is represented to us in the New Testament
is not that Jesus Christ, an innocent person, was punished, without
reference to His own will, by a God who thus showed Himself indifferent
as to whom He punished so long as some one suffered. But He, being
Himself very God, the Son of the Father, the administrator of the {217}
moral law and judge of the world, of His own will became man, and
suffered what the sin of the world laid upon Him, in order that He
might lift the world out of sin. Voluntary self-sacrifice for others
is at least not to be described as injustice. At least we rejoice to
recognize that God accepts such self-sacrifice. It is to vicarious
self-sacrifice like our Lord's that the human race owes the greater
part of whatever moral progress it has hitherto made.

Secondly, God is not represented as imposing any specially devised
punishment on His only Son in our nature. As the matter is stated in
the New Testament, He required of Him obedience, the obedience proper
to man; and, if we regard sympathy with our fellow men as a part of our
duty to God, we may say obedience only. Thus, 'Lo, I come to do thy
will, O God' is the one cry of the Christ. In His simple acceptance of
the whole of human duty lies the moral essence and value of His
sacrifice. All the physical and mental sufferings of Christ came out
of His fulfilment of the human ideal, Godward and manward, and were
involved in it. He died because obedience to the terms of His
mission--'the word of truth, and meekness, and righteousness'--in a
world of sin such as this is, involved dying. 'He was obedient'
without reserve--'unto death, even the death of the cross[1].' The
value of the bloodshedding lies in this, so far as Scripture enables us
to judge--that it represents utter obedience under conditions which
human sin, the sin of Jews and Gentiles, laid upon Him: and it was in
this sense, which does not leave out of consideration the mental
torment caused to His sinless spirit by contact with sin[2], that He
'bare our sins in his body {218} on the tree,' and that 'the Lord made
to light on him the iniquity of us all.' What is ascribed to the
Father is that He 'spared not' His only Son by miraculously exempting
Him from the consequences of His mission; and that He foresaw,
overruled, and used for His own wise and loving purposes the sin of
men[3].

Thirdly and lastly, the Christ (as represented in the New Testament)
did not suffer in order that