraculous facts of Christ’s earthly life, insisted that he was not crucified, but that Simon, the Cyrenian, a guilty criminal who bore his cross, and on whom God stamped the image of Jesus, was crucified in his stead. The reason which Mohammed alleged for this denial of Christ’s death, was the special proof both of its reality and of its efficacy. He denied Christ’s death because it would have been unjust in God to allow a sinless being like Christ to suffer the penalty of sin; giving thus the strongest confirmation that if Christ died it was not for himself, but for sinful men. This same perversion appears again at the Reformation, when, as Dorner and Ritschl, the great modern historians of the Reformation, both avow, the great framers of theories of the Atonement did not return to the Scriptures alone as their guide; but, as their name implied, they but re-formed old opinions. For, seeking to gather a church, not “of holy persons,” but made up “of communities bound together by Christian ordinances,” they sacrificed Christian truth to state policy. Hence arose at the very juncture of the Reformation the partial theories of the Atonement we have traced. On the other hand, this fact can be traced most palpably in all human history. Whenever any human mind has been spiritually enlightened to see his sin as it is pictured in David’s experience and wrought into his Psalms, and in Paul’s world-wide observation as wrought into the Epistle to the Romans,—then the ground of Christ’s Atonement has appeared to be this: it is Christ’s assumption, at once as our Creator and Redeemer, of the responsibility of the sin of all those who accept his interposition for them. This can be traced in all the admired writers of every age and branch of the Christian Church; and it is in their profound reasonings but the echo of truth common to all the inspired writers. Moreover, whenever any profoundly thoughtful believer in other religions than the Christian faith has come to feel the yearning to be “justified by the righteousness,” rather than to be forgiven in the mercy of God, then the fact everywhere revealed in the Scriptures, that his Creator stands pledged as “surety” to secure by his own assumption this perfect redemption for those who accept it from him — this fact meets all the demands of human reason for an Atonement Divine in its provision and Divine in its ground, because it fully harmonizes God’s righteousness and love. But this expression, an Atonement for “those who accept it,” thus far necessarily employed, demands itself an explanation, and leads to the consideration of—

III.—The Efficacy of the Divine A tenement, as Expiation for redeemed men, Propitiation for unredeemed men, and Reconciliation for all beings.

Thus far, it has been necessary, in considering the nature and ground of the Divine Atonement, to allude to its efficacy for men who accept it. The farther question arises whether it has an efficacy beyond that realized in those who are redeemed. The consideration of this requires careful notice of what the Scriptures state to be its efficacy, first for men who are redeemed, second for angels that have not sinned, and third for men and angels who, having sinned, continue in their sinfulness. This specially involves the harmony of the Divine Sovereignty and of man’s free agency in those redeemed and those unredeemed by Christ’s Atonement. As to the efficacy of the Atonement for the redeemed, no statement framed by grateful and enthusiastic Christian hearts can surpass or even equal the reality. The redeemed by Christ are on earth, as John exultantly says (1 John 3:2), “already sons of God,” while “it does not yet appear what we shall be” since “when he,” our Redeemer, “shall appear, we shall be like him;” while, moreover, they who “receive him “receive also from him “power to become the sons of God.” Paul, too, exhausts the vocabulary of the most expressive terms, when he says that the redeemed are “sons of God,” not by nature, but by the higher and most appreciative relationship, that of “adoption;” that this sonship by adoption makes us “heirs of God,” in the double sense of being “glorified” in personal character, and of being blessed with every outward relationship that can exalt. Most of all, Paul teaches that we were “predestinated “by God “to be conformed to the image of his Son,” who is exalted “above the angels,” and that thus we are “joint heirs with Christ to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away.” Yet more, in view partly of this future exaltation, but more in view of the natural interest which a redeemed spirit awakens, and of the personal joy which a saving change begets, Christ and his inspired Apostles enumerate as present and earthly blessings bestowed on the redeemed.” “They already rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” They “have a hundred-fold “of every earthly comfort. “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repents more than over ninety and nine just beings that need no repentance.” In the songs, too, of the upper world there is a strain, “Thou hast redeemed us unto God,” which only the saints of earth can utter; while the angelic choir listens and waits to join in the chorus, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and richen, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.”

