Chapter XLIV: Section IV: The Offices Of Christ (5)

The Ethical theory of the atonement holds that Christ stands in such relation to humanity, that what God’s holiness demands Christ is under obligation to pay, longs to pay, inevitably does pay, and pays so fully, in virtue of his two-fold nature, that every claim of justice is satisfied, and the sinner who accepts what Christ has done in his behalf is saved.

Dr. R. W. Dale, in his work on The Atonement, states the question
before us: “What must be Christ’s relation to men, in order to
make it possible that he should die for them?” We would change the
form of the question, so that it should read: “What must be
Christ’s relation to men, in order to make it not only possible,
but just and necessary, that he should die for them?” Dale
replies, for substance, that Christ must have had an original and
central relation to the human race and to every member of it; see
Denney, Death of Christ, 318. In our treatment of Ethical Monism,
of the Trinity, and of the Person of Christ, we have shown that
Christ, as Logos, as the immanent God, is the Life of humanity,
laden with responsibility for human sin, while yet he personally
knows no sin. Of this race-responsibility and race-guilt which
Christ assumed, and for which he suffered so soon as man had
sinned, Christ’s obedience and suffering in the flesh were the
visible reflection and revelation. Only in Christ’s organic union
with the race can we find the vital relation which will make his
vicarious sufferings either possible or just. Only when we regard
Calvary as revealing eternal principles of the divine nature, can
we see how the sufferings of those few hours upon the Cross could
suffice to save the millions of mankind.

Dr. E. Y. Mullins has set forth the doctrine of the Atonement in
five propositions: “1. In order to atonement Christ became vitally
united to the human race. It was only by assuming the nature of
those he would redeem that he could break the power of their
captor.... The human race may be likened to many sparrows who had
been caught in the snare of the fowler, and were hopelessly
struggling against their fate. A great eagle swoops down from the
sky, becomes entangled with the sparrows in the net, and then
spreading his mighty wings he soars upward bearing the snare and
captives and breaking its meshes he delivers himself and them....
Christ the fountain head of life imparting his own vitality to the
redeemed, and causing them to share in the experiences of
Gethsemane and Calvary, breaking thus for them the power of sin
and death—this is the atonement, by virtue of which sin is put
away and man is united to God.”

Dr. Mullins properly regards this view of atonement as too narrow,
inasmuch as it disregards the differences between Christ and men
arising from his sinlessness and his deity. He adds therefore that
“2. Christ became the substitute for sinners; 3. became the
representative of men before God; 4. gained power over human
hearts to win them from sin and reconcile them to God; and 5.
became a propitiation and satisfaction, rendering the remission of
sins consistent with the divine holiness.” If Christ’s union with
the race be one which begins with creation and antedates the Fall,
all of the later points in the above scheme are only natural
correlates and consequences of the first,—substitution,
representation, reconciliation, propitiation, satisfaction, are
only different aspects of the work which Christ does for us, by
virtue of the fact that he is the immanent God, the Life of
humanity, priest and victim, condemning and condemned, atoning and
atoned.

We have seen how God can justly demand satisfaction; we now show how Christ can justly make it; or, in other words, how the innocent can justly suffer for the guilty. The solution of the problem lies in Christ’s union with humanity. The first result of that union is obligation to suffer for men; since, being one with the race, Christ had a share in the responsibility of the race to the law and the justice of God. In him humanity was created; at every stage of its existence humanity was upheld by his power; as the immanent God he was the life of the race and of every member of it. Christ’s sharing of man’s life justly and inevitably subjected him to man’s exposures and liabilities, and especially to God’s condemnation on account of sin.

In the seventh chapter of Elsie Venner, Oliver Wendell Holmes
makes the Reverend Mr. Honeywood lay aside an old sermon on Human
Nature, and write one on The Obligations of an infinite Creator to
a finite Creature. A. J. F. Behrends grounded our Lord’s
representative relation not in his human nature but in his divine
nature. “He is our representative not because he was in the loins
of Adam, but because we, Adam included, were in his loins.
Personal created existence is grounded in the Logos, so that God
must deal with him as well as with every individual sinner, and
sin and guilt and punishment must smite the Logos as well as the
sinner, and that, whether the sinner is saved or not. This is not,
as is often charged, a denial of grace or of freedom in grace, for
it is no denial of freedom or grace to show that they are
eternally rational and conformable to eternal law. In the ideal
sphere, necessity and freedom, law and grace, coalesce.” J. C. C.
Clarke, Man and his Divine Father, 387—“Vicarious atonement does
not consist in any single act.... No one act embraces it all, and
no one definition can compass it.” In this sense we may adopt the
words of Forsyth: “In the atonement the Holy Father dealt with a
world’s sin on (not _in_) a world-soul.”

G. B. Foster, on _Mat. 26:53, 54_—“_Thinkest thou that I cannot
beseech my Father, and he shall even now send me more than twelve
legions of angels? How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled,
that thus it must be?_” “On this ‘_must be_’ the Scripture is
based, not this ‘_must be_’ on the Scripture. The ‘_must be_’ was
the ethical demand of his connection with the race. It would have
been immoral for him to break away from the organism. The law of
the organism is: From each according to ability; to each according
to need. David in song, Aristotle in logic, Darwin in science, are
under obligation to contribute to the organism the talent they
have. Shall they be under obligation, and Jesus go scot-free? But
Jesus can contribute atonement, and because he can, he must.
Moreover, he is a member, not only of the whole, but of each
part,—_Rom. 12:5_—‘_members one of another._’ As membership of the
whole makes him liable for the sin of the whole, so his being a
member of the part makes him liable for the sin of that part.”

