-.iclnng nonage iiiitural
434
DEATH OF CHRI&t
DEBT, DEBTOR
sense. Is not this wliat St. Peter means when he says, '"Who liis own self bare our sins in liis body on the tree, that we, liaving died unto sins, might live unto righteousness '(IF 2-^) ; and when he says again, ' Because Christ also sutfered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God' (3'*)? Is it not tlie meaning of the author of Hebrews when lie finds in the sacrifices of the Old Covenant types and shadows of the sacrifice of Christ, and speaks of Him as ' having been once offered to bear the sins of many' (9^)? And is it not the Johannine view also, seeing that yve lind ' Jesus Christ the ri<»ht- eous' described as 'the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world ' (1 Jn -2-, cf. 4'" ; .see also Rev P 5^ '• >=) ?
(4) Once more, the death of Christ is set forth in the Ei)n. as a death from which there sprinf/s a life <;/■ hohiicss. These writers relate the death of Christ to the power as well as to the guilt of sin ; they conceive of it not only on the .side of its pro- pitiatoiy efi'ect, but as bringing a mighty regene- rating influence into the life of man. St. I'eter connects the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ with sanctification of the Spirit and obedience (1 I* 1-'), and His death upon the tree with our living unto righteousness (2-^). The author of Hebrews, who says that Christ offered up sacrilice for sins ' once for all, when he offered up himself (7-''), also says that the blood of Christ, by clean.sing the conscience from dead works, sets us free ' to serve the living God' (9"). St. John, viiliiiu ..f those who are already Cliristians, di'rhin - tlni ilic blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cloan-i th tin m ticim all sin (1 Jn 1'). I3ut it is above all in the Mpistles of St. Paul that we lind a full treatment of this idea of Christ's deatli a^ the Miret spring of a new life in the Christian liiuisclf, of a crucifixion with Christ whereliy tlie very life of the Son of God flows into the heart (Gal 2-») ; of a burial with Christ wliich leads to a walk in newness of life, and a union Avith Him by a likeness to His death which carries with it the ]>romise and the potency of a likeness to His resurrection (l!o 6-^^).
There are some moilcrn writers who in.sist that there is a duality in St. Paul's ^ iew when he ap- ])roaehes the subject of Christ's death in its rela- tion to sin, and who distinguish between what they call his juridical and his ethico-mystical doctrines of reconciliation. The former is sometimes repre- sented as nothing more than the precipitate of the Jewish theology in which the Apostle had liceii trained, while the latter is accepted as tlie genuine and immediate product of his personal experieni e (Holtzmann, AT Theologie, ii. 117 f.). The com- mon tendency among such writers is to hold that the Apostle had two quite distinct theories, which lay side by side in his mind in an entirely un- related fashion. He set himself, it is supjiosed, to the high argument of showing how God and man could be reconciled, but never took the trouble to attempt to reconcile his own thoughts about the efficacy of Christ's death. This, however, seems less than just to St. Paul. His theologj' a-s a whole hardly wan-ants the conclusion that lie had no gift of systematic thinking, or that he would be con- tent to allow his ideas on justitication and regenera- tion respectively to lie together in his mind with- out concerning himself as to any possible connexion between them. It seems in every way more reason- able to think, for example, that in Ko 6'"- the Ajiostlo is notsuddenly introducing a. set of entirely new ((inceiitions, connected with the sacrament of baptism, alx)ut a mystical fellow.ship with Christ in His death, con.sidered as an archetyjial ilying unto sin, wliich conceptions stand in no sort of rela- tion to all that has lieen said in 3-"'- about justili- cation tliroujrh faith in the iiio]iitiatiiig blood of
Christ. Katlier it aupears natural to hold, in I'ro- fessor Denney's words, that the justifying faith of which St. Paul speaks in the earlier passage ' is a faith which has a death to sin in it ' (Expositor, 6th ser. iv. [1901] p. 306), so that when by faith we make Christ's death our own, sin becomes to us what it is to the Sinless One Himself— we died to it as He died, and in dj-ing to sin become alive unto God.
Dogmalik, p. 446 ff.; Expos. Times, xiv. [1903] 1
J. C. Lambert.
DEBT, DEBTOR.— The Jews, lieing an inland people, and not directly interested in the world's trade, were slow to gain touch with the credit- systems of more commercial communities. But by Christ's day their business ideas, modified already in part by the Phoenicians, are seen over- laid and radically affected by Koman domination. The people, on the one hand, as they listened to the reading of the Law in public, had the OT ideal before them, which was one of notable mildness, backed by humanitarian ordinances. Debt in their old national life had been regarded as a passing misfortune, rather than a basal element in tradin" conditions. In the popular mind it was associated with poverty (Ex 22-"'), a thing that came upon the husbandman, for instance, m bad seasons (Neh 5'). Being thus exceptional, and a subject for pity, little or no interest was to be exacted (Ex 22^), and a strict tarifl' excluded many things from the list of articles to be taken in pledge (Dt 24'^- ", Job242, Am 2^ etc.), while in the Seventh or Fallow year (Ex 23>"""'', Lv 25'""), and again amid the joys of Jubilee (Lv25*"^-)i the poor debtor had ample reason to rejoice. There was harshness in the tone, on the other hand, of the Koman methods, which were developed more on the lines of modern commerce. Often the more impover- ished the debtor, the greater the exaction, as Horace expressly puts it (Sat. I. 2. 14), 5 per cent, a month (60 per cent, per annum) being cited by him as a rate of interest not unknown.