THE EXTENT OF THE ATONEMENT
IN ITS
RELATION TO GOD AND THE UNIVERSE.
By the
REV. THOMAS W. JENKYN, D.
D. ON THE NATURE AND DESIGN OF THE
ATONEMENT. THE atonement, which the Lord Jesus Christ by his death
gave to the divine government, is a subject of stupendous
interest to every sinner. It concerns him personally: it is
a matter of life and death to him. No man can be innocently
indifferent to the doctrine of the gospel concerning this
atonement. By its dignity and authority, it deserves and
demands the most serious consideration of every man who
hears of it. It is extremely difficult to make this subject plain to a
careless inquirer, or to a captious disputant. Should this
book be read by a convicted offender, whose eternal life
depends on the answer to the question, "How shall a man be
just with God?" I should regard the task of unfolding this
doctrine as comparatively easy. On the contrary, should the
offender think lightly of the evil of his offence, he will
care proportionately little about the means of his
acquittal. It is always found, that slight thoughts of the
atonement of Christ, engender and foster slight thoughts of
the evil of sin. "WHAT IS AN ATONEMENT?" This is a question rarely if ever
pondered, either by those who deny the atonement as an
absurdity, or by those who wrest it for licentiousness. Yet
a distinct and well-defined conception of the nature of an
atonement is indispensably necessary to a successful inquiry
into the design, the aspect, and the extent of the
atonement. What, then, is an atonement? An atonement is any provision that may be introduced into
the administration of a government, instead of the
infliction of the punishment due to an offender--any
expedient that will justify a government in suspending the
literal execution of the penalty threatened--any
consideration that fills the place of punishment, and that
answers the purposes of government, as effectually as the
infliction of the penalty on the offender himself would; and
which thus supplies to the government just, safe, and
honorable grounds for offering and dispensing pardon to the
offender. This definition or description may be more concisely
expressed thus: ATONEMENT is an expedient substituted in the
place of the literal infliction of the threatened penalty,
so as to supply to the government just and good grounds for
dispensing favors to an offender. Let this definition of atonement be fairly tried by the
usage of the word in the administration of civil justice;
and let it be compared with the sense of all the passages of
holy scripture in which the word, or the doctrine of the
atonement is introduced. It will not wrest one text of
scripture; it will not torture one doctrine of Christian
theology. In the administration of a government, an atonement
means, something that may justify the exercise of clemency
and mercy, without relaxing the bands of just authority. The
head of a commonwealth, or the supreme organ of government,
is not a private person, but a public officer. As a private
person he may be inclined to do many things which the honor
of his public office forbid him to do. Of this we have an
instance in the feelings of David towards his son Absalom in
rebellion. Therefore, to reconcile the exercise of his
personal disposition with that of his public function, some
expedient must be found, which will preserve the honor of
his government in the exhibition that he makes of his
clemency and favor. For want of such an expedient, a public
organ of government must often withhold his favors. This
principle is practically adopted every day in the discipline
of children in a family, as well as in the civil
administration of public justice. I will endeavor to illustrate this definition of an
atonement by two remarkable instances, one, borrowed from
the holy scriptures, and the other from profane history. The first instance is that of Darius and Daniel, in Dan.
vi. 14, 15, 16. King Darius had established a royal statute,
and made a firm decree, and signed the writing, that
whosoever should ask a petition of any god or man for thirty
days, save of the king himself, should be cast into the den
of lions. Daniel, one of the children of the captivity of
Judah, was found to be the first offender. "Then the king,
when he heard these words, was sore displeased with himself,
and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him: and he labored
till the going down of the sun to deliver him. Then these
men assembled unto the king, and said unto the king, 'Know,
O king, that the law of the Medes and the Persians is, That
no decree or statute which the king establisheth may be
changed.' Then the king commanded, and they brought Daniel,
and cast him into the lions' den." Here is an instance of an absolute sovereign setting his
heart on the deliverance of an offender, and laboring to
obtain it; and yet prevented from exercising his clemency,
by a due sense of the honor of his government. Could not
Darius at once have pardoned Daniel? Yes; Darius could, as a
private person, forgive any private injury; but he could
not, as a public officer, privately forgive a public offence
committed against the authority of his office. Could not
Darius have repealed the law which he himself had made? Yes;
but not with honor to the laws of the Medes and Persians.
