The Atonement of Our Lord Jesus Christ – Part 2 By Paris Reidhead*
to consider the great being of God that we occupy ourselves with. Here is a musician that can spend much time listening to music; it seems to enter into his personality. Here’s an artist who can sit and park his chair in front of a painting for a whole day that might tire me out in five or ten minutes, at the most. So there are different attractions in life but the Christian attraction is to derive his strength from the contemplation of God. I’ve tried to make a difference between the gifts of God and the being of God. We thank God for all His gifts but the great enjoyment of the Christian life is a contemplation of who God is and who the Lord Jesus Christ
Now our heavenly Father, we’re glad and thankful for Thy love toward us that has brought us together with the desire to worship Thee. Oh, may each one of us who are Thy children realize that our most important function in coming to this little assembly is to worship Thee, so that Thou mightiest receive some pleasure and happiness from our very hearts. And when we think, Oh Lord, that Thou didst create and fashion this whole world in order to place man upon it in those circumstances that would be conducive to his life, and that Thou didst create him with these wonderful endowments
It has been upon my heart to speak in continuation of last Lord’s Day message on the atonement of our Lord Jesus Christ. How
wonderful that God has taken measures. I’ve been feasting on these truths all week in my broadcast preparations, and have
rejoiced that God has allowed us to move out of this world into the heavenly world, and permitted us to think the wonderful
thoughts of God. And how restful, how wonderful, how profound that there is a God like the Bible tells us about. It’s so
relaxing
is. This passage that was read has this wonderful verse in it, “For Christ also hath once suffered
for sin, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but quickened by the spirit.” (I Pet.
3:18) I wonder if we might arise for a word of prayer.
and if we are conscious of that, how much more Thou must be conscious of it. But Lord, help us to react toward Thee in a way
so that he might react
toward Thee out of his own voluntary will. We are painfully conscious, our God, of the difficulty of getting men to love Thee,
that is pleasing to Thee, it that the greatest thing we have to do as Christians is not to win our fellow men for Christ, be that
ever so important, but it is to worship Thee and serve Thee, glorify Thee and make Thy great heart happy. For Thy happiness,
Oh God, is of more value than all the happiness of all the mortals added together. So help us to have this perspective that we
are to serve Thee with our whole hearts, and then, of course, we will take on Thy feeling toward the world, and so help us,
Lord, to have that compassion. Help us not to be hardened by the experiences of life, but that our heart may be tenderized by
Thy great example, Lord Jesus, and by Thy great love. So we commit to Thee Thy Word this morning that it may feed our souls
and strengthen our faith for the problems that face us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Let us view together, somewhat continuing our thinking of last Lord’s Day, what are the problems and accomplishments of the
atonement of our blessed Lord. Now, we may be sure of this, that so great an event as the atonement of Christ was not
brought into existence without good reasons. God certainly would never embark upon such a tremendous program if there
was any possibility of another measure being taken to fulfill the same need. Now that’s the wonderful thing that we derive out
of the Word of God. I’m happy and thankful to God to be delivered from a lot of theological complications that inflicted my
mind for years and years. I’m so glad to find in the Bible a God who does nothing apart from the exercise of His great
intelligence. As we look forward to the acme of human performance, we think of the possibility of our living our living our lives
every moment for some good reason. And we think of focusing our attention on a worthwhile objective in life and applying our
minds moment by moment to widely contribute toward that end. That’s the height of Christian growth, isn’t it, that we shall
not have lapses into emotionalism or arbitrariness that so characterize the world. They are like sheep going astray without a
shepherd. They have no purpose; they are not going anywhere. They are not trying to do anything—just a continuous
gratification of their own imaginations, or whatever emotion happens to bubble the strongest, that’s what they’ll be doing. But
the real essence of Christian life is to have directive as to what we’re trying to do in life. And the purpose of Christian growth is
to use our intelligence so that every hour will count toward that objective.
Now I’m so happy that the Bible reveals that God does nothing except out of His intelligence and out of His wisdom, and
therefore, that God is not arbitrary in choosing one to be saved and in passing by another, for that would be no good reason,
you see. God would simply forsake His heart of love. If He would go to a certain missionary tribe, a tribe a missionary is seeking
to reach, and arbitrarily pick out one and pass by others for no good reason, you see then God would be acting unintelligent.
But the Bible wonderfully portrays that whatever God does, He does for intelligent reasons. And that’s a wonderful power in
the defeat of sin because there’s no lack of intelligence to further sin, is there? Some fellow sits down and he has some
emotional evil that he wants to create and he uses his intelligence and folks pay him for that, to see how he can furthering that
depraved avenue of experience. So the world folks furthering the cause of evil are using their intelligence, why should we not?
