Jesus Himself the Redemptive Gift
A. B. Jack. Galatians 1:4-5 Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:… For three and thirty years He bore the penalty of sin, an endurance which was consummated when He suffered for us on Calvary. And if you say His sufferings were temporary, and ours should have been eternal, I pray you to remember that His Godhead — and there is the power of His divinity, without which I believe no atonement could be made — that His Godhead gave these services and sufferings a value in the eye of justice far greater than all the services and all the sufferings of all God's creatures. And it is easy to understand this. Just as the death of the Prince Royal of England, the heir apparent to the British throne, the oldest son of Victoria, would more honour the law of England, were he to die to-morrow on the scaffold, than the deaths of all the felons imprisoned in her jails — and you can fancy such a things; it needs fancy, for it was never shown on earth, the court and the country mourning, the palace plunged in grief, every cottage pale with astonishment, the news of it travelling on the wings of lightning from city to city, and travelling on the wings of the wind across the wave, a mighty multitude assembled, women weeping, and men's hearts beating, every eye in that sea of heads suffused with tears, while he who was born for a palace, born for a throne, steps forth from the prison to the gallows, to die in the room of the guilty — I say, brethren, just- as the death of that Prince would more honour the law of England than the death of ten hundred victims drawn from the lowest and vilest haunts of society, so the death of Jesus Christ hath honoured the law of God, and now in virtue of what Christ did, and in virtue of what Christ suffered, God stands forth by the cross, not only just, but the justifier of every one who believeth in Jesus. (A. B. Jack.) Parallel Verses KJV: Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: WEB: who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father—