[The following letter to Dr. —, of Dublin, has been sent to us for insertion, as of general interest.]
MY DEAR BROTHER, I have read the paper which you gave me, and which I understand is so much thought of by Christians of the Establishment. We are so apt, in getting hold of some truth, to pursue our own reasonings on it, reasonings in which, in divine things, there may be so easily some error or defect, some positive text forgotten that would show the defect, or with which the conclusion is at variance, that it is important to review all one's assertions and statements, and compare them with God's word: and search that word that we may, in our measure, fully know all its teaching on any point, so as to be guarded against any self-drawn conclusion which may more or less swerve from it. At least so I find it. Conclusions are never knowing the truth. I draw a conclusion: this last is only a consequence, an idea which follows from another. The truth is what exists in Christ, or the showing everything, as it is, by Him. I say as to the truth—it is. I say as to a conclusion—it must be right. It may be so. But in the truth I have what is; in a conclusion, an idea justly deduced. An immense difference, morally speaking. I am subject to the truth. I have proved, if it be so, the justice of my conclusion. I say this not to hinder inquiry, but to insist on testing by the Scriptures all conclusions I arrive at—man's conclusions, by a divine testimony. If we were simply willing to bow to the word, reasoning really would not be necessary. We should need divine teaching, to have our understandings opened, but we should learn, not have conclusions to draw. However, we are not so simple as this, and there is pleading and reasoning, and if carried on in the spirit of grace, and continually tested by the word, it elicits truth, though it calls for watching one's spirit very closely. God has so ordered it. There is a convincing of gainsayers, as well as teaching the truth. We need the Spirit of God for this as for all else. How bright examples do we see in Scripture, as Paul, and Stephen, and others, of this power of confounding the opposers of the truth. Discussion and inquiry, if rightly pursued, if there is, through grace, a love of the truth, are a means of enlarging and deepening our own thoughts also, as well as of convincing others; of correcting them, too, of course, where needed, of perfecting them, rendering them, if in the main true, free from such objections as may apply really only to adjuncts to them, but serve to cast doubt on the truth we hold. Thus the truth and all its bearings are better known as they stand in the divine counsels, and it is held as from God, that which is alloy being removed. I have searched thus, I trust sincerely, the Scriptures, to learn what they say on righteousness; and I certainly, I hope with increased clearness of apprehension, believe the doctrines I have held to be the doctrine of Scripture, while the reading of the article in the Christian Examiner has made me feel more deeply than ever that the ground on which my opponents rest in their views of righteousness is false; that the root of it lies deep, and that, when carefully searched, or, as here, elaborately unfolded, it is worse than it at first appears. Many a traditional error is held without seeing all it implies, nor would it be just to charge on those holding it all that it does imply when they are not aware of it. But we are justified in showing that the error involves it. The evil and deep and deadly doctrine involved in the common doctrine of Christ's righteousness, comes more clearly out in this paper than in anything I have yet seen. I do not in the least charge the Editor or patrons of the journal with what is really involved in their article, other truths may guard them from it; but the insertion of such an article is a proof how the error they contend for blinds them to the exceeding evil doctrine whose germ is in it, and in these days this is becoming important. The conventional landmarks of truth are being removed; confidence in the forms truth took 300 years ago is being shaken; and, alas! though not yet so much, thank God, in Ireland, the truth contained in the form often thrown overboard. Then, alas! a large class of the ministers of the Establishment cling in consequence more to formal ordinances, to have something steady. But this does not keep souls who thirst for the truth itself, it only stunts the growth of those subject to them, and Scripture in itself loses its authority. It does not recover those who are wandering They see these things are not truth. If they return to them it is to a practically Popish form of them, in which truth is sacrificed, to anything, that is, God's authority to man's. For God exercises His own authority over the conscience by the truth. Man's is Jewishly maintained by subjection to ordinances. Nor is it possible to hold godly men in these bonds; at least, a vast number of them; the word of God is too much studied. It may some, but it is soon found that where the word of God has its own power—that is, when God is owned—souls get on into too much real solid sanctifying truth to remain bound to ordinances as the bond of Christianity and Christendom, even when they are divinely given ones. Those who do are more thrown back on mere forms. Truth is needed to keep souls in progress and in holy subjection to God at the same time. In this case, Scripture, the word of God, must have its authority. If the presence of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter on earth, as forming the unity of Christ's body on earth, and dwelling in God's assembly as His habitation; if the coming of Jesus to receive the saints to Himself, and then His appearing to judge the world, and the saints with Him, be taught, and these truths work their effect in people's souls, conventional church forms will not hinder persons who bow to Scripture (and they ought to bow to Scripture) from receiving them. Nor will denying their importance lead people who have known their power to yield to theory. They find them presented in Scripture as immense practical truths, and Scripture is read, the divinely declared safeguard in the perilous times. No