6.02. Vicarious Atonement

Vicarious Atonement Atonement as Substitutionary The atonement of Christ is represented in Scripture as vicarious. The satisfaction of justice intended and accomplished by it is for others, not for himself. This is abundantly taught in Scripture: “The Son of Man came to give his life a ransom for (anti)¹[Note: 1. ἀντί] many” (Matthew 20:28); “this is my body which is given for (anti)²[Note: 2. ἀντί] you” (Mark 10:45). In these two passages the preposition anti³[Note: 3. ἀντί] indisputably denotes substitution. Passages like “Archelaus reigned in the room (anti)⁴[Note: 4. ἀντί] of his father Herod” (Matthew 2:22), “an eye for an eye” (5:38), and “will he for a fish give him a serpent?” (Luke 11:11) prove this. In the majority of the passages, however, which speak of Christ’s sufferings and death, the preposition hyper⁵[Note: 5. ὑπέρ] is employed: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood which is shed for (hyper)⁶[Note: 6. ὑπέρ] you” (Luke 22:19-20); “the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:51); “greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (15:13); “Christ died for the ungodly; while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8); “he delivered him up for us all” (8:32); “if one died for all then all died” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15); “he made him to be sin for us” (5:21); “being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13); “Christ gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2; Ephesians 5:25); “the man Christ Jesus gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5-6); Christ “tasted death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9); Christ “suffered the just for the unjust” (1 Peter 3:18). The preposition hyper,⁷[Note: 7. ὑπέρ] like the English preposition for, has two significations. It may denote advantage or benefit, or it may mean substitution. The mother dies for her child, and Pythias dies for Damon. The sense of “for” in these two propositions must be determined by the context and the different circumstances in each instance. Christ lays down the proposition: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for (hyper)⁸[Note: 8. ὑπέρ] his friends” (John 15:13). The preposition hyper⁹[Note: 9. ὑπέρ] here may mean either “for the benefit of” or “instead of.” In either case, the laying down of life would be the highest proof of affection. The idea of substitution, therefore, cannot be excluded by the mere fact that the preposition hyper¹⁰[Note: 0 10. ὑπέρ] is employed, because it has two meanings. In 2 Corinthians 5:20-21hyper¹¹[Note: 1 11. ὑπέρ] is indisputably put for anti:¹²[Note: 2 12. ἀντί] “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ’s stead (hyper christou),¹³[Note: 3 13. ὑπὲρ χριστοῦ] be reconciled to God. For he has made him who knew no sin to be sin for us (hyper hēmōn).”¹⁴[Note: 4 14. ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν] In Philem. 13 hyper¹⁵[Note: 5 15. ὑπέρ] is clearly equivalent to anti:¹⁶[Note: 6 16. ἀντί] “Whom I would have retained with me, that in your stead (hyper sou)¹⁷[Note: 7 17. ὑπὲρ σοῦ] he might have ministered unto me.” In 2 Corinthians 5:14 it is said that “the love of Christ constrains us, because we thus judge that if one died for all (hyper pantōn),¹⁸[Note: 8 18. ὑπὲρ πάντῶν] then all died (pantes apethanon).”¹⁹[Note: 9 19. πάντες ἀπέθανον] Here, the notion of substitution is plain. If Christ died in the room and place of the “all,” then the “all” are reckoned to have died. The vicarious atonement of Christ is regarded as the personal atonement of the believer. It would be nonsense to say that “if one died for the benefit of all, then all died.”

There is also abundant proof from classical usage that hyper²⁰[Note: 0 20. ὑπέρ] may be used in the sense of anti.²¹[Note: 1 21. ἀντί] Magee (Atonement, diss. 30) quotes the following: Xenophon (Anabasis 7.4) relates that the Thracian prince Seuthes asked Episthenes if he would be willing to die instead of the young lad who had been captured in war (ē kai ethelois an, hō episthenes, hyper toutou apothanein).²²[Note: 2 22. ἤ καὶ ἐθελοις ἄν, ὧ ἐπίσθενες, ὑπὲρ τουτοῦ ἀποθανεῖν = Would you even be willing to die, O Episthenes, on his behalf?] The same use of hyper²³[Note: 3 23. ὑπέρ] is seen in Xenophon’s Hellenica and On Hunting; Plato’s Symposium 180 and 207; Euripides’ Alcestis 446, 540, 732 compared with 155-56, 698, 706, 715-17. In the first three lines anti²⁴[Note: 4 24. ἀντί] is employed, and in the remainder hyper²⁵[Note: 5 25. ὑπέρ] in respect to the same subject, showing that classical usage allows their being interchanged. Demosthenes (Concerning the Crown) says, “Ask these things, and surely I shall do them for (hyper) you.”²⁶[Note: 6 26. erōtēson toutous, mallon de egō touth’ hyper sou poiēsō (ἐρωτησόν τούτους, μαλλὸν δὲ ἐγω τουθ᾽ ὑπὲρ σοῦ ποιήσω)] Winer (Grammar, 383 [ed. Thayer]) remarks that “hyper²⁷[Note: 7 27. ὑπέρ] is sometimes nearly equivalent to anti”²⁸[Note: 8 28. ἀντί] (see especially Euripides, Alcestis 700; Thucydides 1.141; Polybius 3.67; Philem. 13). De Wette on Romans 5:7 says: “Hyper²⁹[Note: 9 29. ὑπέρ] can signify ‘in place of’; 2 Corinthians 5:20.” Baur (Paul the Apostle, 168) says: “Although in many passages the expression ‘to die for’ (apothanein hyper) means only ‘to die for the benefit of another,’ nevertheless, certainly in Romans 4:25; Galatians 1:4; Romans 8:3; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 2 Corinthians 5:14, the concept of substitution, at least in substance, ought not to be rejected.”³⁰[Note: 0 30. Wenn auch in vielen Stellen das apothanein hyper nur ein Sterben zum besten Anderer ist, so kann doch wohl in den Stellen,Romans 4:25;Galatians 1:4;Romans 8:3;1 Corinthians 15:3;2 Corinthians 5:14, der Begriff der Stellvertretung, wenigsten der Sache nach, nicht zurückgewiesen werden.]

The meaning, therefore, of hyper³¹[Note: 1 31. ὑπέρ] must be determined by the context. Since both classical and New Testament usage permit its being employed to signify either benefit or substitution, it is plain that it cannot be confined to either signification. It would be as erroneous to assert that it uniformly means “for the advantage of” as to assert that it uniformly means “in the place of.” The remark of Magee (Atonement, diss. 30) is just: The word for or the Greek words anti,³²[Note: 2 32. ἀντί = in place of]hyper,³³[Note: 3 33. ὑπέρ = for]dia,³⁴[Note: 4 34. διά = on account of]peri,³⁵[Note: 5 35. περί = concerning] of which it is the translation, admitting different senses, may of course be differently applied, according to the nature of the subject, and yet the doctrine remain unchanged. Thus it might be proper to say that Christ suffered instead of us (anti hēmōn),³⁶[Note: 6 36. ἀντὶ ἡμῶν] although it would be absurd to say that he suffered instead of our offenses (anti tōn hamartēmatōn hēmōn).³⁷[Note: 7 37. ἀντὶ τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἡμῶν] It is sufficient if the different applications of the word carry a consistent meaning. To die “instead of us” and to die “on account of our offenses” perfectly agree.³⁸[Note: 8 38. WS: Thefirst of these statements might be either hyper hēmōn (ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν = on our behalf/in our place) or anti hēmōn (ἀντὶ ἡμῶν = in our place); the second might be hyper tōn hamartēmatōn hēmōn (ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτημάτων ἡμῶν = because of our sins) or peri (περί) or dia (διά), but not anti (ἀντί). The preposition anti (ἀντί) has only the one meaning of substitution: the others have more than this meaning.] But this change of the expression necessarily arises from the change of the subject. And, accordingly, the same difficulty will be found to attach to the exposition proposed by these writers (Sykes and H. Taylor): since the word for, interpreted “on account of,” i.e., “for the benefit of,” cannot be applied in the same sense in all the texts. For although dying “for our benefit” is perfectly intelligible, dying “for the benefit of our offenses” is no less absurd than dying “instead of our offenses.” In the light of these facts, it is easy to see why the New Testament writers employ hyper³⁹[Note: 9 39. ὑπέρ] so often, rather than anti,⁴⁰[Note: 0 40. ἀντί] to denote the relation of Christ’s death to man’s salvation. The latter preposition excludes the idea of benefit or advantage and specifies only the idea of substitution. The former may include both ideas. Whenever, therefore, the sacred writer would express both together and at once, he selects the preposition hyper.⁴¹[Note: 1 41. ὑπέρ] In so doing, he teaches both that Christ died in the sinner’s place and for the sinner’s benefit.

Vicariousness implies substitution. A vicar is a person deputized to perform the function of another. In the case under consideration, the particular function to be performed is that of atoning for sin by suffering. Man the transgressor is the party who owes the atonement and who ought to discharge the office of an atoner; but Jesus Christ is the party who actually discharges the office and makes the atonement in his stead. The idea of vicariousness or substitution is, therefore, vital to a correct theory of Christ’s priestly office. Man the transgressor would make his own atonement, if he should suffer the penalty affixed to transgression. So far as the penalty is concerned, retributive justice would be satisfied if the whole human race were punished forever.⁴²[Note: 2 42. WS: The law as precept, however, would not be satisfied. This proves that endless punishment is not excessive punishment. It still leaves the sinner in debt. According to strict justice, the law could require from the lost an active as well as a passive obedience, perfect obedience in the present and future as well as suffering the penalty for past disobedience.] And if God had no attribute but retributive justice, this would have been the course that he would have taken. A deity strictly and simply just, but destitute of compassion for the guilty, would have inflicted the penalty of the violated law upon the actual transgressor. He would not have allowed a substituted satisfaction of justice, and still less would he have provided one. It is important to notice this fact, because it shows the senselessness of a common objection to the doctrine of vicarious atonement, namely, that it is incompatible with mercy. If God, it is asked, insists upon satisfying justice by allowing his Son to suffer in the place of sinners, where is his mercy? The ready answer is that it is mercy to the criminal to permit the substitution of penalty and still more to provide the substitute after the permission. If God had no compassionate feeling toward the sinner, he would compel the sinner himself to satisfy the demands of the law which he has transgressed. But in permitting and still more in providing a substitute to make that satisfaction which man is under obligation to make for himself, God manifests the greatest and strangest mercy that can be conceived of, for the vicarious atonement of Christ is the sovereign and the judge putting himself in the place of the criminal. (See supplement 6.2.1.)

It is important, at this point, to mark the difference between personal and vicarious atonement. (a) Personal atonement is made by the offending party; vicarious atonement is made by the offended party. The former is made by the sinner; the latter is made by God: “our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13 Revised Version). If a citizen pays the fine appointed by the civil law, he satisfies justice for his own civil transgression. If the murderer is executed, he atones for his own crime before the human law, though not before the divine. And when a sinner suffers endless punishment, he personally satisfies eternal justice for his sin. (b) Personal atonement is given by the criminal, not received by him; but vicarious atonement is received by the criminal, not given by him. This is indicated in the scriptural phraseology. In Romans 5:11 it is said that the believer “receives the atonement” vicariously made for him by Christ. If he had made an atonement for himself, he would have given to justice the atonement, not received it. (c) Personal atonement is incompatible with mercy, but vicarious atonement is the highest form of mercy. When the sinner satisfies the law by his own eternal death, he experiences justice without mercy; but when God satisfies the law for him, he experiences mercy in the wonderful form of God’s self-sacrifice. (d) Personal atonement is incompatible with the eternal life of the sinner, but vicarious atonement obtains eternal life for him. When the sinner suffers the penalty due to his transgression, he is lost forever, but when God incarnate suffers the penalty for him, he is saved forever.

