J H Thornwell
It would be as unjust for a sinner to be totally destroyed as for him to be taken to heaven. In either case justice would lose its victim. An infinite penalty can only be inflicted upon a finite creature by eternity of torment. Whatever freedom the Supreme Ruler may have to delay, modify or adjust the ingredients of anguish which constitute the cup of trembling administered to the damned, the unchanging principles of rectitude imperatively demand that eternity should be the measure of their woe – that the darkness to which they are consigned should be the blackness of darkness for ever, that the smoke of their torment should ascend for ever and ever.
The severest penances, the most painful privations and the costliest sacrifices cannot remove the sentence or cancel the handwriting of ordinances against them. What proportions can the tortures of the body – the keenest agonies to which it is susceptible, inflicted and endured in this life – bear to the infinite load of wretchedness which is due to the smallest sin? What can haircloth and rags, laceration of the flesh, penury, voluntary exile from home and friends, needless exposure to scorching suns or withering cold – what can all the devices of superstition and fear avail when the real doom incurred is the wrath of God, and when the just measure of its severity is His omnipotence? Vain here is the help of man.
To come before the Lord with thousands of rams and ten thousands of rivers of oil, to bring to His altar the fruit of the body for the sin of the soul, to mourn in bitterness and weep tears of blood, would be but poor substitutes for that eternity of horror, that endless night of despair, that hopeless banishment from God, which is the legitimate consequence of sin. The insulted justice of God is terrible beyond the power of human thought or expression. The collision of eternal rectitude with human guilt, the conflict of boundless power with the object of its inextinguishable hate – it belongs to eternity alone to disclose, since eternity alone is the theatre of the strife. But to dream of satisfying, by tears, penances and mortal blood, the awful justice of such an immaculately holy Being as God is to suppose that eternity can be swallowed up in time – the infinite lost in the finite.
Is there then no hope? Must the whole race of man perish beneath the frown of the Almighty? Shall none be found to ransom or to save?
To answer these questions apart from revelation is beyond the compass of created wisdom. The essential rectitude of God precludes the possibility of unconditional pardon; the principles of His government, springing necessarily from the perfections of His nature and His relations to the creature, are fixed, immutable, eternal. The glory of His own great Name is deeply and critically involved in the vindication of His justice, holiness and truth. He can by no means clear the guilty.
The analogy of nature might indeed suggest the possibility of deliverance, as we find in the ordinary dispensations of providence that the consequences of folly may be averted by the agency of others. But where shall a fit mediator be found? It is as certain as God is immutable that no substitute could achieve our redemption who was not competent to bear the load of our guilt, to satisfy the insulted justice of our Ruler, to drain the cup of trembling to its dregs. The doctrine of substitution is unquestionably an ultimate principle in the moral government of God. Mediation pervades the arrangements of providence as well as the economy of grace. But the grand difficulty is to find a representative who, without being entirely destroyed himself, could exhaust the curse of the law.
Whatever glimmering of hope the doctrine of substitution might impart must, it would seem, be instantly extinguished when we call to mind the arduous conditions under which alone it could be made available to sinners. The justice of God is too formidable to be encountered by created strength; it hangs like a dark cloud over the prospects of man and mocks his most anxious efforts to secure a Redeemer. Whither shall the sinner turn for help? Shall he look to his own brethren, the descendants of Adam’s race? As each successive generation comes into being it passes under the curse; every man has iniquities of his own to bear, and none can by any means redeem his brother or give to God a ransom for his soul.
Shall he invoke the assistance of the angels above? The law might fitly turn aside from their proffered substitution, as it was man who had sinned and man who must die. Even if this difficulty were overcome, and an angel should become incarnate, where is his power to contend with the justice of God? What created arm could meet the thunder of insulted holiness and endure the storm of eternal wrath? Who can stand when Omnipotence wields the sword and sin provokes the blow? From the single element of substitution, to work out the problem of human redemption is beyond the skill of angels and archangel, of cherubim and seraphim. We might climb the loftiest heights and explore the utmost bounds of this widespread universe, every creature might be summoned in review before us, and heaven, earth and hell be laid under tribute, and still not a single being could be found able to endure the curse of the law; yet this is the only conceivable condition on which salvation could be given. God cannot absolutely pardon. He can only transfer the punishment. He cannot set aside the sanction of His law but only can give it a different direction.
Who then can save from going down to the pit? It was reserved for the wisdom of the eternal God to answer this solemn question. The sublime idea of the incarnation and death of the Son could only have originated in the mind of Him who is wonderful in counsel and unsearchable in His judgements. In Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, we behold a kinsman who, through the eternal Spirit, is able to endure the wrath of God – a Man who can satisfy justice and yet recover from the stroke, a Being who could die and in dying conquer death. Great indeed is the mystery of godliness, but it is no less glorious than great. Through the infinite wisdom of God a suitable substitute is found who takes the place of the guilty, assumes their burden, and bears it away to a land uninhabited. In the scheme of redemption, God visits the transgressions of sinners in the person of the Son, the law is executed in its utmost rigours, and God is just – perfectly and gloriously just – in justifying those who believe. Their sins have been as truly punished as if they themselves had been consigned to the darkness of hell.
The highest working of unbelief is when men judge their misery greater than [God’s] mercy; the great work of faith is to get these two to meet fairly; and mercy will surely prevail. His tender mercy is over all His works; much more is His abundant mercy above a sinner’s misery.
Robert Traill