2. The veracity of God, in settling the penalty of death upon
and indeed the word the apostle useth in that place, Rom. 3:25, is different, πάρεσις, a passing by, a word not used for pardon in all the New Testament, but ἄφεσις. Had not Christ suffered, there had been nothing of the righteousness of God manifested in the remission of sins which were past; the end of God had been frustrated, it being his end, in the death of Christ, 'to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, to declare at this time his righteousness,' i.e. what his righteousness was in passing by sins before committed, to declare that he pardoned no sins before, without an eye to this satisfactory death of his Son; but that in all his former proceedings he kept close to the rules of his infinite justice.
Now, had not Christ died according to his engagement, God had highly suffered in his honour, his omniscience had been defeated;
God had been deceived in the credit he gave, his righteousness had not been manifested, his justice had suffered, or his mercy to his poor creatures had been dammed up for ever from flowing out upon them.
2. The veracity of God, in settling the penalty of death upon transgression, made it necessary for redemption. God passed his word that death should be the punishment of sin, Gen. 2:17; the veracity of God stood engaged to make this word good upon the conditions expressed. The sentence was immutable, and the word that went out of God's mouth must stand; had it been revoked without inflicting the punishment, the faithfulness and righteousness of God, in regard of his word, could not have been justified: 'God cannot lie, or deny himself,' Titus 1:2, 2 Tim. 2:13; his truth is not a quality in him, but himself, his essence. Had he, then, after so solemnly pronouncing, without any reverse, that the wages of sin should be no less than death, been careless of his own word, and left sin unpunished, God had made a breach upon his own nature, and had infringed his own happiness; for a lie or falsity is the fountain and original of all evil and misery. Supposing God had other ways to deal with man (though it is beyond the capacity of man to imagine any other way of God's government of him, or any intellectual and rational creatures, than by a law, and a penalty annexed to that law,
which otherwise would have proved insignificant), yet after his wisdom had settled this law, and the threatening had passed his royal and immutable word, it was no longer arbitrary, but necessary by the sovereign authority, that either the sinner himself, or some surety in his stead, should suffer the death the sinner had incurred by the violation of the precept; we must either pay ourselves, or some other pay for us, what we stand bound in to the justice of God.
Impunity had been an invasion of God's veracity, which is as immutable as his nature; since, therefore, the inflicting of death upon transgression was the real intent of God, upon the commission of sin death must enter upon man, otherwise God would be a disregarder of himself, and his threatenings a mere scarecrow.
(1.) Had God violated his word, he had rendered himself an unfit object of trust. He had exposed all the promises or threatenings he should have made after man's impunity to the mockery and contempt of the offender, and excluded his word from any credit with man. Had God set man right again by a mere act of mercy, without any regard to his word past, and inflicting any punishment upon the offender, though he had made man more glorious promises than at the first, he would have had little reason to trust God. If he had found God unfaithful to himself in the word of his threatening, he could not have concluded that he would have been true to the word of his promise, but might reasonably have suspected that he would falsify in that as he had done him in the other. Had his truth failed in the concerns of his justice, it had been of little value in those of his mercy. He might be as careless of the honour of the one as of that of the other. If a man fail of his word in one thing, there is little reason to believe him in another. The righteousness of God would as little have engaged him to fulfil his promise, as it did engage him to fulfil his threatening. God would have declared himself by such an act, not willing to be believed, not worthy to be trusted, feared, loved, because regardless of his truth and righteousness. And by the same reason that he denied himself fit to be trusted, he would deny himself to be a God, because he would thereby have acknowledged a weakness incompatible to the nature of the Deity. How could any
trust him who had denied himself, by restoring a life to him, without righteousness and truth on his part? It had rather been an encouragement to them to disown him to be any fit object for their confidence, since the great ground of trust among men is their faithfulness to their word. Upon the supposition of God's restoring the creature, the doing it by the intervention of a satisfaction was very necessary to fix the creature's confidence in God; for when he sees God so righteous and true that he will not do anything against the rules of his truth and justice, he hath the more ground to believe
God after a satisfaction made, that he will preserve the honour of his wisdom in approving and accepting that satisfaction, and his truth in promising, declared upon it.
