Hebrews 10:8-9

Hebrews 10:8

Atonement.

If an innocent man should suffer, what is the common verdict of the world? It says, "There is a crime beneath the seeming innocence, or he would not suffer." The book of Job gives the Old Testament answer to this blind opinion. The complete answer is in the death and suffering of Jesus. It has been written there for all the world to read, that this stupid maxim is wrong; suffering does notprove God's anger, nor prove the sufferer's sin. If increase of love were possible, never did the Father so deeply love the Son of man as at the hour of the cross; if increase of righteousness were possible, never was Jesus more sinless than in that hour of human agony and apparent defeat.

I, Christ did notcome to tell us that God needed to be reconciled to us, but that we needed to reconcile ourselves to Him. Christ did not come to die for us, the innocent for the guilty, that God's justice might be satisfied, and because of this satisfaction be enabled to show mercy to us. He came to die that He might make us feel, through the intensity of His human love, how much God loved us, and make us understand that God's justice, though it punished, was final mercy. Christ did not come to enable God to forgive us, He came to tell us that God had forgiven us.

II. The things which belong to the law of atonement are not theological dreams, woven out of the intellect, not parts of a scheme; they are developments of human powers natural to man, things possible to his nature, growing out of the common life of man; ideas, but practical ideas; the flower, according to law, of plants in the garden of human nature. Christ manifested these powers, showed that they were practical and possible, made us understand that we could blossom also into this perfection. And that was another way in which He brought salvation to us, took away our sins, and justly earned the title of Redeemer. His revelation reconciles us to God; reconciles man to man; reconciles man to suffering.

S. A. Brooke, The Unity of God and Man,p. 82.

References: Hebrews 10:9. G. Dawson, Sermons on Disputed Points,p. 73; Christian World Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 319; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iii., p. 18. Hebrews 10:10. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1527; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. x., p. 145.Hebrews 10:11. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xviii., No. 1034.