Fairbairn, Place of Christ in Modern Theology, 483, 484—“There is
a sense in which the Patripassian theory is right; the Father did
suffer; though it was not as the Son that he suffered, but in
modes distinct and different.... Through his pity the misery of
man became his sorrow.... There is a disclosure of his suffering
in the surrender of the Son. This surrender represented the
sacrifice and passion of the whole Godhead. Here degree and
proportion are out of place; were it not, we might say that the
Father suffered more in giving than the Son in being given. He who
gave to duty had not the reward of him who rejoiced to do it....
One member of the Trinity could not suffer without all
suffering.... The visible sacrifice was that of the Son; the
invisible sacrifice was that of the Father.” The Andover Theory,
represented in Progressive Orthodoxy, 43-53, affirms not only the
Moral Influence of the Atonement, but also that the whole race of
mankind is naturally in Christ and was therefore punished in and
by his suffering and death; quoted in Hovey, Manual of Christian
Theology, 269; see Hovey’s own view, 270-276, though he does not
seem to recognize the atonement as existing before the
incarnation.

Christ’s share in the responsibility of the race to the law and justice of God was not destroyed by his incarnation, nor by his purification in the womb of the virgin. In virtue of the organic unity of the race, each member of the race since Adam has been born into the same state into which Adam fell. The consequences of Adam’s sin, both to himself and to his posterity, are: (1) depravity, or the corruption of human nature; (2) guilt, or obligation to make satisfaction for sin to the divine holiness; (3) penalty, or actual endurance of loss or suffering visited by that holiness upon the guilty.

Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 117—“Christ had taken upon
him, as the living expression of himself, a nature which was
weighed down, not merely by present incapacities, but by present
incapacities as part of the judicial necessary result of accepted
and inherent sinfulness. Human nature was not only disabled but
guilty, and the disabilities were themselves a consequence and
aspect of the guilt”; see review of Moberly by Rashdall, in Jour.
Theol. Studies, 3:198-211. Lidgett, Spir. Princ. of Atonement,
166-168, criticizes Dr. Dale for neglecting the fatherly purpose
of the Atonement to serve the moral training of the
child—punishment marking ill-desert in order to bring this
ill-desert to the consciousness of the offender,—and for
neglecting also the positive assertion in the atonement that the
law is holy and just and good—something more than the negative
expression of sin’s ill-desert. See especially Lidgett’s chapter
on the relation of our Lord to the human race, 351-378, in which
he grounds the atonement in the solidarity of mankind, its organic
union with the Son of God, and Christ’s immanence in humanity.

Bowne, The Atonement, 101—“Something like this work of grace was a
moral necessity with God. It was an awful responsibility that was
taken when our human race was launched with its fearful
possibilities of good and evil. God thereby put himself under
infinite obligation to care for his human family; and reflections
upon his position as Creator and Ruler, instead of removing only
make more manifest this obligation. So long as we conceive of God
as sitting apart in supreme ease and self-satisfaction, he is not
love at all, but only a reflex of our selfishness and vulgarity.
So long as we conceive him as bestowing upon us out of his
infinite fulness but at no real cost to himself, he sinks before
the moral heroes of the race. There is ever a higher thought
possible, until we see God taking the world upon his heart,
entering into the fellowship of our sorrow, and becoming the
supreme burdenbearer and leader in all self-sacrifice. Then only
are the possibilities of grace and love and moral heroism and
condescension filled up, so that nothing higher remains. And the
work of Christ himself, so far as it was an historical event, must
be viewed, not merely as a piece of history, but also as a
manifestation of that Cross which was hidden in the divine love
from the foundation of the world, and which is involved in the
existence of the human world at all.”

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:90, 91—“Conceive of the
ideal of moral perfection incarnate in a human personality, and at
the same time one who loves us with a love so absolute that he
identifies himself with us and makes our good and evil his
own—bring together these elements in a living, conscious human
spirit, and you have in it a capacity of shame and anguish, a
possibility of bearing the burden of human guilt and wretchedness,
which lost and guilty humanity can never bear for itself.”

If Christ had been born into the world by ordinary generation, he too would have had depravity, guilt, penalty. But he was not so born. In the womb of the Virgin, the human nature which he took was purged from its depravity. But this purging away of depravity did not take away guilt, or penalty. There was still left the just exposure to the penalty of violated law. Although Christ’s nature was purified, his obligation to suffer yet remained. He might have declined to join himself to humanity, and then he need not have suffered. He might have sundered his connection with the race, and then he need not have suffered. But once born of the Virgin, once possessed of the human nature that was under the curse, he was bound to suffer. The whole mass and weight of God’s displeasure against the race fell on him, when once he became a member of the race.

