THE RIVER OF LIFE by G. E. Fifield

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 29, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 35.

THE RIVER OF LIFE

By G. E. Fifield

THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE.

"Without shedding of blood is no remission." Heb. 9:22.

ANOTHER way of revealing in all ages the constant flowing of this life river, has been through the doctrine and practise of sacrifices and offerings. Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. At the very gateway of Eden, as soon as man had become conscious of his sin and loss, and consequently of his need of a Saviour, this wonderful sacrifice of the divine life was made known as his only hope of salvation. Till then death had been unknown; but now, to help men to comprehend the great gift of the divine life by which they were to be clothed with the garment of eternal righteousness, they were clothed physically with the skins of beasts slain and offered in sacrifice.

So terrible was the world’s first experience of death, and so deep was the impression thus made, that in no nation and in no land has that impression been wholly effaced. No nation has ever existed without its religion, and no religion has ever been known to be wholly without its sacrifices. Paul plainly shows that all these forms of false religion are so many gradually differentiating apostasies from the true religion once revealed by God. This first sacrifice, then, imaging and revealing the divine Sacrifice, was the common source of the practise of offering sacrifice. But here, as elsewhere, Satan has transformed the truth of God into a lie. While retaining the practise of sacrifice, the doctrine, or meaning of sacrifice, has been entirely changed and perverted.

In all paganism, sacrifice indicates the wrath and anger of the gods. Some god is always offended, and his wrath must be appeased by sacrifice, lest the people perish. If it is only an ordinary case of the anger of the gods, a bullock or a lamb will suffice for a sacrifice. If the gods are more than ordinarily offended, some spotless virgin or some innocent child must die. Almost every form of paganism has had, at least for extraordinary occasions, its human sacrifices. When the gods smell the blood of the slaughtered victim, their anger subsides, they are propitiated, and so the people are forgiven, and the impending destruction is averted. This is paganism. But in the Christian system, sacrifice means that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son," that the people might be saved, not from divine wrath, but from their own sins, and the inevitable result of sin, which is death.

In all the Scripture, sacrifice has but one general meaning, whether the sacrifice of bulls and goats and lambs, or the sacrifice of Him who was the Lamb of God, is referred to, and that meaning is love. Indifference keeps; hatred keeps; selfishness keeps, or gives, if at all, but grudgingly, counting the cost, and figuring on larger returns at some future time. Love, and love only, sacrifices, gives itself, gives itself freely, not counting the cost, gives itself because it is love. Thus, then, the general truth taught by the Scripture doctrine of sacrifice is that, through the infinite love of God in giving His only Son, and through the equally infinite love of Christ in freely giving Himself, the life river has ever been flowing from the throne, and coming so near each heart that "whosoever will" may take and live.

But, sad to relate, it is not only in pagan ages but in pagan lands that this truth has been perverted. Here and now, even in this most Christian of all lands, it is also misunderstood and perverted. In the workings of "the mystery of iniquity," when, as Gavazzi says, "a pagan flood, flowing into the church, carried with it its customs, practises, and idols, the same power that brought into the church the pagan sun festival, substituting it for the Sabbath of the Lord, brought in also the pagan conception of the meaning of sacrifice, substituting it for the Christian meaning, and applying it even to the sacrifice on Calvary’s cross. So now the latest confession of faith of one of the largest of Protestant Christian churches contains these words, "Christ died to reconcile the Father unto us," that is, to propitiate the Deity, and appease His wrath by giving Him His "full pound of flesh," so that He would pardon us and let us go free. He who sees clearly the glorious Scripture truth of the atonement in contrast with Satan’s vile perversion of that truth, will recognize at once that wherever this idea is found, or however it may be clothed in a professedly Christian garb, the idea itself is paganism, and came from the father of lies.

Not in a single instance does the Scripture ever say that God needed to be reconciled to us; for God is not like man, or like the heathen deities, to become angry with us. On the contrary, our Father is angry only with the sin, and hates only the sin. And He hates that because it is the deadly enemy of the sinner, whom He loves. In all the Scripture, wherever the atonement, or the reconciliation, or the propitiation is spoken of, it is always and invariably God through Christ who makes the atonement, and we who are atoned for; it is God through Christ making the propitiation, and we who are propitiated; it is God in Christ reconciling, not Himself unto us, but the world unto Himself.

This perversion of the Scripture doctrine of sacrifice was a natural and necessary result of the world’s misunderstanding of the character of God. When man sinned, since the divine law was the law of happiness and life, misery and death came as the inevitable result. That misery and death thus resulted was really a positive proof of God’s love, showing Satan in his true character of deceiver. It clearly showed that the divine law was not arbitrary, as Satan had said it was, but that its regulations were necessary to happiness and life, and that it only prohibited sin in love, that misery and death might not exist. But Satan used his utmost effort of deception to hide these facts from mankind, since they so plainly incriminated him and thwarted his plans. Man was led to believe that misery and death came not as the necessary result of his own actions, but unnecessarily, and only because of the divine wrath. When men once believed this, they could no longer think of sacrifice as a manifestation of God’s love, but could only behold in it a means of appeasing His wrath.

This idea of sacrifice exists to-day because of the same misunderstanding of our Father’s character. Men are taught that God loves them if they are good, while it was the constant effort of Jesus to help men to see that God loved them always, even tho they were sinning and straying; that He so loved the sinner that He left the others who had never sinned, and went after him till he found him, and that not only the Father, but all heaven as well, welcome the returning wanderer with love and rejoicing.

