moral effects of conscious pardon, to which I have invoked Jesus to
reply, is by no means an unmixed error. It touches upon a very profound
and important truth; and I can never bring myself to regard that
assurance of divine forgiveness, which the doctrine of atonement
imparts, as a demoralizing state of mind, encouraging laxity of
conscience and a continuance in sin. The sense of pardon doubtless
reaches the secret springs of gratitude, presents the soul with an
object, strange before, of new and divine affection; and binds the child
of redemption, by all generous and filial obligations, to serve with
free and willing heart the God who hath gone forth to meet him. That the
motives of self-interest are diminished in such a case, is a trifle that
need occasion small anxiety. For the human heart is no labourer for
hire; and, where there is opportunity afforded for true and noble love,
will thrust away the proffered wages, and toil rather in a free and
thankful spirit. If we are to compare, as a source of duty, the grateful
with the merely prudential temper, rather may we trust the first, as not
the worthier only, but the stronger too; and till we obtain emancipation
from the latter,—forget the computations of hope and fear, and
precipitate ourselves for better for worse on some object of divine love
and trust,—our nature will be puny and weak, our wills will turn in
sickness from their duty, and our affections shrink in aversion from
their heaven. But though personal gratitude is better than prudence,
there is a higher service still. A more disinterested love may spring
from the contemplation of what God is in himself, than from the
recollection of what he has done for us; and when this mingles most
largely as an element among our springs of action; when, humbled indeed
by a knowledge of dangers that await us, and thankful, too, for the
blessings spread around us, we yet desire chiefly to be fitting children
of the everlasting Father and the holy God; when we venerate him for the
graciousness and purity and majesty of his spirit, impersonated in
Jesus; and resolve to serve him truly, _before_ he has granted the
desire of our heart, and because he is of a nature so sublime and
merciful and good; then are we in the condition of her who bent over the
feet of Christ; and we are forgiven, because we have loved much.
(2.) Let us now, in conclusion, turn our attention to those portions of
the New Testament, which speak of the death of Christ as the means of
redemption.
I have said, that these are to be found exclusively in passages of the
sacred writings which treat of the Gentile controversy, or of topics
immediately connected with it. This controversy arose naturally out of
the design of Providence to make the narrow, exclusive, ceremonial
system of Judaism, give birth to the universal and spiritual religion of
the Gospel; from God’s method of expanding the Hebrew Messiah into the
Saviour of humanity. For this the nation was not prepared; to this even
the Hebrew Christians could not easily conform their faith; and in the
achievement of this, or in persuading the world that it was achieved,
did Paul spend his noble life, and write his astonishing epistles. The
Jews knew that the Deliverer was to be of their peculiar stock, and
their royal lineage; they believed that he would gather upon himself all
the singularities of their race, and be a Hebrew to intensity; that he
would literally restore the kingdom to Israel; aye, and extend it too,
immeasurably beyond the bounds of its former greatness; till, in fact,
it swallowed up all existing principalities and powers, and thrones, and
dominions, and became co-extensive with the earth. Then in Jerusalem, as
the centre of the vanquished nations,—before the temple, as the altar of
a humbled world, did they expect the Messiah to erect his throne; and
when he had taken the seat of judgment, to summon all the tribes before
his tribunal, and pass on the Gentiles, excepting the few who might
submit to the law, a sentence of perpetual exclusion from his realm;
while his own people would be invited to the seats of honour, occupy the
place of authority and sit down with him (the greatest at his right hand
and his left) at his table in his kingdom. The holy men of old were to
come on earth again to see this day. And many thought that every part of
the realm thus constituted, and all its inhabitants, would never die:
but like the Messiah himself, and the patriarchs whom he was to call to
life, would be invested with immortality. None were to be admitted to
these golden days except themselves; all else to be left in outer
darkness from this region of light, and there to perish and be seen no
more. The grand title to admission was conformity with the Mosaic law;
the most ritually scrupulous were the most secure; and the careless
Israelite, who forgot or omitted an offering, a tithe, a Sabbath duty,
might incur the penalty of exclusion and death: the law prescribed such
mortal punishment for the smallest offence; and no one, therefore, could
feel himself ready with his claim, if he had not yielded a perfect
obedience. If God were to admit him on any other plea, it would be of
pure grace and goodness, and not in fulfilment of any promise.
The Jews, being scattered over the civilized world, and having
synagogues in every city, came into perpetual contact with other people.
