But do not overlook danger from legality on the other side. Far am I from meaning that it was not an evil day in Christendom when people first sang, “That day of wrath, that dreadful day,” which the thought of Christ's return then awoke. Was this genuine affliction of the soul? It was little better than a frightful scare: God was unknown. There is a great difference between repentance and dread. Abject terror of soul may have exactly characterized mediaeval Christendom. High and low were frightened, and in their terror they gave up their acres or their labor in order to propitiate the God before Whose judgments they trembled in view of the day of the Lord. It was out of that spirit that many a grand cathedral arose with its truly dim religious light. It was not merely the great lords as well as crowned heads who contributed from their wealth or their spoils, but the poor workmen freely gave their skill and labor: a standing and striking testimony to the power of alarm in unenlightened people's souls. It had been the main weapon of heathenism, the sole moral element in which dark deceit was dread. So it was and is now alas! in fallen Christendom.
Not that one would exclude pious fear from that which works in those that hear God's word. It is right and fitting that the guilty should be alarmed when they hear of their sins, and of God's justice and sure judgment. How blessed to know that after the sins, and before the judgment, God did come down from heaven in the person of His own Son to work His unfailing atonement! Certainly there could have been no perfection in the work, if Christ had not been a divine person. It is all-important that our. Lord Jesus be acknowledged as God unreservedly. If the Word had not been God, if the Son not one with the Father, the Savior must have been incompetent for the work He undertook. But the Son came; the work was done and accepted; and all is changed. Before our Lord became the sacrifice, the righteousness of God might well fill the soul with deep anxiety: judgment must then take its course. But through Christ's blood, God is just and justifies the believer. How blessed that God justifies us!
That God was to judge the world, every Jew acknowledged. This could give no peace to the guilty. There must be resurrection of the dead, both of just and unjust. After judgment the lake of fire awaited the lost. The second death is not ceasing to exist. Indeed death itself is but the severance of soul from body. For the believer it is “to depart and be with Christ.” Even when a wicked man dies, he is in no way annihilated: his soul is severed from the body, and this is death. “All live to God,” if not to men. But when the second death comes, the wicked exist forever not only in soul but in body. Resurrection is not temporal being, like living in the world that now is; it ushers in what is final and unchanging.
This brings out the deep importance of the true atonement. Let me ask, Are your souls now resting on Christ and His sacrifice? In the gospel God is announcing to you Christ as the propitiation for the whole world. How awful for your own soul and body if you slight His message! Receive it from God, and may this be without the presumption of your works, but with true affliction of soul. If Christ thus suffered for sins, why doubt God's love, guilty though you are? The fact that He reveals Christ's atonement is the fullest testimony to God's mercy as well as justice. Is it not for sinners in their sins, in their transgressions, and in their iniquities? Do not these words of His cover all you have done? Does not Christ's work meet the worst that can be alleged against you? The Atonement-day was Jehovah's doing away man's evil for those that bowed to Him. Make no excuses more.
Rest your soul on the Savior and His propitiation; for there is none other holy, true, or efficacious. It is not merely that He has done the work, but He is the propitiation. John takes particular care thus to identify Him and the work. “He is the propitiation for our sins;” and therefore should we look to Him only for it. God forbid that you should look to yourself or to others! For what can others avail you for sin? What can the Virgin, the angels, or the saints, do for you in this stress? Were the church of God here below in its pristine unity, were the staff Beauty and the staff Bands unbroken (if one may apply figures from Israel), what could all the saints avail for saving your soul? God's church, if not man's, would tell you, by the lips of its members, what His grace in Christ did for each and all of them. But God tells you the truth in His word better than any of the uninspired saints ever preached. His word is intended to give you the sole unfailing decision any can now have on the matter. Here you have all you require in this single chapter, read in the light of Christ. It is admitted that none could make much of it without the New Testament. But have we not both Old Testament and New? Have we not divine light shining on the shadows of the past, so that the truth rises to view in all its unity and holiness, grandeur, simplicity, and with absolute certainty?
What about yourselves, who now hear the truth? May God bring you to Himself and fasten His own blessed word on your conscience. May you acknowledge the folly of your heart and the wickedness of your life. Is there anything really more evil in His sight than, with the scriptures read and heard continually, to be practically living without God and in despite of Christ? Begin then at once to hear God for eternity. Do not put it off for another day. If you never believed in Christ and His salvation before, may God give you to believe in Him that you may be saved now. Remember that with atonement goes true affliction of the soul; but no work of yours can be connected with that which He has wrought. When your soul's deep want is settled with God, there will be ample room and loud call for you to work, and unfailing joy to express. But the atonement is too holy and too solemn for man to be other than abased and prostrate before the God Who sent His Son to suffer for you. Bow to God then with affliction of your soul; and abhor the presumption of adding to it by work on your part. “They shall come, and shall declare His righteousness unto a people that shall be born, that He hath done (it).”
The words just cited are the end of Psa. 22. First Christ most distinctively undergoes the sufferings of atonement, wherein He appeals to God at His necessary desertion, with the blessed results in the latter half. Its opening cry is so applied in the New Testament, as already pointed out. Every other thought deprives it of grace, not to say of meaning, and is altogether unworthy of the suffering Man Who was God. Psa. 40 is more mingled; but beyond dispute, in the light of Heb. 10, it puts forth Christ setting aside, not only sacrifice and offering but burnt-offering and offering for sin, by the oblation of His body once for all on the cross. His willing obedience unto death is the central truth, though in so doing God's will He graciously feels as His own the sins of the ungodly men whose substitute He is. Psa. 69 again points to Messiah on the cross, but in the aspect of His rejection by man, and by the ungodly Jews particularly, with the result of judgment on them, whatever the blessing for Zion. Psa. 88 again indicates Messiah's spirit identified with elect Israel, righteously feeling in grace all the power of darkness and death, yet crying to Jehovah day and night. Psa. 102 is Christ identified with the misery of Zion, and referring to Jehovah, Who owns the humbled One as Jehovah, no less eternal and unchangeable than Himself. Psa. 109 closes these marvelous oracles with Christ suffering from the treachery of the Jews, headed by Judas, and looking on to the son of perdition in the last days, when Jews and Gentiles again unite against Him to their everlasting shame, but the needy shall rejoice in Him forever.
Nor are the Prophets silent, any more than the Law and the Psalm though one need not now go beyond the clear, and deep, and full testimony of Isa. 52, 53. Even the rationalistic Gesenius, though he contends here for the prophetic body personified and rejected by Israel, confesses as the truth, both from the language employed and the habitual thought, not of that nation only but of all others, that an expiatory work runs through it. Yet while allowing the New Testament teaching to be based on it, he (poor man, wise in his own conceit) preferred the expiation should be by the suffering prophets for Israel's deliverance! But if expiation is admitted, none but an unbeliever can fail to see it in Christ alone. The Righteous Servant of Jehovah, Whom the Jews esteemed smitten of God, was really wounded for their transgressions, bruised for their iniquities: the chastisement of their peace was upon Him; and by His stripes are they healed. Jehovah laid on Him the iniquity of them all. For the transgression of His people was He stricken. He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth. “Yet it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him. He hath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied. By His knowledge shall My Righteous Servant justify many (or rather, instruct the many in righteousness, cf. Dan. 12:33And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. (Daniel 12:3)), and He shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong, because He poured out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Argument or even exposition is superfluous: save for men insensible to sin and indifferent to God, the truth of the Holy Sufferer is transparent throughout. It is “Jesus only.” We have seen His sufferings; but His glories are not visible as yet, however great some are in the heavens. The visible are to follow, as they surely will “in that day.”