3. The justice of God made the death of Christ necessary for our
displaying his divine perfections in Christ, 'for whom all things were created,' Col. 1:16, had in his eternal counsel decreed the death of Christ as a surety for man; and this threatening, as well as the creation, being pursuant to this eternal counsel, did not exclude, but rather include, the surety, though it be not expressed.
3. The justice of God made the death of Christ necessary for our redemption. Christ, in his coming, respected the glory of God's righteousness, for he substituted himself as a sin-offering, instead of those insufficient ones under the law: Heb. 10:8, 'Sin-offering thou wouldst not; lo, I come to do thy will,' i.e. the will of the divine justice as well as divine mercy, for in the legal sacrifices both were expressed; justice in the death of the beast, whereby man was taught what he had merited, and mercy in substituting the beast in his room. Christ came to do that in the room of a sin-offering, which the legal sin-offerings were not able to effect. The command of the Father did chiefly respect this satisfaction of justice. It principally required of him the laying down his life, and making his soul an offering for sin, John 10:18. And this it was which his obedience did principally respect, whence it is called an 'obedience to death,' Philip.
2:8. Death is an act of justice. After the command was given, with the sanction of it, the authority of God in enacting it, and the justice of God in adding the penalty to it, were contemned, and man could not well be reduced to his order without a reparation of the damage done to the authority and justice of God. How could God be the judge of all the earth, doing right, Gen. 18:25, had he suffered such a manifest wrong to himself to go unpunished? Justice had as loud a cry for condemnation, as mercy could have for any stream of compassion.
The sanction of the law was irrevocable, unless God had ceased to be immutable in his justice as well as his truth. God can do whatsoever he will, but he can will nothing against his goodness and righteousness.* God had derogated from his own righteousness, if he had not recompensed the sin of man. For as justice requires punishment, so it requires the greatest punishment for the greatest offence. Satisfaction must then be given in such a manner as the justice of God in the law required. It must be then by suffering that
death it exacted as due to the crime, which must be done by the person sinning, or some other capable to do it in his stead, and answer the terms of the law, between whom and the sinner there might be such a strait union, as that there might be a mutual imputation of our sins to him, and his sufferings to us. That he might suffer, justice was to impute our sins to him; that his sufferings might be advantageous, mercy and justice were to impute his sufferings to us.
I shall lay down under this three propositions.
(1.) It seems to be impossible but that justice should flame out against sin. There is the same reason of all God's attributes. It is impossible that the goodness of God should not embrace and kindly entertain an innocent creature, for then he would not be good. It is impossible his mercy in Christ should refuse a penitent believer; then he would not be compassionate. It is impossible he should look upon sin with a pleasing† countenance; then he would not be holy. It is impossible that he can be false to his word; then he could not be true.
It is impossible that he should not act wisely in what he doth; then he would be foolish. Shall we deny the same rights to his justice, that we acknowledge to belong to the other perfections of his nature? Why should not his justice be as unchangeable and inflexible as his goodness, mercy, truth, and wisdom? Shall we acknowledge him firm in the rest, and wavering in this? Justice is as necessary a perfection pertaining to him as the governor of the world, as his wisdom, or any other glory of his nature. Had God acted the part of a just governor, if he had suffered those laws to be broken with impunity, whereof he was the guardian as well as the enactor? Is there not a double reason of punishment accruing to him, both as he is the offended party and the rector of the world? And what is justice, but a giving to every one his due, reward to whom reward belongs, and punishment to whom punishment is due? If God had pardoned where punishment was due, it had been an act of mercy, but what had become of his justice?