man who knows what darkness and light is, can do otherwise than bless God with his whole heart for the blessed intervention of God in the Reformation. We cannot too highly prize that astonishing deliverance. But it set up the authority of Scripture. That was one great half of the blessing of it when it prevailed. Men have gone into infidelity. In no way, far from it, in Protestant countries more than in Roman Catholic. Every one acquainted with the latter knows the contrary. Only in Protestant countries, where there is liberty, it declares itself. But the principle of the authority of Scripture, remains firm wherever God is really owned. But, in all the present movement of mind, it must be its authority as God's word which we appeal to as justifying our statements. I know, alas! man's heart can reject it; but, then, I am authorized and bound to treat him as an unbeliever, for he is one. There is nothing to be believed but the word of God. Thus only can I set to my seal that God is true—thus only exercise true faith. The appeal even to reformers, or more modern authors, cannot avail. I do not believe in them. They cannot be, ought not to be, a ground of faith. They may instruct me; I may listen to them with personal respect. This is all right. But they cannot be authority for my soul. If I own them as such, the word has lost its authority; for I put man's word and God's word on a level. In receiving Scripture, I set to my seal that God is true, and hence His authority over my soul, while His love in giving His word is owned. Always a vital truth, this is now of inconceivable importance. On this question hangs that of the subjection of the soul to God, and in His word, or man's willful departure from it, be it in superstition or infidelity. On the subject we are now occupied with, men have sought to put down what I believe to be the truth by quoting Reformers and Puritan divines. It does not affect my mind in the smallest degree. If they are not in unison with Scripture, I reject them at once. I value all their work, but God's word is alone an authority. I may be told it is only my thought on Scripture, instead of theirs. My faith must be mine, and must be direct, based on the word itself, or it is not faith. They may have been instruments, and blessed ones. They were, in their day. But they are not authority. Were I to hold them so, I must hold many errors, and many opposite things, and leave unlearned many important truths by which God is acting on the conscience of the Church at this day, which it was not in His wisdom to bring out in their day. Let us search Scripture together. God would, out of the common fund of Scripture, lead by His Spirit to the use of certain truths, according to man's need, or the Church's need at the time. Out of the same fund He will teach the humble enquirer by His Spirit now. They are momentous times: all is shaking; and the Holy Ghost knows on what truths to fix the attention of the saints now. Free inquiry is abroad, often without the smallest respect for the word of God. I am persuaded that the safe way for a soul to meet it, and all the difficulties that may arise, is perfect subjection to the word of God. Then let him inquire and search as much as he can, provided it be humbly done in dependence on grace, in true subjection to the authority of the word. The conscience will thus be kept in play, and divine authority will be maintained over the soul, and that is all-important. These ecclesiastical forms cannot keep a soul, unless in darkness; yet, whenever a soul gets from under authority, it goes astray. Where am I to find God's authority? In His word. There, in spirit, not only younger will be subject to elder, but in all grace one to another. Are we not in momentous times? Are we not in times when all is called in question? Does not the Church, and the Christian, need special founding in the truth? Do they not need from the word what is suited to the difficulties of these times, which are not the same as those of the Reformation, nor that of Puritans either. Let us, then, take the word, and inquire by it of the Lord's mind. Our subject is righteousness, and specially the righteousness of God. Now this is used, as the terms imply, in an abstract and in a special sense. The word speaks of righteousness, and there is the special way revealed in which we can have it in a way worthy of, and suited to, God. When I read, “The righteous Lord loveth righteousness,” or, “grace reigns through righteousness,” I have the word used abstractedly: when I read, “the righteousness of God,” or “the righteousness of faith,” I have a special character or way of righteousness. We must keep in mind both. And, first, what is righteousness? It is, I believe, the maintenance in my conduct, in my whole conversation, of what I ought to be, i.e., what I owe, towards others, the consistency of one's ways with the duties founded on relative positions. That is being personally righteous. Judgment maintains the same by the authority of another; but that, too, is righteousness. But God owes nothing to others. It is His consistency with Himself. A man is just when he recognizes the claims of others. Righteous is the same, only habitually the latter word carries more of the internal character of a man. Just refers more exclusively to actual relationship towards others. In Greek, both are δικαιος. Δικαιοσυνη is the habit and character required. But Scripture necessarily introduces from its object a special use of it. Man has to do with God; and, hence, while righteousness in man's dealings with his neighbor is fully treated of, yet the first part of righteousness is what he ought to be for God, what he owes to Him. I do not mean as if Savior: but in the relationship in which he stands, so as to meet the requirements of God as revealed. If man does this, he is righteous with God; but this has, in fact, become impossible. For man is a sinner; which means that he is in a state wholly inconsistent with the relationship in which he stands. Hence, God in judging is righteous in taking vengeance. Holy in repelling evil by His very nature, He is righteous in making good His claims in judgment against those who have not made good what they owed under them.
