"Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world."

If some feel that this subject is being overdone, they may be right. And if they are, we ask that they bear with us, for we are deeply concerned. It is a vital, interesting, beautiful subject, and - far more than we had realized (it seems beyond belief) - it is in great danger of being completely lost in a large part of Christadelphia. We feel a terrible urgency to keep the clear Truth, as expounded by brethren Thomas and Roberts, very prominent - in the hope of persuading a few to hold it fast. Some of the following may seem repetitious. Please bear with this too. It is hard to put eternal spiritual things into human words. And different ways of expressing the same thing will often appeal, or be more clear, to different readers.

To understand the "Sacrifice" of Christ", we must start with the ACTUAL WORK - the task, the accomplishment - that Christ did, and which God from the very beginning determined to require to be done by and for the race to redeem the race. This is the REALITY of the case. From it, we must work BACK to develop our understanding of the types and shadows that point to it.

Because they come first in time, the natural tendency is to work from the shadows and types (or what we think the shadows and types mean) forward to the reality, and to define the reality in terms of the types. We say that Christ "needed a sacrifice." Christ did not need A sacrifice, in the common sense of the term: he needed THE Sacrifice. More clearly, he needed that God- ordained REALITY of which "sacrifice" as we know it is merely the shadow and type.

"Sacrifices" - though antedating Christ's work in time-are just foreshadowings of that work, and have no meaning or purpose apart from it. "Sacrifice" is not an entity in itself - a specific something - so that we can say: Christ needed a "sacrifice." That is getting the cart before the horse.

And the picture is further confused and compounded by the fact that man has totally corrupted and debased and given new and false meanings and connotations to the conception of "sacrifice," as: punishment, appeasement, vicarious transfer of penalty, purchase of divine favor, etc., etc., etc. We must be very careful not to be unconsciously influenced in our thinking by the accretions and new meanings that "sacrifice" has picked up erroneously, and now cling closely to the term.

"Sacrifice"

The actual accomplishment which God required of some one member of the race, and which Christ voluntarily undertook to do for the race, is the root and meaning of the ritual and shadow that we call "sacrifice." As an English word, "sacrifice" has various meanings that may or may not be relevant. Its literal, root meaning is simply "holy work" (Latin: sacra, holy, sacred; and facio, to make or do).

Its current, common meaning is "the giving up or forgoing of something for the sake of something better." Certainly this principle is involved in scriptural sacrifice. It is the basic principle of choosing the truly beneficial good, and eschewing the pleasant (or seemingly pleasant) evil. But this is certainly not the whole picture of scriptural "sacrifice," or even the heart and core of the picture.

In the Scriptures (and here is where we must really get our definitions), there are two conceptions in the terms used to describe what comes under the heading of what we commonly call "sacrifice." They are: 1) to slay, and 2) to offer.

A glance at Young's, pages 829-30, will reveal that, in the overwhelming number of cases, the words in the original (both O.T. and N.T.) translated "sacrifice" mean "a slaughter": zebach in the Hebrew, and thurion in the Greek. Let us bear this in mind: it is fundamental. Scriptural "sacrifice" is a putting to death.

And a study of pages 710-11 of Young's will illustrate the other aspect: offering up to God, causing to ascend, bringing near to God. (All under "offer," etc.).

We could say that Christ's life was an offering, and his death was a sacrifice. And that would be true. But actually they are a one and indivisible sacrificial offering. His whole life was a putting to death: his death was the supreme offering.

Ritual "sacrifice" from the beginning was an obedient act of manifestation of faith in God's promised provision of the "Seed of the Woman" to "take away the Sin of the world." It was faith in Christ and his work.

As such, it involved complete self-repudiation - an abjuration of self, and confession of total inability to save self.

As such, it involved a complete repudiation of Sin; a total declaration of war against Sin; an abject confession of powerless bondage to Sin ("O wretched man that I am!"); a declaration of allegiance to God and His holiness.

As such, it involved total thankfulness to God for His promised provision and deliverance from the Sin- condition into which the first man had plunged the race.

We see these aspects, and others, more specifically delineated and distinguished in the various different kinds and forms of sacrifice under the Law of Moses.

