very nature it must, in every event, be terminated, 7pso
jucto, either by the first sin which brings in the penalty,
or by the granting of the promised reward when the conditions upon which it has been suspended have been accomplished. The penal relation comes in when the
law has been broken, and the trial has ceased. It springs out of the essential nature of the law, and con- tinues in force until that perfect righteousness of which Obedi- the penalty is the outward expression is completely Ba satisfied. in order to
the pro-
It is notorious that, as a matter of fact, men have mise of sustained all of these relations to the law, and that by PHY reason of sin they are condemned in each. They are Suns under perpetual obligation to be conformed to the law indicial
és reconcili- as a standard of character and as a rule of action, but ation.
CHAPTER XVIII.
234 “THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
they are wholly unable to meet the obligation. Their hopes of eternal well-being were all suspended upon the conditions undertaken by the first Adam in the garden, but all this is already and for ever forfeited by past dis- obedience. They are justly subject to the penalty of eternal death. They must be restored to conformity to the law, in all these respects, by a power exterior to themselves, or they cannot be saved. As a matter of fact, believers are restored to conformity to the law in its natural relation, as a standard of character and as a rule of life, by the Holy Ghost regenerating and sancti- fying them. But their restoration to conformity to the law in its penal and federal relations is accomplished by Christ through his one work. of obedient suffering even unto death. If he assumed our place, so as to suffer the penalty in our stead, he must at the:same time have secured our title to the reward conditioned upon obedience by means of his perfect obedience, which was inseparably implicated with his sufferings, and which was rendered in the same covenant relation in our stead as well as in our behalf. All that Christ did on earth he did as Mediator. He was acting in our stead while he was obeying as well as while he was suffering. The active and passive righteousness of Christ were never, in fact, separated from each other; and therefore, except in their logical discrimination, we should never exhibit them as separated. They were wrought together by Christ as our Substitute, as his one work of redemption. It was with reference to both of these conjointly that Jesus is called “The Lorp our Righteousness.” So says John Wesley, as quoted by Richard Watson.* Therefore no view of the nature, relation, and effects of the one, which excludes all consideration of the other, can be accurate, and much less can it be complete. They con- * Theo. Inst., vol. ii., p. 224.
ACTIVE AND PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. 235
sequently should never be separated, but should be cuarrea regarded as the inseparable parts of one organic whole, ~~" and signalized by a title capable of embracing both. Satisfaction is the genus including the two comple- mentary species, obedience and penal sufferings.
The principle which lies at the bottom of this distinc- tion was first discriminated by Thomas Aquinas,* and by him denoted by the terms sutisfactio and meritum. By satisfactio he meant the complete fulfilment of all the claims of law and justice with respect to the penalty. By meritum he meant that which secures, by virtue of the divine promise, the favour of God and everlasting well-being. Both the Lutheran and the Reformed Churches, recognizing the validity of this distinction, have maintained in their Confessions that Christ, as the second Adam, assumed all our covenant responsibilities precisely at that point in the process to which the first Adam had brought them when he fell) The penalty he exhaustively discharged, in strict rigour of justice, by means of all his life-long sufferings culminating in his _ death ; and the condition of perfect obedience, on which the promised reward was suspended, by the unfailing obedience of his entire life. Through the whole of Christ’s life there ran an element of infinite humiliation, especially in his death. Every act, therefore, was in one aspect an item of vicarious suffering, and in another aspect an item of vicarious obedience to the will of his Father. Both elements were necessary, and they are as inseparable as colour and surface, or as matter and form. Yet it is necessary to discriminate them as to both _ their essence and their effects. That is, the perfect and painful obedience of his life and death must be viewed (a) as a guilt-expiating endurance of the penalty of the law in the stead of his people; and (6) as that which by
* Died, 1274.
CRAPTER XVIII.
The origi- nal cove- nant ac- compa- nied by two sanc- tions —a promise and a penalty.
236 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.