Chapter 2 Section 6

2. The truths that lay behind the teaching about the atonement

6 The atonement, God's provision for putting away sin and all its consequences

Wherever we look we see the fact of sin and its vast, far-reaching consequences, consequences that no finite mind can fully take in. The humiliation of the incarnate Son was planned chiefly in connection with providing salvation and so it must be seen as something that God brought about in the light of sin. Those who say, on grounds of human reason, that God never acts because of anything, and apply this idea to the incarnation and its fruits, will find nothing in the Lord's words to support their opinion (see Luke 19:10). The terrible fact of sin is both assumed and adequately provided for in the plan of God that we are about to consider. The all knowing God took the full measure of the evil. No created mind was competent to fathom sin's guilt or measure its consequences, even in theory, not to mention our utter inability to deal with sin or its consequences. The Author of the atonement, on the other hand, undertook both to remove sin and to reverse its consequences. He alone fully knew what were his own claims as the moral Governor of the universe. I refer to this because many, falling prey to the excessive subjectivity of modern theories, have lost sight of the fact that we are subjects responsible to a personal God. Saturated with a mystic pietism, too many see God as a mere fountain of influences rather than an authoritative Lawgiver. This is quite different to what Christ teaches. With a vivid sense of the relation in which we stand to our moral Governor, the Bible teaches truths that stand in close connection with the authority of law and the guilt of disobedience.

(1) As to sin's own nature, it implies God's Law and can only be defined as the violation of the law that mankind was under an obligation to keep. It is either the omitting of a duty required and, in this respect, failing to love God with all the heart and soul and strength and mind, or to love our neighbour as ourselves, or the committing of an act that the law clearly forbids. No sins are venial or pardonable by nature. No, he who offends in one point is guilty of offending in all because the mind within from which the disobedience flows is against God's nature and will (James 2:10). The only right way to think of the criminality of sin is to see the guilt of the offence as being in proportion to the greatness, the moral excellence and glory of the one against whom the offence is committed, the one who intedned us to loyally obey him. Nothing else therefore comes into consideration in estimating the enormity of sin but the infinite majesty, glory, and claims of the one against whom we sin. Therefore, the terms used by the Lord to refer to sin are worth noting.
He calls it darkness (John 8:12). This implies a state of isolation from God, an area where God is not. He calls it a trespass (Mark 11:25). This implies a violation of law.
He calls it a debt (Matthew 6:12). It involves guilt or liability to punishment.
He calls it a lie (John 8:44). This suggests a mental state that either resists or runs counter to the truth revealed by God.
(2) As to the far-reaching consequences of sin, these are so many and so various that they may be thought of as the antithesis or the opposite column to all the benefits won for us by Christ's atonement. It is hardly then to list the the evil effects or consequences of sin. All that is reversed or destroyed by Christ and that once stood against us was caused by sin. If we trace this contrast and look at its different aspects, it will help give us breadth and precision. Under the effects of sin we may classify a vast number of bitter evils, such as
Losing our right relation to or standing before God

• The decay of our nature and the entrance of death, temporal, spiritual and eternal
• The departure of the Holy Spirit from the human heart, formed to be his temple
• The tyranny of Satan
• The gulf made between human beings and angels

In a word, whatever is restored by Christ was lost when sin came in. So when Christ, in a memorable passage in John, describes man as the slave of sin, he says "everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (John 8:34). Commentators, in a rather superficial way, tend to explain this as mainly saying that if we addict ourselves to a particular sin we will become slaves to it. While it is true that the habit of sin confirms its dominion and the slavery of its victim, another thought is plainly in the context, one that brings the Son of God before us in his office as Liberator. He implies that the freedom that man had at creation and that was lost when sin came in can be restored only by the Son (see verse 36). The sinner is a slave under guilt and a slave under justly deserved punishment, as well as under the inward power of sin. The words personify sin as a dreadful dictator. The Apostle Paul uses the same picture in Romans 5-7). When the Lord describes men as they are, or in their sins (John 8:21), he brings out the fact that death is the doom, reward or wages or awarded. "You will die in your sin". In a word, there is such a correspondence or similarity in an opposite direction between sin's effects of sin and the effects of the atonement that compariing the two throws  light on both.

