At any rate, the deity of our Lord, in any real sense of the word “deity,” is of course denied by modern liberalism. To the modern preacher Jesus is an example for faith, and Christianity consists in having the same faith in God that Jesus had. To the Christian, on the other hand, Jesus is the object of faith, and upon Him alone depends the eternal welfare of the individual soul and of humanity.[1]
Finally, liberalism differs from Christianity in the account which is given of the way of salvation. The two give exactly opposite answers to the question, “What must I do to be saved?” Liberalism finds salvation in man; Christianity finds it only in an act of God.
The difference with regard to the way of salvation concerns, in the first place, the basis of salvation in the redeeming work of Christ. According to Christian belief, Jesus is our Saviour, not by virtue of what He said, not even by virtue of what He was, but by what He did. He is our Saviour not because He has inspired us to live the same kind of life that He lived, but because He took upon Himself the dreadful guilt of our sins and bore it instead of us on the Cross. Such is the Christian conception of the Cross of Christ. It is ridiculed as being a subtle “theory of the atonement.” In reality, though it involves mysteries, it is itself so simple that a child can understand it. “We deserved eternal death, but the Lord Jesus because He loved us died instead of us on the cross”—surely there is nothing so very intricate about that. It is not the Bible doctrine of the atonement which is difficult to understand—what are really incomprehensible are the elaborate modern efforts to get rid of the Bible doctrine in the interests of human pride.
To modern liberalism the Cross of Christ is an inspiring example of self-sacrifice. But since there have been many acts of self-sacrifice in the history of the world, why should we pay such exclusive attention to this one Palestinian example? We are perfectly ready, men say in effect, to admit
- ↑ For the distinction between Jesus as an example for faith and Jesus as the object of faith, see Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, 1909.
