The Christadelphian, September 1873, Robert Roberts

“Good Words and Fair Speeches Which Deceive the Hearts of the Simple”

A Fair Speech.—In the death of Christ, God accepted the sacrifice of an unforfeited life, in order that forfeited lives might not die.

Reflections thereon, showing the fair speech to be a delusion.

It is not lives, but persons that are condemned by the law of sin and death. “Lives” in such a connection is synonymous with “persons.” Who a person is, and what are his relations, depends entirely upon ‘nature’ and not on life in the abstract. A cow will convert the same air and the same food into a different “life” (so stated) from man. The air and food (which are the elements of “life”) will become cow-nature if assimilated by the cow, and man-nature if assimilated by a man. All depends upon the vital machinery, or organization.

Christ was the nature of David, Abraham and Adam (Heb. 2.), and you cannot speak of his life as a something separate from that nature. The sacrifice of his life consisted of the offering up of his body, which was a living body before and a dead body after crucifixion. That body as the seed of David was a body of “the flesh of sin,” and inherited the condemnation inhering in the flesh of sin. Therefore he bore our sins in his own body on the tree.—(1 Peter 2:24.)

If it was his life (so called) that suffered condemnation, he did not bear our condemnation, for our condemnation rests on the flesh, substance, or nature by which we are mortal, and not on the life; and if it was his “life” that was offered for sin, “life” must be the thing condemned, and we are compelled to suppose that immortal-soulism is not so far wrong, which regards the life-essence as the sinner and the thing condemned, and the body as a mere place where it resides for a short time. In fact we are conducted to the very threshold of immortal-soulism.

But this talk of “life” having moral relations as distinct from body, is a fiction; we only argue it thus, in accommodation to the language which would entrap with good words and fair speeches.

BUT WORSE THAN ALL.

Look at this:—

An “unforfeited life” ought not to be sacrificed, and “forfeited” lives ought not to escape.

The “good words and fair speeches” say that God required an “unforfeited” life to be sacrificed; in consideration of which, He will allow “forfeited lives” to escape. Therefore they teach that God requires, in the one case and in the other, that which

OUGHT NOT TO BE DONE.

They teach that God’s plan of action is to

DO EVIL THAT GOOD MAY COME.

Though the Scriptures teach concerning those who hold this doctrine that “their damnation is just.”—(Rom. 3:8.) But

GOD’S WAY

Is perfect and good, and in harmony with all His revealed principles of action. Christ was in the condemned nature of David, Abraham and Adam. Therefore when he died, that happened which

OUGHT TO BE.

God’s law was not violated in the death of Christ. On the contrary, it was upheld and made honourable. The glorious sequel which was proposed, could come without compromise, without dishonour, without anything taking place which ought not to take place. This was the Father’s way that God might retain His place towards sinners, and yet sinners be saved. Christ rose because he was an holy one, and it was not possible in the workings of God, that an holy one should be holden of death.—(Acts 2:24.) Being raised, it was his part to carry on the work to its further stages in relation to sinners. God worked to Christ and Christ works to us. He is the mediator—the one between, and because he is the Father in manifestation, it is God in Christ working; and what does God in Christ require? That we relinquish our connection with the condemned Adam, and put on the name of the new Adam, in whom the condemnation of the old is escaped by resurrection. Baptism is this requirement in its ceremonial compliance. Having killed, we bury the old man in the grave of Christ, and rise to union with the new. If there were no risen new Adam, whose life we might partake by association, we could not be saved,

EVEN THOUGH CHRIST DIED.

Here again we put the good word and fair speeches into the crucible. The good words and fair speeches say that Christ gave an unforfeited life to die that forfeited ones might escape. If this were true (to entertain for one moment the thought of folly) what follows? That the “forfeited” lives were free as soon as the “unforfeited” life was sacrificed; and depended not at all upon the resurrection of Christ. According to the good words and fair speeches, the moral right of the “forfeited” lives to live everlastingly, was complete when the “unforfeited life” was sacrificed. How stand they then in relation to the declaration of the Spirit of God, that “if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain and ye are yet in your sins”—(1 Cor. 15:17); that “he was raised again for our justification” (Rom. 4:25); that the Father hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3); “and because I live, ye shall live also.”—(John 14:19.)

