Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

The Death of the Lord Jesus: Atonement by Blood

It has been truly said, there is nothing like the cross. It stands and shall stand for ever in all its solitary greatness and grandeur, the wonder of every intelligent creature, and the pillar upon which is indelibly inscribed the evil and hatred of fallen man and the goodness and love of God. There appears the greatest sin that man ever committed and there is the mightiest display of mercy on the part of God that ever came to light. It is the place where man was tested in every spring of his moral being, and it is where the compassions of God were sounded to their depths. There man lifted up impious hand and struck at his Creator with deadly intent, and the answer of God was given in unspeakable, infinite and victorious love.

“The very spear that pierced His side

Drew forth the blood to save.” — Boyd.

“And behold a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne, and He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone” (Rev. 4:2-3). It is my conviction that if the glorious and eternally blessed Occupant of that throne had appeared only as the jasper stone — the clear, unsullied crystal — no created being could have stood before Him, but because the blood-red rays of the sardine blend with the light of the jasper, the worst of sinners may have a footing there in everlasting righteousness and peace. To understand what the symbol illustrates take the great Christian message which is declared to us in 1 John 1:5, “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.” There is the clear shining of the crystal, but if that had been all could any man have abode in the searching brightness of it? But there follows at once the fear-dispelling, peace-giving word, “The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.” How perfectly that great fact harmonises and blends with the light! Indeed it is part of it. What confidence it gives to the soul, and what uprightness! For in the light nothing can be hidden, yet all is covered by the blood, it is the perfect atonement, equal in its efficacy to the full shining of the light. In the knowledge of this the one who believes walks in the light even as God is in the light and can rejoice in the supremacy of the throne that shines as the jasper and the sardine stone.

Had sin never entered into the world there would, of course, have been no need for atonement by blood, and according to our estimate of what sin is will be our appreciation of it. If a man thinks that sin is merely “the survival of the tiger in humanity” which evolution will most surely destroy, as some divinity professors have asserted, he will deny all need of it; if he thinks that a man’s sin is nothing more than weakness, or a mere negation that he may overcome in time, he will resent the word that tells him that he needs a Saviour such as Jesus is; but if he discovers that his deeds are the outward evidence of a corrupted inward nature, and that his “sin is lawlessness” as the Bible says it is, “for every one that does sin does lawlessness” (1 John 3:4, Revised Version); if his soul bows down before the truth that “by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and death passed upon all men for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12), then atonement by blood will become a necessity to him and his awakened conscience will be satisfied with nothing less.

Atonement by blood is as necessary to God as it is to us. Apart from it His true and full nature and character could never have been known by any of His creatures, least of all by sinful men; but by it His ways are revealed and justified, for it is by the way He has dealt with this question of man’s sinfulness that what He is has been fully declared.

We must face the question as to what God is as well as what we are. Would we have Him to be other than the gospel says He is? In the gospel His righteousness is declared and His wrath is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Could any creature have security and peace if it were not so? There are those who cavil at God’s right to execute justice; would they care to live in a land where crime was strong and law weak? No, they are ready enough to support the law of the land in which they live, and to justify its penalties for their own protection, but deny the right to God to govern and to judge in His universe. Of them the Bible says, “Thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them that commit such things.” How daring and how unreasonable is that spirit in a man which insists upon his neighbour obeying the laws of the land and yet refuses to be subject to the law of God!

Others plead that they are weak and cannot resist temptation to sin, and because of this God must be merciful. But if
  “weakness may excuse
What murderer, what traitor, what parricide
Incestuous, sacrilegious, but may plead it?
  That plea
With God or man will gain thee no remission.”

If the judgment of God were not according to truth and justice, if He winked at sin, and were the indulgent, spineless and weak-fatherly being that the modernist would have Him be, then an awakened conscience of a man would be morally greater and better than He, and the devil would take advantage of His weakness and seize His throne. But we may be thankful and rejoice that God is God, and that His Justice will “never descend from her sceptred royalty” and compound with sin. God will maintain His supremacy and abide for ever and without change in His infinite and unsullied holiness, and all His ways will be in absolute and unchallengeable righteousness.

