Most certainly, then, redemption cannot be without cost to the redeemer of men—not only that cost to the hero of the superior showing of superior character in a superior task, but that other cost, indissolubly linked indeed with this, of reverently, patiently, to the bitter end, helping another to conquer himself—the inevitable suffering of all redemptive endeavor for those whom one loves. This involves (1) suffering in contact with sin, (2) suffering in the rejection by those sinning, and most of all, (3) suffering in the sin itself of those one loves because one loves them—suffering which is the more intense, the more one loves.
2. The Consequent Ethical and Spiritual Meaning of Substitution and Propitiation.—Can we go yet a step farther here? It may be fairly taken for granted that where the church has strongly and persistently stood for certain modes of putting a doctrine—though the precise putting may be unfortunate—that in all probability there is there some real and important truth after which the consciousness of the church is dimly feeling. Starting, now, from this same great law of the contagion of character and the inevitable influence of an association in which there is mutual self-giving, is it not possible to show that there is a strict ethical and spiritual sense that we can understand, in which Christ's suffering may be truly called vicarious, and himself a substitute for us, and a propitiation?
It is, of course, not for a moment forgotten that, in Dr. Clarke's language, "a God who will himself provide a propitiation has no need of one in the sense which the word has ordinarily borne. Some richer and nobler meaning must be present if the word is appropriate to the case."[84] But it is not likely that a purely ethical and spiritual view of the atonement, which sees the problem as a strictly personal one—and this seems to the writer the only true position—can ever succeed in the hearts of the great body of the membership of the churches, if it cannot show, at the same time, that it is able in some real way to take up into itself these thoughts of substitution and propitiation. The writer finds much of the old language about the atonement as offensive to his moral sense as any man well can. But that there is an absolutely universal human need for something like that to which the old language of substitution and propitiation looked, he cannot doubt. It seems to show itself in this, that no man with real moral sense, probably, cares to put himself at the end of his life, say, in the attitude of the Pharisee rather than in that of the Publican. If one sets aside all spectacular elements in the judgment, and even denies altogether any great single final assize for all men, still he cannot avoid the thought of some judgment upon his life. As Dr. Clarke says again: "We are not our own masters in going out of this world; we go we know not whither. Yet our going is not without its just and holy method. Our place and lot in the life that is beyond must be determined righteously, in accordance with the life that we have lived thus far, that the next stage in our existence may be what it ought to be."[85]
However, now, that judgment of God may be expressed, no man can hope to face the test proposed by Christ in the twenty-fifth of Matthew, still less the test implied in Christ's own life, and feel that he has already attained. He knows himself to be at best only a faulty growing child, with some real spirit of obedience in his heart. And it is particularly to be noted, that exactly that man must stand most definitely for the reality of some genuinely ethical judgment, who has most insisted upon the necessarily ethical character of the religious life. Moreover, the normal experience of the deepening Christian life is an increasing sense of sin. Upon this point, too, the social consciousness is witness.
What, now, makes it possible for a man to expect, in any sense, a favorable judgment of God upon his life? If God makes any separation of men in the world to come, he certainly cannot divide them into perfect and imperfect men. Judged by any complete standard, all are imperfect. Or if, without separation, God in any sense, in the most inner way, passes judgment, how does approval fall upon any? And upon whom does it fall? Must not every man who wishes to be clear and honest with himself fairly face these questions?
And Christ's own thought of God as Father must be our key here. And the matter may well be counted worth a more careful analysis than it often gets. How does a father distinguish between what he calls an obedient and a disobedient child? Both are faulty. How in any fair sense may one be called obedient? To the earthly father, that child is called an obedient child, not who is deliberately setting his will against his father's with no intention to coöperate with the father's purpose for him, but whose loyal intention is to do the father's will, really to coöperate with the father in the father's own purpose for the child's life. When, now, this child is carried away by some gust of temptation and disobeys, and then returns in penitence to the father, evidently viewing the sin, so far as his experience allows, as the father views it, and heartily putting it away, the father, either with or without penalty, restores the child to full personal relation to himself; and that is the vital point. And, though he neither judges the past life as without failure, nor expects the future to be without failure, he approves the child, as in a true sense obedient. He is an approved child.
What is it that satisfies the father in such a case? Upon what does he rely in his hope for matured character in the child? What, in biblical language, "covers" for the father the actual disobediences of the past and the certain disobediences of the future, and enables him in a sense to ignore both in his approval of the child? Certainly, the present purpose of the child, the child's honest intention to coöperate with the father in the father's purpose for him. Yes; but as certainly, it seems to the writer, not that alone. The father's hope for his child's steady growth in righteousness depends not only on the child's present intention, but much more upon the father's own intention never to give up in his attempt at any cost to help that child to conquer himself.[86] The father may be said here in a true sense to propitiate himself; and his own fixed purpose has become a partial substitute for the wavering purpose of the child.
And the child's full righteousness is seen, not merely in an attitude of immediate present obedience, but especially in his loyal acceptance of his filial relation—in his honest surrender to his father's influence. And the father can now say, Because my child accepts heartily his relation to me, and honestly throws himself open to it to let it be to him all it can and work its own work in him, I may approve him; for this relation to me which he so takes has only to go on, to work out its complete results in a matured character. In the hearty acceptance of this filial relation to me, there is contained the promise of the end.
Just this attitude exactly, and no other, it seems to the writer, God takes toward men in his revelation in Christ. Christ is God's own showing forth of himself. "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself."[87] "Propitiation," Beysclag truly says, "is blotting out, making amends for sin in God's eyes. Now what can cover the sin of the world in God's eyes? Only a personality and a deed which contain the power of actually delivering the world from its sin."[88]
We have seen, it may be hoped, just how God's self-revealing in Christ does have this actual power, and becomes, thus, a true propitiation in the highest moral sense, in the only sense in which God can wish a propitiation, and in the only sense in which we can ever need a propitiation. Our final hope for that true salvation, which is the sharing of the life of God and the involved likeness of character with God, is in God's own long-suffering, redeeming activity. Only as that may be remembered, in connection with our surrender to it, may we hope to stand approved before the judgment of God. We are not judged alone before the judgment of God. In a very real sense the judge himself stands with us. Not what God is able to believe about this man thought of as standing alone, but what he may believe about this man standing in a living, surrendering association with himself, is the ground of judgment. We may not separate here the work of God and the work of Christ, as the New Testament does not separate them. In constant reliance upon the constant redeeming activity of the Father here and hereafter, we children go hopefully on our way.