Chapter 2 Analysis

2. The truths that lay behind the teaching about the atonement
6 The atonement, God's provision for putting away sin and all its consequences
7 Sayings that affirm or imply the need of atonement
8 The Incarnation comes into the way of salvation as a means to an end
9 God's love providing the atonement or God's love hand in glove with justice, the only channel of life
10 Single phrases describing the unique position of Jesus, or his standing between God and man
11 Sayings of Jesus that refer to a sending by the Father
12 Sayings of Christ that assume that he is the second Adam, and acts according to a covenant with the Father in his atoning work
13 The influence of the fact that Christ is God in the matter of the Atonement

Chapter 1 Section 5 (Last)

5. The importance of biblical ideas regarding Christ's death

When we reflect that all Christ's statements are expressions of his own consciousness, the Christian who understands their meaning, will say, as the Christian astronomer did when he discovered certain laws of the solar system, "My God, I think my thoughts with you." This cannot he a trifling matter for theology. Yet many today who exalt the inner life at the expense of true and right teaching are not slow to say that it does not matter whether Christ's death is regarded as what provides the ground for pardon or as what merely assures us of it. They do not want to know how atonement was made. They avoid defining terms and all biblical precision of thought, as if it could matter little to a Christian, whether the death of Jesus is considered to be a sacrifice on behalf of others or an expression of God's love, whether it displays the evil of sin or merely signifies the end of the Old Testament sacrifices. For them, such matters are mere theological debates or human speculations, from which they self-righteously stand aloof when such things are discussed. This process of unlearning, of leaving everything uncertain does not spring from a commendable zeal for truth but from a wish to blunt its edge. It is as if they are saying that the Bible teaches us nothing on the subject. Such is the watchword of those who tend to be opposed to clearly-defined views of Christian teaching or Bible truth. 

Our duty is the very reverse of this. We must acquire, as far as we can, sharply defined ideas of the atonement from the Gospels themselves. In our judgement they are far superior to any human wisdom on this subject. Whatever cannot be established from the Bible or is undermined by its teaching must go. We will not lose out for that. On the other hand, whatever really is taught, must be gathered by comparing text with text, the less obvious statements being put alongside the clear and easy ones. That is how to think our thoughts with God. 

It is no less common either today for some people to allege that the death of Jesus was his fate or fortune rather than a spontaneous sacrifice in the proper sense. Such writers claim that Christ fell victim to his holy and ardent zeal, while preaching religious and moral truth and discharging his high commission as the Herald of forgiveness. His death thus becomes a merely historical event or occurrence that, it is alleged, served only to give a weighty confirmation to the declaration of absolute forgiveness that he preached. This is an insipid half truth that may seem right but that is essentially wrong. It offers a certain spiritual cache to those who are hostile to the idea of an atonement and who say that only love is found in God. They see Jesus only as a preacher or herald of salvation and not as a true Saviour in the fullest sense. They will even extol him as Prince of Life and as Giver of Life but they do not connect this with a price paid or a ransom offered. When people give prominence to Christ's example or to the pattern of his life, there is inevitably an influence that operates like a trap. We will test this view, a view that makes strong pretensions to spirituality, by the very words of our Lord himself. For now, we simply draw attention to the danger this viewpoint poses. It can never deliver the mind from legalism, from self-reliance or self-dependence. It perverts the spiritual life and makes the Lord's example a pretext, if not an outright argument, for fostering a certain self-justifying confidence. This is the vortex into which every philosophy is irresistibly drawn if it offers no objective atonement or no perfect plea on which the soul can lean. Nothing carries the mind off from self-dependence like the atonement. Nothing so exalts grace and humbles the sinner. This is why God appointed that acceptance and forgiveness should come only through a Mediator and by depending on his merits. Hence the concern of the apostles and of the whole Bible at this point. The apparent spirituality of any tendency to go another way will never be compensation enough for this danger. 

Those who lay the greatest weight on Christ's person or his incarnation, often comparatively make light of his cross. Some, it is true, concede a little by saying that if any find terms such as penalty, price, suretyship and the satisfaction of God's justice helpful then they are welcome. However, the very way this is said calls in question their necessity. In fact, however, whenever any real progress in spiritual knowledge is made it will involve a growing appreciation of Christ's atonement as well as of his person. What happened to the disciples before and after his crucifixion proves this. The more fully we enter into Christ's truly human experience, treading his chequered course of joy and sorrow, the more lively our understanding of his curse-bearing life and of his penal death will be. 

We will also keep in view attacks on the atonement by Socinians and other heretics. Our main aim, however, is to bring out positive truth and teaching that will build people up rather than merely score points against our opponents. Our object is positive truth rather than refuting errors.

In short, we are not asking what men believe or have taught but rather what Christ has said. Our main concern will be to examine this question and to attempt to enter into his consciousness.