They are right, then, who place stress on these declarations; for they are statements of fact. They certainly err who, from these and such like statements, infer that Christ’s Atonement has efficacy only for the redeemed. These are strong statements, indeed: “Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it” (Ephesians 5:25); “He loved me, and gave himself for me “(Galatians 2:20); but they are not statements which exclude an efficacy that reaches another end in another class. There are other declarations that assert a positive efficacy, though not a redeeming power, over others than the redeemed. Such are the declarations of Christ and of Paul and of John to this effect. Christ declares (Matthew 20:28), “The Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for many,” which the Apostle Paul makes synonymous with the declaration (1 Timothy 2:6), “He gave himself a ransom for all.” Again Paul (Hebrews 2:9), “We see Jesus, made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor, that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man.” Yet again, John (1 John 2:2), “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, But also for the sins of the whole world;” in which expression the word rendered “world “is, in the Greek, “kosmos,” or universe. It is impossible to suppose that Paul and John used, without special design, these expressions of an influence exerted by Christ’s Atonement which reaches beyond the redeemed. They are right, indeed, who seek, in the connection of the statements just quoted for proofs that the redemption secured by the Atonement is limited to those who accept it; and yet the form of language chosen by the inspired writers is not by this qualification of the context made of no account in the writer’s design.

Perhaps a harmonizing of important distinctions made in our study of the nature and ground of the Atonement may here prove an aid to reach the divine thought. In its nature, the Divine Atonement includes three elements, reconciliation, propitiation and expiation, their combined result securing justification. Of course no “expiation” is required for angels who have not sinned; and no expiation is made for those who have sinned but are not redeemed. There may, however, be “reconciliation” secured for sinless angels, and “propitiation” for unredeemed men. Yet, again: the ground of the Atonement has appeared from our survey to be rather moral than material; not so much the fact that Christ’s bodily agony and mental anguish was a measured equivalent for that which would have been endured by the precise numbers who are to be redeemed if they had been unredeemed. But Christ’s sacrifice is a moral equivalent, in its united human and divine impression made on the universe of intelligent beings, which infinitely surpasses the impression which would have been made had all mankind been left to bear themselves the penalty of their own sin. Not detracting, therefore, in the least from the strongest possible statement as to the divine purpose and the divine accomplishment in the efficacy of Christ’s Atonement for the redeemed, we should be prepared to receive the divine declaration as to another influence of the Atonement on beings not redeemed. The case of infants, next after mature believers, demands consideration. That they are born with a sinful nature, Greeks, like Socrates, and Romans, like Cicero, without revelation, declare; while Virgil pictures that they need expiation, though among the nearest to the heavenly entrance. David, in the strongest terms, declares their depravity (Psalms 51:5); and yet his confidence in their redemption is as clear (2 Samuel 12:23). Christ, in the last of his life, three times (Matthew 18:3-10; Matthew 19:13-15; Matthew 21:15-16) teaches that children, even infants, are to be saved; yet he accords with their parents that “prayer” for the Divine “blessing” is essential if they “enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:13; Matthew 19:15; Mark 10:16). So John records (1 John 2:12): “I write unto you, little children, because your sins are forgiven yon for his name’s sake.” It is natural to suppose that, as the Divine Spirit acts directly on the mature mind in regeneration, so it may act on the undeveloped infant spirit. It is rational to conclude that, as those who can exercise personal faith are called to that exercise; while at the same time the faith of the weakest intellect is as acceptable as that of the profoundest thinker (1 Corinthians 1:27), so “oat of the mouth of babes and sucklings” God may “perfect praise.” The Atonement of Christ to such may not bring conscious “reconciliation;” while it does provide for their “expiation” and “propitiation.” The interest of angels, both in man who is redeemed and the divine purpose accomplished by it, is the theme of frequent statement by Christ and his Apostles. Christ says that “there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repents;” his words justifying, doubtless, Watts’ interpretation in his hymn, “Who can describe the joy?” etc., that it is the Divine Being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who manifests the greatness of joy, while, however, “saints and angels join “in its expression. Christ again says of his “little ones” (Matthew 18:10), “Their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven;” while Paul (Hebrews 1:14) asks, as if it were a truth universally taught, “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” in which statement every word is full of meaning. We should be prepared, then, for Peter’s declaration (1 Peter 1:10-12) as to the interest of angels in the purpose as well as in the work of human redemption, when, after dwelling on the intense interest of prophets who could not comprehend that of which they wrote, “the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow,” the Apostle adds, “which things the angels desire to look into.” We may, yet more, be prepared for Paul’s repeated statement as to the direct effect of the Atonement on angels. Thus, to the Ephesians (Ephesians 1:9-12) he declares that it entered into the “purpose” of God, that “he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are in earth, even in him,” and then, lest this statement might be supposed to refer only to redeemed saints then in heaven, he adds: “In whom, also, we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory who first trusted in Christ.” To make it clear that angels are affected by the Atonement, the Apostle adds, a little farther on in his epistle (Ephesians 3:10-11), that the divine “intent” in the Atonement