Since that is so, what of men who are sinful and who have been guilty of rebellion against Him, and as a consequence are lying under the sentence and power of death? There could be no hope for them apart from atonement by blood. Hence the Bible, which is God’s Word to men, is full of it; it is, as someone else has said, the diamond pivot upon which the New Testament turns, and it is the burden of the Old. It is woven into the very fabric of the Holy Scriptures and is the basis of all relationship between God and sinful men; apart from it there is no light, no peace, no hope for men. If we reject this the Bible has neither message nor meaning for us.

The Old Testament declares, “It is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul” (Leviticus 17:11), and the New Testament adds its witness by saying, “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22). The coats of skin with which God clothed Adam and Eve in Eden first proclaimed the fact that a victim not chargeable with the offence must suffer in the place of the guilty if he is to go free. Abel’s lamb, the ram that was caught in the thicket and offered instead of Isaac, the paschal lamb in Egypt, and all those offerings that were consumed upon Israelitish altars, taught to all who had ears to hear and hearts to understand that there was no other way by which a man’s sins could be covered and his transgressions forgiven.

Yet in those countless altars and sacrifices God had no pleasure. He had no pleasure in Israel’s offerings because of the character of those that brought them. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me? says the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and I delight not in the blood of bullocks.” There was no sincerity in the hearts of those who brought them; but the great, the fundamental reason for God’s displeasure with them was that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin. Hebrews 10 is the great chapter which shows us the futility of these offerings. There we learn that they called sin to remembrance every year, for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sin, and nobody could suppose that they could please God. Then why were they offered? They were a shadow of good things to come, and they filled up the period of waiting until the Substance appeared. The substance is Christ; it was to Him that all these ancient sacrifices pointed and of His coming they spoke with tongues that were eloquent to the ear of faith. Theories are wearisome, and doctrines are of no value unless they centre in Christ. IT IS HE whom God has set forth, a propitiation through faith in His blood (Rom. 3:25). He is the propitiation for our sins, but not for ours alone, but also for the whole world (1 John 2:2).

The word atonement does not occur in our New Testament, except in Romans 5:11, and it is well known that in that passage it is a wrong translation, and should be “reconciliation.” It is an Old Testament word which means “to cover” and does not mean “at-one-ment” as theology declares. It means that the offence is blotted out by the offering; an equivalent is rendered to the aggrieved party which covers the crime. Yet at-onement, or to use the fuller, New Testament word, reconciliation, is very closely allied to it, for reconciliation is the result of the atoning sacrifice and death of Christ. By it men are reconciled to God. “For when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son” (Rom. 5:10). This reconciliation is realised when there has been awakened in our souls a sense of need and our eyes are turned upon Him to whom God Himself looks, His Son who died for us, and in Him we have a common object with God.

What an hour that was when the Son of God rose up and coming into the world said, “Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body hast Thou prepared Me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin Thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of Me) to do Thy will, O God” (Heb. 10:5-7). We are sure that all heaven was stirred, and the attention of every creature in those realms above was entirely concentrated upon that great event, but who shall tell what it meant to God? His holy will, His glory, the vindication of His character, the revelation of His love were all committed to His beloved Son, to Jesus the Babe in Bethlehem. And to Him we must look, for the words of the Baptist are as much for us as they were for the crowds that heard them on the banks of Jordan, “Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.”

It has been argued that the doctrine of the atonement is an immoral doctrine, for, according to it, the innocent is compelled to suffer in the place of the guilty. But that is a perversion of the doctrine. When the Son of God came forth to suffer for guilty men, there was no compulsion but that of love. The love of God was the spring and motive of His coming. The well-known John 3:16 would be enough most surely to decide that, but we draw upon other texts not so often used, “We have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the World.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4). “God commends His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). And when the Father sent the Son He did not send One who was unwilling to go at His command. “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God,” proves beyond question that His coming was voluntary. He was one with the Father in this, and He took up that body which was prepared for Him by God — He became Man that He might accomplish in manhood all the will of God in regard to men.