(2.) Had God violated his word, he had justified the devil in his argument for man's rebellion. The devil's argument is a plain contradiction to God's threatening. God affirms the certainty of death, the devil affirms the certainty of life: Gen. 3:4, 'Ye shall not surely die.' Had no punishment been inflicted, the devil had not been a liar from the beginning. God would have honoured the tempter, and justified the charge he brought against him, and owned the envy the devil accused him of, and thereby have rendered the devil the fittest object for love and trust. As the devil charged God with a lie, so, had no punishment been inflicted, God would have condemned himself, and declared Satan, instead of a lying tempter, to be the truest counseller. He had exposed himself to contempt, and advanced the credit of his enemy, and so set up the devil as a God instead of himself. It concerned God, therefore, to manifest himself true, and the devil a liar; and acquaint the world that not himself, but the evil spirit, was their deceiver, and that he meant as he spake.
(3.) Suppose God might have altered his word, yet would it consist with his wisdom to do it at that time? It was the first word of threatening that ever went out of his lips to man; and had he wholly dispensed with it, after he had fenced his precept with such a penalty, and seen such a contradiction in his new created subject to his truth, authority, and righteousness, such a daring contempt of his
rich and manifested goodness, he had emboldened the apostate creature in his sin, and encouraged him to a fresh rebellion as soon as ever he had been set right again by an infinite mercy, without any mark of his justice. Men would have thought God had either been mistaken in the reason of his threatening, and had settled a penalty too great for the offence, or had wanted power to maintain his authority in inflicting the due punishment, had he indulged man in this sin. What influence could any of his precepts have had upon the souls of men, if he had so lightly passed by the transgression of his law? Would he not have been less secured in the rights of his authority for the future, than he had been for the time past? Would not man have been encouraged to have run the same risk of disobedience, in hopes of an easy pardon, and continued the attempt which he had begun in his first apostasy, to have freed himself from all the orders of the divine law, to have been his own rule? How could a just sense and awe of God have been preserved in the minds of men, when they should have thought God like one of themselves, and as false to his own righteousness as they had been to his authority?
Ps. 50:21. This certainly would have been the issue, had man been set up in his former state without inflicting that punishment upon the human nature, which had been so righteously denounced, and so highly merited, by the disingenuity of man. Man had been more tempted by this to sin than he could have been by the devil, and when he had been brought to an account for his second transgression, he would have excused himself by God's indulgence to him for the first; and, indeed, God's denial of his truth in this, would seem to be a sufficient apology for after offences.
(4.) Therefore God, for the preservation of his truth and righteousness, accepts of a surety to bear the just punishment for man. Since God had enacted, that if man sinned he should die, upon man's apostasy God must either eternally punish him to preserve his truth and justice, or neglect his own law, and change it to discover his mercy. These things were impossible to the nature of God; he must be true to his nature, and true to his word. If justice should destroy, what way was there to discover his mercy? If mercy should
absolutely pardon, without the due punishment, what way was there to preserve the honour of his truth? The wisdom of God finds out a means to preserve the honour of his truth in the punishment, and discover the glory of his mercy in a pardon, not by changing the sentence against sin, but the person; and laying that upon his Son, as a surety, which we in our own persons must have endured, had the rigour of the law been executed upon us, whereby his righteousness and veracity are preserved by the punishment due to the sinner, and the honour of mercy established by the merit of our Saviour. Death was threatened by the law, but there was no exclusion of a person by that law, that should offer himself to stand in man's stead under the punishment. Man had been for ever irrecoverably miserable, had such a clause been inserted, and would have been without hope as much as the devils. And therefore, saith a learned author of our own,* this acceptance of a surety for us was not an abrogation of the law, for then there could be no execution of the sentence upon wicked men and unbelievers for their sins against it (where no law is, there is no transgression; and where no transgression, no just execution); but it was a merciful relaxation or condescension of the sovereign lawgiver, by his infinite goodness and wisdom, to find out an expedient for the good of the fallen creature, with the preservation of the rights of those divine perfections engaged in the threatening.
God was not prejudiced, or his immutability impaired, by a change of the person suffering, as long as the penalty threatened was inflicted.
Though there was a translation of the penalty, yet there was not a nulling of the penalty; the person was changed, not the punishment; death was threatened, death was inflicted. Death was threatened, not so much to the person of Adam, as the human nature, whereof he was the head, and regarded the descendants from him; death was suffered by the human nature, though in another person; death was threatened to Adam as the root of all in him; death was suffered by Christ, as the mystical head of all in him by faith, so that, as in Adam sinning, all sinned that were in his loins as in their root, Rom. 5:12,
14, 18, so it may be said, that in Christ suffering all believers suffered, his sufferings being imputed to them by virtue of that union they have with him. Besides, God having created the world for the