It is said that a young man ran away from his widowed mother and was gone for years. One stormy night sitting near the window sewing, while the rain was beating against the window pane, she thought she heard a noise. Looking up she saw the shaggy, bearded face of a ragged tramp pressed against the window pane, but it faded back into the storm as she looked up. Faint lines in the face aroused memory. As the needle was plied the mind was busy. Again a slight noise caused her to look up, and again the shaggy, bearded face of the tramp faded back into the storm. This time she knew that she was not mistaken. The shaggy beard could not hide the lines in the face of her long-lost boy. Throwing up the window she cried, "Come in, William, oh, come in." Stepping to where the light fell full in his face, while the tears coursed down his cheeks, he said, "Mother, I can't come in till my sin has been put out of the way." There was honor left in the tramp yet. There ought to be honor enough in every human being not to wish to go to Heaven, not to try to go to Heaven, at the expense of God's justice. Jesus said, John 10:1, 7, "He that entereth not by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." "Verily, verily I say unto you, I am the door." Jesus says, then, that those who confess their sins, and pray for forgiveness and claim it, and yet reject Him as the door, are thieves and robbers. God does forgive the redeemed, for they are His children (Gal. 4:4-7), on confession (1 John 1:9); but for those who are under the law, His word is plain, "Apart from shedding of blood there is no remission."—Heb. 9:22.
God's word states plainly how our sins are put away; not by, or because of, the praying and weeping and confession of the sinner, nor the praying and weeping and interceding of others for the sinner, for God to forgive him; "but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself."—Heb. 9:26. Concerning the justice of putting away sin in this way, see next chapter. On this point Walker well says, "If the holiness of the law was not maintained, that sense of guilt and danger could not be produced which is necessary in order that man may have a spiritual Saviour."—Walker, in "The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation."
Again he says, "When He reveals His perfect law, that law cannot, from the nature of its author, allow the commission of a single sin."—Walker, in "The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation."
Further, he says, "God ought not to allow one sin; if He did, the law would not be holy, nor adapted to make men holy."—Walker, in "The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation."
Equally to the point are the words of James Denny, "It is an immediate inference, then, from all that we have seen in the New Testament, that where there is no atonement there is no gospel. To preach the love of God out of relation to the death of Christ, or to preach the love of God in the death of Christ, but without being able to relate it to sin, or to preach that forgiveness of sins as the free gift of God's love while the death of Christ has no special significance assigned to it, is not, if the New Testament is the rule and standard of Christianity, to preach the gospel at all."—Denny, in "The Death of Christ."
III
JESUS THE CHRIST AS SIN-BEARER—GOD'S JUSTICE AND LOVE
"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life."—John 3:16.