}

If we compare this set of ideas with those that have been current in
our popular theology, we shall find that the main difference lies in
this, that here the stress is laid on the work of Christ _in_ man by
His Spirit, while the theology which has been popular among us has laid
the stress rather on the 'vicarious' work of Christ outside us and
_for_ us, by making a propitiation for our sins. Now in fact this
latter doctrine is an unmistakable part of St. Paul's teaching in this
epistle and elsewhere. And all the mistakes to which it has led are
due to its not having been kept in proper relation to the set of ideas
which I have just been endeavouring to expound. 'Christ for us,' the
sacrifice of propitiation has been separated from 'Christ in us,' our
new life; whereas really the sacrifice was but a necessary removal of
an obstacle, preliminary to the new life.

It was a necessary preliminary that Christ should put us on a fresh
basis, should enable us to break from our past and make a fresh start
in the divine acceptance. This He did by making atonement for our
sins, offering as a propitiatory sacrifice His life, even to the
shedding of His blood, that the Father might be enabled to forgive our
sins. This transaction is always {60} represented in the New Testament
as being the act of the Father as well as of the Son, for the divine
persons are not separable--neither an act by which the Son forces the
unwilling hand of the Father, nor an act in which the Father lays an
undeserved burden upon an unwilling Son--and the idea of propitiation
seems to St. Paul, as indeed it has seemed to men generally, a
thoroughly natural idea. Only in one place does he make any suggestion
as to why such a preliminary sacrifice of propitiation was necessary.
There[8] he seems to find the moral necessity for it in the fact that
through long ages God's 'forbearance' had left men to work through
their own resources and so to find out their need of Him. 'He suffered
all nations to walk in their own ways.' He 'winked at' or 'overlooked
times of ignorance.' He 'passed over sins[9].' This was part of His
educative process. One result of it, however, was a lowering of the
moral ideas entertained of the divine character. Thus God's
righteousness, which means holiness and compassion combined, needed to
be declared especially at that crisis of the divine dealings when God
was coming out towards {61} men, whom He had educated by His seem