Such is the movement and demand of the enlightened conscience. The lack of conviction that crime ought to be punished is one of the most certain signs of moral decay in either the individual or the nation (Ps. 97:10—“Ye that love the Lord, hate evil”; 149:6—“Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, And a two-edged sword in their hand”—to execute God's judgment upon iniquity).
This relation of sin to God shows us how Christ is “made sin on our behalf” (2 Cor. 5:21). Since Christ is the immanent God, he is also essential humanity, the universal man, the life of the race. All the nerves and sensibilities of humanity meet in him. He is the central brain to which and through which all ideas must pass. He is the central heart to which and through which all pains must be communicated. You cannot telephone to your friend across the town without first ringing up the central office. You cannot injure your neighbor without first injuring Christ. Each one of us can say of him: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4). Because of his central and all-inclusive humanity, Christ can feel all the pangs of shame and suffering which rightfully belong to sinners, but which they cannot feel, because their sin has stupefied and deadened them. The Messiah, if he be truly man, must be a suffering Messiah. For the very reason of his humanity he must bear in his own person all the guilt of humanity and must be “the Lamb of God who” takes, and so “takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
Guilt and depravity are not only distinguishable in thought,—they are also separable in fact. The convicted murderer might repent and become pure, yet he might still be under obligation to suffer the punishment of his crime. The Christian is freed from guilt (Rom. 8:1), but he is not yet freed from depravity (Rom. 7:23). Christ, on the other hand, was under obligation to suffer (Luke 24:26; Acts 3:18; 26:23), while yet he was without sin (Heb. 7:26). In the book entitled Modern Religious Thought, 3-29, R. J. Campbell has an essay on The Atonement, with which, apart from its view as to the origin of moral evil in God, we are in substantial agreement. He holds that “to relieve men from their sense of guilt, objective atonement is necessary,”—we would say: to relieve men from guilt itself—the obligation to suffer. “If Christ be the eternal Son of God, that side of the divine nature which has gone forth in creation, if he contains humanity and is present in every article and act of human experience, then he is associated with the existence of the primordial evil.... He and only he can sever the entail between man and his responsibility for personal sin. Christ has not sinned in man, but he takes responsibility for that experience of evil into which humanity is born, and the yielding to which constitutes sin. He goes forth to suffer, and actually does suffer, in man. The eternal Son in whom humanity is contained is therefore a sufferer since creation began. This mysterious passion of Deity must continue until redemption is consummated and humanity restored to God. Thus every consequence of human ill is felt in the experience of Christ. Thus Christ not only assumes the guilt but bears the punishment of every human soul.” We claim however that the necessity of this suffering lies, not in the needs of man, but in the holiness of God.
C. Guilt, moreover, as an objective result of sin, is not to be confounded with the subjective consciousness of guilt (Lev. 5:17). In the condemnation of conscience, God's condemnation partially and prophetically manifests itself (1 John 3:20). But guilt is primarily a relation to God, and only secondarily a relation to conscience. Progress in sin is marked by diminished sensitiveness of moral insight and feeling. As “the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none,” so guilt may be great, just in proportion to the absence of consciousness of it (Ps. 19:12; 51:6; Eph. 4:18, 19—ἀπηλγηκότες). There is no evidence, however, that the voice of conscience can be completely or finally silenced. The time for repentance may pass, but not the time for remorse. Progress in holiness, on the other hand, is marked by increasing apprehension of the depth and extent of our sinfulness, while with this apprehension is combined, in a normal Christian experience, the assurance that the guilt of our sin has been taken, and taken away, by Christ (John 1:29).
Lev. 5:17—“And if any one sin, and do any of the things which Jehovah hath commanded not to be done; though he knew it not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”; 1 John 3:20—“because if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things”; Ps. 19:12—“Who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from hidden faults”; 51:6—“Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts; And in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom”; Eph. 4:18, 19—“darkened in their understanding ... being past feeling”; John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away [marg. “beareth”] the sin of the world.”
Plato, Republic, 1:330—“When death approaches, cares and alarms awake, especially the fear of hell and its punishments.” Cicero, De Divin., 1:30—“Then comes remorse for evil deeds.” Persius, Satire 3—“His vice benumbs him; his fibre has become fat; he is conscious of no fault; he knows not the loss he suffers; he is so far sunk, that there is not even a bubble on the surface of the deep.” Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:1—“Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all”; 4:5—“To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss; So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt”; Richard III, 5:3—“O coward conscience, how thou dost afflict me!... My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain”; Tempest, 3:3—“All three of them are desperate; their great guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, Now 'gins to bite the spirits”; Ant. and Cleop., 3:9—“When we in our viciousness grow hard (O misery on't!) the wise gods seel our eyes; In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us Adore our errors; laugh at us, while we strut To our confusion.”
Dr. Shedd said once to a graduating class of young theologians: “Would that upon the naked, palpitating heart of each one of you might be laid one redhot coal of God Almighty's wrath!” Yes, we add, if only that redhot coal might be quenched by one red drop of Christ's atoning blood. Dr. H. E. Robins: “To the convicted sinner a merely external hell would be a cooling flame, compared with the agony of his remorse.”John Milton represents Satan as saying: “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.”James Martineau, Life by Jackson, 190—“It is of the essence of guilty declension to administer its own anæsthetics.” But this deadening of conscience cannot last always. Conscience is a mirror of God's holiness. We may cover the mirror with the veil of this world's diversions and deceits. When the veil is removed, and conscience again reflects the sunlike purity of God's demands, we are visited with self-loathing and self-contempt. John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 2:25—“Though it may cast off every other vestige of its divine origin, our nature retains at least this one terrible prerogative of it, the capacity of preying on itself.” Lyttelton in Lux Mundi, 277—“The common fallacy that a self-indulgent sinner is no one's enemy but his own would, were it true, involve the further inference that such a sinner would not feel himself guilty.” If any dislike the doctrine of guilt, let them remember that without wrath there is no pardon, without guilt no forgiveness. See, on the nature of guilt, Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:193-267; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 208-209; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:346; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 461-473; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 121-148; Thornwell, Theology, 1:400-424.
2. Degrees of guilt.
The Scriptures recognize different degrees of guilt as attaching to different kinds of sin. The variety of sacrifices under the Mosaic law, and the variety of awards in the judgment, are to be explained upon this principle.