84
The Fundamentals down His life for us” (1 John 3: 16). “Herein is love,” etc. (1 John 4: 10). The propitiatory character of the blood, the substitutionary character of the atonement, and, above all, the expiating char acter of the work of Christ on Calvary, clearly are most in dubitably set forth in the threefoldness of the historic, didactic, and prophetic writings of St. John. st . P aul ’ s witness St. Paul became, in the province of God, the construc tive genius of Christianity. His place in history, through the Spirit, was that of the elucidator of the salient facts of Christianity, and especially of that one great subject which Christ left in a measure unexplained—His own death (Stalker’s “St. Paul,” p. 13). That great subject, its cause, its meaning, its result, became the very fundamentum of his Gos pel. It was the commencement, center, and consummation of his theology. It was the elemental truth of his creed. He began with it. It pervaded his life. He gloried in it to the last. The sinner is dead, enslaved, guilty, and hopeless, without the atoning death of Jesus Christ. But Christ died for him, in his stead, became a curse for him, became sin for him, gave Himself for him, was an Offering and a Sacrifice to God for him, redeemed him, justified him, saved him from wrath, pur chased him by His blood, reconciled him by His death, etc. To talk of Paul using the language he did as an accommo dation to Jewish prejudices, or to humor the adherents of a current theology, is not only, as Dale says, an insult to the understanding of the founders of the Jewish faith, it is an insult to the understanding of any man with sense today. Christ’s death was a death for sin; Christ died for our sins; that is, on behalf of, instead of, our sins. There was some thing in sin that made His death a Divine necessity. His death was a propitiatory, substitutionary, sacrificial, vicarious death. Its object was to annul sin; to propitiate Divine jus-
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker