There is in John 3 a twofold aspect of Christ presented to us, as the object of faith, through which we do not perish but have everlasting life. As Son of man, He must be lifted up; as only begotten Son of God, He is given by the infinite love of God.
Many souls stop at the first, the Son of man's meeting the necessity in which men stood as sinners before God, and do not look on to that infinite love of God which gave His only begotten Son—the love which provided the needed Lamb, the true source of all this work of grace, which stamps on it its true character and effect, and without which it could not be.
Hence such souls have not true peace and liberty with God. Practically for them the love is only in Christ, and God remains a just and unbending Judge. They do not really know Him, the God of love, our Savior. Others alas! with more fatal error, false as to their own state and God's holiness, with no true or adequate sense of sin, reject all true propitiation. The “must be lifted up” has no moral force for them, nothing that the conscience with a. true sense of sin needs.
The former was one great defect of the Reformation, the other comes of modern infidelity, for such it really is. Alas! that defect of the Reformation, as a system of doctrine, is the habitual state of many sincere souls now. But it is sad. Righteousness may reign for them with hope; but it is not grace reigning through righteousness. I repeat, God is not known in His nature of love, nor indeed the present completeness of redemption.
The statement of John 3 begins with the need of man in view of what God is, as indeed it must. But it gives, as the source and result of it for the soul, its measure too in grace, that which was in the heart of God towards a ruined world. As in Heb. 10, to give us boldness to enter into the holiest, the origin is, “Lo! I come to do thy will ... by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all.” The offering was the means, but He was accomplishing the will of God in grace, and by the exercise of the same grace in which He came to do it; for “hereby know we love, that he laid down his life for us.” So in Rom. 5 God commends his love to us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. It is summed up in the full saying, Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This point being premised, and it is an important one, I add that we cannot present too simply the value of Christ's blood, and redemption, and forgiveness through it, to the awakened sinner whom that love may have drawn to feel his need; for by need, and because of need, the sinner must come—it is his only just place before God. The love of God, and even His love announced in forgiveness through the work of Christ, may, through the power of the Holy Ghost, awaken the sense of need; still, having the forgiveness is another thing. That love, brought home to the soul through grace, produces confidence, not peace; but it does produce confidence. Hence we come into the light. God is light and God is love. Christ in the world was the light of the world, and He Was there in divine love. Grace and truth came (ἐγένετο) by Jesus Christ. When God reveals Himself, He must be both—light and love. The love draws and produces confidence; as with the woman in the city who was a sinner, the prodigal, Peter in the boat. The light shows us our sinfulness. We are before God according to the truth of what He is, and the truth of what we are. But the atonement does more than show this; it meets, and is the answer to, our case when known. It is the ground, through faith, of forgiveness and peace. (See Luke 7:47-50). Christ could anticipate His work, and the child of wisdom go in peace. The law may by grace reach the conscience and make us feel our guilt, but it does not reveal God in love. But that love has done what was needed for our sinful state. Hereby know we love, that He laid down His life for us. He was delivered for our offenses, died for our sins according to the scriptures, is the propitiation for our sins, set forth as a mercy-seat through faith in His blood which cleanses from all sin. With His stripes we are healed. I might multiply passages. I only now cite these, that the simple basis of the gospel on the one side, and on the other, the work that love has wrought to purge our sins and withal our consciences, so that we may be in peace before a holy God, who is of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity, may be simply and fully before us.
We must come as sinners to God, because we are sinners; and we can only come in virtue of that which, while it is the fruit of God's love, meets according to His holy nature the sins we are guilty of. But then, while it is true that our sins are removed far from us who believe through grace, as they were carried into a land not inhabited, by the scapegoat in Israel, yet we have only an imperfect view of the matter in seeing our sins put away. In that great day of atonement the blood was sprinkled on the mercy-seat and before it; just as it was sprinkled on the lintel and two door-posts to meet God's eye. “When I see the blood,” He says, “I will pass over.” It was in view of the sin of Israel, but presented to God. The goat whose blood was shed was called, on the great day of atonement, “Jehovah's lot.” The blood was carried within; so it was with the bullock, and with the bullock it was exclusively this. The testimony was there, blessed be God, that as dwellers on the earth our sins have been carried off where none shall find them; but what characterized the day was putting the blood on the mercy-seat—presenting it to God. On this day only, too, it was done. In the case of the sin of the congregation, or of the high priest, it was sprinkled on the altar outside the veil; but on the great day of atonement alone on the mercy-seat within.
