“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord: being ready always to give answer (apologia) to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, yet with meekness and fear.” 1 Peter 3:15 RV

“IF Christ bore the punishment of my sins, how can I be punished for them?” “And if He has not borne the punishment of my sins, how can I escape?” “And in either case, how can my belief affect the fact? Either He bore my punishment, or He did not if He did, my salvation is assured; and if He did not, my salvation is impossible.”

When difficulties of this kind are raised by objectors or scoffers, they are best met by silence or rebuke. But when they are used to stumble ignorant but earnest inquirers after truth, it is but right that we should deal with them.

In common with many kindred difficulties, they spring from the prevailing habit of stating truth in language that has no express warrant in Scripture.

And this habit is fostered by a popular misconception of the true character of faith.

In his “Historic Faith,” Bishop Westcott marks the distinction between faith and both credulity and superstition, and then goes on to enforce the still more needed warning that conviction is not faith. When the Gospel is so stated that knowledge of salvation becomes the obvious conclusion of a syllogism, the sinner may “find peace” without ever being “brought to God” at all. Divine truth can never clash with reason, but it may be entirely opposed to experience, and, seemingly, even to fact.

It was so in Abraham’s case. He had nothing to rest upon but the bare Word of God, unconfirmed by anything to which he could make appeal.

The Revisers’ reading of Romans 4:19 presents this with striking definiteness and force. “He considered his own body now as good as dead, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.” But, looking to the promise of God, he did not waver. Abraham believed God , and it was counted to him for righteousness. And Abraham is “the father of all them that believe.”

Distrust of God was the cause of the creature’s fall; how fitting it is, then, that faith in God should be the turning-point of his repentance! It is this very element indeed that makes the Gospel “the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” With nothing to look back to but sin, and nothing to look forward to but wrath, the sinner, with facts and feelings and experience and logic all against him, accepts God’s Word of pardon and peace. And he receives the blessing, not because he has mastered a syllogism, but because, like Abraham, he believes God. And he becomes a changed man, not because he has learned the shibboleths of a right creed, but because, by the truth of God, received in the power of the Spirit of God, he has been made “partaker of the Divine nature.” He has been “born again, by the Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever.”

But someone will say; “This does not answer the question — Was Christ punished for my sins, or was He not?” No, but it explains what ought to be our attitude toward every problem of the kind. It may be doubted, moreover, whether anyone could intelligently explain the question.

What do we mean by “punishment?” That we suffer for the sins of others, is one of the commonest experiences of life on earth. But this in no way lessens the burden of the guilty. Such suffering, moreover, is but a part of God’s moral government of the world, whereas “punishment” — if we are to use words accurately and in a judicial sense- awaits the decrees of the great day. Does not the question confound punishment with judgment? A sentence of death, for example, is not the punishment for murder. It merely fixes the guilt and decrees the penalty.

First of all, let us take note of the fact that when we say that Christ bore the punishment of our sins, we are using language that is not found in Scripture. But someone will say “Though it may not be expressed, it is implied, as, for example, in Isaiah 53.” Here we may learn a lesson from a recent incident in the French Chamber. The War Office issued an order to the troops. A certain officer communicated it to his command in his own words. The Minister of War was attacked in Parliament for punishing him, and he gave this striking answer’ “He committed an offense, and I removed him; he paraphrased an order which it was his duty only to read.”

What a lesson for the preacher of the Gospel! Some truths there are which we can make our own; and these we can distribute, so to speak, in our own coinage. But when we have to do with spiritual truths of a transcendental character, it behooves us to keep to the very words in which they are revealed.

Do we not use wholly undue freedom, bordering too often upon flippancy, in presenting “the glorious Gospel of the blessed God”? The true minister will never forget that he is a savior either of life unto life or of death unto death, in all those to whom he proclaims it. Isaiah 53 is the utterance of the covenant people in the day of their repentance. The figurative language of the sixth verse is derived from the sin-offering; that of the fifth is borrowed from the prison-house. And to interpret either aright, we must have recourse to the typology of the Old Testament and the teaching of the New.

In the sin-offering of the great day of atonement, the sins of the people were laid upon the scapegoat, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation; and then the victim, bearing those sins, was led away to the solitary land. And so in 1 Peter 2:24,25 (which quotes Isaiah 53.), we read, “Who, His own self bare our sins in His own body to the tree.”

Bishop Ellicott’s commentary suggests that the colloquial expression, “onto” the tree — that is, up to the tree and upon it — would still better express the idiom of the original. But if theological reasons did not intervene, it would not be rendered “on the tree”; and if we have faith in the accuracy of Scripture, we shall fearlessly accept the inspired words.

What light then will the narrative of the Gospels throw on them?

That the night of the betrayal was a tremendous crisis that narrative affirms. “Save Me from this hour ,” was the prayer of the agony in the Garden. And when the Lord was surrounded by the priests and soldiers, He exclaimed’ “This is your hour and the power of darkness .” Till then no hand had ever been laid upon Him, save in loving service; but now He was “delivered up.” The Divine power which till then had shielded Him, now left Him to the hate and violence of men.