Nor was it possible that the Gentiles, among whom they lived, should
notice the singular purity and simplicity of the Israelitish Theism,
without some of them being struck with its spirit, attracted by its
sublime principles, and disposed to place themselves in religious
relations with that singular people. Having been led into admiration and
even profession of the nation’s theology, they could not but desire to
share their hopes; which indeed were an integral part of their religion,
and, at the Christian era, the one element in it to which they were most
passionately attached. But this was a stretch of charity too great for
any Hebrew; or, at all events, if such admission were ever to be thought
of, it must only be on condition of absolute submission to the
requirements of the law. The Gentile would naturally plead, that as God
had not made him of the chosen nation, he had given him no law, except
that of conscience; that, being without the law, he must be a law unto
himself; and that if he had lived according to his light, he could not
be justly excluded on the ground of accidental disqualification.
Possibly, in the provocation of dispute, the Gentile might sometimes
become froward and insolent in his assertion of claim; and, in the pride
of his heart, demand as a right that which, at most, could only be
humbly hoped for as a privilege and a free gift.
Thus were the parties mutually placed to whom the Deliverer came. Thus
dense and complicated was the web of prejudice which clung round the
early steps of the Gospel; and which must be burst or disentangled ere
the glad tidings could have free course and be glorified. How did
Providence develop from such elements the divine and everlasting truth?
Not by neglecting them, and speaking to mankind as if they had no such
ideas; not by forbidding his messengers and teachers to have any
patience with them; but, on the contrary, by using these very notions as
temporary means to his everlasting ends; by touching this and that with
light before the eyes of apostles, as if to say, there are good
capabilities in these; the truth may be educed from them so gently and
so wisely, that the world will find itself in light, without perceiving
how it has been quitting the darkness.
So long as Christ remained on earth, he necessarily confined his
ministry to his nation. He would not have been the Messiah had he done
otherwise. By birth, by lineage, by locality, by habit, he was
altogether theirs. Whoever then, of his own people, during his mortal
life, believed in him and followed him, became a subject of the Messiah;
ready, it was supposed even by the apostles themselves, to enter the
glory of his kingdom, whenever it should please him to assume it;
qualified at once, by the combination of pedigree and of belief, to
enter into life, to become a member of the kingdom of God, to take a
place among the elect; for, by all these phrases, was described the
admission to the expected realm. If, then, Jesus had never suffered and
died, if he had never retired from this world, but stayed to fulfil the
anticipations of his first followers, his Messianic kingdom might have
included all the converts of the Israelitish stock. From the exclusion
which fell on others, they would have obtained salvation. Hence, it is
never in connection with the first Jewish Christians that the _death of
Christ_ is mentioned.
It was otherwise, however, with the Gentiles. They could not become his
followers in his mortal lifetime; and had a Messianic reign _then_ been
set up, they must have been excluded; no missionary would have been
justified in addressing them with invitation; they could not, as it was
said, have entered into life. The Messiah must cease to be Jewish,
before he could become universal; and this implied his death by which
alone the personal relations, which made him the property of a nation,
could be annihilated. To this he submitted; he disrobed himself of his
corporeality, he became an immortal spirit; thereby instantly burst his
religion open to the dimensions of the world; and, as he ascended to the
skies, sent it forth to scatter the seeds of blessing over the field of
the world, long ploughed with cares, and moist with griefs, and softened
now to nourish in its bosom the tree of Life.
Now, how would the effect of this great revolution be described to the
proselyte Gentiles, so long vainly praying for admission to the
Israelitish hope. At once it destroyed their exclusion; put away as
valueless the Jewish claims of circumcision and law; nailed the
hand-writing of ordinances to the cross; reconciled them that had been
afar off; redeemed them to God by his blood, out of every tongue, and
kindred, and people, and nation; washed them in his blood; justified
them _by his resurrection and ascension_; an expression, I would remark,
unmeaning on any other explanation.
Even during our Lord’s personal ministry, his approaching death is
mentioned, as the means of introducing the Gentiles into his Messianic
kingdom. He adverts repeatedly to his cross, as designed to widen, by
their admission, the extent of his sway: and according to Scripture
phrase, to yield to him “much fruit.” He was already on his last fatal
visit to Jerusalem, when, taking the hint from _the visit of some Greeks
to him_, he exclaimed: “The hour is come, that the Son of man should be
glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall
into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but _if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit_.” He adds, in allusion to the death he should die;
“and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw _all men unto
me_.”[322] It is for this end that he resigns for awhile his life,—that
he may bring in the wanderers who are not of the commonwealth of Israel:
“Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring,
and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one
shepherd: _therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my
life_, that I may take it again.”[323] Many a parable did Jesus utter,
proclaiming his Father’s intended mercy to the uncovenanted nations: but
for himself personally he declared, “I am not sent, but to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel.”[324] His advent was a promise of _their_
economy; his office, the traditionary hope of their fathers; his birth,
his life, his person, were under the Law, and excluded him from
relations to those who were beyond its obligations. On the cross, all
the connate peculiarities of the Nazarene ceased to exist: when, the
seal of the sepulchre gave way, the seal of the law was broken too; the
nationality of his person passed away; for how can an immortal be a Jew?
