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have it, a product of His free will, Matt. 5:18. The general principle of the law is expressed in
these words: “Cursed be he that confirmeth not the words of this law to do them,” Deut. 27:26.
And if God wanted to save the sinner, in spite of the fact that the latter could not meet the
demands of the law, He had to make provision for a vicarious satisfaction as a ground for the
sinner’s justification.
3. The necessity of the atonement also follows from the veracity of God, who is a God of truth
and cannot lie. “God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should
repent; hath He said it, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it
good?” Num. 23:19. “Let God be found true,” says Paul, “but every man a liar.” Rom. 3:4. When
He entered into the covenant of works with man, He decreed that death would be the penalty
of disobedience. That principle finds expression in many other words of Scripture, such as Ezek.
18:4; Rom. 6:23. The veracity of God demanded that the penalty should be executed, and if
sinners were to be saved, should be executed in the life of a substitute.
4. The same conclusion may be drawn from the nature of sin as guilt. If sin were merely a moral
weakness, a remnant of a pre-human state, which is gradually brought into subjection to the
higher nature of man, it would require no atonement. But according to Scripture sin is
something far more heinous than that. Negatively, it is lawlessness, and positively,
transgression of the law of God, and therefore guilt, I John 3:4; Rom. 2:25,27, and guilt makes
one a debtor to the law and requires either a personal or a vicarious atonement.
5. The amazing greatness of the sacrifice which God Himself provided also implies the necessity
of the atonement. God gave His only-begotten Son, to be subjected to bitter sufferings and to a
shameful death. Now it is not conceivable that God would do this unnecessarily. Dr. A. A. Hodge
correctly says: “This sacrifice would be most painfully irrelevant if it were anything short of
absolutely necessary in relation to the end designed to be attained—that is, unless it be indeed
the only possible means to the salvation of sinful man. God surely would not have made His Son
a wanton sacrifice to a bare point of will.”[The Atonement, p. 237.] It is also worthy of note that
Paul argues in Gal. 3:21 that Christ would not have been sacrificed, if the law could have given
life. Scripture explicitly speaks of the sufferings of Christ as necessary in Luke 24:26; Heb. 2:10;
8:3; 9:22,23.
D. OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE OF THE ABSOLUTE NECESSITY OF THE ATONEMENT.
There are especially two objections that are often raised to the idea that God had to demand
satisfaction, in order that He might be able to pardon sin, and because there was no other way,
constituted His only begotten Son a sacrifice for the sin of the world.