God's Plan with Men

by T. T. Martin

There are some who sneer at this teaching as the "commercial view" of redemption, in the face of God's word that declares, "ye were bought with a price,"—1 Cor. 6:20; "worthy art thou to take the book and to open the seals thereof; for thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe and tongue and people and nation."—Rev. 5:9. (R. V.)

Consider the testimony of three over against the two quoted against this teaching of God's word:—

"I saw that if Jesus suffered in my stead, I could not suffer, too; and that if He bore all my sin, I had no more sin to bear. My iniquity must be blotted out if Jesus bore it in my stead and suffered all its penalty."—C. H. Spurgeon.

"If you believe on him, I tell you you cannot go to Hell; for that were to make the sacrifice of Christ of none effect. It cannot be that a sacrifice should be accepted and yet the soul should die for whom that sacrifice had been received. If the believing soul could be condemned, then why a sacrifice? Every believer can claim that the sacrifice was actually made for him: by faith he has laid his hands on it, and made it his own, and therefore he may rest assured that he can never perish. The Lord would not receive this offering on our behalf and then condemn us to die."—C. H. Spurgeon.

"The law of God was more vindicated by the death of Christ than it would have been had all the transgressors been sent to Hell. For the Son of God to suffer for sin was a more glorious establishment of the government of God than for the whole race to suffer."—C. H. Spurgeon.

"It is the obvious implication of these words (the Righteous One for the unrighteous ones) that the death on which such stress is laid was something to which the unrighteous were liable because of their sins, and that in their interest the Righteous One took it on Himself."—Denny, in "The Death of Christ."

"This is his gospel, that a Righteous One has once for all faced and taken up and in death exhausted the responsibilities of the unrighteous, so that they no more stand between them and God."—Denny, in "The Death of Christ."

"If Christ died the death in which sin had involved us, if in His death He took the responsibility of our sins upon Himself, no word is equal to this which falls short of what is meant by calling Him our substitute."—Denny, in "The Death of Christ."

"I do not know any word that conveys the truth of this if 'vicarious' or 'substitutionary' does not; nor do I know any interpretation of Christ's death which enables us to regard it as a demonstration of love to sinners, if this vicarious or substitutionary character is denied. There is much preaching about Christ's death which fails to be a preaching of Christ's death, and therefore to be in the full sense of the term Gospel Preaching, because it ignores this. The simplest hearer feels that there is something irrational in saying that the death of Christ is a great proof of love to the sinful unless there is shown at the same time a rational connection between that death and the responsibilities which sin involves, and from which that death delivers. Perhaps one should beg pardon for using so simple an illustration, but the point is a vital one, and it is necessary to be clear. If I were sitting on the end of a pier on a summer day, enjoying the sunshine and the air, and some one came along and jumped into the water and got drowned to prove his love to me, I should find it quite unintelligible. I might be much in need of love, but an act in no relation to any of my necessities could not prove it. But if I had fallen over the pier and were drowning and some one sprang into the water and at the cost of making my peril, or what but for him would be my fate, his own, saved me from death, then I should say, 'Greater love hath no man than this.' I should say it intelligently, because there would be an intelligible relation between the sacrifice which love made and the necessity from which it redeemed."—Denny, in "The Death of Christ."