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Page 34
In this revelation of our Father is the assurance of our forgiveness.
Such a God is not one who may or may not be gracious, as He wills; it is
"His property always to have mercy." He would not be just in His own
eyes, were He unmerciful; He is just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Like His Son, He owes us Himself;
and His forgiveness is freely ours in the measure that we are able to
receive it, that is, in the measure in which we have forgiven others.
Jesus at Calvary proves Himself both our Substitute and our Exemplar. He
who finds and opens a trail to a mountain-top encounters and removes
obstacles, which none of those who come after him need to meet; he makes
the path _for them_. When the sinless Jesus found Himself socially
involved with His brethren in the low valley of the world's sinfulness,
and looked off to the summit of His Father's perfectness, He felt a
separation between the whole world and God; and He gave Himself to end
it. We shall never know the uncertainties that shrouded Him and the
temptations He faced, from the experience in the wilderness at the
outset to the anguish of His spirit in Gethsemane and the consciousness
of dereliction on the cross. The "if it be possible" of His prayer
suggests the alternative routes He sought to find, before He resigned
Himself to opening the path by His blood. Since His death there is "a
new and living way" for those who know Him, which stretches from the
lowest point of their abasement to the very peak of God's holiness. Up
that way they can pass by repentance and trust, and down it the mercy of
God hastens to meet and lead them. They are forever delivered from the
sense of exclusion from God; the way lies open. But he who knows a path
must himself walk it, if he would reach its goal; and no one is profited
by Christ's sacrifice who does not give himself in a like sacrificial
service; only so does he ever reach fellowship with the Father.
The cross convinces us that we must love one another in the family of
God as our Father in Christ has loved us; and it further pledges us
God's gift of Himself, that is His Holy Spirit, to fulfil this debt of
love. It speaks to us of One who offers nothing less than Himself, and
nothing less will do, to be the Conscience of our consciences, the
Heart of our hearts, the Life of our lives. We are lifted by the cross
into a great redemptive fellowship, a society of redeemers--the
redeeming Father, the redeeming Son and a whole company inspired by the
redeeming Spirit. We fill up on our part as individuals and as Christian
social groups--churches, nations, families--that which is lacking in the
sufferings of Christ for His Kingdom's sake. The more Christian our
human society becomes, the more it will manifest the vicarious
conscience of its Lord, and feel burdened with the guilt of every
wrong-doer, and bound to make its law-courts and prisons, its public
opinion and international policies and all its social contacts,
redemptive. Through every touch of life with life, in trade, in
government, in friendship, in the family, men will feel self-giving love
akin to, because fathered by, the love of God commended to the world
when Christ died for sinners.
While in a sense men will become all of them redeemers one of another,
behind them all will ever lie the unique sacrifice of Jesus. The
singularity of that sacrifice lies not in the act but in the Actor:
"_He_ is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also
for the whole world." Every member of the redeemed society, however much
he may owe to the sacrificial service of his brethren, will feel himself
personally indebted to Christ, who loved him and gave Himself up for
him. As the Originator of the redemptive fellowship, the Creator of the
new conscience, the Captain of our salvation who opened up the way
through His death into the holiest of all, we give to Jesus and to no
other the title, "The Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the
world."
CHAPTER VI
THE NEW LIFE--INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL
The health department of a modern city is charged with a double duty: it
has to care for cases of disease, and it has to suggest and enforce laws
to keep the city sanitary. The former task--the treatment of
sickness--is much more widely recognized as the proper function of the
medical profession; the latter--the prevention of the causes of
illness--is a newer, but a more far-reaching, undertaking. When Pasteur
was carrying on his investigations into the origins of certain diseases,
most of the leading physicians and surgeons made light of his work: "How
should this chemist, who cannot treat the simplest case of sickness nor
perform the most trifling operation, have anything to contribute to
medical science?" But Pasteur's discovery of the part played by bacilli
not only altered profoundly the work of physicians and surgeons, but
opened up the larger task of preventive medicine.
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