(7) Another departure from the faith of God's elect is that of Canon J. P. Norris in his “Rudiments of Theology,” which may be noticed briefly as a warning to souls. It is admitted in the letter that Christ bore our sins; but the spirit is neutralized by the distinct denial that He bore the penalty of our sins. For this is the true force of His having borne them in His own body on the tree, of His having suffered for them once (ἅπαξ). Even the prophet is explicit that “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of (or punishment for) our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” Jehovah “hath made to light on him the iniquity of us all.” “For the transgressions of my people was he stricken.” It is bold to say that this is not a vicarious punishment for sin. No doubt there was also a dying to sin; but this is also a further N. T. privilege beyond the old and new and everlasting truth that He died judicially, or penalty suffered, for our sins, as was expressed even in the types which could give but the surface and semblance, not the very image and fullness, of the truth. Redeeming from all iniquity, saving from our sins, is unquestionably scriptural; but it could not be righteously without Christ's enduring the penalty at God's hand that we might not. In the face of scripture to deny this, as the Canon does (p. 49), is extravagantly false and evil.
Dying unto sin, as any one can see in Rom. 6 &c., is that the believer dead with Christ may live to God; it has really no direct connection with “enabling God to forgive the sinner.” Sin in the flesh as such is “condemned” by God in Christ as sacrifice for sin (Rom. 8:3), not forgiven as sins are. The doctrine is shallow and anti-scriptural. Our death with Christ to sin is entirely distinct from His dying for our sins. The last alone is what scripture treats as propitiation or atonement. “For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” This is the vital truth of the gospel which the apostle preached and wrote, and by which also believers are saved.
That He died to sin is a blessed and instructive sequel, as taught from Rom. 5:12 to chap 8, no less true, and most necessary for deliverance and practical holiness. But it is ruinous to confound the two truths, as is here done, for it really excludes the basis of all righteous blessing in Christ's propitiatory suffering for sins, and renders powerless our death with Him. It exposes also to perilous heterodoxy. Think of a person teaching that Christ “gathered up into His own person all mankind, laden as they were with sin; and with the consciousness of sin upon His heart consummated that dying unto sin which they were in themselves powerless to effect” (p. 56)! Expiation thus vanishes, and a kind of Irvingite universalism remains in Mr. N.'s crucible.
This fundamental error as to Christ's Person appears with no less certainty in a later page (282), and no doubt is his real, perhaps unwitting, doctrine: “He could not redeem us without taking our nature, and He could not take our nature without drawing upon Himself the curse in which sin has involved it.” This is to destroy His holy Person, and to deny His grace in suffering for sins, Just for unjust. It was by no fatal necessity of our nature but by the grace of God that He tasted death ὑπὲρ παντος. It was in the holy liberty of divine love that He laid down His life for us. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.”
In this only, and for this, lay the inevitable need of His death. It was sacrificial in the strictest sense and the deepest way. To say that it was in itself a Roman military execution, and the bloodshed by a soldier's pilum, is to set external circumstances against the revealed mind and purpose of God in what ought to be beyond all dear to the believer's heart and conscience. God's judgment of sin in the cross, and Christ's infinite suffering for our sins there, are ignored and set aside for another truth, distinct yet inseparable, which has no ground-work or application apart from what is denied. There may have been many an Israelite with no thought beyond “There goes my sin in the victim's death “; but that God meant no penalty by the shadow, or in the substance, is mere infidelity as to propitiation for sins. Undoubtedly God's mercy appeared in permitting, enjoining, and accepting, the sacrifice; but there was penal suffering in that sacrifice, which prefigured grace reigning through righteousness.
This profound error is the parent of others; as for instance (p. 234), that “the blood of Christ is uniformly spoken of as a most living thing, now communicable,” as also in pp. 212, 223, 224. Life eternal in the Son, which we have by faith even now, is thus confounded most grossly with His death and blood as a propitiation for our sins. These truths, every spiritual man ought to see, are wholly distinct, though the Christian knows both: (1) that God has sent His Son that we might live through Him; (2) that He sent Him as propitiation for our sins—in both the manifestation of God's love. Mr. N. utterly confuses the blessed φυχὴ (given up in His death and blood-shedding for our sins) with His ξςὴ αἰώνιος in which we live also, and forever, in infinite grace. The old errors and worse re-appear in p. 309; but enough.
(8) The last aberration, which we may notice here, consists of a slight on Christ's work on the cross in two opposite directions. One writer will have it that Christ only completed His vicarious suffering after death and before resurrection in hades, and even the punishment of damnation; the other insists on propitiation being made by Christ's entering heaven, after death and before resurrection. I understand both of them to hold that the work was not finished in the blood and death of Christ on the cross, but the propitiation effectively depends on a further action of Christ (whether in heaven or in hades) in the disembodied state. Each of these appears to be a fable as to a foundation truth.
III. TEXTS OFTEN MISUNDERSTOOD AND MISAPPLIED IN ISA. 53:4, 11.
It is of moment to disarm the adversary by avoiding a mistaken application or sense of scripture. The truth is enfeebled by anxiety to press texts misunderstood, like John 1:29, and 1 Peter 2:24.
Thus it is notorious how good and learned men have labored in vain over Isa. 53:4, because they have not taken heed to the Holy Spirit's use of it in Matt. 8:17. There it is applied to the grace with which He used His power in the removal of infirmities and sicknesses in His ministry among the Jews. Partly through the idea that the prophecy must be solely about the atonement and its consequences, partly through the language of the LXX, many will have it that the verse includes the lesser troubles of the body in the larger thought of man's deepest need. But God is wiser than men, even the most faithful; and subjection to His word is the best, holiest, and surest corrective. If Isa. 4 were any where applied by an inspired authority to the atonement, this would be decisive. It is only applied to Christ's ministry or at least miracles. When His dying for our sins is meant, the Spirit (in 1 Peter 2:24, Heb. 9:28) refers to Isa. 53:11, 12. The wisdom of inspiration shines conspicuously here; for the Septuagintal Version is avoided when incorrect or equivocal, and employed only when exact; and this by Peter who had no erudition to fall back on. God is the only absolutely wise guide; and here we may see it, if we be not blind.
But again, ver. 11 has two parts, which cannot be confounded without loss. “By His knowledge shall My righteous servant instruct many (rather, the many) in righteousness; and He shall bear their iniquities.” Dan. 12:3 serves to prove the true force of the verb translated “justify.” Translate it as it should be here, and the sense of both clauses is plain and consistent. Take it as it is done ordinarily, and violence ensues at once with error as the result.
(concluded).