Adam was not holy or righteous, but innocent. He did not know good and evil, hence could not be either. He was not called on to conform himself to any standard, but to be what he was, not leave his first estate. To this end his obedience was tested by a law. What the law referred to was not good or evil in itself. It was a test of obedience simply. Had the prohibition not been there, there would have been no harm in his eating. It was not life annexed to obedience of the law, as has been said. This is fatal error. It was death, on the contrary, coming in consequence of disobedience. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. He ate, and estrangement from God and exclusion by God was the just and necessary consequence. Man was by nature a child of wrath. Now, how is peace to be restored, and needed righteousness attained? This is the serious question. How is he to be reconciled to God? The way back was barred—a return to innocence impossible. That relationship with God was for us wholly and irrevocably gone. The knowledge of good and evil had taken its place. Then comes a second question. Man is a sinner by nature, a child of wrath. He stands in the condition and relationship of the first and fallen Adam. He is in flesh before God. Is he to be restored in that state and position, made righteous by the completion of what he owes according to the responsibilities under which he has stood as born of Adam, and alive in this world; or is he, as in flesh, born of Adam, and under the responsibilities under which he stands as man alive in this world entirely condemned, and the whole condition to be set aside, death and condemnation being the only result of that responsibility; and an entirely new state introduced as that in which God introduces man into His presence on a wholly new ground, and on a new footing, of which the life, righteousness, responsibilities, and sphere of development are entirely new? And even if man be restored to blessing in this world (as in the millennium I believe he will be), yet even this upon the security of a glory, and a government, and a life which does not belong to it, “The sure mercies of David,” proving a resurrection. This is evidently a deep and serious question. It is really this: what is salvation? Is it making good the old state of man before God, as alive and responsible in this world; or is it transferring him into a new one of which the second Adam is the pattern and perfection as risen from the dead? I affirm that, according to Scripture it is the latter and not the former. I believe man is wholly condemned and set aside on the ground of his old responsibilities. The first Adam has no more place before God. God is not looking for fruit from the old tree. I believe he is accepted in Christ risen and ascended, and there only has his place before God. That salvation is not making good the defect and completing the status of the first Adam, but the total setting aside of this, and an introduction into the last—the second man; and that, in the accepted place, there is no mingling them. Conflict down here there is; but no acceptance of both the first and the last man. What is good and accepted is a new creation. All just exercise of conscience as to the state of the first, God glorified as to it in His own way of righteousness and grace; but if in flesh we cannot please God—and it is not by finding a way to make that up that our condition is met, but by our being taken out of that condition, our not being in flesh at all, but in spirit in Christ; we are dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God. Now, to what does law apply? To whom was it applied It applies to man alive in this world, under the responsibilities of his Adam nature, before God: and it was applied to a peculiar people, brought out apart for the purpose, that man might be fully tested by it. Man ought to love God, he ought to love his neighbor. This was what he owed in these relationships. Had he done so he would have been righteous as such. This was developed negatively, as to the evils he was prone to, in the ten commandments. His avoiding these evils would have been, under the circumstances, really fulfilling practically the positive requirements of the position he was in. Such was law. It addressed itself to man in flesh, and would have been his righteousness had he kept it; that is, he would have been righteous in keeping it. But man was a sinner, and he did not. Is now his old position under flesh made good, and the defects supplied, or he introduced into a wholly new one, by a new life, as a new man, no part of the old being allowed, and finally, none left, while we reckon ourselves to be dead even during our life here below? Is this last or the former Christianity? The system I combat admits a new life, or at least a moralizing action of the Holy Ghost, for some go very low with the idea of being born again, but they pretend that the defects of the old man are to be made good (whatever the means), so that