Sacrifice has to do with Sin. Its background and framework is in relation to Sin. It arose from the problem created by Sin. It takes into consideration the punishment of Sin. It recognizes that Sin must inevitably bring Death. But it is not a punishment for Sin, or even a symbol of a punishment for Sin. It is the very OPPOSITE of that: it is a conquering of Sin, a victory over Sin, a deliverance from Sin.

Sacrifice is not a symbol of "punishment" or "paying a penalty," although it does involve the conception and confession that "The wages of Sin is Death." And it does involve the recognition that Sin as a totality - concentered in the Sin-Nature - must be publicly condemned and put to death IN the body of one who is totally free from personal transgression.

We tend to make a mistake when we say that Christ "offered a sacrifice." We are coming at it from the wrong direction. We should say that Christ DID A WORK that became the basis of, and gave meaning to, the shadow and type that is popularly called "sacrifice."

In The Beginning

God created man "very good" - free from Sin, free from Death. Man disobeyed God, and this brought Sin and Death upon the race. While Adam was created "very good," Paul very powerfully states that in his flesh (one of the best of men) was "NO GOOD THING," (Rom. 7:18). And this "no good" condition of his flesh he repeatedly calls "Sin." With Adam's sin and sentence, Sin infected the whole race, diseased the whole race, defiled the whole race, brought the whole race under "condemnation" to Death. This condemnation was on the whole race.

After Adam sinned, God inaugurated a plan to cleanse the race from Sin, and redeem it from Death. This plan was that, of the race itself, there had to be one man to voluntarily give himself to remove from the race that condemnation of Death, and its cause, Sin. He must be ONE OF THE RACE - subject to all the evils and disabilities and defilements brought on the race by Adam's disobedience, and with them equally in need of deliverance from those evils, disabilities and defilements. These were the typical "filthy garments" of the typical High Priest Joshua (Zech. 3:4), who was typically cleansed and re-arrayed in the purity of glorious Sin-freed immortal nature.

This Representative Man must overcome and destroy Sin, and abolish Death. He must thus achieve salvation from these two evils for himself, in full harmony with God's law and justice and holiness.

He must do it by a life of perfect obedience voluntarily completed and terminated by a blood- shedding death that publicly condemned Sin (in ALL its aspects), justified God's law, exalted God's holiness, and manifested God's justice. The obedient life was to defeat and conquer and subdue Sin in himself. The obedient death that completed that obedient life was to condemn and destroy Sin in himself.

God Required An Actual Destroying Of Sin

God required - not a symbol, not a shadow - but a REALITY: a real overcoming and conquering of Sin, a real condemning and destroying of Sin. And that is what Jesus accomplished for himself. His obedient death was just as real and necessary a part of his earning his salvation as was his obedient life. And what he did in his death was no more a mere shadow or ritual than what he did in his life.

The blood-shedding, specifically cut-off death (rather than a "natural" death) was required by God for Sin's public condemnation, and God's public justification and glorification: a public repudiation of Sin, a public confession that God's sentence on Sin - the whole Sin constitution through Adam - was just.

The putting to death of Christ was to manifest God's justice. How did it do so, if Christ never sinned? How can it possibly manifest God's justice to put a perfectly righteous man to death? Why - if Sin must be publicly condemned and God publicly justified for His condemnation of Sin to death - why, of all people, pick the only one man who never sinned to do it to? THEREIN IS THE CLUE. Christ had no sins. Therefore his death made the issue crystal clear that it was the Body of Sin, Sin's Flesh, the "Law of Sin in the members," that was being condemned and put to death. And it had to be done in this way before any one of the race - Christ included - could be cleansed from the Sin Constitution, the Law of Sin and Death in the members. This was God's requirement for cleansing the race from Sin, in harmony with His holiness.

All orthodoxy, and some others, say his "sacrifice" was simply a type, a shadow, a symbol. They say God is simply saying to man -

"This is what by justice should happen to you. It shouldn't happen to this man; he has no connection with it, but I am just doing it to him to illustrate what should be done to you.

It is hard to see either logic or justice in this. They say this is how sin was "condemned" - and God's justice was "manifested": by just arbitrarily putting to death the one person who had never sinned, just as a sample of what should happen to sinners. This would be a strange way of portraying God's justice: to pick as the example of what should be done to sin the one man who had nothing to do with sin.

