In his remarks on Hebrews, Dr. W. omits to notice the real point of the case: the “perfecting” is “as pertaining to the conscience,” and by the blood carried in. Through Christ presenting Himself, and then entering in “not without blood,” the conscience was purged. And this alone is the purging spoken of, so that we have “no more conscience of sins”; not consciousness of sin, but conscience of sins, sins on the conscience, because Christ has borne them and gone within, “not without blood.” It is not our state, but the state of our conscience before God; we as to this are “perfected forever” (εἰς τὸ διηνεκές), always and perpetually, because Christ is always now (ἐις τὸ διηνεκές) sitting at the right hand of God; not like the Jewish priests standing, renewing a work which was never done. No cleansing of our state is spoken of, but of our conscience by Christ's offering, which is gone in not without blood. Dr. W. does not state what scripture states here. It is false that no other import of Christ's sacrifice for God is spoken of than that it was a consequence of God's unchanging love. It hides Christ's forsaking of God and drinking the dreadful cup, and His standing as Son of man who must be lifted up.
Dr. W. says “God so loved the fallen world that He gave it the offering to restore it. And as there is nothing else said about it in scripture,” &c. There is something else said about it in scripture. Christ “offered himself without spot to God through the eternal Spirit,” and “the Son of man must be lifted up.” Dr. W. will say, “that whosoever believeth might not perish.” No doubt; but why must He be “lifted up” on the cross as “Son of man” that they might not? And this is said, as well as that “God so loved”; but Dr. W. always passes it over.
It is not true that scripture says that God never had any anger against him (the sinner). It is expressly said, “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish,” will be rendered “to every soul of man that doeth evil,” and “wrath from heaven is now revealed.” “Now is the accepted time, the day of salvation”; but those who despise the grace of it are “treasuring up for themselves wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” Wrath from God, therefore, rests on and is executed against men; yet God does not change. Vengeance belongs to Him. “Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance?”
But Dr. W. is all out of the way as to reconciling. I do not return to what I have already insisted on, that scripture never says the world is reconciled any more than God. Christians are, and Christians only; but there is no foundation for what he says as to the force of the word. כּפד is a difficult word, at least with על (see Lev. 16); but Num. 25:1313And he shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of Israel. (Numbers 25:13) shows Dr. W. cannot make good his statements. But into this I will enter no farther, because it is perfectly plain that in the New Testament reconciling does mean reconciling the people, changing their disposition; and we have no need of turning to nice discussions on words, and their use in the LXX. It is somewhat more than changing the disposition, because it includes a relative object as to which that change takes place—one is reconciled to some person or thing. This being by an offering or the like, the meaning of the word is extended; but it is not merely cleansing, or anything of the kind. In Rom. 5 we have, “If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more,” &c. Now this is changing the disposition when one was an enemy, and thus bringing back the mind to God. So Col. 1:2121And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled (Colossians 1:21), “And you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled.” That it is by an offering which cleanses and purges the conscience, is true, and what I should insist on. The heart could not return really, if the conscience were not purged, nor this unless the sins were purged; but this was by Christ's suffering the agony of the cross, forsaken of God, God's infinite love to us bringing back the renewed heart to Him thereby. The end of 2 Cor. 5 fully confirms this. Reconciling is bringing into happy relationship with another when we have been out of it, as Matt. 5:2424Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. (Matthew 5:24); and to speak of καταλλαγή, διαλλάγηθι as equivalent to ἱλασμόν and ἱλάσκεσθαι, is unfounded; as making such words as דעה, or נחד or חטּא, or היחחטא, or נצתד and כפד the same, is falsifying the sense of words; so יוס כפדים; so in Num. 16:4646And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar, and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the Lord; the plague is begun. (Numbers 16:46) (Heb. 15:11), wrath, pap was gone out from the presence of Jehovah, and Aaron was לכפּד; nor was it to reconcile the people, but to stay the plague, to stop the wrath that was gone out.
And it is an unhappy thing, because the effect of atonement (when wrath would justly come out against us) is to cleanse and reconcile us, to weaken the truth of that righteous wrath, and its being righteously arrested by the precious blood presented to God, and that bearing of sins, which makes it righteous in God to justify the ungodly and forgive their sins. Appeasing God, ἱλάσκομαι, let the word be what it may, is not changing God, but glorifying and satisfying God's righteous judgment; so that He may say, when “I see the blood, I will pass over.”
Scripture does know the expression of the anger or “wrath of God.” What Dr. W. says of it is not true. “God's wrath is revealed from heaven,” and, if we do not believe, abides upon us (John 3:3131He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all. (John 3:31)). And it is written, “Thou wast angry, but thine anger is turned away” (Isa. 12:11And in that day thou shalt say, O Lord, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me. (Isaiah 12:1)). And the passages are very numerous too which speak of it. I do not know Swedish; but Dr. W. will know that “sühnen” and “versöhnen” are different things, though like the Greek, the meanings run into one another as cause and effect; but they are essentially different: one does apply to God; the other does not. And “we have the propitiation” is an abuse of the word. Dr. W.'s statements on this are most unequivocally unscriptural.
