Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

III. Penalty.

1. Idea of penalty.

By penalty, we mean that pain or loss which is directly or indirectly inflicted by the Lawgiver, in vindication of his justice outraged by the violation of law.

Turretin, 1:213—“Justice necessarily demands that all sin be punished, but it does not equally demand that it be punished in the very person that sinned, or in just such time and degree.” So far as this statement of the great Federal theologian is intended to explain our guilt in Adam and our justification in Christ, we can assent to his words; but we must add that the reason, in each case, why we suffer the penalty of Adam's sin, and Christ suffers the penalty of our sins, is not to be found in any covenant-relation, but rather in the fact that the sinner is one with Adam, and Christ is one with the believer,—in other words, not covenant-unity, but life-unity. The word “penalty,”like “pain,” is derived from pœna, ποινή, and it implies the correlative notion of desert. As under the divine government there can be no constructive guilt, so there can be no penalty inflicted by legal fiction. Christ's sufferings were penalty, not arbitrarily inflicted, nor yet borne to expiate personal guilt, but as the just due of the human nature with which he had united himself, and a part of which he was. Prof. Wm. Adams Brown: “Loss, not suffering, is the supreme penalty for Christians. The real penalty is separation from God. If such separation involves suffering, that is a sign of God's mercy, for where there is life, there is hope. Suffering is always to be interpreted as an appeal from God to man.”

In this definition it is implied that:

A. The natural consequences of transgression, although they constitute a part of the penalty of sin, do not exhaust that penalty. In all penalty there is a personal element—the holy wrath of the Lawgiver,—which natural consequences but partially express.

We do not deny, but rather assert, that the natural consequences of transgression are a part of the penalty of sin. Sensual sins are punished, in the deterioration and corruption of the body; mental and spiritual sins, in the deterioration and corruption of the soul. Prov. 5:22—“His own iniquities shall take the wicked, And he shall be holden with the cords of his sin”—as the hunter is caught in the toils which he has devised for the wild beast. Sin is self-detecting and self-tormenting. But this is only half the truth. Those who would confine all penalty to the reaction of natural laws are in danger of forgetting that God is not simply immanent in the universe, but is also transcendent, and that “to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31) is to fall into the hands, not simply of the law, but also of the Lawgiver. Natural law is only the regular expression of God's mind and will. We abhor a person who is foul in body and in speech. There is no penalty of sin more dreadful than its being an object of abhorrence to God. Jer. 44:4—“Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!” Add to this the law of continuity which makes sin reproduce itself, and the law of conscience which makes sin its own detecter, judge, and tormentor, and we have sufficient evidence of God's wrath against it, apart from any external inflictions. [pg 653]The divine feeling toward sin is seen in Jesus' scourging the traffickers in the temple, his denunciation of the Pharisees, his weeping over Jerusalem, his agony in Gethsemane. Imagine the feeling of a father toward his daughter's betrayer, and God's feeling toward sin may be faintly understood.

The deed returns to the doer, and character determines destiny—this law is a revelation of the righteousness of God. Penalty will vindicate the divine character in the long run, though not always in time. This is recognized in all religions. Buddhist priest in Japan: “The evil doer weaves a web around himself, as the silkworm weaves its cocoon.” Socrates made Circe's turning of men into swine a mere parable of the self-brutalizing influence of sin. In Dante's Inferno, the punishments are all of them the sins themselves; hence men are in hell before they die. Hegel: “Penalty is the other half of crime.” R. W. Emerson: “Punishment not follows, but accompanies, crime.”Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 59—“Corruption is destruction, and the sinner is a suicide; penalty corresponds with transgression and is the outcome of it; sin is death in the making; death is sin in the final infliction.” J. B. Thomas, Baptist Congress, 1901:110—“What matters it whether I wait by night for the poacher and deliberately shoot him, or whether I set the pistol so that he shall be shot by it when he commits the depredation?” Tennyson, Sea Dreams: “His gain is loss; for he that wrongs his friend Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about A silent court of justice in his breast, Himself the judge and jury, and himself The prisoner at the bar, ever condemn'd: And that drags down his life: then comes what comes Hereafter.”

B. The object of penalty is not the reformation of the offender or the ensuring of social or governmental safety. These ends may be incidentally secured through its infliction, but the great end of penalty is the vindication of the character of the Lawgiver. Penalty is essentially a necessary reaction of the divine holiness against sin. Inasmuch, however, as wrong views of the object of penalty have so important a bearing upon our future studies of doctrine, we make fuller mention of the two erroneous theories which have greatest currency.