■J. The Scripiurt doctrim of the vicarious sacrifice of Chrisl is taughl in the passages above cited, and indeed seems t" underlie the whole " gospel" of salva- ntaincd in the teaching of Christ and his apos- tles. Ii may be Btated further (1) that the sacrifices of the < ». T. were (at hast many of them) expiatory [see this shown under Expiation], and the terms used by Christ and his apostles (ransom, sacrifice, of- fering, etc. i were necessarily understood by their hear- era in the sense which they had been accustomed for ages to attach to them. (2) If this be so. then noth- ing could " be more misleading, and even absurd, than to employ those terms which, both among Jews and Gentiles, were in use to express the various processes
and means of atonement and piacular propitiation, if the apostles and Christ himself did not intend to rep- resent his death strictly as an expiation for sin ; mis- leading, because such would be the natural and neces- sary inference from the terms themselves, which had acquired this as their established meaning; and absurd, because if, as Socinians say, they used them metaphor- ically, there was not even an ideal resemblance be- tween the figures and that which it was intended to illustrate. So totally irrelevant, indeed, will those terms appear to any notion entertained of the death of Christ which excludes its expiatory character, that to assume that our Lord and his apostles used them as metaphors is profanety to assume them to be such writers as would not in any other case be tolerated ; writers wholly unacquainted with the commonest rules of language, and, therefore, wholly unfit to be teach- ers of others, and that not only in religion, but in things of inferior importance" (Watson, Diet. s. v. Expiation).
Immediately upon the first public manifestation of Christ, John the Baptist declares, when he sees Jesus coming to him, " Behold the Lamb of God, which ta- keth away the sin of the world" (John i, 29) : where it is obvious that, when John called our Lord "the Lamb of God," he spoke of him under a sacrificial character, and of the effect of that sacrifice as an atone- ment for the sins of mankind. This was said of our Lord even before he entered on his public office ; but if any doubt should exist respecting the meaning of the Baptist's expression, it is removed by other pas- sages, in which a similar allusion is adopted, and in which it is specifically applied to the death of Christ as an atonement for sin. In the Acts (viii, 32) the following words of Isaiah (liii, 7) are by Philip the Evangelist distinctly applied to Christ and to his death : " He was led as a sheep to the slaughter ; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: in his humiliation his judgment was taken away : and who shall declare his generation ? for his life is taken from the earth." This particular part of the prophecy being applied to our Lord's death, the whole must relate to the same subject, for it is un- doubtedly cne entire prophecy ; and the other expres- sions in it are still stronger: "He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we are healed : the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." In the First Epistle of Peter is also a strong and very apposite text, in which the application of the term "lamb" to our Lord, and the sense in which it is applied, can admit of no doubt: " Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Pet. i, IS, 19). It is therefore evident that the prophet Isaiah, seven hundred years before the Lirth of Jesus; that John the Baptist, at the eon - mencement of Christ's ministry; and that Peter, his companion and apostle, subsequent to the transaction, speak of Christ's death as an atonement for sin under the figure of a lamb sacrificed. The passages that fol- low plainly and distinctly declare the atoning efficacy of Christ's death : " Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many ; and unto them that look for him shall he ap- pear the second time without sin unto salvation" (Heb. ix, 26, 28). "This man, after he had offered one sac- rifice for sin, forever sat down on the right hand of (hid; for by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified" (Ileb. x, 12). It is observa- ble that nothing similar is said of the death of any oth- er person, and that no such efficacy is imputed to any other martyrdom. " While we were yet sinners Christ died for us ; much more then, being now justified by | his llood, we shall be saved from wrath through him ;
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for if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being rec- onciled, we shall be saved by his life" (Rom. v, 8-10). The words " reconciled to God by the death of his Son" show that his death had an efficacy in our reconcilia- tion ; but reconciliation is only preparatory to salva- tion. " lie has reconciled us to his Father in his cross, and in the body of his flesh through death'' (Col. i, 20, 22). "What is said of reconciliation in these texts is in some others spoken of sanctitication, which is also pre- paratory to salvation. "We are sanctified" — how? "by the offering of the body of Christ once for all" (Ileb. x, 10). In the same epistle (x, 20), the blood of Jesus is called "the blood of the covenant by which we are sanctified." In these and many other passages that occur in different parts of the New Testament, it is therefore asserted that the death of Christ was effica- cious in the procuring of human salvation. Such ex- pressions are used concerning no other person, and the death of no other person ; and it is therefore evident that Christ's death included something more than a confirmation of his preaching; something more than a pattern of a holy and patient martyrdom ; something more than a necessary antecedent to his resurrection, by which he gave a grand and clear proof of our resur- rection from the dead. Christ's death was all these, but it was much more. It was an atonement for the sins of mankind, and in this way only it became the ac- complishment of our eternal redemption.