Because Christ is essential humanity, the universal man, the life
of the race, he is the central brain to which and through which
all ideas must pass. He is the central heart to which and through
which all pains must be communicated. You cannot telephone to your
friend across the town without first ringing up the central
office. You cannot injure your neighbor without first injuring
Christ. Each one of us can say of him: “_Against thee, thee only,
have I sinned_” (_Ps. 51:4_). Because of his central and
all-inclusive humanity, he must bear in his own person all the
burdens of humanity, and must be “_the Lamb of God, that_” taketh,
and so “_taketh away, the sin of the world_” (_John 1:29_). Simms
Reeves, the great English tenor, said that the passion-music was
too much for him; he was found completely overcome after singing
the prophet’s words in _Lam. 1:12_—“_Is it nothing to you, all ye
that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my
sorrow, which is brought upon me, Wherewith Jehovah hath afflicted
me in the day of his fierce anger._”

Father Damien gave his life in ministry to the lepers’ colony of
the Hawaiian Islands. Though free from the disease when he
entered, he was at last himself stricken with the leprosy, and
then wrote: “I must now stay with my own people.” Once a leper,
there was no release. When Christ once joined himself to humanity,
all the exposures and liabilities of humanity fell upon him.
Through himself personally without sin, he was made sin for us.
Christ inherited guilt and penalty. _Heb. 2:14, 15_—“_Since then
the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in
like manner partook of the same; that through death he might bring
to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and
might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their
life-time subject to bondage._”

Only God can forgive sin, because only God can feel it in its true
heinousness and rate it at its true worth. Christ could forgive
sin because he added to the divine feeling with regard to sin the
anguish of a pure humanity on account of it. Shelley, Julian and
Maddolo: “Me, whose heart a stranger’s tear might wear, As
water-drops the sandy fountain-stone; Me, who am as a nerve o’er
which do creep The Else unfelt oppressions of the earth.” S. W.
Culver: “We cannot be saved, as we are taught geometry, by lecture
and diagram. No person ever yet saved another from drowning by
standing coolly by and telling him the importance of rising to the
surface and the necessity of respiration. No, he must plunge into
the destructive element, and take upon himself the very condition
of the drowning man, and by the exertion of his own strength, by
the vigor of his own life, save him from the impending death. When
your child is encompassed by the flames that consume your
dwelling, you will not save him by calling to him from without.
You must make your way through the devouring flame, till you come
personally into the very conditions of his peril and danger, and,
thence returning, bear him forth to freedom and safety.”

Notice, however, that this guilt which Christ took upon himself by his union with humanity was: (1) not the guilt of personal sin—such guilt as belongs to every adult member of the race; (2) not even the guilt of inherited depravity—such guilt as belongs to infants, and to those who have not come to moral consciousness; but (3) solely the guilt of Adam’s sin, which belongs, prior to personal transgression, and apart from inherited depravity, to every member of the race who has derived his life from Adam. This original sin and inherited guilt, but without the depravity that ordinarily accompanies them, Christ takes, and so takes away. He can justly bear penalty, because he inherits guilt. And since this guilt is not his personal guilt, but the guilt of that one sin in which “all sinned”—the guilt of the common transgression of the race in Adam, the guilt of the root-sin from which all other sins have sprung—he who is personally pure can vicariously bear the penalty due to the sin of all.

Christ was conscious of innocence in his personal relations, but
not in his race relations. He gathered into himself all the
penalties of humanity, as Winkelried gathered into his own bosom
at Sempach the pikes of the Austrians and so made a way for the
victorious Swiss. Christ took to himself the shame of humanity, as
the mother takes upon her the daughter’s shame, repenting of it
and suffering on account of it. But this could not be in the case
of Christ unless there had been a tie uniting him to men far more
vital, organic, and profound than that which unites mother and
daughter. Christ is naturally the life of all men, before he
becomes spiritually the life of true believers. Matheson, Spir.
Devel. of St. Paul, 197-215, 244, speaks of Christ’s secular
priesthood, of an outer as well as an inner membership in the body
of Christ. He is sacrificial head of the world as well as
sacrificial head of the church. In Paul’s latest letters, he
declares of Christ that he is “_the Savior of all men, specially
of them that believe_” (_1 Tim. 4:10_). There is a grace that
“_hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men_” (_Tit. 2:11_). He
“_gave gifts unto men_” (_Eph. 4:8_), “_Yea, among the rebellious
also, that Jehovah God might dwell with them_” (_Ps. 68:18_).
“_Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected_”
(_1 Tim. 4:4_).

Royce, World and Individual, 2:408—“Our sorrows are identically
God’s own sorrows.... I sorrow, but the sorrow is not only mine.
This same sorrow, just as it is for me, is God’s sorrow.... The
divine fulfilment can be won only through the sorrows of time....
Unless God knows sorrow, he knows not the highest good, which
consists in the overcoming of sorrow.” Godet, in The Atonement,
331-351—“Jesus condemned sin as God condemned it. When he felt
forsaken on the Cross, he performed that act by which the offender
himself condemns his sin, and by that condemnation, so far as it
depends on himself, makes it to disappear. There is but one
conscience in all moral beings. This echo in Christ of God’s
judgment against sin was to re-echo in all other human
consciences. This has transformed God’s love of compassion into a
love of satisfaction. Holiness joins suffering to sin. But the
element of reparation in the Cross was not in the suffering but in
the submission. The child who revolts against its punishment has
made no reparation at all. We appropriate Christ’s work when we by
faith ourselves condemn sin and accept him.”

If it be asked whether this is not simply a suffering for his own sin, or rather for his own share of the sin of the race, we reply that his own share in the sin of the race is not the sole reason why he suffers; it furnishes only the subjective reason and ground for the proper laying upon him of the sin of all. Christ’s union with the race in his incarnation is only the outward and visible expression of a prior union with the race which began when he created the race. As “in him were all things created,” and as “in him all things consist,” or hold together (Col. 1:16, 17), it follows that he who is the life of humanity must, though personally pure, be involved in responsibility for all human sin, and “it was necessary that the Christ should suffer” (Acts 17:3). This suffering was an enduring of the reaction of the divine holiness against sin and so was a bearing of penalty (Is. 53:6; Gal. 3:13), but it was also the voluntary execution of a plan that antedated creation (Phil. 2:6, 7), and Christ’s sacrifice in time showed what had been in the heart of God from eternity (Heb. 9:14; Rev. 13:8).

