he propitiation for our sins." To the beloved
disciple evidently the great fact of the Christian revelation is that
Christ died for our sins.

But it is in the letters of Paul that we find the fullest and most
emphatic assertion of this transcendent fact. It will not be possible
for me to quote to you even a half of what he said on the subject. If
you should cut out of his letters all the references to the cross, you
would leave his letters in tatters. Listen to him as he talks to his
converts in Corinth: "First of all I delivered unto you that which
I also received, how that Christ died for our sins." That was the
foremost fact, to be stated in every letter and to be unfolded in
every sermon. To Saul of Tarsus, Jesus is not an illustrious Rabbi
whose sentences are to be treasured up and repeated to listening
congregations; He is everywhere and always the world's Redeemer.
And throughout all of Paul's epistles one hears the same jubilant,
triumphant declaration, "I live by the faith of the Son of God, who
loved me and gave himself for me."

Let us now turn to the last book of the New Testament, the Book of
the Revelation. What does this prophet on the Isle of Patmos see and
hear, as he looks out into future ages and coming worlds? The book
begins with a doxology: "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from
our sins in his own blood, to him be glory and dominion forever and
ever." John looks, and beholds a great company of the redeemed. He
asks who these are, and the reply comes back, "These are they who have
washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." He
listens, and the song that goes up from the throats of the redeemed
is, "Worthy art thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof;
for thou wast slain and didst purchase us for God with thy blood."
At the center of the great vision which bursts upon the soul of the
exiled apostle, there is a Lamb that was slain. Whatever we may think
of Jesus of Nazareth, there is no question concerning what the men who
wrote the New Testament thought. To the men who wrote the book, Jesus
was not a Socrates or a Seneca, a Martin Luther or an Abraham Lincoln.
His life was not an incident in the process of evolution, His death
was not an episode in the dark and dreadful tragedy of human history.
His life is God's. greatest gift to men, His death is the climax and
the crowning revelation of the heart of the eternal. You can not open
the New Testament anywhere