God found infinite satisfaction
in this human obedience and righteousness, and on the basis of this
sacrifice pardons us.

Some may be able to assure themselves better of the forgiveness of God,
if they look at what Christ has done as a satisfaction for or reparation
of the ill that we have done. He properly satisfies for an offence who
offers to the offended party that which he loves as well or better than
he hates the offence. If your child has through carelessness broken or
spoiled something you value, but seeing your displeasure is at pains to
replace it, and does after long industry put into your hands an article
of greater value than was lost to you, you are satisfied, and more than
forgive your child. If a man fails in business, but after spending a
lifetime to recover himself restores to you not only what you lost by
him, but more than could possibly have been made by yourself with the
original sum lost, you ought to be satisfied. And God is satisfied with
the work of Christ because there is in it a love and an obedience to
Him, and a regard to right and holiness, that outweigh all our
disobedience and alienation. Often, when some satisfaction or reparation
of injury or loss is made to ourselves, it is done in so good-hearted a
manner, and displays so much right feeling, and sets us on terms of so
much closer intimacy with the party who injured us, that we are really
glad, now that all is over, that the misunderstanding or injury took
place. The satisfaction has far more than atoned for it. So is it with
God: our reconciliation to Him has called out so much in Christ that
would otherwise have been hidden, has so stirred the deepest part, if
we may say so, of the Divine nature in Christ, and has called out also
so signally the whole strength and beauty of human nature, that God is
more than satisfied. We cannot see how without sin there could have been
that display of love and obedience that there has been in the death of
Christ. Where there is no danger, nothing tragic, there can be no
heroism: human nature, not to speak of Divine, has not scope for its
best parts in the ordinary and innocent traffic and calm of life. It is
when danger thickens, and when death draws near and bares his hideous
visage, that devotion and self-sacrifice can be exercised. And so, in a
world filled with sin and with danger, a world in which each
individual's history has something stirring and tragic in it, God finds
room for the full