Our treatment is intended to meet the chief modern objection to
the atonement. Greg, Creed of Christendom, 2:222, speaks of “the
strangely inconsistent doctrine that God is so _just_ that he
could not let sin go unpunished, yet so _unjust_ that he could
punish it in the person of the innocent.... It is for orthodox
dialectics to explain how the divine justice can be _impugned_ by
pardoning the guilty, and yet _vindicated_ by punishing the
innocent” (quoted in Lias, Atonement, 16). In order to meet this
difficulty, the following accounts of Christ’s identification with
humanity have been given:

1. That of Isaac Watts (see Bib. Sac., 1875:421). This holds that
the humanity of Christ, both in body and soul, preëxisted before
the incarnation, and was manifested to the patriarchs. We reply
that Christ’s human nature is declared to be derived from the
Virgin.

2. That of R. W. Dale (Atonement, 265-440). This holds that Christ
is responsible for human sin because, as the Upholder and Life of
all, he is naturally one with all men, and is spiritually one with
all believers (_Acts 17:28_—“_in him we live, and move, and have
our being_”; _Col. 1:17_—“_in him all things consist_”; _John
14:20_—“_I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you_”). If
Christ’s bearing our sins, however, is to be explained by the
union of the believer with Christ, the effect is made to explain
the cause, and Christ could have died only for the elect (see a
review of Dale, in Brit. Quar. Rev., Apr., 1876:221-225). The
union of Christ with the race by creation—a union which recognizes
Christ’s purity and man’s sin—still remains as a most valuable
element of truth in the theory of Dr. Dale.

3. That of Edward Irving. Christ has a corrupted nature, an inborn
infirmity and depravity, which he gradually overcomes. But the
Scriptures, on the contrary, assert his holiness and separateness
from sinners. (See references, on pages 744-747.)

4. That of John Miller, Theology, 114-128; also in his chapter:
Was Christ in Adam? in Questions Awakened by the Bible. Christ, as
to his human nature, although created pure, was yet, as one of
Adam’s posterity, conceived of as a sinner in Adam. To him
attached “the guilt of the act in which all men stood together in
a federal relation.... He was decreed to be guilty for the sins of
all mankind.” Although there is a truth contained in this
statement, it is vitiated by Miller’s federalism and creatianism.
Arbitrary imputation and legal fiction do not help us here. We
need such an actual union of Christ with humanity, and such a
derivation of the substance of his being, by natural generation
from Adam, as will make him not simply the constructive heir, but
the natural heir, of the guilt of the race. We come, therefore, to
what we regard as the true view, namely:

5. That the humanity of Christ was not a new creation, but was
derived from Adam, through Mary his mother; so that Christ, so far
as his humanity was concerned, was in Adam just as we were, and
had the same race-responsibility with ourselves. As Adam’s
descendant, he was responsible for Adam’s sin, like every other
member of the race; the chief difference being, that while we
inherit from Adam both guilt and depravity, he whom the Holy
Spirit purified, inherited not the depravity, but only the guilt.
Christ took to himself, not sin (depravity), but the consequences
of sin. In him there was abolition of sin, without abolition of
obligation to suffer for sin; while in the believer, there is
abolition of obligation to suffer, without abolition of sin
itself.

The justice of Christ’s sufferings has been imperfectly
illustrated by the obligation of the silent partner of a business
firm to pay debts of the firm which he did not personally
contract; or by the obligation of the husband to pay the debts of
his wife; or by the obligation of a purchasing country to assume
the debts of the province which it purchases (Wm. Ashmore). There
have been men who have spent the strength of a lifetime in
clearing off the indebtedness of an insolvent father, long since
deceased. They recognized an organic unity of the family, which
morally, if not legally, made their father’s liabilities their
own. So, it is said, Christ recognized the organic unity of the
race, and saw that, having become one of that sinning race, he had
involved himself in all its liabilities, even to the suffering of
death, the great penalty of sin.

The fault of all the analogies just mentioned is that they are
purely commercial. A transference of pecuniary obligation is
easier to understand than a transference of criminal liability. I
cannot justly bear another’s penalty, unless I can in some way
share his guilt. The theory we advocate shows how such a sharing
of our guilt on the part of Christ was possible. All believers in
substitution hold that Christ bore our guilt: “My soul looks back
to see The burdens thou didst bear When hanging on the accursed
tree, And hopes her guilt was there.” But we claim that, by virtue
of Christ’s union with humanity, that guilt was not only an
imputed, but also an imparted, guilt.

With Christ’s obligation to suffer, there were connected two
other, though minor, results of his assumption of humanity: first,
the longing to suffer; and secondly, the inevitableness of his
suffering. He felt the longing to suffer which perfect love to God
must feel, in view of the demands upon the race, of that holiness
of God which he loved more than he loved the race itself; which
perfect love to man must feel, in view of the fact that bearing
the penalty of man’s sin was the only way to save him. Hence we
see Christ pressing forward to the cross with such majestic
determination that the disciples were amazed and afraid (_Mark
10:32_). Hence we hear him saying: “_With desire have I desired to
eat this passover_” (_Luke 23:15_); “_I have a baptism to be
baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!_”
(_Luke 12:50_).

