Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Sin as a Business Partnership

"A query may here arise relative to the punishment of sin in the person of Satan. 
Q: If Satan is punished for the sins of the righteous, are not those
sins punished twice, once
in the person of Christ, who suffered for our sins, and again in the person of Satan, upon whom they are finally laid? 
A: We answer that the sins of the righteous are no more punished twice than the sins of the wicked. Christ suffered for all alike, just as much for those who will be finally lost, as for those who will be saved
---But the lost will all be punished at last for their own sins. The trouble arises from a misapprehension of the position of Christ as our substitute. 
-*-The idea seems to be generally entertained that Christ in His own person suffered all the punishment due to the sins of all the saved, which they would themselves have endured had they been lost. This leaves those who believe in eternal misery to grapple with an insurmountable problem; and it leads to the most ultra Calvinism
 
The truth seems rather to be that Christ appeared before the law as an innocent victim to meet in behalf of others the sentence, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." (Ez.18:20). The offering was voluntary, and therefore involved no injustice; 
-it was from one of so exalted a position that God could accept it; 
-and it was of such infinite value that the law could honorably relax its claims from all those who would accept of it, even if all the world should do so. but we have seen from the type that the removal of sin from the penitent did not cancel the sin itself, but only transferred it to some other object. 
 
The forgiveness was relative, not absolute; that is, as related to the sinner it was forgiven, but the sin itself was considered still in existence, to be disposed of in some other way
Christ has done for us in fact what the ancient offering did for the sinner in figure; 
that is, He has provided a medium through which sin with its guilt may be removed from us and transferred to some other party. Thus we can be saved, but the sin must meet its just desert in some other quarter. 
 
Sin may therefore be represented as a partnership business. 
Satan is the senior party,
 the sinner the junior. 
The latter, having been seduced into that position, is allowed, under certain conditions, to leave the company and step out from under the obligations of the business. 
Q: Upon whom then will they fall? 
A: Upon the only remaining member of the firm, the instigator of the whole business, the senior partner, Satan. 
---If the sinner chooses to maintain the partnership in that illegitimate business, he can do so, and receive in his own person at last the punishment of his deeds. But it is in his power, if he so desires, to leave his present relation, unite himself to Christ, and leave his former business with him who is primarily responsible for it.
 
***And this is what we are taught by the doctrine of the scape-goat
The sinner goes free, and Satan receives the sins he has incited the sinner to commit back upon his own head, to answer therefor in the settlement which he at last must meet." Uriah Smith