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self. We read in Qal. 3:10, “As many as are of the works of the law are under a curse, for it is written: Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things that are written in the Book of the Law, to do them,” So then, every one of us is under the curse of the broken law, for not one of us has continued “in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do them.”. But we read in the 13th verse, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (literally, in our behalf ) : for it is writ ten, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” By His death by crucifixion He redeemed us from the curse which we deserved by taking that curse upon Himself. This certainly is “an atonement of blood .and recompense.” . • 6. The Bible puts essentially the same truth in still another form, viz., that Jesus Christ died as our Passover sacrifice —that is, that His shed blood might serve as a ground upon which God would pass over and spare us. We read in 1 Cor. 5:7, “For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ.” , Now what a passover sacrifice was and signified we learn from Ex. 12:12, 13, where our Lord told the children of Israel at the inauguration of the passover, “For I will go through the land of Egypt in that night, and will smite all the first born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the Gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am Jehovah, and the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and there shall be no plague upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.” And again we read in the 23rd verse of the same chapter, “For Jehovah will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when He seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side-posts, Jehovah will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.” Paul wrote his words with all this in mind, and in saying that Christ is our Passover sacrifice beyond a question he meant that
where, either on the sinner himself or upon a lawful substitute. It struck upon Jesus Christ, a lawful substitute. As we read in Isa. 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” The word trans lated “hath laid,” according to the mar gin of the Revised Version, means liter ally, “hath made to light." More literally still it means, “hath made to strike.” Read ing it this way what God says is, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath made to strike on him (i. e., on the Lord Jesus) the iniquity of us all.” And in the eighth verse of the same chap ter we are taught that “the stroke due” to others fell upon Him, and He was conse quently “cut off out of the land of the liv ing;’’ The death of Jesus Christ has its first cause in the demands of God’s holi ness. This is the Bible doctrine versus the Unitarian and Christian Science doctrine of atonement. The doctrine is often misrepre sented and caricatured as being that “God, a holy first person, took the sins of man, the guilty s'econd person, and put them on Jesus Christ, an innocent third person,” and it is objected that this would not be just.' No; this would not be just, and it is not for a moment the doctrine of the Bible, for the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus Qhrist was not “a third person,” but was Himself God, and that He was Him self man, so He is not a third person at all, but both the first person and the second person, and the doctrine is that God Him self, the offended first person, substitutes His atoning action whereby He expresses His hatred against sin, for His punitive action whereby He would express the same thing; that God, instead of visiting the sins of the sinner upon the sinner, takes the punishment upon Himself. This cer tainly is something more than just, it is wondrous love. 5. Further yet, the Bible teaches us that Jesus Christ died to redeem us from the curse of the law by bearing that curse Him
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