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VI

GOD'S REMEDY FOR SIN

He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. -2 Cor. v. 21.

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ET us attempt a retranslation and a paraphrase of that passage. The translation first, and following the order of the clauses in the Greek-" Him who knew no sin, He made to be sin in our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” The text gains a little in clearness of statement and in force by this way of arranging its clause and the substitution of words. Now the paraphrase: "By the will of God, Christ can so deal with human sin that the responsibility for it can as it were be transferred from us to Him, and that we, being freed from the burden of guilt, may rise into the righteousness of God, which is already His."

That is a stupendous thing to say. If my reading of the text be right, we are justified in saying that in these few words we have a complete statement of the Christian doctrine of atonement. I know of no other sentence on the same subject in the New Testament which says so much in so few words as this wonderful sentence written from the experience of St. Paul. I am well aware that this passage, and kindred passages dealing with this subject in the New

Testament, are a standing difficulty to many minds, religious and non-religious, both in the pew and in the pulpit. I have known preachers to say that they felt a great difficulty in preaching the Atoneinent, because they were not able to find a place for it in their own experience, and I remember once being told by a brother minister about a layman (permit the word) of high character and influence in the Church, who said to him, after a sermon on the doctrine of the Atonement, "I wish I could go with you in what you have said, but I do not really feel that I need a doctrine of Atonement; I have tried to live for the greater part of my days as well as I knew how, I have dealt justly with my fellows, and I think I love Jesus Christ, who is Lord of All, but I would love Him just as much if you never preached any doctrine of Atonement at all, and really it has no significance for me." Probably you will think that the speaker must have been in type a Pharisee. He was not. He was a good man. I have known many to say, "I admire the Christian ethic. It stands first, it appeals to the human conscience, it is the ideal for individual manhood; but this doctrine is not ethical, and it is not reasonable. In fact, it is immoral to ask any other being to bear my sins."

If there be any persons here of this way of thinking, my words are not, in the first place, intended for you, and yet I should wish them to appeal to you, too. They are intended for those who are conscious that nothing but the Christian evangel of the Atonement can reach their experience, and what I should like the rest of you to do is to arrange yourselves alongside the sinner, and try to see with his eyes and feel with his heart; then

see whether there be not something in the Gospel of the Cross of Christ that you never saw before. I am speaking to those, then, who are conscious of moral failure when I say this-that the Atonement, in a very real sense, is the whole of Christianity. Take it away and you have nothing left, no Gospel and no evangel. This is a strong statement, and requires justification. You shall have it.

To begin with, it is often said that, nowadays, men do not appear to exhibit the sense of sin as they did in an earlier day. We read about the thousands who flocked to hear the fiery eloquence of George Whitefield, and we are told that with strong crying and tears they entered the kingdom of God, convinced that His message of the Saviourhood of Christ, the atonement wrought by Him, was the first and most necessary thing for every man who would enter into eternal life. Some of you are old enough to remember when Mr. Spurgeon first came preaching in the great metropolis. The same thing took place. If ever there was an uncompromising preacher of the Cross, it was Mr. Spurgeon, and men came in multitudes to that Cross, believing in the Gospel of a crucified Saviour as the first necessity to their spiritual being. Was it not Mr. Gladstone who said that he noticed since that day a certain decrease in the sense of sin? That humble-minded statesman, grand Christian man as he was, deplored this tendency, and declared that the first thing preachers of the Gospel ought to address themselves to was the task of awakening the sense of sin. Dr. R. W. Dale said he feared the difference between a past generation and this was largely to be comprised in the fact that men do not now fear God; they speculate about

Him instead. Be this as it may, I am rather inclined to question the statement that the sense of sin is feebler than it used to be. Admitting that there are thousands and tens of thousands in London who care nothing at all about religion or Christ, I am perfectly sure I am within the mark when I say that both within and without the Church there are more men with a burning sense of sin than any preacher or all preachers put together will reach within the next week. The sense of sin has changed its mode of expression; but it is not gone; it is real and burning, and the need to which it gives rise is as great as ever.

Let me try to illustrate. There sits in the City Temple this morning a man of high repute, perhaps, in the metropolis; he has everything that this world can give him, humanly speaking. He is rolling in wealth, he is a man of great personal influence, with power over the bodies and minds of men. You call him fortunate, perhaps you envy him a little; there may be some here who would wish to change places with him. Do not wish it any more. He is suffering the tortures of hell, and this is the reason why. Years ago, when he was first climbing to success, he married a young wife, who loved him above all else in this world, and he was willing to give her everything in return but kindness. He treated her cruelly, brutally, with that coldness which is worse than hate; he broke her heart and he killed her. Now he is drawing towards the evening of life, when he has obtained everything he ever tried for, he finds how little it is worth, and he wishes that the tender grace of a day that is dead might come back again to him. That man is as much a murderer as any criminal who was executed in England this week. Pity

him; do not denounce. The horror of the situation is this: Whether there be any Gospel, any Christ, any God, or no, he is doomed to torture until the grave closes over him. Conscience has told him something, and nothing will rid him from that dread enemy. What do you make of that? You may give it what name you please, but it is the sense of sin, even though it be awakened by only one dread fact in the past life. Sin is not only a Bible word, not only a pulpit word; it is a newspaper word, a Stock Exchange word, a Fleet Street word, and the thing for which it stands is a very present experience in the life of every man and woman. You know, without preachers, what it is to suffer because of sin-your own or other people's.

Now, take another instance. Here is a man whose lot of life is so different from him whom I have described that there can be no comparison between them; there can only be contrast. This man started life high in the social scale. He has come down, and done it by his own fault. He has flung away his opportunities; He has destroyed the peace of those who loved him best. It may be that he has broken his mother's heart, and brought down his father's grey hairs in sorrow to the grave. Mark him as he sits near you, shabbily dressed, unkempt, hopeless-looking, the fire in his eye dimmed, his manhood gone. If you were to talk to such a man about sin, he might be impatient, but if you tell him that he has made his bed, and must lie on it, he will bow his head in shame, for he knows that it is true. What do you call that? If there never were a preacher of the Gospel, there is something worth preaching to in that man.

Close by him is another. You have pitied the poor

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