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.

Chapter 1 Section 2

2. How many sayings of Jesus on the atonement there are and where they are found.

It is true that there are fewer sayings than we might have wished. However, the amount of information in them  is marked by variety, fullness and range in meaning. They are to be weighed rather than counted. Their wide implications need to be traced rather than simply counting them in a series. Much more important than the mere number is their comprehensiveness, force and fullness of meaning. On examination they will be found to contain, if not expressly at least by implication, almost every blessing that is connected with the atonement. The apostles do not so much develop it as apply it to the various ideas and practices found in the churches. So, for example, the legalism of Judaisers brought out one application in Galatia and the incipient gnosticism in Colossse and Asia Minor, another. We cannot, in this book, investigate all the applications of this great teaching woven into the New Testament letters. Here we are simply going to look at the Lord's own sayings on the subject, something that needs a careful investigation.

Before the event no-one could have predicted what the exact nature of Christ's testimony to his sacrifice might be. Nor could it be predicted in what precise form it would be presented to his hearers. Usually he alludes to it in connection with some fact in the story, some Old Testament type or some particular title or name that he claimed for himself with its roots in prophecy. All of the sayings are pointed and memorable. They embed themselves in your mind by alluding to something otherwise very ordinary. He spoke of the atonement in line with his hearers' openness and lack of prejudice or love of truth and ability to receive it. The story of Nicodemus is an example. What was said to him had the happy effect of preparing his mind to understand the nature of Messiah's death so that he would not take offence when the hour came.
We often think at certain points that an allusion to Christ's atoning work would be appropriate. We expect it. It is a surprise to see with what reserve such a central teaching is announced. It seems strange, for example, that while parables such as that of the Pharisee and tax collector or the two debtors that Jesus spoke about in the house of Simon the Pharisee, clearly teach acceptance by grace they make no allusion to the atonement. Some, opposed to the teaching that Christ died in the place of sinners, think they can find support for their views in this fact. However, a little reflection should be enough to satisfy us that Jesus had reasons for his silence. The idea of a suffering Messiah had been forgotten. His priestly office mentioned in Psalm 110 was ignored. Apart from people like Simeon and Zechariah, John's father, most were unfamiliar with the idea.
More than that, the people needed first to learn, as they did from John the Baptist, that the Law is spiritual, one of the burdens of Christ's Sermon on the Mount. Jesus found it absolutely necessary to awaken a spiritual sense of the things of God; to awaken conscience and preach repentance because the kingdom was near. He needed to attack their hollow and merely external forms and their neglect of the weightier matters of the law. He needed to explode their empty trust in being Abraham's descendants and their futile expectation that they would take part in Messiah's rule just because they were Jews. He had, in a word, to turn them away from thinking only of how they looked in men's eyes, caring only about how the outside of the cup or dish looked. Before they would be ready to hear about the atonement they needed to see their need as sinners, recognise their defects and be awakened to a desire for pardon.
Only then could he announce God's kingdom as having come and begin to explain its nature and excellence, the character of its subjects and its other aspects. He had to show what his God given mission was and prove it by his many miracles. He had to show his more than human dignity, his divine Sonship, his sealing and sending, his unique position in the world as the Great Deliverer and the object of promise, the long-desired one Moses wrote about and who Abraham longed to see. He aimed first at confirming people's faith in him as the promised Christ, attaching them to his person by a bond that would be strong enough to bear pressure, while yet avoiding the danger of offending them with something that any Jewish mind would be offended by. He wanted, first of all, to bind his disciples to him and deepen their faith in him. This was his first and most basic aim as he spoke to his disciples from day to day.
At this point a new difficulty presented itself. The disciples, now attached to his person and accepting him as Saviour, did not want to hear about his death. They would not believe it. They could not take it in. At the time when Peter, in the name of the rest, declared his belief that Jesus was Messiah and the Son of God (Matthew 16:16) we might have expected full submission to every part of Christ's teaching. Surely the Lord's own explicit statement about his death given at this auspicious time would be accepted without demur. On the contrary, Peter began to rebuke Jesus for what he had to say about his death. That is how much their own ideas had possessed them and how hard it was for Jesus to direct their thinking into a new channel. The way they saw it, the kingdom is eternal and he would enter into it at once without any atoning death for a basis and reason. They dreamed of places of authority, rank and honour in the kingdom. Constantly they were pre-occupied, even at the Last Supper, with who would be prime-minister and who would hold the most power. Even true disciples mingled alien ideas with their understanding of the kingdom. And so, to keep his cause free from the risk of the political commotion that an open announcement of his Messiahship would have given rise to, in a community where the true idea had been lost, and conscious that he must die at the hand of that very community, we find that our Lord spoke sparingly and with reserve about the atonement. Indeed, on one occasion he made his disciples get into a ship and be gone when otherwise the excited crowds would have taken him by force and made him king.
People who who were thinking like that were hardly ready to hear about the atonement. These two ideas - the Messiahship and the possibility of his death - seemed to them highly incompatible. They were unwilling to consider even for a moment that the conqueror could himself be conquered. They ruled out any enquiry and so proved themselves unqualified for further teaching. They did not come to him with teachable minds and ask for the information that he would willingly have supplied. It was possible, therefore, for him to leave a record in their memory only in a more indirect and incidental way. He did it by means of his sermons in Galilee and in Jerusalem (as recorded in John 6 and 10) and more obviously when he introduced this truth in connection either with events in his own life or difficulties in theirs. However, it must be allowed on all sides, that while the disciples felt their life was bound up with him, they pushed out of their minds by means of their own explanations the unwelcome fact of his death, even though he frequently mentioned it. Even though it formed the only topic of conversation on the Mount of Transfiguration between Moses, Elijah and Christ, the disciples contrived, somehow, to explain away the fact. When the Lord took them aside and solemnly announced what was at hand, they were very sad indeed but, as if they had found out some way out, were soon found engaging in their old dispute again. The abject dejection into which they were thrown by his actual death, shows how ill prepared they were for it and how little they understood its meaning. All this goes to show that as the disciples were unable to listen calmly and without prejudice when the topic was raised until they were in a position to look back on the event as an accomplished fact, so Christ's teaching could not possibly be given then with the fullness and freedom that it could be after his resurrection.