Chapter 1 Section 4

4. Our method for understanding the implications of these sayings

Our task is to explain the meaning of those sayings that have been preserved - to explore their implications and set out what they really mean. In this volume we will focus only on what the Lord himself said about his death for our redemption - his redeeming work, active and passive. We cannot completely isolate these sayings from the Old Testament prophecies and types that pointed to Messiah's coming or from the apostolic commentary that followed and that pointed back to what he said. However, our focus is the Gospels and our minds are to be filled with the Redeemer's thoughts. Of course, the Old Testament supplied, even to him, things that entered his consciousness and that were embodied in his life. His words undoubtedly contain traces from the past just as they would add a strong tinge what was to follow. Nevertheless, it is the thoughts of Jesus as they found expression in his words that we will concentrate on. We will insert nothing, we will add nothing that is not warranted by what is outlined in the prophets regarding his coming or by the apostolic commentary on the accomplished fact. We will seek only to deduce the Saviour's meaning, according to the force of his own language. We want to avoid any ideas that can be said to be foreign to the meaning of the Saviour's own words.

Christ's own sayings, if allowed to speak for themselves or explained only as far as is necessary to bring out their implications, will be found to convey such a full and rounded outline of the atonement, that almost no aspect of the teaching is left untouched. In discussing them, then, it will be best to catalogue them, then look at them individually. This is better than following the custom of simply giving them in chronological order and not attempting to classify them. Christ's sayings, however, are, by their very nature, so many and so extensive, that an  artificial classification system will not work. Our Lord's sayings are not only too comprehensive to be easily treated in this way but he gives them in ways that tie them to his mission, person, incarnation and design. Thus they cannot well be crystallised in the way that other sayings are by threading them on to a single string supplied by us in order to hold them together. Further, they vary a great deal and may be said to bring before us a new field of enquiry wherever he touches on the subject. Each gives the keynote, as it were, to a whole series or class of similar sayings in the rest of the New Testament, where they are taken up and continued, in line with the practical needs of the churches or in order to counter the changing beliefs of the time. The apostles take up the various sayings and use them in all sorts of ways, giving them a wide range of application.

Chapter 1 Section 3

3. Have all his sayings about the atonement been recorded?

Someone might raise the question of whether Jesus spoke about his atonement more fully and more frequently than is recorded in the Gospels. We do not have a complete description of all he ever said and did so he may have spoken often of his death and the salvation it brings when he found receptive and sympathetic hearts to whom he could speak of such things. We are dealing here with probabilities. We certainly know that our Lord did not make his sufferings and death the main topic of his teaching. He did not teach it the way the apostles later would. However, this does not exclude the possibility of a larger number of references to his death, when appropriate and in private, as in the case of Nicodemus. Possibly, the people of Sychar, who received him so enthusiastically, were taught truths such as those shared with Nicodemus. Perhaps this is what prompted them to hail him as "the Saviour of the world".

Or what about the words Jesus spoke after Mary of Bethany anointed him with perfume? "She did it for my burial" Jesus says (Matthew 26:12). She seems to have been taught by him about his death and simply accepted the words in their proper sense. Many want to assume that the woman intended nothing of that sort and Jesus merely took her words in that way. However, the language used suggests rather that this is a glimpse into her heart, her whole loving nature having been moved. The common view is accepted mainly because she has a simpler and more enlightened faith than the disciples. That should not blind us to the real situation. It is not always the most privileged who show the greatest faith. Jesus seems to have instructed her in private with regard to the nature and effect of his death, something she now regards as certain. She believes him with a simplicity and directness that those who were still dreaming of posts of honour and distinction did not share. This is almost a proof of his having given more statements about his his death than are recorded in the Gospels.

Certainly after his resurrection our Lord had many conversations about his atoning death that have not been preserved. It seems to have been one of the principal objects of his forty day sojourn here. He had a great deal to say on that theme that they were not ready to listen to before. No doubt he said a great deal that is not not recorded when he expounded to them from the Old Testament Scriptures all the things concerning himself there, beginning with Moses and the prophets (Luke 24:27). His words to the two disciples on the Emmaus road were "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" (25, 26). His great design was to unfold the necessity, nature and design of his death in the place of others and to open their minds to understand the Bible (Luke 24:45). We cannot but conclude, when we put all the hints together, that Jesus must then have said more to the disciples on the subject of his death for the remission of sins, than in all he had previously said to them. The work was complete and could now be fully understood. They knew the fact of his death and now he began to help them to get to know the design and purpose of that death in the light of the Old Testament. A complete outline of Bible teaching about the Messiah as it had been fulfilled was now opened to their wondering gaze, as it is contained in the law, the writings an the prophets (Luke 24:44). Who has not often wished to possess these unrecorded expositions of the Old Testament? They are no doubt embodied in the New Testament but it has not seemed good to the inspiring Spirit to preserve them in a separate form. The Lord had said, "I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now " (John 16:12) but they could bear them now.