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Suppose, then, that Philemon had demanded the repayment of what he had lost to the uttermost farthing; suppose that for many months St. Paul had had to work very hard, and to live very sparely, in order to earn the required sum, and that at last he had actually paid it to the rich Philemon, in order that Onesimus might be got out of his debt: would that have been wrong and base? wrong of St. Paul, I mean. Would you, would any man, have blamed him for it? Would you not, rather, have been moved to an enthusiastic admiration of the man who was capable of so singular and so signal an act of self-forgetting generosity and compassion? And what would you have thought of Philemon if he had taken the money? Surely you would have been as quick to condemn him as to admire Paul. "Which things may be allegorised." Let us, then, for our instruction in righteousness, turn this story into an allegory or parable. Let Philemon, the just and kind master, stand for God, our Father and Lord. Let St. Paul, the generous debt-assuming apostle, stand for Christ, our Saviour. Let Onesimus, the fraudulent and runaway slave, stand for man, the sinner. And then, sinful man, fleeing from the God he has wronged, falls into the hands of Christ, and comes to know and hate his sins. Christ goes to the Father saying, "If he [i.e., man] hath wronged Thee, or oweth Thee ought, put that to My account; I will repay it." And, according to one theory of the Atonement at least, God takes the money; He demands that Christ should exhaust Himself with toil and suffering in order that man's debt may be paid, and then blots out the debt from his account. Assuming for a moment this theory of the Atonement to be a true theory, what are we to think of Christ? Was it wrong, was it blameworthy of Him, to take the sinner's place, to pay the sinner's debt, to atone the sinner's offence? If we hold to our parallel, so far from thinking it wrong, we can only pronounce it an unparalleled act of generous and self-forgetting love: so far from blaming Him for it, we can but honour and admire Him for it with all our hearts. But if God took the money — if He would not release man from his debt till some one, no matter who, had paid the debt — what are we to think of Him? Had Philemon taken St. Paul's money, we agreed that in him it would have been an action almost incredibly mean and base; we agreed that we should have felt nothing for him but contempt. Are we to lower our standard, and alter our verdict, because it is God, and not man, who is called in question — God, from whom we expect, and have a right to expect, so much more than from man? No, we cannot, we dare not, either lower our standard or alter our verdict. What would have been wrong in man would have been at least equally wrong in God. And as God can do no wrong, either our parallel does not hold good, or this theory of the Atonement must be radically misleading and incomplete. Is the parallel at fault, then? Look at it again. Philemon was a just and kind master. And does not God Himself claim to hold a similar relation to us? Onesinms was an "unprofitable" servant — running away from a master he had robbed. And have not we again and again robbed God of His due, and left His service to walk after our own lusts? St. Paul loved Onesimus "as his own heart," "as himself" (vers. 12, 17); and, in his love, he even put himself in the place of Onesimus, assumed his debt, interceded for him with his justly offended master, and raised him from the status of a slave to that of a "brother beloved." Are there any words, even in the Bible itself, which more accurately and happily describe Christ's relation to us? The parallel holds good then. We may take Philemon as setting forth God's relation to us, Onesimus as setting forth our relation to God, and St. Paul as setting forth Christ's relation both to God and man. But as the parallel does hold good, must not that theory of the Atonement to which I have referred be radically misleading and incomplete? No doubt any theory of the Atonement must be incomplete, for the Atonement is the reconciliation of man to God; and which of us fully comprehends either God or man? How, then, can we comprehend and express that Divine act or process, "that miracle of time," by which the relations of God with man and of man with God were or are being drawn into an eternal concord? No theory of the Atonement conceived by the human mind, and expressed in human words, can possibly be perfect and entire, lacking nothing. The great "mystery of godliness" must ever remain a deep "in which all our thoughts are drowned." And any man who assumes that he can comprehend it, and crush it into some narrow and portable formula, does but prove that he pertains to that well-known category or class which presumes to "rush in where angels fear to tread." Still we may refuse to hold any theory of the Atonement which is obviously untenable. We may know, we may learn from Scripture at least enough of the Atonement for faith to grasp, and for the salvation that comes by faith. And, surely, it is impossible to deny that in sundry places Scripture does teach what is known as the vicarious or substitutionary theory of the Atonement; that it speaks of Christ as taking our place, paying our debt, suffering in our stead. Whether we like it or not, there it is: the writings of St. Paul are full of it. Whatever the moral effect of it were, candour would compel us to confess that this aspect of Christ's work and ministry of reconciliation is set forth in the Scriptures of the apostles — not as the only aspect, only, indeed, as one of three or four, but still as a true aspect, as demanding our acceptance. Nevertheless, I confess that I for one should hesitate to accept it, were I unable to see and to show that the proper moral effect of it is not evil, but good; that it