Vicarious atonement in the Christian system is made by the offended party. God is the party against whom sin is committed, and he is the party who atones for its commission. Vicarious atonement, consequently, is the highest conceivable exhibition of the attribute of mercy: “Herein is love, that God sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10). For God to remit penalty without inflicting suffering upon God incarnate would be infinitely less compassion than to remit it through such infliction. In one case, there is no self-sacrifice in the Godhead; in the other there is. The pardon in one case is inexpensive and cheap; in the other, costly and difficult of execution. The Socinian objection that vicarious atonement is unmerciful because it involves the full and strict satisfaction of justice has no force from a trinitarian point of view. It is valid only from a Unitarian position. If the Son of God who suffers in the sinner’s stead is not God but a creature, then of course God makes no self-sacrifice in saving man through vicarious atonement. In this case, it is not God the offended party who makes the atonement. The trinitarian holds that the Son of God is true and very God and that when he voluntarily becomes the sinner’s substitute for atoning purposes, it is very God himself who satisfies God’s justice. The penalty is not inflicted upon a mere creature whom God made from nothing and who is one of countless millions; but it is inflicted upon the incarnate Creator himself. The following extract from Channing (Unitarian Christianity) illustrates this misconception: “Unitarianism will not listen for a moment to the common errors by which this bright attribute of mercy is obscured. It will not hear of a vindictive wrath in God which must be quenched by blood or of a justice which binds his mercy with an iron chain, until its demands are satisfied to the full. It will not hear that God needs any foreign influence to awaken his mercy.” The finger must be placed upon this word foreign. The trinitarian does not concede that the influence of Jesus Christ upon God’s justice is an influence “foreign” to God. The propitiating and reconciling influence of Jesus Christ, according to the trinitarian, emanates from the depths of the Godhead; this suffering is the suffering of one of the divine persons incarnate. God is not propitiated (1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10) by another being, when he is propitiated by the only begotten Son. The term foreign in the above extract is properly applicable only upon the Unitarian theory, that the Son of God is not God, but a being like man or angel alien to the divine essence. This fallacy is still more apparent in the following illustration from the same writer: “Suppose that a creditor, through compassion to certain debtors, should persuade a benevolent and opulent man to pay in their stead? Would not the debtors see a greater mercy and feel a weightier obligation, if they were to receive a free gratuitous release?” (Unitarian Christianity). Here, the creditor and the debtors’ substitute are entirely different parties. The creditor himself makes not the slightest self-sacrifice in the transaction, because he and the substitute are not one being, but two. Consequently, the sacrifice involved in the payment of the debt is confined wholly to the substitute. The creditor has no share in it. But if the creditor and the substitute were one and the same being, then the pecuniary loss incurred by the vicarious payment of the debt would be a common loss. Upon the Unitarian theory, God the Father and Jesus Christ are two beings as different from each other as two individual men. If this be the fact, then indeed vicarious atonement implies no mercy in God the Father. The mercy would lie wholly in Jesus Christ, because the self-sacrifice would be wholly in him. But if the trinitarian theory is the truth, and God the Father and Jesus Christ are two persons of one substance, being, and glory, then, the self-sacrifice that is made by Jesus Christ is not confined to him alone, but is a real self-sacrifice both on the part of God the Father and also of the entire Trinity. This is taught in Scripture: “God [the Father] so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16); “he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all” (Romans 8:32); “[the triune] God commends his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8).⁴³[Note: 3 43. WS: The following are the principal points of difference between Unitarianism and Calvinism respecting the subject of Christ’s redemption. Unitarianism contends (a) that God is inherently and spontaneously merciful; (b) that justice is only a form of benevolence and opposes no obstacles to the exercise of God’s inherent and spontaneous mercy; (c) that Christ was not God, but an exalted creature sent to announce divine mercy, set a holy example, and proffer spiritual assistance to imitate it; it was no part of his mission to satisfy legal claims and harmonize justice with mercy, because there is no need of harmonizing them; and (d) that the doctrine of vicarious atonement implies that God is not inherently merciful, but needs to be made so by the agency of another being, namely, Christ (Channing, Life 1.294, 344, 349, 354). Calvinism contends (a) that God is inherently and spontaneously merciful; (b) that justice is an attribute distinct from benevolence, requiring satisfaction for sin and prohibiting the exercise of mercy until this requirement is met; (c) that Jesus Christ was incarnate God himself, who suffered vicariously for sinners in order to satisfy the legal claims which obstructed the exercise of divine mercy; and (d) that this vicarious satisfaction of justice by God himself is the way in which God shows his inherent and spontaneous mercifulness and not a means employed by a third party, other than God, to make him merciful.]

Though it was God the Son and not God the Father who became incarnate and suffered and died, it by no means follows that the first person of the Trinity made no self-sacrifice in this humiliation and crucifixion of the incarnate second person. He gave up to agony and death, his “dear” and “beloved” son. He passed the sword, as Zechariah 13:7 says, through “the man who was his fellow.” Such Scriptures imply that the redemption of sinful man caused God the Father a species of sorrow: the sorrow of “bruising and putting to grief” (Isaiah 53:10) the Son of his love; the Son who is “in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18). The self-sacrifice, therefore, that is made by the Son in giving himself to die for sinners involves a self-sacrifice made by the Father in surrendering the Son for this purpose. No person of the Godhead, even when he works officially, works exclusively of the others. The unity of being and nature between Father and Son makes the act of self-sacrifice in the salvation of man common to both: “He that has seen me has seen the Father. I and my Father are one” (John 14:9; John 10:30). “The mediator,” says Augustine (On the Trinity 4.19), “was both the offerer and the offering; and he was also one with him to whom the offering was made” (see South, sermon 30). And this does not conflict with the doctrine that the divine essence is incapable of suffering. Divine impassability means that the divine nature cannot be caused to suffer from any external cause. Nothing in the created universe can make God feel pain or misery.⁴⁴[Note: 4 44. WS: Divine wrath against sin, we have seen (p. 168), causes no unhappiness or misery in God because of its righteousness and legitimateness.] But it does not follow that God cannot himself do an act which he feels to be a sacrifice of feeling and affection and insofar an inward suffering. When God gave up to humiliation and death his only begotten Son, he was not utterly indifferent and unaffected by the act. It was as truly a sacrifice for the Father to surrender the beloved Son as it was for the Son to surrender himself. The Scriptures so represent the matter: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son”; “God spared not his own Son, but freely gave him up.” When the Father, in the phrase of the prophet, “awoke the sword against the man who was his fellow,” he likewise pierced himself.

Vicarious atonement, unlike personal atonement, cannot be made by a creature: “None of them can by any means redeem his brother nor give to God a ransom for him” (Psalms 49:7); “shall I give my firstborn for my transgression?” (Micah 6:7); “what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). This is acknowledged in the province of human law. No provision is made in human legislation for the substitution of penalty. In the case of capital punishment, one citizen may not be substituted for another; in the case of civil penalty such as fine or imprisonment, the state cannot seize an innocent person and compel him to suffer for the guilty. And even if there should be a willingness upon the part of the innocent to suffer for the guilty, legislation makes no provision for the substitution. The state would refuse to hang an innocent man, however willing and urgent he might be to take the place of the murderer. The state will not fine or imprison any but the real culprit. The reason for this is twofold. First, each citizen owes duties toward man that could not be performed if he should assume the obligations of another citizen. There are debts to the family, to society, and to the commonwealth, of which these would be defrauded, if the life or property of one person should be substituted for that of another. Second, each individual owes duties toward God which would be interfered with by the substitution of one man for another within the sphere of human relations. And the state has no right to legislate in a manner that interferes with God’s claims upon his creatures. The instances in pagan or Christian communities in which there seems to be substitution of penalty are exceptional and irregular. They are not recognized as legitimate by pagan authorities and still less by Christian jurists. When, as in the early Roman history, an individual citizen was allowed to devote himself to death for the welfare of the state, this was an impulse of the popular feeling. It was not regularly provided for and legitimated by the national legislature. It was no part of the legal code. And human sacrifices among savage nations cannot be regarded as parts of the common law of nations. That vicarious atonement cannot be made by a created being within the province of divine law will be made evident when we come to consider the nature of Christ’s substituted work. At this point, it is sufficient to observe that if within the lower sphere of human crimes and penalties one man cannot suffer for another it would be still more impossible in the higher sphere of man’s relations to God. No crime against man is of so deep a guilt as is sin against God; and if the former cannot be expiated by a human substitute, still less can the latter be.

It should be remembered, however, that the reason why a creature cannot be substituted for a creature for purposes of atonement is not that substitution of penalty is inadmissible, but that the creature is not a proper subject to be substituted, for the reasons above mentioned. Substitution is sometimes allowed within the province of commercial law. One man may pay the pecuniary debt of another, if this can be done without infraction of any rights of other parties. If, however, it cannot be, then vicarious payment is inadmissible. A man would not be permitted to take money due to one person to pay the debt of another. A man is not allowed in the State of New York to leave all his property to benevolent purposes if he has a family dependent upon him.

Atonement as Suffering and Forgiveness as Its Result The priestly office of Christ cannot be understood without a clear and accurate conception of the nature of atonement. The idea and meaning of atonement is conveyed in the following statements in Leviticus 6:2-7; Leviticus 4:13-35;Leviticus 5:1-19;Leviticus 6:1-30;Leviticus 7:1-38;Leviticus 8:1-36;Leviticus 9:1-24;Leviticus 10:1-20;Leviticus 11:1-47;Leviticus 12:1-8;Leviticus 13:1-59;Leviticus 14:1-57;Leviticus 15:1-33;Leviticus 16:1-34;Leviticus 17:1-16;Leviticus 18:1-30;Leviticus 19:1-37;Leviticus 20:1-27[Note: 5 45. WS: “It was in China that a Baptist missionary found his converts slow to appreciate the value of Christ’s atoning blood, until the Book of Leviticus threw light upon the sacrificial offering and showed the relation between shedding of blood and remission” (Bible Society’s Record, 21 Nov. 1878).] “If a soul sin and commit a trespass against the Lord, he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord, a ram without blemish, and the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord, and it shall be forgiven him.” This is individual atonement for individual transgression. “If the whole congregation of Israel sin and are guilty, then the congregation shall offer a young bullock for the sin, and the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands upon the head of the bullock, and the bullock shall be killed, and the priest shall make an atonement for them, and it shall be forgiven them.” This is national atonement for national transgression. Two particulars are to be noticed in this account. (a) The essence of the atonement is in the suffering. The atoning bullock or ram must bleed, agonize, and die. And he who offers it must not get any enjoyment out of it. It must be a loss to him, and so far forth a suffering for him. He must not eat any of the trespass offering. The sin offering must be wholly burned: “skin, flesh, and dung” (Leviticus 16:27). In harmony with this, our Lord lays stress upon his own suffering as the essential element in his atonement: “The Son of Man must suffer many things” (Luke 9:22; Matthew 16:21); “that Christ would suffer” (Acts 3:18; Luke 24:26). Christ refused the anodyne of “wine mingled with gall” that would have deadened his pain (Matthew 27:34).⁴⁶[Note: 6 46. WS: Bähr (Symbolism of the Mosaic Cultus) denies that there is anything piacular in the levitical sin offering. The slain victim is emblematic of self-consecration and self-sacrifice, not of penal satisfaction. The death of the lamb or goat teaches, not that the offerer deserves to die for his past transgression, but that he ought to live for future consecration to obedience. This interpretation lies under all the moral theories of the atonement. Its inconsistency is apparent in making the shedding of blood or death the symbol of life.] (b) The forgiveness is the noninfliction of suffering upon the transgressor. If the substituted victim suffers, then the criminal shall be released from suffering. In these and similar passages, Hebrew kāppar,⁴⁷[Note: 7 47. ëÌÈôÇø] which in the Piel⁴⁸[Note: 8 48. The Piel is a Hebrew verb pattern that may express the basic meaning for some verb roots, though it more usually indicates some intensification of the action.] is translated “to make an atonement,” literally signifies “to cover over” so as not to be seen. And Hebrew ṣmlaḥ,⁴⁹[Note: 9 49. ñÈìÇç] translated “to forgive,” has for its primary idea that of “lightness, lifting up,” perhaps “to be at rest or peace” (Gesenius in voce). (See supplement 6.2.2.) The connection of ideas in the Hebrew text appears, then, to be this: The suffering of the substituted bullock or ram has the effect to cover over the guilt of the real criminal and make it invisible to the eye of God the holy. This same thought is conveyed in the following: “Blot out my transgressions. Hide your face from my sins” (Psalms 51:19); “you have cast all my sins behind your back” (Isaiah 38:17); “you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). When this covering over is done, the conscience of the transgressor is at rest.