If God be not just in everything he doth, he is unjust in something, and then doth iniquity, which is utterly impossible for the divine
nature; he neither will nor can do iniquity, Zeph. 3:5. This is an inseparable property of the divine nature. What should his creatures judge of him, if he were utterly careless of vindicating his law, and did totally abstain from evidencing his holiness to his rational creatures? Is his holiness only to be manifested in precepts, and not demonstrated in punishments? If his love to righteousness be essential to him, the exercise of that righteousness upon suitable objects is necessary. His love of righteousness flows from his nature as righteous: Ps. 11:7, 'The righteous Lord loveth righteousness.' It is not only an act of his will, but of his nature; it is not so natural to him as heat is to the fire, that doth necessarily scorch and burn, without any influence of a free and rational principle. There is a liberty of the divine will to order those acts of his justice in convenient seasons.
God acts in all things according to his own nature, and cannot act below himself and the rectitude of it. The first foundation of all his actings towards his creatures is in his will. As upon the supposition that God would create man (which it was free for him to do or not to do, and so depended only upon his will), he could not, according to the rectitude of his own nature, but create him upright, otherwise he had denied his own holiness; so, upon the supposition of man's sinning (the prevention or permission of which depended upon his will), he cannot but punish him, because otherwise he had denied his justice, and seemed to have approved of the disorder man had introduced into the world; and if he had not punished it in the degree it merited, there had seemed to be some abatement of that hatred which was due to the unrighteousness of it; for so much as a punishment is lessened, so much less doth the detestation of the crime appear. The power of God is not limited hereby; his own holiness and truth, and the righteousness of his nature, bound him.*
Doth any man deny the power of God, in saying he cannot forget his creature? Would it not be a weakness in him to be capable of lying?
Is it not an imperfection to be capable of doing any thing unjust? And what would it be but injustice in the Judge of all the earth to let sin go unrevenged? It is rather an argument of strength and virtue, whereby he cannot renounce the rectitude of his nature.†
[1.] This seems to be a general and a natural notion in the minds of men. God hath settled it as an immutable and eternal law, and engraven it upon the hearts of men, that sin is to be punished with death. What other sentiment could be expressed by the universal practice of sacrificing beasts, and, in some places, men, for the expiation of their sins, implying thereby a necessity of vindictive justice, that God would not leave sin unpunished, without a compensation from the sinner himself, or some other in his stead?
And therefore they thought the blood of man, the best of the creatures, a means to avert the stroke they had merited from him themselves. What other foundation could there be of all those sacrifices than a conscience of sin, and a settled notion of the vengeance of God? For that which they principally, or only, respected in those sacrifices, was the justice of God. Upon this account it was probably that the apostle so positively asserts, Rom. 1:32, that they
'knew that they were worthy of death.' They sufficiently expressed it in subjecting other creatures to the stroke of death in their stead, to pacify the offended deity, acknowledging thereby, that he could not pardon sin without a satisfaction. This was learned by them in the school of nature, not by the revealed will of God; or if it were handed to them by tradition from Adam, it had so near an alliance with an universal principle in their own consciences, that it met with no opposition or dispute, the practice of it being almost as universally spread, as the notion of the being of a God, since we scarce find a nation without the sacrificing animals for the appeasing the divinity they adored.
[2.] The holiness of God seems necessarily to infer it. Since justice is nothing else but the testimony or expression of God's hatred of sin, it must be by consequence unavoidable, unless the sin committed can be wholly undone, which is impossible; or his justice be appeased some way or other. If God did not punish sin, how could his hatred of it be manifest? His creature could not discern any aversion in him from it, without the interposition of vindictive justice; for that perfection of God's nature, which requires that he should have an implacable detestation of sin, requires also that the sinner,
remaining under guilt, should be perpetually punished. If God cannot but hate all the workers of iniquity (Ps. 5:5, 'Thou hatest all the workers of iniquity'), he cannot but punish them. The holiness of God is not only voluntary, but by necessity of nature; were it only an act of his will, he might love iniquity if he pleased, as well as hate it.
