*f[ It is interesting to notice how, as his life went on, and his inspiration became more full, this Apostle came to understand, as being the very living and heart centre of his religion, the thing which at first was a stumbling-block and mystery to him. You remember that when Christ was here on earth, and was surrounded by all His disciples, the man who actually led antagonism to the thought of a saving Messiah was this very Apostle Peter. You remember how he displayed his ignorance in the words, " This shall not be unto thee. Lord"; and how his audacity rose to
^ Geoi'ge Edward Woodberry.
I PETER II. 21 87
the height of saying, " Lord, why cannot I follow thee now ? I will lay down ray life for thy sake " — so little did he understand the purposes of Christ's suffering and death. And even after His resurrection we do not find that Peter in his early preaching had got as far as he seems to have got in this letter. You will notice that here he speaks a great deal about the sufferings of Christ, which he puts side by side and in contrast with God's glorifying of His Son. Christ's cross, which at first had come to him as a rejection, has now come to him in all its reality, and to him there was the one grand thing, " He suffered for us," as though he realized Christ in all His beauty and purity, and not only as a beautiful teacher and dear friend. That which at first seemed to him as an astounding mystery and perfect impossibility, he now comes to understand. With those two little words, " for us," where there was before impossibility, disappointment, and anomaly, the anomaly vanishes, although the mystery becomes deeper.^
4. The doctrine of the Atonement, then, is this, that we who were by nature "afar off from God," in Christ are "brought nigh": that God, for His sake, "hath blotted out our transgres- sions," " and our sins and iniquities will he remember no more " that He gives " the water of life," to all who will take it, freely that we are not, and cannot be, saved by our own righteousness that God's purpose towards us is full of mercy and tenderness in His blessed Son : that " He willeth not that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance " : that those will be saved who, renouncing their own merits and all carnal titles to God's favour, look for salvation only through the blood of Christ ; who come unto Him that they may have life; who appropriate the benefits of His sacrifice by personal faith, confessing that " they are bought with a price," and feeling that " he who glorieth must glory in the Lord." It is a blessed and comfortable doctrine ! the anchor of our hopes as well as the object of our faith ; the only sure ground of peace, and confidence, and joy ; not only enabling but impelling us to " come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." It has bridged over the wide gulf that lay between ourselves and God ; and shows even to the most obdurate sinner, if he will only follow it, a way by which he may yet hear of joy and gladness ; and to the heaviest-laden a place where they may find rest unto
A. Maclaren.
88 A PROPITIATION AND A PATTERN
their souls. " God hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin ; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
^ For poor Jean Valjean, weeping bitterly for his sins, while he watched the boy play with the buttercups and prayed that God would give him, the red and horny-handed criminal, to feel again as he felt when he pressed his dewy cheek against his mother's knee — for Jean Valjean is there no suffering friend, no forgiving heart ? Is there no bosom where poor Magdalene can sob out her bitter confession ? What if God were the soul's father ! What if He too serves and suffers vicariously ! What if nature and life do but interpret in the small this Divine principle existing in the large in Him whD is infinite ! What if Calvary is God's eternal heartache, manifest in time ! What if, sore- footed and heavy-hearted, bruised with many a fall, we should come back to the old home, from which once we fled away, gay and foolish prodigals ! The time was when, as small boys and girls, with blinding tears, we groped toward the mother's bosom and sobbed out our bitter pain and sorrow with the full story of our sin. What if the form on Calvary were like the king of eternity, toiling up the hill of time, his feet bare, his locks all wet with the dew of night, while he cries : " Oh, Absalom ! my son, my son, Absalom ! " What if we are Absalom, and have hurt God's heart ! Eeason staggers. Groping, trusting, hoping, we fall blindly on the stairs that slope through darkness up to God. But, falling, we fall into the arms of Him who hath suffered vicariously for man from the foundation of the world.^