These Hebrew words, however, are translated in the Septuagint by Greek words which introduce different ideas from “covering” and “resting.” The word kāppar⁵⁰[Note: 0 50. ëÌÈôÇø = to make an atonement, cover over] is rendered by exilaskomai⁵¹[Note: 1 51. ἐξιλάσκομαι] (to propitiate or appease), and the word ṣmlaḥ⁵²[Note: 2 52. ñÈìÇç] is translated by aphiēmi⁵³[Note: 3 53. ἀφίημι] (to release or let go). The connection of ideas in the Greek translation appears, therefore, to be this: By the suffering of the sinner’s atoning substitute, divine wrath at sin is propitiated, and as a consequence of this propitiation the punishment due to sin is released or not inflicted upon the transgressor. This release or noninfliction of penalty is “forgiveness” in the biblical representation. This is conceded by the opponents of the evangelical system. Says Wegscheider (Institutes §140): “Forgiveness or pardon of sins, in the common and biblical usage, is the abolition of the penalty contracted for sins and the restoration of divine benevolence toward the sinner.”⁵⁴[Note: 4 54. Venia sive condonatio peccatorum, ex vulgari et biblica dicendi consuetudine, est abolitio poenae peccatis contractae, et restitutio benevolentiae divinae erga peccatorem.] In the Lord’s prayer, the petition for forgiveness is aphes hēmin ta opheilēmata hēmōn⁵⁵[Note: 5 55. ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν = forgive us our debts] (Matthew 6:12). Christ assures the paralytic that his sins are forgiven, in the words apheōntai soi hai hamartiai sou⁵⁶[Note: 6 56. ἄφεωνταί σοι αἱ ἁμαρτίαι σοῦ = your sins are forgiven you] (9:2). The preaching of the gospel is the preaching of the “release of sins” (aphesis hamartiōn;⁵⁷[Note: 7 57. ἄφεσις ἁμαρτιῶν]Acts 13:38).

It is highly important to notice that in the biblical representation “forgiveness” is inseparably connected with “atonement,” and “remission” with “propitiation.” The former stands to the latter in the relation of effect to cause. The Scriptures know nothing of forgiveness or remission of penalty in isolation. It always has a foregoing cause or reason. It is because the priest has offered the ram that the individual transgression is “forgiven,” that is, not punished in the person of the individual. It is because the priest has offered the bullock upon whose head the elders have laid their hands that the national sin is “forgiven,” that is, not visited upon the nation. Without this vicarious shedding of blood, there would be no remission or release of penalty (Hebrews 9:22). Not until the transgression has been “covered over” by a sacrifice can there be “peace” in the conscience of the transgressor. Not until the Holy One has been “propitiated” by an atonement can the penalty be “released.” Neither of these effects can exist without the antecedent cause. The Bible knows nothing of the remission of punishment arbitrarily, that is, without a ground or reason. Penal suffering in Scripture is released or not inflicted upon the guilty because it has been endured by a substitute. If penalty were remitted by sovereignty merely without any judicial ground or reason whatever, if it were inflicted neither upon the sinner nor his substitute, this would be the abolition of penalty, not the remission of it.

According to the biblical view, divine mercy is seen more in the cause than in the effect, more in the “atonement” for sin than in the “remission” of sin, more in “expiation” than in “forgiveness,” more in the vicarious infliction than in the personal noninfliction. After the foundation has been laid for the release of penalty, it is easy to release it. When a sufficient reason has been established why sin should be pardoned, it is easy to pardon. It is the first step that costs. This is taught by St. Paul in Romans 5:10 : “If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life.” The greater includes the less. If God’s mercy is great enough to move him to make a vicarious atonement for man’s sin, it is certainly great enough to move him to secure the consequences of such an act. If God’s compassion is great enough to induce him to lay man’s punishment upon his own Son, it is surely great enough to induce him not to lay it upon the believer. If God so loves the world as to atone vicariously for its sin, he certainly so loves it as to remit its sin. In looking, therefore, for the inmost seat and center of divine compassion, we should seek it rather in the work of atonement than in the act of forgiveness, rather in the cause than in the effect. That covenant transaction in the depths of the Trinity, in which God the Father commissioned and gave up the only begotten as a piacular oblation for man’s sin and in which the only begotten voluntarily accepted the commission, is a greater proof and manifestation of divine pity than that other and subsequent transaction in the depths of a believer’s soul in which God says, “Son, be of good cheer, your sin is forgiven you.” The latter transaction is easy enough, after the former has occurred. But the former transaction cost the infinite and adorable Trinity an effort and a sacrifice that is inconceivable and unutterable. This is the mystery which the angels desire to look into. That a just God should release from penalty after an ample atonement has been made is easy to understand and believe. But that he should himself make the atonement is the wonder and the mystery: “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16).

Atonement as Objective

It follows from this discussion that atonement is objective in its essential nature. An atonement makes its primary impression upon the party to whom it is made, not upon the party by whom it is made. When a man does a wrong to a fellow man and renders satisfaction for the wrong, this satisfaction is intended to influence the object not the subject, to produce an effect upon the man who has suffered the wrong not the man who did the wrong. Subjective atonement is a contradiction. Atoning to oneself is like lifting oneself.⁵⁸[Note: 8 58. WS: If it be objected that in the statement of the doctrine of vicarious atonement it is maintained that God atones to God (pp. 702-3), the reply is that Jesus Christ does not make satisfaction to himself as Jesus Christ, but to the Trinity. The incarnate Word satisfies the justice of the Godhead. The relation of his death is therefore objective. It has reference to the divine nature, not to his own theanthropic personality.] The objective nature of atonement is wrought into the very phraseology of Scripture, as the analysis of the biblical terms just made clearly shows. To “cover” sin is to cover it from the sight of God, not of the sinner. To “propitiate” is to propitiate God, not man. The Septuagint idea of “propitiation,” rather than the Hebrew idea of “covering over,” is prominent in the New Testament and consequently passed into the soteriology of the primitive church and from this into both the Romish and the Protestant soteriology. The difference between the two is not essential, since both terms are objective; but there is a difference. Hebrew kāppar⁵⁹[Note: 9 59. ëÌÈôÇø = to make an atonement, cover over] denotes that the sacrificial victim produces an effect upon sin. It covers it up. But the corresponding Septuagint term hilaskomai⁶⁰[Note: 0 60. ἱλάσκομαι = to propitiate] denotes that the sacrificial victim produces an effect upon God. It propitiates his holy displeasure. When St. John (1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10) asserts that “Jesus Christ the righteous is the propitiation (hilasmos)⁶¹[Note: 1 61. ἱλασμός] for our sins” and that God “sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins,” the implication is that the divine nature is capable of being conciliated by some propitiating act. This propitiating act under the old dispensation was, typically and provisionally, the offering of a lamb or goat as emblematic of the future offering of the Lamb of God; and under the new dispensation it is the actual offering of the body of Jesus Christ, who takes the sinner’s place and performs for him the propitiating and reconciling act. The objective nature of atonement appears, again, in the New Testament term katallagē⁶²[Note: 2 62. καταλλαγή = atonement, reconciliation] and the verb katallassein.⁶³[Note: 3 63. καταλλάσσειν = to conciliate, appease] These two words occur nine times in the New Testament with reference to Christ’s atoning work (Romans 5:10-11; Romans 5:15; 2 Corinthians 5:18-20). In the Authorized Version, katallagē⁶⁴[Note: 4 64. καταλλαγή] is translated “atonement” in Romans 5:11; but in the other instances “reconciliation” and “reconcile” are the terms employed. The verb katallassein⁶⁵[Note: 5 65. καταλλάσσειν] primarily signifies “to pay the exchange or difference” and secondarily “to conciliate or appease.” The following from Athenaeus (10.33) brings to view both meanings of the word: “Why do we say that a tetradrachma katallattetai,⁶⁶[Note: 6 66. καταλλάττεται = is appeased] when we never speak of its getting into a passion?” A coin is “exchanged” in the primary signification; and a man is “reconciled” in the secondary. Two parties in a bargain settle their difference or are “reconciled” by one paying the exchange or balance to the other. In like manner two parties at enmity settle their difference or are “reconciled” by one making a satisfaction to the other. In each instance the transaction is called in Greek katallagē.⁶⁷[Note: 7 67. καταλλαγή = atonement, reconciliation] The same usage is found in the Anglo-Saxon language. Saxon bot, from which comes the modern boot, denotes, first, a compensation paid to the offended party by the offender; then, second, the reconciling effect produced by such compensation; and, last, it signifies the state of mind which prompted the boot or compensation, namely, repentance itself (Bosworth, Anglo-Saxon Dictionary). The term reconciliation is objective in its signification. Reconciliation terminates upon the object, not upon the subject. The offender reconciles not himself but the person whom he has offended, by undergoing some loss and thereby making amends. This is clearly taught in Matthew 5:24 : “First, be reconciled to your brother (diallagēthi tō adelphō).”⁶⁸[Note: 8 68. διαλλάγηθι τῷ ἀδελφῷ] Here, the brother who has done the injury is the one who is to make up the difference. He is to propitiate or reconcile his brother to himself by a compensation of some kind. Reconciliation, here, does not denote a process in the mind of the offender, but of the offended. The meaning is not: “First conciliate your own displeasure toward your brother,” but, “First conciliate your brother’s displeasure toward you.” In the Episcopalian order for the holy communion, it is said: “If you shall perceive your offenses to be such as are not only against God, but also against your neighbors; then you shall reconcile yourselves unto them: being ready to make restitution and satisfaction, according to the uttermost of your powers, for all injuries and wrongs done by you to any other.” The biblical phrase be reconciled to your brother agrees with that of common life in describing reconciliation from the side of the offending party, rather than of the offended. We say of the settlement of a rebellion that “the subjects are reconciled to their sovereign,” rather than that “the sovereign is reconciled to the subjects”; though the latter is the more strictly accurate, because it is the sovereign who is reconciled by a satisfaction made to him by the subjects who have rebelled. In Romans 5:10 believers are said to be “reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” Here the reconciliation is described from the side of the offending party; man is said to be reconciled. Yet this does not mean the subjective reconciliation of the sinner toward God, but the objective reconciliation of God toward the sinner. For the preceding verse speaks of God as a being from whose “wrath” the believer is saved by the death of Christ. This shows that the reconciliation effected by Christ’s atoning death is that of divine anger against sin. Upon this text, Meyer remarks that “the death of Christ does not remove the wrath of man toward God, but it removes God’s displeasure toward man.” Similarly, De Wette remarks that “the reconciliation must mean the removal of the wrath of God; it is that reconciliation of God to man which not only here, but in Romans 3:25; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19; Colossians 1:21; Ephesians 2:16 is referred to the atoning death of Christ.”⁶⁹[Note: 9 69. WS: See Magee, Atonement, diss. 20; Owen, Vindications, chap. 21; Shedd, Theological Essays, 265-73.]

The priestly work of Christ is also represented in Scripture under the figure of a price or ransom. This, also, is an objective term. The price is paid by the subject to the object: “The Son of Man is come to give his life a ransom (lytron)⁷⁰[Note: 0 70. λύτρον] for (anti)⁷¹[Note: 1 71. ἀντί] many” (Matthew 20:28); “the church of God which he has purchased (peripoiēsato)⁷²[Note: 2 72. περιεποιήσατο] with his own blood” (Acts 20:28); “the redemption (apolytrōsis)⁷³[Note: 3 73. ἀπολυτρώσις] that is in Jesus Christ” (Romans 3:24); “you are bought (ēgorasthēte)⁷⁴[Note: 4 74. ἠγοράσθητε] with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:20); “Christ has redeemed (exēgorasen)⁷⁵[Note: 5 75. ἐξηγόρασεν] us from the curse” (Galatians 3:13); “redemption through his blood” (Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 1:14); “who gave himself a ransom (antilytron)⁷⁶[Note: 6 76. ἀντίλυτρον] for all” (1 Timothy 2:6). The allusion in the figure is sometimes to the payment of a debt and sometimes to the liberation of a captive. In either case, it is not Satan but God who holds the claim. Man has not transgressed against Satan, but against God. The debt that requires canceling is due to a divine attribute, not to the rebel archangel. The ransom that must be paid is for the purpose of delivering the sinner from the demands of justice, not of the devil. Satan cannot acquire or establish legal claims upon any being whatever.

