Jacombe:

I having in what goes before said enough for the opening of the true notion of our Savior’s expiating of sin, under the present head I have but two things further to speak unto—the one referring to the nature of the act, the other to the extent of the act.

1. As to the nature of the act, know that Christ hath so expiated sin’s guilt as that it shall never be imputed to the believing sinner, in order to the inflicting of eternal punishment upon him. This must be rightly apprehended, or else we shall run ourselves upon great mistakes. When you read of the expiating, condemning, taking away of sin, (and so on in the other expressions named but now,) you are not only to understand them as pointing to the removal of sin’s guilt, in their proper and primary intention, but also as holding forth no more about that removal of guilt than the non-imputation thereof to punishment. Christ indeed, by the sacrifice of himself, hath done all that which I am speaking of; but how? Not but that believers have yet guilt upon them; that that guilt, as considered in itself, makes them liable to the penalty threatened; that the formal intrinsic nature of guilt, viz., obligation to punishment, doth yet remain, and is the same in them which it is in others. All, therefore, which it amounts unto is only this, that this guilt shall not be charged upon such, or imputed to them for eternal condemnation. Sin is sin in the godly as well as in the ungodly; thereupon there is guilt upon them as well as on the other, and upon this guilt they are equally obnoxious to the law’s sentence. But now here comes in the expiation by the obedience, death, satisfaction of Christ, by which things are brought to this happy issue, that though this be so, yet these persons shall be exempted from wrath and hell, and the punishment deserved shall not be inflicted. Thus far we may safely go, but beyond this we cannot; we may, for the encouraging of faith, the heightening of comfort, set this sin-expiatory act of Christ very high, but we must not set it so high as to assert contradictions. But these things will be more fully stated when I .shall come to the handling of the main doctrine of justification.

2. For the extent of the act, that must be considered two ways; either as it respects the subject for which this expiation was wrought, or as it respects the object, the thing expiated.

As to its extent in reference to the subject. And so Christ’s expiatory sacrifice reaches, (1.) both to Jew and Gentile; not to the one or to the other exclusively, but to both: 1 John ii. 2, ‘And he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.’ (2.) To those who lived under the law, as well as to those who now live under the gospel. The former had the benefit of Christ’s expiation of sin as well as the latter: Rom. iii. 2.5, ‘Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness, for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God’—where by sins past you are to understand those that were committed under the first testament, before Christ’s coming in flesh. So the apostle opens it: Heb. ix. 15, ‘And for this cause he is the mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance.’ Nay (3.) there is a sufficiency of virtue and merit in Christ’s sacrifice to expiate the sins of all men in the world. Yet (4.) in point of efficacy it extends no further than to true believers. Others may receive some benefits by a dying Christ; but this of the full and actual expiation of sin belongs only to those who have saving faith wrought in them. As this which I here assert is matter of controversy, I have no mind to engage in it. As it is practically to be improved and enlarged upon, so I shall speak to it in the use; therefore at present I will say no more to it.

Thomas Jacombe, Sermons on the Eight Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1868), 309-310. [Some spelling modernized, underlining mine.]

[Notes: Jacombe here echoes Thomas Aquinas on this verse, and this view was later taken up by Charles Hodge.]

Credit to Tony for the find

Shedd:

THE TRUE PROPORTION IN A CREED BETWEEN THE UNIVERSAL AND THE SPECIAL LOVE OF GOD

IT is objected that insufficient emphasis is laid in the Westminster Confession upon the universal offer of mercy, and the common call to faith and repentance, and some even contend that these are not contained in it. Advocates of revision [of the Westminster Confession] demand that them doctrines shall be more particularly enunciated than they now are, and complain that more is said concerning electing love of God in the effectual call than his upon his indiscriminate love in the outward call. In reply to this, mention the these following reasons why the Westminster Confession, in common with all the Reformed creeds, is more full and emphatic regarding the special love of God toward his church than regarding his general love toward the world.

1. The Scriptures themselves are more full and emphatic in the first reference than in the last. A careful examination of the Old and New Testaments will slow that while the universal compassion of God toward sinful men is plainly and frequently taught, yet it is the relation of God as the Savior of his people that constitutes the larger proportion of the teachings of the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles. These parts of Scripture are full of God’s dealings with his covenant people, instructing them, expostulating with them, rebuking them, comforting them, helping them–expressing in these and other ways his special love and affection for them, as those whom he has chosen before the foundation of the world. Throughout the Bible men universally are both invited and commanded to believe and repent. No one disputes this. This is God’s universal love. But, whenever the love of God is particularly enlarged upon, carefully delineated, and repeatedly emphasized, in the great majority of instances it is his electing love. The Savior’s last discourses with his disciples, and his last prayer, have for their principal theme the “love of his own which were in the world,” whom “he loved unto the end.” For these he specially supplicates. “I pray for them: I pray not [now] for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine.” The Epistles of Paul also are like the Redeemer’s discourses. So full are they of expanded and glowing descriptions of the electing love of God that the charge of a narrow Jewish conception of the Divine compassion is frequently made against them. The Confession therefore follows the Scriptures in regard to the proportion of doctrine, where it puts the mercy of God toward his people in the foreground. And to object to this proportion is to object to Divine Revelation.