How could it be said of him by the prophet, Hab. 1:13, that he is 'of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon iniquity,' if his purity had been only from choice, and a determination of the indifferency of his will, and not from his nature? It is not said, He will not look on iniquity, i.e. with affection, but he cannot. God cannot but be holy, and therefore cannot but be just; because injustice is a part of unholiness. And upon the holiness of God,
Joshua asserts the Israelites' sins in themselves unpardonable: Josh.
24:19, 'He is a holy God, he is a jealous God, he will not forgive your transgressions, nor your sins.' He is jealous of the honour of his perfections; his holiness and jealousy stand as bars against forgiveness, without some means for preserving the honour of them; his holiness and jealousy, whereby his justice and wrath are sometimes expressed, are linked together, and are nothing else but the contrariety in the nature of God, which is infinitely good and righteous, to the nature of sin, which is evil and unrighteous, whereby he is inclined to detest it.* All hatred is a desire of revenge; and the stronger the hatred, the more vehement the inclination to revenge. The loathing of sin being infinite in God, as he is the rector of the world, and so necessary a perfection of his nature, that without it he would not be God; the inclination to punish it, and thereby highly manifest his hatred of it, necessarily follows that perfection. A will to punish sin is always included in an hatred of it. Now, if the hatred of sin be as essential to God as his love to his glory, punishment must follow it. There is a certain connection between the one and the other. This hatred must necessarily be evidenced by some acts, according to the greatness of the evil. How shall it be testified, but by punishment? If he doth not punish, how shall we certainly know but that it pleaseth him? By his bare precept we cannot, if he suffers it to be violated at the pleasure of men without rebuke; we may then judge him to be a negligent governor, and one
that hath no regard to his own command, and cares not whether his creature observes it or no. Hatred cannot be discovered without some expressions of aversion. What signs can those be, unless God's denying his communications to his creature, and a positive inflicting of evil? If a governor hates a disorder never so much, if he expresseth it not, whereby the offending person may be sensible of his hatred, it is as much as no hatred; for, Idem est non esse, et non apparere.
What would all his prohibitions of sin amount to, if he did not punish the commission of it? He that cannot but prohibit sin, cannot but punish sin. God cannot but prohibit sin, because he cannot but hate it, it being contrary to his holy nature. The commands of God are not bare acts of his will, but of his wisdom and righteousness. If they proceeded from bare will, without any regulation by his wisdom and righteousness, he might command things contrary to the law of nature, and the necessary relation of a creature to himself. So neither is his hatred of sin only a free act of his will, but necessarily results from the rectitude of his nature. If it were only an act of his will, as the creation of the world, he might as well love sin as hate it; as he might as well have neglected the creation of the world as performed it, and let the several creatures remain in their nothing, as well as have brought them into being. But it flows from the righteousness of his nature (Prov. 15:9, 'The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord'), and consequently so doth his justice, which is an expression of this hatred, otherwise God would be unjust to his own holiness.
(2.) Hence it follows, that this justice must be satisfied before man could be restored. The justice of God was the bar in the way, and must be removed by punishment. Christ could not have brought one son to glory, had he not first been 'made perfect by suffering,' Heb.
2:10. The wrath of God for the violations of the law, was the flaming sword that guarded paradise from being entered into by guilty man.
This was becoming God as the governor of the world, in which capacity he is considered in punishment. It became not God to do anything unjustly or inordinately. It was an intolerable thing that the creature should despoil God of his honour, and withdraw itself from
that indispensable subjection it owed to its creator. It became God to restore that order by punishment, which had been broken by sin.
Let us consider, [1.] Justice had at least an equal plea with mercy. If mercy pleaded for pardon, justice as strongly solicited the punishment of the sinner.