Some of the early fathers misinterpreted this doctrine of a “ransom” and introduced a vitiating element into the patristic soteriology, which however was soon eliminated and has never reappeared. They explained certain texts which refer to sanctification as referring to justification. In 2 Timothy 2:26 sinful men are said to be “taken captive by the devil at his will.” In 1 Timothy 1:20 Hymenaeus and Alexander are “delivered unto Satan.” In 1 Corinthians 5:5 St. Paul commands the church to “deliver over” the incestuous member “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.” In these passages, reference is had to the power which Satan has over the creature who has voluntarily subjected himself to him. The sinner is Satan’s captive upon the principle mentioned by Christ in John 8:34 : “Whosoever commits sin is the servant (doulos)⁷⁷[Note: 7 77. δούλος] of sin”; and by St. Paul in Romans 6:16 : “Know not that to whom you yield yourselves servants (doulous)⁷⁸[Note: 8 78. δούλους] to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey; whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness?” There is in these passages no reference to any legal or rightful claim which the devil has over the transgressor, but only to the strong and tyrannical grasp which he has upon him. This captivity to Satan is related to the work of the Holy Spirit, more than to the atoning efficacy of Christ’s blood; and deliverance from it makes a part of the work of sanctification, rather than of justification. This deliverance is preceded by another. In the order of nature, it is not until man has been first redeemed by the atoning blood from the claims of justice, that he is redeemed by the indwelling Spirit from the captivity and bondage of sin and Satan.

When, therefore, the efficacy of Christ’s death is represented as the payment of a ransom price, the same objective reference of Christ’s work is intended as in the previous instances of “propitiation” and “reconciliation.” By Christ’s death, man is ransomed from the righteous claims of another being than himself. That being is not Satan, but God the holy and just. And these claims are vicariously met. God satisfies God’s claims in man’s place. God’s mercy ransoms man from God’s justice.

We have thus seen from this examination of the scriptural representations that Christ’s priestly work has an objective reference, namely, that it affects and influences the divine being. Christ’s atonement “covers sin” from God’s sight. It “propitiates” God’s wrath against sin. It “reconciles” God’s justice toward the sinner. It “pays a ransom” to God for the sinner. None of these acts terminate upon man the subject, but all terminate upon God the object. Christ does not “cover sin” from the sinner’s sight. He does not “propitiate” the sinner’s wrath. He does not “reconcile” the sinner to the sinner. He does not “pay a ransom” to the sinner. These acts are each and all of them outward and transitive in their aim and reference. They are directed toward the infinite, not the finite; toward the Creator, not the creature. Whatever be the effect wrought by the vicarious death of the Son of God, it is wrought upon the divine nature. If it appeases, it appeases that nature; if it propitiates, it propitiates that nature; if it satisfies, it satisfies that nature; if it reconciles, it reconciles that nature. It is impossible to put any other interpretation upon the scriptural ideas and representations. A merely subjective reference, which would find all the meaning of them within the soul of man, requires a forced and violent exegesis of Scripture and a self-contradictory use of the word atonement. At the same time, revelation plainly teaches that the author of this atoning influence and effect upon the divine being is the divine being himself. God propitiates, appeases, satisfies, and reconciles God. None of these are the acts of the creature. In all this work of propitiation, reconciliation, and redemption, God himself is the originating and active agent. He is therefore both active and passive, both agent and patient. God is the being who is angry at sin, and God is the being who propitiates this anger. God is the offended party, and he is the one who reconciles the offended party. It is divine justice that demands satisfaction, and it is divine compassion that makes the satisfaction. God is the one who holds man in a righteous captivity, and he is the one who pays the ransom that frees him from it. God is the holy judge of man who requires satisfaction for sin, and God is the merciful Father of man who provides it for him. This fact relieves the doctrine of vicarious atonement of all appearance of severity and evinces it to be the height of mercy and compassion. If it were man and not God who provided the atonement, the case would be otherwise. This peculiarity of the case is taught in Scripture. In 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 it is said that “God has reconciled us to himself (heautō)⁷⁹[Note: 9 79. ἑαυτῷ] by Jesus Christ” and that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself (heautō).”⁸⁰[Note: 0 80. ἑαυτῷ] The statement is repeated in Colossians 1:20 : “It pleased the Father through the blood of Christ’s cross to reconcile all things unto himself.” According to this, in the work of vicarious atonement God is both subject and object, active and passive. He exerts a propitiating influence when he makes this atonement, and he receives a propitiating influence when he accepts it. He performs an atoning work, and his own attribute of justice feels the effect of it. Says Augustine (On the Trinity 4.14.19): “The same one and true mediator reconciles us to God by the atoning sacrifice, remains one with God to whom he offers it, makes those one in himself for whom he offers it, and is himself both the offerer and the offering.” Similarly, Frank (Christian Certainty, 352) remarks that “freedom from guilt is possible for man, because it has been provided for by God, and this provision rests upon a transaction of God with himself, whereby as other [i.e., as Son] he has made satisfaction to the claims of his own justice upon the sinner.” This doctrine of Scripture has passed into the creeds and litanies of the church. In the English litany there is the petition: “From your wrath and from everlasting damnation, Good Lord, deliver us.” Here, the very same being who is displeased is asked to save from the displeasure. The very same holy God who is angry at sin is implored by the sinner to deliver him from the effects of this anger. And this is justified by the example of David, who cries, “O Lord, rebuke me not in your wrath, neither chasten me in your hot displeasure” (Psalms 38:1); and by the words of God himself addressed to his people through the prophet, “In my wrath I smote you, but in my favor have I had mercy upon you” (Isaiah 60:10). The prophet Hosea (6:1) says to the unfaithful church: “Come and let us return unto the Lord: for he has torn, and he will heal us; he has smitten, and he will bind us up.” In Zechariah 1:2-4 Jehovah is described as “sore displeased” and yet at the same time as exhibiting clemency toward those with whom he is displeased: “The Lord has been sore displeased with your fathers. Therefore say unto them, Thus says the Lord of hosts, Turn unto me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, says the Lord of hosts.” “The Lord said to Eliphaz, My wrath is kindled against you, and against your two friends. Therefore take unto you seven bullocks and seven rams and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering, lest I deal with you after your folly” (Job 42:7-8). Here, the very same God who was displeased with Job’s friends devises for them a method whereby they may avert the displeasure. Upon a larger scale, God is displeased with every sinful man, yet he himself provides a method whereby sinful man may avert this displeasure. This is eminently the case with the believer. “When,” says Calvin (3.2.21), “the saints seem to themselves to feel most the anger of God, they still confide their complaints to him; and when there is no appearance of his hearing them, they still continue to call upon him.” Says Anselm (Meditation 2), “Take heart, O sinner, take heart! Do not despair; hope in him whom you fear. Flee to him from whom you have fled. Boldly call on him whom you have haughtily provoked.”⁸¹[Note: 1 81. Respira, o peccator, respira; ne desperes, spera in eo quem times. Affuge ad eum a quo aufugisti. Invoca importune quem superbe provocasti.]

The doctrine of vicarious atonement, consequently, implies that in God there exist simultaneously both wrath and compassion. In this fact is seen the infinite difference between divine and human anger. When God is displeased with the sinner, he compassionately desires that the sinner may escape the displeasure and invents a way of escaping it. But when man is displeased with his fellowman, he does not desire that his fellowman may escape the displeasure and devises no way of escape. Divine wrath issues from the constitutional and necessary antagonism between divine holiness and moral evil. Divine compassion springs from the benevolent interest which God feels in the work of his hands. The compassion is founded in God’s paternal relation to man; the wrath is founded in his judicial relation to him. God as a Creator and Father pities the sinner; as a judge he is displeased with him. Wrath against sin must be both felt and manifested by God; compassion toward the sinner must be felt, but may or may not be manifested by him. Justice is necessary in its exercise, but mercy is optional. The righteous feeling of wrath toward sin is immutable and eternal in God, but it may be propitiated by the gracious feeling of compassion toward the sinner, which is also immutable and eternal in God. God the father of men may reconcile God the judge of men. Whether this shall be done depends upon the sovereign pleasure of God. He is not obliged and necessitated to propitiate his own wrath for the sinner, as he is to punish sin; but he has mercifully determined to do this and has done it by the atonement of Jesus Christ. By the method of vicarious substitution of penalty, God satisfies his own justice and reconciles his own displeasure toward the transgressor. That moral emotion in the divine essence which from the nature and necessity of the case is incensed against sin, God himself placates by a self-sacrifice that inures to the benefit of the guilty creature. Here, the compassion and benevolent love of God propitiate the wrath and holy justice of God. The two feelings exist together in one and the same being. The propitiation is no oblation ab extra:⁸²[Note: 2 82. from the outside] no device of a third party or even of sinful man himself to render God placable toward man. It is wholly ab intra:⁸³[Note: 3 83. from within] a self-oblation upon the part of the deity himself, in the exercise of his benevolence toward the guilty, by which to satisfy those constitutional imperatives of the divine nature which without it must find their satisfaction in the personal punishment of the transgressor or else be outraged by arbitrary omnipotence.

Upon this point, Augustine (Tractates on the Gospel of John, Exodus 6:1-30), remarks:

It is written, “God commends his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” He loved us, therefore, even when in the exercise of enmity toward him we were working iniquity. And yet it is said with perfect truth, “You hate, O Lord, all workers of iniquity.” Wherefore, in a wonderful and divine manner, he both hated and loved us at the same time. He hated us, as being different from what he had made us; but as our iniquity had not entirely destroyed his work in us, he could at the same time, in everyone of us, hate what we had done and love what he had created. In every instance it is truly said of God “You hate nothing which you have made; for never would you have made anything, if you had hated it.”

Calvin, after quoting the above from Augustine, remarks (2.16.3) that

God who is the perfection of righteousness cannot love iniquity, which he beholds in us all. We all, therefore, have in us that which deserves God’s hatred. Wherefore, in respect to our corrupt nature and the consequent depravity of our lives, we are all really offensive to God, guilty in his sight, and born to the damnation of hell. But because God is unwilling to lose that in us which is his own, he still finds something in us which his benevolence (benignitas) can love. For notwithstanding that we are sinners by our own fault, we are yet his creatures; though we have brought death upon ourselves yet he had created us for life.

Turretin (Concerning the Truth of Christ’s Satisfaction 1.1) distinguishes between “compassion” and “reconciliation.” Because God is compassionate in his own excellent and perfect nature, he can become reconciled toward a transgressor of his law. If he were inherently destitute of compassion, he would be incapable of reconciliation. Compassion is a feeling, reconciliation is an act resulting from it. The former is inherent and necessary; the latter is optional and sovereign. If God were not compassionate and placable, he could not be propitiated by the sacrifice of Christ. An implacable and merciless being could not be conciliated and would do nothing to effect a reconciliation. God is moved by a feeling of compassion and a benevolent affection toward sinners, prior to and irrespective of the death of Christ: “When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). The death of Christ did not make God compassionate and merciful. He is always and eternally so. But God’s holy justice is not reconciled to sinners unless Christ die for their sin. The compassion is prior in the order of nature to the death of Christ; the reconciliation of justice is subsequent to it: “Before the death of Christ, God was already compassionate (misericors) and placable. This moved him to provide salvation and redemption for man. But he was actually reconciled and propitiated, only upon the condition and supposition of that death of Christ which was required by eternal justice.” In this manner, compassion and wrath coexist in God. Says Turretin (as above): To us indeed it seems difficult to conceive that the same person who is offended with us should also love us; because, when any feeling takes possession of us we are apt to be wholly engrossed with it. Thus if our anger is inflamed against anyone, there is usually no room in us for favor toward him; and on the other hand, if we regard him with favor, there is often connected with it the most unrighteous indulgence. But if we could cast off the disorders of passion and clothe ourselves in the garments of righteousness, we might easily harmonize these things with one another. A father offended with the viciousness of his son loves him as a son, yet is angry with him as being vicious. A judge, in like manner, may be angry and moved to punish, yet not the less on this account inclined by compassion to pardon the offender, if only someone would stand forth and satisfy the claims of justice for him. Why then, should not God, who is most righteous and benevolent, at once by reason of his justice demand penalty and by reason of his compassion provide satisfaction for us?