had respect to the impression it would make on sinless angels. His words are, “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” To make yet more manifest his specific meaning, in an epistle written at the same time with that first quoted, after repeating the transcendent and special blessings of the Atonement conferred on the redeemed (Colossians 1:9-14), having declared that Christ was “the image of the invisible God,” and yet “the first-born of every creature,” or of the animate and human creation, that “all things were made by and for him,” and that he is the head of the body, the church,” Paul adds this peculiar statement: that by Christ’s Atonement the angels were “reconciled.” His words are (Colossians 1:19-20): “For it pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven.” We may readily conceive, as we bring together all of Paul’s revealed statements, that angels, who saw some of their own number rebel against God and become hopelessly irreconcilable, and who then saw mankind sin and only partially recovered — the loftiest angels, seeing but part of God’s way, could not “reconcile” to their finite judgment God’s character and acts; while, nevertheless, they had such faith in him that they remained sinless. But the “sufferings of Christ” and the gradually manifested “glory that should follow” was to “reconcile” them in their virtuous longing for complete knowledge of God’s purpose. Thus the Atonement had an efficacy—not that indeed of “expiation,” or of “justification,” but certainly that of “reconciliation,” as Paul states, and perhaps of “propitiation,” as John’s language may intimate. But another class than pure angels look upon Christ’s Atonement — hopelessly fallen angels and the unredeemed among men. It is intensely interesting, and it is also practically important, to consider what the Scriptures say as to the impression made by it on them. The relation of those who among men reject the Atonement provided in Christ is dwelt upon at large in the epistle from which our text is taken. Over his countrymen who “have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of Christ,” Paul pours forth his anguish of heart in the opening of the ninth and tenth chapters. He justifies, however, their rejection, while Gentiles were blessed with redemption, by this profound argument. When, before their birth, Jacob was chosen of God for superior mental, moral and material exaltation, a divine appointment everywhere seen among brothers in the same family, the inferior might murmur; but what rational man would not, even in his worldly mind, condemn that murmuring, and commend humble submission and faithful devotion in the lot appointed of God, who, like the potter, has “authority” as to the clay he moulds. But still more: When with a man like Pharaoh, hardened by his own cast of mind, and hardening himself even after his “wise men” and his “people” remonstrate, resisting the appeals of justice to the oppressed Israelites, and of God’s Providence and Word, enjoining upon him his personal duty — when, with such a “vessel of wrath fitted to destruction,” God, like his suffering people, “endured with much long-suffering”—”What if,” asks the Apostle, “What if the Divine Being, after long endurance, leaves to his fate that persistent reprobate?” For, as the great Apostle in his high argument proves—an argument which, in his own day and in every age, has satisfied impartial reason— two ends were accomplished, which in no other way could have been realized: first, the glory of his grace in the redeemed, and second, of his justice on those who reject Christ’s Atonement. And yet, think of it in whatever light we may, unreasonable as well as unreasoning men will retort, “Why, then, doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?” Yes; now, as in Paul’s day, like vicious men condemned by all others yet excusing themselves for brutalizing indulgence, men will not “justify God.” But a time will come — is coming — when others than the redeemed will join in the admission and adoring confession of David and of Paul,” That thon mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged” (Romans 3:4). There is coming (Romans 2:5) “a day of the revelation of therighteous judgment of God.” That day is “the last day,” since not until all the efficacy of Christ’s redemption on earth and in the universe has been realized, can the “revelation” be made clear. Then, whatever be now the judgment of unredeemed men and of fallen angels, then “every knee shall bow (Romans 14:11) and every tongue shall confess.” That confession will be that “Jesus Christ” is rightful “Lord;” that he will justly “confess before the angels” only those who “confess him before men,” and that, therefore, he is “worthy to receive power and glory” eternal. So important is this final, transcendent efficacy of the Atonement that not only does Paul, as we have seen, make it his great argument in the latter half of this wondrous epistle, .and also a point for allusion often in other writings, but John, in his final Revelation as to the future world and its events, twice alludes to it (Revelation 13:8; Revelation 17:8) as specially illustrating the recognized wisdom and power, righteousness and love which at last all intelligent beings, though unredeemed, will behold in the Divine Atonement. John’s revelation of that final confession is thus stated: “All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, even they whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.”

If such be the nature and the ground, and such, most of all, the efficacy of the Divine Atonement, who on earth should not strive to comprehend and appreciate it? If “the angels desire to look into it,” certainly the redeemed of earth should “search the Scriptures “to see “whether these things be so.” If such be the present and future exaltation of a true Christian, “What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness?” If, at the “last day,” not only fallen angels, “greater than” men, will bow and confess that Jesus is “righteous ⁿ as well as self-sacrificing in all his sway—if at the “last day” all that dwell on the earth will “worship” Christ, even those “whose names will not then be written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”—who that is now “neglecting” the “great salvation” should not heed the great Apostle’s appeal in this epistle? (Romans 10:1; Romans 10:13): “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for my kinsmen according to the flesh is, that they might be saved.” “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”