IL. I submit that the induction of Scriptural passages I have presented makes certain the following points: 1. That. the entire class of passages above presented are not only without exception consistent with, but when taken together naturally suggest, the central principle of our doctrine, viz., that Christ, in the strict and proper sense of the term, was substituted in the law-place of his people. (2.) That the existence of this ineffable union, when established as a fact by infallible authority, goes very far to explain the relation which Christ has sustained to the penal sanctions of the law, and the effect which his work of active and passive obedience accom- plishes in expiating the sins of his people, and in en- titling them with himself to a glorious inheritance. And (3.) That neither of the views which I oppose can, by any possible ingenuity, be adjusted to a/l that the Scriptures reveal concerning the union of Christ to his people, taken together as a whole. On neither hypothesis can a rational explanation of the application to the subject ef such language in such variety and involution be afforded.
With respect to the Moral Influence Hypothesis, the
THE MYSTICAL UNION. 195
truth of this assertion is more than sufficiently evident. cuarrer If Christ comes to us merely that by a revelation “~~ ' of divine love he may persuade us to lay aside our wicked enmity to God, in what sense, consistent with
the honest use of language, can he be said to be our “second Adam,” our ‘ Priest,” our ‘“ Ransom,” our
“ Advocate with the Father,’ the ‘‘ Propitiation for our
sins,’ our “Surety” or Bailsman before God? In what sense were we ‘‘predestinated in him,” “bap-
tized into his death”? In what sense was his death virtually our death, or his life virtually our life? In
what sense is our life hid with Christ in God? In
what sense do we have fellowship with him in his sufferings and in the power of his resurrection? In
what sense is he our righteousness and we made right-
eous by his obedience ?
The same essential incongruity will appear when we attempt to adjust the great central truth taught by these passages to the Governmental Hypothesis. If Christ was not strictly a Substitute in our place, and if he did not literally bear the penalty and expiate the guilt of our sins; if all he did was, by sufferings which were not of the nature of punishment, to prove that God will punish sin, and thus make it consistent with God’s rectitude as King for him not to save any, but to put all in a salvable state; if this represents the whole truth revealed as to the nature of redemption,—then it neces- sarily follows that, after all the Holy Ghost has said about it, the union between Christ and his people is not real, but only figurative. He helps us materially to help ourselves. But he never was literally one with us in the eye of the law. We are not truly of his flesh and of his bones, and he was neither our Ransom nor our Bailsman. We are not truly joint heirs with him, but only beneficiaries. His obedience does not make us
CHAPTER
XDIT. +
196 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
righteous, but his sufferings open the way for God's giving us an opportunity of becoming so. He did not bear our sin, and we are not clothed upon with his righteousness. Our sin was only the occasion of his suffering; and the same suffering is only the occasion, by means of which we may, if faithful, become person- ally righteous.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE ORTHODOX DOCTRINE AS TO THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT PROVED FROM WHAT THE SCRIPTURES TEACH AS TO THE NATURE AND GROUNDS OF JUSTIFICATION.
Yano the ninth argument in support of the truth cxarrer of our doctrine as to the nature of the Atone- == ment, I cite the clear and indubitable teach- ings of the Scriptures as to the nature of JUSTIFICATION and the grounds upon which it proceeds. For the ends of my argument, I shall define and establish by Scripture the true doctrine of justification, first on that side on which it immediately antagonizes the Moral Influence Theory as to the nature of the Atonement, and secondly, on that side on which it refuses to coalesce with the Governmental Theory of the same.
I. Those who hold that the entire design and effect Justia. of the vicarious sufferings of Christ was to produce a (ne.
proved to moral influence upon the sinner, and thus to reconcile ¢*'
man to God instead of propitiating God in behalf of of God as man, must, of course, hold justification to be a divine ae work, effecting, by appropriate means, a subjective change
in the moral condition of the individual. Judged from
their point of view, it must signify to make inherently
or personally just or morally good.
In opposition to all heretics of this class, as well as in opposition to the Papists, the Evangelical Protestant Church has always maintained, with an overwhelming weight of Scriptural evidence, that that justification
CHAPTER ATV.
198 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.