Such a repeal would have shown egregious fickleness in him;
and such a fickleness and uncertainty in the administration
of his government, might encourage any disaffection or
treason among the presidents, princes, and satraps of the
provinces. Could not Darius have banished or silenced all
the abettors of the law, and enemies of Daniel? Yes; but
such a deed would have published his folly, imbecility, and
injustice, in every province of his empire: his folly, in
enacting a law which he found it unreasonable to execute;
imbecility, in want of due authority in his own council, and
of due firmness to enforce his own edict; and his injustice,
in protecting and favoring an offender at the expense of the
loyal supporters of the law and the throne. What, then, is to be done? Cannot some means be found
which will enable the king to keep the honor of his public
character, and yet save Daniel? No: the king labored till
the going down of the sun to deliver him. He pondered, and
thought, and devised, about a way to deliver him honorably,
but failed. Consequently, the very personage who had set his
heart to deliver him, "commanded" with his own lips that
Daniel be brought forth, and thrown into the den of
lions. Why was this done? Not because the king had no mercy in
him, but simply and only, because no expedient could be
found, which would at once preserve the honor of the
government, and allow the exercise of clemency towards the
offender. Daniel, then, was cast into the lions' den, merely
because no atonement was found to vindicate and to "show
forth" the public justice of the governor in his
deliverance. Here, then, is an instance of mercy being
withheld, merely from the want of an honorable ground or
medium for expressing it: i. e., the want of an
atonement. The other instance to which I alluded, is from profane
history. In this instance also there was a strong
disposition to save the offender, and yet there was a
difficult, almost insurmountable, in the way of his
honorable acquittal. His deliverance, however, was devised
by a wise expedient introduced by the governor himself. I
allude to the case of the son of Zaleucus. ZALEUCUS, the king of the Locrians, had established a law
against adultery, the penalty of which was, that the
offender should lose both eyes. The first person found
guilty of this offence, was the king's own son. Zaleucus
felt as a father towards his own son, but he felt likewise
as a king towards his government. If he, from blind
indulgence, forgive his son, with what reason can he expect
the law to be respected by the rest of his subjects? and how
will his public character appear in punishing any future
offender? If he repeal the law, he will brand his character
with dishonor--for selfishness, in sacrificing the public
good of a whole community to his private feelings; for
weakness, in publishing a law whose penalty he never could
inflict; and for foolishness, in introducing a law, the
bearings of which he had never contemplated. This would make
his authority for the future a mere name. The case was a difficult one. Though he was an offended
governor yet he had the compassion of a tender father. At
the suggestion of his unbribed mercy, he employed his mind
and wisdom to devise a measure, an expedient, through the
medium of which he would save his son, and yet magnify his
law and make it honorable. The expedient was this:--the king
himself would lose one eye, and the offender should lose
another. By this means, the honor of his law was preserved
unsullied, and the clemency of his heart was extended to the
offender. Every subject in the government, when he heard of
the king's conduct, would feel assured that the king
esteemed his law very highly; and though the offender did
not suffer the entire penalty, yet the clemency shown him
was exercised in such a way, that no adulterer would ever
think of escaping with impunity. Every reporter or historian
of the fact would say that the king spared not his own eye,
that he might spare his offending child with honor. He would
assert that this sacrifice of the king's eye, completely
demonstrated his abhorrence of adultery, and high regard for
his law, as effectually, AS IF the penalty had been
literally executed upon the sinner himself. The impression
on the public mind would be, that this expedient of the
father was an atonement for the offence of his son, and was
a just and honorable ground for pardoning him. Such an expedient, in the moral government of God, the
apostles asserted the death of Christ to be. They preached
that all men were "condemned already,"--that God had
"thoughts of peace, and not of evil" towards men,--that
these thoughts were to be exercised in such a manner, as not
to "destroy the law," and that the medium or expedient for
doing this, was the sacrifice of his ONLY SON, as an
atonement or satisfaction to public justice for the sin of
men. The sufferings of the Son of God were substituted in the
room of the execution of the penalty threatened to the
offender. The atonement in the death of Christ is not the
literal enduring of the identical penalty due to the sinner;