And so God invites us to think with Him as to the reasons back of the great measure that He has token.
What then are not the reasons for the atonement? One great liberation of my thinking has been the deliverance from the
concept that was fostered in and upon our Christian church just a few hundred years ago, and has not been in great
acceptance until probably two centuries ago. It is the idea that in the very nature of God He cannot overcome His
vindictiveness, in the matter of sin, and therefore, that the basic reason of the atonement of Jesus Christ was in some sense to
satisfy the vindictiveness of God, or that God cannot exercise mercy until His justice is calculatingly satisfied. Now come along
with me on this process of thought. We understand a lot about that principle, do we not? That’s the very principle we function
upon as human beings apart from Christ. Because John the apostle said in his first epistle, “We love him,” and him is not in the
text. Actually, we are loving, a present tense, “because He first loved us.” In other words, no human being, according to the
Scripture, has ever exercised one ounce of real, true benevolent love apart from the reactive movement of the love and
kindness of God. So we understand a lot about vindictiveness. The world is always trying to get even, aren’t they? And my,
what a worry, what a tension, how many minds today are broken because of the worry about getting even in one form or
another? How many thoughts people carry in their minds, a purpose someday and a secret hope that someday they’ll be able
to get even with so and
so, and so and so. And if some evils happen to those they hope to get even with, they find an inner personal satisfaction even though they may go with express regret and sorrow. So the very principle of vindictiveness is that we try to get exact and calculating justice.
Now there’s another thought here. We may be entirely mistaken to what real justice is. We may, of course, deepen our
concept of the justice they deserve, or we may not make it deep enough. But with God that couldn’t possibly exist, because
with God the knowledge is perfect as to just exactly what perfect justice is. Now I ask you, is the great God of the heaven like
that? You are aware, of course, that I doubt whether one theological treatise is in print at the present time which advocates
that view I’m asserting. They all uniformly assert that the atonement of Christ was made primarily to the person of God, the
Father, to satisfy His vindictive justice. That God the Father is not actually merciful, that His justice prevents Him from being
merciful, and so theology has, I believe, whittled away the most powerful tool of the gospel in the hands of the Holy Spirit.
Theology has made out God the Father to be like we are. We certainly understand the principle of strict and precise justice, do
we not? And theology has made out God the Father to be just like that, and then hymnology to a large extent concerning the
atonement has made the Lord Jesus Christ as more tender and more sympathetic toward sinners than the Father is. And then,
in some mysterious way, God is the austere being that can hardly be reached, so calculating is His justice and the Lord Jesus is
supposed to be more sympathetic, more kind, more loving than the Father. And the Holy Spirit, well not too much is said,
except that He is the applicator of the wonderful truths of redemption.
Now I submit to your thinking, how could such a thing possibly be? I got to thinking about it yesterday and it struck me with
utter amazement that we could divide the beings of the trinity. That you can have one member of the trinity of a different
sympathy than another member of the trinity, how could that be? The Bible reveals a great and glorious trinity, in a sense
concerning all the members of the Godhead, that God is love. It does not distinguish between the basic motivating forces of
any member of the trinity. And so by no possibility could the Lord Jesus Christ be more loving, more sympathetic, more lenient,
more compassionate than God the Father is, and with that thought, we must seek for a new aspect of the meaning of the
atonement, and my soul is exceedingly liberated. If no one would ever listen to these thoughts, I bless the Lord; I could listen to
my own thinking and find exceeding joy in the revelations of the Word of God concerning the Godhead. And when the Bible
says that God the Father is different from us, that we are so prone to vindictiveness and strict and calculating justice that
mercy has to be pinned down
and cannot manifest itself. And when I think that the Bible reveals God with all the attributes at His disposal and yet, mind you, after all that man has done against God, God’s mercy and love and forgiveness overcome all the vindictiveness of His personality which makes God different from any human being that’s ever walked the earth.
I think I could get folks to be excited to live for the Lord in the hopes that they’re going to have a wonderful pleasure forever
admiring the person of the Godhead. How wonderful that God’s Word rescues us from all these falsifying ideas that out the
very throb of God’s heart of love. I got to study the longsuffering of God, and in order that I might appreciate what God is up
against, I collected some of the Scriptures to show how bad God feels concerning sin. When you get the Word of God and its
assertions as to how bad God feels hurt in His great essential being because of man, and when you think that little mere man
can hinder and ruin the happiness of the great God, and you see what God has said and read what He has said to the prophets
as to how bad God feels because of man’s sin. If we can feel bad when our children don’t respond to some climax that we were
looking for, how much more must God agonize over sinners. And so it’s the throbbing message of the Bible that God’s merciful
forgiven overcomes His vindictive reaction.