Now, though the sinner must come as guilty and because of his need, and can come rightly in no other way, as the poor prodigal, and so many other actual cases, yet this does not reach to the full character of propitiation or atonement, though in fact involving it. The divine glory and nature are in question. In coming we come by our need and wants; but if we have passed in through the veil, we can contemplate the work of Christ in peace, as viewed in connection with God's nature, though on our part referring to sin. The sins, then, were carried away on the scapegoat, but what God is was specially in view in the blood carried within the veil. The sins were totally and forever taken off the believers, and never found; but there was much more in that which did it, and much more even for us. God's character and nature were met in the atonement, and through this we have boldness to enter into the holiest. This distinction appears in the ordinary sacrifices. They were offered on the brazen altar, and the blood sprinkled there. Man's responsibility was the measure of what was required. His case was met as to guilt; but if he was to come to God, into His presence, he must be fit for the holiness of that presence.
Not only Christ has borne our sins, but He has perfectly glorified God on the cross, and the veil is rent, and we have boldness to enter into the holiest. The blood, therefore, of the bullock and of the goat which was Jehovah's lot, was brought into the holiest. The other goat was the people's lot; this Jehovah's. He was dishonored by sin; and Christ the holy One was made sin for us, was before God according to what God was in His holy and righteous nature.
“Now,” says the Lord, “is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him;” and man entered. into the holiest, into heaven itself. Having glorified God in the very place of sin as made it before God, He enters into that glory on high. Love to God His Father, and absolute obedience at all costs, was perfected where He stood as sin before God. All that God is was glorified here, and here only: His majesty—it became Him to maintain His glory in the moral universe, and thus in bringing many sons to glory, that He should make the Captain of our salvation perfect through suffering; His truth was made good; perfect, righteous judgment against sin, yet perfect love to the sinner. Had God cut off man for sin, there was no love; had He simply forgiven and passed over all sins, there would have been no righteousness. People might have sinned on without its being any matter. There would have been no moral government. Man must have stayed away from God, and misery and allowed sin have had their fling; or he must have been admitted into God's presence in sin, and sin been allowed there; man incapable withal of enjoying God, and, as sensible of good and evil, more miserable than ever.
But in the cross perfect righteousness against sin is displayed and exercised, and infinite love to the sinner. God is glorified in His nature: and salvation to the vilest, and access to God, according to the holiness of that nature, provided for and made good, and this in the knowledge, in the conscious object of it, of the love that had brought it there; a perfect and cleansing work in which that love was known. This, while the sins were put away, could only be by the cross: God revealed in love, God holy and righteous against sin, while the sins of the sinner were put away, his conscience purged, and, by grace, his heart renewed, in the knowledge of a love beyond all his thoughts; himself reconciled to God, and God glorified in all that He is, as He could not else be: perfect access to God in the holiest, where that blood, the testimony to all this, has been presented to God, and the sins gone forever, according to God's righteousness, while the sinner has the consciousness of being accepted according to the value of that sacrifice in which God has been perfectly glorified, so that the glory of God and the sinner's presence there were identified. Angels would learn, and principalities and powers, what they could learn nowhere else.
And this marks the two parts of propitiation—man's responsibility, and access to God given according to His glory and nature: in the sins borne and put away, the scape-goat, God judging evil according to what man ought to be; and access to God according to what He is. The last specifically characterizes the Christian; but the former was necessary, and accomplished for every one that believes: both by the same work of the cross, but each distinct—judicial dealing according to man's responsibility, access to God according to His nature and holiness. The law in itself was the measure of the former, the duty of a child of Adam; the nature of God, of the latter, so that we have the infinite blessedness of being with God according to His nature and perfection, partaking of the divine nature, so as to be able to enjoy it, holy and without blame before Him in love. Of this Christ as man, and we must add as Son withal, is the measure and perfection; and let it not be said that, if we partake of this nature, we need not this propitiation and substitution. This can only be said or supposed by those who have not got it; because, if we partake of the divine nature, we judge of sin in principle as God does, we have His mind as to it, and as upright of ourselves as in it, and so come, as I have said, first in lowliness in our need to the cross, and, then purged in conscience, comprehend the glory of God in it.
These two points, in their general aspect, are clearly presented in Heb. 9:26-28: “Christ appeared once in the end of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself; and as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after that the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.” It is carried out in application in chapter 10, where we have no more conscience of sins, and boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus.
(To be continued)