Turretin quotes in proof of this view the following from Aquinas (3.49.4): “We are not said to have been reconciled as if God began to love us anew (de novo), for he loved us with an eternal love. Rather, we are said to have been reconciled because through this reconciliation every cause of hatred was removed, on the one hand through the cleansing of sin, and on the other hand through the compensation of a more acceptable good (acceptabilioris boni).”⁸⁴[Note: 4 84. Non dicimur reconciliati quasi deus de novo amare incipiret, nam aeterno amore dilexit, sed quia per hanc reconciliationem sublata est omnis odii causa, tum per ablutionem peccati, tum per recompensationem acceptabilioris boni.] He also remarks: “The Scholastics say that God loved the human race insofar as he himself made that nature, but he hates it insofar as men have brought guilt on themselves.”⁸⁵[Note: 5 85. Scholastici loquntur, dilexit deus humanum genus quantum ad naturam quam ipse fecit; odit quantum ad culpam quam homines contraxerunt.]

In all that is said, consequently, respecting the wrath of God, in Christian theology, it is of the utmost importance to keep in view the fact that this wrath is compatible with benevolence and compassion. This is the infinite difference in kind between divine and human anger. At the very moment when God is displeased, he is capable of devising kind things for the object of his displeasure: “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And at the very instant when guilty man is conscious that divine wrath is resting upon him, he may address his supplication for a blessing to the very being who is angry with his sin and may pray: “From your wrath, good Lord, deliver me.” And the great and ample warrant and encouragement for men to do this is found in the sacrifice of the Son of God. For in and by this atoning oblation, divine compassion conciliates divine wrath against sin. In the death of the God-man, “righteousness and peace, justice and mercy, kiss each other” (Psalms 85:10). The mercy vicariously satisfies the justice; divine compassion in the sinner’s stead receives upon itself the stroke of divine wrath; God the Father smites God the Son, in the transgressor’s place: “Awake, O sword, against the man that is my fellow, says the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 13:7).⁸⁶[Note: 6 86. WS: The same principle applies to the afflictions of life. The strength and comfort must come from the very same being who afflicts. God is the source of affliction, and he is the God of all comfort. God wounds, and God heals the wound. See Pascal’s letter to his brother-in-law on the death of his own father. The same truth is expressed in the lines of George Herbert:

Ah, my dear, angry Lord!

Since Thou dost love, yet strike;

Cast down, yet help afford;

Sure, I will do the like.

I will complain, yet praise;

I will bewail, approve; And all my sour-sweet days, I will lament, and love.]

This subject is elucidated still further by noticing the difference between the holy wrath of God and the wicked wrath of man: “The wrath of man works not the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). When man is angry at man, this feeling is absolutely incompatible with the feeling of compassion and benevolent love. Selfish human anger and benevolence cannot be simultaneous. They cannot possibly coexist. When a man, under the impulse of sinful displeasure, says to his brother “Raca” or “you fool” (Matthew 5:22), when he feels passionate and selfish wrath, he cannot devise good things for his brother man. On the contrary, he devises only evil things. He plots his neighbor’s destruction. The wrath of the human heart is not only incompatible with benevolence, but is often intensely malignant. It is even increased by the moral excellence that is in the object of it. Holiness in a fellow creature sometimes makes wicked human anger hotter and more deadly. The Jews gnashed their teeth in rage at the meekness and innocence of Christ. “The hatred of the wicked,” says Rousseau (Confessions 9), “is only roused the more from the impossibility of finding any just grounds on which it can rest; and the very consciousness of their own injustice is only a grievance the more against him who is the object of it.” “They hated the one whom they injured,”⁸⁷[Note: 7 87. oderunt quem laeserint] says Tacitus. This kind of wrath requires complete eradication before compassion can exist. “Better it were,” says Luther (Table Talk: Of God’s Works), “that God should be angry with us than that we be angry with God, for he can soon be at a union with us again, because he is merciful; but when we are angry with him, then the case is not to be helped.”

Still further elucidation of this subject is found in the resemblance between the holy wrath of God and the righteous anger of the human conscience. The sinful feeling of passionate anger to which we have just alluded is an emotion of the heart; but the righteous feeling of dispassionate anger to which we now allude is in the conscience. This is a different faculty from the heart.⁸⁸[Note: 8 88. WS: “La conscience est la voix de l’âme, les passions sont la voix du corps” [AG: The conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body]; Rousseau, Émile, 4. This is borrowed from Descartes, Passions of the Soul, arts. 18-19.] Its temper toward sin is unselfish and impartial, like the wrath of God. And this feeling can exist simultaneously with that of benevolence. When a man’s own conscience is displacent and remorseful over his own sin, there is no malice toward the man himself, “for no man ever yet hated his own flesh” (Ephesians 5:29). At the very moment when a just and righteous man’s conscience is offended and incensed at the wickedness of a fellowman, he can and often does devise good things toward him. The most self-sacrificing philanthropists are those whose conscience is the most sensitive toward the moral evil which they endeavor to remove and whose moral displeasure against sin is the most vivid and emphatic. It is not the sentimental Rousseau, but the righteous Calvin who would willingly lay down his life, if thereby he could save men from eternal retribution. The conscience of Rousseau was dull and torpid, compared with the keen and energetic conscience of Calvin; but the desire of the latter for the spiritual and eternal welfare of sinful men was a thousand times greater than that of the former, supposing that there was in Rousseau any desire at all for the spiritual and eternal welfare of man. When St. Paul says respecting Alexander the coppersmith, “The Lord reward him according to his works” (2 Timothy 7:14), he gives expression to the righteous displeasure of a pure conscience toward one who was opposing the gospel of Christ and the progress of God’s kingdom in the earth. It was not any personal injury to the apostle that awakened the desire for divine retribution in the case, but a zeal for the glory of God and the welfare of man. Could St. Paul by any self-sacrifice on his own part have produced repentance and reformation in Alexander, he would gladly have made it. As in the instance of his unbelieving Jewish kindred, he would have been willing to be “accursed from Christ” for this purpose (Romans 9:3). But when a profane man angrily says to his fellowman: “God damn you,” this is the malignant utterance of the selfish passion of the human heart and is incompatible with any benevolent feeling.⁸⁹[Note: 9 89. WS: On the difference between divine and human anger, see Shedd, Theological Essays, 269-84.]

We find, then, that in the exercise of Christ’s priestly office the agency is wholly within the divine nature itself. The justice and the mercy, the wrath and the compassion, are qualities of one and the same eternal being. It follows, consequently, that the explanation of the great subject of divine reconciliation lies in the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine of vicarious atonement stands or falls with that of the triune God. If God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three distinct persons, each one of them really objective to the others, then one of them can do a personal work not done by the others that shall have an effect upon the Godhead. And if God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are also one undivided being in nature and essence, then this effect, whatever it be, is not limited and confined to any one of the persons exclusive of the others, but is experienced by the one whole undivided nature and essence itself. The Godhead, and not merely God the Father or God the Son or God the Spirit, is reconciled to guilty man by the judicial suffering of one of the persons of the Godhead incarnate. The Son of God is a person distinct from and objective to the Father and the Spirit. Hence, he can do a work which neither of them does. He becomes incarnate, not they. He suffers and dies for man, not they. And yet the efficacy of this work, which is his work as a trinitarian person, can terminate upon that entire divine nature which is all in God the Father and all in God the Spirit, as it is all in God the Son. “Christ,” says Frank (Christian Certainty, 366), “experienced as a [vicarious] sinner both subjection to God and rejection by God; but yet as one who can call the God who has rejected him, his God, and who while the wrath of God goes forth upon him and delivers him up to the punitive infliction, nevertheless can pray: ‘Not my will, but yours be done.’ ”

Atonement as Subjective

Before leaving the subject of vicarious atonement, it is in place here to notice its relation to the soul of man. For, while Christ’s atonement has primarily this objective relation to the divine nature, it has also a secondary subjective relation to the nature of the guilty creature for whom it is made. The objective atonement is intended to be subjectively appropriated by the act of faith in it. In the first place, the priestly work of Christ has an influence upon the human conscience similar to that which it has upon divine justice. Man’s moral sense is pacified by Christ’s atonement. Peace is everywhere in Scripture represented as the particular effect produced by faith in Christ’s blood: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God” (Romans 5:1); “we are made nigh to God by the blood of Christ, for he is our peace” (Ephesians 2:13-14); “having made peace through the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20); “peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you” (John 14:27); “the peace of God passes all understanding” (Php 4:7). The human conscience is the mirror and index of the divine attribute of justice. The two are correlated. What therefore God’s justice demands, man’s conscience demands. “Nothing,” says Matthew Henry, “can pacify an offended conscience but that which satisfied an offended God.” The peace which the believer in Christ’s atonement enjoys, and which is promised by the Redeemer to the believer, is the subjective experience in man that corresponds to the objective reconciliation in God. The pacification of the human conscience is the consequence of the satisfaction of divine justice. God’s justice is completely satisfied for the sin of man by the death of Christ. This is an accomplished fact: “Jesus Christ the righteous is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). The instant any individual man of this world of mankind believes that divine justice is thus satisfied, his conscience is at rest. The belief of a fact is always needed in order to a personal benefit from it. Belief is not needed in order to establish the fact. Whether a sinner believes Christ died for sin or not will make no difference with the fact, though it will make a vast difference with him: “If we believe not, yet he abides faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). Unbelief cannot destroy a fact. Should not a soul henceforth believe on the Son of God, it would nevertheless be a fact that he died an atoning death on Calvary and that this death is an ample oblation for the sin of the world. But it must be remembered that the kind of belief by which a man obtains a personal benefit from the fact of Christ’s death is experimental, not historical or hearsay. A man may believe from common rumor that the death of Christ satisfies divine justice for the sin of the world and yet experience no benefit and no peace from his belief, even as a blind man may believe from common rumor that there is a mountain in front of him and yet have none of the pleasing sensations and personal benefits that accompany the vision of it. The blind man may have no doubt of the fact that there is a mountain before him; he may even argue to prove its existence and still have all the wretched sensations of blindness and obtain no personal advantage from his hearsay belief. And a sinful man may have no skeptical doubt that the death of Christ on Mount Calvary has completely expiated human guilt and may even construct a strong argument in proof of the fact and still have all the miserable experience of an unforgiven sinner, may still have remorse and the fear of death and the damnation of hell. The belief by which men obtain personal benefit, namely, mental peace and blessedness, from the fact of Christ’s atonement involves trust and reliance upon Christ. A man may believe Christ and yet not believe on him. Christ himself marks the difference between historical or hearsay belief and experimental faith in Matthew 13:13-15 : “Seeing, they see not; and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which says, By hearing you shall hear and shall not understand; and seeing you shall see and shall not perceive.” Whenever there is an experimental belief of the actual and accomplished fact of Christ’s atonement, there is a subjective pacification of the conscience corresponding to the objective reconciliation of divine justice. But this subjective effect of Christ’s death is neither the primary nor the whole effect of it. It presupposes the objective satisfaction or propitiation. In this instance, as in all others, the object is prior to the subject and determines its consciousness.

