I do not like the pages you sent me, because they perplex the mind as to what it needs as fundamental truth. The first passage might pass, because the last words save it. But the first two lines state boldly that God does not need to be propitiated, and the second line of page 246 throws all into confusion. 'To be propitiated on their behalf He never needed,' yet propitiation was requisite. Now this confounds two senses of 'propitiate': the disposing to kindness, and meeting justice about sins. Yet it was 'an act Godward,' and propitiation was needed; yet 'God needed not to be propitiated.' This confuses and mixes up the two senses of the word, and indeed the characters of God, as judge and as love. Now as regards reconciliation, I recognize fully God did not need to be influenced to be gracious towards us. In John 3 His love is stated as the ground on which the gift came, by which propitiation could be made. The outgoing of the love of God was the free spontaneous actings of His own grace and nature. This was wanting in the theology of the Reformation and their creeds. They had, "the Son of man must be lifted up," and believed in its efficacy; but they had not, "for God so loved" etc. Christ on the cross had satisfied for believers the justice of God, but God still retained the character of a judge.
The mistake is, confounding the character of judge and sovereign love, which is above all causes and relations. God is a righteous judge; righteousness is a real thing, and God is righteous, a righteous Lord, and requires righteousness. He is not said to be righteousness, but righteous, because it is a relative term; no more than we are called to be love, because it is free and supreme. Now love brought down God to deliver Israel. But the God who delivered them was a righteous God, "of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity." He passed through Egypt to smite; and blood, the blood of the lamb, had to be presented to His eye, or He must have smitten Israel. He judged being what He was, according to that which met Him, righteous judgment, and passed over because the blood was there. It was a righteous estimate of the value of what God saw. "The Son of man must be lifted up"; and this should have all its value: to reveal God's love and all its manifold consequences, according to the counsels of God, it needed to be the Son of His love.
I read, `It is not the meeting of the sinner's need, though that results from it, but the providing that God should be able to act in grace.' This supposes that God's activity is only in grace, and that judgment is only a casualty. But this, save as to activity, is false. There exist relationships to which responsibility is attached, and these must be met. There is right and wrong, which bring in judgment, besides grace. Of these the express measure, as to man, is law; nor would grace exist but for this, though love would. When men have failed, righteous judgment ensues, the receiving of the things done in the body. And in bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, Christ directly and intentionally met our need—this as regards us; but as a general principle, He gave Himself a ransom for all, gave Himself to meet the need as an avriktrrpor. This giving Himself was pure, unbounded love, but it was to meet a need. The blood on the lintel and doorposts was the effect of divine love, but it was to meet a need. Responsibility and its consequences are forgotten in the statements; and the requirements of God's nature founded on it lost, as if there was nothing but the activity of love which had to be kept pure in God, according to some unknown standard and exigency. The love is free and sovereign, but the righteousness and righteous requirement is true and unchangeable: "The Son of man must be lifted up." The existence of conscience is the now innate sense of this. And obligation to God is in these pages set aside or forgotten, in insisting on the love of God. There is a vast deal more: the doctrine of God's righteousness for man when man had none, and the wonderful counsels of God in which grace reigns through righteousness, so that righteousness is itself the fruit of love, and a far, far wider range of thought behind, on which I do not touch, confining myself to the questions you have sent me.
Reconciling God is not scriptural, and it seems to me unworthy of God—[supposing] some being, superior Being in love, who is so to dispose Him. I add, the words are confounded in A.V., Rom. 5:11: "atonement" should be "reconciliation": and Heb. 2:17,17Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:17) "to make reconciliation" should be " propitiation," where the need is clearly expressed: compare chapter 1:3.
February 18th, 1881.