FEBRUARY 17TH, 1903

FEBRUARY 17TH, 1903

I am glad to send you a line on the point to which your letter refers. I have never heard it asserted that Christ bore the sins of all. If such were said it would imply that all were individually in His thoughts in His sufferings. We have no ground for such a thought. The apostle says, Christ ‘loved me and gave Himself for me’. I do not think it is going too far to say that Christ had the elect individually in His thoughts in His sufferings. But at the same time it is equally true that He did a work in virtue of which He is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. The Head of every man. The sufficiency of the work for the ^[p. 194] position that He occupies must be admitted. In the gospel that the apostle Paul preached he said that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and through this Man the forgiveness of sins is preached, and therefore the bearing of the work must be unlimited. “Through one righteousness toward all men unto justification of life”. But I cannot see that this necessitates that all were individually in the mind of Christ, as bearing their sins in His work. I certainly think that substitution is more limited in its bearing than propitiation. The latter is evidently the basis of the gospel.