The Remonstrants 2 endeavour not a little to destroy the perfection of the atonement. Though they have not yet been so bold as the disciples of Socinus, to reject the atonement entirely, yet they make every effort in their power to diminish its efficacy and fulness. They maintain that the satisfaction of Christ was accepted by God, not on account of its own dignity, but merely through grace: that it was not a real, but a nominal satisfaction. The substance of the doctrine which they teach on this head is that God forbore to punish after the death of Christ, not because satisfaction had been truly rendered to his justice, but because he was graciously pleased to admit the satisfaction as altogether sufficient, notwithstanding its imperfection. The doctrine for which we contend is that Christ has so perfectly satisfied divine justice for all our sins, by one offering of himself — and not only for our guilt, but also for both temporal and eternal punishment. So that, henceforth, there are no more propitiatory offerings to be made for sin — and though God often chastises his people to promote their penitence and sanctification, yet no satisfaction is to be made by them either in this or in a future state of existence. Such is the perfection of the atonement, that it corresponds to the justice of God revealed in the Word, to the demands of the law, and to the miseries and necessities of those for whom it was made. If it had been deficient in its own nature, and derived its sufficiency only from God's acceptance of it through mere grace, then the victims under the law might have possessed equal efficacy in making atonement for sin,contrary to Heb 10:4.3 Its perfection is derived from its own intrinsic fulness of merit. It is perfect:
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Hebrews 2:16-17 PSA.
- Thread starter Iconoclast
- Start date
Remission is an act of signal and Sovereign Divine Love and Mercy, —but without shedding of blood there is no evidence of any such attributes on God's part at all. We conceive of Remission as a transaction of Mercy even more readily than we regard it as an act of justice and judgment. Mercy to the guilty—pure and profound compassion for the miserable— matchless love even to an enemy, are what we naturally imagine to
be the moving causes with God in remitting the sins of His people. And Scripture testifies that it is so—even "for His great love wherewith He loveth them" (Eph. 2:4), even "according to His loving-kindness, and according to the multitude of His tender mercies" (Ps. 51:1). But were God to forgive the iniquities of His people without a ransom, without shedding of blood, there would be no such act of loving-kindness on His part—no evidence whatever of His mercy, compassion, and love towards them.
For, if God comes to me, a guilty transgressor of His law, and tells me that He means to let me off; that He means to let my sin pass; that He cannot find it in His heart to inflict upon me the vengeance which He threatened; and so without any more ado, I pass away, free from judgment, free from terror: I soon begin to question whether I am so greatly indebted to Divine beneficence as in the first rapture of my escape I fancied. I begin to consider whether, after all, it is any great token of God's love to me that I have just obtained. And I argue that, if it was at God's option, at His mere option, to cast me into hell, or save me from it, without any expiation of my sin, or any satisfaction to His justice; if it was in His power to free me from wrath and woe, without any claim of justice interposing to object, or needing to be met; if there were no imperative call of righteousness demanding my condemnation to eternal death, but God could free me simply if He chose, and no interests of righteousness be injured by His doing so,—why, then, instead of arguing any wonderful benevolence on His part towards me, that He puts forth with infinite ease His will and power to save, the wonder would be that He should abstain from doing so. There is really no marvellous grace, no peculiar amazing compassion, no overwhelming evidence of personal distinguishing, peculiar love to me, when God stretches forth His hand to save from a fate which Divine, justice was not inflexibly assigning to me, and as to which Divine justice can in no way object, though it be made to pass away from me. I cannot possibly recognise any peculiar stamp, or signature of marvellous Divine mercy, in the act which frees me from a fate which no demands of justice assigned to me. The marvel rather would be if God could have left me to be overtaken by it. It would have been, in such a case, no small ground on which to rest a charge of cruelty if He had: it is little evidence of love that He has not. Contrast the two cases by the aid of illustration. (1.) I see, let us say, a wretched fellow-creature about to expiate, by death, his offence against his country's laws.
Even so, if no inflexible necessity calls for the wrath of God on my iniquity;—if no claims of justice, no interests of government, no demands of law, and truth, and righteousness, are violated by my sin going unpunished, by God clearing me though I am guilty;—if He can, apart from atonement, avert eternal ruin from me without violating any of the perfections of His divine nature, or any of the provisions and requirements of His Divine government;—if He can altogether rescue me without any satisfaction to Divine justice, or any claim of Divine justice needing to be satisfied: then I cannot see how I ever can come to be convinced that His averting from me that awful, eternal, infinite ruin, in these plain and easy circumstances, evidences, to me-ward any marvellous, or special, or tender love. And when, over and above this, I am told that His whole nature is so beneficent that He recoils from the sight of suffering among His creatures; that He is too kind and merciful to visit their faults with the damnation of hell, and may be expected at last to deal leniently with every one whose case will at all admit of it; I begin to think that, with a nature so constituted,—so sensitively pained by the sight of pain in others,—it is more out of love to Himself than love to me that He forgives my sin; more that He may Himself escape the pain of seeing my pain, than out of any very marvellous, amazing, personal, peculiar love to me. So little can a forgiveness without shedding of blood demonstrate the mercy and love of God.