This then was the time to open wide the scope of his mission, and to
invite to God’s acceptance those that fear him in every nation. Though,
before, the disciple might “have known Christ after the flesh,” and
followed his steps as the Hebrew Messiah, “yet now henceforth was he to
know him so no more;” these “old things had passed away,” since he had
“died for all,”—died to become universal,—to drop all exclusive
relations, and “reconcile the world,” the Gentile world, to God.[325]
Observe to whom this “ministry of reconciliation” is especially
confided. As if to show that it is exclusively _the risen Christ_ who
belongs to all men, and that his death was the instrument of the
Gentiles’ admission, their great Apostle was one Paul, who had not known
the Saviour in his mortal life; who never listened to his voice, till it
spake from heaven; who himself was the convert of his ascension; and
bore to him the relation, not of subject to the person of a Hebrew king,
but of spirit to spirit, unembarrassed by anything earthly, legal, or
historical. Well did Paul understand the freedom and the sanctity of
this relation; and around the idea of the Heavenly Messiah gathered all
his conceptions of the spirituality of the gospel, of its power over the
unconscious affections, rather than a reluctant will. His believing
countrymen were afraid to disregard the observances of the law, lest it
should be a disloyalty to God, and disqualify them for the Messiah’s
welcome, when he came to take his power and reign. Paul tells them, that
while their Lord remained in this mortal state, they were right; as
representative of the law, and filling an office created by the religion
of Judaism, he could not but have held them _then_ to its obligations;
nor could they, without infidelity, have neglected its claims, any more
than a wife can innocently separate herself from a living husband. But
as the death of the man sets the woman free, and makes null the law of
their union, so the decease of Christ’s body emancipates his followers
from all legal relations to him; and they are at liberty to wed
themselves anew to the risen Christ, who dwells where no ordinance is
needful, no tie permitted but of the spirit, and all are as the angels
of God.[326] Surely, then, this mode of conception explains, why the
death of Jesus constitutes a great date in the Christian economy,
especially as expounded by the friend and apostle of those who were not
“Jews by nature, but sinners of the Gentiles.”[327] Had he never died,
they must have remained aliens from his sway; the enemies against whom
his power must be directed; without hope in the day of his might;
strangers to God and his vicegerent.
But, while thus they “were yet without strength, Christ died for” these
“ungodly;”[328] died to put himself into connection with them, else
impossible; and rising from death drew them after him into spiritual
existence on earth, analogous to that which he passed in heaven. “You,”
says their Apostle, “being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of
your flesh, hath he quickened together with him;” giving you, as “risen
with him,” a life above the world and its law of exclusion,—a life not
“subject to ordinances,” but of secret love and heavenly faith, “hid
with Christ in God;” “blotting out the hand-writing of ordinances that
was against us, which was contrary to us, and taking it out of the way,
nailing it to his cross.”[329] God had never intended to perpetuate the
division between Israel and the world, receiving the one as the sons,
and shutting out the other as the slaves of his household. If there had
been an appearance of such partiality, he had always designed to set
these bondmen free, and to make them “heirs of God through Christ;”[330]
“in whom they had redemption through his blood” from their servile
state, the forgiveness of disqualifying sins, according to the riches of
his grace.[331] Though the Hebrews boasted that “theirs was the
adoption,”[332] and till Messiah’s death had boasted truly; yet in that
event, God “before the foundation of the world,” had “blessed us”
(Gentiles) “with all spiritual blessings, in heavenly places;” “having
predestinated us unto the adoption of children, by Jesus Christ,
according” (not indeed to any right or promise, but) “to the good
pleasure of his will,”[333] “and when we were enemies, having reconciled
us, by the death of his son;”[334] “that in the fulness of times he
might gather together in one _all things_ in Christ;”[335] “by whom we”
(Gentiles) “have now received this atonement” (reconciliation);[336]
that he might have no partial empire, but that “in him might all fulness
dwell.”[337] “Wherefore,” says their Apostle, “remember that ye,
_Gentiles in the flesh_, were in time past without Messiah, being aliens
from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of
promise, having no hope, and without God in the world; but now in Christ
Jesus, ye, who sometime were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of
Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken
down the middle wall of partition between us” (not between God and man,
but between Jew and Gentile); “having abolished in his flesh the enmity,
even the law of commandments, contained in ordinances; for to make in
himself, of twain, one new man, so _making peace_; and that he might
reconcile both unto God, in one body, by the cross, having slain the
enmity thereby; and came and preached peace to you who were afar off, as
well as to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by
one spirit unto the Father.”[338]
The way, then, is clear and intelligible, in which the death and
ascension of the Messiah rendered him universal, by giving spirituality
to his rule; and, on the simple condition of faith, added the
uncovenanted nations to his dominion, so far as they were willing to
receive him. This idea, and this only, will be found in almost every
passage of the New Testament (excepting the Epistle to the Hebrews)