Dr. W. reverts to the statement already often noticed to give it a particular application, saying, “The forgiveness of sins is nothing but an application to the individual sinner of the taking away the sins of the whole world, which took place in Christ.” Every part of this statement is unscriptural. It did not take place in Christ. There is no such thought in scripture; indeed if there were, there could be nothing to judge them for. And further, no such application would be needed, for the sins would be already taken away. The forgiveness of sins and the imputation of righteousness is by faith (Rom. 4).
Eph. 1:77In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; (Ephesians 1:7), Col. 1:1414In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: (Colossians 1:14), Heb. 10:1818Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin. (Hebrews 10:18), cited by Dr. W., do not say one word of what Dr. W. says. But further, redemption from a state is the commonest use in scripture and in modern speech of the word “redeem.” We say “redeemed from captivity,” from destruction, from death; so that all the discussion about Anselm and the fathers is to no purpose. We are delivered from the wrath and the curse by Christ's being made a curse for us. From whence did His suffering come? “He hath put him to grief.” Debt is used as a figure; but by the Lord. It was not restitution of money; of course it is a mere figure; but it was not to remove the sin of man, that is, from man (which indeed is in every sense an unscriptural way of putting it, and will not be found in scripture), but by bearing our sins for us; and if scripture speaks of putting away sin, it is putting it as a state and condition out of God's sight, and that even of heaven and earth, not of forgiveness. He condemned sin in the flesh. But, as for faith we died, were crucified with Christ, we are freed from its law. When we are brought in, then it is Christ who knew no sin was made sin for us; that is, it was what was done for us, outside of us, not our state, though that state (righteousness of God, note, not of man, though the believer stands in it) be the purpose of it, yet not an actual righteous state in us, but we made the righteousness of God in Christ. (See Rom. 8:33For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: (Romans 8:3); 2 Cor. 5:2121For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21).) Dr. W. has evidently not taken into consideration this part of the truth.
I turn to the conclusion: “No change was effected by the fall of Adam in God, or in his disposition, but what was effected was that we fell into sin, and by sin into eternal death. In the work of Christ there was no change in God or in His disposition, but we gained righteousness, and thereby eternal life. And behind this work of Christ scripture only recognizes one thing, God so loved the world.” Now though save the last phrases I recognize in general the truth of this, yet the statement is fundamentally false, because it suppresses a mass of scriptural truth of the most solemn character, and in the last phrase denies it. Is wrath not spoken of in scripture? It was no change in God Himself, yet we are not merely fallen into something: God drove out the man, and not only so but shut up the way back to the tree of life, previously free to him; and man must get life some other way. It is the gift of God, and, save in the sense of man's ultimate state in glory, righteousness is not the way of regaining it. Man must be born again when he is a sinner.
Dr. W. speaks of wrath against sin elsewhere; but why, in order to systematize, is so immensely an important thing left out here? It is no change in God; it is righteousness dealing justly with evil. Man fell under wrath by sinning, God's wrath. It is the wrath of God which abides upon him if he does not believe; he is a child of wrath, Jew or Gentile alike; and it is part of the truth which came in by Christianity though not in itself of the grace, that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. Something does remain “behind,” besides “God so loved,” that is, “the wrath of God.” Already God's driving man out of paradise was an execution of judgment, and the flood was righteous judgment. But it was not fully “revealed from heaven,” nor judgment pronounced on man till he had rejected Christ, because another question was to be tried in God's ways: could the first man be restored? He was tried without law, and the flood had to come in; he was tried under the law and broke it (the flesh was not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be; so that they that are in the flesh cannot please God), tried by the patient goodness that sent the prophets till there was no remedy. Then God said, I have yet my Son, my well-beloved, it may be they will reverence my Son. And when they saw Him, they said, This is the heir; come, let us kill Him, and the inheritance shall be ours. Man has both seen and hated both Him and His Father. Then the Lord pronounced the sentence “Now is the judgment of this world.” Except death were gone through, and the curse borne by another, the “corn of wheat” remained alone.