And that’s the very essence of truth that makes me so excited, that gives me such a joy concerning God, that gives me a hunger
to know more of such a God as this. Wonderful treasure of the Word of God, it is the mainspring of missionary activity, that we
can go
forth and say that there is a being in the universe that is as differ
You’ve never seen anything like the nature of God, and when we portray the love and tenderness of God and when we view in
ent from any other being that’s ever walked the earth.
a quantity God’s love, how astonishing and marvelous. So the atonement of Jesus, I’m exceedingly happy to say, and by the
way this was a very common view
during the revivals the last century but has somehow evaporated in our own century
the mind and forges chains over the mind, the thinking individual can’t shake it off. There’s force in it, there’s power in it, and
. The
very force, I believe, that will bring a revival among intelligent people when you can present the challenge of truth that arrests
when the power of truths like this can be brought to the attention of thinking individuals, there’s bound to be some kind of an
earthquake. But let’s read a couple Scriptures. We think of God’s expression to this great servant of His, Nehemiah, in the 9th
chapter, verses 16 and 17. “But they and our fathers
dealt proudly, and hardened their necks, and hearkened not to thy commandments, and refused to obey, neither were mindful of thy wonders that thou didst among them; but hardened their
necks, and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage.” Woul
control by the essence of His great and profound love. In other words, God does not react like we do, and as I’m thinking, I think of the disciples as they went with Jesus, and one time the Samaritans didn’t behave just right concerning Jesus, and they got indignant for His sake and said, “Would you that we bid fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Jesus didn’t say they didn’t deserve it but He said, “Ye know not what spirit ye are of. The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” (Luke 9:55,56) So here, in spite of this reaction, what do
we read here? “B
all away and put them all to death. So great was His indignation, and righteously so after all He had done, wouldn’t you expect
dn’t you expect this passage to go on, and
God got so angry at them and in His infinite righteousness did He cause a might cloud to settle down over them and cast them
that now? But look what the Word of God says, and that’s the greatest gem of truth that comes forth from the Scriptures--that
God, in spite of all His inner reactions, is in complete
ut thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful; slow to anger and of great kindness and forsookest
them not.” (Neh. 9:17b) What a collection of terms concerning our great God. How happy we should be over the thought that
God is love and kindness above all our comprehension.
We’ve read Psalm 86:5 where the psalmist was lifted up in worship—“For thou Lord art good and ready to forgive and
plenteous in mercy unto all them that calls upon thee.” So here God is pictured as ready to forgive, and this was the very thing
that Jonah was afraid of, was it not? The reason he gave why he disobeyed God was that he was afraid that God’s heart would
be moved, and God would forget His iron hand of judgment, just exactly what Jonah was afraid of. God, I know you enough to
know that I’m afraid you’ll embarrass me, and while I want the judgment to go on and I even want the judgment for your sake,
even pray dear Lord that you’ll send judgment for your sake. Let’s be careful about our distinguishing our prayers, and the very
thing that Jonah was afraid of, that the great God in heaven would be moved with compassion and would change His mind and
embarrass Jonah, and he says, “I don’t want to be embarrassed, Lord.” I suppose he might have said, for his sake. Oh, how
deceptive our hearts can get many times.
Then we think of that great verse, John 3:16—“God so loved the world that he gave.” God didn’t have a mixture in causing the
great measure of the atonement. I’m so thrilled at the concept that there is a great God, and when I’m thrilled at the very
essence of His being and I contemplate the greatness of His being, I am all the more thrilled. When we form some concept of
the extensiveness of God’s universe and consider the greatness of His essence beyond all our comprehension, I’m all the more
thrilled to think that there is a God that has the tremendous attributes and yet is moved with the tender compassion. If a
mother has ever exercised love to her little tykes, let her realize that God is the creator and the source of that love. If a
mother’s love is ever dependent, let us realize that God’s love is much more so.
So I’m happy that the atonement of Jesus Christ was not necessary to render God the Father merciful. That God was not
calculating every iota of His strict and personal justice before He would be willing to manifest mercy. We are not talking fiction,
my friends. I talked to a leading preacher of a certain denomination at one time about this very thought and this brother said,
“Well, now, God is not now merciful. God has been merciful in extending the atonement but God is not now extending one bit
of mercy. God was merciful in sending the Lord to die and pay for the sins of self, so all the mercy He is ever going to extend,
He has already extended.” Can you fashion going forth and trying to serve the Lord with such a message? Do you wonder why
preachers’ hearts are moved and melted and broken down? Do you wonder what these ideas; have done to the spiritual state
of the church? But I’m glad that the Bible warms our hearts, gives us a concept that’s beyond our thinking. In Ephesians 4:32
we are to “be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” There’s no thought of
any kind of vindictive justice that we are to extract from one another, and this text says that just as we are to go forth and
freely forgive, just like God freely forgave. And that we are to extract no justice from anyone but go forth in the extreme
kindness and love, just as God has done to us. And so the vindictive nature of God cannot be a requirement for the great
measure of the blessed atonement.
