Christ in the infinitely higher sphere to which his work belongs. Such being the relation between the Old Economy and the New, the whole sacrificial service of the Mosaic institutions, becomes to the Christian an extended and irresistible proof and exhibition of the work of Christ as an expiation for the sins of the world, and a satis- faction to the justice of God.
The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah.
It is not however only in the typical services of the old economy that this great doctrine was set forth in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah this doctrine is presented with a clearness and copiousness which have extorted assent from the most unwilling minds. The prophet in that chapter not only fore- tells that the Messiah was to be a man of sorrows ; not only that He was to suffer the greatest indignities and be put to a violent death ; not only that these. sufferings were endured for the benefit of others ; but that they were truly vicarious, i. e., that He suffered, in our stead, the penalty which we had incurred, in order to our deliverance. This is done not only in those forms of expression which most naturally admit of this interpretation, but in others which can, consistently with usage and the analogy of Scripture, be understood in no other way. To the former class belong such expressions as the following, " He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows." Our griefs and our sorrows are the griefs atul sorrows which we deserved. These Christ bore in the sense of enduring, for He carried them as a burden. " He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." "With his stripes we are healed." " For the transgression of my people was he stricken." These phrases might be used of the sufferings of a patriot for his country, of a philanthropist for his fellow-men, or of a friend for those dear to him. That they however are most naturally understood of vicarious suffering, can hardly be denied. And that they were intended by the Spirit of God to be so under- stood, is plain by their being intermingled with expressions which admit of no other interpretation. To this class belong the fol- lowing clauses: First, "the chastisement (or punishment) of our peace was upon him " That is, the punishment by which oui" peace was secured. Of this clause Delitzsch, one of the very first of living Hebraists, says,^ " Der BegrifF der poena vicaria kann hebraisch gar nicht scharfer ausgedriickt werden als in jenen Worten." " The idea of vicarious punishment cannot be more 1 Commentar zum Briefe an die Hebraer, Leipzig, 1857, p. "16.
608 PART ni. Ch. Vn.— satisfaction of CHRIST.
precisely expressed in Hebrew than by those words." Secondly, it is said, " The Lord hath laid on him (caused to fall, or, cast on him) tlie iniquity of us all." We have already seen that this ig the language used in the Old Testament to express the transfer of the guilt of the offender to the victim slain in his stead. They have a definite Scriptural meaning, which cannot be denied in this case without doing open violence to admitted rules of interpretation. " If," says Dr. J. Addison Alexander,^ " vicarious suffering can be described in words, it is so described in these two verses;" i. e., the verses in which this clause occurs. Tliirdly, it is said of the Messiah that He made, or was to make " liis soul an offering for sin." The Hebrew word is ^^i^, guilt, debt ; and then an offering which bears guilt and expiates it. It is the common word in the Levitical law for "trespass offering." Michaelis in his marginal annotations, remarks on this woi\l (Isaiah liii. 10), " Delictum significat, ut notet etiam sacrificium, cui delictum imputatum est. Vide passim, inprimis Lev. iv. 3 ; v. 6, 7, 16 ; vii. 1, etc., etc. .... Recte etiam Raschi ad h. 1. ' Ascham,' inquit, ' significat satisfactionem, seu lytron, quod quis alteri exsolvit, in quem deli- quit, Gallice, Amande, i. e. mulcta.' " The literal meaning of the words, therefore, is. His soul was made a satisfaction for sin. Fourthly, it is said, " My righteous servant shall justify many ; for he shall bear their iniquities." " He was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many." It has already been shown that to " bear sin " never means to sanctify, to effect a moral change by removing the power and pollution of sin, but uniformly, in the sacrificial language of the Bible, to bear the guilt or penalty for sin.
Passages of the New Testament in which the Work of Christ is set forth as /Sacrifice.
In Romans iii. 25, it is said. He was set forth as " a propitiation through faith in his blood." The word here used is iXaar-jpiov, the neuter form of the adjective t\ao-T)Jptos ("propitiatory, expiatory"), used substantively. It therefore means, as Robinson and other lexicographers define it, and as the great body of interpreters explain it, " an expiatory sacrifice." The meaning of the word is determined by the context and confirmed by parallel passages. The design of setting forth Christ as a lAacrrT^ptov was precisely that which an expiatory sacrifice was intended to accomplish, namely, to satisfy justice, that God might be just in the forgiveness 1 The Later Prophecies of Isaiah, New y*rk, 1847, p. 264.