Here is the truth in Campbell’s theory of the atonement. Christ is
the great Penitent before God, making confession of the sin of the
race, which others of that race could neither see nor feel. But
the view we present is a larger and completer one than that of
Campbell, in that it makes this confession and reparation
obligatory upon Christ, as Campbell’s view does not, and
recognizes the penal nature of Christ’s sufferings, which
Campbell’s view denies. Lias, Atonement, 79—“The head of a clan,
himself intensely loyal to his king, finds that his clan have been
involved in rebellion. The more intense and perfect his loyalty,
the more thorough his nobleness of heart and affection for his
people, the more inexcusable and flagrant the rebellion of those
for whom he pleads,—the more acute would be his agony, as their
representative and head. Nothing would be more true to human
nature, in the best sense of those words, than that the conflict
between loyalty to his king and affection for his vassals should
induce him to offer his life for theirs, to ask that the
punishment they deserved should be inflicted on him.”

The second minor consequence of Christ’s assumption of humanity
was, that, being such as he was, he could not help suffering; in
other words, the obligatory and the desired were also the
inevitable. Since he was a being of perfect purity, contact with
the sin of the race, of which he was a member, necessarily
involved an actual suffering, of an intenser kind than we can
conceive. Sin is self-isolating, but love and righteousness have
in them the instinct of human unity. In Christ all the nerves and
sensibilities of humanity met. He was the only healthy member of
the race. When life returns to a frozen limb, there is pain. So
Christ, as the only sensitive member of a benumbed and stupefied
humanity, felt all the pangs of shame and suffering which
rightfully belonged to sinners; but which they could not feel,
simply because of the depth of their depravity. Because Christ was
pure, yet had united himself to a sinful and guilty race,
therefore “_it must needs be that Christ should suffer_” (A. V.)
or, “_it behooved the Christ to suffer_” (Rev. Vers., _Acts
17:3_); see also _John 3:14_—“_so must the Son of man be lifted
up_”—“The Incarnation, under the actual circumstances of humanity,
carried with it the necessity of the Passion” (Westcott, in Bib.
Com., _in loco_).

Compare John Woolman’s Journal, 4, 5—“O Lord, my God, the amazing
horrors of darkness were gathered about me, and covered me all
over, and I saw no way to go forth; I felt the depth and extent of
the misery of my fellow creatures, separated from the divine
harmony, and it was greater than I could bear, and I was crushed
down under it; I lifted up my head, I stretched out my arm, but
there was none to help me; I looked round about, and was amazed.
In the depths of misery, I remembered that thou art omnipotent and
that I had called thee Father.” He had vision of a “dull, gloomy
mass,” darkening half the heavens, and he was told that it was
“human beings, in as great misery as they could be and live; and
he was mixed with them, and henceforth he might not consider
himself a distinct and separate being.”

This suffering in and with the sins of men, which Dr. Bushnell
emphasized so strongly, though it is not, as he thought, the
principal element, is notwithstanding an indispensable element in
the atonement of Christ. Suffering in and with the sinner is one
way, though not the only way, in which Christ is enabled to bear
the wrath of God which constitutes the real penalty of sin.

EXPOSITION OF 2 COR. 5:21.—It remains for us to adduce the
Scriptural proof of this natural assumption of human guilt by
Christ. We find it in _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no sin he made
to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of
God in him._” “_Righteousness_” here cannot mean subjective
purity, for then “_made to be sin_” would mean that God made
Christ to be subjectively depraved. As Christ was not made
_unholy_, the meaning cannot be that we are made _holy_ persons in
him. Meyer calls attention to this parallel between
“_righteousness_” and “_sin_”:—“_That we might become the
righteousness of God in him_” = that we might become justified
persons. Correspondingly, “_made to be sin on our behalf_” must =
made to be a condemned person. “_Him who knew no sin_” = Christ
had no experience of sin—this was the necessary postulate of his
work of atonement. “_Made sin for us_,” therefore, is the abstract
for the concrete, and = made a sinner, in the sense that the
penalty of sin fell upon him. So Meyer, for substance.

We must, however, regard this interpretation of Meyer’s as coming
short of the full meaning of the apostle. As justification is not
simply remission of _actual_ punishment, but is also deliverance
from the _obligation_ to suffer punishment,—in other words, as
“_righteousness_” in the text = persons delivered from the _guilt_
as well as from the _penalty_ of sin,—so the contrasted term
“_sin_,” in the text,—a person not only _actually_ punished, but
also under _obligation_ to suffer punishment;—in other words,
Christ is “_made sin_,” not only in the sense of being put under
_penalty_, but also in the sense of being put under _guilt_.
(_Cf._ Symington, Atonement, 17.)

In a note to the last edition of Meyer, this is substantially
granted. “It is to be noted,” he says, “that ἁμαρτίαν, like κατάρα
in _Gal. 3:13_, necessarily includes in itself the notion of
guilt.” Meyer adds, however: “The guilt of which Christ appears as
bearer was not his own (μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν); hence the guilt of
men was transferred to him; consequently the justification of men
is imputative.” Here the implication that the guilt which Christ
bears is his simply by imputation seems to us contrary to the
analogy of faith. As Adam’s sin is ours only because we are
actually one with Adam, and as Christ’s righteousness is imputed
to us only as we are actually united to Christ, so our sins are
imputed to Christ only as Christ is actually one with the race. He
was “_made sin_” by being made one with the sinners; he took our
guilt by taking our nature. He who “_knew no sin_” came to be
“_sin for us_” by being born of a sinful stock; by inheritance the
common guilt of the race became his. Guilt was not simply
_imputed_ to Christ; it was _imparted_ also.