According to the good words and fair speeches,

THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST WAS UNNECESSARY.

According to the truth, our

SALVATION WAS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT IT:

for our salvation depended on sin being condemned in its own flesh, in the person of a sinless sin-bearer, who should afterwards escape the condemnation by resurrection, and be a name for all the sons of Adam to run into, in which they might, through the forbearance of God, in the forgiveness of their sins, obtain a title to that eternal life realised in one of their own nature, in whom God dwelt and opened a way in His love for our escape without violating the principles of His wisdom.

A “SEDAN” FOR THE NEW THEORY.

Christ bore the whole condemnation of his brethren.

Part of that whole is the Adamic condemnation.

Therefore,

The Adamic condemnation was on him equally with the Mosaic and individual.

“Iniquities laid on Him”

This is a figurative description of what was literally done in God sending forth His Son, made of a woman (Adamic), made under the law (Mosaic) to die under the combined curse, that God’s way might be upheld while salvation was given by his resurrection. To give a literal construction to a figure of speech always leads to error.

Iniquities are immoral acts. You cannot lay acts on another, but you may lay the consequences, which is metonymically laying themselves.

The total consequences of “our iniquities” is death. This was laid on Jesus in his being made of our nature, under the curse to die. The orthodox (and also the new theory) construction of this is that our iniquities as so many separate debts incurred, were taken by Christ, and discharged in full, setting the original debtors free. If this were true, remission would have been every man’s possession as soon as Christ died; whereas it is no man’s possession till he believe and obey the gospel. Baptism is “for the remission of sins.” Not only so, but forgiveness, in such a theory, is impossible; for you cannot say a creditor forgives a debt which has been paid by someone else. But God does forgive. He was “in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, “not imputing their trespasses to them.” Sin having been condemned in him “on the tree,” God’s authority is upheld, and His way magnified, and forgiveness brought within our reach in the new name, without compromise. “Him hath God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God . . that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth.”—(Rom. 3:25.)

In What Respect was the Death of Christ Voluntary?

Much stress is laid by the upholders of the “life” heresy, on the statement of Christ, “I lay down my life . . . no man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.” It is argued from this that Christ need not have died. In this the bearing of his words is misapplied, as will appear at a glance. It is the relation of human possibility to his death that Christ has in view. He seems to say, that as a matter of power no man could do anything against him if he chose to resist. As he said to Pilate, “thou couldst have no power against me, except it were given thee from above.” He voluntarily submitted to their violence, which it was in his power to escape. In this, no man took his life: he laid it down.

But the case appears in a different light when we come to consider the Father’s will. This submission was not voluntary in the same sense on this side of the question. The Father required it of him; as he says, “commandment have I received of my Father.” This fact comes out strikingly at the crisis of his agony. He prayed earnestly that the cup might pass from him; “nevertheless” added he “not my will but Thine be done.” Compliance with that will required his submission to a violent death, even the death of the cross; for by this, it had been divinely arranged he might come under, and so bear away the curse of the law of Moses, and redeem them that were under the curse of the law. By this also, it was required that his obedience should be brought to a perfect test. As saith Paul “he became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him.”—(Phil. 2:8.)

When he said “I lay down my life, no man taketh it from me,” he only intimated beforehand that his crucifixion was no mere triumph of violence, but the submission of his own will to what the Father required. The declaration is not inconsistent with the truth that he was born under the curse of Adam, that he might in death bear it away.

The Law and its Weakness

Paul says, Romans 7:10, that “the law (or commandment) was ordained to life.” That this means eternal life is proved by an incident several times recorded, (Matt. 19:16; Mark 10:17; Luke 18:18, ) namely, that a certain young man came to Jesus and said “good master, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? Jesus answered, If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder,” &c. Here we have the declaration of Jesus that the keeping of the law would have led to life eternal. How are we to reconcile this with the fact that the supposed keeper of the commandments was Adamically condemned? The answer is that such a person would have been in the position of Jesus himself; death would have purified him from the Adamic condemnation, and righteousness would have admitted of his resurrection.

