True, but we reply: Why do we need an incarnation for the manifestation
of that purpose? Why not make a guilty, and not an absolutely
innocent and guileless man such an example of God's displeasure
upon sin? Were there not men enough in existence? Why create a
new being for such a purpose?

5. THE LOVE OF GOD THEOEY.

He died to show men how much God loved them. Men ever after would
know the feeling of the heart of God toward them.

True, the death of Christ did show the great love of God for fallen
man. But men did not need such a sacrifice to know that God loved
them. They knew that before Christ came. The Old Testament is full
of the love of God. Read Psalm 103. The Scriptures which speak
of God's love as being manifested in the gift of His Son, tell us
also of another reason why He gave His Son: "That whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16);
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and
sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10).

We believe that Christ's Cross reveals the love of God, and that
throughout all these ages men have been bowed in penitence as they
have caught a vision of the One who hung thereon. But if you were
to question the multitudes that have believed in God because of
the Cross, you would find that what moved them to repentance was
not merely, if at all, certainly not primarily, that the Cross
revealed the love of God in a supreme way, but the fact that there
at that Cross God had dealt with the great and awful fact of sin,