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is God’s doctrine of the Atonement versus the Unitarian and Christian Science doc trine of the Atonement. ' 2. But this is not all. We are further taught that He died as a ransom, that is, His death was the price paid to redeem others from death. He Himself says so. His own words ■are, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” If His life was not a ransom, that is to say, if He did not redeem others from death by dying in their place, then He was the greatest fool in the whole history of this universe. Was He a fool or was He a ransom? No one who in any real sense can be said to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ can hesitate as to his answer. 3. But even this is not all. The Bible distinctly tells us that He died as a sin offering, i. e., it was on the ground of His death, and on this ground alone, that forgiveness of sin is made possible for and offered to sinners. This we are told in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, to which Reference has already been made, and the 10th verse. It is written, “Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise him; He (i.e., Jehovah) hath put him to grief (literally, made him sick) : when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall pro long his days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand.” Now the mean ing of “offering for sin” is unquestionable, to any one who has studied the Old Testa ment offerings. An offering for sin, or a “guilt offering,” which is the exact force of the Hebrew word translated “an offer ing for sin,” was a death of a sacrificial victim on the ground of which pardon was offered to sinners (Lev. 6 :6-10, R. V .). The Holy Spirit says expressly in Heb. 9:22, in words the meaning of which is unmistakable, and the force of which is inescapable, "Apart from shedding of blood there is no remission,” and the whole con-i text in which the passage is found shows that the blood, to which all the blood of the Old Testament types as sacrifices pointed forward, was the blood of Jesus
Christ. So then the Word of God declares that apart from the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ there is absolutely no par don for sin. There is absolutely no for giveness outside the atoning blood of Christ. Without Christ’s atoning blood every member of the human race must have been everlastingly damned. 4. Fourth and further yet, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ died as a propitia tion for our sins. God the Father gave Christ the Son to be a propitiation by His blood. That is to say that Jesus Christ, through the shedding of His blood, is that by which God’s holy wrath at sin is appeased. We read in 1 John 4:10, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” And we read in Rom. 3 :25, 26, “Whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in His blood, to show His righteous ness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; (26) for the showing, I say, of His righteousness at this present season: that He might Himself be just, and the justi- fier of Him that hath faith in Jesus.” The meaning of these words also is as plain as day. The two Greek words in these two passages are not exactly the same words (“hilasmos” and “hilasterion”) but are from the same root. The word used in 1 John 4:10 is “hilasmos” and the word used in Rom. 3 :25 is “hilasterion.” The definition given of the first in Thayer’s Dictionary of New Testament Greek, the standard work, is “a means of appeasing.” The definition given in the same lexicon of the second word is “an expiatory sacrifice.*’ So the thought that is in both passages is that the death of Jesus Christ was a “propitia tion” “an expiatory sacrifice,” the “means of appeasing” God’s holy wrath at sin, or in other words, that Jesus, through the shedding of His blood, is that by which the wrath of God against us as sinners is appeased. God’s holiness and consequent hatred of sin, like every other attribute of His character, is real and must manifest itself. His wrath at sin must strike some-
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