# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1928_S22
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

22 Proceedings of the thirty-first convention

rest not on poetic fancy but on God's holy Word. Therefore one cannot speak
here of an immoral or anti-moral act. On the contrary, this dying of Jesus was
the highest proof of love. And if one wanted to say: No judge would allow an
innocent man to be executed for the guilty, even if the innocent man offered
himself of his own free will as a sacrifice, our answer is: It is precisely the
Judge himself who here goes into death.

It has further been said that in matters belonging to the moral realm there is
no possibility of substitution; here one cannot step into the place of another
and take over his obligations and his punishment. It is different with a money
debt. If someone owes a hundred dollars, a friend may well pay this sum for him
and send him the receipt. But where it is a matter of bearing and atoning for a
sin, it is said to be excluded that one should represent another. This too
seems unassailable at first glance. Guilt cannot be washed off with water or
laid upon someone else. And yet this argument is not legally valid. We point
here first, as always, to the "It is written." It is not for us to say what is
possible and what impossible in this matter, but for the great God. And further
this is to be said: Jesus took upon himself and atoned for the sin and guilt of
mankind. Now one must not forget that he himself was a part of mankind, that he
had taken our flesh and blood upon him, as the Epistle to the Hebrews stresses,
so that in him not a stranger became the substitute of mankind, but one of its
members. Because Jesus himself belongs to mankind, he can step in for it and
take its burden of sin and punishment upon his back. Then it is true that man
cannot lay his guilt on someone else. None of his fellow men can take the guilt
from him and say: I bear it for you. But one can take the guilt from his
shoulders, and that is God, the Judge. In our guilt of sin we have to do with
God. To him we are accountable. He can forgive. He can therefore also take the
guilt away from us and lay it on his dear Son. To the sober understanding this
indeed seems incomprehensible, but the heart tormented by sins, which finds
peace in the Gospel, gladly believes that God performs this deed of love.

Finally the objection has been raised that Jesus did not in fact bear the
punishment for the sins of men. The punishment for transgression of the Law,
according to Scripture, is eternal death, eternal damnation; but Jesus did not
suffer eternal damnation, since he hung on the cross only about six hours and
was raised again on the third day after his death. Who knows how many
theologians have fallen victim to this objection. They think it is true that in
so short a time Jesus could not have endured the eternity of hell's
punishments. Jesus' suffering was therefore not an actual enduring of the
torment and pain that we had deserved, but was only regarded by God as
equivalent. This is essentially the so-called acceptilation theory, which Duns
Scotus already put forward in the Middle Ages. Jesus' suffering was not a
meritum de condigno [merit of full worth], to use the scholastic expressions,
but only de congruo [of fitness]. Whoever views Jesus' suffering in this way
robs himself of the comfort that Scripture offers him, that Jesus really bore
our punishments.