What about some other things? Is man who is utterly devoid of anything that would attract God. We read in the book of
Romans, verses 12 and 23, of the 3rd chapter, “Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit. The
poison of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness,” and so forth as we go through that text. Then in
verse 12, “They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable, there is none that doeth good, no, not
one.” None that doeth good. None that doeth one act of goodness. Scripture maintains that if you analyze the apparent works
of goodness that prevail in this world among those that don’t love God, you can find a selfish motive somewhere that is the
mainspring of all their work. That what we studied last Sunday in that tremendous passage in Matthew 7:21-23 where we have
the many religious leaders knocking on the door of heaven and claiming their works, you see. They said they did many, many
wonderful works, and what did Jesus say? “Depart from me, ye workers of iniquity.” (Psa. 6:8) What? “Worker of iniquity?”
Weren’t we doing works of benevolence and kindness? Weren’t we trying to cast out devils and further your work, Lord?
“Workers of iniquity?” What meanest Thou? Can’t you see the objection that shall someday rise up from multitudes who are
today in churches with a false profession, and God looks upon their heart and saying, apart from the regenerating grace of
God, every act that appears to be benevolent has a selfish motive somewhere in it. Yes, a pastor can do quite famously in
building a church and building a large congregation if he’s a psychological specialist, if he’s sharp to observe the particular
things that fascinate each individual.
I’m reminded of a farmer that I stayed with several days, and I was intrigued by his extreme orderliness about his little farm. It
wasn't too large and yet it was extremely efficient. I was interested to walk along with him a little bit, look at some of his
creatures and some of the thing he said and how he went through the farm with me. He didn’t have more than a dozen cows,
but he said, now there’s a cow that I give this kind of food to and here’s another one where I mix a little something more, and
here’s another where I proportion this. As a result, he had this thing so complicated that even his boys couldn’t feed his stock,
and he couldn’t go away from home. Now that was a clever accomplishment on his part in analyzing what made each cow give
the most milk. And if pastors get specialized in that way, they can be quite successful in building up an apparent work for God.
If they cater at just the right time, if they reward in just the correct fashion, if they know how to feed each individual just right,
great things can be done. But the Scripture said that apart from the regenerating grace of God there’s a selfish motive behind
every action, and isn’t that a depressing thing? Doesn’t it completely collapse our concept of moral goodness? Now we’re glad
that the world all at once doesn’t go to pieces, aren’t we? And God, I believe, is cooperating and operating in various ways to
prevent it from going to pieces. But the Scripture reveals the bold fact that the selfish heart of man manifests itself in every
avenue and is a very complicated and complex thing.
I told you about the great building up here in Oberlin on the campus. Some fellow gave, I don’t know how many million dollars,
and I got to looking at that thing and I thought, well now, that’s quite a sum. I said to one of the faculty men there, “I suppose
it seats quite a large audience.” “No,” he said, “It only seats about six or eight hundred.” I said. “Six or eight hundred, with that
great investment?” And then as we went over and saw the thing being built, the front was amazingly impressive. Here was a
great big marble front with the embossment of the name of the donor. Here was a tremendous structure that gave a
tremendous appearance. Now I ask you, what do you think was the reason back of that apparent benevolence?
And so the Scripture reveals that every act of a human being apart, from the grace of Jesus Christ has a selfish motive in it
somewhere, and that’s humiliating, isn’t it? Now I say that you would think that that would be a barrier to God’s mercy,
wouldn’t you? But an endless state of persistent selfishness, think of it, that God looks down and sees the motives of men.
What a complete opposite evaluation that must result in over man’s evaluation. That’s why the Scriptures say, “God looketh on
the heart,” and can evaluate truly what everyone is trying to do, but I’m happy to say as I view that dark picture I get a more
elevated picture of God. (I Sam. 16:7) You see the reaction? Man is in a most degraded state of selfishness. Now, mercy, some
people wouldn’t be caught in the deep outward bondages of sin but they’re not virtuous in that. They wouldn’t not be caught
in there, because they have an intellectual training that it wouldn’t be for their profit, all things considered, that they go out in
those forms of indulgences. Maybe they developed the faculty of wanting to be thought well of by fellow men and looks like it
ought to be worth something. The whole thing resolves itself into selfishness, and until men begin to hate sin for what sin is
and begin to love God for the true sake of love, no virtue exists.
