Now, have we any reason for thinking that God also combines, in their highest forms, these two attributes of mercy and justice? Certainly we have; for, as shown in [Chapter V.], the goodness of God includes both beneficence and righteousness; and these general terms, when applied to the case of judging sinners, closely correspond to mercy and justice. God, as we have seen, combines both, and both are required by the Christian doctrine. Mercy alone would have forgiven men without any atonement; justice alone would not have forgiven them at all. But God is both merciful and just, and therefore the idea that voluntary atonement might incline Him to mercy rather than justice does not seem incredible.
And this is precisely the Christian doctrine. The mercy of God the Father is obtained for sinful man by Christ's generous sacrifice of Himself on man's behalf; so that, to put it shortly, God forgives sins for Christ's sake. And it should be noticed, the idea of sins being forgiven which occurs all through the New Testament, and is alluded to in the Apostles' Creed, shows that Christ's Atonement was not that of a mere substitute, for then no forgiveness would have been necessary. If, for example, I owe a man a sum of money, and a friend pays it for me, I do not ask the man to forgive me the debt; I have no need of any forgiveness. But if, instead of paying it, he merely intercedes for me, then the man may forgive me the debt for my friend's sake.
And in this way, though Christ did not, strictly speaking, bear man's punishment (which would have been eternal separation from God), His sufferings and death may yet have procured man's pardon; He suffered on our behalf, though not in our stead. And some Atonement was certainly necessary to show God's hatred for sin, and to prevent His Character from being misunderstood in this respect. And it probably would have been so, if men had been forgiven without any Atonement, when they might have thought that sin was not such a very serious affair after all.
(3.) As to the sinner.
Lastly, the willingness of the victim affects the sinner also. For if the changed attitude of the judge is due, not to his justice being satisfied, but to his mercy being appealed to, this is plainly conditional on a moral change in the sinner himself. A good man suffering for a criminal would not alter our feelings towards him, if he still chose to remain a criminal. And this exactly agrees with the Christian doctrine, which is that sinners cannot expect to avail themselves of Christ's Atonement if they wilfully continue in sin; so that repentance is a necessary condition of forgiveness. Therefore instead of having a bad influence on the sinners themselves; it has precisely the opposite effect.
And what we should thus expect theoretically has been amply confirmed by experience. No one will deny that Christians in all ages have been devotedly attached to the doctrine of the Atonement. They have asserted that it is the cause of all their joy in this world, and all their hope for the next. Yet, so far from having had a bad influence, it has led them to the most noble and self-sacrificing lives. It has saved them from sin, and not only the penalties of sin, and this is exactly what was required. The greatness of man's sin, and the misery it causes in the world, are but too evident, apart from Christianity. Man is indeed both the glory and the scandal of the universe—the glory in what he was evidently intended to be, and the scandal in what, through sin, he actually became. And the Atonement was a 'vast remedy for this vast evil.' And if we admit the end, that man had to be redeemed from sin, impressed with the guilt of sin, and helped to resist sin; we cannot deny the appropriateness of the means, which, as a matter of fact, has so often brought it about.
This completes a brief examination of the moral difficulties connected with the Atonement; and it is clear that the willingness of the Victim makes the whole difference, whether we regard them as referring to the Victim himself, the Judge, or the sinner.
(D.) The Resurrection.
The last great Christian doctrine is that of the Resurrection. According to Christianity, all men are to rise again, with their bodies partly changed and rendered incorruptible; and the Resurrection of Christ's Body was both a pledge of this, and also to some extent an example of what a risen body would be like. He was thus, as the Bible says, the firstborn from the dead.[179] Now this word firstborn implies, to begin with, that none had been so born before, the cases of Lazarus, etc., being those of resuscitation and not resurrection; they lived again to die again, and their bodies were unchanged. And it implies, secondly, that others would be so born afterwards, so that our risen bodies will resemble His. The Resurrection of Christ is thus represented not as something altogether exceptional and unique, but rather as the first instance of what will one day be the universal rule. It shows us the last stage in man's long development, what he is intended to become when he is at length perfected. We will therefore consider first Christ's Resurrection, and then man's resurrection.
[179] Col. 1. 18; Rev. 1. 5; 1 Cor. 15. 20; Acts. 26. 23.