Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/140

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��The .Plan of ike Ages.

��iiave won the right to lasting life. Hence, if those perfect men were asked to become ransomers of the fallen ones, it would be God's plan, as with our Lord Jesus, to set some spe- cial reward before them, so that they, for the joy set before them, might endure the penalty of their brethren. And if the same reward should be given them that was given to our Lord Jesus, namely, to partake of a new nature, the divine, and to be highly exalted above angels and principalities and powers, and every name that is named next to Jehovah (Eph. i : 20, 21), then there would be an immense number on the divine plane, which the wisdom of God evidently did not approve. Furthermore, these fifty billions, under such circumstances, would all be on an equality, and none among them chief or head, while the plan God has adopted calls for but one Redeemer, one highly exalted to the divine nature, and then a "little flock " of those whom he re- deemed, and who "walk in his footsteps " of suffering and self-denial, to share his name, his honor, his glory and his nature, even as the wife shares with the husband.

Those who can appreciate this feature of God's plan, which, by condemning all in one representative, opened the way for the ransom and restitution of all by one Redeemer, will find in it the solution of many perplexities. They will see that the condemnation of all in one was the reverse of aa injury : it was a great favor to all when taken in connec- tion with God's plan for providing justification for all through another one's sacrifice. Evil will be forever ex- tinguished when God's purpose in permitting it shall have beea accomplished, and when the benefits of the ransom are made co-extensive with the penalty of sin. It is impossible, however, to appreciate rightly this feature of the plan of God without a full recognition of the sinfulness of sin, the nature of its penalty death, the importance and value of the ransom which our Lord Jesus gave, and the positive and

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