3. THE MORAL EXAMPLE THEORY.
Christ's death has an influence upon mankind for moral improvement. The example of His suffering ought to soften human hearts, and help a man to reform, repent, and better his condition. So God grants pardon and forgiveness on simple repentance and reformation. In the same way a drunkard might call a man his saviour by whose influence he was induced to become sober and industrious. But did the sight of His suffering move the Jews to repentance? Does it move men today? Such a view of Christ's death does not deal with the question with which it is always connected, viz., the question of sin.
4. THE GOVERNMENTAL THEORY.
This means that the benevolence of God requires that He should make an example of suffering in Christ in order to exhibit to man that sin is displeasing in His sight. God's government of the world necessitates that He show His wrath against sin.
True, but we reply: Why do we need an incarnation for the manifestation of that purpose? Why not make a guilty, and not an absolutely innocent and guileless man such an example of God's displeasure upon sin? Were there not men enough in existence? Why create a new being for such a purpose?
5. THE LOVE OF GOD THEOEY.
He died to show men how much God loved them. Men ever after would know the feeling of the heart of God toward them.
True, the death of Christ did show the great love of God for fallen man. But men did not need such a sacrifice to know that God loved them. They knew that before Christ came. The Old Testament is full of the love of God. Read Psalm 103. The Scriptures which speak of God's love as being manifested in the gift of His Son, tell us also of another reason why He gave His Son: "That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16); "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).
We believe that Christ's Cross reveals the love of God, and that throughout all these ages men have been bowed in penitence as they have caught a vision of the One who hung thereon. But if you were to question the multitudes that have believed in God because of the Cross, you would find that what moved them to repentance was not merely, if at all, certainly not primarily, that the Cross revealed the love of God in a supreme way, but the fact that there at that Cross God had dealt with the great and awful fact of sin, that the Cross had forever removed it.
"I examine all these views, beautiful as some of them are, appealing to the pride of man, but which leave out all thought of vicarious atonement, and say, 'But what shall be done with my sin? Who shall put it away? Where is its sacrifice? If without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin, where is the shed blood?' These views are neat, measurable, occasionally pathetic, and frequently beautiful, but they do not include the agony of the whole occasion and situation. They are aspect theories, partial conceptions. They do not take in the whole temple from its foundation to its roof. No man must set up his judgment against that of another man in a dogmatic way, but he may, yea, he must, allow his heart to speak through his judgment; and in view of this liberty, I venture to say that all these theories of the atonement are as nothing, most certainly shallow and incomplete to me . . . . As I speak now, at this very moment, I feel that the Christ on the Cross is doing something for me, that His death is my life, His atonement my pardon, His crucifixion the satisfaction for my sin, that from Calvary, that place of a skull, my flowers of peace and joy blossom forth, and that in the Cross of Christ I glory."—Joseph Parker.