But this leads us to a still wider bearing of the work of the cross. The whole question of good and evil was brought to an issue there: man in absolute wickedness and hatred, against God manifested in goodness and love; Satan's whole power as prince of this world, and having the power of death; man in perfect goodness in Christ, obedience and love to His Father, and this in the place of sin, as made it, for it was there the need was for God's glory and eternal redemption; God in perfect righteousness and majesty, and in perfect love. So that all was perfectly settled morally forever. The fruits will be only complete in the new heavens and new earth, though the value of that work be now known to faith; but what is eternal is settled forever by it, for its value is such and cannot change.
Propitiation, then, meets our sins through grace, according to God's holy nature, to which it is presented and which has been fully glorified in it. It meets the requirements of that nature. Yet is it perfect love to us; love, indeed, only thus known as wrought between Christ and God alone, the only part we had in it being our sins, and the hatred to God which killed Christ.
But it does more, being according to God's nature, and all that this nature is in every respect. It not only judicially meets what is required by reason of our sins, man's failure in duty, and his guilt, but it opens access into the presence of God Himself known in that nature which has been glorified in it. Love, God in love working unsought, has through grace made us love, and we are reconciled to God Himself according to all that He is, our conscience having been purged according to His glory, so that love may be in unhindered confidence. Man sits at the right hand of God in virtue of it, and our souls can delight in all that God is, our conscience being made perfect by that which has been wrought. No enfeebling or lowering the holiness of God in His judicial estimate of, and dealing with, sin; on the contrary, all that He is thus glorified, no pleading goodness to make sin light; but God in the will and love of salvation met in that judgment and holiness, and the soul brought to walk in the light, as He is in the light, and in the love which is His being and nature, without blame before Him, a perfect conscience so as to be free before Him, but a purged one which has judged of sin as He does, but learned what sin is in the putting of it away. Without the atonement or propitiation of Christ this is impossible. God is not brought in: it is but human goodness which drops holiness and overlooks sin or estimates it according to mere natural conscience. Christ has died, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.
It is not innocence, for the knowledge of good and evil is there, nor the slighting of God and an unpurged conscience, nor even the return to the former state of Adam (not knowing good and evil, innocent), but God fully revealed and known in majesty and light and love, and we brought to Him according to that revelation in perfect peace and joy by a work done for us, which has met and glorified His majesty and light and love in the place of sin, as made it, by Him who knew no sin.
The full result will only be in the new heavens and new earth, the eternal state of blessedness, a condition of happiness not dependent on fulfilling the responsibility in which he who enjoyed it was placed and in which he failed, but based on a finished work accomplished to the glory of God in the very place of ruin, the value of which can never, in the nature of things, change; it is according to the nature and character of God, it is done and is always what it is, and all is eternally stable. Righteousness, not innocence, dwells in the new heavens and the new earth, not feeble man responsible, but God glorified for evermore. The result is not all there yet; but we know that the work is done through the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, and we wait as believers for our portion in the rest when all shall be accomplished, accepted in the Beloved.
Judgment is according to man's responsibility, shut out then judicially into that exclusion from God into which man has cast himself: blessing is according to the thoughts and purpose and nature of God in the exceeding riches of His grace displayed in our salvation through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ come to bring us into His presence as sons.
Sin and sins are before God in the cross, and propitiation wrought. There sin and sins met God, but in the work of love according to holiness and righteousness, which brings to God, according to His nature, those who come to Him by it, cleared from them all forever.
In commenting on Dr. W.'s statements as to the atonement, I would begin by saying that I entirely agree with him (and indeed I have long insisted on this in contrast with the church confessions of the Reformation), that it is man who is reconciled to God, and that scripture never speaks of God's being reconciled to man. The statement and the thought are wholly unscriptural, and shock rather the scripturally-taught mind. And it alters the whole tone of the gospel and the state of soul as to God, both as to peace, and the sanctifying power of the truth, for it is the truth which sanctifies. That God is always the same and immutable is assuredly true. Thank God, it is so. There is one thing stable; or what would be?
But while fully acknowledging this, it seems to me that some of Dr. W.'s thoughts come from tradition, or from his own mind, not from the word of God; and these I will briefly notice, while my heart would encourage him in his conflict in maintaining the truth of which I have just spoken. And here I would add that I look to the scriptures alone as the foundation and source of truth; on them alone I shall base any doctrine; and if I call in question any statement of Dr. W.'s, it will be because it is not in the word; and I present to him these remarks, first of all, that he may weigh there before the Lord, remembering how important the truth is, and how all blessing and sanctification flow to our souls by it through grace. It is to the scriptures that the apostle refers us in 2 Tim. 3 when the perilous times should be come. And are they not here?