If we do not see Christ's relation to Sin's Flesh, and God's plan for cleansing the whole race from Sin's Flesh - the "motions of Sin in the members" - we shall never make any real sense out of Christ's bloodshedding death, or see HOW it destroys Sin and manifests God's justice.

Human Flesh Is Scripturally "Sin"

Happily, brethren Thomas and Roberts have pointed out from Scripture a rational, God- honoring, God's-justice-manifesting, actual Sin destroying (not just in shadow) explanation. There is in all human flesh - as a result of the sin and sentence of Adam - an evil, destructive, defiling principle that the Scriptures call "Sin-in-the- flesh," "The Law of Sin in the members," "Sin that dwelleth in me," "Sin working Death in me," etc. It is Paul, in Rom. 7, who goes into this most fully; but what the Spirit says all throughout the Scriptures about the "flesh" and the "natural mind" and the "'heart of man" repeatedly testifies to this Sin-defiled condition of all human flesh that caused Paul the righteous to cry (Rom. 7:24) -

"Who shall deliver me from the body of this Death?" (marg: this Body of Death).

As brethren Thomas and Roberts point out, the Sin-caused and Sin-causing principle that is in every cell of human flesh is called "Sin" by the Scriptures. Certainly this is "metonymy." "Metonymy" is simply a title for this "figure of speech" by which the name of something is extended to its related aspects.

"Sin" - literally and narrowly and primarily - is an act of disobedience against God's law. By "metonymy," and very reasonably, God extends the name "Sin" to that principle of evil in all human flesh that came by Sin and causes Sin - and that inevitably makes all men sinners (except in the one special case where God stepped in for the sake of the race, and made special arrangements).

But let us not get hung up here on the word "metonymy," and continue thereafter to just go in circles on this spot. Having established by "metonymy" that God has extended the name "Sin" to include this evil, sinful principle in all human flesh, let us go on from there. WHY did He do so? And what bearing does the fact have on salvation? We find that the fact He did so is a very important step in the developing picture. Paul, continuing his exposition from chapter 7, says -

"To be fleshly-minded is death ... the fleshly mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed CAN be, so that they that are in the flesh CANNOT please God" (Rom. 8:6-8).

This is certainly enough to identify the flesh as "Sin," and to justify the name the Scriptures give it. What better definition of Sin is there than "enmity against God: not subject to God, nor CAN be"? That is the flesh: all mortal flesh: Sin's Flesh. That is why it had to be crucified. That is why the crucifixion of Christ was a declaration of God's justice and holiness and righteousness. That is why Christ, who successfully fought Sin's Flesh all his life, voluntarily crucified it - in life and in death: wholly: completely.

Look up "flesh" in Strong's - especially throughout Romans, but also all through the New Testament. If the "works of the flesh" are what Paul tells the Galatians they are (5:19), and if the "flesh lusteth AGAINST the Spirit" (Gal. 5:17), then what else, is the flesh but SIN?

Our Oneness With Christ: A Common Sin-Nature

As brethren Thomas and Roberts so repeatedly point out, this evil principle in the flesh - scripturally called "Sin" - is the essential unifying factor between Christ and us: the fact that makes it possible for our sins to be done away in his blood- shedding. It is our common, mutual problem with him. He solved it: escaped it: cleansed himself from its defilement in God's holy appointed way. (Is not something in us that is "enmity to God" and leads to all the corrupt things Paul calls the "works of the flesh," a defilement? If we are godly-minded - and Christ was pre-eminently so - then anything that pulls us constantly in the very opposite direction will be seen vividly as the worst possible defilement. What is a little filth on the outside, compared to this vile leprosy on the inside? This is the terrible struggle of the Psalms.)

As a race, we ARE Sin. Everything we do naturally is Sin. Sin is the very fiber of our being: "Conceived in Sin, and shapen in Iniquity" (Psa. 51:5). If this was true of Christ (and brethren Thomas and Roberts correctly apply it to him), then how much more of us! It is from this that we need redemption, cleansing, deliverance. Let us realize this to the full. It is far deeper and more pervasive than we realize. This is why the whole world is in such a terrible condition. This is what we have to fight. This is what we MUST overcome. A full realization of what we are is the key to the achievement of what we may become. Facing facts is always the essential beginning to any solution. Let us face this reality concerning Christ and ourselves.