Nor did the innocent suffer for the guilty when Jesus died. We cannot attach that word to Him, for it means without knowledge of good and evil, and He had full knowledge of all things. He was holy and not innocent; He knew what the sin of man was in its exceeding sinfulness and hated it, and was Himself sinless though a Man; and He knew what the righteousness of God was and loved it, and was God’s righteous Servant to manifest and establish it.

Yet He did suffer for the guilty; the Bible tells us this in the plainest language, “Christ also has once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Yes, that is it, “the Just for the unjust,” and in that suffering He bore the judgment that the unjust deserved. Atonement is made by the blood which flowed forth from the spear-riven side of Jesus. In virtue of it the sinner is brought to God and by it God is glorified. The love of God and His mercy and grace are exercised in the sinner’s salvation in absolute accord with His holiness, righteousness, justice and truth; the majesty of His throne is upheld and His heart flows out in blessing to men; He is a just God and yet a Saviour.

There is the Godward aspect of atonement and the usward who believe aspect of it. The Godward aspect of it is propitiation, which is brought out in Romans 3:25. It was typified in the sin-offering that was consumed without the camp of Israel on the great day of Atonement. The fact that it was consumed outside the camp indicated in figure God’s abhorrence of sin, and the great anti-type of that comes out in those solemn words, “He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Here, we must confess, is a holy mystery, as deep and impenetrable as was the darkness that for three hours enveloped the cross. But having taken the sinner’s place Jesus endured the judgment that was against the sinner, even to being forsaken of God. There was no mitigation of the judgment for Him, but because of who He was, the holy Son of God, He was able to endure and exhaust the judgment, and cry, “It is finished.”

The blood of the sin-offering that was burnt without the camp was carried by the high priest into the holiest in the Tabernacle and sprinkled there upon the golden mercy seat and seven times before it, and that was the propitiation, and that was the place where God could meet with His people. Romans 3:22-23 gives the antitype of this shadow. It says, “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.” The word “propitiation” as used in Romans really means “a mercy seat” or meeting place. And God has set forth Christ Jesus to be this “through faith in His blood.” There God in His holiness can meet the sinner in his guilt. God is there in free grace, but not apart from righteousness, and the sinner may draw near in faith.

The usward who believe aspect of the atonement is redemption and reconciliation. In Christ, who has so blessedly glorified God about the sin question, “we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins,” and we “have been reconciled to God by the death of His Son.” Could it be otherwise? All enmity must die out of our hearts as we see God’s great desire for our blessing as it has been displayed in the death of His Son, and the more we consider His death the more we are filled with wonder at its suitability to the situation. Nothing else could have met God’s claims, nothing else could have met our need; Christ crucified is the power and the wisdom of God and the present and eternal boast of all who are saved.

It should not be difficult to understand that the carrying out of this great work depended wholly upon what the Lord is. If He had not become Man He could not have been our substitute and representative; but having become Man, He was lifted up for us, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness; and if He had not been the sinless Man He could not have stood for us, for how could one who had sins of his own to suffer for, be a substitute for others? But if He had not been more than man, if He had not been God in His own eternal Being, His sacrifice would have had no atoning value. Who could measure and meet the claims of God’s eternal justice but God? Who could understand how sin had challenged the very majesty of God and threatened the stability of God’s throne but God? Who could put one hand upon God and one hand upon a guilty sinner, and glorify the One and bless the other, and bring the two together in righteousness and peace, but One who in His own Person was God and man? If He had not been man He could not have died, if He had not been God His death would have been without value.

We rejoice in a full atonement great peace fills our hearts as we consider it, for what He our Saviour God has done will abide for ever, His blood can never lose its value. We know that by His “one offering He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified,” and we know that all things in heaven and on earth are to be reconciled to God on the sure foundation of that same offering. And when that has been effected the throne of God and the Lamb shall be the great centre from which streams of blessing and life will flow to multitudes of men who own the authority of that throne. Thus we return to our beginning, “And He that sat upon the throne was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone.”