Second, the subjective appropriation of Christ’s atonement is the evidence and test of genuine repentance. An unselfish godly sorrow for sin is shown by a willingness to suffer personally for sin. In Leviticus 26:41; Leviticus 26:43 the truly penitent are described as “accepting the punishment of their iniquity.” The criminal who complains of punishment or resists it or endeavors to escape from it evinces by this fact that he cares more for his own happiness than he does for the evil and wickedness of his act. If he were certain of not being punished, he would repeat his transgression. There is of course no genuine sorrow for sin in such a temper. If, on the contrary, a wrongdoer approves of and accepts the punishment denounced against his crime and voluntarily gives himself up to suffer for his transgression, he furnishes the highest proof of true sorrow. He does not make his own happiness the first thing, but the maintenance of justice. With Angelo (Measure for Measure 5.1), he says: So deep sticks it in my penitent heart, That I crave death more willingly than mercy;

’Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it. With the penitent thief, he says, “We are in this condemnation justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds” (Luke 23:41). Says Dorner (Christian Doctrine 1.302): No one can deny that true penitence includes the candid acknowledgment of actual desert of punishment and that the denial of this desert and the unwillingness to suffer punishment and to surrender to the disgrace of justice is the most certain proof of a mere semblance of penitence. And it is not essentially different, when repentance and the resolution to live a better life are put in the place of that suffering which constitutes satisfying atonement and gives a title to remission of sin. Such views are a poisoning of penitence, which, in order to be genuine, must stand the test of being ready to suffer punishment and approve of the retribution of justice. The first impulse consequently of true penitence is to make a personal atonement. This distinguishes penitence from remorse, the godly sorrow from the sorrow of the world (2 Corinthians 7:10). Mere remorse has no desire or impulse to suffer and make amends for what has been done. Its impulse and desire is wholly selfish, namely, to escape suffering. Remorse leads to suicide, penitence never. The suicide’s motive is to put an end to his misery. He supposes that he will be happier by dying than by continuing to live. This was the motive of the impenitent Jude 1:90[Note: 0 90. WS: Suicide, if the act of sanity, is ipso facto proof of insubmission and rebellion toward God and impenitence in sin. Socrates (Phaedo 61) contends that to take one’s own life is to defraud and dishonor the Creator. “The gods,” he says, “are our guardians, and we are a possession of theirs. If one of your own possessions, an ox or an ass, for example, took the liberty of putting himself out of the way when you had given no intimation of your wish that he should die, would you not be displeased with him and would you not punish him if you could?” It was upon this view of suicide that the self-murderer was denied burial by the church in consecrated ground.] But the broken and contrite heart is willing to do and to suffer anything that would really satisfy God’s holy law. This is taught in Psalms 51:16 : David in his genuine sorrow for his great transgression says: “You desire not sacrifice, else would I give it.” He perceives that any expiation which he could make for his sin would be unequal to what justice requires; but this does not render him any the less ready to make it if he could. And when the true penitent perceives that another competent person, divinely appointed, has performed that atoning work for him which he is unable to perform for himself, he welcomes the substitution with joy and gratitude. Any aversion, therefore, to Christ’s vicarious atonement evinces that there is a defect in the supposed sorrow for sin. The lust of self is in the experience. The individual’s happiness is in the foreground, and divine holiness is in the background. And the positive and deliberate rejection of Christ’s atonement, upon the same principle, is absolute and utter impenitence. A hostile and polemic attitude toward the blood of Christ as atoning for human guilt is fatal hardness of heart. Christ refers to it in his awful words to the Pharisees: “If you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sins” (John 8:24). Impenitence shows itself both in unwillingness to make a personal atonement for sin and to trust in a vicarious atonement for it. (See supplement 6.2.3.) Christ’s Sufferings as Penal Substitution

It becomes necessary now to consider the question how the suffering of Christ meets the requisitions involved in the case of substitution of penalty or vicarious atonement. We have seen that suffering is the inmost essence of an atonement. The sacrificial victim must agonize and die. Without shedding of blood there is no remission of penalty. Even in cases where physical suffering does not take place, a suffering of another kind does. A citizen within the province of civil law is said to make amends for his fault when he pays a fine and suffers a loss of money as the compensation to civil justice. What, then, is suffering?

Suffering is of three kinds: (1) calamity, (2) chastisement, and (3) punishment or penalty.

Calamity does not refer to sin and guilt. It is a kind of suffering that befalls man by the providence of God for other reasons than disciplinary or judicial. Calamitous suffering, however, it should be noticed, occurs only in a sinful world. Consequently, it is never found isolated and by itself alone. It is associated either with chastisement (as when a calamity falls upon a child of God) or with punishment (as when it falls upon the impenitent sinner). Calamity is therefore rather an element in suffering than the whole of the suffering. When, for illustration, some of the Galileans had been cruelly put to death by Pilate (Luke 13:1-5), our Lord distinctly told those who informed him of this fact that these Galileans “were not sinners above all the Galileans because they suffered such things.” They were sinners, but not the worst of sinners. In other words, he taught them that the whole of this suffering was not penal. As sinners, they deserved to suffer; and some of this suffering was for their sins. But as they were not greater sinners than other Galileans, they did not deserve a suffering that was so much greater than that of the Galilean people as a whole. A part of this extraordinary suffering, therefore, was calamity, not punishment. As such, it had no reference to the guilt of the Galileans. If it had, it would have been a proof that they “were sinners above all the Galileans.” Our Lord then repeats and emphasizes the same truth by an allusion to the fall of the tower in Siloam upon some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem. This event did not prove that these few persons were sinners “above all men that dwelled in Jerusalem.” There was, therefore, a calamitous as well as a penal element in this fall of the tower. The same doctrine is taught by the extraordinary sufferings of the patriarch Job. Job’s friends contended that these were all and wholly penal. They inferred that Job had been guilty of some extraordinary sin which merited this extraordinary punishment, and they urged him to confess it. The patriarch, though acknowledging himself to be a sinner and deserving to suffer for sin (Job 42:5-6), was not conscious of any such extraordinary act of transgression as his friends supposed he must have committed and cannot understand why he should have been visited with such enormous afflictions. Both he and they are finally informed by God himself, out of the whirlwind, that the extraordinariness of the suffering is due to the will of God; that it is of the nature of calamity, not of penalty. Jehovah resolves the mystery in the uncommon treatment of Job into an act of almighty power by an infinitely wise being who gives no reason for his procedure in this instance (Job 38:1-41; Job 39:1-30; Job 40:1-24; Job 41:1-34). Elihu, the youngest of the speakers, seems to have had an intimation in his own mind that this was the true explanation of the dark problem: “I will answer you that God is greater than man. Why do you strive against him? For he gives not account of any of his matters” (33:12-13). The second species of suffering is chastisement. This is spoken of in Hebrews 12:6 : “For whom the Lord loves, he chastens (paideuei).”⁹¹[Note: 1 91. παιδεύει = treats like a child] Chastisement and punishment are distinguished from each other in 1 Corinthians 11:32 : “When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.” The purpose of chastisement is discipline and moral improvement. The reason for it is not secret and unknown, as in the case of calamity. It is adapted to reform. It is administered by parental affection, not by judicial severity. It is the form which suffering assumes within the family. The parent does not cause the child to feel pain for the satisfaction of justice, but for personal improvement. The suffering does indeed remind the child of his guilt and is suggestive of penalty, but it is not itself penal. Family discipline is not of the nature of retribution.

Hence analogies drawn from the family do not apply to the civil government and still less to divine government, when guilt and retribution are the subjects under consideration. Guilt and retribution are not res domi;⁹²[Note: 2 92. res domi = matters of the home] they are not family affairs. The family was not established for the purpose of punishing criminals, but of educating children. Because a human father may forgive a child, that is, may forego the infliction of suffering for an offense, without any satisfaction being rendered for him by a substitute and without any reference to the claims of law, it does not follow that the state can do this or that the supreme ruler can. Within the sphere of family life, there is nothing judicial and retributive. There is, therefore, no analogy between the two spheres. There can be no legitimate arguing from a sphere in which the retributive element is altogether excluded, such as that of the father and the child, over into a sphere in which the retributive is the prime element, such as that of God the just and man the guilty. It is metabasis eis allo genos.⁹³[Note: 3 93. μετάβασις εἰς ἀλλο γένος = a change into another kind] A parent is at liberty in case he judges that in a particular instance the child will be morally the better for so doing to forego chastisement altogether. He can pass by the transgression without inflicting any pain at all upon the child. But the magistrate has no right to do this in the instance of crime against the state. He must cause each and every transgression to receive the penalty prescribed by the statute. Furthermore, since chastisement has no reference to crime, it is not graduated by justice and the degree of the offense, but by expediency and the aim to reform. Sometimes a small fault in a child may be chastised with a severe infliction, and a great fault with a mild one. The object not being to weigh out penalty in exact proportion to crime, but to discipline and reform the character, the amount of suffering inflicted is measured by this aim and object. A very slight offense, if there is a tendency frequently to repeat it on the part of the child, may require a heavy chastisement, so that the habit may be broken up. And on the other hand, a very grave offense which is exceptional in its nature and to which there is no habitual tendency on the part of the child, may be best managed with a slight infliction of pain or even with none at all. A rebuke merely may be better adapted to promote the reformation of the offender. All this is illustrated in God’s dealings with his own children. A Christian of uncommon excellence to human view sometimes experiences a great affliction, while one of less devoutness, apparently, is only slightly afflicted or perhaps not at all. This difference is not caused by the degree of demerit in each instance, but by what the divine eye sees to be required in each case in order to the best development of character.

Now the relation of a believer to God is like that of the child to the earthly father. Man enters into God’s heavenly family by the act of faith in Christ. All the suffering that befalls him in this sphere is therefore of the nature of chastisement, not of punishment or retribution. It is not intrinsically endless and hopeless, as divine retribution is: “I will visit their transgression with the rod; nevertheless my loving-kindness I will not utterly take from him”; “he will not always chide; neither will he keep his anger forever” (Psalms 89:31-34; Psalms 103:9; Jeremiah 10:24). The penalty due to the believer’s sin has been endured for him by his Redeemer, and therefore there is no need of his enduring it. Justice does not exact penalty twice over. Consequently, whenever the believer suffers pain from any cause or source whatever, he is not suffering retributive punishment for purposes of law and justice, but corrective chastisement for purposes of self-discipline and spiritual improvement: epi to sympheron⁹⁴[Note: 4 94. ἐπὶ τὸ συμφέρον = for what is profitable] (Hebrews 12:10). This suffering, though for the present moment not joyous but grievous, yet after it has been submissively endured, works out the peaceable fruit of righteousness (12:11). Even death itself, which is the climax of suffering, is not penal for a believer. Its sting, that is, its retributive quality, is extracted (1 Corinthians 15:55-56). Suffering is penal when it is intended and felt to be such and is chastisement when it is not so intended and felt. God intends a benefit, not a punishment, when he causes a believer in Christ to suffer the pains of dissolution; and the believer so understands it. He feels that it is fatherly discipline. When a penitent believer dies, God supports and comforts the departing soul; but when an impenitent unbeliever dies, the soul is left to itself without support and comfort from God. The tranquilizing presence of God converts death into chastisement; the absence of such a presence makes it penalty. (See supplement 6.2.4.) The relation of a rebellious and unbelieving man to God is like that of a rebellious citizen to the state. All that such a citizen can expect from the government under which he lives is justice, the due reward of his disobedience. The state is not the family, and what is peculiar to the one is not to the other. The disobedient citizen cannot expect from the magistrate the patient forbearance and affectionate tuition which the disobedient child meets with from a parent with a view to his discipline and moral improvement. The citizen is entitled only to justice, and if he gets it in the form of the righteous punishment of his crime he must be silent. No man may complain of justice or quarrel with it. To do so is an absurdity, as well as a fault. By creation, man was within the circle both of divine government and the divine family. Holy Adam was at once a subject and a child. By apostasy and rebellion, he threw himself out of the circle of God’s family, but not out of the circle of God’s government. Sinful man is invited and even commanded to reenter the divine family when he is invited and commanded to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of his sins. But so long as he is an unbeliever, he has not reentered it and is not an affectionate or “dear” child of God. The phraseology in Jeremiah 31:20 (Ephraim is “my dear son”); Ephesians 5:1 (“be followers of God as dear children”); Romans 8:16-17 (“the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, and if children then heirs”); Galatians 3:26 (“you are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus”); and Matthew 5:9 (“the peacemakers shall be called the children of God”) is not applicable to men indiscriminately, but only to believers. The childhood and the fatherhood in this case is special, because it is founded in redemption.