but it is a provision, or an expedient, introduced instead
of the literal infliction of the penalty; it is the
substitution of another course of suffering, which will
answer the same purposes, in the divine administrations, as
the literal execution of the penalty on the offender himself
would accomplish. Had Darius found any person willing to be thrown into the
lions' den instead of Daniel, and literally to bear the
penalty threatened, this could never have been deemed an
atonement to the laws of the Medes and the Persians. These
laws had never contemplated that the offender should have
the option of bearing the penalty, either in person, or by
his substitute. It would have been a much more likely
atonement of the laws, if one of the presidents of the
provinces, one high in the esteem of the king, one concerned
for the honor of the government, and one much interested in
Daniel, had consented, either to lose his right hand on a
public scaffold, or to fight with a lion in an amphitheater,
for the sake of honorably saving Daniel. In that case, one
class of sufferings would have been substituted instead of
inflicting another class. Atonement is not an expedient contrary to law, but above
law: It is what law, as Law, cannot contemplate. It is
introduced into an administration, not to execute the letter
of the law, but to preserve "the spirit and the truth" of
the constitution. The death of Christ is an atonement for
sin committed; it is a public expression of God's regard for
the law which has been transgressed; and it is an honorable
ground for showing clemency to the transgressors. That the
atonement is a doctrine of the word of God, is evident from
the following facts,--that it suggests itself to every
unprejudiced reader of the New Testament,--that, in the
churches which used the Greek text only, it was never deemed
a heresy,--and that one end of the modern opponents of it,
in constructing an "Improved Version of the New Testament,"
was to exclude it. The simple and unbending language of the
scriptures speaks of Christ as an atoning Mediator, "whom
God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in
his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of
sins past through the forbearance of God, to declare at this
time his righteousness, that he might be just, AND the
justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Rom. iii.
25. If this representation of the death of Christ be correct
and scriptural, it must be evident that the atonement of the
Son of God did not consist in suffering literally the
identical penalty threatened, or the identical amount of
penalty due to a certain number of offenders for a certain
number of offenses. The atonement of Christ is represented
by men sometimes, as if he would have had to suffer more,
had there been more to be saved; or less, had there been
fewer to be saved. Sometimes also another aspect is given to
the atonement, as if God saved a number more or less, of
offenders, in proportion to the value received for them, in
the obedience and suffering from their substitute. This is
what is called by divines, COMMERCIAL ATONEMENT. Here, let us pause. Let us bethink ourselves, and
seriously consider--" IS THIS the atonement of the
scriptures ? "This invests with the meanest calculating
mercenariness a moral transaction of the utmost grandeur in
the universe. By supposing the literal infliction of the
threatened punishment upon the substitute, it exalts the
condemned supplicant into a presumptuous claimant, it
excludes grace from the dispensation of pardon, and, in
fact, annuls the idea of an atonement. By maintaining the
certain salvation of so many persons, in consideration of so
much suffering endured for them, and for them only, this
hypothesis prescribes dimensions to the mercy that "loved
the world;" it makes the salvation of some offenders utterly
impossible; and it destroys the sincerity of that universal
call which summons all men to "receive the atonement." This commercial atonement accumulates the obligations of
the elect, to the Son, at the expense of their obligations
to the Father; for, on this showing, the Father has granted
no boon without being compensated for it. And it completely
darkens the justice of that "sorer punishment" which shall
befall the rejecters and despisers of salvation. By its
absurdity, it furnishes the most plausible apology for
Socinianism, and every other system of opposition to the
doctrine of an atonement: and by its boldness it unbridles
all the licentiousness of Antinomianism. The character and
aspect of such an action of atonement show that it is not
the atonement of the scriptures. It is a suspicious circumstance in any system of
theology, when it is so promulgated as to excite objections
and controversies, which were not raised by the ministry of
the apostles. We can clearly ascertain the theological
doctrines of the apostles, partly from their direct
assertions, and partly from their replies to the objections
proposed by their adversaries. If the apostles shunned not
to declare the whole counsel of God, and if this whole
counsel was delivered unto us, when the inspired code of
