Archive for April 4th, 2012
Styles:
1) Christ’s sufferings
proportionate to His people’s
guilt, the ground if the
sufficiency of His work.
We believe that as the death of the Lord Jesus was penal (that is to say inflicted on Him in punishment for the sins of His people,) His vicarious agonies were proportioned to their guilt, and died to save His own. that He suffered at the hands of impartial Justice what they Truth, wisdom, justice, power and love in their own persons must otherwise have endured in the place of endless woe, and that thus the measure of His rendered His oblation gloriously sufficient for great ends contemplated in the covenant of grace. William Jeyes Styles, A Manual of Faith and Practice, Designed for Young and Enquiring Christians, (London: Printed by J. Briscoe, Banner Street, Finsbury, E.C., 1897), 43. [Some spelling modernized; some reformatting; italics original; and underlining mine.]
2) ADDENDA TO CHAPTER 10. No. E.–Some erroneous views of the Atonement…
We differ from those who hold that "the dignity of Christ’s person,” and the "agony which He endured," "determines the merit of His work” No Scripture that we are aware of is adduced in favour of this assertion. It will therefore suffice to state that it has been duly considered and rejected by those whom we regard as authorities–who hold that the efficacy of the atonement lies in our Lord’s having so suffered, in His precious and inexplicable complexity, for the sins of His elect, as to satisfy divine justice on their behalf. Its worth lies neither in the glory of His person nor the circumstances of HIS passion, separately considered; but in His having suffered as the God-man, under the Divine wrath justly excited by the sins of His people.
“The merits of Christ," says William Palmer, consist in the worth of His person drawn out in acts of obedience unto death, which He rendered as a public person to the Law." The glory of the Lord’s person indeed characterized His atoning work Had He not been the infinite God, not one sinner would have been saved by His sufferings. This we concede. But "the essence of the atonement," again says William Palmer, "must not be confounded with tho Divinity of Him who made it; for then the slightest pang would have sufficed, and a plenary punishment been avoided.”