8. The Redemption of Mankind
CHAPTER VIII THE REDEMPTION OF MANKIND
WE pass on to consider in this chapter the Fatherhood of God in relation to the Redemption of mankind. This must be regarded in two aspects, namely, the Atonement offered by our Lord on account of the sins of the world, and thesubjective reconciliation of men to God through the ministry of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. 1
We have seen that our Lord so embodies the idealperfection of the human race that in His incarnate life He reaffirms the law of righteousness, which has been violated by sin, and reaffirms man’s adhesion to it. This reaffirmation is the foundation of the whole of His ministry of redemption; it is the spirit which fills it. Further, this reaffirmation was made under all those general conditions which have been brought about by the entrance of sin into the world, personal sinfulness in our Lord only being excepted. Moreover, this reaffirmation was made not for Himself alone. He stands in such eternal relationship to mankind, and completes their spiritual development by His Incarnation in such wise, that in whatever He does and suffers He represents them, and that the spiritual meaning of His work can be reproduced in them by His Spirit.
Finally, all that He is, does, and suffers in His incarnate, equally in His pre-incarnate state, is in the unity of the Father and of the Holy Spirit.
These main facts must provide the basis of any satis-
1 It is impossible to deal with this subject exhaustively here. The reader may be referred to the Author’s work, The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, for a complete treatment of the subject from the same standpoint as that taken in these pages. factory doctrine of the Atonement. An examination of its nature, as determined by them, will bring to light both its general necessity, and also the necessity that it should be just what it actually was.
1. In the first place, the relationship which governs the Atonement throughout must be the relationship of Fatherhood and Sonship.
Christ is so related to God and also to mankind that what He does God does, and equally that what He does man does. But this statement is not sufficient. The form of His relationship to God and to mankind is such that what He does is the manifestation of the Father in the Son, and is the manifestation of the Father in relation not only to Himself, but also to mankind as standing in organic relationship to Himself. All the experience of the Son must therefore be explained by the Fatherhood of God towards Him, and towards mankind in Him. And, on the other hand, the Son is so related to the Father and to mankind, that His response to the Fatherhood of God is a perfect expression of the filial spirit, not on His own account alone, but as embodying the true and essential life of mankind in its divinely-ordered and ideal relationship to God.
These facts must therefore supply the principles which govern the Atonement, whether it is looked at as a personal dealing between the Father and the Son, or whether we extend our survey so as to include its features as meeting in a certain way certain Divine demands made on mankind in order to the forgiveness of sins. The Atonement cannot for a moment fall outside, still less be inconsistent with, the relationships to God and to man kind by which the whole of our Lord’s life is constituted.
Whether as a personal dealing between the Father and the Son, or as an offering presented by the Son in order to meet the demands of God upon mankind, the Atonement must, from first to last, be determined by the Fatherly and filial relationship. And this must be the case, both because this relationship is supreme and all-embracing as between the Father and the Son, and also because it is the relationship in and by which mankind was originally constituted in the Son. To set up any necessities of Atonement, or to lay down any principles or methods of it, which are incompatible with this fundamental and all-embracing relationship, properly under stood, is therefore shown from the first to be impossible.
Nothing which is done or suffered by Christ can fall outside the realm of this Divine relationship, which is the governing fact not merely for Himself, but for mankind as constituted in Him. The final test of all possible doctrines of the Atonement is, therefore, whether they can be seen to arise naturally and by a spiritual necessity out of the all-determining relation ship, or whether they cannot. In so far as that is doubtful, they themselves are in doubt. Whatever else may be obscure, this is made perfectly clear, that the Atonement must be an ideal fact, giving full effect to the Fatherly and filial relation ship, as its existence and manifestation are affected, but not set aside, by the entrance of sin. Should it be objected that this relationship is set aside by sin, the answer is that, sin notwithstanding, Christ entered into the world in this rela tionship, and, while in it, was in spiritual solidarity with mankind. This is a plain proof from the facts of His nature and history, that Fatherhood and Sonship remained the relationship by which the dealings of God with mankind were determined.
2. If this be so, the Atonement must be understood as a personal dealing with the Father by the Son on behalf of mankind. It is the great act by which the Son at once sets forth the mind and will of the Father, and offers a perfect response to that mind and will on behalf of mankind.
Hence care must be taken in treating the Atonement as though it concerned abstract considerations. Such explanations are offered, for example, when it is said that the death of Christ satisfies the demands of justice, or, as Dr. Dale expresses it, “ the Eternal Law of Eighteousness.” When it is said that God could not forgive sins till justice had been satisfied, the statement contains an essential and important truth. But it is beset with the danger of treating Justice as an abstract deity apart; as something outside the nature of God and of man, and independent of their relations one to the other. Justice is a personification.
It represents a spirit in the universe, which watches over and exacts payment of what is due. In case of debt, and of debt incurred by guilty transgression, it exacts payment and a penalty in addition, by which satisfaction is made to the majesty which has been outraged, and to the interests which have suffered.