This exposition may be made more clear by putting the two
contrasted thoughts in parallel columns, as follows:

Made righteousness in him = Made sin for us =
righteous persons; a sinful person;
justified persons; a condemned person;
freed from guilt, or put under guilt, or obligation
obligation to suffer; to suffer;
by spiritual union with by natural union with the
Christ. race.

For a good exposition of _2 Cor. 5:21_, _Gal. 3:13_, and _Rom.
3:25, 26_, see Denney, Studies in Theology, 109-124.

The Atonement, then, on the part of God, has its ground (1) in the holiness of God, which must visit sin with condemnation, even though this condemnation brings death to his Son; and (2) in the love of God, which itself provides the sacrifice, by suffering in and with his Son for the sins of men, but through that suffering opening a way and means of salvation.

The Atonement, on the part of man, is accomplished through (1) the solidarity of the race; of which (2) Christ is the life, and so its representative and surety; (3) justly yet voluntarily bearing its guilt and shame and condemnation as his own.

Melanchthon: “Christ was made sin for us, not only in respect to
punishment, but primarily by being chargeable with guilt also
(_culpæ et reatus_)”—quoted by Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,
3:95, 102, 103, 107; also 1:307, 314 _sq._ Thomasius says that
“Christ bore the guilt of the race by imputation; but as in the
case of the imputation of Adam’s sin to us, imputation of our sins
to Christ presupposes a real relationship. Christ appropriated our
sin. He sank himself into our guilt.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:442
(Syst. Doct., 3:350, 351), agrees with Thomasius, that “Christ
entered into our natural mortality, which for us is a penal
condition, and into the state of collective guilt, so far as it is
an evil, a burden to be borne; not that he had personal guilt, but
rather that he entered into our guilt-laden common life, not as a
stranger, but as one actually belonging to it—put under its law,
according to the will of the Father and of his own love.”

When, and how, did Christ take this guilt and this penalty upon
him? With regard to penalty, we have no difficulty in answering
that, as his whole life of suffering was propitiatory, so penalty
rested upon him from the very beginning of his life. This penalty
was inherited, and was the consequence of Christ’s taking human
nature (_Gal. 4:4, 5_—“_born of a woman, born under the law_”).
But penalty and guilt are correlates; if Christ inherited penalty,
it must have been because he inherited guilt. This subjection to
the common guilt of the race was intimated in Jesus’ circumcision
(_Luke 2:21_); in his ritual purification (_Luke 2:22_—“_their
purification_”—_i. e._, the purification of Mary and the babe; see
Lange, Life of Christ; Commentaries of Alford, Webster and
Wilkinson; and An. Par. Bible); in his legal redemption (_Luke
2:23, 24_; _cf._ _Ex. 13:2, 13_); and in his baptism (_Mat.
3:15_—“_thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness_”). The
baptized person went down into the water, as one laden with sin
and guilt, in order that this sin and guilt might be buried
forever, and that he might rise from the typical grave to a new
and holy life. (Ebrard: “Baptism = death.”) So Christ’s submission
to John’s baptism of repentance was not only a consecration to
death, but also a recognition and confession of his implication in
that guilt of the race for which death was the appointed and
inevitable penalty (_cf._ _Mat. 10:38_; _Luke 12:50_; _Mat.
26:39_); and, as his baptism was a prefiguration of his death, we
may learn from his baptism something with regard to the meaning of
his death. See further, under The Symbolism of Baptism.

As one who had had guilt, Christ was “_justified in the spirit_”
(_1 Tim. 3:16_); and this justification appears to have taken
place after he “_was manifested in the flesh_” (_1 Tim. 3:16_),
and when “_he was raised for our justification_” (_Rom. 4:25_).
Compare _Rom. 1:4_—“_declared to be the Son of God with power,
according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the
dead_”; _6:7-10_—“_he that hath died is justified from sin. But if
we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him;
knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;
death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died,
he died unto sin once; but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto
God_”—here all Christians are conceived of as ideally justified in
the justification of Christ, when Christ died for our sins and
rose again. _8:3_—“_God, sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh_”—here Meyer
says: “The sending does not precede the condemnation; but the
condemnation is effected in and with the sending.” _John
16:10_—“_of righteousness, because I go to the Father_”;
_19:30_—“_It is finished._” On _1 Tim. 3:16_, see the Commentary
of Bengel.

If it be asked whether Jesus, then, before his death, was an
unjustified person, we answer that, while personally pure and
well-pleasing to God (_Mat. 3:17_), he himself was conscious of a
race-responsibility and a race-guilt which must be atoned for
(_John 12:27_—“_Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto
this hour_”); and that guilty human nature in him endured at the
last the separation from God which constitutes the essence of
death, sin’s penalty (_Mat. 27:46_—“_My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?_”). We must remember that, as even the believer must
“_be judged according to man in the flesh_” (_1 Pet. 4:6_), that
is, must suffer the death which to unbelievers is the penalty of
sin, although he “_live according to God in the Spirit_,” so
Christ, in order that we might be delivered from both guilt and
penalty, was “_put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the
spirit_” (_3:18_);—in other words, as Christ was man, the penalty
due to human guilt belonged to him to bear; but, as he was God, he
could exhaust that penalty, and could be a proper substitute for
others.

