Azazel, or the People's Lot (Continued)
Still the message goes forth to all, for in verse 23 it is written, “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all.” But the moment you come to application it is said, “And upon all those that believe.” These are justified, but the word of grace goes out to every one. Thus the two truths are borne witness to in a remarkable manner throughout the New Testament. There is universal proclamation by virtue of Christ's precious blood; and there is the positive assurance of justification wherever there is faith in Him. So in Rom. 5 we are told, “God commendeth His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.”
We may observe by the bye, that scripture speaks in three ways of justification as the need of man naturally unrighteous—justified by His grace (Titus 3:77That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:7)), if we speak of the source; justified by His blood (Rom. 5:99Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. (Romans 5:9)), if we seek the procuring cause in the work of our Lord Jesus Christ; and justified by faith, if we ask the way by which the soul is individually brought into the blessing (Rom. 5:11Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: (Romans 5:1)).
You may have heard possibly that there are those who will have faith to mean the sum and substance of all Christian virtues. This is in principle to annul the gospel of God. Faith means the soul's reception of divine testimony. He who believes is one who sets to his seal that God is true. If God testifies of Jesus as His Son, he who believes receives it heartily. It is for the guilty and lost: how then can it be the sum and substance of all Christian virtues, when the gospel is expressly for any poor soul as a lost sinner? When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Take even a stronger word, “To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is reckoned for righteousness.” Is this the sum and substance of Christian virtues? It is the full contradiction of such unbelief. Yet it is not simply believing God, or receiving His testimony; it is trust in Him and in His grace. Compare 1 Peter 1:2121Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. (1 Peter 1:21). There is enlarged exercise of faith, through Christ, on God Himself.
Alas! what is thus expressed is the doctrine of men that heard, but do not understand the gospel: though the particular person referred to is the late Dr. Pusey, and indeed men of his school, besides that party in particular. Their heterodoxy or rather misbelief is, that in effect we become our own saviors by the help of the Holy Ghost. Redemption is unknown, little as they suspect it; for outwardly they pay reverence to more than Christ, some seeming to adore the sign of the cross. They believe that Christ died to put every one, especially the baptized, in the way of salvation, and that without baptism nobody in general can be saved. But when it comes to the application, they bring in ordinances and morally the sum of all Christian virtues. So that it is a complete robbing the Lord of His redemption spoil, as it deprives the lost of all possibility of peace with God. How could any upright man say to God, “Now let me have peace with Thee, for I have the sum and substance of all the Christian virtues?” The very thing the Holy Spirit has been proving home is, that the soul has not one good thing as it ought to have; and therefore is it forced to fall back on God's sovereign mercy in Christ. The idea completely nullifies the direct operation of God in quickening souls, as well as in redemption. Yet these are the sentiments of pious men. But withal they are blinded by human tradition. They read the Bible only through deceiving mists, unless when they defend it in some little measure against rationalists; for their ignorance of truth is deplorable.
There is no more fruitful source of darkening the spiritual understanding than the allowance of man between the soul and God, particularly at that solemn moment of a soul's coming for the first time into God's marvelous light, the revealing of the Savior for eternity.
But, passing on, we may see the same truth in the twin Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, and with no small precision and brilliancy. It may assume a somewhat different shape. For instance, “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” Although redemption and atonement are very distinguishable, they are indeed none the less in fact inseparable. You cannot have atonement without redemption, or redemption without atonement. Therefore it appears to be quite lawful to adduce the force of these scriptures into the case. As all is based on the blood of Christ, so it cannot be enjoyed without faith. The “we,” who “have redemption,” are those who believe, those described in a previous verse as the faithful in Christ.
So again we may look at a scripture very distinct indeed in the First Epistle of Peter. I purposely pass over the Epistle to the Hebrews for the moment; but in 1 Peter 2 we have what distinctly refers to Christ making good the day of Atonement. “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps; who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered, threatened not, but committed [Himself] to Him that judgeth righteously; who His own self bare our sins in His body on the tree.” It is not “up to” the tree. The margin, after many others, so gave it; but this was an ignorant and total oversight of the sacrificial language in the Old Testament. There are two forms employed in the LXX., and always distinctly. When it is a question of “up to,” or “to,” another different preposition is compounded. Where the one found here is expressed, it invariably means “upon,” and not “to.” It is allowed that in other connections this may not always hold; but in sacrificial language the distinction is certain and constant. Now it is plain that here the apostle Peter is referring to the sacrificial language of the Old Testament. All his Epistle indeed abounds in allusions of a similar kind. If the world tells us that Peter was an unlearned man, let not believers forget that the Holy Ghost inspired him. There may be no show of human reasoning or rhetoric, no effort to gild the golden truths in what he was given to announce; but the language for all that is divinely accurate. Any unbiased scholar ought to understand it also on the surface of the passage. The believer ought to be sure.