Let us concede at once that there is such a principle working in the universe. But it is a principle and not a person. And principles are realised only in persons, for they are, after all, only the persistent aims which persons consti tuted in a certain way set before themselves. The working of principles must therefore be understood and criticised as they live in persons, and as they are, or ought to be, shaped by the nature of those persons and the ends set before them. The claims of justice among men, for example, are the claims which can be enforced by the law or the social action of the community for securing that the relationships which are vital to the well-being of society shall be maintained, and that conduct infringing them shall be repressed. The content of what is just of what, therefore, justice claims is determined by the nature of the persons composing the community, by the relationships in which, as the result of that nature, they stand to one another, and by the various conditions which are necessary in order that the persons possessing such a nature may live together in harmony and efficiency in such relationships.
Directly, therefore, we seek to discover what are the actual claims of justice in human society, whether as to law or as to penalty, it becomes necessary to seek the explanation in the nature, relationships, and ends of the men who may or may not in their actual character and conduct fulfil its requirements. It is from the general features thus disclosed that the conception of abstract social justice is arrived at, and it is from the organised judicial activity of the community that the conception of abstract justice as sleeplessly watching and visiting right and wrong in it is derived. In human affairs it is the more natural and necessary thus to speak of justice as an abstraction, because the combination of promise with imperfect fulfilment in human character and relation ships is such that a more perfect state, which actual conditions more or less disappoint, is always in some degree conceived of. In the case of God, however, there is of course no such difference between the ideal and the real.
It is obvious that men are not the source either of their own nature or of the relationships in which they stand. And therefore it is clear that justice or righteousness is not an artificial convention made by them. It is constituted by the nature of the universe, of which men are a part. And the nature of the universe is constituted by the nature of God, involved in the eternal relationships between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God, being such a God, allperfect, as existing in these eternal relationships, must in creating, by reason of His perfection, bring into existence a world the nature and relationships of which are determined by His own perfection. Ultimately, therefore, that which justice demands is that which maintains the nature and relationships of things as they are constituted by the perfection of God. The perfection which justice maintains and vindi cates does not exist outside the Divine nature. It consists of the personal qualities of the Godhead, as existing in the eternal relationships of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That perfection gives the law to creation, which, while it abides in God, has an existence of its own, and therefore stands in definite relationships to Him. Thereupon a law of righteousness is set up, the end of which is to maintain spiritual existences in true relationships to God. That law must be upheld for the sake of creation itself, for it is the law of its life; but, above all, for the sake of God, for otherwise His perfection would be destroyed. It is upheld by all the spiritual and material forces which go to reinforce its authority in the case of creatures who are free to depart from it. It is upheld under the sanction of the death which visits those who depart from the law of life.
Therefore justice, or righteousness, which is a more comprehensive term, lives in God and gives law to the universe as grounded in God. His character is its content; His will indicates its claims. Upon its maintenance depends the integrity of the eternal fellowship within the Godhead Him self. When a world has been created, which, while in a measure independent, is yet penetrated through and through with the triune relationships of the Godhead, the maintenance of righteousness involves a dealing between the Father, who is the creative source of the world, and the Son, who is its creative ground and end. Thus the dealing, which sets forth and vindicates righteousness, which satisfies the claims of justice, is not in reality a dealing by God with external abstractions, but is a dealing within His own life of the three Persons, in whose nature righteousness is grounded, and by whose activity it is made the foundation of created life.
Hence all vindication of righteousness in and on behalf of the creation must be a vindication by the Son, who constitutes and controls the world, in personal dealing with the Father, in whose fellowship He constitutes and controls it. And it must be a personal dealing which, while it is within the life of the Godhead, is yet completed in that incarnate state, by assuming which the Son fulfils His union with mankind, and therefore His power to represent them.
3. It follows that the end of an Atonement which is determined by the Fatherly and filial relationship must itself be Fatherly. An Atonement demanded and offered within the limits of the Fatherly and filial relationship must be determined as to its object, methods, and meaning by the Fatherly end. And the end of Atonement thus determined is the restoration to filial fellowship of those who have fallen from it. But in order to such restoration there must be, first of all and above all, a vindication of the sanctity of the relation ship which has been infringed. The demands of the law of that relationship must be brought into full light and enforced, and it is the office of the Father thus to assert and enforce them. It is in the necessity of such an assertion and enforcement that the necessity of Atonement in order to forgiveness lies. The way to the restoration of the fellowship of love is through such a reassertion of the filial law as to bring about a truly filial reparation from those who have violated it. The demand for such a satisfaction must necessarily proceed from the Father, and must manifest His Fatherhood in the full depth of its meaning and in the entire range of its functions.
Three features must be clearly visible in the Fatherly demand for Atonement.
First and foremost, it must be clear that the ultimate motive of it is the love that seeks the return to itself of those who have wandered, but seeks their return upon those conditions which alone make such a return spiritually real and effective. The very greatness of the love will be the measure of the strictness with which that love demands recognition of, and conformity to, the only conditions which make its satis faction possible. However love may yearn for its object, it will abate none of these conditions. Indeed, the more it yearns, the more it will insist upon them.