that is to be set up in righteousness before God. The Christian even fails in walking as he ought, according to the measure of the law, the just rule for a child of Adam. And this is made up for him; so that he has the righteousness which he would have had as a child of Adam, had he kept perfect according to that just rule. Now, I say, that is not Christianity. The life which we receive is Christ as our life. And this is not to make good our place in flesh. It makes me own that there is in me, that is, in my flesh, in me as a child of Adam, no good thing. And, hence, knowing that Christ has died to put! away my sin, so that God's glory is maintained and enhanced as to it, I reckon myself dead, and accept my condemnation as such; but find myself, Christ being in me, in Christ. I have put on the new man, and that is all I am before God. I have given up, died to, owned the just condemnation of (only that condemnation borne on the cross) the old man. I am not in the condition, status, responsibilities of a child of Adam at all. As such, I have owned myself wholly lost. I have, through grace, put it off, am dead and risen with Christ. They that are in the flesh cannot please God; but I am not in the flesh, because the Spirit of Christ dwells in me. I do not look for any rehabilitation of the old man by any performance of its duties. I have given it up as wholly bad and condemned, and take my place through grace in Christ. For all that I was in the flesh Christ died. He has put it all away, and I reckon myself dead. I am in Him, with Him as my life, and accepted in Him my righteousness. The law, then, is the just measure of human righteousness. To speak of it as the measure of God's as such, that is, as the expression of perfection in His relationships, if He is pleased to have any, is simply absurd when the law, in its highest expression, is the requirement of loving Him with all our heart, and one's neighbor as one's self. For a human being, that is a perfect rule—for a divine, a contradiction in terms. By nature, man was simply lawless (ανομος), with a conscience, or the sense of good and evil. But he, being lawless in nature, was expressly put under law. If he had fulfilled it, he was righteous; but the flesh is not subject to it, nor can it be. If Christ had fulfilled and made up the deficiencies (a strange kind of righteousness), those for whom he had fulfilled it would have been legally righteous by His vicarious accomplishment. But it would have placed man on the ground of the fulfilled law, and given him a righteousness on the ground of His standing as a living man, a child of Adam in the flesh. That was the position to which the obligation he was under by the law attaches. It applies to a living man, not a dead and risen one. It was in that obligation that man is supposed to have failed in this world; and when we have failed, and are unrighteous, Christ, by keeping the law for us, according to that our obligation, has made the defect good. It is simply setting up the old man according to the divine requirement under the law. That was the debt, this the payment. Whatever our obligations to God for its being done in grace may be, whoever was the author of it, that was the thing done. Man is replaced as righteous on the ground he had lost. He is a child of Adam, righteous according to the law of God. He himself could not do it, because of the flesh, of his sinfulness. Another has done it for him, and he is completely righteous according to law, and is to live in virtue of that. All defects are made good, and perfectly. It is righteousness such as is required from a man, for that is what he failed in, and which is made good. It is that blessedly done, but only that. But that is complete and perfect, and it is complete and perfect righteousness. And now remark: Christ having accomplished this, and set up the living man completely righteous, what place has death? There is no ground. for death at all. I mean morally no place for Christ's dying to atone for sin; for all defects are made good. He is not to die and make atonement for a perfectly righteous person. And we shall see, in examining the article you have sent me, how strikingly the death of Christ is left out. And this is what I think serious in this matter. But I must examine this vicarious legal righteousness a little more. Scripture goes farther than anything I have said. Not only are we under death as a penalty, nor is it alone necessary that the flesh must die, but morally speaking we are dead—dead I mean in trespasses and sins. I admit fully the responsibility of man. Scripture is plain upon it. But when am experimentally exercised under divine teaching, I find there is not a single living movement of the soul towards God. In me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing. By the application of the law known in its spirituality if applied to my conscience, this becomes known to me. My righteousness under the law is absolutely null. The contrary is there—sin.
