1. It may be inferred from the amazing greatness of the sacrifice. The Scriptures constantly speak of the sacrifice of the Son by the Father as an unparalleled wonder. All else that God will or can do is as nothing in comparison with the gift of Christ. If God “spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. vill. 32.) This sacrifice would be most painfully” irrelevant if it were anything short of absolutely neces- sary in relation to the end designed to be attained—that is, unless it be indeed the only possible means to the salvation of sinful men. God surely would not have made his Son a wanton sacrifice to a point of bare will. Christ certainly would not have been sacrificed if divine wisdom could have devised, or if divine power could have executed, any other process capable of effecting the end designed—that is, the redemption of men from the curse of the law.
2. The same truth is asserted in effect in Gal. ii, 21: “Tf righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” In the original there is no article before the word vonos (law). The affirmation of the text is, that if righteousness by law (dta vouov), by any law whatsoever, were possible for man, then Christ is dead in vain. So great a sacrifice as this is misplaced, is to all intents in vain, thrown away, made without adequate purpose, if any other means could have attained the end.
3. Again, in Gal. 11. 21, it is said: “If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteous- ness should have been by the law.” God can give no law whose requirements fall short of absolute perfection, otherwise he would deny himself. There can be no
NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT. 221
change or compromise of righteousness. But in the case cmarrer of man this all-perfect law can only demand and con- Be demn. It is not the function of law to empower, nor to
remit, nor to give life, nor to atone. Verily Christ would never have been sacrificed if righteousness could
have been by law.
4. God expressly measures his love to his people by his gift of his Son to die for them: ‘“‘God 80 LOVED THE WORLD, that he gave his only-begotten Son” (John ii. 16). ‘‘God COMMENDETH HIS LOVE TOWARD US, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. v. 8). “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son - into the world, that we might lve through him” (1 John iv. 9). This is an amazing truth, and it is true just be- cause the sacrifice of Christ was necessary to secure the salvation of those God loved; and hence the greatness of his love to us is measured by the greatness of his sac- rifice for us. But if the sacrifice was not necessary in the strict sense of that term, then there must have been some one or more alternatives at God’s disposal; and hence the sacrifice of Christ, the alternative chosen, could be in no true sense a measure of his love for his people, but only of his own unwillingness to adopt any other one of the possible alternatives.
5. Paul declares, Rom. i. 25, 26, that Christ was “set forth to be a propitiation (‘AacTyproy, expiation) through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past ;”—that is, the _ expiatory work of Christ is set forth as the vindication of the righteousness or essential holiness of God, in re- spect to the fact that he had remitted sins in time past. ‘And he proceeds,—‘“To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness : that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” It is absolutely neces-
222 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
PrApIEE SANY. that God should be just. This he eternally is. But —— that he should be just while he justifies the unjust, it was necessary that Christ should be offered a piacular sacrifice for sin. Therefore the sacrifice of Christ, con- sidered as a means to the justification of sinners, was an . absolute necessity. And therefore it follows, as shown above, that the ground of that necessity must lie in the divine nature——which is the one only absolute ground of necessity in the universe. And if the ground for the necessity for the Atonement is in the constitution of the divine nature, it follows that the Atonement, as to its nature, is a satisfaction by vicarious penal sufferings of
the demands of the divine nature.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT DETERMINED BY WHAT TIE SCRIPTURES TEACH AS TO ITS PERFECTION.
=p TK question as to the PERFECTION of the atoning cnarrsr EaP Se| work of Christ has often been agitated in the ~~ Church. It relates to two distinct points :—
(a.) Is that work perfect as to its intrinsic justice-satisfying value; does it fully satisfy all the demands of the law by reason of its own inherent merit?