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
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.
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.
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