of sin and condemnation of it, he conducts those who follow him into the heights of his own holiness and make his estimates and ideals of life their own.

And how did his life-work stand related to sin's consequences? If these consequences are solely retributivedesigned only for the satisfaction of distributive justice, then, certainly, Christ did not vicariously endure the consequences of sin. That the guiltless should bear punishment in this sense is a contradiction in terms. Did Christ, then, bear chastisement or discipline? Some have affirmed this and have thus maintained a semblance of the old penal theory. But this conception is only a pale image of the post-Reformation dogma. Whether one may properly use such language is a question of defining words. If by "chastisement" is meant suffering inflicted in consequence of sin for the benefit of the sinner (the usual meaning of the word, as I suppose), then it is obviously absurd to speak of Christ as being chastised. The more indefinite term " discipline" one may use, if he means by it what the Epistle to the Hebrews means in saying that Christ learned obedience by the things which he suffered, or was made perfect by his sufferings. But such a term carries us outside the circle of ideas commonly denoted by "penal." To say that Christ was punished is absurd. To say that he was chastised is equally absurd, if frankly and seriously meant. In actual usage the assertion is probably one of those vague, non-committal affirmations in which the more recent forms of governmentalism commonly take refuge.

In what sense, then, was Christ "made sin on our behalf" (2 Cor. v. 21)? In what sense did he "become a curse for us" (Gal. iii. 13)? In the sense that he entered into the perfect realization of the misery and guilt of our sin, suffering these with and for us, as Edwards says, by strong sympathy. In his oneness with us the evils which flow from sin afflicted his spirit with deep and awful distress. He entered perfectly into the conditions in which sin had involved us. He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. He descended to our prison-house that he might share our woes with us. This

He stooped to

he did as a means to our deliverance. conquer us. In his pure heart he felt the curse of evil and with us tasted its bitter fruit. Thus by sympathetic identification through the vicariousness of love - was he "made sin on our behalf" in the only sense which can have any ethical meaning or reality; thus by perfect union with men in the misery and wretchedness which flow from sin, did he share the curse of sin for us. And by this vicarious suffering with and for sinners he has condemned sin and exalted holiness. Would you see what sin is? Look on the cross! See how sin regarded and treated incarnate love! Would you learn what holiness is? Look again on the cross! See what holy love will do and suffer to raise man out of the curse of sin into

harmony with itself. The cross expresses the verdict of holy love upon the worth of man and its condemnation upon the sin which would destroy him. Hence the cross is the symbol of the most precious truths of our faith. It summarizes what is central in the saving work of Christ because it expresses what is supreme in the bosom of eternal love. God forbid that we should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NECESSITY OF CHRIST'S DEATH

WHY was it necessary for Christ to suffer and die, and what, for his consciousness, was the purpose to be achieved by such an experience? These two questions are quite inseparable because the nature of the reasons why he must suffer and die would be determined by the object which his death was to secure or promote. But these questions involve others. Was his death the direct object of his whole career, or was it an experience which lay in the path by which he sought some end beyond itself? Did he come into the world to die, or did he die in consequence of being what he was in such a world as this? Must we regard the question respecting the necessity of his death from the side of its human, historical causes only, or may we also interpret it as grounded in a divine purpose and as a factor in a providential plan for the salvation of mankind?

To the question immediately in hand: Why was it necessary for Christ to die? the most various answers have been given: In order, by enduring the penalty of sin, to appease the wrath of God and so to open the way to forgiveness; that the Old Testament prophecies might be fulfilled; because the will of God had so ordained; to render homage to the divine law against sin and so to express God's holy displeasure toward it; to attest his own perfect submission to the divine law of self-sacrificing love; to consummate his fidelity to truth and righteousness in a world which was hostile to his ideals and purposes. Some of these customary answers are only formal, as when it is said that prophets foretold the Messiah's death, or that the divine will required it. We still

have to ask: What was the ground or rationale of this requirement? Until we have found some answer to that question we have made no progress; we remain content with saying: It was necessary because it was prophesied or decreed that it must happen.

In reviewing the references to the death of the Messiah in the Synoptic Gospels and in the earlier discourses in Acts (pp. 42 8q., 55 sq.), we saw that while Jesus spoke of his death as inevitable in view of the increasing hostility of the people, he also regarded it as having a great providential purpose to serve in his saving work. The early apostolic teaching viewed the subject in a similar light; his death resulted from human hatred, but it was, at the same time, designed by Providence to prove a means to the accomplishment of the messianic salvation. Now the great problem for primitive Christian thought was this: In what way did the death of Christ serve this end? | How did his suffering secure or contribute to man's recovery from sin? We have in the New Testament the beginnings of the long history of philosophizing on this question.

One thing is clear: Christian thought can never rest content with merely summarizing the human historical conditions and circumstances which occasioned Christ's death. It is true, of course, that he died because the people of his time opposed and hated him. He died the death of a martyr, for a martyr is a heroic witness to the truth of certain convictions and ideals which he maintains at whatever cost to himself. But the death of a martyr even cannot be wholly explained by reference to the opposition and obloquy which he encounters, apart from the motives and convictions which give meaning and purpose to his life. Our question, then, takes this form: Did Jesus have a settled life-purpose, a providential mission, which he felt himself bound to accomplish at whatever cost of labor and suffering, and how did his death, as the acme of this labor and suffering, stand related to it? That he had such a purpose, and what it was, is evident on the face of the Gospels. That purpose

1

is stated in various terms, but they all mean essentially the same to found the Kingdom of God; to enable men to know God as their Father and to live as his true sons; to seek and to save the lost; to bear witness to the truth. It is also evident that, as time went on, it became more and more clear to him that he would have to die in the accomplishment of this object, and that his death, so far from being the defeat of his plan, would contribute to its realization. He regards himself as subject to the universal law: "He that gives his life shall save it." Hence the giving of his life is to be a potent means to the ransom of many.

It is worth noting, I think, that in these most significant expressions of Jesus concerning his life-purpose and his manner of realizing it, he speaks not of death but of the giving of his life. Now certainly the life-giving of which he was speaking involved the experience of dying, but are the expressions, on that account, synonymous? Was the meaning of Jesus in saying that he would give his life for men, exhausted in the idea that he would expire for their benefit? Or if we, for the moment, disregard the characteristic expression of Jesus and keep to the term which theology has chiefly employed, we must still ask: What was death, what did death mean, to Jesus? What was his own death as he viewed it? Is there the slightest intimation in his teaching that he regarded death in general, or his own death in particular, as the penalty of sin? That was a popular theory at the time, and it was soon brought over into Christian thought and applied in the effort to explain the saving significance of Jesus' death, but of this current Jewish opinion there is as little trace in the teaching of Jesus as there is of any of the theories which were then current concerning the origin and propagation of sin. It is safe to say that for the mind of a Jewish Christian, trained in a legalist mode of thought, and to whom it was axiomatic that Christ's death was a means of salvation, no explanation would lie so near to hand as this: Death is sin's penalty; Christ died, though sinless; therefore, in so doing he was enduring the penalty