WHEN the Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died on the Cross, what was He seeking to accomplish? To this question many answers have been given. The question may rightly be answered in different ways, as various aspects of Christ's saving work are stressed. Essentially, however, all these aspects center about one basic fact, namely, that our blessed Lord by His death reconciled God to the sinner. But any answer which is incongruous with or contradictory to that one basic fact is incorrect.
In short, this is the gospel. Man, through Adam’s transgression, is born into the world in an estate of sin and misery. Since man possesses a sinful nature, his every act proceeds from an evil heart, and naught that he does can please God. His sin leads to everlasting death. Because he has offended God, man cannot receive divine favor or blessing, unless satisfaction be first rendered to God's justice. No mere man can make such satisfaction. But Jesus Christ the Lord has fully satisfied God's justice by the shedding of His precious blood upon the Cross. "Without shedding of blood, there is no remission", the Bible asserts. The blood of the Lamb of God, however, has been shed and, upon the basis of this glorious fact, God may, in perfect justice, freely pardon the sinner.
This is the plain teaching of the Bible. When our Lord died, He died to reconcile God to His own. The atonement is an offering primarily unto God and not to man. He "gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God" (Eph. 5:2) and He "offered himself without blemish unto God" (Heb. 9:14).
Furthermore, according to the Bible, Christ is our great High Priest, and He has performed the work of a priest. Now, a priest is a mediator between God and man. He represents man before God. He acts to procure the favor of God for sinful man. So Christ as a priest once brought an offering to secure the favor of God for mankind. It is as a priest too that He now lives to intercede before God on behalf of His people. In fact, it is only through Him that men may draw nigh to God.
The sacrifice which Christ presented was a sacrifice of infinite.value. It was Himself. He brought His own most holy and precious blood. This as our High Priest He offered unto God, not unto man. He "gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, for an odor of a sweet smell" (Eph. 5:2).
Christ is also set forth in the Bible' as performing a work of propitiation. That is, He has done all that which was necessary so that God, in perfect consistency with His nature, might pardon and bless the sinner. Hear the words of Scripture: "Whom God hath 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; to declare, I say, at this time, his righteousness: that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus" (Rom. 3:25, 26).
Again, the Bible constantly emphasizes the fact that Christ is our substitute. He gave His life "a ransom in the stead of many" (Mark 10:45). "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement which procured our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5). It is obvious that Christ is our substitute before God; He is not God's substitute before us.
There is not space in this brief article to say more about the Biblical teaching of Christ's death. Sufficient has been indicated, however, to make it clear that His death was intended to reconcile God to man and not primarily to reconcile man to God. This clear teaching of the Bible has found expression in many of the creeds of the church. For example, the Westminster Confession says, "The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he through the eternal Spirit once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of his Father; and purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him”.
Dr. Kerr's View of the Cross
Throughout the history of the church, however, there have been those who have refused to accept this plain teaching of the Bible. Among other errors, there has appeared from time to time the assertion that Christ's death was not at all to reconcile an offended God to mankind but rather merely to produce a change within man, to reconcile man to God. The latest to propagate this serious error is the Associate Professor of Systematic Theology in Princeton Theological Seminary, the Rev. Hugh Thompson Kerr, Jr. The propagation of this antiscriptural error appears, not in some openly-avowed modernistic magazine, but rather in The Presbyterian, a supposedly conservative journal. In the issue of April 8, 1943, occurs an article by the Princeton professor entitled "The Cross is Crucial”. We are primarily concerned with certain statements made in the final paragraph and, therefore, it is here reproduced in full. It is as follows:
Finally, it may help us to understand the meaning of the Cross if we think of it as God's condemnation of sin and, at the same time, as God's supreme revelation of His saving love. To put it negatively again, we may not catch the significance of the Cross if we hide its plain message behind theories of atonement and reconciliation. It may be that theories are necessary and useful, but we must remember that the Cross is God's saving act and not a theory. Or to put it differently, we must realize that our faith in the Cross of Christ must be personal, or as the Barthians say, existential. Somebody else’s faith will not help me, and somebody else’s theory of how the Cross saves may or may not prove an adequate explanation for me. The Early Church thought of atonement as ransome paid to the Devil; the Middle Ages following Anselm thought of Christ's death as satisfaction for God’s honor; Abelard and his modem imitators were chiefly concerned with Christ's selfless sacrifice; the Reformers and the Puritans, in a time of political upheaval, used the legal and governmental language of justice and substitution to express the way of reconciliation. These and other interpretations are all worthy of consideration since they all purpose to interpret the Cross. Yet they are not all of equal value, and no one can perfectly communicate what, we have said, is essentially ineffable and mysterious. It is not simply that theories are inadequate, but that we are saved not by assent to any particular theory of the Cross, but by the faith that "Christ died for our sins." This conviction, which is born of a sense of penitence (in so far as the Cross reveals man's sin for what it is) and thankful devotion (in so far as the Cross reveals God's forgiveness), must precede and condition any theory of how atonement is possible. Unless that personal conviction exists, theories are not only valueless, but definitely dangerous. For example, any theory of atonement which suggests that God stands aloof from man and must be reconciled to man is not worthy of serious concern, for it is manifestly out of touch with the New Testament and with the Christian experience. The Christian believes that the Cross reconciles man to God, not God to man. If God had to be reconciled to man, atonement in any sense would appear to be impossible, and one wonders if such a conception of God is in any sense Christian. No, if we are to understand the message of the Cross, we must seek to interpret it as God's way of redeeming and reconciling sinful men to Himself. That God takes this initiative, that forgiveness and newness of life are offered, that Christians throughout the ages have testified to the saving power of the Cross—this is surely a Gospel to preach and a Gospel to hear again and again.
