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ture of God and not in what the man Jesus did. Some times the atonement is represented as a third person stepping in between God and man and initiating recon ciliation. This is a misrepresentation. Biblical theology tells us that the atonement effecting our salvation was wrought out according to the good pleasure of God, ac cording to the eternal counsel of His will. It originated in the very nature and purpose of God. This truth reveals the other side of God’s nature, namely, that God is love and God’s mercy is His love in action toward men. If God is love, then before God ever created the world, He must have had a plan in mind whereby the violation of His holiness might be forgiven, and the creature who sinned could be saved and restored to fellowship with Him. God’s good pleasure, the eternal counsel of His own will, originated this atonement. It was not some secondary afterthought on the part of God when sin had entered the world. God’s love moved toward man so that by means of an atonement He could forgive sin. Thus His action remained in perfect consist ency and harmony with His justice. In order to accomplish this, there had to be a satisfac tion, an appeasement, a restitution made to God which would result in reconcilement between God and man. That was wrought out by Jesus Christ on the Cross. The atone ment brought reconciliation to the objects of judicial wrath, whom God loved. We have already said that this atonement was accom plished by Christ, not by a third person stepping between God and man. Rather it was God in Christ, who took sin into Himself, suffered the penalty thereof and thus for gave it. He came into the world, assumed human flesh, lived as a man, became the perfect representative of man, and went to the Cross, bearing the penalty of sin. There on the Cross eternal deity suffered the guilt and punish ment incurred by it in the moral universe and thus made a complete satisfaction. Salvation is thus a triune affair wrought by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That Christ did so take our sin, guilt and penalty into Himself is the plain teaching of the Scripture. Isaiah declared, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” John the Baptist declared concerning Christ, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” That figure of the Lamb of God could mean nothing else to the Jewish mind than a substitutionary sacrifice. Paul said, “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” Peter declared, “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,” and “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed,” and also “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.” The Bible is explicit and lucid in teaching us that Jesus Christ took the penalty of our sins in His body as He hung upon the Cross and thereby made an atonement for sin. If this is true, then who was appeased by this death? Did Christ die on the Cross to appease men? God had done mankind no wrong. Hence, Christ died not to con ciliate mankind but to appease God, to satisfy justice and holiness in the nature of God, so that God might continue to be righteous and just and still forgive the sins of man kind. The amends were not made to man, but to God. Thus all theories which teach that Christ died to set an example, or to give! a moral uplift to humanity, or to demonstrate righteousness in the governmental affairs of the world, fall short of the Biblical teaching concerning the Cross-. These may be secondary purposes of Christ’s
How to Read the Bible Read the Bible, not as a newspaper, but as a home letter. If a cluster of Heavenly fruit hangs within teach, gather it. If a promise lies upon the page as a blank check, cash it. If a prayer is recorded, appropriate it, and launch it as a feathered arrow from the bow of your desire. If an example of holiness gleams before you, ask God to do as much for you. IF the truth is revealed in all its intrinsic splendor, entreat that its brilliance may ever irradiate the hemisphere of your life. —F.B.Meyer. Law is not to be differentiated from God. Some think that law is above God and that God is God because He conforms to that superior law. Others think that God is above law and that law exists because God established it and that it would not be authoritative if God had not said so. According to this principle, if God had com manded that it was good to steal and that it was wrong to be honest, such practices would be called moral because God established them. We hold that neither of these con ceptions concerning law is correct, but rather that law and God are identical. Moral law is an expression of the nature of God. Since moral law is drawn from the very being of God, it cannot be otherwise; law is neither above nor below God, nor is God God because He conforms to law, but rather because law and God cannot be otherwise in a moral universe. Presupposing that God has such a moral nature as that revealed in the Scripture, that He is a God of justice, and a God of righteousness, a God who must punish the wrongs which have been perpetrated against His law and against His nature, we can understand what is called “the wrath Of God.” Just as God’s mercy is the activity of God’s love toward man, so His wrath is the movement of God’s justice toward man. When the Bible refers to the wrath of God, it does not mean an ebullition of anger such as a human being displays. George Washington had one besetting sin which he called a weakness: an ungov ernable temper. Once when a lad, he was told by a serv ant that his mother and brother would be displeased if he went duck shooting on Sunday. He was about to push off in a rowboat on the creek, and he became so infuriated that he picked up an oar and cracked the servant over the head with it. Had the riienial not been a colored man with an extremely thick skull, the blow would have killed (him. This one incident taught George Washington more about his own nature than any one else could have ever told him. God’s wrath is not in any way comparable to this kind of anger. It is but the expression of His justice against the violation of His holiness and against the very existence of sin in the world. In this sense, then God is angry with the wicked. His wrath is manifested against those who withhold the truth in ungodliness. Because sin is guilt, because law is unchangeable, because there can be no ac commodation of law to the needs of a particular sinner, law must be satisfied by an atonement. The atonement is grounded in God’s good pleasure toward man. Righteousness is the fundamental attribute of God’s nature. Since God is righteous, there must be a satisfaction made for sin, but the wonderful fact in this connection is that this satisfaction is grounded in the na
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