Thus, secondly, the Fatherly love which demands satis faction in order to the restoration of filial relations will manifest itself as sovereignty, upholding the law, and demanding the reparation to the law, which is the indispens able means of honouring it when it has been broken. The love which seeks will show itself as the sovereignty which demands. Looked at as an abstraction, there may seem to be something of severity in the sovereignty and of rigidity in the demand. But such is only a surface appearance, and all that is necessary in order to counteract it is that men should set back the sovereignty and the demand into the whole of which they are part, and should read their meaning in the context of that whole. The action of the Sovereign in demanding honour to the law is not for the sake of the sovereignty and the law in themselves, but for the sake of that of which they are the eternal safeguard. This very end, however, necessitates the enforcement of Fatherly supremacy as such. It was a true insight which led the Calvinists to assert the priority of the “ glory of God “over all other ends to be attained through the history of the universe. And this not merely on account of the priority, the absoluteness, and the perfection of the Creator, who has made all things to serve His own ends and to display His own perfection, but because the more closely the Fatherly and filial relationship in itself is examined, the more clearly it will be seen that there can be no filial well-being which is not in subordination and self-surrender to the Father in whom sons have their source. The glory of the Father, made the end of His sons, is the prior condition of the blessedness of sons as such. And therefore the Father, in making the demand which honours His Fatherhood, is demanding that, without the offering of which the sons themselves cannot be blessed.
Thirdly, a love thus manifesting itself in the sovereignty which upholds law, must be completed in the judgment which visits the transgression by which the law is set at naught.
Hence a God without wrath is a God without mercy and without love. But the love is behind the wrath and within it, is witnessed to by the wrath, and makes the wrath the instrument of its purposes, until wrath can be laid aside for the unrestrained exercise of mercy.
These three features, then, must be displayed in the perfect Fatherhood which demands the Atonement; and it is by these three, taken in this order, that its nature must be determined. When thus understood, it becomes evident that the Fatherly end for which the Atonement is demanded necessitates that the nature of the Atonement should be such as in itself to be the earnest and the effective means of restoration. It must involve a spirit which, while suffering from wrath, submitting to judgment and becoming obedient to authority, in and through all these responds and returns to the love which only commands, judges, and smites that it may restore those who have wandered to itself.
4. Hence an Atonement which rests upon and is offered within the limits of the Fatherly and filial relationship, and secures the Fatherly end, can only be offered by the truly filial mind and will. Kegard, therefore, must be had through out to the presence of these.
It is impossible to make the Fatherhood of God the relationship which determines the Atonement, without the spiritual and ethical features of it becoming the elements which determine its value. Other elements it may and must have, as we shall see later on, but the efficacy of the Atonement depends upon the way in which all these elements are used to bring about and to express perfect filial correspondence with the Fatherhood of God, in all its aspects, functions, and purposes, as these are affected by the fact of sin.
Submission to the chastisement, which carries out the Divine judgment, must be there, and obedience to the commands of sovereignty, as those commands are issued in the providential course of life, and, above all, in the general conditions under which a completely filial life is placed in this world. But submission to judgment and obedience to sovereignty are part of, and are taken up into, that full response to the manifestation of Fatherhood which consists in the return of filial trust and self-surrender to the love that seeks, above all, the restoration of sons to itself.
Thus the obedience is rendered under a perfectly filial motive; the offering of self is a complete and loving sur render, in faith, submission, and reparation, to the authority which asserts the supremacy and sanctity of the law of righteousness. This submission places the offerer in perfect unison with the authority which asserts, meets a demand with an offering, turns a chastisement into a sacrifice. Such is the spirit which responds to a fatherly demand for atonement, and it is by the perfection with which this spirit is present that the adequacy of the atonement must be judged.
5. Further, the atoning offering thus presented by the filial mind must be consummated in, under, and through those penal conditions which are the indispensable means used by the Father to bring home the meaning alike of righteousness and sin.
All true fatherhood has, as has been seen, its judicial side. In carrying out its judicial function, therefore, father hood imposes penalty upon transgression. The more abso lutely sovereign the fatherhood, the more it is under the obligation to impose such penalty. There may be cases of filial wrong-doing among men where this obligation on the father does not hold good, because judgment on such wrong doing will be inflicted by other means than those of the father. But, in proportion as the fatherhood is supreme and all-embracing, the principle is essential, and is essential, above all, to the spiritual ends which fatherhood sets before itself.
Departure from the law of the father, which secures the wellbeing of his sons, must call forth the father’s wrath, which is the guardian of righteousness and life, and must issue in a condition of punishment. This condition of punishment must set forth the sanctity of the law which has been broken, and the iniquity of the conduct that has broken it. And it is only in and under these penal conditions that the expiation of the offence can be made.
