039. THE SUPREMACY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

THE SUPREMACY OF RIGHTEOUSNESS The idea of moral influence took the place of moral government. But the influence was not moral, because the morality was utilitarian, and happiness instead of righteousness was regarded as the end of creation. The word righteousness indeed has of late years been falling into desuetude as the word government did before it, and schemes of the atonement have been devised in which its whole purpose has been represented to be a subjective change in man, while the necessity of any atonement to the divine holiness has been either ignored or denied. It is interesting to find such men as Pfleiderer declaring these schemes to be direct contradictions of the doctrine of the New Testament, where the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of Christ as through the eternal Spirit offering himself without spot to God, and where the Epistle to the Romans represents him as being set forth to be a propitiation through faith, by his blood, to show his righteousness, that he might be just, while he justifies the believer. While other scriptures assure us that love provides the atonement, these passages make it equally plain that the atonement is made to righteousness, and that it is righteousness that requires it.

I regard the last half-century as having led the way, by the new discoveries of Christ’s world-relations and by the demonstrated insufficiency of all mediating theories, to a larger and profounder conception of that redeeming work of which the whole universe is but the theatre and the illustration. And so I suggest, as the sixth truth to which theology has been gravitating, the supremacy of righteousness in the nature of God. The ethics of the cross is the ethics of the universe, and the cross and the universe alike declare that not love but righteousness is the fundamental attribute of God. Bishop Butler, in his "Analogy," wrote long ago as follows: "Perhaps divine goodness, with which, if I mistake not, we make very free in our speculations, may not be a bare single disposition to produce happiness so much as a disposition to make the good, the faithful, the honest happy." If it be replied that even this righteousness is a form of love,—God’s love for himself,—it still remains to be considered that this self-love, which is righteousness, conditions all other love, and that God cannot make the universe happy except by first making it holy. The immanent Christ is a suffering God. Love for his sinning creatures makes possible his suffering. But only his holiness makes that suffering necessary. If God were not supremely righteous, even love’s sharing of the sinner’s life and the sinner’s lot would involve no suffering and no atonement. No quia voluit then can explain God’s suffering for human sin. It is a fact of life and a revelation of the fundamental attribute of his nature. God cannot be God unless he is righteous and maintains that righteousness intact, for righteousness, though it is not a utilitarian self-love, is God’s instinct of self-respect and self-preservation. When sin assails this attribute it assails God himself. The immanent God suffers, and must suffer, so long as there is sin. The reproaches of those that reproach God fall upon Christ, whose life is the inmost principle of their being. He suffers because of his holiness what they because of their unholiness cannot suffer. His suffering takes the place of theirs and becomes remedial. For those who appreciate and accept it, this sharing of their guilt and penalty becomes a veritable substitution. The believer sees that Christ has done for him what he could never do for himself, that the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all, that by his stripes we are healed. But even to those who do not understand its meaning, Christ’s sacrifice brings blessing. Because his suffering vindicates God’s righteousness, the whole race can live under a dispensation of grace. So the atonement is an ethical fact of universal significance. While the cross is the manifestation of suffering love, it reveals the holiness of God as the reason why that suffering must be endured.