If it be asked whether he, who from the moment of the conception
“_sanctified himself_” (_John 17:19_), did not from that moment
also justify himself, we reply that although, through the
retroactive efficacy of his atonement and upon the ground of it,
human nature in him was purged of its depravity from the moment
that he took that nature; and although, upon the ground of that
atonement, believers before his advent were both sanctified and
justified; yet his own justification could not have proceeded upon
the ground of his atonement, and also his atonement have proceeded
upon the ground of his justification. This would be a vicious
circle; somewhere we must have a beginning. That beginning was in
the cross, where guilt was first purged (_Heb. 1:3_—“_when he had
made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the
Majesty on high_”; _Mat. 27:42_—“_He saved others; himself he
cannot save_”; _cf._ _Rev. 13:8_—“_the Lamb that hath been slain
from the foundation of the world_”).

If it be said that guilt and depravity are practically
inseparable, and that, if Christ had guilt, he must have had
depravity also, we reply that in civil law we distinguish between
them,—the conversion of a murderer would not remove his obligation
to suffer upon the gallows; and we reply further, that in
justification we distinguish between them,—depravity still
remaining, though guilt is removed. So we may say that Christ
takes guilt without depravity, in order that we may have depravity
without guilt. See page 645; also Böhl, Incarnation des göttlichen
Wortes; Pope, Higher Catechism, 118; A. H. Strong, on the
Necessity of the Atonement, in Philosophy and Religion, 213-219.
_Per contra_, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:59 note, 82.

Christ therefore, as incarnate, rather revealed the atonement than made it. The historical work of atonement was finished upon the Cross, but that historical work only revealed to men the atonement made both before and since by the extra-mundane Logos. The eternal Love of God suffering the necessary reaction of his own Holiness against the sin of his creatures and with a view to their salvation—this is the essence of the Atonement.

Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 252, 253—“Christ, as God’s atonement,
is the revelation and discovery of the fact that sacrifice is as
deep in God as his being. He is a holy Creator.... He must take
upon himself the shame and pain of sin.” The earthly tabernacle
and its sacrifices were only the shadow of those in the heavens,
and Moses was bidden to make the earthly after the pattern which
he saw in the mount. So the historical atonement was but the
shadowing forth to dull and finite minds of an infinite demand of
the divine holiness and an infinite satisfaction rendered by the
divine love. Godet, S. S. Times, Oct. 16, 1886—“Christ so
identified himself with the race he came to save, by sharing its
life or its very blood, that when the race itself was redeemed
from the curse of sin, his resurrection followed as the first
fruits of that redemption”; _Rom. 4:25_—“_delivered up for our
trespasses ... raised for our justification._”

Simon, Redemption of Man, 322—“If the Logos is generally the
Mediator of the divine immanence in Creation, especially in man;
if men are differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if
the Logos is the immanent controlling principle of all
differentiation, _i. e._, the principle of all _form_—must not the
self-perversion of these human differentiations necessarily react
on him who is their constitutive principle? 339—Remember that men
have not first to engraft themselves into Christ, the living
whole.... They subsist naturally in him, and they have to separate
themselves, cut themselves off from him, if they are to be
separate. This is the mistake made in the ‘Life in Christ’ theory.
Men are treated as in some sense out of Christ, and as having to
get into connection with Christ.... It is not that we have to
create the relation,—we have simply to accept, to recognize, to
ratify it. Rejecting Christ is not so much refusal to _become_ one
with Christ, as it is refusal to _remain_ one with him, refusal to
let him be our life.”

A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 33, 172—“When God breathed into
man’s nostrils the breath of life, he communicated freedom, and
made possible the creature’s self-chosen alienation from himself,
the giver of that life. While man could never break the natural
bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond,
and could introduce even into the life of God a principle of
discord and evil. Tie a cord tightly about your finger; you
partially isolate the finger, diminish its nutrition, bring about
atrophy and disease. Yet the life of the whole system rouses
itself to put away the evil, to untie the cord, to free the
diseased and suffering member. The illustration is far from
adequate; but it helps at a single point. There has been given to
each intelligent and moral agent the power, spiritually, to
isolate himself from God, while yet he is naturally joined to God,
and is wholly dependent upon God for the removal of the sin which
has so separated him from his Maker. Sin is the act of the
creature, but salvation is the act of the Creator.

“If you could imagine a finger endowed with free will and trying
to sunder its connection with the body by tying a string around
itself, you would have a picture of man trying to sunder his
connection with Christ. What is the result of such an attempt?
Why, pain, decay; possible, nay, incipient death, to the finger.
By what law? By the law of the organism, which is so constituted
as to maintain itself against its own disruption by the revolt of
the members. The pain and death of the finger is the reaction of
the whole against the treason of the part. The finger suffers
pain. But are there no results of pain to the body? Does not the
body feel pain also? How plain it is that no such pain can be
confined to the single part! The heart feels, aye, the whole
organism feels, because all the parts are members one of another.
It not only suffers, but that suffering tends to remedy the evil
and to remove its cause. The body summons its forces, pours new
tides of life into the dying member, strives to rid the finger of
the ligature that binds it. So through all the course of history,
Christ, the natural life of the race, has been afflicted in the
affliction of humanity and has suffered for human sin. This
suffering has been an atoning suffering, since it has been due to
righteousness. If God had not been holy, if God had not made all
nature express the holiness of his being, if God had not made pain
and loss the necessary consequences of sin, then Christ would not
have suffered. But since these things are sin’s penalty and Christ
is the life of the sinful race, it must needs be that Christ
should suffer. There is nothing arbitrary in laying upon him the
iniquities of us all. Original grace, like original sin, is only
the ethical interpretation of biological facts.” See also Ames, on
Biological Aspects of the Atonement, in Methodist Review, Nov.
1905:943-953.