How comes it then that eternal life could not come by the law (as Paul plainly says in Galatians 3:21)? Paul answers this question, by saying that the law could not do it “in that it was weak through the flesh”—that is the flesh in Adam’s descendants was incapable of perfect obedience. If it kept some, it broke other requirements. Its righteousness was altogether as filthy rags.—(Isaiah 64:6.) When Paul spoke of being blameless, “touching the righteousness which is of the law,” he did not contradict what he said in Romans 7. “that sin, by the law, slew him.” He merely intimated that so far as his general course in the law, as a Jew was concerned, his fellow-countrymen could impute no blame to him. Now, a single offence against the law, was equivalent in its results to a breach of the whole, for the law enacted “cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them” (Gal. 3:10, ) and again, “he that offendeth in one point is guilty of all.”—(James 2:10.) Now, because there never lived a man who kept the law spotless (the flesh being unequal to the task), the law was weak through the flesh. It could do nothing in opening the way to life, because human nature was too weak to keep it. This was of design. Paul expressly tells us that “the law entered that the offence might abound.”—(Romans 5:20.) The situation was divinely contrived that God’s magnanimity might come into play for our salvation and His own glory. Paul’s words are “The law entered that the offence might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, that as sin hath reigned unto death even so might grace (or favour) reign unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” And again, “What things soever the law saith, it saith to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world become guilty before God.”—(Romans 3:19.) “What therefore the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh” God himself has done, not by setting aside the law of Moses, nor by setting aside the law of Eden, but by raising for himself a holy one under both, who in dying could bear the curse of both, because his perfect obedience admitted of the Father’s raising him from the dead. The Father’s honour thus vindicated and the Father’s mercy thus brought forward, the Father invites to forgiveness and salvation all who recognise their position, and accept the Lord Jesus, “who of God is (thus) made unto us, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that according as it is written let him that glorieth glory in the Lord.”—(1 Cor. 1:30.)

Life as a Ransom

Jesus says he came “to give his life a ransom for many.” This is one of those figures of speech with which the Lord’s discourse on earth abounded. It is based upon the custom of demanding a price for the release of captives. To construe the words on the basis of this literal fact, is to destroy the doctrine of which it is a figurative expression. There is no literal tyrant anywhere holding the human race in bondage, who will be satisfied with the payment of any ransom to let them go. Literally, it is God who holds man in death because of disobedience. He himself proposed their release, and Jesus is the illustration of the way of His wisdom in the matter. He sent him forth in the nature of the condemned, that sin might be condemned in him. Hence he was “made sin, ” (2 Cor. 5:21, ) and when he died, “he died unto sin, ” (Romans 6:10, ) and when he comes again, he comes without sin.—(Heb. 9:28.) Regarding sin in a figure, as the captor of the human race, the death of Christ is in the same figure, a ransom; but it is a ransom in harmony with the revealed principle of action in the case, viz. the death of a sinless wearer of the condemned nature; and not a ransom in the ordinary literal sense; for this ransom was only made effective for the deliverance of the captives by that resurrection to life again which his sinlessness allowed. Every element of truth can be packed in the same box. In a wrong treatment of any truth, all the parts wont pack: of which we have illustration in many orthodox cases; and now, in the new interpretation of the Son of Man giving his life a ransom for many.

Editor.

The Spiritual Substance of a Review Lately Published by the Editor in Defence of the Faith

