Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

3. This Sovereignty of God appears in transferring our sins upon Christ. The Supreme Power in a Nation can only appoint or allow of a commutation of punishment; 'Tis a part of Sovereignty, to transfer the penalty due to the crime of one upon an other, and substitute a sufferer with the sufferers own consent, in the place of a criminal, whom he had a mind to deliver from a deserved punishment. God transferred the sins of men upon Christ, and inflicted on him a punishment for them. He summed up the debts of man, charged them upon the score of Christ, imputing to him the guilt, and inflicting upon him the penalty. Isa. 53.6. The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all; He made them all to meet upon his back. He hath made him to be sin for us. 2 Cor. 5.21. He was made so by the Sovereign pleasure of God. A punishment for sin, as most understand it, which could not be Righteously inflicted, had not sin been first Righteously imputed by the consent of Christ, and the order of the Judge of the World. This imputation could be the immediate act of none but God, because he was the sole Creditor. A Creditor is not bound to accept of another's suretyship, but it is at his liberty whither he will or no; and when he doth accept of him, he may challenge the Debt of him, as if he were the Principal Debtor himself. Christ made himself sin for us, by a voluntary submission, and God made him sin for us, by a full imputation, and treated him penally, as he would have done those sinners in whose stead he suffered. Without this Act of Sovereignty in God, we had for ever perished: For if we could suppose Christ laying down his life for us without the pleasure and order of God, he could not have been said to have born our punishment; What could he have undergone in his Humanity, but a temporal death, but more than this was due to us, even the wrath of God, which far exceeds the calamity of a mere bodily death? The Soul being principal in the crime, was to be principal in the punishment. The wrath of God could not have dropped upon his Soul, and rendered it so full of Agonies, without the hand of God. A creature is not capable to reach the Soul, neither as to comfort nor terror; and the Justice of God could not have made him a sufferer, if it had not first considered him a sinner by imputation, or by inherency and actual commission of a crime in his own person.

3. This Soveraignty of God appears in transferring our sins upon Christ. The Supream Power in a Nation can only appoint or allow of a commutation of punishment; 'Tis a part of Soveraignty, to transferr the penalty due to the crime of one upon an other, and substitute a sufferer with the sufferers own consent, in the place of a criminal, whom he had a mind to deliver from a deserv'd punishment. God transferr'd the sins of men upon Christ, and inflicted on him a punishment for them. He summ'd up the debts of man, charg'd them upon the score of Christ, imputing to him the guilt, and inflicting upon him the penalty.