Cited by bro Roberts as evidence of his consistent position on Christ in relation to his sacrifice in The Christadelphian September 1894

The Christadelphian March 1875, Robert Roberts

“For Himself That It Might Be For Us”

J.W.C.—The statement of Paul in Heb. 7:27 is, that Christ did “once” in his death what the high priests under the law did daily, viz., offered “first for his own sins and then for the people’s.” But there is all the difference between the two cases that there always is between shadow and substance. Christ’s “own sins” were not like the sins of the priests; they were not sins of his own committing. He was without sin, so far as his own actions were concerned. Yet as the bearer of the sins of his people—whether “in Adam” or otherwise, he stood in the position of having these as “his own,” from the effects of which he had himself first to be delivered. Consequently, he offered first for himself; he was the first delivered. He is “Christ the first fruits.” He obtained eternal redemption in and for himself, as the middle voice of the Greek verb euramenoz (Heb. 9:12) implies. (The “for us” is not in the original.) He was brought again from the dead “through the blood of the everlasting covenant.”—(Heb. 13:20.) But this offering for himself was also the offering for his people. The two aspects of the double typical offering were combined in one act. He had not twice to offer for himself. “By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” Yet, though combined, the two relations of the act are visibly separate. Christ was the first saved from death (Heb. 5:9); “afterwards, they that are Christ’s at his coming.”—(1 Cor. 15:23.) In this way the Mosaic type has its counterpart. There is no inconsistency whatever between these facts and the constant declaration that “Christ died for us.” All that Christ was and did was “for us.” It was “for us” he was born; “for us” he bore sin; “for us” he came under the curse of the law; “for us” he died; and the fact that personally he was without sin where all were transgressors, gives all the more point to the declaration. It was “for us” that he came to be in the position of having first to offer for himself. The “for us” does not deny that what he submitted to “for us” was our own position. “He was made sin for us who knew no sin;” and does not sin require an offering? The matter might be simplified by supposing the case were leprosy instead of sin, and the cure to be passing through fire instead of death; but that the fire should only possess the power of cure where the disease existed without the virus of the disease, and that in all other cases the effect of the fire should be to destroy. Let the leprosy be death in the constitution, brought about by sin, and the virus, actual sin itself. By this illustration, all mankind are under the power of leprosy, which cannot be cured by the fire, owing to the presence of the combustible virus, which will catch fire and destroy the patient. If only one could be found free from the virus, he could go through the fire and save the rest: but he cannot be found. God interposes and produces such a one among them, one in whom the leprosy exists without the virus, that the rest may be cured by joining hands with him after he has gone through the fire. He goes through the fire “for them;” but is it not obvious that he goes through it for himself in the first instance? for if he is not delivered from the leprosy first, how will his going through the fire avail them? It is “for himself that it might be for them.” He is now “separate from them,” but he was not so in the first instance.