Put into the language of the blood covenant, where the blood has all its significance as life—the giving of life, the sharing of life, the closest and most indissoluble union of lives—this is to say, there is no atonement, no reconciliation, no remission of sins, no forgiveness—and these are all essentially identical terms—without shedding of blood, that is, without complete giving of life on both sides, Christ giving himself not only for us in seeking us out, but to us in complete reconciliation and renewal of life. It means that only God, the very life of God, sharing God's life, can really save one from his sins. God must pour his life into one, and he does, in Christ.
This seems to be the heart of the whole matter; but certain considerations may be still added, as indicating how far a purely ethical and spiritual view of the atonement may go, in meeting the human need expressed in these older terms of substitution and propitiation.
There must be a wrath of God against wilful sin, a complete disapproval of it, and all the more because God loves the sinner. God is a consuming fire for sin in us, because he loves us. That wrath cannot be propitiated, that disapproval cannot be satisfied, in any effective way, so long as the sin continues. The punishment of the sin in its inevitable consequences, will go on in the very fidelity of God. But for any real satisfaction of God, the sin itself must cease, and there must be assurance of righteousness to come. The sinner must come to share God's hatred of the sin and God's positive purpose of love. Hence the expiation of the sin, the propitiation of the wrath of God, the satisfaction of God—so far as these terms still have meaning, and so far as they express Christ's work—consist (1) in winning men to repentance, to sharing God's hatred of their sin, (2) in helping men to a real power against sin, and (3) in the assurance of perfecting righteousness which is contained in the relation to God honestly accepted by men. When, now, the unfilial spirit is thus changed into a completely filial spirit—through the fullest acceptance by the child of the father's purpose for him, and through the child's throwing himself completely open to the influence of the father—the personal relation is thereby inevitably changed, personal reconciliation is achieved. It is impossible to think it otherwise. And so the chief pain in the previous relation is done away both for God and man; though the punishment, in the consequences of sin in other respects, is not thereby set aside.
But, further, so far now as the power of this new personal relation to God in Christ begins actively to counteract the consequences of sin in us, as it will assuredly do, God's work in Christ becomes a direct substitute for that punishment of us that would else inevitably follow. And yet the process is wholly ethical; for the results of righteousness can actually occur in us, only in so far as we come into harmony with Christ's purpose for us.
Even so far, we may believe, does the social consciousness, in its emphasis upon the mutual influence of persons go, in leading us into the secret of the attainment of character—into the heart of God's redemption of men.
IV. MUTUAL INFLUENCE FOR GOOD IN OUR PERSONAL RELATION
TO GOD
What, now, in the second place, does the mutual influence of men for good mean for theology in the individual relation to God? Here it may be said at once, that faith is as directly contagious as character.
1. In Coming into the Kingdom.—We are introduced through others into all spheres of value, including friendship even with God. In the atmosphere of those who already feel the value, our interest is aroused; we find it possible at least to take those initial steps of a dawning attention, which give the value opportunity to make its own impression upon us, and bring us to an appreciation, to a faith of our own. Only so is that most difficult of all tasks in the redemption of a man—that first stirring of a new appetite, a new desire, a new aspiration, a new ideal—accomplished.
We are members one of another here to an extent that deserves ever fresh emphasis. We cannot too often say to ourselves, Had it not been that there were those who actually entered into the meaning of the revelation of God in Christ—who, in John's language, "beheld his glory"—the record of that revelation never could have come down to us. Christianity must have perished at its birth. "Hence," in the vital language of Herrmann, "the picture of his inner life could be preserved in his church or 'fellowship' alone. But, further, this picture so preserved can be understood only when we meet with men on whom it has wrought its effect. We need communion with Christians in order that, from the picture of Jesus which his Brotherhood has preserved, there may shine forth that inner life which is the real heart of it. It is only when we see its effects, that our eyes are opened to its reality so that we may thereby experience the same effect. Thus we never apprehend the most important element in the historical appearance of Jesus until his people make us feel it. The testimony of the New Testament concerning Jesus is the work of his church, and its exposition is the work of the church, through the life which that church develops and gains for itself out of this treasure which it possesses."[89]
The Christian is no Melchizedek, then, without father or mother; he comes into life in a community of life, and usually, moreover, through the personal touch of some other individual life. It is the one primal law, of life through life.