Put it in the simplest shape, to which all Christians will agree.
The Father sent the Son to die for the world. Most true: but who
can explain those words? We are stopped at the very first step by an
abyss. Who can tell us what is meant by the Father sending the Son?
What is the relation, the connexion, between the Father and the Son?
If we do not know that, we can know nothing about the matter, about
the very root and ground thereof. And we do know little or nothing.
The Bible only gives us scattered hints here and there. It is one of
the things of which we may say, with St. Paul, that we know in part,
and see through a glass darkly. How, then, dare we talk as if we
knew all, as if we saw clearly? The atonement is a blessed and awful
mystery hidden in God: ordained by and between God the Father and
God the Son. And who can search out that? Who hath known the mind
of the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor? Did we sit by, and
were we taken into his counsels, when he made the world? Not we.
Neither were we when he redeemed the world. He did it. Let that be
enough for us. And he did it in love. Let that be enough for us.
God the Father so loved the world, that he sent his Son into the
world, that the world by him might be saved. God the Son so loved
the world, that he came to do his Father's will, and put away sin by
the sacrifice of himself.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49