The Purpose of the Sacrifice by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 21, 1912

The Purpose of the Sacrifice

By C. M. S.

He who knows the Father by living, his personal knowledge knows that to reconcile God to us was not the purpose of the sacrifice on Calvary. The purpose of the gospel and of the life and death of Christ upon this earth was to bring to man a knowledge of God’s undying love for humanity, so reconciling man to God.

When man sinned in Eden, and fled to hide from God’s presence, he was simply fleeing from life to the silence of an eternal death. If God had needed to be reconciled, he would simply have allowed man to continue to flee from his presence, and go down into a grave that would hold him forever.

Satan, in the beginning, taught the innocent pair that God was unjust in withholding from them even one tree of that glorious garden. His deception succeeded; man sinned, fled from God’s presence, and, as a race; has been fleeing and ever since. Now he comes with the second accusation against God, teaching that he must needs be reconciled, appeased, like the gods of the heathen; and that, too, by the sacrifice of his own Son.

But our blessed Lord was not sacrificed for that purpose. If Satan can succeed in making man believe that he was, he has accomplished a master-stroke in the war of the ages against the best interests of man. If he can induce religious teachers to teach that, then is his success the more complete, his charge against God so much the more convincing. Accusing God of injustice in the beginning, and then making it appear that God must be reconciled, Satan attempts to shut the door of salvation in the face of man. He succeeds in the case of those who believe his sophistries. Let us see what Inspiration teaches in reference to this matter of reconciliation.

God has never been the enemy of man. His own declaration is, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.” Jer. 31: 3. He says of himself, “I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, . . . wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.” Eze. 18: 32. “The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.” Ps. 103: 17. “The Lord is good; for his mercy endureth forever.” Jer. 33: 11. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3: 16.

It has always been man’s sin that has put a cloud between him and his Maker. It is not that God has withdrawn himself from his faulty children; but, as in Eden of old, when man has sinned, he has hid himself from his Maker. “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you.” Isa. 59: 2.

In view, then, of God’s everlasting love toward men, of his ever-enduring mercy, and the fact that man has hid from God and not God from man, who is it that is to be reconciled? What was the purpose of Christ’s ministry? what the purpose of his life and sacrifice upon the earth? Let us answer in the language of the Bible: “But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses, and having committed unto us the word of reconciliation.” 2 Cor. 5: 18, 19. Thus has the Word made plain that it is man who must be reconciled to God, not God who must be reconciled to man. God never has been unreconciled. His arms have ever been stretched out toward the erring race

and are stretched out still. Christ’s work in the earth was “to reconcile all the things unto himself.” “And you . . . hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death.” Col. 1: 20-22. We are told in Rom. 5: 10 that “we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.”

So the plea of God’s representative in the land of the unreconciled is, “We pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” 2 Cor. 5: 20. The ministry of Christ, the ministry of those who are Christ’s, is the “ministry of reconciliation,” the reconciliation of an unreconciled and a needy and perishing world to the great God whose love is everlasting, whose mission is ever-drawing, whose kindness never faileth, and whose arms will continue to be stretched out to the human race as long as there is hope of saving a single soul. Christ died that he might ransom out of the enemy’s land those who had forfeited their heritage, bartered their souls, and fled from the face of God,—that he might turn them, win them, and bring them back with him, the fruits of his ministry in this world. C. M. S.