ing
absence to feel their need of Him, with the offer of His love. The
free bounty of His mercy must not be misunderstood as if it were
indifference or laxity about moral wickedness. Thus the proclamation
of His compassion must be associated with something which would make
unmistakable the severity of His holiness and His moral claim. This
twofold end is what Christ accomplishes. Thus if He is the revealer of
the compassion of the Father, He also vindicates the divine character
by a great act of moral reparation, made in man's name and on man's
behalf, to the divine holiness which our sins have ignored and
outraged. This great act of reparation is consummated in the
bloodshedding of the Christ. The sacrifice of consummate obedience is
carried to its extreme point and accepted in its perfection. God in
Christ receives from man, and that publicly, a perfect reparation: an
acknowledgement without fault or drawback: a perfect sacrifice. Now
God can forgive the sins of men freely and without moral risk, if they
come to Him in the name of Christ. To come to God in the name of
Christ means, of course, to come in conscious moral identification of
one's self with Christ, with {62} His Spirit and His motives. The
faith which simply accepts the bounty of forgiveness through Christ's
sacrifice, must pass necessarily into the faith which corresponds
obediently with the divine love. Thus the purpose of the atonement is
never expressed as being that we should be let off punishment, or
simply that we should be forgiven, but rather that, being forgiven, we
should be united to Christ in His life[10]. The propitiation which
Christ offered is only the removal of a preliminary obstacle to our
fellowship with Him in the life of God. The work of Christ 'for us'
has no meaning or efficacy till it has begun to pass into the work of
Christ 'in us' by His assimilating Spirit. It was only as baptized
into Christ and sharing His Spirit that Christians could accept the
forgiveness of their sins through the shedding of Christ's blood. The
sacrament of new life is also the sacrament of absolution, and the
washing away of sins. Nothing in fact can be plainer in this Epistle
to the Ephesians than that 'the redemption through Christ's blood, even
the forgiveness of trespasses[11]' was only a preliminary removal of
{63} obstacles to that fellowship with God in Christ by His Spirit
which is the secret of the Church.

ii.

[Sidenote: _P