As children of Adam, we inherit his condemnation, but we did not forfeit our lives in him. We have forfeited our lives since by transgression. In addition to inheriting Adam’s condemnation, we are personally transgressors, and therefore cannot of ourselves escape from the law that appoints death as the penalty of transgression. But Jesus was not personally a transgressor. Hence, though he inherited the condemned nature of Adam, God could “justly” deliver him from death after he had died. His death met the requirements of the Adamic and Mosaic curses which were both on him: his personal sinlessness ensured his resurrection. And thus is apparent the answer to the question: “Has the fact (that God was the Father of Jesus) no value?” Great value indeed. We could not have been saved but for this. God thus saves us. God is the Saviour by Christ. If Jesus had not been the Son of God, Jesus would have been a sinner, as shewn by the fact that all men born of the flesh are sinners without exception. The value of Christ’s divine extraction lies in its result—the sinlessness of the Lamb of God. Was any other man ever sinless? How came this man to be without sin? “By sheer determination,” says the new theory; but (supposing the gracelessness of such an answer is passed over,) how came he to be possessed of a “sheer determination” that no other man ever possessed? Christ supplies the answer: “Ye (the Jews) are from beneath: I am from above. Ye are of this world; I am not of this world. . . . I do nothing of myself, but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things, and He that sent me is with me . . . I speak that which I have seen with my Father, and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. . . . If God were your Father ye would love me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but He sent me.”—(John 8:23, 28, 42.) “The Son can do nothing of himself but what he seeth the Father do; for whatsoever things He doeth, these things also doeth the Son likewise.”—(John 5:19.) The secret of Christ’s power lay in his connection with the Father, both by begettal and subsequent indwelling of the Spirit, which established unity between them. This it is that makes Christ’s work the Father’s work—God in him and by him, “through the eternal Spirit” (Heb. 9:14), accomplishing the work of reconciliation.

And here it is that the glory is to God manifest in the flesh and not to man. God produced a sinless man. Granted the sinlessness was due to the volition of the man Jesus, but this volition was the result of what God did in the womb of Mary and afterwards on Jordan’s banks. And this sinless man so produced was in condemned human nature, as even the new theory now concedes.

The suggestion that Jesus “inherited Adam’s nature” without inheriting Adam’s life, is absurd! What is the nature of Adam? Paul tells us: “The first man, Adam, was made a living soul.” “Living soul,” therefore, defines his “nature:” the living element is a part of it, without which it ceases to be Adam’s nature, but becomes the inorganic dust from which it was at first fabricated.

A strained distinction between life and the organism which develops it will logically land in immortal-soulism. Condemnation fell on “Adam’s flesh?” as evidenced in the words of the sentence, “Dust thous art.” Adam’s flesh was Adam, containing blood which was the life of the flesh, oxygenised from without, and supplied with food from the elements of vital combustion. It was not Adam’s life in the abstract that was condemned; it was his flesh; his nature: by affecting which, its tenure of life was shortened. The life of all flesh, in the abstract, is the same, and is of God, and cannot, in the abstract, be condemned. It may be compared to water in a vessel. Make a hole in the glass, and the water runs out. Condemnation is knocking a hole in the vessel. Or steam in an engine: derange the parts, and it works crankily, while the same steam will work a sound machine all right.

If Jesus inherited Adam’s nature (which is admitted), he certainly inherited Adam’s life, which is the principal element of that nature. God built a man from Mary’s nature who should meet all the requirements of the situation, in view of His purpose to save the condemned; of which we shall see more anon.

Adam’s nature was condemned to die, and Jesus was a divine form of that condemned nature for the meeting of the condemnation in a way that would admit of its salvation. The production of this form was no ordinary operation, and is not to be judged by the laws of physiology. It was the act of the Eternal Spirit which antecedes, and has made, and when need be, overrides the laws of physiology. All we know and need to know in the matter is, that the Spirit quickened Mary’s womb, impressing on the human ovum a certain latent impress of the image of the Invisible, on the basis of which, the babe came forth the Son of God, in the nature of Adam—the whole nature of Adam, not a part—for the bearing of the condemnation inherited by that nature. This was “the body prepared,” and this the purpose.

That purpose is indeed the key to the whole matter. What is the purpose? To save men from a law of God’s own imposing, but on a principle that does not upset or compromise it, and that while upholding the majesty of God’s own government, presents Himself in the front, as the Benefactor of man, that the glory may be to Him (as it in reason ought to be) and not to man, who, as a mere creature existing by Him, cannot take the glory.

What does the new theory say? That God destroyed a life that ought not to have been destroyed; in consideration of which, He is to allow to live a million lives that ought not to live. This is the old orthodox heresy of substitution, the only difference being, that death instead of torment is accepted in “satisfaction.” It is the old insult to God, representing Him as winking at the violation of His own laws; accepting a compromise; destroying where He ought not to destroy, and saving alive where He ought not to save alive.