The wrath of God was “revealed from heaven,” but by the sin that work wrought which cleanses the believer for God according to God's own perfectness in light, and man took his place in heaven, according to the righteousness of God, in Christ. He came to seek and to save that which was lost—now proved so. No doubt faith rested on prophecies before the Lord came: but now all came out: the mind of the flesh was “enmity against God,” but the veil rent, and heaven opened. The answer to the spear, which made sure that the Son of God, come in love, was gotten rid of from the earth, was the blood and water which cleanses and saves every one that believes, that comes to God by Him. Love was revealed; for hereby know we love, that He laid down His life for us; but wrath was “revealed from heaven.” And “if God so loved the world that He gave His Son,” so was it equally true that “the Son of man must be lifted up,” or we should have perished under just wrath. And it is not true that Christ was only God's representative to take away our sins; He was man's representative and made sin for us, bearing our sins so that it pleased Jehovah to bruise Him, He put Him to grief when He made His soul an offering for sin, having offered Himself “through the eternal Spirit without spot to God.”
I have nothing to do with the traditions of theologians and do not notice them, but with what the word of God brings before us. I have spoken of this at the beginning as to principles; but Dr. W. brings it all again forward here, and it is the kernel of the question. I agree with him, reconciling God is not spoken of; but he is one-sided in hiding a mass of truth which scripture puts clearly forward. All that is said as to God being what He is in His revelation of Himself is delusion. God is love, God is light. But God could not act in wrath to man innocent (for man was neither righteous nor holy, as theologians say)—He would not have been righteous—and wrath was not revealed nor judgment, but, solely, the consequence of disobedience that man would die. All that Dr. W. takes up, and all that was said when man was judged in paradise. But God did act in wrath when he had sinned, and turned him out of paradise, and shut the way of the tree of life; but it was not revealed before, and surely not executed, nor was love revealed as it was in redemption. Christ was God's representative on earth, the image of the invisible God. But whose representative was He when made sin, and what was the consequence to Him? With the theories Dr. W. opposes I have nothing to do. He joins with his adversaries in holding that God reconciled the world to Himself; and from this common error one draws his theological consequences, which I refuse, as they are not in scripture, and the other hides other plain scriptural statements and falls into denying them.
“Incidit in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim.”
Here, in this section (X.), Dr. W., as I have already said he did, speaks of wrath. But then how can he say, “Nothing remains besides and behind but God so loved the world”? Because the momentous fact of wrath remains. Perhaps he will tell us, Yes, but the world was reconciled, which is totally unscriptural, and how reconciled so that there is no wrath, if the wrath of God abides upon them, as scripture says and Dr. W. admits, and Christ is our deliverer from the wrath to come? Yea, they are “heaping up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” Dr. W. says this reconciliation is “not a change of disposition, but of relative position, placing in another relation to a person”; but how in another relative position when the wrath of God abides on him? That wrath is not executed now (save in chastisement for our good in love, called “wrath” in scripture, Job 36), and that it is the accepted time, the day of salvation, is true: the wrath is “to come”; but “he that believeth not is condemned already,” the “wrath of God abideth upon him.” Dr. W. tells us God cannot be angry and love at the same time. If so, there is no wrath abiding on the unbeliever, as he admits it is, or he is not loved.
All this error flows from one-sided reasoning and the utterly unscriptural notion that the world is reconciled, because it is the time of the exercise of grace founded on Christ's death, as the apostle states. I do not comment on the fallacious arguments of Dr. W.'s opponents. He and they have both started from a false tradition.
I have only to remark, again, that Dr. W. avoids the question; namely, that saying the object of the atonement was to justify the sinner (which all will admit was one object) does not touch the real question: What was done there in order to justify him? What were the stripes with which we are healed? Herein we find again the utterly anti-scriptural doctrine: “The race of Adam was herein justified.” We are justified by faith, not without it, though it be through the atonement. The saved are righteous in Christ, but “salvation only for the righteous” is as unscriptural as possibly can be. Christ came to save sinners “not to call the righteous, but sinners.” God justifies “the ungodly.” Christ came “to seek and to save that which was lost.” This is another fundamental fallacy of Dr. W., that we are justified by being made personally righteous.
Dr. W.'s argument as to demons is sadly sophistical. The necessity of appeasing God as alleged was, if people were to be saved. If the devil and evil spirits were to be saved, according to God's justice an atonement would be needed; but Christ did not die for them, nor undertake their cause. This is poor sophistry.
“Community of love” is not sovereign love to sinners. All this too is sad confusion of mind. God commends His love to us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The power of tradition is curious enough here, where Dr. W. says such a passage as “God reconciled the world unto Himself,” when there is absolutely no such passage in scripture, just where he is insisting, quite rightly, on seeing how scripture does speak. The conflict of theologians I leave with Dr. W., thoroughly decided with him to know only what scripture says.
