in his own person a sinner. Mystery though it is, and ineffable the meaning in its ultimate divine relation, the eternal love between the Father and the Son was not, and could not, be broken, not even in the cry of dereliction from the cross, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46). The Father loved the Son even as he poured out his wrath against him, against the guilt of sin that he bore. The very godness of the Godhead, the eternal indwelling of the Son, with the Holy Spirit, in the Father, speaks its witness. Oh eternal love! That God himself, in the Person of his Son, should die for us who rebelled against him and his covenantal faithfulness. In the very death of the cross, God the Father looked upon the Son whom he loved and was satisfied that in his impeccable innocence the Son, in the perfect righteousness that he had sustained in his human nature, allowed the guilt of his people’s sin to be laid upon him. Therein he bore the Father’s wrath and saved the host that God, in his eternal jealousy and design, has elected to share his glory with him. The smile of the Father would soon return, and in his temporal death Christ the redeemer would give his human soul again to the Father. He would soon return to the heavens as the victorious high priest and intercessor for his people, glorified again, as he had prayed: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory that I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5).
Let us observe the meaning of the substitutionary death of Christ in summary terms. When he paid the penalty for sin on the cross, was Christ guilty? Yes he was guilty, not of his own sin, for he was sinless, but of the sin of those for whom he died. He was guilty because our sin was placed to his account. Our guilt was laid upon him. “The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6). Did the Father then regard his Son as in his intrinsic personhood a sinner? No, because as a person he was not intrinsically guilty, for he was the eternally pure, sinless Second Person of the Godhead and, further, in his human nature that he had assumed he was perfectly sinless. The guilt that was laid on Christ was true and punishable guilt, but so far as the Person who bore the guilt was concerned, it was not an intrinsic guilt. It did not belong to him personally. It was an extrinsic guilt.
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