YOU did not believe that beggar’s pitiful story, and therefore did not respond to his urgent appeal for charity. But the case was real, and the need was great. Yet, since beggars have so often been found impostors, telling a false story to excite pity, no one greatly wonders that you did not credit his. Honest poverty might, all the same, consider itself insulted.
But suppose another case. You are broken down in health, and in the greatest financial extremity. A gentle knock is heard at your door. You answer. Your visitor tells his errand: he assures you that he is one of the royal family, that he has not come to seek pity, but to show it; not to beg, but to give. But you coldly criticize or impudently question his kind acts, and perversely misconstrue his words. He makes you many gracious offers, but you proudly refuse them all, and finally you so often bid him begone that at last, with tears of real sorrow, he departs. This time it is royal kindness that feels insulted.
Oh, but I should never think of insulting such a benefactor. Not I! No one doubts the assurance. But this is only our introduction to a more serious matter. Among men, insult could not go higher than when it is shown to royalty. Yet insult can go higher, for it can be shown to, divine persons—to God, to His beloved Son, and to His Holy Spirit.
There are many today who profess to honor Christ, that is if words mean anything; they even call Him “our Great Example.” They applaud His life of unceasing service for others, and admiringly point out that He consummated that life of holy devotion by a martyr’s death. But they stoutly deny His work as the Holy Substitute of God’s providing for the bearing of sin’s judgment in the sinner’s stead.
This we cannot but regard as a gross insult to our blessed Lord, cover it by whatever garb you may. Let us look more closely at this solemn matter, and let us plainly repeat the assertion that the man who does not believe that Christ bore the believer’s sins— “our sins,” “in His own body on the tree,” and the judgment of God due to them, does nothing less than cast insult upon the Son of God.
We have in Scripture three distinct records of the cry of Jesus upon the cross: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Once prophetically in Psa. 22:11<<To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.>> My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? (Psalm 22:1), and twice historically—Matt. 27:4646And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46), Mark 15:3434And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Mark 15:34).
Who dare affirm that this cry was not intensely real, and that God did not in those three dark hours actually forsake His Son? Mark this: the blessed Sufferer Himself while raising the question Why? indicates the righteousness of God’s act in thus forsaking Him, saying, “But Thou art holy, O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.”
This righteous act, therefore, on the part of God was either on account of the forsaken One personally, or on account of the place He had voluntarily taken for others. In other words, this fierce wrath, which in those three hours of darkness overwhelmed Him, was either for Himself or for others. Which? If you say, Not because He was a substitute for others, then it was for Himself (oh, horrid thought!), or else God was inflicting judgment for nothing. Oh, how His dying love is thus insulted!
But if not for His own offense (and blessed be God it was not, for He always did those things. that pleased His Father, and of this His Father publicly testified), then it was for others. “He was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification.” “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” The sins of those who believe on Him were as actually transferred to Christ when, in love, He took the place of the sin offering, as in the Levitical type on the day of atonement the sins of Israel were, for one year, laid upon the head of the scapegoat.
Let Unitarianism either admit this or let her stop her mouth forever in professing to applaud the holy life of Him who bowed His head in death at Calvary, while her doctrine otherwise grossly insults Him by denying redemption by His precious blood.
But perhaps the reader may say, I am no Unitarian, yet I have not found peace with God through Him.
If Christ was a sin-bearer on the cross, where is He now? Oh, I believe that God raised Him from the dead, and that He has gone to the right hand of God in heaven.
But you would not insult God by inferring that the sins He bore on the cross were taken by the Sin-bearer to that holy place? Oh no; sin can never be tolerated in His presence. Then where are the believer’s sins? If God laid my sins to His charge, they are not laid to my charge. If He, to whom they were transferred, and by whom their judgment was righteously borne, is forever clear of them, so is he for whom He bore them.
Faith honors Christ by resting its all on the atoning merits of His sacrifice and death; but this kind of unbelief not only insults Him, but shuts the door of hope in its own face. Let my reader seriously consider how he stands in the light of all this. When once you are awakened to the righteous deserts of sin, nothing short of the suffering work of the once God-forsaken Substitute will meet your case. But remember He is a living, exalted, sinner-welcoming Saviour now. Oh, make His acquaintance early!
GEO. C.