all these things, Christ's work goes beyond them all. It is simply the perfection of atonement.

"Atone

ment" in

The word occurs but once in the English version of the New Testament, in a passage the New where St. Paul declares that "we joy in God Testament. through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” 1 But the same Greek noun which is here rendered

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atonement," occurs again in a later verse, where he speaks of "the reconciling of the world," and in a still more important passage of another epistle, where he describes the gospel as "the word of the reconciliation," and the preacher's work as "the ministry of the reconciliation." The translation should be made uniform in all three places. Then we should have "the atonement of the world," "the word of the atonement," and "the ministry of the atonement.'

This would prepare us to appreciate the full The classic force of another passage in which we find, not passage. the noun, but the verb from which it is derived, in an intensive form which gives it new value, and in a connection which seems to pour fresh light upon it from all sides of human

When that which is perfect is

come.

experience.1 The classic passage on the atonement is in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians, and the central idea of it is in the twentieth verse, in which St. Paul declares. that it pleased the Father, by Christ, "to atone all things with himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.” Go backward and forward from this point, and see how many meanings converge in St. Paul's idea of the great atonement. Deliverance from the power of darkness; 2 redemption through Christ's blood, even the forgiveness of sins; 3 a new birth from the dead; peace-making by the cross; the winning back of enemies; the taking away of blame and reproof; the interpretation of human sufferings in fellowship with the afflictions of Christ; and finally the making known of the riches of the glory of a mystery, "which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." This, indeed, is atonement made perfect.

4

7

The perfection of it lies in the fulness and clearness with which it embodies and expresses the three essential elements of all lesser atone

1 The noun is κατάλλαγη: the verb is καταλλάσσω: the intensive form is ἀποκαταλλάττω.

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ments. Its purpose is a true, deep, eternal harmony of spirit between man and God, a peace which the world can neither give nor take away. Its condition of operative power is a full acknowledgment of the immense obstacle which sin has put between man and God. Its motive is pure and perfect love, the love which meets all needs as man feels them in his repentant heart, the love which passeth knowledge in its power to cover the whole mystery of sin as it is known to God alone.

Atonement begins with God's love.

Atonement a form of Incarnation.

Ι

The Love that meets All Needs

There is no truly Christian view of the atonement which does not begin with the love of God. This love involves the primal purpose of self-revelation, of fellowship with man, of a divine incarnation. There is a gospel, a promise of God's communication of Himself to man, in the very act of creation. "The faith of the atonement presupposes the faith of the incarnation." 2

If this be true, it follows that we may believe that the Son of God would have come into the world whether man had sinned or not. God has chosen and loved mankind in His Son before the foundation of the world. There is a profound truth in the saying of Robertson of Brighton, "God's idea of humanity is, and ever was, humanity as it is in Jesus Christ." 4

Atonement, therefore, is the form which is given to the incarnation by the presence of sin

1 Charles Cuthbert Hall, The Gospel of the Divine Sacrifice, ch. i.

2 Campbell, The Nature of the Atonement, pp. xvi ff. Eph. i. 4.

* Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson, Vol. II., p. 121.

in the world. Christ would have come to us as the revealer of the divine love, even though the world had never been separated from God.1 But because the separation had actually taken place, because man had offended against God, and departed from His ideal, and fallen into enmity with Him, Christ must reveal the divine love as a suffering love, a sacrificial love, a reconciling love, in order to bring man back to God.

This atoning form of incarnation appears to

us more glorious, more wonderful, than any other form, because it costs more. It is love put to the test. It is love overcoming obstacles. It is love militant and victorious. And its perfection is manifest in the freedom and fulness with which it meets all the needs imposed by the fact of sin.

The glory of this form.

and the un

known.

Our consciousness of these needs is the The known measure of our power to understand the atonement. But beyond this consciousness there is another region wherein the results of evil, the disorders which it has introduced into the world, surpass our comprehension. In that region we cannot fully understand the atonement. We

1 Westcott's Commentary on the Epistles of John, pp. 273 ff. Oxenham, The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement, pp. 80 ff.