are united to Christ by faith, that is, are in a justified state. Without faith it is impossible to please God. We are accepted in the Beloved. As an honest action can only be performed by an honest man, so a good work can only proceed from one who is himself good. The whole world is by nature guilty before God; there is none righteous, no, not one; in our flesh dwelleth no good thing; our best righteousnesses are as filthy rags in God's sight. None but such as are in Christ can serve God in newness of spirit, can yield him the obedience of faith; and to suppose any other kind of obedience to be acceptable, is to fancy that He who looks on the heart will be pleased with the performance without the principle, the shadow without the substance, the body without the spirit. Moreover, the notion that good works are meritorious is expressly contradicted by scripture. On nothing is the bible more full and explicit. The assertions are so express, that only the most inveterate prejudice can mistake their import or evade their force. Before the efficacy of good works to secure the pardon of sin can be held with any plausibility, its advocates would do well to have certain plain affirmations blotted from the records of divine truth. By the deeds of the law there shall be no flesh justified in his sight. And if by grace, then is it no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace: but if it be of works, then it is no more grace; otherwise work is no more work. As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse. Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Rom. iii. 20. xi. 6. Gal. iii. 10. Eph. ii. 9.) Such is the insufficiency of those other grounds of pardon which have been supposed to render atonement unnecessary, or, rather, have been proposed as substitutes for the atonement of Christ. If, by the previous remarks on this subject, we are warned against entertaining insulated views of the divine perfections, and defective notions of God's moral government, by that we have just been considering, are we put on our guard against trusting to repentance or future amendment of life, as a meritorious ground of forgiveness. What impious presumption do such thoughts imply! How perilous the state of those who rest their soul's eternal interests on the daring experiment of supplanting the righteousness of God's own Son by worth of their own! God grant that we may have deeper impressions of the evil of sin, and humbler views of ourselves than such presumption supposes! The heathen themselves may well reprove such impiety; for the existence among them of expiatory sacrifices, indicates a universal sense of the inefficacy of other things to secure pardon to offenders, and of the necessity of something more than pardon and good works, to appease the anger of their divinities. The fact itself is highly instructive, and should put to shame those pretended Christians who would set aside altogether the plan of a propitiatory mediation. IV. With the views already taken of the necessity of the atonement, agree the assertions of holy writ. The following are a specimen. Luke xxiv. 26. " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" The sufferings of the Redeemer are here spoken of by himself as being necessary. Such is the meaning of "Ought not ;" oxide. The verb denotes necessity in the strict and proper sense of the term. Necesse est, oportet, opus est, ita, ut vel necessitas absoluta vel relativa indicetur? (Scleusner.) The necessity is not absolute, but relative. It springs not from any personal sin on the part of Christ; but from God's sovereign and free determination to pardon the sins of those in whose room he stood, as well as from those scripture predictions in which his determination had been made known and which required to be fulfilled. Heb. ii. 10. " For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." Here we have an object proposed, "bringing many sons to glory," or the salvation of a number of the human family; the manner in which the object is accomplished, by "making the Captain of Salvation perfect through sufferings," that is, by the sufferings of Christ, who is undoubtedly meant by the Captain of Salvation ;* and the necessity that exists for taking this method of effecting the end, "it became him for whom all things, and by whom are all things." Necessity is the idea expressed by the original term, ingene. It is fit, decorous, becoming, proper. The ground έπρεπε. of this fitness is the character of God-" it became him." There was a moral fitness or propriety arising from the nature, will, and government of God, that Christ should suffer, if men were to be saved. Any other way would not have been befitting the Divine Being. A stronger necessity than what is founded on the nature of God, cannot be conceived; and such necessity we have here adduced by the inspired apostle for the sufferings or atonement of Christ. Heb. viii. 3. "For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that this man ȧpxyds is used in the New Testament only with reference to Christ. Acts iii. 15. v. 31. Heb. xii. 2. 135 have somewhat also to offer." The person spoken of as "this man," or this one (rotov,) i. e. this high priest is Christ. What is said of him is, his having "somewhat to offer," some gift or sacrifice to present to God as an atonement for the sins of his people. And for this, there is stated to exist a strong necessity" it is of necessity"-ávayxaĭov. The term expresses the strongest moral necessity, what cannot be dispensed with-indispensable. Not only to fulfil the type, to complete the office of high priest, but to satisfy the law and justice of God, on which account he assumed this office, was it necessary that Christ should offer an atoning sacrifice. Heb. ix. 22, 23. "And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. It was, therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these." A grand general principle, in the moral economy is here laid down-WITHOUT SHEDDING Of blood is no rEMISSION. The terms are most explicit; it is not repentance, it is not amendment, but the shedding of blood,-atonement,-without which there is no remission of the guilt or punishment of sin. It is spoken of, to be sure, in connexion with the ceremonies of the typical law; but the remission of the temporal penalty, due to ceremonial offences, by means of typical blood, was prefigurative, if that dispensation had any meaning, of the irreconcilable opposition of the divine holiness and justice to sin, and of the necessity of Christ's death to the remission of the eternal punishment due to the breach of God's moral law. Hence arose a necessity that there should be sacrifices of a typical nature to secure the privileges of the ceremonial economy. Whence it is inferred, that a sacrifice of superior intrinsic worth and relative value, was necessary to the enjoyment of communion with God here and of heavenly glory hereafter,—those high and glorious privileges of which the others were only shadows. The plural number" better sacrifices"-presents no obstacle to the one offering of Christ being understood; when it is recollected that the plural for the singular is, in scripture, a not uncommon enallage, used to denote worth or dignity; and more particularly when it is considered that here the sacrifice of Christ stands in antithetical connexion with the sacrifices of the law, as that which fulfilled what these only typified. THE END. |