In favor of the Substitutionary or Ethical view of the atonement we may urge the following considerations:

(_a_) It rests upon correct philosophical principles with regard to the nature of will, law, sin, penalty, righteousness.

This theory holds that there are permanent states, as well as
transient acts, of the will; and that the will is not simply the
faculty of volitions, but also the fundamental determination of
the being to an ultimate end. It regards law as having its basis,
not in arbitrary will or in governmental expediency, but rather in
the nature of God, and as being a necessary transcript of God’s
holiness. It considers sin to consist not simply in acts, but in
permanent evil states of the affections and will. It makes the
object of penalty to be, not the reformation of the offender, or
the prevention of evil doing, but the vindication of justice,
outraged by violation of law. It teaches that righteousness is not
benevolence or a form of benevolence, but a distinct and separate
attribute of the divine nature which demands that sin should be
visited with punishment, apart from any consideration of the
useful results that will flow therefrom.

(_b_) It combines in itself all the valuable elements in the theories before mentioned, while it avoids their inconsistencies, by showing the deeper principle upon which each of these elements is based.

The Ethical theory admits the indispensableness of Christ’s
example, advocated by the Socinian theory; the moral influence of
his suffering, urged by the Bushnellian theory; the securing of
the safety of government, insisted on by the Grotian theory; the
participation of the believer in Christ’s new humanity, taught by
the Irvingian theory; the satisfaction to God’s majesty for the
elect, made so much of by the Anselmic theory. But the Ethical
theory claims that all these other theories require, as a
presupposition for their effective working, that ethical
satisfaction to the holiness of God which is rendered in guilty
human nature by the Son of God who took that nature to redeem it.

(_c_) It most fully meets the requirements of Scripture, by holding that the necessity of the atonement is absolute, since it rests upon the demands of immanent holiness, the fundamental attribute of God.

_Acts 17:3_—“_it behooved the Christ to suffer, and to rise again
from the dead_”—lit.: “_it was necessary for the Christ to
suffer_”; _Luke 24:26_—“_Behooved it not the Christ to suffer
these things, and to enter into his glory?_”—lit.: “_Was it not
necessary that the Christ should suffer these things?_” It is not
enough to say that Christ must suffer in order that the prophecies
might be fulfilled. Why was it prophesied that he should suffer?
Why did God purpose that he should suffer? The ultimate necessity
is a necessity in the nature of God.

Plato, Republic, 2:361—“The righteous man who is thought to be
unrighteous will be scourged, racked, bound; will have his eyes
put out; and finally, having endured all sorts of evil, will be
impaled.” This means that, as human society is at present
constituted, even a righteous person must suffer for the sins of
the world. “Mors mortis Morti mortem nisi morte dedisset, Æternæ
vitæ janua clausa foret”—“Had not the Death-of-death to Death his
death-blow given, Forever closed were the gate, the gate of life
and heaven.”

(_d_) It shows most satisfactorily how the demands of holiness are met; namely, by the propitiatory offering of one who is personally pure, but who by union with the human race has inherited its guilt and penalty.

“_Quo non ascendam?_”—“Whither shall I not rise?” exclaimed the
greatest minister of modern kings, in a moment of intoxication.
“Whither shall I not stoop?” says the Lord Jesus. King Humbert,
during the scourge of cholera in Italy: “In Castellammare they
make merry; in Naples they die: I go to Naples.”

Wrightnour: “The illustration of Powhatan raising his club to slay
John Smith, while Pocahontas flings herself between the uplifted
club and the victim, is not a good one. God is not an angry being,
bound to strike something, no matter what. If Powhatan could have
taken the blow himself, out of a desire to spare the victim, it
would be better. The Father and the Son are one. Bronson Alcott,
in his school at Concord, when punishment was necessary, sometimes
placed the rod in the hand of the offender and bade him strike his
(Alcott’s) hand, rather than that the law of the school should be
broken without punishment following. The result was that very few
rules were broken. So God in Christ bore the sins of the world,
and endured the penalty for man’s violation of his law.”

(_e_) It furnishes the only proper explanation of the sacrificial language of the New Testament, and of the sacrificial rites of the Old, considered as prophetic of Christ’s atoning work.

Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 207-211—“The imposition of
hands on the head of the victim is entirely unexplained, except in
the account of the great day of Atonement, when by the same
gesture and by distinct confession the sins of the people were
‘_put upon the head of the goat_’ (_Lev. 16:21_) to be borne away
into the wilderness. The blood was sacred and was to be poured out
before the Lord, evidently in place of the forfeited life of the
sinner which should have been rendered up.” Watts, New
Apologetics, 205—“ ‘_The Lord will provide_’ was the truth taught
when Abraham found a ram provided by God which he ‘_offered up as
a burnt offering in the stead of his son_’ (_Gen. 22:13, 14_). As
the ram was not Abraham’s ram, the sacrifice of it could not teach
that all Abraham had belonged to God, and should, with entire
faith in his goodness, be devoted to him; but it did teach that
‘_apart from shedding of blood there is no remission_’ (_Heb.
9:22_).” _2 Chron. 29:27_—“_when the burnt offering began, the
song of Jehovah began also._”

(_f_) It alone gives proper place to the death of Christ as the central feature of his work,—set forth in the ordinances, and of chief power in Christian experience.