He, by total devotion to God, lifted himself out of this universal Sin-Constitution: cleansed himself from it in the "sacrificial" way and method that God had appointed from the beginning. Now he is no longer Sin, or Sin-tainted, in any respect. He is "free from Sin ... without Sin ... Sin hath no more dominion over him."

And he now offers, by God's merciful arrangement, to reach down and lift us out - if we will give total devotion to him. That was the very purpose of his creation and existence and glorious work.

Paul said, "In me, that is, IN MY FLESH, dwelleth no good thing" (Rom. 7:18). And Jesus could say exactly the same. ["Why callest thou me good? None is good, save One, that is, God" (Luke 18:19).] That is why he crucified it, and tells us we must do the same. And the fact that he could say this with Paul is what makes him one with us in our problem. It is what makes his putting the flesh to death a manifestation of God's justice, in which he himself totally concurred. In fact, in that death, Jesus is saying exactly what Paul said: publicly, humbly, God-honoringly -

"In my flesh dwelleth no good thing. This is what Sin's Flesh deserves. I have never yielded to it for a moment. I have always crucified it within me. And now, in obedience to the Father, and in full agreement with Him, I am putting it to death IN ME once and for all destroying the diabolos. That is the kernel and essence and climax of my work of perfecting MYSELF so that I may save YOU."

Christ Totally Defeated And Destroyed Sin In Himself

The work Christ did - the essential, race- redeeming work that was pre-ordained and fore- shadowed from the beginning - was the overcoming and destroying and publicly repudiating and condemning and putting to death of Sin IN himself, and, necessarily, FOR himself - not as a personal, selfish motive, but as a practical, necessary operation to achieve the race's redemption.

As a moral and physical actuality, Christ could conquer and destroy Sin only IN HIMSELF. That was the arena of his total and perfect victory over Sin, by which he laid the eternal foundation for his further work. He will complete the battle against Sin by: 1) absorbing into his own perfect, Sin-free self all who accept this deliverance that God has provided and do what God requires them to do to receive it; and 2) physically destroying all who do not accept him and enter into him. In this way, the whole race will eventually be purged and saved (as a race, though not all individuals of it).

Christ - in the God-appointed way, and with the indispensable God-provided help and guidance and strengthening- had to: 1) Cleanse himself from Sin, and 2) Destroy Sin in himself - by his total, inseparable life-AND-death work. That is the root and basis and meaning of what we call "sacrifice." It was his only way to his own personal salvation. He was "made perfect by suffering" (Heb. 2:10), and THIS was the "suffering" required. He was "redeemed by his own blood" (Heb. 9:12).

His great work was not a mere shadow, not a mere form, not a mere symbol illustrating what should be done to someone else. It was an actual, essential accomplishment: the self-cleansing from, and destruction of, Sin. He didn't just typify this - he DID it. He didn't "pay the penalty" for anyone. He did the actual job of destroying Sin that God's holiness required to be done for the race to be saved. He did it in and for himself. There was no other way or place he could do it.

As to motive, he did it - not for himself - but in love and obedience to his Father, and for the sake of the glorious "Seed" whose eternal redemption and joy was, and will ever be, his eternal "satisfaction" (Isa. 53:10-11).

The total life-and-death work of Sin-destroying that was laid upon him as THE Representative Man of the race, was essential for his own cleansing and salvation, as part of the race. In fact, it WAS his cleansing - that was its whole essence and actuality. He, as THE Representative Man, the embodiment and new nucleus of the race, must first himself be transformed from a defiled, condemned condition to a totally purified and perfected condition.

And his culminating blood-shedding death on the cross was an inseparable Divinely-required part of that work of racial salvation. He was not just ritually "cleansed" by "sacrifice." It was not just an arbitrary form that God required him to go through as an act of obedience, or to symbolize something. It was an actual personal process of conquering and self-cleansing: a being "made perfect by suffering."

