been consigned over to everlasting perdition, if Jesus had not engaged on our behalf to satisfy every demand of law and justice. When he saw that there was none able or willing to avert from us the miseries to which we were exposed, " his own arm brought salvation to usc." As Paul, interposing for the restoration of Onesimus to the favour of his master whom he had robbed, said, " If he hath robbed thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account ; I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it," so did our Lord, as it were, address his Father on our behalf; that a full compensation being made for our iniqui- ties, we might be restored to the divine favour.
Jesus having thus become our surety, our debt " was exacted of him, and he was made answerable" for it. The demands of justice could not be relaxed. How- ever desirous the Father himself was that man should be spared, the honour of his government absolutely required that the violations of his law should be pun- ished. On whomsoever guilt should be found, whether on the principal or the surety, it must be marked as an object of God's utter abhorrence. Not even his only dear Son, if he should stand in the place of sinners, could be exempt from the penalty due to sin. Hence, when the time was come, in which Jesus was to fulfil the obligations he had contracted, he was required to pay the debt of all, for whom he had engaged ; and to pay it to the very utmost farthing.
It was by his sufferings that he discharged this debt. Let us only call to mind the sentence originally denounced against sin, and we shall see that he en- dured it in all its parts. Were our bodies and our souls doomed to inconceivable misery ? He sustained, both in body and soul, all that men or devils could inflict upon him. Was shame to be a consequence of transgression ? Never was a human being loaded with such ignominy as he ; " the very abjects mocking him incessantly, and gnashing upon him with their teeth'1." Were we to be banished from the presence of God, and to have a sense of his wrath in our souls ?
c Isai. lix. 1G. d Ps. xxxv. 15, 16.
970.] Christ's behaviour under his sufferings. 869
Behold, Jesus was "bruised by the Father" himself; and experienced such bitter agonies of soul, that the blood issued from every pore of his body ; and he who had sustained in silence all that man was able to inflict, cried out by reason of the darkness of his soul, and the inexpressible torment that he suffered under the hidings of his Father's face. Were we subjected to a curse ? He was, by the special providence of God, doomed to a death, which had long before been declared accursed ; and was given up into the hands of the Romans, in order that he might, in the strictest sense, " be made a curse for use." Finally, had the decree gone forth, " The soul that sinneth, it shall die ?" He filled up the measure of his sufferings by death, and effected our deliverance by " giving his own life a ransom for us." It may be said indeed, that we had deserved eternal misery ; whereas that which he endured was but for a time. This is true ; neverthe- less there was no defect in his payment ; because his temporary sufferings were equivalent to the eternal sufferings of all the human race ; equivalent, as far as related to the ends for which they were inflicted, to the honour of the divine perfections, and the equity of God's moral government. Indeed, the value of his sufferings infinitely surpassed all that ever could have been endured by man : if the whole world of sinners had been suffering for millions of ages, the demands of the law would never have been satisfied ; eternity itself must have been the duration of their torments : but the dignity of Christ's nature, as God over all, stamped an infinite worth on all that he did and suffered. Hence his death was a full, perfect, and sufficient propitiation for the sins of the whole world : in the hour of his death he " blotted out the hand- writing that was against us, nailing it to his cross." Thus was our debt wholly cancelled ; and " there now remains no condemnation to them that believe in him."