"I know not how that Calvary's Cross
A world from sin could free;
I only know its matchless love
Has brought God's love to me.”
In the first place, it may be remarked that the thought is not always very clear. It is said that "we are saved not by assent to any particular theory of the Cross, but by the faith that 'Christ died for our sins' ". Well, what is the assertion "Christ died for our sins" but a theory of the Cross? Christ died on the Cross—that is a fact. The Bible says He died for our sins—that is an interpretation of the fact. It is a theory of His death. It is one explanation of why He died. Hence, if we are saved by the faith that He died for our sins, we are saved by a theory of the Cross.
But far more dangerous and far more serious is the assertion that “… any theory of atonement which suggests that God stands aloof from man and must be reconciled to man is not worthy of serious concern, for it is manifestly out of touch with the New Testament and with the Christian experience. The Christian believes that the Cross reconciles man to God, not God to man". How, we ask, can anyone who has ever read the Bible carefully make such statements?
"Not Worthy of Serious Concern”
If this is so, then why did the Romish Church at the Council of Trent speak of Christ as having "rendered satisfaction on our behalf to God the Father"? Why did the Augsburg Confession say of Christ that "by his death he made satisfaction on behalf of our sins"? Why did the Westminster Confession speak of His purchasing reconciliation and an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven by "his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he through the eternal Spirit once offered up unto God"? Yes, and far more, important, why did the Holy Spirit, speaking through the mouth of the Apostle Paul, say that Christ "gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, for an odor of a sweet smell" (Eph. 5:2)?
"Out of Touch With the New Testament”
In the beginning of this article it was shown that this precious doctrine that Christ has reconciled an offended God to His people is the very heart of the New Testament teaching. If this were not so, all that the New Testament says about Christ as a Priest would be so much idle chatter. All that it teaches about Him as our sacrifice, our propitiation, the One who performs a work of expiation, our Redeemer—all this would be unintelligible. All that it says about His death for our sins, on our behalf, for us, or in our stead would have to be discarded. What is really out of touch with the New Testament is not the blessed doctrine of Christ's satisfaction, but the strange form of the Moral Influence Theory which Dr. Kerr, despite the fact that elsewhere he characterizes this theory as unsatisfactory, appears to teach.
"Out of Touch With the Christian Experience”
Is this so? What about the following words of Spurgeon? "When I was in the hand of the Holy Spirit, under conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of the justice of God. Sin, whatever it might be to other people, became to mean intolerable burden. It was not so much that I feared hell, as that I feared sin; and all the while I had upon my mind a deep concern for the honor of God's name and the integrity of His moral government. I felt that it would not satisfy my conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly. But then there came the question: 'How could God be just, and yet justify me who had been so guilty?’"
What about the words of the hymn,
"Other refuge have I none,
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee”
or,
"What Thou, dear Lord, hast suffered,
Was all for sinners' gain.
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But Thine the deadly pain.”
or,
"There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin.
He only could unlock the gate
Of heaven, and let us in.”?
Does not Dr. Kerr know that the devotional literature of the ages is filled with expressions of love to God because of the wondrous thing which He did when He offered up His only begotten Son to be a sacrifice to avert the wrath of God from men?
It is time that Presbyterians awoke to the erroneous teaching which has been coming out of Princeton Theological Seminary. What the Princeton professor says about the Cross is one thing; what the Bible says is another.
There once was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary named Charles Hodge. Concerning the theory which the present Princeton professor characterizes as "not worthy of serious concern" Charles Hodge wrote, "It is against this rock—the substitution of Christ in the place of sinners; his making a full satisfaction to the justice and law of God, thus working out for us a perfect righteousness, by which we may be justified,—that the assaults of philosophy falsely so called, and of heresy in all its forms have been directed from the beginning. This it is that the Gnostics and New Platonists in the first centuries; the Scotists and Franciscans during the Middle Ages; the Socinians and Remonstrants at, and after the Reformation; and Rationalists and the speculative philosophy of our own age, have striven to overthrow. But it remains, what it ever has been, the foundation of the faith, hope and life of the Church”.
To this long list—the Gnostics, New Platonists, Scotists, Franciscans, Socinians, Remonstrants, Rationalists, proponents of speculative philosophy—must now be added the name of a successor of Dr. Hodge, the Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.