Sermons: Selected from the Papers of the Late Rev. Clement Bailhache. Clement Bailhache
to our sin, as being unworthy of the God who has to govern us. No! when we reflect seriously upon the question, we cannot resist the feeling that God must have some plan of rescuing us from the doom we merit which shall give equal expression to His justice and His mercy.
Men in general, alas! hold justice cheaply, and, lowering the Divine standard of human character, they easily persuade themselves that they may enter heaven through the breach they have made in the Divine attributes. They think that God is indulgent, and will forgive, forgetting that indulgence is weakness. God will forgive, but His forgiveness must stand on safe ground. It cannot apply indiscriminately to all men. Men think they have said all when they have said, “God will forgive.” Such a forgiveness would aim a blow at His justice. No matter; He will forgive! Such a forgiveness is without motive—an effect without a cause. No matter; He will forgive! Such a forgiveness has its root in sentiment, not in reason. It matters not; He will forgive! Such a forgiveness imposes no obligation on the forgiver, and encourages sin. Never mind; He will forgive!
Surely this is the spiritual blindness which comes from the perversion of the conscience and the heart.
Some say, “God forgives; but the condition is that we turn away from sin and live a life of holiness.” There are many answers to this; but I will only ask those who thus speak, “Are you now living in such a way as to have in your present holiness, and on the ground of it, the assurance of your pardon?” That is a question which conscience may be safely left to answer.
At this point Christianity comes professing to reveal to us the Divine plan of salvation. It tells us that God forgives for the sake of Jesus Christ, who is Himself, in His sacrifice, the gift of the Father’s love. A debt has been contracted; the insolvent debtor presents in payment the money which a friend has freely contributed for the purpose; the creditor is satisfied. In this way goodness and justice are reconciled. It is Divine love which meets the claim of the Divine Righteousness. The redeemed soul, redeemed by the blood of Christ, is led to obedience by a love which responds to the love which has redeemed him. This last result none can dispute. Does it spring from error? No; it is too pure, too blessed for that. The redemption that produces it is a true principle founded in the nature of God—sublime in its working—like sap, inexplicable, but justified by the beauty of its foliage and the goodliness of its fruits.
Let us look a little more closely into this principle of Propitiation. Suppose we were reading the gospel for the first time, free from prejudice, and from the deadening influence of habit; we should be struck with the prominence everywhere given in it to the death of Christ. Ask a Christian child, or an aged saint, “What did Christ come on earth to do?” The answer from each will be, “He came to die for us.” The child finds his answer on the very surface of Scripture; the aged man finds it in that same Scripture when he has studied it to its very depths. The one quickly learns that this death of Christ was often predicted by Christ Himself, that it holds the most prominent place in each of the four Gospels, that it is constantly referred to in the Epistles, that it is the text of all the preaching of the apostles, and that it is symbolised in both the sacraments, for “we are buried by baptism into His death,” and whenever in the Supper we partake of the bread and wine, we “show forth His death till He come.” The mature Christian, in his turn, learns to look upon the death of Christ as the centre and the soul of all the great acts of the great work of our redemption, which seem, whether they preceded or followed, to have been done in direct view of it, and in indissoluble connection with it. The incarnation was designed to open up the way for it. “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.” The resurrection was intended to attest its meaning and its value. For Christ was “delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” The object of the ascension was to secure the precious fruits of it. “For He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.”
The remarkable thing in all this is that in the gospel, the aim of which is to reveal eternal life, the Prince of Life is always offered to us as dying upon the cross. Death in order to life! What can be the meaning and the bearing of a death which God has placed in so exalted a position? We can only get our answer from Scripture; and we can only get it from Scripture as we read in the simple, unsophisticated humility of mind and heart of which Christ Himself and His apostles give us the example.
“Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins.” We have sinned against God, and our sins have been so many offences to Him; offences which must be dealt with. Christ averts the penalty from us by taking it to Himself. The Holy One consents to suffer for the sake of the guilty. The apostle who styles Christ as the “Propitiation” has said, in a sentence immediately preceding: “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” Almost numberless passages teach the same doctrine. If we were engaged in an exercise of Biblical criticism, we should have to discuss each of these passages minutely in its turn. But the general idea we gather from them is definite and clear. A ransom paid, our sins borne, the wrath of God appeased, an offered sacrifice—all these contain one idea: Jesus Christ freeing us from the desert of our sin by Himself satisfying Divine Justice on our behalf.
Hence the two great facts of our religious history. We were under the condemnation of a holy law. He who was “the Life,” for our sake endured death that we who deserved death might have life for His sake. And God is “faithful and just to forgive us our sins.”
To a simple-hearted Christian all this is clear. Men may be scandalised at the exchange (as they term it) between justice and sin, between life and death; but Paul knows how to state the matter: “God hath made Him (Christ) to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” Men may be indignant (as they often profess to be) at the thought of the innocent suffering for the guilty; but Peter does not hesitate to say: “Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.”
What is it, moreover, that connects the teaching of the Old Testament with that of the New? The doctrine of sacrifice, as thus explained, is not simply attested by Scripture: it is the soul of it; its bond of unity. The death of Christ is the sacrifice “once offered in the end of the world,” in which all the sacrifices of the Old Testament find their common destination; to which they correspond, as the figure to the reality. The cross is the end, the key, the meaning, the value of all of them. Without this we cannot understand them. They were types: the cross is the antitype. What they represented, the cross achieved. The cross procured the pardon which they proclaimed. And so the cross has always been the symbol of the Christian Church. The Jews understood it, and were scandalised; the Greeks understood it, and sneered.
And now what ends does this sacrifice of Propitiation serve? Mainly two, which are inclusive of all the rest.
I. It is the fullest revelation of the Divine character. Leaving aside all questions of abstract and technical theology, we observe that it sets before us, in one great act, the righteousness and the mercy of God. The cross proclaims the pardon for which infinite love solicits. The heart of God yields to itself. But how can this be? It is because the pardon solicited by love is obtained by a sacrifice which equally exhibits God’s righteousness. If we seek the universe through for the greatest proof we can have of the love of God to the sinner, we shall find it in the cross; for we there see not only that God forgives, but also that He is so resolved to forgive that, rather than that the sinner shall be left to perish, the stroke of the offended law shall fall on the willing head and heart and life of “His only begotten and well-beloved Son.” On the other hand, if we want to know something of God’s abhorrence of sin, we shall find it in the cross; for we there see that, so impossible is it for Him to allow it to go unpunished, that He secures for it a Divine expiation in the willing sacrifice of His Divine Son. “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Most persons can see in the cross a demonstration of Divine love; in the light of Bible teaching, they may also see in it a demonstration of Divine justice more marked and telling than in a closed Eden, in the waters of the Deluge, in the overthrow of the cities of the plain, in the destruction of Jerusalem, or