John McLeod Campbell · 11 of 23

CHAPTER VII. · Part 3

All this, while it accords with the place of sacrifices under the law, is to us, when we see it in the light of our relation to God as the Father of our spirits, of the nature of necessary truth, that is to say, we see that that access to God which shall indeed be to us a way into the holiest, must accord with the spiritual constitution of our being, with the nature of holiness, and with the nature of the separation from God which sin causes; therefore, that no permission or authority to come to God can be of any avail to us, apart from the mind in which alone he who has sinned can in truth draw near to God; and this mind we see is just that into which the sinner enters in the Amen of faith to the voice that is in the blood of Christ, viz., Christ's confession of our sins. In the faith of God's acceptance of that confession on our behalf, we receive strength to say Amen to it,--to join in it--and, joining in it, we find it a living way to God; and at the same time we feel certain that there is no other way,--that we get near to God just in the measure in which in the Spirit of Christ we thus livingly adopt His confession of our sins,--in this measure and no further.

Permission to draw near to God, seen thus in the light of the mind in which to draw near,--that is to say, the remission of our sins seen in connexion with Christ's confession of our sins,--this is the way of life open before us; yet is that way to our faith altogether a part of the gift of eternal life. Though the right feelings for us to cherish,--though the only suitable feelings in which to approach to God,--though, in truth, the only feelings in which the consciousness of having sinned can coexist with the experience of communion with God,--these feelings altogether belong to the Son of God,--to the Spirit of sonship,--and are possible to us only in the fellowship of the Son's confidence in the Father's fatherly forgiveness, being quickened in us by the faith of that fatherly forgiveness, as uttered in God's acceptance of Christ's confession and intercession on our behalf.

I have above insisted upon the importance of the difference between a legal standing and a filial standing, and on the necessity, in considering the nature of the atonement, of keeping continually in view, that in redeeming us who were under the law the divine purpose was that we should receive the adoption of sons. This necessity is becoming, I trust, more and more clear as we proceed. The virtue required in the blood of Christ is seen to be necessarily spiritual--a power to influence the spirits washed in it by faith, when our need is seen as the need of those whose life lies in God's favour, whose well-being must consist in communion with God, whose salvation is joining in that worship of God which is in spirit and in truth. And the spiritual virtue needed is determined to be the law of the Spirit of the life that is in Christ,--the life of sonship, when it is understood that the worship in spirit and in truth is that which the Father seeketh as the Father,--the worship which is sonship, that of which the Son is High Priest and head. But it further appears to me, that this conception of the worship for which the blood of Christ is to qualify, sheds back a light on the atonement, in which we are justified in saying that Christ's confession of our sin was not only the expiation due to the righteous law of God, but also the expiation due to the fatherly heart of God.

To speak of an atonement as due to the fatherly heart of God is foreign to our habits of mind on the subject of atonement. Yet I believe, that in proportion as we see the expiation that is in Christ's confession of man's sin to be that which has truly met the demand of the divine righteousness, we must see that the filial spirit that was in that confession, and which necessarily took into account what our being rebellious children was to the Father's heart, constituted the perfection of the expiation. This is no uncalled for refinement of thought. The pardon which we need is the pardon of the Father of our spirits,--the way into the holiest which we need is the way into our Father's heart; and therefore, the blood of Christ which hath consecrated such a way for us, must have power to cleanse our spirits from that spiritual pollution which defiles rebellious children, that is to say, must contain the new mind in which it pertains to rebellious children to return to the Father.

And this consideration manifestly confirms the view now taken of the atonement. In proportion as it is seen that that which expiates sin must be something that meets a demand of the divine righteousness, the superiority of a moral and spiritual atonement, consisting in the right response from humanity to the divine mind in relation to sin, becomes clear. But that superiority is surely rendered still more unequivocal when, from the conception of God as the righteous ruler, we ascend to that of God as the Father of spirits. It is then that we fully realise that there is no real fitness to atone for sin in penal sufferings, whether endured by ourselves or by another for us. Most clearly to the Father's feelings such sufferings would be no atonement; and yet are not these the feelings which call for an atonement,--is it not to them that expiation is most righteously due?

And I would ask some attention to this question, because I know that weakness has been supposed to be introduced into our conceptions of the divine requirements, by giving prominence to the idea that God is our Father. Those who have this impression, and who fear the weakening of our sense of the divine authority, through giving the root place in our system to our relation to God as the Father of our spirits, would say, "It is the righteous ruler and judge who calls for an atonement, not the Father; the Father would receive us without an atonement." Certainly, such an atonement as they have before their minds, in saying this, would be no response to any demand that we can ascribe to the Father's heart,--as neither, indeed, I believe would it be to any demand which, in the light of the divine righteousness, we can ascribe to the Judge of all the earth.

