Page:Groves - Darbyism - Its Rise and Development and a Review of the Bethesda Question.djvu/85

 consideration of the cross, is its reference to the believing soul, who is able to look back there and read its title to life in the fact that God points to the crucified Jesus, and says, “Whosoever believeth in Him shall have eternal life.” Christ stands as God’s propitiation for sin; He comes under the load as God and man on behalf of God in the first place, and on behalf of man in the second, that He might redeem all who believe. And it appears to us that many of the difficulties that arise on the mysterious subject of the sufferings of Christ, arise from the aspect of the cross Godwards being too much lost sight of. A word may not be out of place here relative to the words wrath and judgment, which with many are often unjustifiably interchanged.

Wrath is the expression of a moral sentiment of a moral being against a sin as such, or against the sinner as such; it contains within itself no judicial expression or action. Judgment, on the other hand, is the delivery of the object of wrath to the experience of the judicial consequence of his misdeeds. Wrath pertains to God as the holy One, who abhors sin; and judgment to Him as the just and righteous One, who is the avenger of sin, and the awarder of evil to the evil-doer. Now when we contemplate Christ as the sacrifice for sin, we see one perfectly and essentially holy, holy as God is holy, in all the infinite heights and depths of His nature, and yet coming to the cross as appointed by God to bear the full judgment of sin, the absolute forsaking of God, and the endurance of the full power of the infinite holiness of God, when from Him the uttermost exaction of that holiness was made, and the utmost requirement met and discharged by Him who was the eternal light, who tabernacled in flesh. In all this He was God’s infinite delight, alike when judicially forsaken as when dwelling in the bosom of the Father. Now this doctrine of wrath coming on Christ, whether vicariously or otherwise, places Him in the place of that which was morally abhorrent and intolerable to God. Can this be? He stood as the sin-bearer in the place of deepest humiliation, but yet at same time in the place of the most absolute and perfect delight and acceptance to Him, who, as the avenger of sin, made to meet on Him the iniquities of us all; in consequence of which the judgment fell on Him likewise, that was due to such iniquity. To contemplate Christ, the Holy One of God, as abhorrent to God, and as an abomination to His holiness, which is to place Him under the wrath of God, is impossible, and yet this is unwittingly done by many. Some will say the distinction we draw is immaterial; we believe it to be of essential importance, and again repeat it, that the word wrath is in no instance said to come on Christ in connexion