Such expiation involves submission to the penalty and suffering from it. But it involves further, that in thesubmission to the suffering there should be a recognition of the righteousness of the law that has been broken, of the heinousness of the conduct which has broken it, and of the rightfulness of the authority which vindicates it. Only through such a spiritual attitude can the return be made and the reparation perfected, and only under these penal conditions can this attitude be realised and expressed. The inflicting of penalty is the only way to mark sin, and the endurance of penalty is the only way to express the spirit which confesses and puts away sin and returns to righteousness.
All this, while generally true, holds good in regard to God, and to God not merely conceived of as sovereign but as Father. His Fatherhood does not set aside the necessity that penal conditions should enter into His dealings with a sinful world, or even into His dealings with His Son acting on its behalf. The Fatherhood of God strengthens rather than weakens this necessity, for of all relations the fatherly can least throw off its jurisdiction. The difference, which is brought about when Fatherhood is seen to be behind and within sovereignty, is simply to give a larger meaning, more salutary and necessary ends, to the infliction of penalty, than would otherwise be the case. The penal conditions imposed by the Father upon man kind on account of sin have their relations to the individual; but, still more, they represent the general experience under which the sinful race is brought, of which therefore every individual member of that race has his own share. It follows that for the Son Himself to enter into our nature and to take His place in the world as the Head of mankind, meant inevi tably that He must enter into our nature under the penal conditions pertaining to it; and that in His life and death He must voluntarily submit to and feel the whole weight of those conditions, and in an infinitely greater degree because of the perfection of His nature. And this is, above all, true of the experience of death, in which the penal conditions under which mankind are brought culminate, and in which is especially brought home the reality of sin.
6. In Atonement, conditioned by Fatherhood, there must be the co-operation of the Father in love and grace. The bearing of penalty on account of wrong- doing, and the offering of filial submission in so bearing it, is never, even among good men, a condition imposed upon the son to which the father is himself indifferent. While the wrath of the father finds expression in the penalties which he imposes, yet his love is within both the wrath and the penalties, while his heart is engaged in securing the response from his son, by which normal relations can be restored. In the fatherly infliction of penalty, in the demand for confession and peni tence, it is still true that, while the son “ was yet afar off, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion “ (Luke 15:20).
Despite the wrath and the penalty, it is most true that the father suffers with the son, and that he prepares and, indeed, is the main cause of the son’s return in penitence and submission. This compassion and grace in human fatherhood is the faint shadow of what we may expect to find in an atoning dealing of God with mankind. We should expect to find that the very dealing intended to set forth and bring home the heinousness of sin should also be a dealing of such grace and mercy as to show that the weight of our sin lies upon the Father’s heart, and that He Himself, by the full use of all His spiritual resources, prepares and brings about our restoration.
7. Lastly, the Atonement is offered on behalf of a race which, while it is a community in such spiritual solidarity that the Son of God is its representative Head for ever, is also composed of individuals. Therefore, in the light of the prin ciples which fatherhood lays down, we should expect that the offering which is made on account of sin should be so essentially representative, not only in the Person of Him who makes it, but also in its spiritual qualities, that it can be brought into direct spiritual relationship to each one of us, so as to appeal to our heart and to order our consciousness of God, of right eousness, and of sin. It must be something which can be appropriated by us, the spirit of which can be reproduced in us, so that, while it is a great representative act on our behalf and in our stead, it may be so made our own as permanently to embody in ideal perfection the spirit in which we as penitents seek to approach God. Although beyond our reach to offer, it must be something with which we can identify ourselves, something the spiritual meaning of which is in such wise the expression of the truth within us, that the atoning act offered on our behalf may become in very deed the perfect spiritual act of the race, and may be, as it were, repeated by the faith which appropriates it. It must be so reproduced by the faith which appropriates it, although it is appropriated as the offer of God’s free grace to us in Christ.
Such would seem to be the general conditions as to the nature, ends, and principles of the Atonement laid down by the Fatherhood of God. We may now pass on to see how entirely this general account is verified in the New Testament as being a description of what was realised in the Passion of our Lord. If we take them in order, we shall find confirmation of each of them in the narratives of the Gospels and in the doctrine of the Epistles. Indeed there seems to be no teaching of the New Testament which does not fall under one or another of them.
Nothing more need be said as to the fact that our Lord’s life and death were determined by His filial relationship to God, for this subject has been exhaustively dealt with already. But let us take the remainder of the conditions which have been laid down.