It may be urged that this was a necessary step to the cross. Such no doubt it was; but was it only this. The shadow of the cross had darkened all His path. But now a cloud unknown before was about to cover Him. No reverent spirit will attempt to lift the veil which hides the unrevealed mysteries of Gethsemane and Calvary. For “the secret things belong unto the Lord our God. But those things which are revealed belong to us, and to our children”; and can we not learn the meaning of the record from the types and prophecies of the Old Testament, and the doctrinal teaching of the Epistles? Men have faced martyrdom in its most dreadful forms without flinching; and He was the pattern Man. “He endured the cross, despising the shame.” But that which crushed Him, that from which His whole being shrank with an intensity of horror and dread that we can never understand, was it not the imputation of sin We are in the habit of assuming that His work as the Sinbearer began when He was nailed to the cross. But that was the act of the Roman soldiers, whereas this depended on the decree of God. And this was the death He dreaded — not the yielding up of His spirit, for death in that sense was the close of His sufferings, the gate through which He passed to victory. The cup which the Father had given Him to drink was death in its primary and deepest sense, as separation from God. Scripture speaks of it as His “being made a curse for us.” The meaning of such words is one of the mysteries of our redemption. And yet, with extraordinary levity and daring, we presume to enter this “holiest of all.”

In infinite grace, God has used the imagery of the prison-house to give us as it were a glimpse behind the veil. But instead of falling on our faces in adoring worship, we sit down forthwith to translate the bruises which came of our iniquities, and the stripes which bring us healing, into the language of the police-court or the counting-house.

That there are great realities behind these words we know, for the figurative language of Scripture is never exaggerated or fanciful. And in respect of all that it concerns us to know, we have Divine certainty. It was not that the guiltless died, as guiltless, for the guilty, for that would be an outrage upon justice both human and Divine; but that “He who knew no sin was made sin for us.” And sin being thus imputed to Him, He expiated it by His death.

If the inquiry be pressed “How could sin be so imputed to the sinless as to make a vicarious, death efficient, or even justifiable?” no answer may be attempted. As Bishop Butler says, “All conjectures about it must be uncertain.” “Nor,” he adds, “has he any reason to complain from want of further information, unless he can show his claim to it.” If anyone can solve the mystery of the imputation of sin to Christ, he will be able perchance to solve the further mystery of God’s imputing righteousness to the sinner.

And when he has achieved this, his faith will stand in the wisdom of men and not in the power of God. God retreats upon His own sovereignty and the believing sinner is satisfied with the Divine “It is written.” Reason bows before the God of reason, and the reasoner becomes a disciple and a worshipper.

The Revised Version reading of the fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians warrants our laying strong emphasis on what I am contending for. The inspired Apostle thinks it necessary to remind the Corinthians of the Gospel he had preached to them, the Gospel by which they had been saved. “I make known unto you,” he says, “in what words I preached it unto you. And he adds that he had delivered to them what he had himself received of the Lord - the same solemn formula that he uses of the Lord’s Supper. ( 1 Corinthians 11:23.) And here are “the words”: “That Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried; and that He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures.”

The public facts of the death of Christ would in themselves be no Gospel for a sinner. Indeed, they might well give rise to “a fearful looking, for of judgment.” What makes the record of that death a “Gospel” is that He died for our sins , according to the scriptures . And here we, pass into a sphere where human testimony is not only inadequate but impossible; the sinner is shut up to accept, or to reject, the Word of God. And this it is, I again repeat, which makes the Gospel “the power of God unto salvation.”

The Gospel is not a veiled or conditional promise, but a public proclamation to be “preached to every creature.” For “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself”; and now grace is reigning. Christ “gave Himself a ransom for all.” “He has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself”; put away sin in such sense that God can now proclaim forgiveness to all, without distinction or reserve. And all that believe are justified. For, in virtue of the cross, God can now be “just, and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”

And if we are asked to translate this marvelous revelation of Divine grace into the language of criminology or commerce, and to say whether Christ has paid the sinner’s debt, or borne his punishment, the answer that becomes us is a refusal “to paraphrase the order.” As I have already noticed, moreover, the Gospel to the unsaved is never stated in the New Testament in the language of the sin-offering? On believing, the sinner is brought within the Covenant. Then, and not till then, he becomes so identified with Christ in that death on Calvary that it is reckoned as his own. Hence the added words, “That we, being dead to sins , should live unto righteousness; by Whose stripes ye were healed.” ( 1 Peter 2:24.)

When the preacher’s theme is “righteousness, temperance, and judgment” — when he seeks to probe the conscience and stir the heart; when he appeals to men’s better nature, and warns them of the consequences of their sins - he is master of his subject, and can choose his words. But when, as the ambassador of Christ, he comes to proclaim the message of the Gospel, let him speak with solemn reserve, and let him (unlike “the many”) refrain from “corrupting the Word of God.” ( 2 Corinthians 2:17 (R.

V.).) A closing word respecting this caution about the language of the sinoffering.

I deprecate the thought that we should be limited or hindered in using Holy Scripture. Only let us beware of huckstering it in phraseology of our own. As I crossed Hyde Park on my way to Whitehall one morning, some years ago, I was startled by a pistol shot near by. As I turned I saw a man roll off one of the seats upon the ground. The poor wretch had shot himself. I ran across the grass to where he lay, and plied him with questions. He was past speech, but I saw by his look that he was conscious and understood my words. His life was ebbing, and if a message was to reach him it must be brief and quickly spoken. And as, in that solemn moment, I lifted my heart for guidance, the words that came to my lips were these, and I repeated them to the dying man: “Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”