(A Requested Writing)  From The Primitive Baptist, Christian Pathway, Gospel Appeal February, 2016

"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all" (Rom. 8.32).

The Father might have spared his Son. God was under no obligation to save anyone, and if He had chosen not to save any of the human race, there would have been no necessity for Jesus to have suffered. There was no requirement for the Godhead to enter into the Eternal Covenant, so God might have spared his Son the suffering of the cross. Having entered into the Covenant, however, there was a self-obligation upon the three Persons of the Godhead to do what they had agreed to do. Let us not doubt that the love which the Father had for the Son was infinite and perfect and intense. The Father was "well pleased" with Him while He was here upon the earth, and they had enjoyed a perfect fellowship and joy in one another's company from all eternity. In the garden, Jesus referred to it as "the glory which I had with thee before the world was." Yes, God loved his Son.

Thus, even though He had purposed to save his people, if there had been any other way for salvation to have been accomplished apart from the suffering of Christ, surely God would have done it that way. If He loved his Son, why would He have imposed needless suffering upon Him? Therefore we may safely conclude that there was no other way for the elect to be saved than through the suffering and death of Christ.

God cannot act in a way that violates his nature. "He cannot deny himself," and to act contrary to his nature would be a denial of his own being. Therefore, the entire process of salvation had to be done in a way that was in absolute agreement with and conformity to the perfect and faultless nature of God. Thus, God could not merely overlook man's sin, because that would have been a violation of his justice. If He had done that, Christ would not have had to suffer; but it is impossible for God to act in such a manner, so Christ had to suffer, because God's justice had to be satisfied.  

In order for man to be saved, blood had to be shed. "Without shedding of blood is no remission," Brother Paul taught us. For sins to be remitted or put away, blood had to be shed: that was an absolute requirement. What blood, then, must be shed? Man had sinned: he was the condemned party; and therefore the One who should taste death for man must be a man. Jesus was made "a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death." Furthermore, "he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." Jesus became our brother, took upon him, not the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham. The blood had to be the blood of our kinsman.

Further, the blood by which we were saved had to be pure blood. It is a well-known medical fact in our day that polluted blood is a very dangerous thing, and so far from healing, it can inflict upon us all manner of deadly diseases. Our fathers' blood could only pass to us its own mortal corruption. Thus, the blood of salvation must be the blood of a man, but it must also be sinless blood, and where was such blood to be found among the human race? The blood by which we were to be saved must have infinite virtue, for it was to satisfy in six hours of suffering the divine justice that inflicted woe and misery for an infinite duration upon those who were not covered by the blood of Christ. Where could blood of such merit be found among finite beings? Brother Paul charged the Ephesian elders to "feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood." Deity strictly considered cannot bleed, but the only blood by which men could be saved must be the blood of a divine Person. How is that problem to be solved? "God was manifest in the flesh." Jesus was "made of a woman." In one of the most wonderful and mysterious events in the history of the world, at the moment of conception in the womb of the virgin Mary, the second Person of the Godhead took into union with himself a real, complete human nature.

This nature included a body. "A body hast thou prepared me, "the apostle reminds us. God prepared in the womb of Mary a body that could and would bleed with the blood of a divine Person and therefore with infinite virtue — "the righteousness of God." Just as surely as there could be no blood without humanity, so there could be no salvation without Deity. "I am the Lord, and beside me there is no saviour." He who saved us must be God, for He said, "My glory will I not give to another," and He is a jealous God.

There had been a curse pronounced upon Adam, and Justice demanded that that curse be borne. If someone had not borne it for us, then we would bear it still. How was that to be done? "Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree," Paul told us from the book of Deuteronomy. The death of our Substitute could not be just any death, but it had to be such a death as would take away that curse from us; and thus the Savior must hang on a tree.

"Ought not Christ to have suffered these things?" the Lord asked the brethren on the Emmaus road. Yes, He ought to have suffered, for He had covenanted before the world began to do so. He had obligated himself to suffer, to bleed and to die; to be crucified and to bear the shame of the cross. All these things He ought to have done, and He did them, for there was no other way by which we could have been saved. If there had been, surely, surely, God would have spared his own Son — but He did not.