Christ's doctrine of the atonement - Smeaton - XXVII - Chapter 8

Required reading
Christ's doctrine of the atonement by George Smeaton (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Chapter 8.

My summary
Today we finish Smeaton's work.

Firstly Smeaton unpacks John 14:2-6 and demonstrates that heaven or hell results on acceptance or non-acceptance of Christ's atonement.

Secondly Smeaton looks at the influence of the atonement on:
(i) morality;
(ii) religion.

What grabbed me
I appreciated Smeaton's point that the atonement has an influence on our reverence for God: '...the atonement is peculiarly adapted to imbue men with reverence for God. The rational creature can revere and stand in awe of God only when He is known as venerable ; and what can more fill the human mind with reverence than a due discovery of the majesty of God, and of the inviolability of the divine law in the atonement of the cross ? Even in other orders of being, who obtain a knowledge of it, and who look into these things, the same feelings are awakened (1 Pet. i. 12). Then, as to the dread of sin, nothing is so calculated to infuse it, as a right view of the atonement, especially when we apprehend the infinite dignity of the substitute, who must needs be made the object of the divine wrath. With regard, moreover, to the aversion to sin, essential to all true piety, nothing is more calculated to make the memory of sin bitter, and its allurements repulsive, than the agonies of Christ in connection with the sins that caused them.'

Unlike anything else, the cross demonstrates the awfulness of sin and encourages us to worship God rightly.

Next week's reading
Commence A treatise on Satan's temptations by Richard Gilpin (Available from Amazon or free here) by reading 'The Prefatory Note' and beginning the 'Memoir of Richard Gilpin' by reading up to the paragraph starting 'It needeth not that in a necessarily brief Memoir such as this we should enter on the merits of the national change of Church 'Polity' which gave supremacy for the time to Presbytery over Prelacy'.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.