Throughout the Gospels, and especially in the Gospel of St. John, we find disclosures of our Lord’s inner spirit, and from first to last it is filled by the content of His personal relationships to the Father. There is not the slightest trace anywhere that our Lord’s mind was ever influenced in the least, whether in life or in death, by abstract considerations. To such there is no answer whatever in our Lord’s consciousness as it is revealed to us. Whatever claims are made upon Him are made by the Father Himself, and spring out of His Fatherly relationship. The study of the Gospel according to St. John shows clearly how our Lord’s mind was occupied throughout by the personal dealings between Him self and the Father. Especially is this brought out by the great discourse at the Last Supper, culminating in the highpriestly prayer recorded in John xvii. Our Lord is entirely concerned in entering upon His Passion with the maintenance, in life and death, of perfect fellowship between Himself and the Father. Throughout He has apprehended and fulfilled, and He confidently claims that the Father will fulfil, the ideal attitude which should pervade the Fatherly and filial relation ship between them. “ I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do. And now, Father, glorify Thou Me “ (John 17:4), is the burden of His consciousness. “ Therefore doth the Father love Me because I lay down My life, that I may take it again” (John 10:17), is the expression of the inner motive which constrained Him to die. “ Nevertheless not My will, but Thine, be done” (Luke 22:42), is the spirit which consummates His life and governs His Passion. Whatever else we may find present in His death, we must make this purpose of perfect correspondence with the Father’s will supreme, if we are to give any effect in our theology to the unchanging consciousness of our Lord. And, after all, the record of His consciousness of the Passion is our highest, indeed our only, means of finding out what it was in itself. When we pass from our Lord’s consciousness, as revealed to us in the Gospels, to the Epistles, the same note is present. The greatest stress throughout is laid upon the spiritual and ethical qualities which enter into our Lord’s sacrifice. St. Paul declares in the Epistle to the Eomans, that “ as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteousness” (Romans 5:19). To the Philippians he says of our Lord, that “ being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross “ (Php 2:8). In the Epistle to the Hebrews, whenever the writer passes from the ceremonial associations of our Lord’s death, he lays the greatest stress upon its spiritual qualities. We are told, for example, “ Though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered “ (Hebrews 5:8). Again, when the vital difference between our Lord’s sacrifice and the Levitical sacrifices is pointed out, it is by the quotation and adaptation of the great passage from the 40th Psalm: “ Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldst not, but a body didst thou prepare for Me; in whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hadst no pleasure: then said I, Lo, I come (in the roll of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, God” (Psalms 40:6-8).
St. Peter, in his First Epistle, gives a prominence to our Lord’s sufferings, as such, which is not found elsewhere in the New Testament. Writing to a suffering Church, the apostle lays great stress upon our Lord’s kinship in suffering. In so doing he glorifies the Cross, which had once been an offence to him. Yet St. Peter dwells upon the spirit which was manifest in Christ’s sufferings. He says: “ Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:21-23). While concerned to set forth Christ as the atoning Bearer of suffer ings, he emphatically insists on the temper in which those sufferings were endured, as giving to them their spiritual worth.
So, in the Apocalypse, the vision of the Lamb upon Mount Zion, surrounded by the first-fruits of the Redeemed, repre sents the triumph in heaven and on earth of what may be termed the lamblike spirit. This is clearly shown by the description which is given of the spiritual and ethical qualities of the glorified company (Revelation 14:4-5).
Yet, on the other hand, throughout the New Testament the greatest emphasis is laid upon our Lord’s endurance of death, and of death in itself. “ He died for us “ is the simplest and most inclusive statement which can be made as to our Lord’s atoning work. That He should die was indeed the goal of our Lord’s life, in His own view of it. At the Transfiguration we are told that Moses and Elijah “ spake of His decease which He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem “ (Luke 9:31). All the New Testament writers concur in insisting upon the necessity that our Lord should “ taste death.”
And, when we come to our Lord’s apprehension of death, we find abundant evidence of how terrible an experience it was. The question whether our Lord came under penal conditions in His death cannot be decided merely by discussions of what is involved in the dogmatic statements of Scripture, still less by scientific evidence as to the nature of death and its place in the economy of the world. Such a discussion generally takes the following course. It is urged on the authority of Scripture, that death, at least so far as the human race is concerned, was not part of the original order of nature, but was introduced as a consequence and punishment of sin. To this it is replied that death has been present from the beginning; that the economy of the world would be quite impossible without it, and that man is necessarily subject to it on account of his animal nature. When the force of this objection is felt, it is met either by treating the presence of death from the beginning as being due to an anticipation of sin, so that, sin being foreseen, the arrangements of the world were made accordingly; or by the view that death took on new aspects on account of sin.
There is value in all such discussions, but they are hardly decisive. The determining consideration is, after all, the way in which death as a visitation was apprehended by our Lord Himself, and the correspondence of His apprehension of it with a very deep and real spiritual experience of mankind. The optimist way of speaking of death, now current in certain quarters, does not accord with the revealed experience of our Lord upon the cross. The darkness of death, in its fullest meaning, fell upon the very heart of Christ and called forth the cry, “ My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? “ If it be suggested that this cry was due to a momentary weakness, the answer is that, even if this were the case, it was the experience of death that produced it, and was designed to produce it. It was through the weakness produced by death that the intrinsic meaning of the death He died was brought home to the heart of Christ. Therefore we have in the consciousness of our Lord abundant evidence that if the fulfilment of spiritual obedience is important in respect of an Atonement offered to the Father, so also it is important that that Atonement should be offered in and through the experience of a visitation which can only be called penal. And thus only can the insistence throughout the New Testament upon death and suffering as the experience through which Christ made Atonement be understood. The New Testament everywhere asserts that the endurance of this death of unspeakable suffering by our Lord was the offering of a sacrifice the sacrifice of Himself.
