LITMIR.BIZ

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What can be the meaning and the bearing of a death which God has placed in so exalted a position? We can only get our answer from Scripture; and we can only get it from Scripture as we read in the simple, unsophisticated humility of mind and heart of which Christ Himself and His apostles give us the example.

      “Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins.” We have sinned against God, and our sins have been so many offences to Him; offences which must be dealt with. Christ averts the penalty from us by taking it to Himself. The Holy One consents to suffer for the sake of the guilty. The apostle who styles Christ as the “Propitiation” has said, in a sentence immediately preceding: “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Almost numberless passages teach the same doctrine. If we were engaged in an exercise of Biblical criticism, we should have to discuss each of these passages minutely in its turn. But the general idea we gather from them is definite and clear. A ransom paid, our sins borne, the wrath of God appeased, an offered sacrifice – all these contain one idea: Jesus Christ freeing us from the desert of our sin by Himself satisfying Divine Justice on our behalf.

      Hence the two great facts of our religious history. We were under the condemnation of a holy law. He who was “the Life,” for our sake endured death that we who deserved death might have life for His sake. And God is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”

      To a simple-hearted Christian all this is clear. Men may be scandalised at the exchange (as they term it) between justice and sin, between life and death; but Paul knows how to state the matter: “God hath made Him (Christ) to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Men may be indignant (as they often profess to be) at the thought of the innocent suffering for the guilty; but Peter does not hesitate to say: “Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.”

      What is it, moreover, that connects the teaching of the Old Testament with that of the New? The doctrine of sacrifice, as thus explained, is not simply attested by Scripture: it is the soul of it; its bond of unity. The death of Christ is the sacrifice “once offered in the end of the world,” in which all the sacrifices of the Old Testament find their common destination; to which they correspond, as the figure to the reality. The cross is the end, the key, the meaning, the value of all of them. Without this we cannot understand them. They were types: the cross is the antitype. What they represented, the cross achieved. The cross procured the pardon which they proclaimed. And so the cross has always been the symbol of the Christian Church. The Jews understood it, and were scandalised; the Greeks understood it, and sneered.

      And now what ends does this sacrifice of Propitiation serve? Mainly two, which are inclusive of all the rest.

      I. It is the fullest revelation of the Divine character. Leaving aside all questions of abstract and technical theology, we observe that it sets before us, in one great act, the righteousness and the mercy of God. The cross proclaims the pardon for which infinite love solicits. The heart of God yields to itself. But how can this be? It is because the pardon solicited by love is obtained by a sacrifice which equally exhibits God’s righteousness. If we seek the universe through for the greatest proof we can have of the love of God to the sinner, we shall find it in the cross; for we there see not only that God forgives, but also that He is so resolved to forgive that, rather than that the sinner shall be left to perish, the stroke of the offended law shall fall on the willing head and heart and life of “His only begotten and well-beloved Son.” On the other hand, if we want to know something of God’s abhorrence of sin, we shall find it in the cross; for we there see that, so impossible is it for Him to allow it to go unpunished, that He secures for it a Divine expiation in the willing sacrifice of His Divine Son. “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Most persons can see in the cross a demonstration of Divine love; in the light of Bible teaching, they may also see in it a demonstration of Divine justice more marked and telling than in a closed Eden, in the waters of the Deluge, in the overthrow of the cities of the plain, in the destruction of Jerusalem, or in the punishment of the wicked in eternity.

      II. If men are to be saved at all, they must be saved to holiness; they must be sanctified as well as forgiven. The result cannot be otherwise for those who truly believe in the sacrifice of Christ as thus explained. Holiness and love, the two great elements of the character of God; these are expressed in the cross, and they must be reproduced in the character of those for whom the cross does its appointed work. How can we believe, as the cross teaches us to believe, in God’s hatred to sin, without feeling that we must hate it also, and, hating it, must forsake it? And how can we believe, as the cross teaches us to believe, in the love which has obtained our salvation, without giving our own love as a genuine, though feeble, return? Let a man, struggling with the sins which he condemns, but which he cannot shake off, learn that the Son of God came into the world to die for him; and he will find in that revelation a strength for conflict with sin which he never had before. Speak to him of the beauty and dignity of the law, of the righteousness of God’s claims, of the penalties of transgression; and, though his conscience may assent to all you say, his heart will not yield. Can he refuse when he sees Jesus on the cross, and knows what, for him, that spectacle means? The cross is an argument presented to his reason, his conscience, his will, his heart, his whole being; nay, it is more than an argument, it is an appeal; and the response must be: “We love Him because He first loved us.” “The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again.”

      And now it only remains to be said that this Propitiation is needed by all, that it is sufficient for all, and that it is free to all. Let all receive it.

      III.

      FAITH IN THE SAVIOUR

      “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” – Acts xvi. 31.

      A startling providential dispensation was one of the means by which the spiritual nature of this jailer was roused. Only one, effectual so far as it went, but not complete in itself. It was preparatory and auxiliary to the action of the Holy Spirit, the instrument by which the Spirit did His special work of convincing the man of sin. Thus it is that outward events and circumstances are made to co-operate with God in the conversion of a soul. The way in which the Spirit works is a mystery, akin to that in which one human mind acts upon another. But the means of this spiritual action is no mystery. We use speech, external appliances of various kinds; the Divine Spirit does the same. In the case of the jailer he employed the earthquake together with the calm faith, the perfect serenity, of the apostles at a moment which was to himself a moment of terror, and which would also have been a moment of terror to them had they not been the Christians they were. A great joy; a great sorrow, commotion, loss, alarm, the apparent nearness of death; daily mercies, the “means of grace,” the Word of God, the ministry of the gospel – through all these the Spirit works. They are powerless in themselves; they can only become mighty as used by Him.

      It is obvious at a glance that this man’s spiritual nature was roused. Spiritual realities burst in upon his mind in all their awful momentousness. His whole soul was suddenly concentrated in a sense of his ruin. Hence the short, sharp question – the question which sprung from an inward agony – “What must I do to be saved?” That question must be answered, if it can be – answered on the instant! There is a tremendous depth of meaning in it. It is as though a lightning flash had in a moment illuminated the man’s whole spiritual condition, bringing out every feature of it into startling distinctness. All the fears and the aspirations of his immortal being are here; his past life with all its sin, his remorse, his dread of judgment, his terror in the presence of God – all are here; he feels himself to be a lost man. How can he be saved?

      In his question there is no hint of self-righteousness or of self-confidence, or even of the remotest hope in himself. He does not ask, like “the young man in the gospel,” “What good thing must I do that I may inherit eternal life?” The question of the young man is leisurely; the question of the jailer is hurried, under the feeling that there is not a moment to be lost. Helpless and hopeless, he wants but one thing, and that

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