1 ' the blood
Perhaps it mai iince the ideas of he conception of
ted 1
piator>' power the covenant
by which, as a bond of Iitt
the covenant is establibhed an
express both of the thoughts j
expiatio and commnmn were o
sacrifice. Besides tins, the a
between the new covenant and the f
rendered highh probable b\ the joint f
' passage where tl
blessing of the t it in mind and ]
named as the gre Jeans had this the of the sacrificial po impossible for Hin conceive of the blr ness. It is b\ nn the words in Matth that these words ai shall still ha
.of'
argument on IS bupposmp thought, we
i^rii/e iiRiii as an essentiall\ interpretation, which lucitU icboUea the u-ip of Maik and Luke
A further argument ma^ be added to this from the pai t w hich the covenant conception p]a\s m the second part of the Book of Isaiah in connexion w ith the figure of the Sei \ ant of Jeho\ ah, who is called, as wc ha\ e seen, the ny n "i^ In our opinion, although this has been denied b\ Rif^chl and otheis, there can he no doubt that the Sei\ant of Jeho\ah prophet \, and paiti cularlv Is 53, was an influential fattm in determining the
Stnaiit
in
m e\pil
(,„
Moirious
sense, is so distincth delin
atL.l t
Himself in
the cliapter, Jesus could n
\H
r nt
principle than is here set Chnsl, pp. 13-56)
torth
(f
Denne\ ,
Th
Death i,f
As a matter of fact, the trend of lecent in\esti gation of the problem of the Supi" i i-- U>\\ inK tlic acknowledgment, that the woids is l!ll^ s( uid not merely m Luke .uid P.uil ik.i hkk I\ m Matthew, but e\ en in Mai k, (leu h (\|.iiss ind were intended by the writers of the (.ospeis to express, the expiatory interpretation of the death of Jesus. So far as the purely exegetical deter- mination of the sense of the words ex ammo auctorum (in distimtiori from the estimate put upon their historir infliliilii \ ) is concerned, the traditional Churih-d.n tiinc i~ licing more and more decisively vindicated. Ti iic, many modern writers, while granting this, emphatically deny that our Lord spoke, or could have spoken, the words which St. Paul and the Synoptists attribute to Him, or that what He spoke can liavp liad the meaning which the words in their pics. ■lit s,.t(i,|o and form convey. The two main rci.-Mii. i,,i iln, denial are, that, on the one hand, the i, iirlnn- .ii .lusus about the sinner's relation to God i.s .-ucli as to leave no room for sacrificial expiation as a prerequisite of the sinner's acceptance, forgiveness flowing from God's free grace ; and tliat, on the other hand, in the early Apostolic Church the expiatory inter- pretation of the death of Jesus is not present from the beginning, as it would have been if Jesus had taught it, but marks a .subsequent doctrinal de- velopment. Neitlier of these contentions has sufficient force to discredit the unanimous witness of St. Paul and the Synoptists. In point of fact, Jesus nowhere represents the forgiveness of sins as
absolutely unconditioned. It is one of the gifts connected with the state of .sonship in the Kingdom. Consequently, it is bound to His own person in the same sense and to the same degree as the general inheritance of the Kingdom is. Unless one is ready to assert with Harnack, that in the gospel, as preached by Jesus Himself, there is no place for His person, it wiU be necessary to believe that our Lord considered His own Messianic character and work of supreme importance, not merely for the preaching, but also for the actual establish- ment of the Kingdom of God. This being so, it became necessary for Him to combine with the specific form He gave to His Messiahship a specific conception of the manner in which the blessings of
the Kingdom are obtained by the disciples. His views about the forgiveness of sins would be less apt to be determined by any abstract doctrine as to the nature of God, than by the concrete mode in w hich the developments of His life led Him, in dependence upon Scripture, to conceive of the char- acter of His Messiahshi]) and its relation to the coming of the Kingdom. If He anticipated death, as there is abundant evidence to show He did, fiom a comparatively early point in His ministry, then He could not fail to ascribe to this death a Messianic meaning ; and this Alessianic meaning, if there was to belong to it any definiteness at all, could hardly be other than that portrayed by the piophet I.saiah in the sufiering Servant of Jehovah. It is quite true that the silence observed by our Loid in regard to this important matter till very neai the close of His ministry is calculated to awaken surprise. But this silence He likewise pieserved till the same point with regard to His Messianic calling in general ; the problem is not greater in the former respect than in the latter ; the reasons which will explain the one will also explain the other. Nor should it be forgotten that, side by side with His liigh conception of the love of God, .Icsiis iLsi'iilii'd supreme imi)ortanee to the Divine jiisl icr. 11,. ruefully preserved the \ aluable truth ( cmlaiiu-il in the exaggerated Jewish ideas about the furensiu relation between God and man (cf. Keim, v. 331, 'A continual oscillation between the standpoint of grace and that of Jewisli satisfaction can lie established '). Recognizing this (Itinentin His teaeliing as something He did not liol.l lucfiiiK-torily, but witli great earnestness of I on\ ictiuii, we have nn ri,L:ljt to assert that every idei of expiation and satisfaction must have beeii on principle repudiated by Jesus as inconsistent with tlie love of God. Nor is there much force in the second contention, namely, that the absence of the expiatory interpretation of the death of Jesus from the early Apostolic preaching proves the impossibility of deriving this doctrine from Jesus. The doctrine is certainly older than St. Paul, who declares that he ' received ' ii' irpuiTois, as one of the fundamental tenets of the Apostolic faith, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (1 Co 15^). This ' receiving' on the part of St. Paul is separated by no more than seven years from the death of Jesus ; according to recent schemes of chronology, by an even shorter interval. When in the discourses of the earlier chapters of Acts the emphasis is placed on the resurrection rather than on the death of Jesus, this must be ex- plained from the apologetic purpose of these dis- courses. They were intended to prove that, notwithstanding His death, Jesus could still be the Messiah. Probably even upon the discifiles themselves, at that early date, the full meaning of the teaching of Jesus concerning His death had not dawned ; but if it had, to make this the burden of their preaching to the Jews would have been an ill-advised method. AVe know from these same discourses in Acts that the disciples looked upon