There can be no making up deficiencies. There is in God's sight evil, and nothing else. The flesh is thus judged. Then Christ dies for me because I am such, and I am born again—receive Him as eternal life. Is Christ now as to righteousness a maker up of defects, or absolutely my righteousness? Defects of what? Is my righteousness—what I am as living after the Spirit—made up as patchwork by Christ's acts, when I have acted after the flesh? Is that the idea of divine righteousness—of Christ being of God righteousness I The new man has in himself no defects—it is Christ as my life; and the old man no good in it.. Scripture says we have put him off—we are not seen in it at all—we are not now in the flesh. If I have the life of Christ in me, I stand before God in Christ's present perfectness. He, in all that He is, is my righteousness; and the workings of the old man, while they have been borne as my sins, and God glorified as to them, do not enter into account at all. I am not seen in flesh, but in Christ, in His absolute perfectness, apart from flesh altogether. I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. If ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why as though living (alive) in the world, are ye subject to ordinances? If I am really alive in Christ, I have not a righteousness to be made up at all, since Christ is in the presence of God for me. I have to overcome. If I fail, Jesus Christ the righteous intercedes; God chastens me if needed; but I am not seen in flesh at all.
On the question of righteousness, and of the accuser, “He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor beheld perverseness in Israel;” there are no defects to be made up, because I am only Christ before Go I, only seen in the new man. The old man is dead and gone for faith, because Christ has died for us as to all it is. God has condemned me in the flesh, is not making up my defects in it, for I am not in it: and in Christ there are surely no defects to be made up. But I am nothing else before God. The making out a particular legal righteousness of Christ for my failures, is keeping me still in the flesh and in my responsibilities as to righteousness as in it (and I should really perish on this ground), and making out the righteousness of a man in flesh; that is, denying that I am dead and risen with Christ; for if He has thus made good my failures as in flesh, I am in flesh subject to have them imputed, and having to make out a righteousness in it. To be corrected and disciplined I am, as a new creature, and a great blessing it is; but we are speaking of righteousness. Supposing I have lived half according to the Spirit, so far I am all right. The other half I have walked in the flesh. It is very sad, no doubt; but how am I now viewed of God as to righteousness Am I still viewed as in flesh before God, and a righteousness to be made good as being so! Why, walking in the Spirit is really being dead as to the flesh! But this other bad half; am I to hold myself half-righteous by my sanctified state in the Spirit, and half-unrighteous because I have suffered the old man to act? And this half to be made good But, then, it is the failure of the new man that is to be made good; or I must be considered as still in the old, a responsible man in flesh. But then there is no good at all. The truth is, this doctrine leads to an absurdity. It is based on not seeing that the flesh is simply bad, and hopelessly bad, and never anything else. It confounds practical sanctification, an immensely important subject in its place; cannot be held too much so, with righteousness before God. I know it will be said that, by holding man righteous in Christ, when we have failed, we are making allowance for sin. Quite the contrary. The truth of Scripture is, we are all utterly dead in sin. No one has a place really in this righteousness in his consciousness, and cannot have it till he is brought experimentally to know it; and then, while conflict will surely remain, he reckons himself dead and alive to God. Then Scripture reasons thus, “How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?” Every saint, even if obscure in doctrine, loves holiness; but, as a doctrine, the notion of this supplementary righteousness of Christ, instead of seeing the Christian wholly dead and only alive and righteous in Him, is to keep him quiet in sin, because death is not then its wages; it is made up for by the living acts of another. Either Christ, in His own present perfectness risen from the dead, is my righteousness, His place my place, and I reckon myself absolutely dead and gone as regards the old man, or I am making Christ a completer of my standing as alive in the old man. For if I hold it to be dead and gone, there is no such living person whose defects are to be made good. I shall be told, You are living as a person, and it is your defects as a man living in the world which are to be made good, and to you, as so alive in the world, law applies. And you fail, and Christ must make it good. My answer is, Scripture teaches me exactly the contrary. It is this denial of the import of death in sin, and I must add in Christ, that is the great evil. I am not alive as a child of Adam in this world. In saying that I am a living person in flesh, you are depriving me exactly of all my privileges in Christ, of all my sense of what the wages of sin is, of all my sense of what a state of sin is, of what it is to be in the flesh before God. For by faith I am not alive in this world. In my conscience I have wholly died before God. Such is Scripture teaching. Why as though alive in the world, says the apostle; if ye be dead with Christ, reckon yourselves also to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God. Why? Because in that Christ died, He died unto sin once; in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. I am crucified with Christ; through law I am dead to law; I am dead to law (looking at man as under it) by the body of Christ; I am delivered from the law, having died in that in which I was held. The whole doctrine of the Apostle Paul is that for faith the Christian is not alive as a child of Adam; that he has been crucified with Christ, and yet lives—not he, but Christ in him. In the Ephesians the teaching goes a step further, and views Christ Himself only as already dead, and us as dead in sin, and the whole thing in us as a new creation, quickened out of that state of death, raised, and sitting in Christ in heavenly places. Only this new creation is recognized; associated with Christ not known till he is already dead. And hence it gives the Church's place.
