1. He was put to death on the Cross. How did this happen? What were His leading thoughts about it as so viewed ? He lived and died without sin. He fulfilled all righteousness in the course of His obedience unto death, freely and perfectly- uniting Himself and all the activities of His will and life with the will and purpose of God, and with Him His Father was well jjleased. This means that although He appeared and lived and died in the moral course of the world, He was not of the world, had absolutely no fellowship with it in so far as it was under the domination of sin. He loved sinners in their character as moral beings with perfect love. But sin He hated with perfect hatred ; and He lived and died to save men and the moral course of the world from it. His life of perfect union witli His Father's will and purpose in all things implied not only that He lived en- tirely on the side and in the interests of the moral order of the world, but also that the latter found in Him, for the first time on earth, the One Individual moral Being in whom it had secured its perfect form of manifest realization, in so far as this was possible in one life in human form. It was this fact, on the one liand, and the hatred of the men over whom the world's sin had gained complete domination on the other, that determined His way to His destiny on Calvary. This conjunction of righteousness and sin, and their creative influence on His earthly history and experience, afl'ected Him in three ways, each of which should have a regulative efl'ect on every one's thoughts as to the meaning and value of His death.
(1) He regarded the existence of the sin that arose and developed in increasing antagonism
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DEATH OF CHRIST
against Himself and His mission, in tiie course of His ministry, as a thing that ought not to be. Saying after saying of His, bearing on this point, seems almost to convey the impression that He must have resarded this sinful and guilty opposi- tion, ■without wliich He woidd not have been put to death, as not required by the interests and objects of the moral task vliieh He had come into the world to accomplish (Mt2333-ss^ l]^ 1331-35 23=^-^, Jn 7" 8='-=" 151"-=" 19"- "). (2) Then, again, His own words show that the inward ' moral ' struggles and agonies of His life arose out of the prospect and contemplation of the development of the mani- festations of tlie world's sin and unbelief against Him and against His claim to be entirely identified with His Father's will and purpose m all His words and deeds. His experience of inward crush- ing sorrow, arising from the cause alluded to, reached its culmination in the Garden of Gethse- mane. But before the hour which He spent tliere in anguish and bloody sweat, He had foretastes of the terrible bitterness of the Passion which He knew was awaiting Him as His destiny (Jit 20-- 26^«-'=, Jn 12"). (3) In spite of these two facts as to our Lord's thought and e.xperience in connexion with His death, He alwa}s cherished perfectly optimistic confidence and hope as to the issues of the latter. Through the discipline of experience and through praj'er He became strong enough to be obedient even unto death. He had perfect faith in His Father as the Lord of heaven and earth. He knew that all the future interests and objects of His mission and work on earth were absolutely safe in His hands. He knew before He died that His death could not hinder, but would be made to further these objects and interests (Jn 12^-3=16'-"), and the first word He spoke about His death after He had risen from the dead was, ' Ought not Christ to have sufi'ered these things, and to enter into his glory ? ' (Lk 24=").
2. The question now arises as to the nature, meaning, and value of our Lord's unique achieve- ment on earth, which reached its perfect accom- plishment in His death on the cross. This achievement from beginning to end was made by Him in His position as internally related to the moral order of the world, and through it to the world in its character, aspirations, and activities as under the domination of sin. His achievement, as so viewed, consisted in the perfect realization of His Father's will and purpose in His unique moral Individuality, and in all the manifestations of the latter in His relations with God and with men. It is to be observed, then, for one thing of liighest importance, that this achievement of His, in its nature, meaning, and value, was purely, entirely, exclusively moral. There are two con- siderations wliich place this fact in the region of absolute certainty.
In the first place, the fact has its validity in the established nature of the moral order of tlie world and in Christ's own place in this order. This is an order of things which has its foundations in the moral nature of God ; in the moral nature of man as made in tlie image of God as a Moral Being ; in the fact and in the nature of the moral relations between God and men and between man and man ; and also in the fact that Christ as the Son of God came into the world to qualify Himself for occupy- ing His momentous position of mediation witliin the sphere of the moral relations of God to men and of men to God. These are all indisputable facts, and they make it certain that the essential nature and objects of our Lord's earthly achieve- ment, which culminated in the manner in wliich He met His death on the cross, were absolutely and exclusively moral. That it was so in our Lord's own way of conceiving of the nature, mean-