Chapter 1 Section 1

Where to find the sayings of Jesus and how we will investigate them

1 The four Gospels - where to find the sayings of Jesus

The four Gospels are written in a way that is just right for showing us why Christ died. It will be enough here just to briefly note the elements found in them.

It was impossible for one writer to adequately describe the riches of Christ's life and so God gave us a four-faced mirror to adequately reflect the God-man. This is one reason why the apostles were allowed to get so close to him during his earthly public ministry. God intended that they should be eye witnesses and ear witnesses who would, in due time, faithfully record Jesus' deeds and words. This comes out at certain points even when they had not fully realised this (see Matthew 26:13 Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told in memory of her; Acts 1:21). For thirty years the precious record waited on their lives, so often in danger, until the appointed time, when it could be committed to the church in writing. By that time the church was ready to welcome it and appreciate it as God's Word. What was eventually written down had shared with the church orally by the apostles for nearly a generation. The Gospels themselves were produced either by eye witnesses or by those who knew the eye witnesses and were approved by them. The fact that the apostles were still leading the churches when the Gospels first appeared ensured at least two things. First, the authenticity and faultless accuracy of the records. Second, their unimpeded circulation. They were accepted as books written by people who were called to the task and competent to execute it by putting the material in the form it is in now. Down the years Christians have continued to reverently preserve these records as part of God's Word.

• Matthew's Gospel was received by the church as the work of an eye witness. It has its own distinctiveness. The fact that it opens with a family tree that begins with Abraham and its apparently rather Jewish interests suggests that it was written with Jewish believers in mind. He describes the life of Jesus in the light of Old Testament prophecies about Messiah. He avoids detail, much more than Mark and John at least. He puts together an important set of facts and sayings, however, often pointing out where prophecy has been fulfilled.
• Mark's Gospel has long been said to be John Mark's record of the preaching of Peter. It does not merely give us the gist of Matthew but is a separate Gospel in its own right. It is often thought to be the first Gospel published and this is likely. It begins in the style of Peter's sermons as found in Acts (see Acts 10 for example) and focuses on Jesus's great deeds. It reveals what a powerful impression Jesus made. There is little teaching and little attempt to show that Jesus fulfilled prophecy.
• Luke's Gospel is like Mark except that here it is Luke and Paul rather than Mark and Peter. It was prepared by someone from Paul's circle and with his approval. Its connection with Paul comes out in many ways. For example, Luke's genealogy makes no attempt to distinguish Jew and Gentile and goes right back to Adam.  Or take the way he reports the Song of Simeon, the insufficiency of deeds or the connection between salvation and faith (see 2:32, 17:10, 7:50).
• The fourth Gospel, by John, the disciple Jesus loved and his apostle, was written long after the others had died and was intended to supplement what they had written. John's main aim was to show that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (20:31). This is done in a way not attempted before that focuses on the Lord's own consciousness. John was particularly suited and gifted to work in this way. Unlike Matthew and Luke, he does not begin with a family tree or Jesus as a baby nor does he begin with Jesus' public ministry as Mark does. Rather he goes back to the Lord's divine pre-existence and eternal Sonship before coming to the story of what happened and what Jesus said.