Dr. W.'s first proposition is, “that no change has been effected in the heart of God by the fall.” Now as to God's nature, this is surely true. If He is love, He is always love, if righteous, always righteous; if holy, always holy. But because He changes not, His relationship towards others changes, and His conduct and dealings, because they are changed.
God would not, could not, because He did not change, drive man out of paradise when he was innocent. This would have been a change in God if there was none in man. But He did drive him out when he had sinned, because the righteousness (which would have left him to enjoy in innocence the blessings in the midst of which He had placed him while unchanged, and because He Himself did not change) now had to deal with one that was changed, and therefore dealt differently, dealt judicially, with the guilty and alienated, which He had not to do before. Leaving him to enjoy the tree of life, and turning him out and barring the way to it was an immense difference, an immense change, not in God, but in God's ways and dealings with man because He did not change. And to say that God does not change in Himself does not meet the question. Even the love was quite different in its ways and character. The love of complacency in what He had made good is very different from the sovereign love of mercy which works to redeem a fallen, defiled, and guilty creature. God rested when all was created, and all was good; but, when Jesus was maliciously accused of violating the Sabbath, His sovereignly beautiful answer was, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” How, could the love of God, a holy God rest in sin and misery? It could work in grace, but it could not rest. And there is a revelation of that in God in redemption which had no place in innocence. “God commendeth his love to us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Love takes the character of grace to what is in enmity, not of complacency in what was His own work.
Here let me remark that, if I do not mistake him, Dr. W., with all who rest in theological traditions, reckons Adam to be, righteous and holy. He was neither, but innocent. To be righteous or holy requires the knowledge of good and evil, and this Adam had not till he fell; and the difference is immense. We have only to speak of God as innocent, and the believer's heart at once revolts from it—is offended by it. Righteous and holy He surely is.
This difference in Adam is clearly and formally stated in scripture. It was the promise of Satan (Gen. 3:5), and Jehovah Elohim declares it to be so (ver. 22). Tradition has falsified all this, but the word is clear and certain. It does not mean, “You shall know evil who before knew only good.” Would Satan have proposed such a thing as this to him, or, still more, could it have this sense in God's mouth? “The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil.” No, he was before innocent, and now marks inwardly the difference between right and wrong, not merely by an imposed law as tradition teaches, but inwardly as God does, though he may be hardened or misled as God cannot be. We must not confound the rule for conscience with conscience. The law is the perfect rule for the conscience of Adam's fallen children, Christ's walk for the Christian; and this the soul taught of God accepts, and with delight. The conscience takes knowledge of the difference of what is right and what is wrong.
Further, the question is not, as Dr. W. states it, “If the fall was an obstacle in the way of man's salvation.” It was no obstacle to his salvation. Salvation was not needed without the fall; but it was an obstacle, and in itself an absolute one, to man's acceptance as he was. Christ came to save what was lost, and that, because God was not changed but remained holy and righteous —is “of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on iniquity.” I do not speak of God's wrath against the world being the obstacle; but the unconverted man is under wrath, a child of wrath. I do not say this was an obstacle to salvation; it was not, because God was sovereign in goodness.
But scripture does not speak of the matter as Dr. W. does. He asks, “How could he be propitiated that loved?” A person who loves deeply and truly may require something in order that he may show favor. The eternal maintenance of the unchangeableness of God's character, of the nature of good and evil as He sees it, may require it. Not merely man's being saved is in question, for that is not the result of Christ's death as to all men, if He did die for all, but the public testimony to the immutability of God's nature, and to maintain it in the sight of the universe; yea, to lay the foundation of the immutable blessing of the new heavens and the new earth according to what God is, supreme as righteous, holy, and love. A father with the most perfect love to his child may require, for the order of his family, that satisfaction to his authority, what maintains it before all, and the rules of his house, be done. “It became him [God] for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (Heb. 2:10). It became Him. Did He not love that blessed One? Yet it became Him to do this. So that this statement of Dr. W.'s in alike inadequate and incorrect. There is that which becomes God because of what He is, which is not love, though love be His unchangeable nature.
And now see how scripture actually speaks of the very point. It does not simply say that, where sin abounded, love did much more abound, but grace did much more abound. But more. We were by nature the children of wrath: it was our natural inheritance from God; for whose wrath is spoken of? What belonged to us? “But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us.” So that wrath against us, as our natural portion from God, is not inconsistent with infinite and sovereign love. Thus Christ in the synagogue looked upon them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts. The grief was love, the anger His righteous estimate of their sin.
