is Jesus Christ crucified. To preach Him alone in His fulness and grace is all that we need or that He desires. Of Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Ancient of Days, the King of the Jews and the God of heaven, let us say with David, “Thine O Lord is the greatness and the power, and the Glory and the victory, and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all.”
However, for now, we walk here be low and He walks with us. Is not this beyond the fondest imaginations of the carnal man? God Himself walks with us day by day. It is true. He dwells within us by His Spirit. Our closest companion and friend is the God who appeared to the patriarchs in Ur and Bethel. Since our Christ is God, let us be serious with an awe born of His holi ness. Let us have confidence rooted in His power and faith which is anchored in His faithfulness. Let our efforts on His behalf be the Gospel of God which
This We Believe
The Death of Christ An Atonement for Sin
by J. Richard Chase, Ph.D. sociate Professor of Speech
T h e doctrine of the atonement is a battlefield. For centuries men have contended over the means by which man is righteously restored to fellow ship with God. Those who man the fortress, in defense of what is frequent ly called substitutionary atonement, believe that God’s Word presents the crucified Christ as the perfect, the fully adequate, God-given means for the pardoning and putting away of sin. Those who attack this representation of the atonement are innumerable and their strategies legion. Let me indicate, simply, a few of the strategies that have been employed to counter the doctrine: (1) They have assailed it on the ground that it violates man’s sense of justice—the innocent suffering for the
guilty; (2) they have asserted that the doctrine so described here, presents God as an unduly austere Father who harshly demands the sacrifice of His own Son — and, among other things, (3) these detractors have claimed that such a doctrine as substitutionary atonement strips Christianity of its spiritual vitality and substitutes but a legal contract of remission and accept ance for sinners. The last forty years have produced historic arguments and given rise to two new schools of strategy — modern ism, and neo-orthodoxy. The modernist, I suppose, does not really attack as much as he ignores. He may draw upon aforementioned arguments and, at the same time voicing the thought that the (continued on next page) 11
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