DEATH OF CHRIST
DEATH OF CHRIST
the current dispensation of the Spirit by whose agency His mediation is brought to saving effect in souls. All the methods of the Spirit's work and all the moral elt'ects that result from it imply the existence of internal, direct, living, moral relations between the soul and God in Christ. — (3) The mediation of Christ, as brought to effect by the Spirit's work, is in every case a relation of His mediation to the individual. For the Spirit can- not work in any number of indi\dduals as a body unless in so far as He works in the moral nature and life of each. — (4) The mediation of Christ operates through the Spirit's agency by means of moral illumination and power — and moral illumina- tion is always moral power. — (5) The moral means in question consist in the revelation of the holy gracious love or righteousness of God as realized by Christ, and manifested in His life and death of perfect self-sacrifice for the world's salvation. The best name for all this is ' grace ' — the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, or the grace of God in Clirist, which was and is no other thing than the sum of the living activities of God as lioly love, evoked by men's need of salvation from sin — men as moral lieings. And this grace of God in Clirist is moral. It is the highest and grandest form of tlie self- manifestation of God as a perfect moral Being. — (6) Hence it is only by means of appropriate moral conditions, existing in the individuals own moral nature and inner life, that he can enter into and abide in a saving relation to the grace of God as mediated by Christ througli the work of His Spirit. And these internal moral conditions are repentance, faitli, and the spirit of free and loyal obedience to Christ or to God, all of wliich "are essentially related to one another, in every one of which the whole of the individual's moral natiire comes to forms of manifestation in harmony with the will of God, and all together have the effect of uniting the individual directly and inwardly with God in Christ. — (7) This internal, immediate union of the individual with Christ, and therefore with God, is the true way of salvation and life for man (Jn 14^) This secures not only forgiveness, but every moral or spiritual blessing that the indi- vidual needs for this world and the next, every blessing that God has to give or that it is possible for Him to bestow in Christ and through the work of His Spirit in the heart. The inward, direct union of the individual with Christ through re- pentance, faith, and the spirit of obedience, means that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made him free from the law of sin and death (Ro 8'-^). This law of the Spirit of life in Christ is the law of eternal righteousness. Thus the moral regeneration of the individual through liis entrance into a state of union with Christ, and with God in Him, is a new life, which carries in it the whole principle of eternal righteousness ; and his union with Christ, his dependence on Christ, his fellow- ship with Him in the love that is of God, are guarantees that the lawof righteousness will eventu- ally receive complete fulfilment through his walk- ing not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. And what is the law of the Spirit of life and righteous- ness in Christ but tlie law of that moral order, through which Christ Jesus, by means of His media- tion, first in the flesh and then in tlie Spirit, is establishing and perfecting all the moral relations of indi^dual men to God and to one another in Him ? This is the new creation that Christ is evolving in the moral course of the world by means of His mediation. And, having made peace by the blood of His cross, IL \,i;i i .loiin i.- His mediation until He has reconril..; i _ In Ijeaven and on
earth unto Himself, ^m i h t m ( lod (Coll-^).
LlTERATl-RF..— Dale, .1' ' '.1 DixMm, chs.
x.-.\ii. ; Bruce, Trainiwj ../ the Tirrn.; ilis. xii., xvrt., xviii.,
xxii., HumUiation of Christ, 317-400; Lrix Mundi, ch. vii. ; Dennev, Death of Christ, Atonement aiui Modern Mind ; Weiss, Bib. Theol. of NT, i. 419-452 ; Beyschlag, ST Theol. ii. 133-164 ;
Kaftan, Dogmatik,
W. D. Thomson.
II. In the Epistles.— In keeping with the amount of space devoted in the Gospels to the story of Christ's Passion is the place assigned to our Lord's death in the Epistles, and the signifi- cance CA-idently attached to it. The material is so abundant that it is impossible to give it in full detail. All that can be attempted is a brief sketch covering the chief epistolary groups, in which, however, the Apocalypse may be included, as con- taining the ' Letters to the Seven Churches,' and forming an important part of tlie Johannine cycle. Two distinct features come before us : (1) the place given in the Epp. to the death of Clirist ; (2) the meaning assigned to it.
1. The place given to the death of Christ — Beginning with 1 Peter, we see the prominence which the subject occupied in the Apostle's mind when we find him in his very first sentence speak- ing of ' the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ' (1=), and thereafter referring repeatedly to those sufferings of Christ on our behalf {V^<- 2="f- 3'M') of which he himself had been a witness (5').