Christ was here to reveal God. Again and again He said, "I and My Father are one." How did He feel toward even the most unrepentant and incorrigible sinners? Over Jerusalem, that had killed the prophets and stoned those that were sent unto her in love; over Jerusalem, that was just then plotting and planning to take His life, He wept in unutterable love. We hear Him saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" When on the cross, while those for whom He was dying were mocking in unrepentant hate at its foot, He prayed, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." These words reveal the true attitude of God toward even unrepentant sinners. He holds no grudge against the sinner. He would gladly forgive him if He could. There are two reasons why He can not forgive without repentance. Repentance is the turning away of the heart from sin. Sin can not be separated from its results, which are inevitably misery and death. But God Himself can not separate sin from us by any arbitrary process, He can not do it unless we freely repent, or turn from it of our own free will. As sin can not be separated from us, so its results can not be. That would not be forgiveness, therefore, which could not remove the result, or penalty, which is death. God reveals Himself in Christ to win us to repentance, so that He can forgive. "Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins."

Again, to forgive sin without repentance, even were this possible, would be to ignore the sanctity of the law, and so to lead others to think lightly of transgression. This would be an injustice on God’s part, since by an unwise manifestation of love He would lead others into sin, and therefore into the results of sin, which are misery and death. God does not, like an unwise father, manifest His love so foolishly as to spoil the child. But through the sacrifice of Christ He reveals His love, to win us to a free repentance, that He may grant unto us the "forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace; wherein He hath abounded to us in all wisdom and prudence," God having through Christ first propitiated us, and brought us to repentance, can then be just, and yet "the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus;" for by such wise and loving forgiveness He does not lead others into sin.

All this is just what the Scripture says, only our eyes have often been blinded to these glorious truths by the pagan conception of sacrifice. I repeat, Throughout all the Scripture, the one general meaning of sacrifice is divine love, that gives itself freely to bring back the wanderer and reconcile him to God, so that he may be forgiven and healed of his backslidings.

God gives His life freely for us, because He is love, and it is the very nature of love to give freely. As we partake of His given life until we become like Him, our lives also are given, and thus we have part in His sacrifice. When the Scripture says, 'Without shedding of blood is no remission,' it states a most glorious and solemn truth. There is no paganism, and no arbitrary, mechanical conception of the atonement here. It is not necessarily the literal blood that is shed. 'The blood is the life.' This expression occurs often in the law, and it is the law interpreting the law.

The free shedding of the blood is the free giving of the life. This is made plain in many scriptures. 'For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your soul; for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood.' You 'shall even pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with dust. . . . Whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.' This is a most wonderful and glorious scripture.

In the offerings, the victim stood for the one who offered it, its life for his life. To eat, throughout the Bible, is the symbol of self-appropriation. 'No soul of you shall eat blood. . . . Whosoever eateth it shall be cut off;' that is, thou shalt not appropriate thy life unto thyself; whosoever doeth this shall die. This is the innermost spiritual truth of Christianity. 'Whosoever will save his life shall lose it.' Nor does this mean simply that if we do wrong rather than give up the present life, we shall lose the future life. It means that if we save our lives selfishly to ourselves, we shall in so doing lose both the here and the hereafter; but if we give our lives freely for others, we shall in so doing find a glorified and larger life now and evermore.

Herein is the great difference between monkery and Christianity. The monks left the cities and all the abodes of men, for fear of contamination with human guilt. They went into the deserts to be alone with God, that they might become righteous, that they might be saved. They failed. In seeking to become spiritual in this way, they became bestial, so that Draper well says, 'The degree of degradation from the dignity of a man, became the measure of the merit of the monk.' Monkery ate the blood,—appropriated the life unto itself,—and died. On the other hand, Christ was in heaven, where all was pure, and there was no danger of temptation, or of contamination; but to save us, who were fallen and lost, in self-forgetful love He stooped to these depths, and plunged into this maelstrom of temptation to rescue the perishing, or perish in the attempt. Christ succeeded, was made perfect through suffering, and given a name above every name in earth or heaven, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. Jesus gave His life freely, and found a larger life in the giving.

Jesus did not eat the flesh or drink the blood, but He gave it to us, saying, 'Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.' John 6:53. As we partake of His shed blood—His given life—until we become like Him, our lives are given also, and without this shedding of the blood, this giving of the life, there is no remission, and no atonement.

Theology has invented many arbitrary conceptions of the atonement, but all these are utterly unknown to the Scripture. The atonement is the at-one-ment. When our lives so partake of the nature of His life of love that they too are given freely for others, becoming merely so many channels through which His life of love flows out to the world, then, and then only, are we one with Him who gave His life for us all.

In creation, God gave His life to all that live, becoming thus the 'Fountain of life.' In redemption, He poured out His life through Christ into this dying world,—poured it out to be hated, spit upon, and crucified, 'and covered with dust.' Can we then be one with Him by any arbitrary substitution of sacrifice, while we selfishly keep our lives to ourselves? Hear the solemn answer of Jesus: 'If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily.' 'Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, can not be My disciple.' Thousands of people believe, without a doubt, that Jesus was the divine Son of God, and that He lived, died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, and yet their whole lives show that, instead of being one with God, they are in utter antagonism with Him in all things. It is not the sacrifice of Christ nineteen hundred years ago merely, that makes us one with God, but it is His sacrifice now and here, through us, that makes the atonement. Then when we are thus made one with God, we are to be channels through which the life river is to flow out to others. We repeat, without such a shedding of the blood there is no atonement and no remission.