by Rev. Hugh Martin, D.D.
While it is undoubtedly true that Scripture is most clear and abundant in its revelation of the truth that Christ’s death was priestly action, we have a strong conviction that there are, or may be, not a few who acquiesce in the sound and scriptural doctrine of the Atonement, but have not given to the simple proposition which affirms the action of Christ in His own death that attention to which it is gloriously entitled. We are so familiar with the plain statement that Christ was at once the Sacrifice and the Priest — “He offered up Himself” — that we think we have fully mastered its contents, while we may have done little more than skim the surface.
That it must contain great depths of truth should be obvious from the fact that it presents a consideration absolutely unparalleled, and singular and unique. That the man Christ Jesus should both suffer death — and such a death, under the curse of the divine law, and with all conceivable aggravations of woe, and agony, and shame; and also that He should sinlessly, yea, obediently and officially, have an active hand in His death — and such a death; ought at once to strike us as passing all comprehension, and as entitled to that thoughtful, prolonged, and reverent contemplation which might enable us, under the teaching of the Spirit of truth, to place the fact before our understandings with the most exact accuracy of thought we can attain; and with the fullest completeness that we can grasp. There is, indeed, good reason to think that the severe mental exercise for which there is in this simple familiar truth such manifest scope, is precisely what has led many minds to pass it by without any attempt to fathom it. That “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,” they are content to believe. But that in this transaction of the death at Calvary He combined the two apparently antagonistic attitudes of suffering and offering: — suffering unto such extent and such intensity as would have quelled all the active powers, not to say the patience, of any but a Divine person; and offering also in such activity, and such unquelled and excelling triumphant action, as if no suffering were making a drain upon His active powers at all; — this is the apparent paradox in the death of Christ which many, we fear, have far too lightly considered. And yet, how, without profound consideration and appreciating admiration of it, they can intelligently “glory in the Cross”, it is impossible to see.
That the simple but profound truth on which we are desirous of insisting should have been, at least to some extent, overlooked by many whose views of the Atonement are not incorrect, may in some measure be easily accounted for. Apart from the demand for severely accurate mental action, which the nature of the subject makes on all who would attain to exact theological knowledge of its various elements, several phrases have acquired a currency unfavourable to clearness and comprehensiveness. Among these we may notice what we have long thought the unhappy and not very intelligible expression — “Christ’s active and passive obedience”. No doubt, with explanations, the phrase may be allowed; and, without question, it is with these explanations that sound writers have used it. It has been employed to express the fact, that in Christ’s life and death as our surety, there meet the endurance of the penalty of the law and the inbringing of a positive righteousness. But it may be safely doubted whether the phrase “passive obedience” naturally indicates anything that can be properly called obedience at all; and the use of it in well-known English history is not favourable to the probability of its suggesting very accurate ideas theologically. Moreover, if there is anything in Christ’s interposition for our salvation that may be supposed to be called “passive” obedience, as in express contradiction to “active” obedience, it must be His death: and where this impression prevails, it obviously countenances, and indeed suggests, the idea that His death was exclusively passive — that His own activity or agency is not to be recognised in it.
Then the phrases, “Our Lord’s Passion,” and “The Passion Week,” lead obviously in the same direction. Used exclusively, and used as adequate and complete expressions for the death of Christ, and for that ever-memorable period of His closing sufferings and crowning work as our Redeemer, they evidently concentrate attention disproportionately, and indeed alone, on that aspect in which Christ appears as the piacular victim, or the Lamb of Sacrifice; presenting to the mind no suggestion of the great truth that in His “passion” He was an official, and obedient, and triumphant agent.
The Paraphrase also — the forty-fourth — which represents “the pale ensigns” of death as overspreading the cheeks and the “trembling lips” of our Lord, while life forsook His closing eyes and His drooping head,” does most manifest injustice to the condition of our Lord’s person on the cross, and is clearly most injurious to the scriptural representations that “He cried with a loud voice” and “gave up the ghost” — dismissed His Spirit. The impression which such phrases are fitted to make upon the mind is just this, and nothing more — that our Lord unmurmuringly endured inconceivable sufferings — that He was being subjected to death as the penalty due to sin. All which is true. But they also suggest the idea, that whereas formerly He had been engaged in positive duty, going about doing good, the time for positive and active duty was now passed, and the time for simply suffering had come.
We must never cease to affirm that this representation of the Cross is most inadequate. It exhibits the Cross as the emblem and scene of patience merely, while it conceals those glorious and glorifying aspects of it in which it is seen to be an altar of priestly agency, a throne of powerful action, and a chariot of victory and triumph. It represents Christ’s activity as subdued and overborne, or at least as in abeyance. It pretermits the grand consideration — which direct Scriptural assertions place before us, and which an adoring appreciation of the constitution of Christ’s person, and the intrinsic nature of His work necessitate — that Christ’s actual forth-putting of power, and His official, and obedient, and positive agency, never were, and could not be, overborne and subdued; but that, on the contrary, they prevailed to put forth their energy, and their grandest energy, precisely against an inconceivable combination of agencies and instruments naturally fitted, had that been possible, to subdue and overbear them. Earth, and hell, and heaven; earth’s rulers and her rabble; her kings, and priests, and soldiers, and malefactors assailing Him; her Jews and Gentiles; her dumb creatures even; earth’s forests furnishing wood; earth’s streams refusing water; earth’s bitternesses mingled in vinegar and gall; earth’s curse embodied in her thorns, in mockery and pain to crown Him; earth’s “founded” steadfastness refusing to support Him, and her firmament to shine upon Him: hell’s utmost force and fury gathered up against Him: heaven’s sword devouring Him, and heaven’s God forsaking Him: — earth, and hell, and heaven thus in conspiring action against Him, unto the uttermost of heaven’s extremest justice, and earth’s and hell’s extremest injustice: — what is the glory of the Cross, if it be not this; that with such action conspiring to subdue His action, His action outlasted and outlived them all, and He did not die subdued and overborne into dying, He did not die till He gave Himself in death? Emmanuel a mere sufferer in His death? “The Logos (Word) of the Cross is the Power of God” (I Cor. 1:18).