Grace reigns, blessed be God, but it is through righteousness (Rom. 5). Dr. W. seems to say it is in making us practically righteous by removing our sins. But it is “God's righteousness.” Does he question it is God's wrath? I quote Rom. 1:17, 18 for both, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed.” Why? “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven.” And then Paul proceeds to prove all the world guilty before God as the reason of this. It is not true therefore, that wrath cannot be where there is love. A father full of love may be rightly angry with his child, and when Dr. W. says “wrath in the heart,” he is misled altogether, and confounds hatred with judicial anger. There is no hatred in God to man assuredly. Yet God is a righteous judge, and God is angry every day and ought to be so.
Farther on, Dr. W. admits that there is wrath against sin in God's mind, and therefore against the sinner while he abides in the sin; but what God does is to take away the criminality by Christ, and so He can love the sinner, and His wrath has no ground as the sin is gone. Now, as thus put, it is merely the personal state of the sinner which removes the wrath in removing the occasion of it. And this is doubly, and in every way, false. First, it mars the perfectness of God's sovereign love. God loved us while we were sinners, and this is characteristic of His love, His saving love; and, secondly, it ignores the righteousness of God, and the work by which judicially the sins were put away. I do not mean that he denies that Christ died for our sins as a fact; but it is merely the effect in us which removes the wrath, the state we are in which leaves God free to love us; our criminality is gone, we are cleansed, so there is no object of wrath left because we are clean. He speaks indeed of God's wrath being His justice, but all his reasoning is that there is no “change in the disposition from anger to kindness.”
But peace had to be made when there was wrath, and the sovereign love that saves is not the favor which rests on those reconciled (Rom. 5:1). God loved us when we were sinners; He loves us without any change when we are cleansed. But we are cleansed, reconciled, we are told. Now I fully recognize, and insist on it, that God loved us when we were sinners, and that we are reconciled. But then, according to Dr. W., the only change is in our state which leaves God free to love us; whereas He loved us when we were in our sins. The change spoken of is by the operation and work of grace in us. The work of Christ we needed is wholly left out. I do not mean that Dr. W. in terms denies there was an atonement; he says, scripture teaches the necessity of an atonement. But what is this? Is it anything towards God? “The reconciliation must be effected by our recovering the righteousness in which God through His righteousness could again become our eternal life.” There are as many errors as thoughts here: but I only notice now that the mediatorial work of atonement is simply a change in our actual state, otherwise “the righteous One is a consuming fire for the unrighteous,” and so over and over again. I quote one passage more— “No: where there is sin, there is wrath; God's wrath is unchangeably manifest, as sure as God is God.” I ask in passing, Is there no sin in us? “His justice can take no other form against sin but that of wrath, and it is impossible that there should be sin without the wrath of God.” “But where there is righteousness, there is no wrath to be quenched, for there can be none.” “But an individual who is blameless respecting the law is outside its wrath, and instead thereof enjoys its blessings.” Did God then not love us when we were sinners? If He did, and it is impossible there should be sin without the wrath of God, wrath and love go together. All Dr. W.'s system is false.
The truth is, all this confounds divine favor resting on us in Christ, and sovereign love to the sinner. The first part of what the Lord says in John 3 is thus left out: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man he lifted up.” The Son of man, He who represented man, must be lifted up—die on the cross, and where was such a lamb to be found? “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son.” The “Son of man” must be lifted up, the “Son of God” was given, the same blessed person: but “Son of man,” to die for man's need, standing for man before God; “Son of God,” vessel and proof of God's sovereign love. He is therefore spoken of as representing man (which Dr. W. denies), and not merely God. Nor did He, properly speaking, represent God in dying, nor in being made sin. His doing so was the effect of God's infinite love to man, which was His own withal; but in the work thus wrought He suffered as Son of man made sin. This could not represent God. If the world be reconciled, the relationship is changed, though God be not. But this scripture never says. Christ, Dr. W. tells us, “was struck by the curse of God's wrath against sin.” “He descended,” he says, “into our sin,” and so was “struck by the curse of God's wrath. Whom did He represent then? Was Christ, as man made sin for us and struck by the curse, representing God in this place? That His doing so was the effect of infinite divine love is true; but did sin, and wrath, and the curse, represent in the infliction of it God's love or God's righteous wrath against sin? By the grace of God He tasted death, being made a little lower than the angels to that end; but was His tasting death, and drinking that dreadful cup, and sweating as it were great drops of blood at only thinking of it, God's love to Him or apprehended by Him? Did He pray, that if it were possible, the cup might pass, meaning the cup of God's love?
(Continued from. p. 230)
(To be continued).