It is quite true that justice is not wrath or judgment. But as far as men go, we may justly say we turned God into a judge by sin, not assuredly into a righteous Being. When He had created Adam innocent, there was nothing to judge. It would have been judging His own workmanship. But righteousness becomes wrath (not hatred) when evil is in the presence of judicial authority exercised in righteousness. The righteous Lord loveth righteousness; but God is a righteous judge, and God is angry every day. And now wrath is revealed from heaven as surely as infinite love is. In sovereign grace He rises above the sin, and loves without a motive, save what is in His own nature and part of His glory. Man must have a motive for loving. God has none but in Himself, and “commendeth His love to us” (and the “His” is emphatic as to this very point), in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us: the best thing in heaven that could be given for the vilest, defiled, and guilty sinners. Dr. W. seems to me to lower and depreciate the love of God quite as much as His justice and His righteous wrath.
There is one other point to which, though I have noticed it, I return, as of vital importance. Dr. W. holds that Christ represented God before men, not men before God. The first part is most blessedly true, but even that not to the extent of the inferences Dr. W. would draw from it, that there must be identity of operation. The Son did not send the Father, nor not spare Him but deliver Him up for us. The thought would be utterly anti-Christian. He accepted His part of the work of grace. “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God”; and, a body being prepared for Him, He took upon Him the form of a servant, and was found in the likeness of men. I may return to this point elsewhere; I merely take note of it now, and turn to the question of representing God to men and man to God. Now, in His life down here, he that had seen Him had seen the Father, a most precious and sanctifying truth. John 14 is express in stating it, as the whole life of Jesus is the verification and illustration of it. He is, moreover, in His person the image of the invisible God, the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His being, His hypostasis. As to this, scripture is plain; and I have no controversy with Dr. W. Further, that He was true God, and true man, united in one person, is not in question either; it is believed by both of us. The question is, Did He stand for men before God as well as for God before men? That He does in heaven is quite clear. He is gone into heaven now to appear in the presence of God for us (Heb. 9:2424For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: (Hebrews 9:24)). But was all His life down here only a manifestation of God to men? when He took His place with the godly remnant in Israel, being baptized with John's baptism, assuredly not confessing sins as they did, but fulfilling righteousness, having emptied Himself and taken the form of a servant and entered upon the path of obedience, ἐν σχήματι εὑρεθεὶς ὡς ἄνθρωπος, saying to John, “thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness”? When He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil, did He represent God to men? Was it not, as the first man was tempted and fell, the Second man held fast and overcame? Did He not overcome saying, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God? and overcome by refusing to go out of the place of a servant which He had taken, though challenged by Satan to do so as being Son of God? Did He not hold the place of man when He said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God? Did He not, when He dismissed Satan, saying, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve? He was always the obedient man before God, as Adam was the disobedient one; and though he abode alone till redemption was accomplished, the corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying, yet He stood in this world as man before God, as well as God before man—Who was the obedient man, did always such things as pleased His Father, pleaded in Gethsemane when His hour was come in the days of His flesh, with strong crying and tears made His supplication unto Him that was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared ἀπὸ τῆς εὐλαβείας! Was this representing man or God?
That He was alone till redemption was accomplished I fully recognize, but alone, as the sinless man amongst men, to accomplish what was called for from man for God. If He tasted death for every man, was that as representing God to men or standing for men before God? When God laid our iniquity on Him, was it representing God before men? When it became Him, for whom are all things, to make the Captain, ἀρχηγόν, of our salvation perfect through sufferings, whom did He represent? When He cried in deep agony, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me,” did He represent God to man? That He must have been God to be fit and able to do it is most true. Yet He was not representing God before men, but drinking the cup given to Him. When He was made sin, for whom was He made sin? Did He represent God to man then, or stand for men before God when He took up the cause of man (Heb. 2)? He did not represent God to men, but it is written in a certain place, “What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the Son of man that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, Thou crownedst him with glory and honor.” He was the Second man, the last Adam. He was the ἀρχηγός of our salvation, the obedient, sinless, suffering Man who overcame Satan as man for men, was made sin for us, died for our sins, that is, represented us before God, our iniquity being laid upon Him, and drank that dreadful cup, taking it from His Father's hand, “the curse of wrath.” Was suffering the curse of wrath representing God to men, or man as made sin under the righteous judgment of God?
I add that, though the priesthood of Christ be now in heaven where He appears in the presence of God for us, yet all His life was in every sense a preparation for it. He had so taken up man that it became God to make Him perfect in that heavenly place through sufferings. He was tempted, suffering being tempted, that He might succor them that are tempted. Not only so, but He was made like to His brethren in all things, that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. And so in chapter 5 of the same epistle, comparing Him with the Jewish high priest, though shelving the difference. And it is clear that the priest represented the people before God, confessed their sins on the scapegoat, and went into the sanctuary for them, as Christ has done in the true sanctuary for us. The priesthood of Christ is no doubt for believers; but to deny that He represented men, stood there as man for them before God, and that on the cross (as in Heb. 2:1717Wherefore 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)) as man, alone indeed but for men, is ruinous error.
J. N. D.
(Concluded from p. 296).
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