It is sadly plain that there is, at the bottom of all these efforts to mystify, a want of faith in the true inspiration of God's word as well as in the perfect efficacy of Christ's work. But let me refer to another point showing how unfounded is the idea that our Lord was bearing sins all His life. The word “bare” excludes the desired notion. “Bare” (ἀνήνεγκεν) does not convey continuity but a transient act. The aorist is the definite expression of such a fact. It expresses therefore what took place on the cross, certainly not what was in process before, any more than after. Christ's bearing our sins in His body was complete then, and only then. The form of the word excludes anything begun before that solemn epoch, and it implies a completeness on the cross, where it began. Therefore the notion “up to” is false, not perhaps in the form of the word itself, but in its contextual and sacrificial usage.
We may add another thing. When our Lord became a sin-bearer, He was surrounded by a supernatural darkness. It is notorious that, on scientific grounds, there could not have been an eclipse at that time. It was not then a merely natural shadow; it was a supernatural darkness. There were other supernatural tokens which accompanied it. The veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. The graves were opened. The sun was darkened, and the darkness, we know, was absolutely unique. Thus and then it was that Christ was made sin for us. If Christ had been bearing our sins all His life, there ought to have been these mysterious tokens all the while. If Christ had been made sin before, as such He must also have been throughout forsaken of God. But plainly the forsaking of God was then, and only then. The supernatural darkness, the forsaking of God, and all the other wonderful signs, marked the presence of a crisis unequaled and unfathomable, which stands apart from all before and after. Is it too much, with scripture for our warrant, to say that in all eternity there never can be such a crisis again? How blessed to know that it all points to Christ made sin for us. No doubt it was God's doing for His own glory, whatever the wickedness of the creature in its part about it. The heart is not to be envied which can reason such things away, instead of growing by the truth that what Christ suffered that day constitutes the most important fact that ever was, or can be.
When a soul is awakened, not merely to the deep and outrageous evil done to the Son of God, but to His and the Father's unspeakable grace in achieving infinitely more than creature could either do or suffer, that sin might be judged and put away as well as forgiven, and God be glorified even as to that which in itself is most hateful to His nature, how immense the change and blessed the victory of good over evil! Conscience, in us who believe, feels that God ought to be vindicated. But if we cannot but care for His moral glory, yet more has God set His heart on the blessing of man lost in sin. Therefore has He in the cross of Christ made peace, and given us to have redemption through His blood, rising in the majesty of His love above our hatred where it was vilest against His Son going down to the uttermost to save us out of our miserable selfishness, rebellious works, and foreboding of just wrath and judgment. He therefore gives us to know that the same death of our Lord Jesus Christ was both the complete meeting of His glory as Judge of sin on the one hand, and the blotting out by His blood of our sins on the other. Irreconcilable everywhere else, they are united in the reality of Christ's death; as His person alone afforded the sole Being capable of solving the problem of sin to the sinner's blessing and Gods honor as well as His love.
The sending away of the people's sins, grounded on the sin-offering of Atonement-day, is the meaning of the scape-goat. We have but glanced at certain unhallowed speculations which need not be dwelt on. Suffice it now to say that, from the early days of Christendom's departure from apostolic truth till our own day, not a few learned persons have not been wanting who have dared to conjecture that the scapegoat represents the devil! Plain Christians might think that these men must have lost their senses to broach such defiling notions, as if God's word sanctioned them. But one form of the dream was put forward by a chief champion of orthodoxy as opposed to the neologists of Germany. It was quite common among the Fathers, so called, some of whom went so far as to think that there was even a sacrifice to the devil! Far be it from me to attribute such low heathenism to the learned Dr. Hengstenberg of Berlin, or to the respected Mr. George Stanley Faber of our own country. They were Christians, but slipped into the extraordinary delusion that the scapegoat meant Satan dealing with our Lord Jesus Christ. No! it was the figure which God graciously vouchsafed, as the complement of the sacrificed goat, for the removal of all their sins from the burdened souls of His people. It was God Who, as He found His rest as to sin in the shed blood of Christ on the cross, would also signify His banishment of all dread of judgment from the verily and confessedly guilty that looked to Him who confessed and bore their sins on the tree.
It is almost superfluous to commend the subject as one of urgent and exceeding moment to souls. May the Lord grant, if any now who look to Him be still troubled by their sins, that they may see God's written testimony to the cross, blood, and death of Christ, if one may put it in the largest form. It is not a mere question of their loss through unbelief of scripture; but are they truly doing honor to the atoning work of our Lord Jesus Christ? The Holy Spirit testifies strongly the virtue of Christ's death (Heb. 10:1515Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before, (Hebrews 10:15)). It is not the bare fact of His death of course, but God's declaration to and for man of its value in His sight that you are called to weigh—the revealed power of it for your sins. It is the cleansing and peace which God gives the believer by reason of Christ. He wants you to have the settled assurance that all against you is so clean gone that God will never remember it more.