The remission of the offence would appear more charitable; but the vindicating the public laws, and punishing the offence, would appear more righteous. It was not convenient the creature should be utterly ruined as soon as ever God had displayed his power in creating it, nor was it convenient the creature should be emboldened in sin by a free act of pardon, after so high and base an act of disingenuity. What could mercy plead on the behalf of the creature, that justice could not as strongly plead on the behalf of God? If the ruin of the creature be argued to move compassion, the dishonour of God on the other side would be argued to excite indignation. If the nature of God, as love, 1
John 4:8, be pleaded by mercy, the nature of God, as righteous and a consuming fire, Heb. 12:29, would be opposed to it by justice. His mercy would plead, It were not for his honour to let his enemy run away, just after the creation, with the spoil of the best of his works.
His justice would reply, It was fit the judge of the world should do right, and be the protector of his righteous law. If his mercy inclines him to will our salvation, justice would not permit him to leave sin unpunished, and his laws trampled in the dust. Had mercy been discovered without preserving the rights of justice, when the whole nature of man fell, God had been but a half governor of the world, and exercised but one part of government.
[2.] Justice seems to have a stronger plea. (1.) The highest right falls on the side of justice. That had been declared and backed by his truth, when mercy was not yet published upon the stage of the creation. The righteous and just nature of God had been signified to man, and his veracity brought in to second it, Gen. 2:17. No notion of pardoning mercy had yet been imprinted upon the mind of man, or revealed to him; so that God was not so much concerned in honour
to shew mercy, which stood single, as I may say, and lay hid in the nature of God, without the appearance of any perfection to back and support it. Had man stood, the veracity of God had stood on the side of his goodness (for we may suppose a promise of life implied, if man continued in obedience, as well as a threatening expressed, if he fell into rebellion). But when men broke the precept, the whole force of God's truth fell on the side of justice. There being not a syllable of pardoning grace uttered in any promise before the sin of man, the truth of God had no part at that time to take with mercy; so that there were greater engagements at that time, from the manifestation of God's nature, for the making good his justice, than for the demonstration of his mercy.
(2.) Mercy could principally plead the good of the creature, justice principally insisted on the honour of God. Mercy might solicit the liberty of God's will, but justice might strongly challenge the holiness and rectitude of God's nature to support it. The creature was fallen under the hatred of God and penalty of the law, and rendered itself an unfit object of love by its rebellion and filthiness.
(3.) Besides, the wits and consciences of men cannot frame so many arguments for the necessity of mercy, in regard of God, as for the necessity of his justice. Mercy is wholly a free act, but justice is a debt due to a sinful creature. The necessity of mercy to a fallen creature, in regard of God, cannot possibly be asserted with any reason. For it would then be asserted on the behalf of devils more than men. I say, the necessity, for perhaps something may be said for the congruity of God's shewing mercy to man rather than to devils. Justice respects merit caused by the righteousness or unrighteousness of men,* according to which God immutably carries himself in rewarding or punishing of them, and never doth reward or punish any but according to their merit; but the mercy of God doth not at all respect merit, or any work done by man, but is busied wholly in giving freely, and offering graciously to man those things he hath not deserved.
(4.) Again, justice had stronger arguments from the rectitude of God's nature. Justice might argue, If God did righteously judge sinners to everlasting death, then if he had not judged them to everlasting death, he had done unjustly, being unmindful of the rectitude of his own nature. And if he should not now, after sin, inflict eternal death, but wholly lay aside his threatening, he would do unjustly; for those being contrary acts, one of them must needs be unjust. Who could call that a righteous government, wherein laws should be made with the greatest wisdom, and be broken with the greatest impunity?
(5.) Again, consider, though mercy be essential to God, yet mercy must not be unjustly exercised. The fallen creature, indeed, was an object of both: as miserable, he was an object of mercy; as criminal, he was an object of justice. But being first criminal before he was miserable, he was first the object of justice by his crime, before he was an object of mercy by his misery. Had he been miserable without being culpable (which was impossible, in regard of the goodness of God), he had then been an object of compassion only. But falling under justice first, it was not fit mercy should wholly despoil justice of its rights.
(6.) Again. Man, as miserable by the fall, is not the object of mercy.
