Chapter 13—Atonement Vindicates God’s
Changeless Law
The cross speaks to the hosts of heaven, to worlds unfallen, and
to the fallen world, the value which God has placed upon men, and of
His great love wherewith He has loved us. It testifies to the world, to
angels, and to men, the immutability of the divine law. The death of
God’s only begotten Son upon the cross in the sinner’s behalf is the
unanswerable argument as to the changeless character of the law of
Jehovah.—
The Review and Herald, May 23, 1899
.
The cross of Christ testifies to the sinner that the law is not changed
to meet the sinner in his sins, but that Christ has made an offering of
Himself that the transgressors of the law might have an opportunity to
repent. As Christ bore the sins of every transgressor so the sinner who
will not believe in Christ as his personal Saviour, who rejects the light
that comes to him, and refuses to respect and obey the commandments
of God, will bear the penalty of his transgression.—
Manuscript 133,
1897
.
The death of Christ was to be the convincing, everlasting argument
that the law of God is as unchangeable as His throne. The agonies of
the garden of Gethsemane, the insult, the mockery, the abuse heaped
upon God’s dear Son, the horrors and ignominy of the crucifixion,
furnish sufficient and thrilling demonstration that God’s justice, when
it punishes, does the work thoroughly. The fact that His own Son, the
Surety for man, was not spared, is an argument that will stand to all
eternity before saint and sinner, before the universe of God, to testify
that He will not excuse the transgressor of His law.—
Manuscript 58,
1897
.
Satan is continuing the work on earth that he commenced in heaven.
He leads men to transgress the commandments of God. The plain
“Thus saith the Lord” is put aside for the “thus saith” of men. The
whole world needs to be instructed in the oracles of God, to understand
the object of the atonement, the at-one-ment, with God. The object of
this atonement was that the divine law and government might be main-
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