He “ through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God “ is the statement of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 9:14). We are also told that by our Lord’s will of obedience “ we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). Hence the penal conditions were the passive element of what was yet an active obedience. It was because the sufferings were accepted in the spirit of sonship, in order that that spirit might be maintained, and were then turned to serve the ends of Fatherhood for the salvation of the world, that they were acceptable to God. The active and passive obedience of perfect Sonship were conjoined throughout our Lord’s life and death. And thus death was made the means of His complete and final self - surrender to the Father, standing in place of mankind and offering Himself up on our behalf.
Again, we have seen that the co-operation of the Father in love is a mark of fatherly atonement, and that co-operation is manifest throughout the Atonement of our Lord. Our Lord’s offering of it makes Him well-pleasing to the Father. His sacrifice is not apart from the Father; He is the gift of the Father. “ God so loved the world, that He gave His onlybegotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The Son is conjoined with the Father in the demand, the Father is conjoined with the Son in fulfilling it. All that our Lord does and suffers is in the unity of the holy Trinity. Human thought struggles to reach a complete statement of this, but must needs fall short, because it can never be adequate to the life and works of God. But it must reach out after all these elements of the complete truth, and endeavour to combine them. To suppress any one of them, is to make our account of the Atonement unnatural and false. The Atonement, as has already been said, is sui generis, and surpasses the highest earthly foreshadowings of it. But there is a foreshadowing of it in the dealings of earthly fathers with their children. And it is safe to say that whatever in spirit or method is vital to the latter, must in some way reflect the dealings of our Father in heaven. And thus the co-operation of the father in bringing about the atonement which yet he demands, is an earthly analogy, which suggests, but is infinitely surpassed by, the truth that “ the Father hath sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world” (1 John 4:14).
Finally, it is the characteristic view of St. Paul’s theology, that our Lord’s sacrifice is appropriated and reproduced by faith in those who are saved by it. The apostle’s conception of our Lord’s ministry of reconciliation cannot be appreciated as a whole, without justice being done to his experience of being “crucified with Christ.” The atoning act of Christ, while complete in itself, is a universal act, performed on behalf of mankind, and therefore it stands in a permanent and typical relationship to the experience of all believers.
They cannot believe, as St. Paul understands it, without being brought into such a spiritual relationship to Christ’s death as that its essential spiritual qualities are reproduced in them. Its spiritual principle is so transferred by the Spirit of Christ to their hearts and made theirs by faith, that it becomes the sign and power of their own death to sin and life to righteousness in penitent self-surrender to God. From all this we may conclude that the New Testament doctrine of the Atonement is determined by the Fatherhood of God, and represents the complete response to the Father by the sinless Son on behalf and under the conditions of a sinful world.
Two other points remain to be brought out.
1. In the first place, the general doctrine just outlined is in harmony with all the figures under which the Atonement is represented in the New Testament. Special mention may be made of the figure of Eansorn, and also of those sacrificial figures which are contained particularly in the Epistle to the Hebrews. These figures have to do with analogies, which are not in themselves subject to the Fatherly and filial relationship which we have seen to underlie the Atonement; but they are not incompatible with it, and can easily be brought under it. The first conceives salvation as redemption from the power of evil. Christ’s death provides the ransom-price. We shall consider shortly the subjective side of redemption as the reconciliation and restoration of alienated men to God. The essential meaning, however, of the figure before us is that man is given over, in consequence of his sin, to come under the dominion of powers of evil, which, while they represent a spiritual thraldom, are also a judgment of God upon sin. That man should pass under the dominion of sin and the curse, is a penal consequence of his rebellion against God. Our Lord’s death is a ransom, inasmuch as it frees men from this subjection to evil. But this is effected by removing the judgment upon them as sinners. That they should be ransomed from evil, is the natural consequence of their being made once more at one with God. It cannot, therefore, be understood except as the consequence of that setting right of the relations between God and man which we have considered, and it issues from the forgiveness of sins. Hence the effect of Christ’s death as a ransom comes second in order, being dependent upon the dealing with God by the Son on behalf of mankind, which restores the spiritual relations that sin has broken, and sets men free from a slavery that exists because, and so long as, the true relations in which men should stand to God are impaired.
Similarly, the sacrificial figures of the New Testament may easily be brought into harmony with the doctrine founded on the spiritual relations actually subsisting between God and mankind in the Son. The ritual of the temple, with its sacrifices and sprinkling, sets forth in outward show the means by which spiritual relationships, impaired by sin, are restored. The entrance of men, as purified members of the congregation, into the out ward temple, and the purification of the holy place itself by the blood of atonement, sets forth, in pictures, restored fellow ship with God, the means by which it is brought about, and the social consequences which follow. The external is but the shadow of the spiritual, and the final explanation of the spiritual can be found only indirectly and imperfectly in the shadow. It must be sought in the positive revelation in Christ of what the true spiritual relationship between God and man really is. The nature of the means taken for its restoration must depend upon its essential nature.