But this associating of moral weakness, and, as it were, easiness, with the idea of the fatherliness that is in God, is altogether an error; neither should any place be given to it. "If ye call on the Father, who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear." The Father's heart did demand an atoning sacrifice. Is not this clear, if the worship in relation to which the victim's blood was shed, is, indeed, sonship? The Father's heart did demand the shedding of blood in order to the remission of sins, because it demanded blood in which justice would be rendered to the fatherliness which had been sinned against, and which, therefore, would have virtue in it to purge our spirits from their unfilial state, and to purify us in respect of the pollution that attaches to us as rebellious children.

We might, indeed, say, that the Father's heart asked for an atonement for our sin, simply on the ground that it desired us back to itself, and therefore, desired a living way of return for us, and one related in its nature to the nature of our departure, in order that our return might be--a real return; and that such a way could only be that which was opened by the Son of God, when He confessed the sins of God's rebellious children as the Son, who abides ever in the bosom of the Father, alone could: for He, indeed, alone could know the exceeding sinfulness of our sins, and feel regarding them in that mind, the fellowship of which would be to us our purgation from them. But this moral and spiritual impossibility of our returning to the Father of our spirits, except on such a path as this which Christ has opened for us through the rent veil of His flesh, and in the power of that endless life in which He is related to us as our High Priest over the house of God,--this impossibility in respect of the very constitution of our spiritual being, can only be the counterpart of a necessity in the divine nature, in respect of which, the right feelings of the Father of spirits must be conceived of as demanding that expiation which we are now contemplating, rendering it impossible that He should receive us with welcome and acknowledgement, if coming by any other path than the fellowship of that expiation. God's righteous glory in us, no less than our special and peculiar blessedness in God as redeemed sinners, implies that in our consciousness in drawing near to God, our future shall not be cut off from our past. Therefore, that is not to be in time or in eternity; nor is our life of sonship in its highest development to be without the element of the remembrance, that we did not from the first cry Abba, Father; "Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion, for ever and ever. Amen." We may say, that without the shedding of the blood of Christ, the Father of spirits could not receive back to the bosom of His love His rebellious children, as well as that without the shedding of the blood of Christ, it was morally and spiritually impossible for them to return. For these, indeed, are but two aspects of one spiritual truth.

What I thus labour to impress on the mind of my reader is, that the necessity for the atonement which we are contemplating, was moral and spiritual, arising out of our relation to God as the Father of spirits; and not merely legal, arising out of our being under the law. In truth, its existence as a legal necessity, arose out of its existence as a moral and spiritual necessity: therefore, the legal difficulty is to be contemplated as what could be, and has been, removed only in connexion with, and because of, the removal of the spiritual difficulty. In other words, we have remission of our sins in the blood of Christ, only because that blood has consecrated for us a way into the holiest, and in this relation, and in this alone, can remission of sins be understood.

Therefore, it is altogether an error to associate weakness and easiness with the fatherliness of God, and severity and stern demand with His character as a moral governor. What severity, what fixedness of righteous demand has to be calculated upon, is to be seen as first in the Father, and then in the moral governor, because in the Father. And, although there had been in the universe but one moral being related to God as each of us is, and though God should be contemplated in His dealing with that individual being as acting exclusively as the Father of that spirit, seeking to realise the yearning of His fatherly heart in relation to that spirit,--the necessity for the atonement would, as respected that individual, have been still what it has been; nor could the fulfilment of the Father's desire for that one man have been possible, otherwise than through the opening of that fountain for sin and for uncleanness which is presented to our faith in the shedding of Christ's blood. And I never expect to see the real righteous severity of God truly and healthfully realised, and the unchangeable and essential conditions of salvation apprehended, and hope cherished only in being conformed to them, until the blood of Christ is thus seen in its direct relation to our participation in eternal life.

So far is it from being the case, that giving the root place to our relation to God as the fountain of life and the Father of spirits, and subordinating the relation in which we stand to Him as a Lawgiver and as a Sovereign,--so far is this from introducing weakness into our conceptions of the moral and spiritual laws of the kingdom of God, that it is the seeing the Father in the Son, and the desire of the Father for us realised in the Son, which ultimately and absolutely shuts us up to the faith, that there is for us but one path of life, because but one path to the Father. "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." These words of the Son, who dwelleth in the bosom of the Father, heard as shedding light on the kingdom of God, reveal a fixed and immutable constitution of things. No words can be more exclusive, more unbending, more remote from all opening of a door to the hope of being easily dealt with,--the hope of experiencing a soft, accommodating indulgence, that in weak tenderness would bend the divine requirement to what we are.

