efficacy ; and a full equivalent, in being of equal efficacy cHarrsx in these respects in strict rigour of justice, according ate to the judgment of God. Consequently, what Christ suffered is by no means the same with what his people would have suffered, when considered as suf- fering, but is precisely the very same when considered
as penalty.
3. The Scriptures clearly teach that, as a matter of christ
fact, Christ came not to relax the law, but to fulfil it. fis, not He says of himself (Matt. v. 17, 18): “Think not that (0 relax IT am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” The apostle declares (Rom. x. 4), that “ Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.” When discussing the great doctrine of justification by faith, Paul anticipates the objection (Rom. iii. 31), ‘Do we then make void the law through faith?” and answers, “God forbid: yea, we establish the law.” The law pro- nounced a curse upon the sinner, and “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law,” not by waiving that curse, but by “ being made a curse for us.”
If the penalty is an essential part of the law—if the whole law is immutable—if Christ actually came to fulfil the law, and not to relax its demands—then it follows, without doubt, that he suffered the penalty of the law as our Substitute.
John Young, LL.D., of Edinburgh, in two chapters of Roation his late oul: (Life ae HoH of Men), entitled sever- Som. ally “Spiritual Laws” and ‘“ Eternal Justice,” essays to Younes overturn the entire conception of law and penalty upon lew and which the faith of the whole Church, Greek and Ro- es man, Lutheran, Reformed and Arminian, has always reposed. His points are as follows: (1.) The spiritual
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CHAPTER Vv.
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Refuta- tion.
6454. THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
laws of the universe have their ground independent of God, in the essential and eternal nature of things. (2.) They are necessarily and instantly self-acting. The penalty of every sin is so connected with the sin itself, in the nature of things, that “it is impreventable. It lies in the essential nature of things that it must come
‘down. Ever and ever justice inflicts an inevitable pen-
alty, and exacts the completest satisfaction.” (3.) These Jaws are self-acting and independent of God; “the God. of purity and love has no part in the punishment of sin.” Sin punishes itself instantly and adequately. “The doom of the lost, be it whatever it may, is simply and wholly their own work. It is all, from first to last, not only their own doing, but their own doing in despite of God.” (4.) Sin continues to punish itself as long as it exists. It can cease to be punished only by being anni- hilated. And the mstant sin ceases to exist in a sinner’s soul—that is, as soon as he is sanctified——he ceases to be punishable. (5.) God is not just in the rectilineal human sense at all. He is never less than just. He is never unjust. But he is always more than just—that is, better to men than their deserts. Goodness is his grand distinguishing attribute.
This appears to us a very low and material view of the case. It is incipient Positivism, and Positivism is infallibly gross Materialism. It conceives of the laws of a spiritual society of persons—personal subjects living under the righteous administration of a personal God, acting upon them by the light of truth and the influence of motives, by commands, benefactions, authority, pro- mises, threatenings—as nothing more or less than the necessarily self-acting physical laws of the material world or of the human organism. It grounds these laws
in the “nature of things,” independent of God. But —
what entity in the whole universe exists, except as the
ee ee ee ee
IMMUTABILITY OF THE LAW. 65