It has been the forcing of the words into an unnatural and immoral theory of substitution, the notion of an angry God claiming a victim, that has done such terrible harm to the cause of Christianity, and has led many thoughtful minds to give it up in disgust or despair.  Probably in a wise commingling of the two lines of thought we shall arrive most nearly at the truth.  We all agree that our Blessed Lord’s death was “in behalf of us”; that is for our everlasting welfare; in a very real sense this was “instead of us,” since His sufferings were endured so that we might not lose the blessing of salvation.

Very beautifully is the matter summed up by a modern writer:  “In the death of the Lord Jesus Christ as a Sacrifice and Propitiation for the sins of the world, the moral perfections of God find their highest expression, and the deepest necessities of man’s moral and spiritual life their only complete satisfaction."[3]

[Footnote 3:  Dale on the Atonement.]

The death of Christ was not only typically but, in a certain sense, actually the offering up of our bodies on the Cross.  Notice very carefully the words of St. Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal. ii., 20 R.V.).  Not simply, as in the old Authorised Version, “I am crucified with Christ,” but something much more definite and exact.  When Christ ascended the Cross He took up with Him our human nature collectively, as bound up in Himself by virtue of His Incarnation.  Hence it follows that you, the individual, have been crucified with Him; just as you, the individual, have been buried with Him, and raised with Him in your Baptism (Rom. vi., 4).  How completely this takes the sting out of the reproach brought against Christianity, on the ground of the immorality of the Crucifixion!  It is no longer the Innocent one suffering instead of the guilty, but it is the sinless One taking upon Himself human nature, with all its guilt and consequent punishment, and “in His own body on the tree,” offering that human nature up to God.  He in us, we in Him, that the redemption of human nature may be complete.  Canon Liddon thus puts it in one of his University sermons, “The substitution of the suffering Christ arose directly out of the terms of the Incarnation.  The human nature which our Lord assumed was none other than the very nature of the sinner, only without its sin.  Therefore He becomes the Redeemer of our several persons, because He is already the Redeemer of this our common nature, which He has made for ever His own.”

We have already noticed that it was not the sufferings of Christ which were acceptable to God the Father.  To think this would be to fall back into the very crudest and most repulsive idea of substitution.  No, it was the offering up of the will of Christ that formed the essence of the sacrifice.  If we may presume to attempt a mere earthly illustration of so tremendous a matter, let us take the case of a General whose son meets with a terrible death while leading a forlorn hope.  The father’s heart is torn with anguish both for the death and the circumstances of it; but at the same time the father’s heart swells with pride, ay, even with joy, that his son should have been true to the highest thing in the world—­duty.