as certainly as pantheism is atheism, does this generalizing of vicarious suffering, which of right is the sole, inalienable, and glorious function of the “one Mediator between God and men,” amount only to a direct and absolute denial of the doctrine of vicarious sacrifice, and to the affirmation that the sufferings of Christ were mere incidental con- comitants of his philanthropic interpositions in man’s be- half. We disprove this denial of the vicarious character of the sufferings of Christ, by proving that the Scriptures assert In many ways that they are vicarious.
There are several forms of expression which essen- tially present the same great principle, but with varia-
* Bushnell on Vicarious Sacrifice, pp. 41-53
CHAPTER Xx.
True rela- tion of
the words “ Vieari-
x” : ’ (4 . . Substi-
152 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
tions. His sufferings are said to be vicarious. He himself is said to have been the Substitute of his people, and a Ransom for them—that is, in their stead. He is also said to have been their Representative before God, and the one Mediator between God and men. We have before seen that Christ was accurately prefigured by the
. bleeding sacrifice upon the altar, and by the high priest
who brought the blood near to God within the veil.
- He was in like manner prefigured, at the same time, by
the slain goat upon the altar, and by the living goat carrying away the expiated sins of the pecple into the wilderness. His office as Mediator included the func- tions at once of prophet, priest, and king; and yet not one of his personal types embraced, in one person, more than two of these, as David and Ezra. The reason for this, of course, lay in the fact that the type was finite and transient, while the Antetype was infinite and eternal. He was at once God, and priest, and bleeding sacrifice, dead and alive again for evermore, offerer and offering. When we say, therefore, that our blessed Lord is, in the strict sense of the word, our Substitute or our Ransom, we do not mean that for any single moment these relations exhaust all the relations borne or functions discharged by his infinite person. At the very same moment he is God, whose justice demands propitiation ; and _ priest, offermg himself a sacrifice; and the sacrifice, offered to satisfy that justice. Let it be distinctly understood, then, that when we say that Christ was the Substitute of his people, and that his sufferings were, in the strict sense of the word, vicarious, we affirm this to be true of him viewed in his function as a sacrifice. When we say that he is the Representative, we affirm this to be true of him as the second Adam or federal Head, undertaking and discharging all the obligations of the broken law in our stead. When we say he is our Mediator, we affirm that
CHRIST’S SUFFERINGS VICARIOUS. 153
to be true of him as our High Priest, as he is ordained orrer for man in the things pertaining to God (ra zpos Tov Ocdv).
The place we occupied was “under the law.” We were placed under it at the creation, and perfect obedience made the condition of our well-being. By our fall in Adam we became at once incapable of obeying the de- mands of the law and subject to its unrelaxable penalty.
The law remains over us, therefore, as an inexorable taskmaster, demanding the impossible; and as the organ of immutable justice, demanding our death. Christ, being a divine person, was of course himself the norm and fountain of all law, and incapable of being subjected to any personal conditions of life; yet, as the Thean- thropic Mediator in behalf of his elect, he “was made under the law,” that is, transferred to that position, that he might ‘redeem them that were under the law” (Gal. iv. 4, 5). The place he took, therefore, was our law-place. In taking our law-place he necessarily assumed our legal responsibilities ; for example, obedience as a condition of life, and suffering as a penal consequent of disobedience. And he did this “to redeem them that were under the law’’—that is, all he did in our place was for our sake.
We accept fully Barnes’s definition of a substitute :* Barnes's “The idea is, that the person substituted is to do or Sees suffer the same thing which the person for whom he is Site’ substituted would have done.” This is a fair statement of the true doctrine of substitution, which necessarily involves the true doctrine of the Atonement. The ad- vocates of the Governmental Theory are able to admit that Christ died as our substitute only in the loose sense of having died for our sakes. On the other hand, we eee maintain, as is implied in the above definition, that ™ot™s
; : : ; people; Christ suffered as our substitute in the strict and proper his sui-
ferings
sense of having suffered in our place or stead. The vicarious,
* Atonement, p. 281.
CHAPTER
154 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
truth of this position is expressly affirmed in Scripture, as well as indirectly involved in many related doctrines.