1. The Bible represents all the sufferings of believers in this life as disciplinary, designed to advance their moral and spiritual improvement, and having no respect whatever to the expiation of guilt. The removal of condemnation is referred solely to the work of Christ (Rom. vil. 1, 33, 34); and the design of discipline is referred solely to the paternal purpose of improving the persons exercised thereby : “ For our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness” (Heb. xii. 5-11).
2. The Scriptures declare that “the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1. 7); and that ‘by one offering [for sin] he hath perfected for ever them that are See (Heb, x. 12, 14); and that all Christians are “complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power” (Col. i, 10).
3. Trust in the one sacrifice of Christ is made the sole condition of acceptance and favour at all times; but this act of trust necessarily, from its very nature, excludes all dependence whatsoever upon the expiatory value of our own sufferings, or upon the merit of our own services.
In answer to the Protestant impugners of the absolute perfection of the satisfaction of Christ as the alone pro- curing cause of the salvation of his people, I call to wit- ness, in addition to what has been cited against the
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kindred position of the Romanists, the fact that the Scriptures habitually and characteristically, and in every variety of form, assert that the satisfaction of Christ effects the deliverance, the redemption, the salvation, the adoption, the sanctification, Wc, &c., of his people. Every reader of the Scriptures knows that they con- stantly declare that the Father gave the Son to death,
and that the Son submitted to die, for the purpose of
effecting these things. Every reader knows that the Scriptures constantly declare that the obedience and sufferings of Christ actually effect these things. They do, as a matter of fact, ‘save us,” “redeem us,” “reconcile us to the Father,” secure for us ‘the adop-
tion of sons,’ “the indwelling” and all the “fruits of
the Spirit.” If this be so, then unquestionably Christ, by his expiatory sacrifice, did not merely make salvation possible : his sacrifice must secure that salvation as a whole, and all that is meluded in it. Not the end without the means, but the end through the means ; not eternal life without faith and ppediodce: but i and obedience in order to eternal life. In this respect the redemption of Christ is like the eternal decree of God. It does not alter any natural relation sustained by the several elements involved in the believer’s life to the means of grace—the exercises of free will, and the necessity for gracious affection and obedience ; but it does render the event it was designed to secure certain, and, in order to that end, secures all the antecedents and conditions upon which that event depends or to which it is related. We will not be saved without faith and obedience; but our precious Saviour left no such conditions unprovided for. The faith, the obedience, and the perseverance to the end, were as surely pur- chased by the great ALL-PERFECT Sacrifice as were the remission of the penalty and final salvation.
CHAPTER XVII.
XVIII.
Ambigu- ity of the word
“* Atone- ment.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SATISFACTION RENDERED BY CHRIST PROVED TO EMBRACE HIS ACTIVE AS WELL AS HIS PASSIVE OBEDIENCE.
baal PROPOSE to prove, in conclusion, that our blessed Lord, having assumed our law-place, and, as our Substitute, become responsible for all our obligations to the law in its federal relation, has discharged them by his obedience as well as by his sufferings; having by his sufferings cancelled the claims of penal justice, and by his obedience merited the rewards of that original Covenant of Life under which all men were held.
In the third chapter I have stated the reasons why the word Atonement fails unambiguously and compre- hensively to express the entire nature of the work: wrought by our Lord for our redemption. (a.) While it properly, as the English equivalent for the Hebrew “a2, means to make expiation for sin by means of a vicarious infliction or endurance of the penalty, it is nevertheless used by many to express mere reconciliation, at-one-ment. (b.) Even when it is settled that the word ‘to atone” is equivalent to the phrase ‘‘to make expia- tion,” the difficulty still presses, that it is too narrow for the use to which it is put, and cannot properly cover all that Christ has done for the discharge of our legal obli- gations. The Scriptures teach us plainly that Christ’s obedience was as truly vicarious as was his suffering,
ACTIVE AND PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. 231
and that he reconciled us to the Father by the one as cuarrer well as by the other. Now the word Atonement sig- “~ nalizes only the expiation of our guilt by Christ’s vica-