Scripture then teaches, not a making good any defects of the old man (in the new such a thought has no place before God, it is Christ), but its death; and the Christian holding himself for dead, and not in the flesh at all, consequently knows no making good the responsibilities of the child of Adam by himself or any other, but his death and condemnation. Now Christ, in infinite grace, has taken this on Himself on the cross, so that the guilt under which we were, as so responsible in a nature which in its corruption could do no good, and could never bear fruit, is borne and put away. And now I am in Christ, risen and ascended, and have no righteousness to make out, but to glorify God as His child, being the righteousness of God in Christ already. My defects have nothing to do with my righteousness; they have to my living to God and enjoying communion with Him; they have as to all my actual condition as a child of God. Here, then, is the question Is the old man to have a righteousness made out for it as still alive and responsible under law? Or is the Christian accounted crucified as to that with Christ, alive only in Him, and having no other standing before God than His abiding perfection, and all his conduct here measured by that? If I am to believe Scripture, the answer is plain. “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” “Ye are not in the flesh.” We are created again in Christ, placed on a wholly new footing, have nothing to do with the old man (save as an enemy, which is no longer I), but are alive, and the righteousness of God in Christ. Having laid these general grounds for our inquiry, I turn now more directly to the article you have sent me. First, as to the term “righteousness of God.” I should not call it properly an attribute of God, in the common sense of the word attribute. The word is generally used for what is essential to His being and nature, as power, whereas righteousness is a relative term. But the righteousness of God, like the righteousness of faith, is surely used to characterize the kind of righteousness in contrast with man's toward God, if such were to be had. It must be divine in its character as well as its source. It must not be what man owes to God, that is, man's righteousness. Man's righteousness is man's consistency with the relationship in which he stands, or, internally, the quality which makes him always such. But this cannot be God's righteousness. That, in the Old Testament, the Lord's righteousness means a quality in the character of God, is beyond all question or controversy. It occurs too often to make it necessary to cite proofs. A concordance will suffice. Is it different wholly in the New? I do not believe it. I do not doubt that the righteousness of God is a wider and fuller term. I quite recognize that the application is peculiar in the New, in the full explanation of it, but that is connected with God instead of Lord or Jehovah, and the full revelation of the way He has been glorified in Christ. But as to the use of righteousness; Jerusalem is called “the Lord our righteousness.” Christ is called so, too; exactly the same as the double use which is attempted to be insisted on, as making it impossible to use the righteousness of God as that which belongs to His character and nature. Christ is made to us righteousness, as “the Lord our righteousness” is said of the Jew. We are the righteousness of God in Him, as Jerusalem is called “the Lord our righteousness.” But why? Because Jehovah's consistency with all His glorious character was displayed both in the one and the other. In the latter, in grace and through righteousness, still that consistency was displayed. But that most assuredly in the Old Testament does not destroy the proper sense of the word as that which characterized God Himself. It displayed that character, and is the abiding witness of it. But now I read what to me is the very serious aspect of this paper. “There can in it, indeed, be no allusion to the divine attribute of justice, inasmuch as the act is only of grace. The former acceptation would furnish the idea of an incensed God, which is the essence of the purport of the law of a reconciling or justifying God, which is the gospel.” This is doubly false. First, justice or righteousness does not in itself imply an incensed person. I may be just in blessing, and certainly, if Scripture is to be believed, just in justifying. Note, therefore, how this doctrine of legal righteousness destroys the thought of righteousness in God. God's being just in justifying. This is important, but a small thing compared with the other error. The gospel does present God as reconciling, not the one to be reconciled. But has justice, as wrath against sin, nothing to do with our justification? Was no sacrifice, no sin-offering, no propitiation offered to His justice? Had Christ to drink no cup, to bear no wrath, that we might be justified? I pray you seriously to note this. I see a deadly tendency in the present day to substitute living obedience (carry it, if you please, into death, for that is true, and it was all one obedience, as stated here—I should even urge that); to substitute, I say, a living