My attention was called to the article at the time, by a brother at Reading, and I wrote to him as follows:—“October 11Th, 1884. As I read the MS., I rather hesitated at the same word execrable.” (Page 233, Things New and Old.) But I think the writer strove to express the loathsomeness of sin, and what it was for the Holy One to bear it on the cross. Most solemn subject, made sin for us. The thought is this, the carcass was regarded as sin,’ as you know there is no difference in the Hebrew: sin and sin offering. Surely it was because He was the most holy, that sin was so loathsome. What words can express what it was for Him to be made sin?
“If you look at Lev. 16:2626And he that let go the goat for the scapegoat shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward come into the camp. (Leviticus 16:26), you will see there it could not be merely death (as in Num. 19:11-1411He that toucheth the dead body of any man shall be unclean seven days. 12He shall purify himself with it on the third day, and on the seventh day he shall be clean: but if he purify not himself the third day, then the seventh day he shall not be clean. 13Whosoever toucheth the dead body of any man that is dead, and purifieth not himself, defileth the tabernacle of the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off from Israel: because the water of separation was not sprinkled upon him, he shall be unclean; his uncleanness is yet upon him. 14This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent: all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days. (Numbers 19:11‑14)) that was the reason why the one should wash, &c., as there was not death, but the imputation of sin, in the case of the scapegoat. I think you have scarcely caught the writer’s idea; though I believe he felt far more than he has clearly expressed. But you, cannot for a moment suppose, that he meant that the holy, holy Lord, was in His adorable Person what that word means, but sin which He bore.
Never more glorious than when so on the cross; but it was there in the darkness, He became Gal. 3:1313Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: (Galatians 3:13). Let us beware of intellectual meddling here, yours or mine, but adore in worship.”
I have read the article over again, and I can say with great enjoyment to my own soul, and if any one will react it in communion with the Lord, he must utterly refuse the impression or meaning sought to be put upon it, that the writer, or the lecturer, had the most remote thought of impugning the adorable Person of the Holy One of God. No word can go beyond the fact that He was made sin for us on the cress. The doctrine of the article is, as understand it, that the Lord Jesus was in His own Person ever the perfect, holy, sweet savor to God; but as made sin, or the sin-offering, no heart can conceive, no words express, no pen describe, the depths into which He sank for us. Did not the thought of it make Him sweat, as it were, great drops of blood? Did not the endurance of it make our precious Jesus cry out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” I am sorry that any one could have read the article, and have allowed, the thought for a moment, that either the author or the editor, would send forth a single sentence that a spot or a stain on the adorable Person of the only-begotten Son of the Father. EDITOR.