does not tend to weaken our hatred of sin, or to relax our struggle against it, but tends rather to strengthen our hatred of it, and to brace us for new endeavours to overcome it. And I value this story of Onesimus very highly because it suggests a reasonable and a complete answer to this common difficulty and objection. For, consider: Was St. Paul's offer to pay the debt of Onesimus in the very least degree likely to confirm Onesimus in his knavery? Suppose the offer accepted; suppose he had seen the busy and weary apostle toiling night and day, suffering many additional hardships, in order to clear him of his debt — would Onesimus, after having thus seen what his crime had cost, have been the more likely to rob Philemon again? Would that have been the natural and proper effect on his mind of the apostle's generous and self-sacrificing love for him? We know very well that it would not. We know very well that Onesimus, touched and melted by the love St. Paul had shown him, would rather have starved than show himself wholly unworthy of it. Why, then, if we believe that Christ Jesus, in the greatness of His love, took our place, paid our debt, toiled and suffered for our sins, and so reconciled us to the God we had wronged — why should that have a bad moral effect upon us? If Christ so loved us as to give Himself for us, the just for the unjust; if we clearly and honestly believe that, surely its proper moral effect on us will be that we shall love Him who so loved us: and how can we love Him, and yet not hate the evil that caused Him so much pain? But here we come back to a still graver difficulty. As St. Paul, to Philemon, for Onesimus, so Christ says, to God, for us, "If they have wronged Thee, or owe Thee ought, put that to My account; I will repay it." Let it be granted, as I have tried to show, that this assumption of our place and debt by Christ Jesus was an act most noble and generous and Divine. Let it be granted, as I have also tried to show, that by our faith in His great love we are incited to more strenuous efforts after moral purity and righteousness, instead of being degraded and demoralised by it. Grant both these points: and, then, what are we to think of God if He took from Christ the money which paid our debt? All that series of Scriptural figures which represents our sins as debts, and the Father Almighty as keeping a book in which they are entered, and as blotting them from that book when they are paid, may be necessary, and may once have been still more necessary than it is now, to set forth certain aspects of spiritual truth. But we need not conceive of God's book as though it were a ledger, nor of God Himself as a keen, hard-eyed merchant, still less as a peddling huckster, indifferent where his money comes from so that he gets it, and gets enough of it. All this is not in the Bible, though it may be in certain creeds and systems of divinity which, although they "have had their day," have not even yet altogether "ceased to be." And even the mercantile and forensic metaphors which are in the Bible are but metaphors after all; i.e., they are but human forms of Divine truth adapted to the weakness and grossness of our perceptions. Nor do they stand alone. Lest we should misinterpret them, they stand side by side with figures and words which set forth other aspects of the self-same truth in forms we cannot easily mistake. Recall and consider, for example, such sayings as these: — "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him might have eternal life"; and again, "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself"; and again, "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." Are not these words sufficiently simple and clear and direct? Are they not instinct — charged and surcharged — with a Divine tenderness? But if these sacred and tender words be true; if God was in Christ, if He against whom we had sinned Himself took our debt upon Him that He might frankly forgive us all, is there any lack of love and kindness in Him then? "It was noble in St. Paul," you admit, "to take the debt of Onesimus upon him; but it would have been ignoble of Philemon to let the apostle pay it." Granted. But suppose — for even impossibilities are supposable — that St. Paul had been both himself and Philemon. Suppose that when, in the form of Philemon, he had been robbed at Colosse, he forthwith posted to Rome in order that, in the form of St. Paul, he might bring Onesimus to repentance, in order that, at any cost of toil and suffering to himself, he might wipe out his debt and atone his wrong. Would not that have been nobler still? And if God, the very God whom we had defrauded, from whom we have fled, Himself came down into our low and miserable estate, to toil and suffer with us and for us, in order that He might bring us back to our better selves and to Him, in order that He might wipe out the debt we had contracted, convince us that He had remitted it, and raise us to a new life of service and favour and peace — what was that but a love so pure, so generous, so Divine, that the mere thought of it should melt and purify our hearts? We are to think of God, then, not simply as taking the money offered Him by Christ on our behalf, but also as paying it; not as exacting His due to the uttermost farthing, but rather as Himself discharging a debt we could never have paid. In the terms of our parable, He is Paul as well as Philemon — not only the Master we have wronged, but also the Friend who takes the wrong upon Himself. And we owe to Him both whatever service and duty the forgiven Onesimus owed to Philemon, and whatever gratitude and love he felt for St. Paul.

(S. Cox, D. D.)

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KJV: If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine account;

WEB: But if he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, put that to my account.