usually adduced to prove the doctrine of the Atonement. Some of the
strongest of these I have already quoted; and my readers must judge
whether they have received a satisfactory meaning. There are others, in
which the Gentiles are not so distinctly stated to be the sole objects
of the redemption of the cross: but with scarcely an exception, so far
as I can discover, this limitation is implied; and either creeps out
through some adjacent expression in the context; or betrays itself, when
we recur to the general course of the Apostle’s argument, or to the
character and circumstances of his correspondents. Thus Paul says, that
Christ “gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time;” the
next verse shows what is in his mind, when he adds, “_whereunto_ I am
ordained a preacher, and an apostle, a teacher of THE GENTILES in faith
and verity:” and the whole sentiment of the context is the _Universality
of the Gospel_, and the duty of praying for Gentile kings and people, as
not abandoned to a foreign God and another Mediator; for since Messiah’s
death, to _us all_ “there is but One God, and One Mediator between God
and men, the man Christ Jesus:” wherefore the Apostle wills, that _for
all_, “men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath, and
doubting,”—without wrath at their admission, or doubt of their
adoption.[339] And wherever emphasis is laid on the _vast number_
benefited by the cross, a contrast is implied with the _few_ (only the
Jews) who could have been his subjects, had he not died: and when it is
said, “he gave his life a ransom _for many_;”[340] his blood was “shed
_for many_, for the remission of sins;”[341] “thou wast slain, and hast
redeemed us by thy blood, _out of every kindred, and tongue, and people,
and nation_; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests; and we
shall reign on the earth;”[342] “behold the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of _the world_;”[343] —by all these expressions is still denoted
the efficacy of Christ’s death in removing the Gentile disqualification,
and making his dispensation spiritual as his celestial existence, and
universal as the Fatherhood of God. Does Paul exhort certain of his
disciples, “to feed the church of the Lord, which he hath purchased with
his own blood?”[344] We find that he is speaking of the _Gentile_ church
of Ephesus, whose elders he is instructing in the management of their
charge, and to which he afterwards wrote the well-known epistle, on
their Gentile freedom and adoption obtained by the Messiah’s death. When
Peter says, “ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things,
as silver and gold, from your vain conversation, received by tradition
from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot,”[345] we must inquire _to whom_ he is
addressing these words. If it be to the Jews, the interpretation which I
have hitherto given of such language will not apply, and we must seek an
explanation altogether different. But the whole manner of this epistle,
the complexion of its phraseology throughout, convinces me that it was
addressed especially to the _Gentile converts_ of Asia Minor; and that
the redemption of which it speaks is no other than that which is the
frequent theme of their own apostle.
In the passage just quoted, the form of expression itself suggests the
idea, that Peter is addressing a class which did not include himself;
“YE were not redeemed, &c.:” further on in the same epistle the same
sentiment occurs, however, without any such visible restriction.
Exhorting to patient suffering for conscience sake, he appeals to the
example of Christ; “who, when he suffered, threatened not, but committed
himself to Him that judgeth righteously: who, his own self, bare _our_
sins in his own body on the tree; that we, being dead to sin, should
live unto righteousness:” yet, with instant change in the expression,
revealing his correspondents to us, the Apostle adds, “by whose stripes
YE were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned
unto the shepherd and bishop of your souls.”[346] With the instinct of a
gentle and generous heart, the writer, treating in plain terms of the
former sins of those whom he addresses, puts himself in with them; and
avoids every appearance of that spiritual pride, by which the Jew
constantly rendered himself offensive to the Gentile.
Again, in this letter, he recommends the duty of patient endurance, by
appeal to the same consideration of Christ’s disinterested
self-sacrifice. “It is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer
for well doing than for evil doing: for Christ also hath once suffered
for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” And
who are these “unjust” that are thus brought to God? The Apostle
instantly explains, by describing how the “Jews by nature” lost
possession of Messiah by the death of his person, and “sinners of the
Gentiles” gained him by the resurrection of his immortal nature; “being
put to death in flesh, but quickened in spirit; and _thereby he went and
preached unto the spirits in prison, who formerly were without faith_.”
This is clearly a description of the Heathen world, ere it was brought
into relation to the Messianic promises. Still further confirmation,
however, follows. The Apostle adds: “forasmuch, then, as Christ hath
suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same
mind; for the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the
will _of the Gentiles_; when _we_ walked in lasciviousness, lusts,
excess of wine, revellings, banquettings, and _abominable
idolatries_.”[347] If we cannot admit this to be a just description of
the holy Apostle’s former life, we must perceive that, writing to Pagans
of whom it was all true, he beautifully withholds from his language
every trace of invidious distinction, puts himself for the moment into
the same class, and seems to take his share of the distressing
recollection.