He died to show men how much God loved them. Men ever after would
know the feeling of the heart of God toward them.
True, the death of Christ did show the great love of God for fallen
man. But men did not need such a sacrifice to know that God loved
them. They knew that before Christ came. The Old Testament is full
of the love of God. Read Psalm 103. The Scriptures which speak
of God's love as being manifested in the gift of His Son, tell us
also of another reason why He gave His Son: "That whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16);
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and
sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).
We believe that Christ's Cross reveals the love of God, and that
throughout all these ages men have been bowed in penitence as they
have caught a vision of the One who hung thereon. But if you were
to question the multitudes that have believed in God because of
the Cross, you would find that what moved them to repentance was
not merely, if at all, certainly not primarily, that the Cross
revealed the love of God in a supreme way, but the fact that there
at that Cross God had dealt with the great and awful fact of sin,
that the Cross had forever removed it.
"I examine all these views, beautiful as some of them are, appealing
to the pride of man, but which leave out all thought of vicarious
atonement, and say, 'But what shall be done with my sin? Who shall
put it away? Where is its sacrifice? If without shedding of blood
there is no remission of sin, where is the shed blood?' These
views are neat, measurable, occasionally pathetic, and frequently
beautiful, but they do not include the agony of the whole occasion
and situation. They are aspect theories, partial conceptions. They
do not take in the whole temple from its foundation to its roof.
No man must set up his judgment against that of another man in a
dogmatic way, but he may, yea, he must, allow his heart to speak
through his judgment; and in view of this liberty, I venture to
say that all these theories of the atonement are as nothing, most
certainly shallow and incomplete to me . . . . As I speak now,
at this very moment, I feel that the Christ on the Cross is doing
something for me, that His death is my life, His atonement my pardon,
His crucifixion the satisfaction for my sin, that from Calvary,
that place of a skull, my flowers of peace and joy blossom forth,
and that in the Cross of Christ I glory."--_Joseph Parker._