This brings us to the matter of the facts of Jesus' life and the things he said.

The facts. As to the facts, the story is basically simple and straightforward. The necessary interpretation and commentary comes mainly from the Lord's sayings and the comments we find in the New Testament letters. Without this interpretation, the story of Jesus' suffering can give rise to nothing more than sentimental feelings or idle sympathy, something the Lord rejected (see Luke 23:28). The facts and sayings are so connected that on their own they cannot be understood. The story would be an insoluble puzzle without the commentary. The historic incidents of the Lord's suffering supply what we may call the realism of the atonement. They exhibit it in concrete personal form. The teaching is given in the New Testament letters. There the curtain is lifted so that we can see God's thinking or the plan of redemption that the stories embody in historical reality. It is when we combine God's thought and action, his plan and its fulfilment, that the way they coincide serves to confirm both. The teaching makes the story clear. The Gospels can only be studied properly when they are read in the light of God's plan. Without that you only skate on the surface, happy just to see Christ as an example or slipping in some petty and random ideas of your own, even though the stories are dominated by this idea of sacrifice on behalf of others. When the story is read by those able to trace the cause of the Lord's sufferings as well as the sufferings themselves, they are able to learn the true teaching from the facts. The Gospels, in a word, exhibit on a foundation of fact, both the conditions of the atonement and all its different parts. The more the story is examined, the more the correspondence between sayings and facts, predictions and fulfilments, is seen.
When we closely examine the story in the Gospels, we find these writings very well adapted to the design for which they were composed. They must be read with this design in mind. They aim to bring out, in line with a definite plan, the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is the suffering Messiah, who all the prophets wrote about. For this reason, their story is so arranged that it will bring out, either directly or indirectly and without labouring the point, the co-incidence between fact and prophecy.
We can divide Old Testament prophecy of the humiliations of the Messiah into three sorts:
1. Those announcing a suffering Guarantor
2. Those showing the voluntary subjection of Messiah to the sufferings faced
3. Those setting forth how those sufferings serve to lead others to put their trust in him for salvation.
There is a most impressive coincidence between fact and prophecy.
But further still, the Gospels are structured, careful analysis will show, in a way that brings out all the most important elements of the atonement in terms of the historical reality. This confirms that an infinite Intelligence is behind their composition. No merely human version of the Lord's life can come near it. The essential qualities required in an atoning Guaranotr are chiefly the following four. In each case we see them developed on the basis of fact. The sufferings must be
1. Faultless and entirely in keeping with the character of the one to whom satisfaction is required to be made.
2. Very painful and shameful
3. Of unlimited worth or value in light of the dignity of the sufferer
4. In accurate correspondence with God's declarations
All four points come out in the facts as recorded in the Gospels in a most remarkable way. By way of example think of
1. The declarations of Pilate and his wife, of Herod and of Judas. These all come out quite naturally.
2. The scorn and mockery inflicted on the sufferer, the indignities he suffered, the false charges that condemned him and the way the sentence was carried out.
3. Christ's dignity is confirmed by those touches in the story where his priestly prayers and sacrifice are covered, including the way he blessed the dying thief beside him. In the most simple way, the Gospel writers record his royalty when his enemies were thrown back in his presence and he protected his disciples; the notice that, in God's providence, Pilate placed above his head on the cross and the words of the centurion at the cross "Truly this was the Son of God".
4. The final point is the one most fully illustrated in the original threat of death, the curse of which being hung on a tree was the obvious evidence and emblem and in the details of the arrest, trial, crucifixion and shame, sufferings and death, as foreshadowed and foretold in the Old Testament and as recalled in those brief records supplied by the Gospels; not to mention little incidents occasionally introduced, such as his thirst and none of his bones being broken.

The sayings. As to the sayings, they are expressions of the Lord's own consciousness. They are accurately given, having been lodged in the memories of the apostles. These sayings undoubtedly give us Jesus' own thoughts on the subject of his atoning death. They announce the design, aim and motive behind his actions. Every Christian will readily admit that they are spoken truthfully, without overstatement, on the one hand, or defect, on the other. They give us not only an objective outline of his work in its nature and results but also a glimpse into the very heart of his activity. In this light these sayings are invaluable. They disclose Jesus' inner thoughts and convey the absolute truth on the subject of the atonement, in accord with a knowledge of his function that was known only to himself. Only in his own mind did he fully and adequately know such things. Here, then, we have perfect truth. Here we may affirm, unless we are ready to give up everything to uncertainty and doubt, that we have the whole truth as to the nature of the atonement, as well as in reference to the design and scope for which Christ gave himself up to death for others.