We have been delivered from this blasphemy by the revival, in our day, by the instrumentality of Dr. Thomas, of the sublime doctrine of Godmanifestation in the flesh, for the condemnation of sin in the flesh, that the poor flesh may be saved, without stultifying the working of God towards it, or leaving it room to glory. This doctrine is a true one, and not to be imperilled by parley with a plausible but hostile theory that comes as an angel of light; to whom we give place by subjection, no not for an hour.

The evidence of it is complete in the few facts already conceded, if there were no other. The Spirit so to speak, arrays itself with the nature of Adam which is the nature condemned. The Son of God is thus no substitute, but the very bearer of the condemnation. Though personally sinless, he was by constitution condemned, and had therefore to offer for himself and his brethren.

This is proved in various ways. There is the declaration of Paul that God sent him forth in the flesh and blood of the children to condemn sin in the flesh.—(Rom. 8:4.) Next, the corresponding statement that he took on him the seed of Abraham that “through death he might destroy that having the power of death.”—(Heb. 2:17, 14.) Next the statement of Peter that he bore our sins in his own body on the tree.—(1 Pet. 2:24.) Next Paul: He hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin.—(2 Cor. 5:21.)

Then there are those statements which shew that it was the body, and not the life, that was the sin-bearing element in the Messiah’s death. “A body hast thou prepared me . . . we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once.”—(Heb. 10:5, 10.) “A new and living way which he hath made new for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.”—(Heb. 10:20.) “This is my body which is given for you.”—(Luke 22:19.) “The bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.”—(John 6:51.)

Another class of evidence exists in those statements which show that Jesus had himself to be saved: “In the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared.” “Though he were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things that he suffered. And being made perfect—(He was perfected on the third day when he rose to immortality)—he became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him.”—(Heb. 5:7–9.) “By his own blood, (that is, by death) he entered at once into the holy place, having (thus) obtained eternal redemption” (‘for us,’ is not in the original.)—(Heb. 9:12.)

Then we have the declaration of Paul that Christ “needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first, for his own sins, and then for the people, for this he did once”—(Heb. 7:27). Paul’s statement is that Jesus did once what the typical high-priest did daily. What was that? “Offered first for his own sins and then for the people’s.” It follows that there must be a sense in which Jesus offered for himself also, a sense which is apparent when it is recognised that he was under Adamic condemnation, inhering in his flesh.

Finally, and conclusively, is the sort of evidence obtainable from that Mosaic system of things which Paul says has its substance in Christ (Col. 2:17)—is a shadow of good things to come (Heb. 10:1)—is “the form of the knowledge and of the truth,” (Rom. 2:20, ) “the pattern of things in the heavens (Heb. 9:23). Jesus expounded to the disciples, from the law of Moses, the things concerning his death, saying, “Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer.”—(Luke 24:44, 46.) We have, therefore, a good example for applying to the same source on the same subject. And we do so under excellent guidance; for Paul, by the Spirit, has given us sundry hints, which as so many keys, open up to us the significances that are contained in “the example and shadow of heavenly things.”—(Heb. 8:5.)

For instance, he tells us that the vail of the sanctuary was representative of the flesh of Christ: “a new and living way, which he hath made new for us through the vail; that is to say, his flesh.”—(Heb. 10:20.) This is confirmed by the fact recorded, that at the moment of Christ’s death, “the veil of the temple was rent in twain.”—(Luke 23:45.) Now what was the composition of the symbolic veil, which had its spiritual substance in the body of Christ? We are informed at Ex. 26:31: “Thou shalt make a veil of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine-twined linen.” What is the significance of those colours? We are not without guidance. Blue is healing (Prov. 20:30), expressing that aspect of the body of Christ, “by whose stripes we are healed;” purple is royalty (John 19:2, 5; Jud. 8:26); showing his extraction from a kingly house: scarlet, what is the moral significance of this, as a type? Sin always. “Though your sins be as scarlet.”—(Isaiah 1:18.) “Scarlet-coloured beast.”—(Rev. 17:3.) The new theory makes no provision for this. His being the sin nature of the condemned Adam explains it: but this the new theory denies, and, in so doing, denies the truth. The fine-twined linen finds its counterpart in the righteousness of Christ.

