ature itself. God could not do justice to Himself, in
relation to man and sin, in any way less awful than this; and it is the
fact that He does not shrink even from this--that in the Person of His
Son He enters, if we may say so, into the whole responsibility of the
situation created by sin--which constitutes the death of Jesus a
demonstration of divine love, compelling penitence and faith. Nothing
less would have been sufficient to touch sinful hearts to their
depths--in that sense the Atonement is humanly necessary; but neither
would anything else be a sufficient revelation of what God is in
relation to sin and to sinful men--in that sense it is divinely
necessary. And the divine necessity is the fundamental one. The power
exercised over us by the revelation of God at the Cross is dependent on
the fact that the revelation is true--in other words, that it exhibits
the real relation of God to sinners and to sin. It is not by
calculating what will win us, but by acting in consistency with
Himself, that God irresistibly appeals to men. We dare not say that He
must be gracious, as though grace could cease to be free: but we may
say that He must be Himself, and that it is because He is what we see
Him to be in the death of Christ, understood as the New Testament
understands it, that sinners are moved to repentance and to trust in
Him. That which the eternal being of God made necessary to Him in the
presence of sin is the very thing which is necessary also to win the
hearts of sinners. Nothing but what is divinely necessary could have
met the necessities of sinful men.

When we admit this twofold necessity for the Atonement, we can tell
ourselves more clearly how we are to conceive Christ in it, in relation
to God on the one hand and to man on the other. The Atonement is God's
work. It is God who makes the Atonement in Christ. It is God who
mediates His forgiveness of sins to us in this way. This is one aspect
of the matter, and probably the one about which there is least dispute
among Christians. But there is another aspect of it. The Mediator
between God and man is Himself man, Christ Jesus. What is the relation
of the man Christ Jesus to those for whom the Atonement is made? What
is the proper term to designate, in this atoning work, what He is in
relation to them? The doctrine of Atonement current in the Church in
the generation preceding our own answered frankly that in His atoning
work Christ is our su