Could he have attained to immortality without that blood-shedding death? NO. Because he must share the common racial salvation, or it has no benefit for us. God had several threads of purpose in that death and its form. In God's wisdom that particular death was essential to lay a sound basis for the salvation of the race. And Christ was, and IS, the Race. He is all mankind. None can live eternally except within him and as part of him.

Did Christ Need A "Sacrifice"?

But did Christ "need a sacrifice"? Perhaps we can see it more clearly this way: Christ, as one of the race, and as the embodiment of the race, needed what the whole race needed - the reality that is simply shadowed by the ritual of "sacrifice." He did not need a "sacrifice" as such, in the shadowy, typical sense of the term: and nor do we. We need, as he with us needed, the flesh-cleansing, sin- condemning, grave opening perfect-life-and-shed-blood-death REALITY that God's holiness and wisdom demanded from some one man for the salvation of any of the race.

Starting within the condemned, defiled, Sin-and- Death-cursed race, he - with God's strengthening - earned his way out of it. That work was his "sacrifice."

Ritual can never save anyone. It is true that ritual may be required by God (as baptism in this dispensation, and circumcision and sacrifice in the Mosaic), as an act of humility and obedience to connect us with the reality, and to bring us its benefits. And when God requires a ritual, then salvation is impossible without that ritual. But a ritual must have a fulfilling reality; and shadow must have a fulfilling substance. Christ's actual Sin- destroying accomplishment - his overcoming, his self-perfecting - is the reality and substance of which baptism and breaking of bread, sacrifice and circumcision, are the representative rituals.

It was not for himself that he redeemed himself. He was specifically created to redeem the race, and he joyfully accepted the great work for which he was born:

"God will provide Himself a Lamb ... a Lamb to take away the sin of the world."

Someone had to righteously win his way out of the Sin-Constitution, in the way God appointed, with whom God could deal as the race. There was no one already in the race - nor naturally ever would or could be - that could do it. So God in love especially created one within the race, and specially strengthened him so that he could do what had to be done: one who from beginning to end always kept God in the foreground and himself in the background, claimed nothing for himself, and always attributed everything he accomplished to God Who did it through him - at his own voluntary acceptance and submission.

Now, are we cleansed from the "Body of Sin" by Christ's sacrifice? Yes! But not in the artificial, legalistic, ritualistic way of brother Andrew's technical "justification from eternal death so as to come out of the grave" theory. We are cleansed (eventually, as the final result) from the Body of Sin by the blood of Christ, if we have been faithful to the end. And we cannot possibly be cleansed from the Body of Sin without the shed blood of Christ. This was brother Roberts' point (see Debate, Question 468, etc.).

We are not "justified from Sin's Flesh at baptism (as brother Andrew claimed, and built his theory on), except in the prospective sense that brother Roberts explained. At baptism we are ... 1) washed and cleansed from our own transgressions (literally, they are forgiven, blotted out of record against us); and 2) we are lifted out of the path of certain death in which Adam put us, and are set on the path that will lead us at last (if we are faithful) to total cleansing and deliverance from Sin's Flesh, from the Constitution of Sin, from the Sin-nature and its Sin-impulse - to which, as natural creatures, we are in hopeless, death-ending bondage.

Does His Sacrifice Cleanse Us From Sin's Flesh?

What is the "barrier" between us and God that is removed at baptism?: our nature (legalistically), or our transgressions? Certainly our transgressions. At baptism all our past personal sins are "washed away" - forgiven: we stand morally perfect before God. We can approach God as justified and cleansed men, washed in Christ's shed blood. Our nature is unchanged, though our Adamic destiny is reversed.

We are confronted by those who differ with us with many quotations from brethren Thomas and Roberts that Christ died for our personal sins: our actual transgressions. This has never been questioned. It is beside the real point. This emphasis on certain agreed truths diverts attention from the real issue on which there is a difference.

Clearly, as far as we ourselves are concerned, our own personal transgressions are the real problem in God's sight. It was from them that Christ came to redeem us. But not only from them. They are but the Fruit of the evil. We must go to the Root. What is the Root of Sin - of our sins? What assures that there will always be Sin, as long as that Root remains?

