admitted that the Hebrew word Stt73 i«ay mean to remove^ or hear away^ as in 1 Samuel xvii. 34 and judges xvi. 31, although even in these cases the ordinary sense is admissible. The question, how- ever, is not what a word may mean, but what it does mean in a given formula and connection. The word signifies to raise^ or lift up; to lift up the eyes, the hand, the voice, the head, the heart. Tiien it means to lift up in the sense of bearing, as a tree bears its fruit ; or in the sense of enduring, as sorrow, suffering ; or, of bear- ing as a burden, and especially the burden of guilt or punishment. And finally it may have the accessary meaning of bearing away, or of removing. If this should be insisted upon in those cases where sin is spoken of, then it remains to be asked what is the Scriptural sense of removing sin, or bearing sin away. That formula means two things ; first, to remove the guilt of sin by expiation, and sec- ondly, to remove its defilement and power by spiritual renovation. One or the other of these ideas is expressed by all the correspond- ing terms used in the Bible ; KaOalp^iv, to purify, or KaOapicr/xov ttoulv ; dyia^eiv, to cleanse ; and others, as to wash, to blot out, etc. All these terms are used to express either sacrificial purification by blood, or spiritual purification by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. Which, in any particular case, is intended, is determined by the context. Therefore, even if the words ]1^ Wtt>3 be rendered to re- move iniquity or sin, the question would still be, Does it mean the removal of guilt by expiation ; or the removal of pollution by moral renovation? In point of fact the words in question always refer to bearing the punishment and thus removing the guilt of sin, and never to the removal of moral pollution. This is plain, (1.) Be- cause Si£>3 is interchanged with ^?D, which never means to remove, but only to sustain, or bear as a burden. (2.) Because usage de- termines the meaning of the phrase and is uniform. In Numbers xiv. 34, it is said, " Ye shall bear your iniquities forty j^ears." Leviticus v. 1, " If a soul .... hear the voice of swearing, and is a witness ; .... if he do not utter it, he shall bear his iniquity." Leviticus v. 17, "He is guilty, and shall bear his iniquity." Leviti- cus vii. 18, " The soul that eateth of it shall bear his iniquity." Leviticus xvii. 16, " If he wash not .... then he shall bear his iniquity." Leviticus xix. 8 ; xx. 17 ; xxii. 9, " They shall keep my ordinance, lest they bear sin for it." Numbers ix. 13, If a man forbear to keep the passover, he shall be cut off from the people, "he shall bear his sin." See also Numbers xviii, 22, 32. Ezekiel iv. 4, 5, it is said to the prophet enduring penance, "So shalt thou bear the iniquity of the house of Israel." " Thou shalt bear th€
50C PART UI. Ch. Vn. — satisfaction' of CHRIST.
iniquity of the house of Judah forty days." " Lie thou upon thy left aide .... according to the number of the days tliat thou shalt lie upon it, thou shalt bear their iniquity." Ezekiel xviii. 20, " The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father; neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son." In all these, and in other like cases, it is simply impossible that " bearing sin " should mean the removal of sin by moral renovation. The expression occurs some forty times in the Bible, and always in the sense of bearing the guilt or punishment of sin. It is hardly an exception to this remark that there are a few cases in which nsisn Sb3 means to pardon ; as in Exodus X. 17 ; xxxii. 32 ; xxxiv. 7 ; Psalms xxxii. 5 (and Ixxxv. 8) ; for pardon is not the removal of sin morally, but the lifting up, or removal of its guilt. This being the fact, it determines the nature of the sin offerings under the law. The victim bore the sin of the offerer, and died in his stead. An expiation was thereby effected by the suffering of a vicarious punishment. This also determines the nature of the work of Christ. If He was an offering for sin, if He saves us from the ])enalty of the law of God, in the same way in which the sin offering saved the Israelite from the penalty of the law of Moses, then He. bore the guilt of our sins and en- dured the penalty in our stead. We may not approve of this method of salvation. The idea of the innocent bearing the sins of the guilty, and being punished in his stead, may not be agreeable to our feelings or to our modes of thinking, but it can hardly be denied that such is the representation and doctrine of the Scrip- tures. Our only alternative is to accept that doctrine, or reject the authority of Scripture directly or indirectly. Tiiat is, either to deny their divine origin, or to explain away their explicit state- ments. In either case their plain meaning remains untouched. The German rationalists in general take the former of these two courses. They admit that the Bible teaches the doctrine of vicari- ous punishment, but they deny the truth of the doctrine because they deny the Bible to be the Word of God.
The passages in which Christ is represented as a sacrifice for sin, are too numerous to be here specially considered. The New Testament, and particularly the Epistle to the Hebrews, as before remarked, declares and teaches, that the priesthood of the old economy was a type of the priesthood of Christ ; that the sacrifices of that dispensation were types of his sacrifice ; that as the blood of bulls and of goats purified the flesh, so the blood of Christ cleanses the soul from guilt ; and that as they were expiations effected by vicarious punishment, in their sphere, so was the sacrifice of