Written by Robert Roberts

Brethren Of Christ Articles - Biblical Standpoints

Trinitarians  and all those who say that Jesus came (was born) with divine nature and not human nature propound a proposition that cut at the root of the righteousness of God provided in the sacrifice of Christ.

They believe that it magnified the honour of his life and simplified the mystery of his death and union with Christ.  Rather than simplify, it creates a mystery where there is none and let there be no misunderstanding.  There can be no union in the case without unity.  The very basis of union in Christ is unity of apprehension of him; and this apprehension of him (while including his kingship) relates particularly to his position as the way of approach and basis of reconciliation to the Father on the part of those invited to be his sons and daughters.  Jesus is this basis of reconciliation, this way of approach.  It is a foundation that has been “laid,” a way that has been “opened.”  Our approach by this way is a mental act; our reconciliation is a mental result, on the basis of a mental perception of the way the foundation was laid and the way opened.  It is here where the heresy operates to the destruction of the truth.  It upsets the principles upon which God invites our approach.  It tells us that Christ, as not belonging to our race, has paid a debt owing by our race, and that therefore we are no longer in a position to be sued for the debt.  It tells us that Christ died as a substitute for us, and that therefore we are free—free from death, free from judgment, with a legal title to eternal life.

This may not appear a very serious matter to those who have not realised what approach to God is in fact; but to those who have, it amounts to a complete obscuration of that wisdom of God in the stake of Christ, which we are called upon to recognise in coming unto God by him.  If Christ was a substitute, on whom death had not come as upon all the sons of Adam, we do not see the declaration of God’s righteousness in his blood shedding, (Rom 3:25).  We cannot see how God is “just and (yet) the justifier of him that believeth on Jesus,” (verse 26).  If his death was a payment of our debt of sins, we do not see “the forbearance of God in the remission of sins that are past.”  There is no forbearance or remission if a claim is “satisfied” by payment in full:  “100 pence in the pound,” as it has been vulgarly expressed.  Nor can we see, if he died “in our stead,” how his resurrection was possible, not to speak of necessary; for a death in substitution would have kept him in the eternal grave of which the substituted were heirs. Nor can we see, if Christ’s death were substitutionary and expiatory, how we can any longer be responsible for sins expiated, nor how, therefore, we can have to “give account” for the deeds of our present lifetime at the judgment seat of Christ.  Thus the doctrine of judgment is undermined and gone

The truth runs clear of all these difficulties, and enables us to see, in the death of Christ, God’s dreadful majesty and the unutterable purity of His character and nature, as well as His kindness and compassion in forgiving such as fear and tremble before Him.  He gives us in Christ crucified a declaration of His righteousness.  It is such a declaration of righteousness, because Jesus was one of our race by his mother Miriam (or to give her Latin name – Mary); and the race was under sentence of death in Adam.  In Christ dying, as the representative of the entire family of God, that which was right was exemplified.  Therefore, the shedding of his blood was a declaration of the righteousness of God.  God puts this declaration of His righteousness in our hands, so to speak; to identify ourselves with it, not going clear of it not saying that this having been done, we are free; but being “crucified with Christ” and baptised into his death and accepting the fellowship of his sufferings, acknowledging ourselves dead in his death and risen with his resurrection.  Christ the first-fruits; afterwards those who are accepted through him.  Christ saved first; then his brethren by union with him. Christ delivered first; Christ obtaining eternal redemption first by his own blood (Heb. 9:12) —”for us,” in italics, is not in the original.  We obtain forgiveness for his sake—not as a right but as a favour God bestows on our recognition of our position as expressed by the stake.

Nothing has been paid; no debt discharged. God’s righteousness has been declared in sacrifice and the declaration has been endorsed and accepted in the resurrection of Christ, who is offered to us as a name of forgiveness, a way of salvation and a judge of our deeds hereafter.  The whole arrangement was on behalf of us, and, therefore, “for us,” but not instead of us.

The basis of reconciliation is laid in the crucifixion and resurrection of a righteous man of God’s own providing, who being born under the curse and partaking of it in all the evils of weakness, pain and death, could take it away in his own person by death and resurrection, and then act as a mediator for those still under the curse who could not of themselves obtain deliverance, but may obtain it by coming, in the name of Christ, in the confession of their sins, for forgiveness, and submitting to the obedience of his commandments, of which he will, afterwards, be judge and rewarder.

Those of Christendom present us with a view which involves the whole matter in utter obscuration.  It gives us a man who was not a fellow-sufferer—one who was outside our race, outside the death that came by Adam, and therefore one who was not saved from it, who, therefore, is not our forerunner; not the first-fruits, not the first-born, not the head of the body, but a substitute — one punished instead of us, one, therefore, in whose death, not righteousness but the opposite is declared.  It takes away justice, and puts a cloud over mercy, and destroys the judgment of the living and the dead.  It does all this by denying that Jesus was a son of Adam, and a sufferer with us from the consequences of Adam’s sin.  It deranges the whole arrangement of God’s wisdom and God’s kindness: it makes salvation an inscrutable compromise, instead of the reasonable result of efforts invited by God on the basis of His own supremacy vindicated and acknowledged, and it obliterates the principles upon which He asks the sinners of Adam’s race to approach Him.  Salvation by union with Christ who has obtained that salvation in and by himself is a very different idea from salvation resulting from Christ’s destruction.  When we come unto God by Christ we are forgiven; we are not made free because Christ endured the consequences. Nor are we released from the responsibility of our actions as candidates for eternal life, which we should be on the theory of substitution.  On the contrary, we are made more responsible and will have to give account to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead.

The simple fact of the truth concerning Christ would be a sufficient reason for standing out against all departures from it:  but there is a further reason in the purifying moral tendencies of the truth in question and the demoralising tendencies of the apostate doctrine of substitution.  It takes away the motive to circumspection by giving him to understand that Christ has expiated the whole of his sins, past and to come; and it powerfully strengthens this demoralising tendency by denying (logically enough) that there is any judgment seat at which the saints will have to answer for deeds done.  Its principal mischief, however, is experienced in the cloud it throws over the character of God, and the difficulty it creates in the way of our practically realising the scriptural declaration that He is just and holy and also compassionate and forgiving.  This difficulty may not be palpable to those who have not learnt what it is to worship God in spirit and in truth, but it weighs heavily with those with whom approach to God is a reality, and relation to the judgment seat a practical calculation.