2. The electing love of God and his special grace naturally has the foremost place in the Confession as in Scripture, because it is the only love and glace that is successful with the sinner. The universal love of God in his outward call and common grace is a failure, because it is inadequate to overcome the enmity and resistance with which man meets it. While therefore the sacred writers represent the common call as prompted by the compassion of God toward the sinner, and expressive of his sincere desire that he would hear it, and as aggravating his persistence in the sin of which a free pardon is offered, yet inasmuch as it yields no saving and blessed results, they we see no reason for making it the principal and prominent part of the Divine oracles. But that electing love in the effectual call and irresistible grace, which overcomes the aversion of the sinner and powerfully inclines his hostile will, inasmuch as it is tile principal work of God in the human heart, becomes the principal subject of discourse for ” the holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” They dwell rather on the special grace that triumphs over human depravity, than on the common grace that is defeated by it.

William G.T. Shedd, Calvinism Pure and Mixed (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893), 107-109. [Underlining mine.]

Chamblin:

REDEMPTION

Both before and during Paul’s time, both within and beyond the Bible, to redeem typically meant to secure a release from some bondage or penalty by the payment of a ransom-price.⁴⁵ In accord with what was just said about righteousness, Paul declares that redemption occurs in Christ (Col. 1:14) and that Christ is the very embodiment of redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).

As with other aspects of salvation considered thus far, it is preeminently in the cross that Christ does his redeeming work.⁴⁶ His death is the ransom-price that secures the liberation of others. Here “the man Christ Jesus . . . gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:6; cf. Titus 2:14).⁴⁷ Christians “were bought at a price” (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23)–Christ’s sacrificial death (1:18-31; 5:7; 11:23-26; 15:3). Sinners are “justified freely by [God’s] grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement . . . in his blood (Rom. 3:24-25 NIV). The shedding of blood signals not just the gift of life but the loss of life.⁴⁸ By the language of redemption, Paul does not imply that the ransom-price was paid to someone, whether to God or to the devil; his focus is on redemption’s costliness, both to God and to Christ. A principal reason for its costliness to Christ is that he “became sin” so that sinners might be justified (Rom. 3:24-26; 2 Cor. 5:21). “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins . . .” (Eph. 1:7; cf. Col. 1:14).⁴⁹ As in any instance of genuine forgiveness, the offended part absorbs the wrong and thus prevents it from spreading and multiplying.⁵⁰

In his death Christ the Redeemer liberates his people from bondage to Sin and its agencies, together with all the consequences of such bondage. God, “by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as a sin offering, condemned Sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:3)–in the very “body of [Jesus’l flesh through death” (Col. 1:22). “God did not redeem flesh by an act of incarnation; he destroyed flesh by an act of condemnation.”⁵¹ Moreover, by nailing sinners’ certificate of indebtedness to the cross, Jesus “disarmed the rulers and authorities [and] made a public spectacle” of them (Col. 2:13-15).⁵²

^{Read the rest of this entry »}

Tossanus:

A consideration upon the said text.

Blessed are those says David, in the 119 Psalm that are upright in their way, and walk in the law of the Lord. But what? Where is the man that walks uprightly? For they are all gone out of the way, taking damnable paths: as it is said in the 14^th Psalm: and in such sort through infidelity and disobedience are men turned away from the Lord, and walk after vanity: they are turned again into their course, says Jeremy in the 8^th chapter, as the horse that rushes into battle.

Now see the Son of God, who so graciously does call you again, and bid you to come again unto him. For so is there none other mean to find salvation & life: or whither shall we go elsewhere? He has the words of everlasting life, as S. Peter says in the 6^th chap., of S. John. But it is not with the feet of the body that we go to him: it is the soul that ought to march forwards, and to draw near to him by faith, who does approach so near unto him, that it joins and binds us with him: yea, it does graft us in him even as the branches are grafted in a vine stock, that in him we might have good consciences, & bring forth fruits agreeable or pleasing unto God [John 15: 2,15.].. So we might then well say:

O Lord, thou which does call us, draw us if it please thee, unto thee: draw & turn our spirits & wills unto thee. Be thou thyself that Adamant, which draws our hearts, more harder than iron [Rom. 9:16]. For alas, it is not in him that wills, nor in him that runs, but in thee O God, that shows mercy. And because thou pities not the proud & high-minded that feel not that charge of their sins, which are the more heavy than a great lump of lead; but shows mercy to the broken, and beholds all those that do groan under the burden of their sorrowful sins: give us grace to humble ourselves, that we may be exalted, and to feel our death, that thou may quicken and make us alive, & that O Lord, we do not despise or refuse thy yoke, seeing that it is an easy yoke, when as by thy Spirit thou will guide us, and by the word govern us, giving us a daughterly spirit, which is the spirit of adoption, seeing also that to serve thee, is to reign; to obey thee, is to rule and so to triumph over the devil & sin. This is not the fearful yoke of the law, that threatens condemnation to all those which did not fulfill it. This is not the damnable yoke, wherewithal the sinners are wrapped in: whereof is spoken in the 1^th chap., of Jeremiah’s Lament. The yoke of my transgressions is bound upon upon my hand: they are wrapped and come up upon my neck: But Lord, who would refuse thy yoke, which is so easy, seeing it gives rest unto the soul [Matt. 11:30], seeing it unbinds and rids us out of the devil’s yoke, and from the oppression, as it is said in thy Prophet Isaiah, 9^th chap.  Therefore receive again unto thee thy poor creatures, and bring us O Lord, and gather us together, as the poor straying sheep, unto that great shepherd Jesus Christ [1 Pet. 2:25].

Daniell Tossain The Exercise of the faithful soule (Imprinted at London by Henrie Middleton for Henrie Denham, 1583), 44-47. [Some spelling modernized, underlining mine.]