obedience for the wages of sin—the drinking the cup of wrath. Justice, we are told, cannot, as an attribute of God, be in question in our justifying, because it implies wrath, “an incensed God,” a term used to make it offensive in contrast with grace, but which betrays so much the more the mind of the writer. It has been the fancy latterly to designate the “Brethren” Socinians, as the early Christians were called Atheists. But this article in this respect does tread on the heels of Socinianism. Justice, as an attribute of God, had nothing to do with our justifying, for wrath (an incensed God) could not have to do with it. What becomes of the cross here What of the cup Jesus had to drink? What of the bloody sweat in Gethsemane I It was obedience. To be sure it was. But what gave obedience such a character as this? Was it obedience to say, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That He was perfectly obedient when He said it, I freely admit. But obedient in what? What was the obedience? Was there no bearing of wrath; no drinking of a cup such as none else could ever know the depth and bitterness of? Was He not made sin in that dreadful hour? I say in that dreadful hour. The notion that He was made sin at His birth has no ground in Scripture. He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin. Does the apostle speak of a divine person in heaven simply knowing no sin, or one who in a perfect life had proved his sinlessness on earth? Oh! it is terrible, this blotting out, this merging, the sufferings of Christ, the true character of His death in its fullness, the bearing of wrath, His making His soul an offering for sin: the highest, most wonderful act of love of that blessed One. I avow to you, that I hate with a perfect hatred the doctrine of these men. You will ask, how can good men acquiesce in such doctrine? and I have always heard that the Editor of the Christian Examiner is an excellent person; my answer is, good men often carry with them certain truths and are unsuspicious; they assume them to be held, and suppose they are only getting some clearer view in which this truth is tacitly contained, and then it is undermined. This is going on everywhere in the propagation of rationalist views.
Now, in this article, the blood of Christ, save in a casual sentence, which has no force at all, unless to turn aside all thought of Christ's laying down His life atoningly for sin, is never mentioned, but justification, and redemption, and forgiveness, are attributed to something else. You will say, Is not Rom. 3:18-2618There is no fear of God before their eyes. 19Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. 21But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Romans 3:18‑26) alluded to? Frequently, but to the exclusion of the blood. “The one” (the righteousness as a substantive reality) is a completed fact, as well as “the other” (the world's ruin by sin). Man came short of that revenue of glory which would have resulted from a sinless obedience. In the righteousness of God, that revenue or tribute is restored or paid.
Now, I am satisfied that almost all the exegeses of this paper is completely false; as to the γαρ-δικαιοσυνη, and all the rest utterly false. But I shall not dwell on it, the main point is too serious. Sin is the nonpayment of the just revenue or tribute to God. In God's righteousness that is restored (i.e. without propitiation or blood-shedding; and note the use of once for all, and how Scripture uses it, Heb. 9; 10) and paid. Christ's life, even His death, is simply a restoring or paying to God a sinless obedience in which Adam had failed.
Now, read the passage on which this comment is made. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.” This is the revenue or tribute restored and paid to God of a pure nature and sinless obedience.
Surely there was that in Christ. But what is left out in commenting on this passage, yea, really denied in the offensive term of an “incensed God?” PROPITIATION. The whole true groundwork of peace and salvation is left out. The value of Christ's blood—the only thing spoken of as that in which the righteousness of God was shown in forgiving past sins is left out. It is the “historical manifestation of righteousness,” and so there can be retributive justice. And this is fully brought out, and redemption grounded on the same obedience, without an allusion to blood-shedding or propitiation. The manifestation of this righteousness as an historical fact is noticed by the apostle when he says, Now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested. (Rom. 3:2121But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; (Romans 3:21).) In that phrase he refers to its coming into existence, or to its manifestation as an historic fact, in the incarnation of Christ. The allusion is not to the preaching of it, or to what he calls the revelation of it in the gospel (Rom. 1:1717For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. (Romans 1:17)); but to the bringing in of this righteousness once for all, when Christ was manifest in the flesh. (1 Tim. 3:1616And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. (1 Timothy 3:16).)