"No man cometh unto the Father but by me,"--these words raise us up to a region in which there is, there can be, nothing arbitrary. A sovereign Lord and moral governor, appointing laws and enforcing them by the administration of a system of rewards and punishments, may be contemplated as severe and uncompromising in the exercise of his righteous rule,--but he may also be thought of as merciful and considerate of individual cases; and the outward and arbitrary nature of the rewards and punishments which he is believed to dispense makes his awarding the former on easier terms, and withholding or mitigating the latter according to circumstances,--and, it may be, under the influence of mercy,--what can be supposed, and what, in thinking of God as such a governor and Lord, and of ourselves as the subjects of His rule, we can turn to the thought of with a vague hope. And such a governor and Lord God is in the ordinary thoughts of men, and such a vague hope towards God is the ordinary hope of men. And on such a conception of their relation to God have men ignorantly engrafted the gospel,--conceiving of it as giving a special and definite form to the indefinite combination of judgment and mercy, which has sustained that vague hope of salvation which they had cherished. But the gospel, truly apprehended, raises us into another and a higher region,-a region, indeed, in which divine mercy or clemency, as previously conceived of, is felt to have been but as the dimmest twilight of kindness and goodwill towards men, in comparison of the noonday light of the love of the Father of spirits to His offspring,--but a region also in which no arbitrary dealing with us can find a place. In the light that shines in that region, it is clear to us, that the relation between the blessedness that is seen there, and the rightness that is recognised there, is fixed and immutable. So that the liberty which, in the lower region, we ascribed to mercy, is here found not to belong to love; nor the discretion which we ventured to attribute to the righteous governor, found to pertain to the loving Father; but, on the contrary, the law of the Father--the principle on which happiness is dispensed, by Him to His offspring as His offspring--is found to be fixed and altogether unbending, incapable of accommodation in a way of pity, or indulgence, or consideration of circumstances. "No man cometh unto the Father but by the Son." All modification of this law is impossible; for sonship and fatherliness are mutually related in an eternal relation. The Father, as the Father, can only receive His offspring to Himself as coming to Him in the spirit of sonship;--neither otherwise than as coming in the spirit of sonship can they in spirit and in truth draw near to Him.

I have spoken of a way into the holiest as what must have its nature determined by the nature of holiness; so a way to the Father must have its nature determined by the nature of fatherliness. These are two aspects of one spiritual reality; a reality, reader, which we must steadfastly contemplate, to the certainty and fixedness of which we must be reconciled,--a reality in the light of which we must see the free pardon of sin and redeeming love, and all the divine mercy to us sinners which the gospel reveals. In that lower moral region to which I have referred, in which men are not dealing with the Father of spirits, but with the moral governor of the universe, (but whose moral government, while thus not illumined by the light of His fatherliness, is never understood,) we may be occupied with the punishment of sin and the rewards of righteousness, in a way that permits us to connect the atonement directly with the idea of punishment and reward, and invests it simply with the interest of that desire to escape punishment and to be assured of happiness, which may, even in the lowest spiritual state, be strong and lively in us. But if we will come to the atonement, not venturing in our darkness to predetermine anything as to its nature, but expecting light to shine upon our spirits from it, even the light of eternal life; if we will suffer it to inform us by its own light why we needed it, and what its true value to us is, the punishment of sin will fall into its proper place, as testifying to the existence of an evil greater than itself, even sin; from which greater evil it is the direct object of the atonement to deliver us,--deliverance from punishment being but a secondary result. And the reward of righteousness will be raised in our conceptions from the character of something that can be ours by the adjudication of the judge on arbitrary grounds which mercy may recommend, to its true dignity as that blessedness which is essentially inherent in righteousness, and in that glorifying and enjoying of God of which righteousness alone is the capacity, and which no name, nor title, nor arbitrary arrangement, can confer.

The atonement, thus seen by its own light, is not what in our darkness we desired; but it soon reconciles us to itself, for it sets us right as to the true secret of well being. A spiritual constitution of things that would have been more accommodating to what we were through sin, we soon see as precluded alike by the nature of God, and the nature of man in its relation to the nature of God,--a relation, to violate which would not be the salvation, but the destruction of man. We, indeed, see ourselves encompassed by necessities, instead of flexible, compromising; weak tendernesses; but they are necessities to which we are altogether reconciled, for we are reconciled to God. One has said, "It is a profitable sweet necessity to be forced on the naked arm of Jehovah." That "no man cometh to the Father but by the Son" is the great and all-including necessity that is revealed to us by the atonement. But, as combined with the gift of the Son to us as the living way to the Father, we rejoice to find ourselves shut up to "so great salvation."