Atonement for Spiritual, Physical, and Eternal Death.
By Editor
We are requested to express our opinion concerning an article which appeared in the Faith of God, published at Allegheny, Pa. The heading of the article is "Atonement for Spiritual, Physical, and Eternal Death." There are good things in the article, and yet it is based on an entirely erroneous view. The Bible nowhere makes any such distinction as spiritual, physical, and eternal death. The penalty for sin was death, simply death, and nothing more. Spiritual death is, as the term is generally used in the theological world, a condition of sinfulness, or, as sometimes expressed, "death in trespasses and sins." But that is not a penalty; it is a consequence of yielding to sin. The penalty pronounced upon Adam became a consequence to the children of Adam because they inherited his fallen nature; but God saved them from that, irrespective of character, and gave them, through Christ Jesus, the privilege of obtaining eternal life. Those who do not choose Christ, but who rather choose sin, choose with that sin its penalty, death, just the same as Adam did in the beginning. Adam's death was rendered temporal because of the interposition of the gospel. The second death will be eternal, not because the death is any different from the first death, but because that after it there is no promise of a resurrection. The atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ covers every death, but upon the atonement the writer is at sea, thinking it was made upon the cross. But the reconciliation was made there—the offering for sin; the atonement is made in Christ's closing work. Then all of those who have accepted of Christ, renounced sin, and by his grace are cleansed from all iniquity, will be made "at one" with him forever. Of course this work begins in the regeneration of men at conversion; the power which brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, changes the heart of man, perfects him in character, and when Christ comes, changes the body of man's humiliation and fashions it like unto the body of Christ's glory. Of course in that sense the atonement in Christ Jesus saves from all death; but our deliverance is not, as stated by this writer, in this present evil world, but from this present evil world. Scriptural ideas of the atonement will be obtained by a careful reading of the articles by Elder M. H. Brown, on the sanctuary question, which are now running in the SIGNS OF THE TIMES.