Sin, the Most Expensive Thing

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. JOHN 3:16

Finney’s sermon God’s Love for a Sinning World, which is in the Ochorus library, opens with a sentence few who read it forget: “Sin is the most expensive thing in the universe.” Pardoned or unpardoned, he went on, its cost is infinitely great. If pardoned, the cost falls on the great atoning Substitute; if unpardoned, on the guilty sinner. The sermon is full of warmth, and it shows Finney at his most tender. It also shows his distinctive view of the atonement, which needs to be understood and weighed.

A salvation open to every sinner

Finney’s first conviction about the cross was that it was for everyone. His first serious theological argument, as a new convert, was with George Gale, who held that Christ died only for the elect. Finney could not see it in his Bible. If the gospel commands all men to repent and believe, how can they believe in a salvation not provided for them? In God’s Love for a Sinning World he put it with typical directness. If the atonement had not been made for the entire race, no one could know it was made for him. As it is, the fact that a man is human, born of woman, is enough; it brings him within the pale.

And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 1 JOHN 2:2

He loved to picture it. When the Broadway Tabernacle was built, he told the workmen to hang the doors so that they would swing open and fasten themselves open, so that they could not swing shut on the crowds. So, he said, the door of salvation stands always open, fastened back, and no one — not the pope, nor the devil, nor any angel — can shut it. There is no need, he said, for any perhaps.

Whatever one believes about the precise design of the atonement, every preacher should sound that note. Christ is freely offered to every sinner, and none who comes is turned away.

Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. JOHN 6:37

The love that gave

The sermon lingers on the nature of God’s love. It is not complacency in a lovely race, for the race was not lovely. It is not blind emotion. It is the love of a father for a rebellious, prodigal child: disinterested, zealous, self-denying, patient. Finney pictured the Father heading the subscription for the world’s redemption with the gift of His only Son, and all heaven following. He spoke of God’s amazing patience, setting Himself to weep sinners down, and bleed them down, and die them down by the death of His Son in their stead.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. ROMANS 5:8

There is real beauty here, and real truth. The cross is the measure of God’s love and of sin’s cost.

Upholding the law

But what exactly did Christ’s death accomplish? Here Finney took a particular line. God rules the universe, he taught, by moral law, and the law is essential to the happiness of all His creatures. When sin dishonours the law, God cannot simply overlook it, or every creature would learn that His law does not matter. Either the penalty must be executed, or something else must be done that honours the law as much. Christ’s death is that something else. “The Son of God died not to appease vengeance, as some seem to understand it, but under the demands of law,” Finney wrote. It showed the universe how seriously God takes His law, and so made it safe for Him to pardon.

In his Memoirs he was more explicit. In lectures against a Universalist preacher at Adams, he argued that Christ did not pay the literal debt of sinners or suffer just what they deserved. Instead, he said, “Christ had only satisfied public justice,” by honouring the law in His obedience and death, so that it became possible for God to proclaim a universal amnesty. The atonement, on this view, made salvation possible for all without of itself securing it for anyone.

This is known as the governmental view of the atonement, and it goes back to the seventeenth-century Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius. It was widely held among the New England theologians of Finney’s day.

What is right and what is missing

Finney was right about several things. God’s justice matters, and the cross vindicates it; Paul says God set forth Christ to declare his righteousness … that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus (Romans 3:26). The atonement is not the appeasing of a vindictive temper in God; it flows from the Father’s love. And Finney was right to reject any account that made the cross a mere commercial transaction.

Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. 1 PETER 2:24

But the governmental view leaves out what Scripture puts at the centre: that Christ bore our sins, in our place, and suffered the curse that was ours. Isaiah says the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Paul says God made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us. These are not pictures of a demonstration staged for the watching universe. They are pictures of a substitute taking the penalty of the guilty.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. ISAIAH 53:5

This is not a quarrel about words. It touches the believer’s assurance. If Christ only made salvation possible, then what makes it actual is the sinner’s continuing response, and Finney did in fact teach that persistence in holiness is a condition of salvation. If Christ bore my sins and His righteousness is counted as mine, then my standing rests on His finished work. Finney, strikingly, experienced exactly this at his conversion. Walking to his office he saw, he wrote, the reality and fulness of the atonement: that Christ’s work was a finished work, and that he had only to submit to the righteousness of God through Christ. His heart, in that moment, was sounder than his later theory.

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:21

What to carry away

Carry away the open door. Finney was right that the gospel is for every sinner and that no one who comes will be refused. Carry away the cost. Sin is the most expensive thing in the universe; it cost the Son of God His life, and it should cost us our love of it. And carry away the substitute. Christ did not only honour the law in general. He loved me, and gave Himself for me.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Think about the phrase “the most expensive thing in the universe.” What would change if you saw your favourite sin that way?

2. Read Isaiah 53 slowly, noting every phrase in which the Servant bears what belongs to others.

3. Ask where your assurance rests: on your continued response, or on Christ’s finished work.

4. If you share the gospel, make sure people hear both that the door is open to them and that Christ died in their place.

5. Thank God specifically today that Christ bore your sins in His own body on the tree.

A PRAYER

Father, You so loved the world that You gave Your only Son. I cannot measure what my sin has cost You.

Thank You that the door of salvation stands open, and that no one who comes is cast out.

Lord Jesus, You were wounded for my transgressions and bruised for my iniquities. You bore what I deserved. I rest on You alone.

Make me hate the sin that cost You so much, and love You who paid for it. Amen.