It is therefore a mistake to seek the final explanation of the Atonement in the analogies of the Old Testament ceremonial. They are imperfect pictures of it, but the great reality explains the picture far more truly than the picture the reality.
Furthermore, it is necessary once more to remember that the Atonement is sui generis, that God’s Fatherhood embraces all the relationships subsisting between Him and us, and that His dealing with mankind involves such vast concerns, that while in principle it may be brought to the utmost simplicity and even homeliness under the associations of fatherhood, yet that His Fatherhood is so august and all-comprehending as to need many-sided analogies to set its dealings forth.
2. The second point to be noted is, that the main lines of our explanation include the substance of all the leading explanations of the Atonement which have been given in the Christian Church. First in order of importance stands the doctrine of satisfaction. That doctrine has been presented in many forms. There is its original form as shaped by Anselm, which treats the Atonement as a reparation made to the outraged majesty of God; as a repayment to God of that which sin has robbed Him of, with the addition of a compensation to His majesty for the affront which has been put upon it. There is the Calvinist view, according to which the exact payment of the debt of penalty remitted to the elect takes the place of honour done to the majesty of God.
There is the governmental doctrine of Grotius and of the Arminians, which sets both the foregoing analogies aside, and regards the Atonement as intended to bring home the enormity of sin in the interests of spiritual order, by marking God’s sense of it and affording a recognition of it on behalf of man. And, lastly, there is the account of Dr. Dale, which treats the satisfaction rather as offered than as demanded by God Himself, and as offered by Him to the eternal law of righteousness, the claims of which are independent of the will of God and are recognised by God Himself.
All these accounts have a measure of truth, but the truth in them is conserved and placed on its true foundation when the essentially Fatherly and filial nature of the Atonement is borne in mind. The satisfaction is then seen to be made not to regal majesty, but to that primacy and authority of the Father upon the integrity of which the whole well-being of the universe depends. The discharge of the debt owing to God is not the payment, whether in pure suffering, or in suffering the value of which is enhanced by the dignity of the Sufferer, of an equivalent for penalties remitted, but is the restoration to God, under the penal conditions brought about by sin, of the spiritual life which sin has withdrawn from Him. By that restoration all governmental interests are secured, and without it no respect for such external considerations, even if possible, could be effective. And, finally, the law of righteousness to which satisfaction is offered is not an abstraction, but stands for the nature of that perfect relationship between the Father and the Son into which mankind enters on the ground of their creation and constitution in and for the Son; so that the Atonement is a reparation for the sake of the great spiritual bond which explains and upholds the spiritual constitution of the universe. The essential meaning of all these explanations is thereforepreserved, but in a more lifelike whole, when that which lies deeper than them all is taken into account. As to the offering itself, there have been elaborate doctrines of our Lord’s active and passive obedience, and of the bearing of each of these, taken separately, upon atonement and justification. In later times the distinction has been seen to be unnatural, and increased stress has been laid upon obedience as, in itself, the vital element in the Atonement. In some accounts notably in that of the late Dr. Westcott emphasis has been laid upon the fellowship of Christ with the race in His sufferings, and upon His death as the culmination of a discipline to which He was exposed both for His own sake and for ours. And this is involved in the whole conception of our Lord’s obedience as rendered in a normally constituted human nature. The only qualification that need be made is, that the discipline is in order to the obedience, and that the end of the obedience is the presentation of the perfect sacrifice to the Father. In the same way, an element of truth is present in those accounts of the Atonement which dwell chiefly upon the vicarious suffering manifested in it, and treat it as the supreme proof and appeal of love, which can only be perfected in sacrifice. The truth, in this view, must needs be recognised when we bear in mind our Lord’s original relationship to our race, and the consummation of that relationship in the In carnation. The Son of God bears mankind for ever in His heart, upholds men by His life, and restores them by entering into their lot and enduring its evil out of the fulness of His Divine-human sympathy.
Once more, there is the explanation of the Atonement which regards it as the great spiritual means by which the self-realisation of man is brought about. It is the ideal expression of the true attitude of man towards God and the world; the means also by which that attitude is reproduced in believers. This element of the truth is recognised when justice is done to St. Paul’s doctrine of the spiritual union of believers with Christ in His death and resurrection.
We may therefore conclude that the explanation of the Atonement which is to be found in the Fatherhood of God and the Sonship of Christ, while the simplest and most natural, is the most comprehensive, demands for its full setting forth the essential principles of previous accounts, and harmonises them. At the same time, it strips them of those exaggerations and imperfections which have disfigured them, because they have taken a part for the whole, and have treated that which is subordinate as though it were supreme. A glance must be taken at the work of redemption as it brings about the reconciliation of men to God that subjective change in their attitude to God which is wrought by the work of Christ and by the ministry of the gospel made effectual by the Holy Spirit. To this subject St. Paul refers when he says to the Corinthians, “ We are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, as though God were entreating by us: we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).
