hat sort is
anywhere intimated in the Johannean documents, even in the
faintest manner. So far from saying that there was unwillingness
or inability in the Father to take the initiative for our ransom
and pardon, he expressly avows, "Herein is love, not that we loved
God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation
for our sins." Instead of exclaiming, with the majority of modern
theologians, "Believe in the atoning death, the substitutional
sufferings, of Christ, and your sins shall then all be washed
away, and you shall be saved," he explicitly says, "If we confess
our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." And
again: "Whosoever believeth in him" not in his death, but in him
"shall have eternal life." The allusions in John to the doctrine
of redemption and reconciliation do not mean, it is plain enough,
the buying off of the victims of eternal condemnation by the
vicarious pains of Jesus. What, then, do they mean? They are too
few, short, and obscure for us to decide this question
conclusively by their own light alone. We must get assistance from
abroad.

The reader will remember that it was the Jewish belief, and the
retained belief of the converts to Christianity, at that time,
that men's souls, in consequence of sin, were doomed upon leaving
the body to descend into the under world. This was the objective
penalty of sin, inherited from Adam. Now, Christ in his
superangelic state in heaven was not involved in sin or in its
doom of death and subterranean banishment. Yet at the will of the
Father he became a man, went through our earthly experiences, died
like a sinner, and after death descended into the prison of
disembodied souls below, then rose again and ascended into heaven
to the Father, to show men that their sins were forgiven, the
penalty taken away, and the path opened for them too to rise to
eternal life in the celestial mansions with Christ "and be with
him where he is." Christ's death, then, cleanses men from sin, he
is a propitiation for their sins, in two ways. First, by his
resurrection from the power of death and his ascent to heaven he
showed men that God had removed the great penalty of sin: by his
death and ascension he was the medium of giving them this
knowledge. Secondly, the joy, gratitude, love to God, awakened in
them by such glorious tidings, would purify their natures, exalt
their souls into spiritual freedom and virtue, into a blessed and
Divine life. A