Because God is so great and His standards so high, and because we shall one day stand before Him, we do well to give heed to the situation in which our sin has placed us. The sinner facing the prospect of judgment before such a Judge is in no good case. The Epistle [to the Hebrews] leaves us in no doubt but that those who are saved are saved from a sore and genuine peril. Christ’s saving work is not a piece of emotional pageantry rescuing men from nothing in particular.
— Leon Morris, The Cross in the New Testament, p. 274
Roger - what does he meam by emotional pageantry?
ReplyDeleteI think he is referring to those (like Aberlard and Ritschl) who reject the biblical teaching that the substitutionary atonement of Jesus is required by the unchangeable justice of God's character — God's holiness requires that sin be punished, and God in mercy has provided a substitute to bear that punishment in our place. Instead, these people claim that the death of Jesus is a grand demonstration of the love of God (which, of course, it is). But if the cross is not first of all necessary, then it cannot then be a demonstration of God's love. To punish someone who ought not to be punished is not a display of love, but of cruelty. Jesus' death would be saving us from "nothing in particular." It would then be mere display, "pageantry."
ReplyDeleteJesus' self-offering is a display of his love — and of the Father's who sent him — precisely because it was necessary — to get back to Morris' comment, it delivered us from "a sore and genuine peril."