And how did Christ get at that Root? How did his God-appointed life-and-death extirpate that Root? repudiate it? condemn it? destroy it? deliver him from it? cleanse him from it? make him for us a cleansed Ark of Safety and Life?

We are charged with being obsessed (like brother Andrew) with the technicalities of the Sin Nature, and being insufficiently mindful of the vital, major part our own sins play in the matter. This charge is not true, but it does define a real danger we must avoid. The issue truly isn't technicalities and legalities, but realities. It was an actual reality for Christ, and actual work, and actual life of self- purification. And it must be an actual reality for us. We must first define the basic doctrine correctly, but admittedly our main work and concern must be the reality of coping with Sin's flesh ourselves: our own sins. With us, as with Christ, nothing is actually accomplished by the magic wand of ritual: there must be a real doing, a real labor, a real victory and overcoming of the "motions of Sin in our members."

But to solve the problem, to remove Sin as a totality, Christ had to go to the Root, in himself and for himself - the whole race embodied in

One Man who in himself solved the problem and destroyed the Enemy of the race.

If we cannot see this picture, then we just have two disjointed, unconnected things: 1) our sins, and 2) Christ's sacrifice. And we have to invent a shadowy link in the name of "ritual" which just boils down to Substitution. In that case, he was not actually treating Sin as it ought to be treated, and had to be treated to solve the problem. If he had no Sin in his flesh to overcome and destroy, he was not destroying Sin, but just once more typifying how it ought to be destroyed.

Christ was always one with God. There was never any barrier separating them morally, though he was of Sin-defiled flesh. But still the defiled nature is (was) a barrier in one sense, both for him and us. He could not be one with God in perfect and eternal totality and substance, as he now is, until that barrier was removed: not a moral barrier, but a physical one: not a "guilt," but a misfortune, a disability, an inherited disease of the flesh that must be cleansed in God's required way.

Andrewism And Stricklerism: The Latter More Dangerous

Some who oppose brother Andrew's theories have gone to the other extreme. No one can unbiassedly read the Law of Moses without perceiving that brother Roberts largely had his eye on the Renunciationist/Strickler-type "Christ didn't offer for himself" errors. The whole spirit, tenor and essence of his many and extensive expoundings of the Sacrifice of Christ are to the effect that he must accomplish the work for and in himself first - work out his own physical purification by perfect life-and-death obedience as God required, and then open it up for the benefit of others.

This is the essential link that the current advocates of Stricklerism are missing. This is the reality of his work that makes it more than just a ritual and shadow.

Even though Andrewism was at the time a very current issue (Law of Moses appeared serially 1894-1898), still it was the opposite error (also then current: brother Harry Fry was withdrawn from for Stricklerism in 1898) that brother Roberts could see was the principal one that the Truth needed defending against.

There seems to be an incomprehensible squeamishness about robustly accepting this dear pivotal Truth: the vital link that takes the Sacrifice of Christ out of the powerless, shadowy realm of just one more type and figure, and gives it substance as an actual and essential accomplishment: a terrible, wonderful, personal self-sacrificial purging and cleansing: "made perfect by suffering."

How dreadful, how beautiful, how glorious a victorious self-purification it was! What a deadly Enemy within! What a perfect, personal victory over the dread Sin-Power of the Flesh that held all his brethren in hopeless bondage! What marvelous meaning we see thereafter in the symbol and type and ritual of "sacrifice"!

What do they have but dead types and shadows who cannot see this reality? It seems to be feared that the acceptance of this great Truth will give the whole case away to Andrewism. Far from it! The fear is groundless. All sound brethren have held this Truth for over 100 years with no taint of Andrewism.

Rather it would greatly strengthen the case for the Truth; for it would supply the missing link that makes the Strickler concept of Christ's Sacrifice another dead shadow, instead of a living reality, an actual accomplishment, a real destruction of Sin at its root.

Let Us Stick To The Main, Basic Issue

Much is being written and quoted from brethren Thomas and Roberts which is beside the point, and with which all who are sound will agree. The main, key issue is -

Did Christ offer for himself first, and was he cleansed and redeemed from "Sin-in-the-flesh," "the Law of Sin in his members," by his own perfect life and blood-shedding death?

