Ball:
It is objected again, that God does freely remit and pardon sin, therefore, he wills not that Christ should make satisfaction: because free remission will not stand with satisfaction. And most sure it is, that God is favorable to our iniquities, Jer. 31:34, but God has set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. Rom. 3:25, Acts 10:43, Luke 1:68-70.
There is a twofold payment of debt: one of the thing altogether the same, which is in the obligation, and this ipso facto frees from punishment, whether it be paid by the debtor himself, or by the surety. Another of a thing not altogether the same, which is in the obligation, so that some act of the creditor or governor must come unto it, which is called remission: in which case deliverance does not follow ipso facto upon the satisfaction. And of this kind is the satisfaction of Christ: for in the rigor of the law, the delinquent himself is in person to suffer the penalty denounced, “Every man shall bear his own burden,” Gal. 6:5. “In the day that thou eat of thereof, thou shall die the death” [Gen. 2:17].1 So that the law in the rigor thereof, does not admit any commutation, or substitution of one for another. And, therefore, that another person suffering made procure a discharge to the person guilty, and be valid to free him, the will, consent and mercy of him to whom the infliction of punishment belongs, must concur, which in respect of the debtor is remission; and this overruling power must dispense, though not with the substance of the law’s demands, yet with the manner of execution, which in respect of the law is called relaxation. Remission, therefore, is not repugnant to the antecedent satisfaction: but only to that payment of the thing due, which ipso facto does deliver and set free.
It may be added that of grace, Christ was ordained to be our surety, that at the commandment of grace he made satisfaction, and that his mind and will in satisfying was, that grace might justly glorify herself in pardoning offenses, and not that pardon should be given of justice. And so the satisfaction of Christ is full and perfect, and our pardon every way free and gracious. And seeing every one may impose a law to act depending upon his own free will and pleasure, he that pays2 for another, and he that admits the payment of one thing for another, and he that admits the payment of one thing for another, may covenant, that remission shall presently, or after a certain time, purely or upon condition. And this was the will and pleasure of Christ making satisfaction, and of God admitting satisfaction, and this the Covenant, that God should pardon sin, not presently in the very time of Christ’s passion, but when a man is turned unto God by true faith in Christ, humbly entreating pardon. To forgive sin, is no opposite to the accepting of that satisfaction which is freely admitted, when it might be refused, and to which he upon whom the benefit undue is conferred, does confer nothing.