Again; Paul writes: “The bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary, by the High Priest for sin, are burnt without the camp. Wherefore, Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.”—(Heb. 13:11.) Here is a parallel between the burnt bullocks, as the type, and the slain body of Jesus as the antitype. Now, let us mark the facts connected with “the bodies of those beasts,” in their significance with regard to the body of Christ. “Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke. And ye shall give her unto Eleazer the priest, that he may bring her forth without the camp, and one shall slay her before his face . . . . And one shall burn the heifer in his sight: her skin and her flesh and her blood with her dung shall he burn. And the priest shall take cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet and cast it in the midst of the burning of the heifer. Then the priest shall wash his clothes and shall bathe his flesh in water, and afterwards he shall come into the camp and the priest shall be unclean until the even. And he that burneth her . . . shall be unclean unto the even. . . . It is a purification for sin. He that gathereth the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until the even.” Everyone who had to do with “the bodies of those beasts burnt without the camp” (for the purification of sins) contracted uncleanness by contact with the bodies. Now, the type being so wholly unclean, what is the uncleanness of the anti-type? The heifer was without spot and had never been put under yoke, pointing to the sinlessness of Christ and of the fact that he was brought into the world for the service of God alone; but what counterpart had the uncleanness? The answer is found in the fact that he was “the seed of Abraham,” the flesh of David,—the sin-nature of the condemned Adam, for the condemnation of sin in the flesh. The condemnation rested on him, which was the uncleanness, and this antitypical uncleanness of the “one great offering” could only be cleansed after the example of the type—by death and burning: the burning being the change effected by the Spirit on the risen body of the Lord after his death for sin. The new theory contains no parallel to this uncleanness of the typical “bodies of those beasts burnt without the camp.”

So with the two goats (Lev. 16:15, 21, 26): the one that was burnt without the camp was unclean, necessitating ablution on the part of the man who carried out the body to be burnt; and the one that was allowed to escape alive into the wilderness, as the sin-bearer of the people, imparted uncleanness to the man who let her go. The sins were ceremonially put upon the goats before the goats were fit for sin-bearing, testifying before-hand that there is no such thing as substitution, but that death can only come where condemnation is, and that the antitypical sin-bearer must be clothed with the condemned nature before he could suffer the condemnation.

But not only the bodies of the beasts, the whole system of the law was pre-figurative of Christ. Thus, the priest was his type (Heb. 9:11); the brazen altar was his type (Heb. 13:10); the tabernacle was his type (Heb. 8:2; 9:9–11); so with the golden altar of incense, the mercy seat, and the whole furniture of the sanctuary.—(Heb. 9:1–9.)

Now in view of this, the fact has to be noted that the whole had to be atoned for once a year.—(Lev. 16.) Aaron was first to offer a bullock for himself and his household.—(verse Lev. 16:6.) He was then to offer a goat for the people.—(Lev. 16:15.) He was then to make an atonement for the holy place.—(Lev. 16:16.) He was then to go out unto the altar that is before the Lord, and make an atonement for it, touching it with blood.—(Lev. 16:18.) In short, he was to “make an atonement for the holy sanctuary, for the tabernacle of the congregation, and for the altar, and for the priests and for all the people of the congregation.”—(Lev. 16:33.) As Paul expresses it (Heb. 9:22), “Almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the pattern of things in the heavens (that is the things pertaining to the law) should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.” Now Jesus was the substance of all these. He was “the heavenly things” in compendium; and the testimony of the law argued out by Paul, is that before his sacrifice, they were unclean, and had to be purified by his sacrifice. The exact meaning of this is not obscure when it is recognised that Jesus was the sin-nature or sinful flesh of Adam, inheriting with it the condemnation clinging to it; that sin being thus laid on him he might die for it. He bore in himself the uncleanness of the sanctuary, the altar, the high priest, his own house, and of the whole congregation; for he was born under their curse, being born in their nature, and could therefore bear it. A theory takes all this away, which says that he was not under the curse at all.

