Chapter 81

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.”[pg 757]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 inLam. 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[pg 758]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 sojustthat he could not let sin go unpunished, yet sounjustthat he could punish it in the person of the innocent.... It is for orthodox dialectics to explain how the divine justice can beimpugnedby pardoning the guilty, and yetvindicatedby punishing[pg 759]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 pages744-747.)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[pg 760]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 alsoJohn 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 in2 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 madeunholy, the meaning cannot be that we are madeholypersons 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 ofactualpunishment, but is also deliverance from theobligationto suffer punishment,—in other words, as“righteousness”in the text = persons delivered from theguiltas well as from thepenalty[pg 761]of sin,—so the contrasted term“sin,”in the text,—a person not onlyactuallypunished, but also underobligationto suffer punishment;—in other words, Christ is“made sin,”not only in the sense of being put underpenalty, but also in the sense of being put underguilt. (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 inGal. 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 simplyimputedto Christ; it wasimpartedalso.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 obligation to suffer;put under guilt, or obligation to suffer;by spiritual union with Christ.by natural union with the race.For a good exposition of2 Cor. 5:21,Gal. 3:13, andRom. 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.

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 inLam. 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.”

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[pg 758]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.”

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 sojustthat he could not let sin go unpunished, yet sounjustthat he could punish it in the person of the innocent.... It is for orthodox dialectics to explain how the divine justice can beimpugnedby pardoning the guilty, and yetvindicatedby punishing[pg 759]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 pages744-747.)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[pg 760]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 alsoJohn 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 in2 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 madeunholy, the meaning cannot be that we are madeholypersons 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 ofactualpunishment, but is also deliverance from theobligationto suffer punishment,—in other words, as“righteousness”in the text = persons delivered from theguiltas well as from thepenalty[pg 761]of sin,—so the contrasted term“sin,”in the text,—a person not onlyactuallypunished, but also underobligationto suffer punishment;—in other words, Christ is“made sin,”not only in the sense of being put underpenalty, but also in the sense of being put underguilt. (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 inGal. 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 simplyimputedto Christ; it wasimpartedalso.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 obligation to suffer;put under guilt, or obligation to suffer;by spiritual union with Christ.by natural union with the race.For a good exposition of2 Cor. 5:21,Gal. 3:13, andRom. 3:25, 26, see Denney, Studies in Theology, 109-124.

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 pages744-747.)

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[pg 760]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 alsoJohn 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 in2 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 madeunholy, the meaning cannot be that we are madeholypersons 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 ofactualpunishment, but is also deliverance from theobligationto suffer punishment,—in other words, as“righteousness”in the text = persons delivered from theguiltas well as from thepenalty[pg 761]of sin,—so the contrasted term“sin,”in the text,—a person not onlyactuallypunished, but also underobligationto suffer punishment;—in other words, Christ is“made sin,”not only in the sense of being put underpenalty, but also in the sense of being put underguilt. (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 inGal. 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 simplyimputedto Christ; it wasimpartedalso.

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

For a good exposition of2 Cor. 5:21,Gal. 3:13, andRom. 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.

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