Exposition of Rom. 3:25, 26.—These verses are an expanded statement of the subject of the epistle—the revelation of the “righteousness of God” (= the righteousness which God provides and which God accepts)—which had been mentioned in 1:17, but which now has new light thrown upon it by the demonstration, in 1:18-3:20, that both Gentiles and Jews are under condemnation, and are alike shut up for salvation to some other method than that of works. We subjoin the substance of Meyer's comments upon this passage.
“Verse 25. ‘God has set forth Christ as an effectual propitiatory offering, through faith, by means of his blood,’ i. e., in that he caused him to shed his blood. ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι belongs to προέθετο, not to πίστεως. The purpose of this setting forth in his blood is εἰς ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ, ‘for the display of his [judicial and punitive] righteousness,’ which received its satisfaction in the death of Christ as a propitiatory offering, and was thereby practically demonstrated and exhibited. ‘On account of the passing-by of sins that had previously taken place,’ i. e., because he had allowed the pre-Christian sins to go without punishment, whereby his righteousness had been lost sight of and obscured, and had come to need an ἔνδειξις, or exhibition to men. Omittance is not acquittance. πάρεσις, passing-by, is intermediate between pardon and punishment. ‘In virtue of the forbearance of God’ expresses the motive of the πάρεσις. Before Christ's sacrifice, God's administration was a scandal,—it needed vindication. The atonement is God's answer to the charge of freeing the guilty.
“Verse 26. εἰς τὸ εἶναι is not epexegetical of εἰς ἔνδειξιν, but presents the teleology of the ἱλαστήριον, the final aim of the whole affirmation from ὂν προέθετο to καιρῷ—namely, first, God's being just, and secondly, his appearing just in consequence of this. Justus et justificans, instead of justus et condemnans, this is the summum paradoxon evangelicum. Of this revelation of righteousness, not through condemnation, but through atonement, grace is the determining ground.”
We repeat what was said on pages [719], [720], with regard to the teaching of the passage, namely, that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute in God which demands the atonement in his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer. It is only incidentally and subordinately that the atonement is a necessity to man; Paul speaks of it here mainly as a necessity to God. Christ suffers, indeed, that God may appear righteous; but behind the appearance lies the reality; the main object of Christ's suffering is that God may be righteous, while he pardons the believing sinner; in other words, the ground of the atonement is something internal to God himself. See Heb. 2:10—it “became” God = it was morally fitting in God, to make Christ suffer; cf. Zech. 6:8—“they that go toward the north country have quieted my spirit in the north country”—the judgments inflicted on Babylon have satisfied my justice.
Charnock: “He who once ‘quenched the violence of fire’ for those Hebrew children, has also quenched the fires of God's anger against the sinner, hotter than furnace heated seven times.” The same God who is a God of holiness, and who in virtue of his holiness must punish human sin, is also a God of mercy, and in virtue of his mercy himself bears the punishment of human sin. Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 98—“Christ is not only mediator between God and man, but between the just God and the merciful God”—cf. Ps. 85:10—“Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other,” “Conscience demands vicariousness, for conscience declares that a gratuitous pardon would not be just”; see Knight, Colloquia Peripatetica, 88.
Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the Atonement, 219, 304—“The Atonement 1. has Godward significance; 2. consists in our Lord's endurance of death on our behalf; 3. the spirit in which he endured death is of vital importance to the efficacy of his sacrifice, namely, obedience.... God gives repentance, yet requires it; he gives atonement, yet requires it. ‘Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift’ (2 Cor. 9:15).” Simon, in Expositor, 6:321-334 (for substance)—“As in prayer we ask God to energize us and enable us to obey his law, and he answers by entering our hearts and obeying in us and for us: as we pray for strength in affliction, and find him helping us by putting his Spirit into us, and suffering in us and for us; so in atonement, Christ, the manifested God, obeys and suffers in our stead. Even the moral theory implies substitution also. God in us obeys his own law and bears the sorrows that sin has caused. Why can he not, in human nature, also endure the penalty of sin? The possibility of this cannot be consistently denied by any who believe in divine help granted in answer to prayer. The doctrine of the atonement and the doctrine of prayer stand or fall together.”
See on the whole subject, Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 272-324, Philosophy of History, 65-69, and Dogmatic Theology, 2:401-463; Magee, Atonement and Sacrifice, 27, 53, 258; Edwards's Works, 4:140 sq.; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 214-334; Owen, on Divine Justice, in Works, 10:500-512; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:27-114; Hopkins, Works, 1:319-368; Schöberlein, in Studien und Kritiken, 1845:267-318, and 1847:7-70, also in Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.: Versöhnung; Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 3:713, and 8:213; Macdonnell, Atonement, 115-214; Luthardt, Saving Truths, 114-138; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 605-637; Lawrence, in Bib. Sac., 20:332-339; Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre; Waffle, in Bap. Rev., 1882:263-286; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:641-662 (Syst. Doct., 4:107-124); Remensnyder, The Atonement and Modern Thought.
Secondly,—the Atonement as related to Humanity in Christ.
The Ethical theory of the atonement holds that Christ stands in such relation to humanity, that what God's holiness demands Christ is under obligation to pay, longs to pay, inevitably does pay, and pays so fully, in virtue of his two-fold nature, that every claim of justice is satisfied, and the sinner who accepts what Christ has done in his behalf is saved.
Dr. R. W. Dale, in his work on The Atonement, states the question before us: “What must be Christ's relation to men, in order to make it possible that he should die for them?” We would change the form of the question, so that it should read: “What must be Christ's relation to men, in order to make it not only possible, but just and necessary, that he should die for them?” Dale replies, for substance, that Christ must have had an original and central relation to the human race and to every member of it; see Denney, Death of Christ, 318. In our treatment of Ethical Monism, of the Trinity, and of the Person of Christ, we have shown that Christ, as Logos, as the immanent God, is the Life of humanity, laden with responsibility for human sin, while yet he personally knows no sin. Of this race-responsibility and race-guilt which Christ assumed, and for which he suffered so soon as man had sinned, Christ's obedience and suffering in the flesh were the visible reflection and revelation. Only in Christ's organic union with the race can we find the vital relation which will make his vicarious sufferings either possible or just. Only when we regard Calvary as revealing eternal principles of the divine nature, can we see how the sufferings of those few hours upon the Cross could suffice to save the millions of mankind.