Jesus was born a Jew to redeem those that were under the law. How did he redeem them that were under the law? Was it by dying to compromise a law that had no hold on him? No. Paul states the matter clearly: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us:” how? “It is written, cursed is he that hangeth on a tree.”—(Gal. 3:13.) So that in the mode of his death, he came under the actual personal curse of the law. Now, as brother Smith pithily asked: If it was necessary that Jesus should come under the actual curse of the law of Moses to redeem them that were under it, how can he redeem them that were under the Adamic curse except on the same principle, that is, of coming actually under it? The answer is obvious and is fatal to a new theory, which, as Dr. Thomas says, “destroys the sacrifice of Christ.”

The process of generating the new race began by God manifesting Himself in the nature of the old, for the condemnation of sin in a way admitting of its deliverance conformably with His ways; and surely it needs no great argument to prove that in the days of his flesh, in the days of his weakness, Jesus was not a specimen of the glorious, powerful, incorruptible and immortal race that will yet inhabit this globe under his visible leadership.

As has been said, “a mere babe in the word must know why Jesus came from Mary.” The substitution theory cannot explain it. It would be satisfied with an uncondemned new man made fresh from the ground. But the truth requires the sin-nature of condemned Adam to suffer the death to which it is subject, in a Holy One whom the Father could raise, being well pleased with Him.

Jesus opened the way to life by perfect obedience. In plain words, though under condemnation, by the power of God, who he was in manifestation, he earned resurrection; for “by man came also the resurrection of the dead.” By this blessed arrangement he could die under the condemnation, and yet look to the opened way of resurrection. “God raised him from the dead.” The whole arrangement is the Father’s own devising, of his abundant mercy, for our salvation, that the praise be to him.

Jesus was human stock divinely fashioned and used; the clay worked by the hands of the potter for the great work of honour and mercy purposed towards men. He was the antitypical altar of unhewn stone (Ex. 20:25), upon which the children of Israel were not to lift a tool. The stones were the same as those they used in building, but were to be in the form received from God’s hand. The application of a tool to the stones of the altar defiled it; this was the type: the antitype is that if a man had been the father of Jesus, Jesus must have been a transgressor, and, therefore, not an acceptable altar of Sacrifice. Through Mary, he was the Son of David, son of Abraham (Matt. 1:1), and son of Adam (Luke 3:23–38).

He was, therefore, the flesh of sin, specially manipulated for the great work of putting sin away in its condemnation therein, and bringing resurrection by the personal righteousness of the sin-bearer. “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world!”

Ineffectual ultimately must be everything that can be said against the sublime doctrine of God (in love) manifest in the flesh for the nullification of sin therein, that we may be saved in harmony with all His ways towards us; and vain all attempts to establish a theory which degrades the scheme of redemption to a man-glorifying and God-dishonouring commercial compromise. But apostasy once succeeded, and may again.

The words, “in him (Adam) all sinned” (Rom. 5:12), only amount to an “as I may so say,” as in the case of Levi said to have paid tithes, (or more properly, “to have been tithed”) in the loins of his father Abraham (Heb. 7:10). He says (verse 9), “As I may so say, Levi did so and so.” That is, in an indirect sense, not to be practically pressed. Our sinning in Adam can be made to mean nothing more than that from him we were destined to be generated, and that his act affected our state when we should appear. But this is not the meaning of “sin,” when we come to discuss “sin” as affecting individual destiny. Using the term in its correct sense, Paul expressly isolates Adam’s descendants from Adam’s sin. He says: “Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them who had not sinned after the similitude of adam’s transgression.”—(Romans 5:14). The point of his argument is that “through the offence of one many are dead, ” who sinned not after the similitude of that offence, being no “parties to the transaction,” and not being “in at the job”—to use phrases whose allusion will be understood; but that the glory of God’s grace is to release penitent and reforming offenders from many offences through the righteousness of one. The new argument destroys this beautiful fact by huddling the millions of Adam’s race all into one Edenic offender, and making them all “parties to the transaction” and “in at the job.” Adam’s descendants have not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression; but are his companions only in the sense of being heirs of the consequences of his act; among whom was Jesus, who, however, being the begotten of God in the channel of those consequences, could annul them, in the bearing of them into a grave that God could open because of his holiness.