An email

I feel like I was hurtful to you yesterday. I spoke against the book you were reading about God not needing to see blood before He would forgive us. Maybe I misunderstood. And I didn’t read the rest of what the author had to say. Maybe he had it right.

 

But, I feared for you because for years I had read similar things myself. And they didn’t really help give me a lasting assurance of God’s love, and they also didn’t agree with the bigger picture of the Spirit of Prophecy.

 

If I may, can I please show you what I’ve learned about the atonement? The power of the cross isn’t just to break our heart, but to also bring us gigantic offense. Just as God can’t go easy on us, so at Calvary we don’t see God going easy on His Son. “Though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.”(Heb. 5:8). Rather, we see the Father going over the top with terror.

 

But, it was love all the way through, because God used the only thing that He could use to destroy His Son—Their separation, which showed the most basic love. And that separation destroyed God too. They both died of self-sacrificing love. Thus, the cross shocks us, destroys our pride, and saves us.

 

The cross was God bringing infinite terror upon Himself. In the big picture, it was the Son assisting His Father to gain in Himself a new ability to spare a rebel planet. But, in an even bigger picture, the cross was the Father arranging all of this for His own change of heart, and using His Son to proctor His change. He could trust no one else for this, not even Gabriel, because the Son was the only one who would do the work of reconciliation infinitely perfectly, infinitely loyally to perfect righteousness. For the sake of a future kingdom eternally impregnable to another rebellion, God couldn’t let anyone allow Him to go easy on Himself. Only His infinitely strong Son would keep Him to that task. Only the omniscient and omnipotent Son would extend His time under the hot wrath of His Father, requiring of the great King what needed to be done for the destruction of sin in the universe, forever.

 

The Son was the only one who could remain untouchable by the inundation of satanic hosts, and, with an unimpeachable sacrifice, keep faithfully to the plan to restore a kingdom that could never fall. Only beholding the poured out soul of the Son, who would prefer to take our infinite hell and His infinite, eternal separation from His Father, could satisfy and move the heart of God to overlook our rebellion and ensure the perfectly reclaimed trust of the unfallen hosts and worlds. Only the infinite love in His Son for Their earthly children could God depend on to cause His own unburdening His infinite agony from the presence of sin in His kingdom, and relenting toward mankind. His Son’s mediation under His consuming, unending wrath against sin helped Him to choose the redemption of Adam’s race over the loss of His Son. And as His satisfaction of justice and condemnation abounded toward the Son of His sorrow, His grace could legally much more abound toward man.

 

Thus, the inseparable Ones died together that day; and the holy angelic hosts recognized absolute righteousness in the Godhead and in Their decision to save mankind. And all of us who see this pivotal act of the great controversy will come to life. He that hath the Son hath life. “Thy dead men shall live, together with My dead body shall they arise.” (Isa. 26:19).

 

We need to see what God was going through because of sin, and still is going through until Christ can finalize the investigative judgment and seal His children with a perfect reproduction of His character in us.

  What is the work of the minister of the gospel? It is to rightly divide the word of truth; not to invent a new gospel, but to rightly divide the gospel already committed to them. They cannot rely upon old sermons to present to their congregations; for these set discourses may not be appropriate to meet the occasion, or the wants of the people. There are subjects that are sadly neglected, that should be largely dwelt upon. The burden of our message should be the mission and life of Jesus Christ. Let there be a dwelling upon the humiliation, self-denial, meekness, and lowliness of Christ, that proud and selfish hearts may see the difference between themselves and the Pattern, and may be humbled. Show to your hearers Jesus in his condescension to save fallen man. Show them that He who was their surety had to take human nature, and carry it through the darkness and the fearfulness of the malediction of his Father, because of man's transgression of his law; for the Saviour was found in fashion as a man. Describe, if human language can, the humiliation of the Son of God, and think not that you have reached the climax, when you see him exchanging the throne of light and glory which he had with the Father, for humanity. He came forth from heaven to earth; and while on earth, he bore the curse of God as surety for the fallen race. He was not obliged to do this. He chose to bear the wrath of God, which man had incurred through disobedience to the divine law. He chose to endure the cruel mockings, the deridings, the scourging, and the crucifixion. "And being made in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death;" but the manner of his death was an astonishment to the universe; for it was even the death of the cross. Christ was not insensible to ignominy and disgrace. He felt it all most bitterly. He felt it as much more deeply and acutely than we can feel suffering, as his nature was more exalted, and pure, and holy than that of the sinful race for whom he suffered. He was the majesty of heaven, he was equal with the Father, he was the commander of the hosts of angels, yet he died for man the death that was, above all others, clothed with ignominy and reproach. O that the haughty hearts of men might realize this! O that they might enter into the meaning of redemption, and seek to learn the meekness and lowliness of Jesus !  Review and Herald, September 11, 1888 par. 10.