theology was completed, we have no safe ground to expect the
revelation of any new doctrine of Christianity. When the announcing of our theological doctrines raises
the same objections as those to which the apostles have
already replied we may safely conclude that such a statement
of the doctrine is apostolical. But if we, by any of our
theological statements, excite objections which the apostles
did not excite, we have good grounds, not only for being
very jealous of such a doctrine, but also for a total and
immediate renunciation of it. The doctrines of the apostles did excite controversies
about predestination to life, the sovereignty of divine
grace, the accountableness of a sinner to the moral law, the
reality of the atonement, etc.; but there is not the most
remote allusion to any controversies having been raised
concerning the EXTENT of the atonement, Some of the Jews,
indeed, at one time, had doubts about the universal calling
of the Gentiles; but those doubts arose from their views of
the Mosaic covenant, and not from considerations relative to
the intrinsic aspect and design of the atonement. The apostles declare, in language the most distinct and
unequivocal, that the death of Christ was a ransom for all,
and a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, that he
tasted death for every man, and that God, consequently, was
in him reconciling the world unto himself. Yea, they openly
declared that persons, who denied or renounced the Lord who
had bought them, would, notwithstanding, meet with a
damnation that slumbered not. Yet this universal aspect of
the atonement is never supposed to have shocked the minds,
or clashed with the doctrines, of the primitive churches. In
all the apostolical writings, there is no hint given that
the churches had any narrow views of the design of the death
of Christ; and no reply is given to any objection which
might imply a misapprehension of such an unshackled,
unqualified, and unlimited, testimony concerning the extent
of the atonement. That the apostles represented Christ to have died "for
the church," "for the people," etc., does not in the least
weaken this position; for what is true of the whole of
mankind, must be true of a part; and such a language
expresses the actual result of the atonement, and not the
nature, aspect, and adaptation, and design of it. It is, then, evident that the advocates of a limited
atonement, and the inspired apostles, do not publish their
message in the same style. Do the advocates of a limited
atonement ever cheerfully and fearlessly declare, that
"Christ died for all?" and that his death is "a propitiation
for the sins of the whole world?" Do they not hesitate to
use such unmeasured phraseology? Do they not call sinners to
repentance, rather on the ground that perhaps they are
elected, than on the firm and broad basis of a "ransom for
all? The apostles, on the contrary, understood their
commission to be general and indiscriminate for "every
creature:" so they received it from Him, who laid the
foundation of such an extensive ministration, by "tasting
death for every man." Accordingly, they went forth on their
commission to preach the gospel to "all the world." They did
not square their message by any human systems of theology,
nor measure their language to the lines of Procrustean
creeds. They employed a dialect that would traverse the
length and breadth of the world. They did not tremble for
such an unreserved exhibition of the ark and the mercy seat.
They could not bring themselves to stint the remedy which
was prepared and intended to restore a dying world; nor
would they cramp the bow, which God had lighted up in the
storm that threatened all mankind. To avoid some of the absurdities of a commercial
atonement, its advocates allow, that it was sufficient for
all, but not designed for all. This then is conceding the
point, that the particularity of the atonement consists, not
in its nature and aspect, but in its application. The phrase
"sufficient for all," should be well weighed. If the
atonement be "sufficient for all," sufficient for what is
it? It was, no doubt, sufficient to show that the throne and
government of God were quite guiltless in the intrusion of
sin, and that sin is a wrong, and an evil of tremendous
malignity. But is the atonement sufficient to justify the
government in the salvation of every man provided such a
salvation would take place? Is the atonement sufficient to
demonstrate to all the offenders of the world the evil of
their revolt, and the inexcusableness of persisting in it?
Is the atonement sufficient to show, that if any sinner
perished, he perished not through any deficiency in the
provision made for his salvation? In a word, is the
atonement sufficient to justify a free, a full, and a
sincere offer of cordial acceptance to every applicant at
the throne of mercy? If the atonement be not sufficient for
these purposes, in what senses can it at all be sufficient
for men, and for all men? And if it be actually sufficient
for these purposes, let it be preached as such; let it be
fearlessly exhibited in its true character, sufficient for
every sinner.