"If we believe that Jesus died and rose again." "To this end Christ both died, and rose and lived again." "He died for them and rose again." We confidently avow, therefore, that the Christian Scriptures concentrate the most essential significance and value of the mission of Jesus in his resurrection, describing it as the Divine seal of his claims, the visible proof and pledge of our redemption, by God's freely forgiving grace, from the fatal bondage of death's sepulchral domain to the blessed splendors of heaven's immortal life.
There remain a class of passages to be particularly noticed, in which an extraordinary emphasis seems to be laid on Christ's sufferings, Christ's blood, Christ's death, three phrases that mean virtually the same thing and are used interchangeably. The peculiar prominence given to the idea of the sacrifice of Christ in the instances now referred to is such as might lead one to suppose that some mysterious efficacy was meant to be attributed to it. But we think an accurate examination of the subject will show that these texts are really in full harmony with the view we have been maintaining. Admitting that the resurrection of Christ was the sole circumstance of ultimate meaning and importance, still, his violent and painful death would naturally be spoken of as often and strongly as it is, for two reasons. First, the chief ground of wonder and claim for gratitude to him was that he should have left his pre existent state of undisturbed bliss and glory, and submitted to such humiliation and anguish for others, for sinners. Secondly, it was the prerequisite to his resurrection, the same, in effect, with it, since the former must lead to the latter; for, as the foremost apostle said, "It was not possible that he should be holden in death."
The apostolical writers do not speak of salvation by the blood of Christ any more plainly than they do of salvation by the name of Christ, salvation by grace, and salvation by faith. If at one time they identify him with the sacrificial "lamb," at another time they as distinctively identify him with the "high priest offering himself," and again with "the great Shepherd of the sheep," and again with "the mediator of the new covenant," and again with "the second Adam." These are all figures of speech, and, taken superficially, they determine nothing as to doctrine. The propriety and the genuine character and force of the metaphor are in each case to be carefully sought with the lights of learning and under the guidance of a docile candor. The thoughts that, in consequence of transmitted sin, all departed souls of men were confined in the under world that Christ, to carry out and revealingly exemplify the free grace of the Father, came into the world, died a cruel death, descended to the prison world of the dead, declared there the glad tidings, rose thence and ascended into heaven, the forerunner of the ransomed hosts to follow, these thoughts enable us to explain, in a natural, forcible, and satisfactory manner, the peculiar phraseology of the New Testament in regard to the death of Christ, without having recourse to the arbitrary conceptions and mystical horror usually associated with it now.
For instance, consider the passage in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, from the eleventh verse to the nineteenth. The writer here says that "the Gentiles, who formerly were far off, strangers from the covenants of promise, are now made nigh by the blood of Christ." This language he clearly explains as meaning that through the death and resurrection of Christ "the middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles was broken down" and a universal religion inaugurated, free from all invidious distinctions and carnal ordinances. In his bodily death and spiritual ascension the Jewish ritual law was abolished and the world wide moral law alone installed. From his spirit, rising into heaven, all national peculiarities fell away, and through him Jews and Gentiles both had access, by communion with his ascended and cosmopolitan soul, unto the Father. A careful study of all the passages in the New Testament which speak of Christ as delivering men from the wrath of God will lead, it seems to us, almost every unprejudiced person to agree with one of the ablest German critics, who says that "the technical phrase 'wrath of God' here means, historically, banishment of souls into the under world, and that the fact of Christ's triumph and ascent was a precious pledge showing to the Christians that they too should ascend to eternal life in heaven."7 The doctrine of the descent of Christ among the dead and of his redemptive mission there has of late wellnigh faded from notice; but if any one wishes to see the evidence of its universal reception and unparalleled importance in the Christian Church for fifteen hundred years, presented in overwhelming quantity and irresistible array, let him read the learned work devoted to this subject recently published in Germany.8 He can hardly peruse this work and follow up its references without seeing that, almost without an exception, from the days of Peter and Paul to those of Martin Luther, it has been held that "the death and resurrection of Christ are the two poles between which," as Guder says, "his descent into the under world lies." The phrase "blood of Christ" is often used in Scripture in a pregnant sense, including the force of meaning that would be expressed by his death, descent, resurrection, and ascension, with all their concomitants. As a specimen of innumerable passages of like import which might be cited, we will quote a single expression from Epiphanius, showing that the orthodox teachers in the fourth century attributed redeeming efficacy to Christ's resurrection rather than to his death." As the pelican restores its dead offspring by dropping its own blood upon their wounds, so our Lord Jesus Christ dropped his blood upon Adam, Eve, and all the dead, and gave them life by his burial and resurrection." 9
It was a part of the Mosaic ritual, laid down in the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus, that on the great annual day of expiation there should be two goats chosen by lot, one for the Lord and one for Azazel. The former the high priest was to slay, and with his blood sprinkle
