THE SOUL'S SIN-OFFERING AND SACRIFICE
By J. O. C.
Did the Son of God Himself Really Die?—Is the Sacrifice Divine, or Merely Human?—He Tasted Death for Every Man
HOW superficially is considered, at times, the cost of man's salvation! How disposed are many to weigh this matter by natural standards! How apparently easy to think of the divine Sacrifice in the light of a common death! This is so, evidently, because of the established custom of measuring deeds by comparison of human environments. By such customary appraisements, many take for granted that the death of Christ was simply the snuffing out of His physical life, which affected only the human form of flesh in which was enshrouded the Son of God. MORE THAN MERE PHYSICAL DEATH
But there surely must have been something more than the taste of physical death in the attendant scenes of Calvary. No common obituary record can relate the story of that "death of death" suffered on the "hill of crucifixion." Of ordinary malefactors, with all their belated sorrow for a wrong course, not one was ever known to sweat blood drops from face and trunk in anguish of soul for the final act. There must, then, have been an inner meaning to the words of the Redeemer's passion, when He declared that His soul was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Matt. 26:38. The excessive agony of that Gethsemane event was not, however, the symptom of personal guilt clinging to the divine Sufferer. No, indeed! But the deep wounds which caused such superabundant, cheerless grief, were the resultant burden of a world's multiform transgressions. Those shocking bruises were the effect of stripes laid on the Guiltless One, made inconceivably grievous by the infinitely expanded iniquities of creation's millions. CARRYING THE GRIEFS AND SORROWS OF OTHERS
The Sorrowing One of Gethsemane and Calvary, in all His sufferings, was but bearing the griefs and carrying the sorrows that belonged to a world of sinners against Himself. Afflicted though He was, beyond human comprehension, without offering complaint, yet He was unappreciated. Because He was seen to be so given to grief, He was said to be thus humiliated by having been smitten of God as for leprosy, that hated disease of the Jewish nation. The very ones He came to suffer for and save, were so anxious to rid the world of Him, that justice was denied Him, and He was "cut off" without a legal trial. Whatever guilty humans deserved as a penalty for multiplied transgressions, was tasted in that awful experience. An unchangeable decree had made death the wages of sin. Rom. 6:23. This was not simply physical dissolution; for if that were all, it would soon be over. It must have been more than this, else the sufferings of Christ were a supererogation, and an excessive requirement from Him. But love's demand is not thus unreasonable. Christ simply tasted death for man—that is, in man's behalf—no more, no less. THE "DEAD BRANCH" AND THE DEATH CHRIST TASTED
At his creation, man was endowed with capacity for real happiness. This power of discernment was no less than a "living soul" bestowed on the senseless clay by the inbreathing of God's own life. But disobedience was made the sure cause of the man's alienation from this all-sufficient support, which would leave him to wander in the "vanity," or uselessness, of his degraded mind. Gen. 2:17; Eph. 4:17-19. To remain thus cut off from the life of God, no union with the Eternal could be hoped for, no heavenly pleasure could be known, and only the darkness of despair could be depended upon. In this way man became a "dead branch," only fit to be cast into the fire and be burned. John 15:6. It must have been this death, this alienation from God's life, that Christ tasted—yes, tasted—for every man (Heb. 2:9) whose soul was tainted with sin. Christ's very soul was therefore made an offering for sin, that the souls of men might again thrill with the inbreathing of God's life, and thus promote the pleasure of a loving Father. Isa. 53:10; Rev. 4:11. He must, then, have had a depressing soul sense of man's forsaken condition, as an alien from God's sustaining life, which grieved Him "even unto death"—that is, made Him conscious of the temporary withdrawal of the life of the Godhead. This was intensified to the limit when the agony of the cross drew from the cognizant Sufferer those appalling words which broke His own heart: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Matt. 27:46. Just how great was the God-man sacrifice, none may ever know until the full God-power of discernment has been restored to the156redeemed in the future life, when men shall be counted sons of God after the model of their elder Brother, when He was raised from the dead. Rom. 1:4. This much, however, is now familiar to all — the sense of sin has become so generally admitted as to cover the world with altars, churches, and temples. In all grades of humanity, religious rites betray this consciousness so strongly that many are readily found who will sacrifice earthly holdings to satisfy sin-stricken moral faculties. Nay, more; to ward off death, which is the aftermath of sin, everything dearly held, as accumulated possessions, is gladly offered, though in vain. But even this can not measure the sufferings which brought relief to every sin-sick soul who will receive it in the way prescribed. In view of what the divine sacrifice meant, it is not so strange that in the agonizing prayer of His garden passion, He who had never sinned, but had ever been one with the eternal Father, should fear that His offering would not suffice to meet the awful debt of accumulated sin. But we may well thank the loving Father that the suffering Saviour was heard in the thing that He feared, and so was perfected to become the Author of eternal salvation to all who accept Him as their offering for sin. Heb. 5:7-9. J. O. C.