--as brethren Thomas and Roberts teach over and over as the essential link that binds him to us, makes his death on the cross a declaration of God's holiness and justice (as it is declared to be), and makes his personal perfecting and cleansing efficacious for us as a true Representative (one in need of the same thing), and not as a mere ritual Substitution, just illustrating something not applying to himself. Let us stick to this main issue, and not be side-tracked into side-issues.

Once we frankly and robustly take our stand with brethren Thomas and Roberts, and say clearly:

"Yes! Christ offered for himself. His sacrifice was necessary for his own cleansing and salvation from Sin, the whole Sin Constitution. He "obtained eternal redemption and entered the Holy Place by his own blood" (Heb. 9:12). He was "brought from the dead through the blood of the Everlasting Covenant" (Heb. 13:20). He actually in himself destroyed Sin by his perfect sacrifice."

- then the picture is clear, and controversy ceases. Until we snap this vital link shut, we leave his sacrifice an isolated enigma, a shadow, unrelated to reality and accomplishment: a type, a symbol, nothing more: a yawning chasm between his work and our need. Brethren Thomas and Roberts say (in many forms of words, and this is one) -

"Sin could not have been condemned in the body of Jesus if it had not existed there ... The purpose of God was to condemn Sin in the flesh, a thing that could not have been accomplished if there were no Sin there." -Elpis Israel, page 128 "To be made Sin for others is to become flesh and blood." -Eureka 1:247

Brethren Thomas and Roberts saw so clearly, and stated so unequivocably, that Christ's "destruction of the devil" in his death had to be a reality, and not just a shadow. It is not logical or reasonable that after 4000 years of preparatory, foreshadowing rituals, God would be satisfied with settling the great conflict with Sin - the Diabolos; - with just one more ritual of what should be. He required the fulfillment.

"He bore our sins in his own body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). Of course he did! Peter specifically says so. Of course it was our sins: our personal transgressions. That is one side of the arch. But it was "IN his own body" - that's the other side of the arch. And the vital keystone that links them and makes them one is the Sin Nature, Sin-in-the-Flesh, the Law of Sin in the members. It all, as a unit, needed taking away: our sins and the evil defilement from which they spring: the Fruit, AND the evil Root from which the Fruit springs, and from which it would endlessly continue to spring until the Root itself be stamped out in victory.

Brother Andrew got the Root aspect out of proportion. Brother Roberts fought this - especially in view of the inferences concerning resurrection brother Andrew drew. Andrewism is a mixture of Truth and Error, often in the same sentence. We have no desire to go into its ramifications. As a totality, we repudiate it.

But some, in very rightly denying its errors, are going too far and are denying the heart of the Truth that brethren Thomas and Roberts brought to light.

Separating Christ From His Brethren

Those currently teaching the Strickler theory make the same mistake as brother Andrew. They separate Christ from his brethren. They say -

"We need a blood-shed sacrifice for our salvation: Christ only needed a simple death."

They are hung up on "sacrificial" ritual. They completely miss what he actually did. Any theory that has two different salvations - one for Christ and one for his brethren - must be wrong. We all- the whole race - need the same thing. And what we need is not just a ritual that points, but an accomplishment - a real, actual victory over the Sin Nature that we can (in God's mercy) enter into and share.

God deals with the race as a race, but on an individual basis. That sounds like a contradiction, but it is not. God is saving the race, as the race, IN and through Christ. But not the whole race: just those members of the race who individually take advantage of God's provision of salvation for the race.

"IN Adam all die": that is the natural - our natural destiny in Adam. "IN Christ shall all be made alive": that is the spiritual - our spiritual destiny in Christ, if we enter into Christ, and stay in Christ:

"Abide IN me ... if a man abide not in me, he is cast forth ... and burned." (John 15:4-6)

Naturally, in Adam, we die with Adam. Spiritually, in Christ, we live with Christ. One man took himself down, and us with him. The second man took himself up, and us with him, IF we enter him, and stay in him.

Christ redeemed and saved himself, and - at first, only himself. Then, having "obtained eternal redemption," the salvation he won for himself was, in God's mercy and as planned from the beginning, extended to all who make themselves part of him.