7 Bretschneider, Religiose Glaubenslehre, sect. 59: Christus der Erloser vom Tode.
8 Guder, Die Lehre von der Erscheinung Jesu Christi unter den Todten: In ihrem Zusammenhange mit der Lehre von den Letzten Dingen.
9 Physiol., cap. 8: De Pelecano.
the mercy seat. The latter, when the high priest's hands had been laid on his head and all the iniquities of the children of Israel confessed over him, was to be sent into the wilderness and loosed. The former goat is called "a sin offering for the people." The latter is called "a scape goat to make an atonement with the Lord." The blood of the sin offering could not have been supposed to be a substitute purchasing the pardon of men's offences, because there is no hint of any such idea in the record, and because it was offered to reconcile "houses," "tabernacles," "altars," as well as to reconcile men. It had simply a ceremonial significance. Such rites were common in many of the early religions. They were not the efficient cause of pardon, but were the formal condition of reconciliation. And then, in regard to the scapegoat, it was not sacrificed as an expiation for sinners; it merely symbolically carried off the sins already freely forgiven. All these forms and phrases were inwrought with the whole national life and religious language of the Jews. Now, when Jesus appeared, a messenger from God, to redeem men from their sins and to promise them pardon and heaven, and when he died a martyr's death in the fulfilment of his mission, how perfectly natural that this sacrificial imagery these figures of blood, propitiation, sprinkling the mercy seat should be applied to him, and to his work and fate! The burden of sins forgiven by God's grace in the old covenant the scape goat emblematically bore away, and the people went free. So if the words must be supposed to have an objective and not merely a moral sense when the Baptist cried, "Behold the Lamb of God, that beareth off the sin of the world," his meaning was that Jesus was to bear off the penalty of sin that is, the Hadean doom which God's free grace had annulled and open heaven to the ranks of reconciled souls. There is not the least shadow of proof that the sacrifices in the Mosaic ritual were Divinely ordained as types pre figuring the great sacrifice of Christ. There is no such pretence in the record, no such tradition among the people, not the slightest foundation whatever of any sort to warrant that arbitrary presumption. All such applications of them are rhetorical; and their historical force and moral meaning are clearly explicable on the views which we have presented in the foregoing pages, but are most violently strained and twisted by the Calvinistic theory to meet the severe exigencies of a theoretical dogma.
If any one, granting that the central efficacy of the mission of Christ, dogmatically and objectively considered, lay in his descent into Hades and in his resurrection, maintains that still certain passages in the New Testament do ascribe an expiatory effect directly to his death as such, we reply that this interpretation is quite likely to be correct. And we can easily trace the conception to its origin beyond the pale of revelation. It was an idea prevalent among the Jews in the time of the apostles, and before, that death was an atonement for all sins, and that the death of the righteous atoned for the sins of others.10 Now, the apostles might adopt this view and apply it pre eminently to the case of Christ. This is the very explanation given by Origen.11 De Wette quotes the following sentence, and many others of the same purport,