For what mercy could pardon an obstinate rebel? And how could man have been otherwise, without some supernatural operation upon him? Mercy could not challenge any footing to exercise itself about man, till he had confessed and bewailed his crime, and been sensible, not only of his misery, but of his offence. It is not honourable for God to exercise mercy upon those that continue in their enmity; this seems to be clearly against the rectitude of the divine nature; this had been a favouring of the crime as well as the criminal. Had he been sensible of and sorrowful for his misery, without a true grief for his offence, this had been an act of love to himself, but had had in it nothing of a true affection to God. After man had contracted in his nature an enmity against God, how could he have acquired a true repentance flowing from an affection to God?
Repentance for a fault against a prince, and enmity against a prince, are inconsistent. How should man have attained this quality of himself, any more than the devils have done, of whose repentance we read not one syllable in the Scripture, who are left to those habits of malice and aversion from God, which they had superinduced upon themselves? And if devils, who were creatures of greater understanding, and more sensible of their misery, because they fell from a greater happiness than man, were morally impotent to this, can we think that man had a stronger bias in his will after the revolt from God, to return again to God? Besides, repentance is made a gift of God, 2 Tim. 2:25; and the Spirit that gives repentance, is a fruit of Christ's death; and the repentance itself is made a fruit of Christ's exaltation, due to him upon his death, Acts 5:32. To strengthen this, it may be considered that when God came to examine Adam, as a judge, about his crime, there is not a syllable that savours of any true repentance issues from him, Gen. 3:8–10, &c., whatsoever he might exercise after the promulgation of the gospel-promise.
[3.] Consider, if there had not been a tempering of these two perfections towards man, one of them had remained undiscovered to the world. Justice only could have appeared in the creature's suffering, mercy only could have appeared in the creature's restoration. Mercy could not have been discovered by the condemnation of the creature, nor justice by the mere salvation of the creature. Had there been no punishment, or a light one below the demerit of the creature, there had been no demonstration of the highest glory of his holiness in the hatred of sin, or of the highest glory of his justice in the punishment of sin. Had the punishment due to the creature been inflicted upon him, the creature had been utterly destroyed, and mercy had been for ever obscured; and had mercy solely acted about the creature, justice had been wronged.
Justice therefore must be one way or other righted, that the streams of his grace might flow out to man, since, after man's fall, justice had stopped all commerce of God with man, because sin had rendered him unfit for the communications of God. As the nature of compassion must be satisfied in acting about a miserable creature,
and the love God bore to man as his creature manifested; so the nature of justice must be satisfied for the injury done, and the hatred of God to man as a sinner discovered. And this must be satisfied either by the creature's bearing the punishment, or compensating the injury, for that properly is satisfaction. God's justice could not have come off with honour without it; for since he was engaged by his word to have sin punished, would not God have been unjust had he laid by all consideration of his justice and holiness in this case? Had justice been glorified upon the person of the sinner, mercy would have lost the manifestation of itself, and have had no objects to exercise itself about; had mercy been glorified in bringing man to a happy state, without any punishment, after so base a breach of his law, where had been the demonstration of the unchangeable holiness of God, and the exactness of his justice? God therefore appointed a Mediator, in whom he might act as a righteous judge for the punishment of sin, according to his law, that his dreadful majesty might be more feared; and a tender father according to the necessity of his creatures, that his love might be commended, as a wise governor tempering both together. And therefore God, foreseeing the fall of man, elected some to eternal glory, but in Christ as the means,
Eph. 1:4, not as the meritorious cause of election, but as the means and foundation of the execution of it, that the glory of his grace might issue out in the preservation of the rights of his justice, maintained by the blood of his Son, in whom we have redemption, ver. 6, 7, and without this way we cannot see how the glory of God had been preserved. God had made the world for his glory, and the communication of his goodness. After the world was polluted and disordered by sin, the justice of God, by annexing such a penalty to the law, stood as a bar in the way of any kindness to the creature, unless some way might be found out to preserve the honour of that justice. Shall God in a moment lose all the glory of his creation? Did he make the creatures, whose fall he did foresee, only to punish and damn them; and that the glory of his other perfections, save that of his justice and holiness, should be spoiled by it? His glory therefore must be preserved; that could not be if the glory of his justice or mercy were wholly lost. To preserve it, therefore, Christ is
substituted in our room, and the Captain of salvation made perfect through sufferings, which was most becoming God, as he was Lord of all, and his glory the end of all, Heb. 2:10. His love not permitting him to leave the world under the curse, nor his justice to leave sin without punishment, both those necessities are provided for by the wisdom of God; a wonderful temperament wrought, whereby sin is punished in the surety, and impunity secured to the believing sinner.* [4.] This satisfaction must be by death, because death was threatened. Since it was the judgment of God that sin was worthy of death, God had contradicted his own judgment and holy wisdom, if he had remitted it without death, or punished it with less than death.