There is a providential fatherhood and childhood spoken of in Scripture which is not sufficient to constitute fallen man a member of God’s heavenly family. In Acts 17:28 all men are called the “offspring” of God; and in Malachi 2:10 the question is asked: we not all one father?” This providential fatherhood and childhood is founded in creation. This is proved by a second question in 2:10, which follows the one already cited and explains it: “Has not one God created us?” And in Acts 17:26 the reason given why all nations are the offspring of God is that they are “made of one blood” by their Creator. Creation is a kind of paternity. In Job 38:28-29 this is extended even to the inanimate creation: “Has the rain a father? Or who has begotten the drops of the dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? And the hoary frost of heaven, who has gendered it?” In Deuteronomy 2:27 idolatrous Israel is represented as “saying to a stock, You are my father; and to a stone, You have brought me forth.” In acknowledging a false God to be their maker, they acknowledged him to be their providential father. In accordance with this, God says to a wicked generation “whose spot is not the spot of his children,” who are not “dear” children in the special sense: “Do you thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? Is not he your father that bought you? Has he not made you and established you?” (Deuteronomy 32:6). Our Lord teaches (Matthew 7:11) that “evil” men have a “father in heaven” and explains this fatherhood by God’s readiness to bestow “good things” in his general providence. This association of paternity with creation and providence is found also in secular literature. Plato (Timaeus 9) says that “to discover the Creator and Father of this universe is indeed difficult.” Horace (Odes 1.12) speaks of “the Father of all, who governs the affairs of men and gods.” Creation, together with providence and government which are necessarily associated with creation, is a solid basis for this kind of paternity. It implies benevolent care and kindness toward its objects, and these are paternal qualities. God’s providential and governmental goodness toward all his rational creatures is often referred to in Scripture: “Your Father which is in heaven makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain upon the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45); “he left not himself without witness, in that he did good and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). The fact, then, that God creates man after his own image a rational and immortal being, that he continually upholds him and extends to him the blessings of a kind and watchful providence, and still more that he compassionates him in his sinful and guilty condition and provides for him a way of salvation-all this justifies the use of the term father in reference to God and the term child in reference to man. But the fatherhood and childhood, in this case, are different from those of redemption and adoption. The former may exist without the latter. God as the universal parent, while showing providential benevolence and kindness to an impenitent sinner, “filling his mouth with food and gladness” all the days of his earthly existence, may finally punish him forever for his ungrateful abuse of paternal goodness, for his transgression of moral law, and especially for his rejection of the offer of forgiveness in Christ. And this lost man is still, even in his lost condition, one of God’s “offspring.” Abraham, speaking in the place of God, calls Dives in hell a child of the universal parent: “Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things” (Luke 16:25). And Dives recognizes the relationship when he says, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me” (16:24). The providential fatherhood of God is thus shown to be consistent with the punishment of a rebellious son. It is also consistent with the refusal to abate the merited punishment. Dives asks for a drop of water to cool his tongue and is refused. Dives was an impenitent man. He did not confess his sin or implore its forgiveness. He only asked for deliverance from suffering. He lacked the spirit of the prodigal son and of the penitent thief. He did not say, “Father, I have sinned and am no more worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired servants. I am in this condemnation justly. I am receiving the due reward of my deeds.” The universal fatherhood and childhood may exist without the special, but not the special without the universal. There may be creation, providence, and government without redemption, but not redemption without the former. A man may experience all the blessings of God’s general paternity without those of his special, but not the blessings of God’s special fatherhood without those of his general. Christ speaks of those who are not God’s children in the special sense, when he says, in reply to the assertion of the Jews that “we have one Father, even God”: “If God were your Father, you would love me. You are of your father, the devil” (John 8:41-44). St. John refers to the same class in the words “in this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil” (1 John 3:10). When men universally are commanded to say “our Father who is in heaven,” they are commanded to do so with the heart, not with the lips merely. They have no permission to employ the terms of the family from the position of a rebel. Says Christ, “Why call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). In like manner God says, “A son honors his father: If I be a father, where is my honor?” (Malachi 1:6). The fact of the providential fatherhood, as previously remarked, is not sufficient to constitute fallen men members of God’s heavenly family. Unfallen man was a member of the heavenly family merely by the fatherhood of creation and providence; but after his rebellion and apostasy this ceased to be the case. Redemption was needed in order to restore him to membership. The whole human family is not now God’s heavenly family. Only a part of it are the dear children of God. Those only are members of God’s family who are members of Christ, “of whom the whole family in heaven and earth [the church above and below] is named” (Ephesians 3:15). All others “are bastards and not sons” (Hebrews 12:8).⁹⁵[Note: 5 95. WS: See the excellent treatise of Crawford, Fatherhood of God.]

The third species of suffering is punishment. This is pain inflicted because of guilt. The intention of it is the satisfaction of justice. Retributive justice is expressed in the saying “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This is the lex talionis⁹⁶[Note: 6 96. law of retaliation] or law of requital.⁹⁷[Note: 7 97. WS: See the explanation and defense of it by Kalisch onExodus 21:22-25.] Our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, did not abolish this law, but placed its execution upon the proper basis. “That which was addressed to the judges,” says Calvin (Henry, Life 1.287), “private individuals applied to themselves, and it was this abuse which our Lord Jesus Christ would correct.” The private person may not put out the eye of him who has put out an eye, but the government may. Retribution is not the function of the individual. It belongs to God and to the government, which is ordained of God: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves; for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19). This retributive function is delegated by God to the magistrate: “For he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil” (13:4). When the private individual takes the lex talionis⁹⁸[Note: 8 98. law of retaliation] into his own hands, it is revenge. Christ forbade this. When God or the government administers it, it is vengeance. Christ did not forbid this. The former is selfish and wrong; the latter is dispassionate and right. That particular amount and kind of suffering which is required by the law of requital is punishment. Its primary aim is the satisfaction of justice, not utility to the criminal. The criminal is sacrificed to justice. His private interest is subservient to that of law and government, because the latter is of more importance than the former. Even if he derives no personal benefit from the retribution which he experiences, the one sufficient reason for it still holds good, namely, that he has voluntarily transgressed and deserves to suffer for it. Both the quantity and the quality of the suffering must be considered, in order to penalty. In the first place, the amount of the suffering must be proportionate to the offense. To take human life for a petty larceny would be unjust. To take money as an offset for murder would be unjust. In the second place, suffering must be intended as penal and felt to be penal in order to be penal. It must have this retributive quality. Two men might suffer from God precisely the same amount of suffering, and in one case it might be retribution and in the other chastisement, because in the one case his intention was the satisfaction of law, in the other the correction of his child. Physical death in the case of a wicked man is penal evil, because it is designed as a punishment on the part of God and is felt to be such by the man. God grants no comfort to the wicked in his death; the sting is not extracted, and death is remorseful and punitive. But the very same event of death and the same suffering in amount is chastisement and not punishment for a believer, because it is accompanied with inward strength from God to endure it and is known to be the means of entrance into heaven. The sufferings of Christ the mediator were vicariously penal or atoning because the intention, both on the part of the Father and the Son, was that they should satisfy justice for the sin of man. They were not calamity, for their object is known. The reason for calamitous suffering is secret. And they were not disciplinary, because Christ having no sin could not pass through a process of progressive sanctification. Scripture plainly teaches that our Lord’s sufferings were vicariously retributive; that is, they were endured for the purpose of satisfying justice in the place of the actual transgressor: “Christ has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust” (1 Peter 3:18); “Christ was made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13); “Immanuel was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5); “Jesus our Lord was delivered for our offenses” (Romans 4:25); “he has made him to be sin [a sin offering] for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21); “he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2); “behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29); “he spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all” (Romans 8:32). With this, compare 2 Peter 2:4 : “He spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell.” Penalty in the case of Christ was vicarious; in that of the fallen angels was personal. The penal and atoning sufferings of Christ were twofold: ordinary and extraordinary. The first came upon him by virtue of his human nature. He hungered, thirsted, was weary in body, was sad and grieved in mind, by the operation of the natural laws of matter and mind. All that Christ endured by virtue of his being born of a woman, being made under the law, living a human life, and dying a violent death belongs to this class. The extraordinary sufferings in Christ’s experience came upon him by virtue of a positive act and infliction on the part of God. To these belong, also, all those temptations by Satan which exceeded in their force the common temptations incident to ordinary human life. Through these Christ was caused to suffer more severely than any of his disciples have. And that this was an intentional and preconceived infliction on the part of God, for the purpose of causing the sinner’s substitute to endure a judicial suffering, is proved by the statement that “Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil” (Matthew 4:1). These severe temptations from Satan occurred more than once: “The devil departed from him for a season” (Luke 4:13). But still more extraordinary was that suffering which was caused in the soul of Christ by the immediate agency of God in the garden and on the cross. That agony which forced the blood through the pores of the skin and wrung from the patient and mighty heart of the God-man the cry, “My God, why have you forsaken me!” cannot be explained by the operation of natural laws. There was positive desertion and infliction on the part of God. The human nature was forsaken, as the words of Christ imply. That support and comfort which the humanity had enjoyed, in greater or less degree, during the life of the God-man upon earth was now withdrawn utterly and entirely. One consequence of this was that the physical suffering involved in the crucifixion was unmitigated. Christ had no such support as his confessors have always had in the hour of martyrdom. But this was the least severe part of Christ’s extraordinary suffering. The pain from the death of crucifixion was physical only. There was over and above this a mental distress that was far greater. This is indicated in the terms employed to describe the spiritual condition of Christ’s soul, in the so-called agony in the garden: “He began to be sore amazed and to be very heavy and says unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death” (Mark 14:33-34). The words ekthambeisthai⁹⁹[Note: 9 99. ἐκθαμβεῖσθαι = to be amazed] and adēmonein¹⁰⁰[Note: 00 100. ἀδημονεῖν = to be distressed] imply a species of mental distress that stuns and bewilders. This mental suffering cannot be explained upon ordinary psychological principles, but must be referred to a positive act of God. Christ was sinless and perfect. His inward distress did not result from the workings of a guilty conscience. The agony in the garden and on the cross was not that of remorse; though it was equal to it. Neither was it the agony of despair; though it was equal to it.¹⁰¹[Note: 01 101. WS: Christ felt that he was forsaken of God, but not, like a despairing person, that he was eternally forsaken. The desertion was only temporary. The comforting presence of God returns to Christ, as is indicated in the statement ofLuke 23:46that “Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Again, the agony of Christ was not despair, because in this very cry he says “my God.” A despairing man or angel would say “O God” and would not exclaim, saying, “Why have you forsaken me?” Again, Christ did not experience despair, because he knew that the union between the divine and human natures was indissoluble. He also knew that the covenant of redemption between him and the Father could not fail. His distress did not relate to either of these two particulars. It arose (a) from his view of the nature of the curse upon sin which he had vicariously come under; (b) because the comforting influences from the union of the divine with the human nature were temporarily restrained; (c) from temporary desertion of God; and (d) from positive infliction when the “sword was awakened” against him (Owen, Third Sacramental Discourse). The words why have you forsaken me? express wonder, not ignorance or unbelief or complaint. Christ well knew why he was deserted at this hour, had perfect faith and confidence in his Father, and was entirely submissive to his will. But he was amazed and paralyzed at the immensity of the agony. The word why is not interrogative, but exclamatory. The words are equivalent to “how you have forsaken me!” This is Hugh St. Victor’s explanation (see Hooker 5.48). When a Christian exclaims, “Why am I so unbelieving and sinful?” it is only another way of saying, “How unbelieving and sinful I am!” He is not asking for information. He well knows the reason why.]

The positive agency of God, in causing a particular kind of suffering to befall the mediator which could not have befallen him by the operation of natural causes, is spoken of in Isaiah 53:5-6; Isaiah 53:10 : “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. It pleased the Lord to bruise him.” And again in Zechariah 13:7 : “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd and against the man that is my fellow, says the Lord of hosts; smite the shepherd.” This language teaches that the incarnate second person of the Trinity received upon himself a stroke inflicted by the positive act of another divine person. The Son of God was bruised, wounded, and smitten by God the Father, as the officer and agent of divine justice; and the effects of it appear in that extraordinary mental distress which the mediator exhibited, particularly during the last hours of his earthly life: “While he was buffeted, scourged, and nailed to the cross, we hear nothing from him; but like a lamb before the shearers, he was mute. But when God reached forth his hand and darted his immediate rebukes into his very soul and spirit, then he cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”¹⁰²[Note: 02 102. WS: South, Sermon on Messiah’s Suffering; Edwards, Excellency of Christ in Works 4.189.]

The nature of this suffering is inexplicable, because it has no parallel in human consciousness. The other forms of Christ’s suffering are intelligible, because they were like those of men. Thirst, hunger, weariness, grief at the death of a friend, were the same in Christ that they are in us. But that strange and unique experience which uttered itself in the cry “My God, why have you forsaken me?” belongs to the consciousness of the God-man. Only he who occupied the actual position of the sinner’s substitute can experience such a judicial stroke from eternal justice, and only he can know the peculiarity of the suffering which it produces. Suffering is a form of consciousness, and consciousness can be known only by the possessor of it. (See supplement 6.2.5.)

