Mediator the offering of Himself an expiatory sacrifice for sin.

In other words, the love of God to man subject to the condemnation of violated law, and the yearning of man after peace with God whose wrath is abiding on the transgressor, meet in the righteous life and the expiatory history. of the Mediator. As regards man it may be said: the Mediator raises the transgressor into true communion with God in expiating his guilt. The reverse statement is equally true: in expiating the guilt of the transgressor He assumes and perfects human nature. As regards God it may be said: the Mediator originates a new communion of God with man by actualizing redeeming love in His mediatorial life; and He actualizes redeeming love inasmuch as, born under the law, He bears the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.

5. By His expiation of guilt the Mediator delivers the race from subjection to the kingdom of darkness.

Sin is of Satan. In superinducing man's fall Satan has made man the servant of his will. His will is fixed antagonism to God. By the commission of sin man does Satan's will. Doing Satan's will, man is held in bondage by Satan. Says our Lord: Every one that committeth sin is the bond-servant of sin.' Sinful human life is centered in Satan's will. Says John: "He that doeth sin is of the devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning."" The

'Jno. viii. 34. Both the A. V. and the R. V. take ris áμaprías to be genuine. If the words be spurious, we shall have to translate: "Verily, verily, I say to you that whosoever commits sin is a slave;" a sense which for substance is the same: truly a slave he is, while believing himself a free man.

*1 John iii. 8. 'Of the devil' as a son. The word born is not used, nor seed, as in v. 9, but works. "From the devil there is not generation, but corruption."

wrong-doer occupies a position in the Good and a position in the evil; and this twofold attitude implies a twofold ground.

The original connection with God, which determines the normal constitution of the race, has its ground in God alone; and the immanent force of this original connection is the power of God for good in the being of fallen humanity.

Man's false attitude toward God and toward himself, the attitude which perverts and disorganizes the functions of the human constitution, has its ground in Satan's will; and the determinative force of this false connection is 'the power of the devil'1 working in the perversion of humanity. Fellowship with Satan's will has disturbed and neutralized normal communion with God. Says Godet:

"All personal and free life has communication in its depths with an infinity of Good or of Evil, of light or darkness, which penetrates into our inner being and which, when once received, displays itself in our works, words or acts."

To emancipate the race from sin this false, antagonistic dominion of Satan had to be destroyed. "To this end was the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil." Into this false relation of the race the Christ enters. His relation obtains not in thought only, but in reality. Assuming the nature of the race whose fallen life is centered in Satan's will, the Christ enters into the domain of Satan and in a qualified sense is under Satan's power. But at every point of His history the falsifying power of Satan is met and effectually oyercome; Satan's mighty will is resisted; Satan's dominion

'Heid. Cat., Q. 1 and 34.

21 John iii. 8.

over mankind is broken. As in the wilderness, so at every other juncture, the tempter is beaten back. The Son of God partook of flesh and blood "that through death He might bring to nought him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage."

In a real way the Mediator enters into this abnormal relation in order that, standing in it and dissolving it in Himself, He may destroy Satan's power over the new, regenerate race.

6. Accordingly the mediatorship of the Christ involves personal conflict with Satan, and the necessity of victory. The race with which He was identified being subject to Satan's dominion, He as the deliverer purchased redemption by carrying on the conflict amid temptation, sorrow, ignominy, unto complete triumph. Says Paul: "Ye were bought with a price." Peter says: price." Peter says: "Ye were redeemed with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." Jesus says of His mission: "Verily the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." On the ground of such teaching the Catechism declares: Our Lord has redeemed us and purchased us, body and soul,

1 Heb. ii. 14, 15. "A murderer from the beginning.' Death agreeably to its full and profound biblical meaning denotes not only corporeal death, but the destruction through sin of the body and the soul. (Cf. Rom. i. 32. Ch. v., 12.) The devil is the originator of bodily and spiritual, of the temporal and eternal ruin of men. From him the kingdom of evil, split as it is into innumerable divisions, derives unity, coherence and direction; through his cunning wiles men are drawn into his own destruction. The consequence of these diabolical seductions is that all men stand in fear of death."-Otto von Gerlach.

21 Cor. vi. 20; 1 Peter i. 18, 19; Mk. x. 45; Matt. xx. 28.

from sin and from all the power of the Devil, to be His

Here we have the important element of truth which Gregory Nyssa and other Greek theologians emphasized disproportionately by their doctrine of the atonement:

*

'Deity was invested with the flesh, in order to secure that the enemy, by looking upon something congenial and kindred to himself, might have no fears in approaching that supereminent power. * It was by means of a certain amount of deceit that God carried out this scheme on our behalf. For that not by pure Deity alone, but by Deity veiled in human nature, God, without the knowledge of His enemy, got within the lines of him who had man in his power, is in some measure a fraud and a surprise. * He who first deceived man by the bait of sensual pleasure, is himself deceived by the presentment of the human form. But whereas he, the enemy, effected his deception for the ruin of our nature, He who is at once the just, and good, and wise one, used His device, in which there was deception, for the salvation of him who had perished.

To ignore the truth underlying this misapprehension of the relation of the Mediator to Satan involves defect in construing the doctrine of redemption as really as to ignore the Mediator's obligation to the justice of God.

The suffering of death as the penalty of sin and the achievement of the victory over Satan were different aspects of one abnormal necessity of the mediatorship, just as on the other hand the violation of the divine law and obedience to the will of Satan are two aspects of the same transgression. The Mediator conquers Satan when, bearing the curse, He takes away the sin of the world.

7. Deliverance from the dominion of Satan, the bearing of God's curse upon sin, and the purification of humanity, are three different aspects of the one redemption.

'Heid. Cat. 34.

2 Gregory Nyssa, The Great Cat'm, ch. 23-26.

These three forms are objectively inseparable; inseparable, because the false moral status of the Adamic race includes three things: the false relation of man to himself, to God, and to Satan. to Satan. False these human relations are, inasmuch as each is a perversion of the constitution and the teleology of mankind.

A real redemption answers to the needs and miseries of the subjects of redemption.

To form a scriptural conception of Christ as Redeemer we have to emphasize these three things in due propor tion, each being valid and intelligible when viewed in its internal connection with the others. To emphasize man's fallen condition in any one relation by itself whilst the modifying force of the other false relations is overlooked, will result in a defective doctrine of redemption.

If we fasten thought chiefly upon the attitude of the Adamic race toward God, the curse of God's law will be unduly prominent; as a consequence the doctrine on the redemptive work will come to be exclusively or mainly forensic or judicial. The ethical needs of the race are overlooked.

If thought dwells principally upon the false relation of man to himself, that is, upon the moral defilement of human nature, redemption becomes mainly ethical, a process of personal purification. The believer by the efforts of his own will, by obedience and self-denial, attains to righteousness. Then the juridical demands of violated law recede or are ignored.

If, as was done in the first ten centuries, thought lays stress chiefly on the false relation of the transgressor to Satan, or on the dominion of the Devil over man and nature, redemption is resolved into a strategic device by