God established our propitiation in the blood of Christ, 'to declare his justice,' Rom. 3:25.† If justice had required less than death, it had been unjust to have demanded so much as death, for then he had demanded more than was due. Sin could not be expiated by a less punishment than it had merited, but that was death. Besides, the love of God to his Son would not have permitted him to expose him to a cursed and cruel death, merely to shew his justice implacable, had it not really been in itself implacable without it, as the most transcendent means to discover the incomprehensible purity of his nature. Certainly, that God who would not do the least injustice to the meanest of his creatures, would not have delivered up his Son to so shameful a death, and took so many counsels about it, and made it the principal work of his wisdom in all ages of the world, to order all things for the execution of it, if justice could have been contented with less than death, and remission of sin could have been granted by the pure mercy and bounty of God, at least after the threatening.
Could justice have been satisfied at a lower rate than death, the Father would have answered the request of his Son when he prayed so earnestly that this cup might pass from him; nor would death have been exacted of him, if a drop of his blood had been a sufficient payment to the demands of justice. The suffering death had been superfluous, and the imposing death upon him had been an unrighteousness in God; and his giving himself up to death, without
any necessity, had been an injustice to himself. Could a few drops of blood have satisfied justice, it might have been satisfied without any blood at all, as well as with a punishment beneath what the law demanded. The effusion of one drop of blood cannot pass for a punishment of sin. when death for it was required by the law, so that it could be no less than death.
Prop. 3. None could satisfy the justice of God but the Son of God incarnate.
[1.] Let us remove those things that might be supposed capable to do it. Nether could man do it for himself, nor any intellectual or rational creature do it for him, nor any observances of God's institutions do it, so that it must necessarily fall upon some one above the rank of creatures. Some divine person only was capable to undertake it and effect it. There is a necessity of satisfaction to the law, both by paying obedience to every tittle of it, and by enduring the penalty for the transgression of it. God stands so much upon the honour of his law, that the heavens shall be folded up, and the earth shaken out of its place, before one point of the law shall be disregarded, Mat. 5:18.
Some one therefore must repair the breach made upon it, and restore the honour of it. Let us see if anything else could.
(1.) Man was unable to do it for himself. It must be done either by active or passive obedience, by doing or suffering; but was man capable of either as a full compensation to God? Man by sin fell in his person, and with all that he had, under the curse of the law, Gal.
3:10; and what was under the curse, and by sin was forfeited, could not remove the curse. Man may be considered as a sinful creature or a gracious creature. A sinful creature cannot satisfy; for being a sinner in that satisfaction, he doth offend the holiness of God, and heap new provocations before the eyes of his justice instead of pacifying it. A gracious creature cannot, for that supposeth satisfaction first, whereby justice is moved to take away the bar that locks up the treasures of grace from being dispensed to man. A man might be gracious after a satisfaction, but not before; besides, grace