II. The Priestly Office of Christ.
The priest was a person divinely appointed to transact with God on man's behalf. He fulfilled his office, first by offering sacrifice, and secondly by making intercession. In both these respects Christ is priest.
Hebrews 7:24-28—“he, because he abideth forever, hath his priesthood unchangeable. Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such a high priest became us, holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who needeth not daily, like these high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people: for this he did once for all, when he offered up himself. For the law appointeth men high priests, having infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was after the law, appointeth a Son, perfected for evermore.” The whole race was shut out from God by its sin. But God chose the Israelites as a priestly nation, Levi as a priestly tribe, Aaron as a priestly family, the high priest out of this family as type of the great high priest, Jesus Christ. J. S. Candlish, in Bib. World, Feb. 1897:87-97, cites the following facts with regard to our Lord's sufferings as proofs of the doctrine of atonement: 1. Christ gave up his life by a perfectly free act; 2. out of regard to God his Father and obedience to his will; 3. the bitterest element of his suffering was that he endured it at the hand of God; 4. this divine appointment and infliction of suffering is inexplicable, except as Christ endured the divine judgment against the sin of the race.
1. Christ's Sacrificial Work, or the Doctrine of the Atonement.
The Scriptures teach that Christ obeyed and suffered in our stead, to satisfy an immanent demand of the divine holiness, and thus remove an obstacle in the divine mind to the pardon and restoration of the guilty. This statement may be expanded and explained in a preliminary way as follows:—
(a) The fundamental attribute of God is holiness, and holiness is not self-communicating love, but self-affirming righteousness. Holiness limits and conditions love, for love can will happiness only as happiness results from or consists with righteousness, that is, with conformity to God.
We have shown in our discussion of the divine attributes (vol. 1, pages 268-275) that holiness is neither self-love nor love, but self-affirming purity and right. Those who maintain that love is self-affirming as well as self-communicating, and therefore that [pg 714]holiness is God's love for himself, must still admit that this self-affirming love which is holiness conditions and furnishes the standard for the self-communicating love which is benevolence. But we hold that holiness is not identical with, nor a manifestation of, love. Since self-maintenance must precede self-impartation; and since benevolence finds its object, motive, standard, and limit in righteousness, holiness, the self-affirming attribute, can in no way be resolved into love, the self-communicating. God must first maintain his own being before he can give to another; and this self-maintenance must have its reason and motive in the worth of that which is maintained. Holiness cannot be love, because love is irrational and capricious except as it has a standard by which it is regulated, and this standard cannot be itself love, but must be holiness. To make holiness a form of love is really to deny its existence, and with this to deny that any atonement is necessary for man's salvation.
(b) The universe is a reflection of God, and Christ the Logos is its life. God has constituted the universe, and humanity as a part of it, so as to express his holiness, positively by connecting happiness with righteousness, negatively by attaching unhappiness or suffering to sin.
We have seen, in vol. I, pages 109, 309-311, 335-338, that since Christ is the Logos, the immanent God, God revealed in nature, in humanity, and in redemption, the universe must be recognized as created, upheld and governed by the same Being who in the course of history was manifest in human form and who made atonement for human sin by his death on Calvary. As all God's creative activity has been exercised through Christ (vol. I, page 310), so it is Christ in whom all things consist or are held together (vol. I, page 311). Providence, as well as preservation, is his work. He makes the universe to reflect God, and especially God's ethical nature. That pain or loss universally and inevitably follow sin is the proof that God is unalterably opposed to moral evil; and the demands and reproaches of conscience witness that holiness is the fundamental attribute of God's being.