“And the language used by the apostle shows that it is coincident with the person of Christ and found in Him. This is evident from the way in which he speaks of one of those terms which describe the one obedience of Christ in the manifoldness of its effects and benefits. When he says that the redemption is 'in Christ Jesus,' the meaning is, that it is found in His person; that He is personally the redemption, just as He is called our peace. (Eph. 2:1414For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; (Ephesians 2:14).) (There, too, note the reconciliation is made (16) solely by the cross having slain the enmity thereby, which is wholly dropped here), and is furthermore described as made of God unto us righteousness. (1 Cor. 1:3030But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: (1 Corinthians 1:30)). It does not denote that we have it in a state of union to His person, however true that is in itself, but that is actually IN Him, that He is Himself that manifested righteousness, and will continue to be so while His living person endures. The judge then sees our righteousness and our eternal redemption whenever He looks upon the person of Christ. The living Redeemer, in His crucified and risen humanity, is Himself the manifestation of the righteousness of God; and it must not be lost sight of that He is living through death according to the power of an endless life (Heb. 7:1616Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life. (Hebrews 7:16)), and the restoration of life to appear in the presence of God was essentially necessary to the existence, validity, and perpetuity of this righteousness of God (not, it seems, his laying it down or being a sacrifice for sin). It is, therefore, no putative, past, or transitory righteousness that has been manifested; one actually in the world, and the only great reality in it. Thus, when the righteous judge beholds His Son, He sees in Him the righteousness of God, the grand re-adjustment of man's relation to his Maker, the reunion of God and man.”
Now I could hardly conceive anything which could show more distinctly the true character of this interpretation of the righteousness of God than the passage I have quoted. Justification without blood-shedding, no wrath—such a sense of justice would imply an incensed God. Redemption by incarnation, in the person of Christ, without blood-shedding, righteousness manifested, brought in once for all as an historic fact in the incarnation, only in the accomplishment of law, as we read (p. 39), Peace found in His person, not through His blood; Christ as righteousness, the readjustment of man's relationship to his Maker, the re-union of God and man.
In Scripture we are, in the passage referred to, justified by His blood for the manifestation of righteousness. In Eph. 1, “we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins;” in Eph. 3, peace is made by the cross; in Colossians “He has made peace by the blood of his cross.” Without it is no remission; though for our author, redemption, of which the apostle says, “even the forgiveness of sins,” is “in him.” He is, personally, the redemption. Scripture says he “entered in by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for us:” that it is “by means of death for the redemption of the transgressions which were under the first testament.” Our author declares it was His righteousness in life.
And all this (and it might be greatly enlarged upon) is not because he is not speaking of the death of Christ; for he takes care to say it must not be lost sight of, because this righteousness of God was to be manifested in His crucified and risen humanity. His account of this is, “His living through death, according to the power of an endless life.” (Heb. 7:1616Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life. (Hebrews 7:16)). And “the restoration of life to appear in the presence of God for us was essentially necessary to the existence, validity, and perpetuity of this righteousness of God.” My soul, come not thou into their assembly. I cannot conceive a more complete, deliberate, careful setting aside of the necessity, value, and true sufferings of Christ's death, viewed as atonement, as a victim, a propitiation for sins, as bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, as one who drank that dreadful cup of wrath. Death, as death for sin, is wholly gone; not lost sight of, but set aside by language which slights the agonies of the Son of God.
And see how distinctly it is as I said, the setting up of the old standing of the creature with God, the old creation, the first Adam. It is “the grand re-adjustment of man's relationship to his Maker.” No thought of a new creation: but an idea fit for a Rationalist, and never found in Scripture at all— “a reunion of God and man.” God's justice demanding satisfaction is referred to. “Righteousness is measured by the standard of justice.” (There is no difference in Greek, but let that pass.) There is first a manifestation of justice in demanding the satisfaction, and then a display of it in connection with the preparation of this righteousness of God, when it is added, “that he might be just and the justifier.” This righteousness came “into existence as an historic fact” “in the incarnation of Christ.” “He who has the righteousness of God with this rectified relation which it brings” is not condemned, not under the curse.
( To be continued)