There are some particulars respecting this positive infliction upon the mediator which must be carefully noted. Though the Father “smote,” “wounded,” and “bruised” the Son, he felt no emotional anger toward the person of the Son. The emotional wrath of God is revealed only against personal unrighteousness, and Christ was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. The Father smote his “beloved Son, in whom he was well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). At the very instant when the Father forsook the Son, he loved him emotionally and personally with the same infinite affection with which he had loved him “before the world was.” When it is said that Christ experienced the “wrath of God,” the meaning is that he experienced a judicial suffering caused by God. The “wrath” of God in this instance is not a divine emotion, but a divine act by which God the Father caused pain in Jesus Christ for a particular purpose. This purpose is judicial and penal, and therefore the act may be called an act of wrath. “The wrath of God is his will to punish”¹⁰³[Note: 03 103. ira dei est voluntas puniendi] (Anselm, Why the God-?Man 1:6). In Romans 13:4 the infliction of suffering by the magistrate upon the criminal is denominated an act of “wrath”: “He is the minister of wrath.” But the magistrate has no emotional anger toward the criminal. God the Father could love the Son, therefore, at the very instant when he visited him with this punitive act. His emotion might be love, while his act was wrath. Nay, his love might be drawn forth by this very willingness of the Son to suffer vicariously for the salvation of man. “We do not admit,” says Calvin (2.16.11), “that God was ever hostile or [emotionally] angry with him. For how could he be angry with his beloved Son in whom his soul delighted? or how could Christ by his intercession appease the Father for others, if the Father were incensed against him? But we affirm that he sustained the weight of divine severity; since being smitten and afflicted of God, he experienced from God all the tokens of wrath and vengeance.” Says Witsius (Covenants 2.6.38): To be the beloved Son of God and at the same time to suffer the wrath of God are not such contrary things as that they cannot stand together. For, as Son, as the Holy One, while obeying the Father in all things, he was always the beloved; and indeed most of all when obedient to the death of the cross; for that was so pleasing to the Father that on account of it he raised him to the highest pitch of exaltation (Php 2:9); though as charged with our sins he felt the wrath of God burning not against himself, but against our sins which he took upon himself.

Second, the Son of God understands the judicial infliction which he undergoes, in this sense. God the Son knows that the blow which he experiences from God the Father is not for sin which he has himself committed. The transaction between the two divine persons is of the nature of a covenant between them. The Son agrees to submit his person, incarnate, to a penal infliction that is required by the attribute of justice. But this attribute is as much an attribute of the Son as it is of the Father. The second trinitarian person is as much concerned for the maintenance of law as is the first. The Son of God is not seized an unwilling victim and offered to justice by the Father. The Son himself is willing and desires to suffer. “I have,” he says, “a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished” (Luke 12:50). This explains the fact that Christ everywhere represents himself as voluntarily giving up his life: “No man takes my life from me; I lay it down of myself” (John 10:18). In some instances he employs his miraculous power to prevent his life from being taken because “his hour was not yet come.” But when the hour had come, though in the full consciousness that “twelve legions of angels” were at his command, he suffers himself to be seized by a handful of men, to be bound, and to be nailed to a cross. So far as the feature of mere voluntariness is concerned, no suicide was ever more voluntary in the manner of his death than was Jesus Christ.

Christ’s Active and Passive Obedience A distinction is made between Christ’s active and passive obedience.¹⁰⁴[Note: 04 104. WS: Philippi, Active Obedience of Christ.] The latter denotes Christ’s sufferings of every kind-the sum total of the sorrow and pain which he endured in his estate of humiliation. The term passive is used etymologically. His suffering is denominated “obedience” because it came by reason of his submission to the conditions under which he voluntarily placed himself when he consented to be the sinner’s substitute. He vicariously submitted to the sentence “the soul that sins, it shall die” and was “obedient unto death” (Php 2:8).

Christ’s passive or suffering obedience is not to be confined to what he experienced in the garden and on the cross. This suffering was the culmination of his piacular sorrow, but not the whole of it. Everything in his human and earthly career that was distressing belongs to his passive obedience. It is a true remark of Edwards that the blood of Christ’s circumcision was as really a part of his vicarious atonement as the blood that flowed from his pierced side. And not only his suffering proper, but his humiliation, also, was expiatory, because this was a kind of suffering. Says Edwards (Redemption 2.1.2): The satisfaction or propitiation of Christ consists either in his suffering evil or his being subject to abasement. Thus Christ made satisfaction for sin by continuing under the power of death while he lay buried in the grave, though neither his body nor soul properly endured any suffering after he was dead. Whatever Christ was subject to that was the judicial fruit of sin had the nature of satisfaction for sin. But not only proper suffering, but all abasement and depression of the state and circumstances of mankind [human nature] below its primitive honor and dignity, such as his body remaining under death, and body and soul remaining separate, and other things that might be mentioned, are the judicial fruits of sin.

Christ’s active obedience is his perfect performance of the requirements of the moral law. He obeyed this law in heart and in conduct, without a single slip or failure. He was “holy, harmless, and undefiled” (Hebrews 7:26). Some theologians confine Christ’s atonement to his passive obedience, in such sense that his active obedience does not enter into it and make a part of it.¹⁰⁵[Note: 05 105. WS: Piscator was the first formally to present this view. John Taylor of Norwich went to an opposite extreme and held that active obedience was the sole cause of man’s salvation. He denied any piacular effect of Christ’s death and held that as a reward of Christ’s active obedience alone the remission of sin was given to man, as the eminent services of a soldier are rewarded by the monarch by benefits to his family.] Since atonement consists in suffering and since obedience of the divine law is not suffering but happiness, they contend that Christ’s active obedience cannot contribute anything that is strictly piacular or atoning. This would be true in reference to the active obedience of a mere creature, but not in reference to the active obedience of the God-man. It is no humiliation for a created being to be a citizen of divine government, to be made under the law, and to be required to obey it. But it is humiliation for the Son of God to be so made and to be so required to obey. It is stooping down when the Ruler of the universe becomes a subject and renders obedience to a superior. Insofar as Christ’s active obedience was an element in his humiliation, it was an element also in his expiation. Consequently, we must say that both the active and the passive obedience enter into the sum total of Christ’s atoning work. Christ’s humiliation confessedly was atoning, and his obedience of the law was a part of his humiliation. The two forms of Christ’s obedience cannot therefore be so entirely separated from each other as is implied in this theory which confines the piacular agency of the mediator to his passive obedience. But while there is this atoning element in Christ’s active obedience, it is yet true that the principal reference of the active obedience is to the law as precept, rather than to the law as penalty. It is more meritorious of reward than it is piacular of guilt. The chief function of Christ’s obedience of the moral law is to earn a title for the believer to the rewards of heaven. This part of Christ’s agency is necessary, because merely to atone for past transgression would not be a complete salvation. It would, indeed, save man from hell, but it would not introduce him into heaven. He would be delivered from the law’s punishment, but would not be entitled to the law’s reward: “The man which does the things of the law shall live by them” (Romans 10:5). Mere innocence is not entitled to a reward. Obedience is requisite in order to this. Adam was not meritorious until he had obeyed the commandment, “Do this.” Before he could “enter into life,” he must “keep the commandment,” like every subject of divine government and candidate for heavenly reward. The mediator, therefore, must not only suffer for man, but must obey for him, if he would do for man everything that the law requires. Accordingly, Christ is said to be made of God unto the believer “wisdom” and “sanctification” as well as “righteousness” and “redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30). Believers are described as “complete” in Christ (Colossians 1:10); that is, they are entitled to eternal blessedness as well as delivered from eternal misery. Christ is said to be “the end (telos)¹⁰⁶[Note: 06 106. τέλος] of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes” (Romans 10:4). This means that Christ completely fulfills the law for the believer; but the law requires obedience to its precept as well as endurance of its penalty. Complete righteousness is conformity to the law in both respects: “By his obedience shall many be made righteous” (Romans 5:19); “by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many” (Isaiah 53:11); “the Lord our righteousness” (Jeremiah 23:6); “in the Lord have I righteousness” (45:24; Romans 8:4; Php 3:9; 2 Corinthians 5:21). The imputation of Christ’s active obedience is necessary, also, in order to hope and confidence respecting the endless future. If the believer founds his expectation of an eternity of blessedness upon the amount of obedience which he has himself rendered to the law and the degree of holiness which he has personally attained here upon earth, he is filled with doubt and fear respecting the final recompense. He knows that he has not, by his own work, earned and merited such an infinite reward as “glory, honor, and immortality”: “We cannot by our best works merit eternal life at the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion between them and the glory to come” (Westminster Confession 16.5).¹⁰⁷[Note: 07 107. WS: See on this point, Paley, sermon onHebrews 9:26, part 2.] But if he founds his title to eternal life and his expectation of it upon the obedience of Christ for him, his anxiety disappears. (See supplement 6.2.6.) A distinction is made by some theologians between “satisfaction” and “atonement.” Christ’s satisfaction is his fulfilling the law both as precept and penalty. Christ’s atonement, as antithetic to satisfaction, includes only what Christ does to fulfill the law as penalty. According to this distinction, Christ’s atonement would be a part of his satisfaction. The objections to this mode of distinguishing are that (a) satisfaction is better fitted to denote Christ’s piacular work than his whole work of redemption; in theological literature, it is more commonly the synonym of atonement; (b) by this distinction, atonement may be made to rest upon the passive obedience alone to the exclusion of the active. This will depend upon whether “obedience” is employed in the comprehensive sense of including all that Christ underwent in his estate of humiliation, both in obeying and suffering.

Another distinction is made by some between “satisfaction” and “merit.” In this case, “satisfaction” is employed in a restricted signification. It denotes the satisfaction of retributive justice and has respect to the law as penalty. Thus employed, the term is equivalent to “atonement.” “Merit” as antithetic to “satisfaction” has respect to the law as precept and is founded upon Christ’s active obedience. Christ vicariously obeys the law and so vicariously merits for the believer the reward of eternal life. Respecting this distinction, Turretin (14.13.12) remarks that the two things are not to be separated from each other. We are not to say as some do that the “satisfaction” is by the passive work of Christ alone and that the “merit” is by the active work alone. The satisfaction and the merit are not to be thus viewed in isolation, each by itself, because the benefit in each depends upon the total work of Christ. For sin cannot be expiated until the law as precept has been perfectly fulfilled; nor can a title to eternal life be merited before the guilt of sin has been atoned for. Meruit ergo satisfaciendo, et merendo satisfecit.¹⁰⁸[Note: 08 108. therefore, he merited by making satisfaction, and he made satisfaction by meriting]

There is some ambiguity in this distinction, also. The term merit is often applied to Christ’s passive obedience as well as to his active. The “merit of Christ’s blood” is a familiar phrase. The mediator was meritorious in reference to the law’s penalty as well as to the law’s precept.¹⁰⁹[Note: 09 109. WS: Owen (Justification, chap. 10) endorses the distinction as made by Grotius: “Whereas we have said that Christ has procured two things for us, freedom from punishment and a reward, the ancient church attributes the one of them to his satisfaction, the other to his merit.” Edwards adopts it: “Whatever in Christ had the nature of satisfaction, it was by virtue of the suffering or humiliation in it. But whatever had the nature of merit, it was by virtue of the obedience or righteousness that was in it” (Redemption in Works 1.402).]

Atonement and Its Necessity in Relation to Divine Justice

Having thus considered the nature of atonement and the sufferings of the mediator as constituting it, we proceed to notice some further characteristics of it. In the first place, atonement is correlated to justice, not to benevolence. Some have maintained that retributive justice is a phase of benevolence. They would ultimately reduce all the moral attributes to one, namely, divine love. This theory is built upon the text “God is love.” But there are texts affirming that “God is light” (1 John 1:5) and that “God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). The affirmation “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts” (Isaiah 6:3) is equivalent to “God is holiness.” Upon the strength of these texts, it might be contended that all divine attributes may be reduced to that of wisdom or of justice or of holiness.¹¹⁰[Note: 10 110. WS: Bengel composed his Syntagma de sanctitate (Book on holiness) to prove that all the attributes of God are implied in Hebrew qādôš (