Now I say out of that dark picture, there emerges in my mind a wonderful concept of God. In the book of Genesis there
concerning the flood, God looked down and saw the imagination of men’s heart was only evil. That would be bad enough, if
the extra word wasn’t put on there, but only evil continually. And so men were taking the cultured imagination that God had
given, the imagination is the most marvelous thing; it’s the endowment that enables man to imagine what God is like. And so,
apart from that faculty of imagination, we could never worship God. That’s the faculty God has endowed us with that we
perceive by our divine gift what God is like in His essence, and by virtue of that imagination, we can worship God with all our
hearts. That’s what makes the difference between a human being and an animal. You can bring an animal into this situation
like I’ve commented in times before. You could lay some food before it and when it’s through with its food, it might lay down
and pay no attention to our spiritual seeking, have no concern with it at all. Why not? Because it has not been endowed with
that wonderful quality of imagination. It cannot imagine what God is like; therefore it doesn’t pay any attention to discussions
about God. But man has been given that wonderful quality of imagination, but what has he done with it? He has used it to
imagine what various types of sin would be like, and so this very elevated thing that God has given has been depraved and
debased and debauched to imagine all kinds of evil things. Oh, how God must be hurt over this whole situation, and so the
deeper our concept of man goes in the face of the Scripture, the more glorious do we consider God out of His love and out of
His virtue.
Oh, how Isaiah was humbling to His audience. He was evidently a great preacher and a great servant of the Lord, but very
unsuccessful, so success does not evaluate ministry. But here in this 64th chapter of Isaiah and verse 6, this verse we are
familiar with, “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf and our
iniquities like the wind have taken us away.” All our righteousness, all the things that we thought righteous, in other words, are
as filthy rags because, apart from the grace of God, we are moved by selfish motives, which color the whole being. If you got a
glass full of beautiful spring water, we saw some folks stopping to get some clear water, I suppose, and filling up their jugs. If
the little tyke, after they get home, opens one of these jugs of nice, clear sparkling water and drops few pinches of some
coloring matter into it, the whole thing is tainted. So with God, just when men think they have righteousness in manifestation,
God sees that the whole thing is colored by selfish motives. Yet, my friends, this is not an impossible obstacle to the mercy of
God. As we paint the dark picture of human kind, and we view that God, in spite of all, has been moved with great movements
of compassion and love.
But you say, “Wait a minute, don’t some of these folks walking down here on this earth with this great quality of imagination
and ability to think, this great endowment that God has given them, do not some of them seek after God?” It would be bad
enough, if mankind was evil continually, if they had peak moments when they suddenly emerged or tried to emerge out of it, if
you please. But according to the Word of God, nobody is even trying to emerge out of selfishness. And so if the other picture
was dark, this picture is much darker. Not only do we have human kind in one mass of taint of selfish complexity of
psychological problems, and the psychologists are supposed to be something like a lawyer. A lawyer’s education consists
mostly, as most of you realize, in studying what has happened in the realm of law and to be conversant on what has happened
in all the areas of the world, if possible, to build up a better law background, so that they have wisdom in dealing with certain
situations, the psychologist is trying to be like the chemist only in the intellectual sphere. The chemist is analyzing all kinds of
things. We’ve got a research chemical organization that’s been increased. It’s been there for years. But these fellows have
liberty to explore anything that they think might have possibility. So they are scratching their heads as to what would happen if
we combine this with this and what would happen in this situation and if we would analyze this and do this, what would
happen? They are looking for facts in the materialistic realm that have to do with fluids. The psychologist is looking for facts
that have to do in the intellectual realm by which men have successive thoughts and act as they do, and he’s trying to be an
analyst as to cause and effect—what situation results in this and why men decide this and try to analyze the emotional life and
its effect on the will and where the intellect comes in in this whole situation. So there’s a great analysis going on. And God
looks down upon this analysis, and it’s terribly bad as we’ve seen from the descriptions of the Word of God, but you say,
“Aren’t there some who try to find God and be reconciled to God? Aren’t there some who have peak moments of psychology
where they arise out of their bondage and seek after God? Aren’t there some who get down on their knees and really,
sincerely pray that they might find God and forsake their sinful ways?” You’d certainly think so, wouldn’t you? But according to
the Scripture such is not the case. And there we have in Romans again, chapter 3 and verse 10, “As it is written, there is none
righteous, no not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. There is none that seeketh after
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