the idea of a substitute. It is true, as I showed above, | . that the person upon whom the penalty is to be inflicted
being changed—one divine person being substituted for many human persons—the law itself, on principles of essential justice, spontaneously adjusts the quality of the sufferings constituting the penalty to the quality of the victim. Sinners being the victims, the penalty includes remorse and eternal death. Christ being the substituted victim, remorse and eternal death, ipso facto, cease to be the penalty, but he, standing in our place, suffers precisely the very penalty of the law in our stead—that is, all that the law in rigour of justice demands on the account of our sins, when that account is settled in his person. In every substitution there must be a constant as well as a variable quantity. A substitute is not a different man in a different place, but a different man in the same place.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ORTHODOX DOCTRINE PROVED FROM THE FACT THAT THI SCRIP- TURES DECLARE THAT OUR SINS WERE LAID UPON CHRIST.
\Yrexa UR doctrine is explicitly and emphatically curren | taught in a large class of passages which = assert that our sims were laid wpon Christ— scripture that they were charged to his account, and #7... made his in such a sense that they were the legal cause #5 were of his suffering the penalty due to them: “The Lorp cist. hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. liu. 6). “He bare the sin of many” (Isa. lit 12). ‘For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. v. 21). “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. iii. 13). “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many” (Heb. ix. 28). ‘Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1 Pet. 11. 24).
It is claimed that these expressions cannot possibly be interpreted literally ; that it cannot be true that Christ in any literal sense was transformed into sin; that the all-perfect Son of God could not have been in any natural sense of the word a sinner. Those who reject the orthodox doctrine of satisfaction hence illogically conclude that since these terms are not to be interpreted literally, they have no definite and certainly ascertain- able meaning at all, but may be accommodated to any view of the Atonement which we have reason on other
CHAPTER ».6 F
Different senses of the word “sin” in Scripture.
Scriptural usage of the phrase to “‘im- pute sin’ or “‘righ- teous- ness.”
158 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
grounds to prefer. In opposition to this, we maintain that the usage of Scripture with respect to the phrases ‘sin,’ “to bear sin,” or “iniquity,” ‘to impute” or “to lay upon” one “sin” or “iniquity,” is uniform, and that their sense is both definite and certainly ascertainable ; and that the meaning of the passages above quoted, when interpreted in the light of this usage, is unmistakably clear, and consistent only with the doctrine that our sins were, in strict rigour of justice, laid upon and punished in the person of Christ.
1. The word sim is habitually used in Scripture to set forth moral evil in three aspects or relations: (1.) Sin considered as to its formal nature—that is, as transgres- sion of God’s law (1 John ii. 4). (2.) Sin considered as a moral quality inherent in the soul of the agent—as pol- lution—macula (Rom. vi. 11-13). (8.) Sin considered with respect to its legal obligation to punishment—as euilt—vreatus. In this last sense it is used in all those passages which speak of “bearing sin,” of ‘laying on iniquities,” of “imputing sin,’ &c. In this sense the Hebrew words for sin (nxon) and guilt (owKN) were used to designate the sacrifices which were made to suffer vicariously the penalty due the ritual transgres- sions of the offerer. In like manner Christ is said to be made sin—that is, according to constant usage, a sin- offering—because he is the sacrifice who volunteers to suffer vicariously the penalty consequent upon our trans- gressions of the moral law.
2. The phrase to ‘‘impute sin,” or “ righteousness,” in its Scriptural usage signifies simply to set to one’s ac-.
, count, to lay to one’s charge or credit as a ground of
legal process. The thing imputed may belong to the person to whom it is imputed originally. In that case it is imputed in the sense of being simply charged to him, made the ground of a legal indictment preparatory
OUR SINS LAID ON CHRIST. 159