Such a subjective effect is wrought by our Lord’s life and death and resurrection as an indissoluble whole, the meaning of which is brought home to men in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. In the first place, there is a redemptive significance in this whole of our Lord’s life and death and resurrection considered as revelation. In regard to this the words of Dr. Hort may be quoted: “ Working out the righteousness and forgiveness of God, and revealing, are the same. Revelation and Redemption are always hand in hand; the Revelation is the means by which the Redemption accomplished once for all is made effectual through knowledge.” l Christ’s life and death, in the first place, make known the secrets of God, the purposes and promises of God to men, as they are conveyed in and through the relationship of the Son to the Father and to mankind. They are revealed in the process of their accomplishment; for revelation and fulfilment are in the Divine method inseparable, being joined together as two aspects of the same reality. That which is revealed is revealed by being fulfilled; that which is fulfilled is so by 1 Hort, The Way, the Truth, the Life, p. 212. being made manifest to and in men. Thus, throughout, our Lord’s work is at once the accomplishment and revelation of Redemption. In its subjective effect upon us, the work of Christ accomplishes our redemption by revealing God, and by the manifold spiritual influences which the revelation of God exerts upon us in and through His Spirit. The beginning of the redemption of sinful men, and therefore of our Lord’s work, as the source and embodiment of a divinely redemptive activity, is the reinforcement of the authority of God. It is of the highest significance that our Lord’s first preaching was the message, “ Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). This call connected His teaching and influence with John the Baptist. But it brought home the claims of God, and summoned men to recognise and to adjust themselves, above all in character, to those claims. This is the meaning of repentance. And the recognition of the authority of God is the first requisite of the filial mind. Especially is this the case where the return to the filial mind from the self-will of sin is concerned. The spirit of penitent self-surrender, although it may be brought about by the awakening of spiritual desires seeking satisfaction, comes foremost, and is uttered in the confession, “ Father, I have sinned.” But the authority asserted so as to overcome the self-will of man is the authority of the Father, whose love is manifest in the promise upon which the call to repentance is based, “ The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” As the description of that kingdom is completed in our Lord’s teaching, it is set forth as the kingdom of blessedness, in which the Father is manifested to the heart of His children in the grace of forgiveness and in the fellowship of love. For this is the essential meaning of the kingdom as revealed by our Lord.
It is the revelation of the Father in all the fulness of His Fatherhood, in and through the Son. The blessedness of salvation understood in the light of the Fatherhood is not found in any self-contained well-being, even if prolonged for ever, but in the restoration of that fellowship of love which makes all the blessings that grow out of it and are secured by it a thousandfold precious, as being its outward signs and seals. Such a call to repentance, growing to such a revelation of the Father and of the blessedness He offers, at once rouses the conscience, awakens the desire of the heart, and changes the perverse judgment which has misconceived God under the influence of that “ mind of the flesh “ which “ is enmity against God “ (Romans 8:7).
Such was the effect originally wrought, such is the effect continually wrought, by the preaching of our Lord. But not by His preaching in word only, but by His preaching illustrated and set forth by the ministry of love, in which He showed forth the love which His words described. This ministry of His works was completed in the words by which He revealed the Father, and both in their inseparable union are the material which to the end is used by the ministry of the Spirit in bringing men to acknowledge, to desire, and to know the Father. And the foundation which is laid in the life and ministry of our Lord, as the revelation of the Father to the spirit of man, in its unity of conscience, heart, and mind, is completed in the Divine appeal of the Cross the supreme appeal alike to conscience, heart, and mind. Without the foundation laid in the ministry of revelation, the appeal of the Cross could not be understood; without the breaking of the precious vessel of love upon the Cross, the ministry, as an appeal to the human spirit, would have been ineffective. But together the ministry and its completion in the Cross make an unchanging and irresistible appeal to men to return in repentance and faith, in desire and self-surrender, to the Father, whose love is thus displayed in and by the Son. The ground of that appeal, moreover, is not limited by the Cross of Christ. The Cross is the inauguration of that dispensation of the resurrection and of the Spirit in which all the truths of Christ’s life and death are confirmed, glorified, and made spiritually effective in that ampler world revealed to faith as the eternal reality and earnest of the kingdom of the Father. The agents of that eternal and invisible kingdom are the apostolic ambassadors who proclaim forgiveness of sins in Christ, and whose proclamation is made good by the revelation of the Father, in the life, death, resurrection, and exaltation of the Son, and by the gift of the Holy Spirit in the Son. There is thus revealed to sinful men a home of love, opened to them through the infinite grace and compassion of the Father. The entrance to that home is through the forgiveness of sins offered to and accepted by penitent faith. Thus a message is brought by the Spirit to the heart of man, which, while it is so august in its source, its nature, and its issues that it may fitly be called an embassy, yet owes its constraining and attractive power to the wealth of Fatherly love which it makes known.