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By a sort of legal fiction, Jesus was treated as what he was not [i.e., a sinner], in order that we might be treated as what we are not [i.e., righteous]. This is the best device, according to the prevailing theology, that the God of truth, the God of mercy – whose glory is that He is just to men by forgiving their sins – could fall upon for saving His creatures! … They say first, God must punish the sinner, for justice requires it; then they say He does not punish the sinner, but punishes a perfectly righteous Man instead, attributes His righteousness to the sinner, and so continues just. Was there ever such a confusion, such an inversion of right and wrong! Justice could not treat a righteous man as an unrighteous; neither, if justice required the punishment of sin, could justice let the sinner go unpunished.
To lay the pain upon the righteous in the name of justice is simply monstrous. No wonder unbelief is rampant. Believe in Moloch if you will, but call him Moloch, not Justice.
George MacDonald (1824–1905)
“Righteousness”
Unspoken Sermons
(Originally published in three series in 1867, 1885, and 1889 in London by Longmans, Green & Co.)