Hovey calls Christ's relation to human sin a vice-penal one. Just as vice-regal position carries with it all the responsibility, care, and anxiety of regal authority, so does a vice-penal relation to sin carry with it all the suffering and loss of the original punishment. The person on whom it falls is different, but his punishment is the same, at least in penal value. As vice-regal authority may be superseded by regal, so vice-penal suffering, if despised, may be superseded by the original penalty. Is there a waste of vice-penal suffering when any are lost for whom it was endured? On the same principle we might object to any suffering on the part of Christ for those who refuse to be saved by him. Such suffering may benefit others, if not those for whom it was in the first instance endured.
If compensation is made, it is said, there is nothing to forgive; if forgiveness is granted, no compensation can be required. This reminds us of Narvaez, who saw no reason for forgiving his enemies until he had shot them all. When the offended party furnishes the compensation, he can offer its benefits upon his own terms. Dr. Pentecost: “A prisoner in Scotland was brought before the Judge. As the culprit entered the box, he looked into the face of the Judge to see if he could discover mercy there. The Judge and the prisoner exchanged glances, and then there came a mutual recognition. The prisoner said to himself: ‘It is all right this time,’ for the Judge had been his classmate in Edinburgh University twenty-five years before. When sentence was pronounced, it was five pounds sterling, the limit of the law for the misdemeanor charged, and the culprit was sorely disappointed as he was led away to prison. But [pg 768]the Judge went at once and paid the fine, telling the clerk to write the man's discharge. This the Judge delivered in person, explaining that the demands of the law must be met, and having been met, the man was free.”
(c) That there can be no real propitiation, since the judge and the sacrifice are one.—We answer that this objection ignores the existence of personal relations within the divine nature, and the fact that the God-man is distinguishable from God. The satisfaction is grounded in the distinction of persons in the Godhead; while the love in which it originates belongs to the unity of the divine essence.
The satisfaction is not rendered to a part of the Godhead, for the whole Godhead is in the Father, in a certain manner; as omnipresence = totus in omni parte. So the offering is perfect, because the whole Godhead is also in Christ (2 Cor. 5:19—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself”). Lyman Abbott says that the word “propitiate” is used in the New Testament only in the middle voice, to show that God propitiates himself. Lyttelton, in Lux Mundi, 302—“The Atonement is undoubtedly a mystery, but all forgiveness is a mystery. It avails to lift the load of guilt that presses upon an offender. A change passes over him that can only be described as regenerative, life-giving; and thus the assurance of pardon, however conveyed, may be said to obliterate in some degree the consequences of the past. 310—Christ bore sufferings, not that we might be freed from them, for we have deserved them, but that we might be enabled to bear them, as he did, victoriously and in unbroken union with God.”
(d) That the suffering of the innocent for the guilty is not an execution of justice, but an act of manifest injustice.—We answer, that this is true only upon the supposition that the Son bears the penalty of our sins, not voluntarily, but compulsorily; or upon the supposition that one who is personally innocent can in no way become involved in the guilt and penalty of others,—both of them hypotheses contrary to Scripture and to fact.
The mystery of the atonement lies in the fact of unmerited sufferings on the part of Christ. Over against this stands the corresponding mystery of unmerited pardon to believers. We have attempted to show that, while Christ was personally innocent, he was so involved with others in the consequences of the Fall, that the guilt and penalty of the race belonged to him to bear. When we discuss the doctrine of Justification, we shall see that, by a similar union of the believer with Christ, Christ's justification becomes ours.
To one who believes in Christ as the immanent God, the life of humanity, the Creator and Upholder of mankind, the bearing by Christ of the just punishment of human sin seems inevitable. The very laws of nature are only the manifestation of his holiness, and he who thus reveals God is also subject to God's law. The historical process which culminated on Calvary was the manifestation of an age-long suffering endured by Christ on account of his connection with the race from the very first moment of their sin. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 80-83—“A God of love and holiness must be a God of suffering just so certainly as there is sin. Paul declares that he fills up ‘that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ ... for his body's sake, which is the church’ (Col. 1:24); in other words, Christ still suffers in the believers who are his body. The historical suffering indeed is ended; the agony of Golgotha is finished; the days when joy was swallowed up in sorrow are past; death has no more dominion over our Lord. But sorrow for sin is not ended; it still continues and will continue so long as sin exists. But it does not now militate against Christ's blessedness, because the sorrow is overbalanced and overborne by the infinite knowledge and glory of his divine nature. Bushnell and Beecher were right when they maintained that suffering for sin was the natural consequence of Christ's relation to the sinning creation. They were wrong in mistaking the nature of that suffering and in not seeing that the constitution of things which necessitates it, since it is the expression of God's holiness, gives that suffering a penal character and makes Christ a substitutionary offering for the sins of the world.”
(e) That there can be no transfer of punishment or merit, since these are personal.—We answer that the idea of representation and suretyship [pg 769] is common in human society and government; and that such representation and suretyship are inevitable, wherever there is community of life between the innocent and the guilty. When Christ took our nature, he could not do otherwise than take our responsibilities also.
Christ became responsible for the humanity with which he was organically one. Both poets and historians have recognized the propriety of one member of a house, or a race, answering for another. Antigone expiates the crime of her house. Marcus Curtius holds himself ready to die for his nation. Louis XVI has been called a “sacrificial lamb,” offered up for the crimes of his race. So Christ's sacrifice is of benefit to the whole family of man, because he is one with that family. But here is the limitation also. It does not extend to angels, because he took not on him the nature of angels (Heb. 2:16—“For verily not of the angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold of the seed of Abraham”).
“A strange thing happened recently in one of our courts of justice. A young man was asked why the extreme penalty should not be passed upon him. At that moment, a gray-haired man, his face furrowed with sorrow, stepped into the prisoner's box unhindered, placed his hand affectionately upon the culprit's shoulder, and said: ‘Your honor, we have nothing to say. The verdict which has been found against us is just. We have only to ask for mercy.’ ‘We!’ There was nothing against this old father. Yet, at that moment he lost himself. He identified his very being with that of his wayward boy. Do you not pity the criminal son because of your pity for his aged and sorrowing father? Because he has so suffered, is not your demand that the son suffer somewhat mitigated? Will not the judge modify his sentence on that account? Nature knows no forgiveness; but human nature does; and it is not nature, but human nature, that is made in the image of God”; see Prof. A. S. Coats, in The Examiner, Sept. 12, 1889.