TD or Cofty can you explain the difference please....I still don’t get it
Since you included me in the question, I'll add my two cents as well
The question of whether Christ died for you or whether he died in place of you is an old one that goes back to the split between the Eastern and Western churches.
Those that advocate the former believe that the Ransom effects forgiveness of sins here and now. Those that advocate the latter believe that Christ's sacrifice simply balances the scales by restoring that which Adam lost but that your sinful state remains.
Barbour clearly fell into the second camp. He believed that Christ's sacrifice erased the effects of Adam's transgression, but found it monstrous that one creature should suffer for the sins of another:
"Let me illustrate: My son is a very wicked boy, he deserves severe chastisement, but I shrewdly hit upon a plan of substitution; I say to my boy, or to one of the servants, when James bites his sister, you catch a fly, stick a pin through its body and impale it to the wall and I'll forgive James."
"But are you not running foul of Scripture in opposing the doctrine of substitution? No I answer, a thousand times NO. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." "And death has passed upon all, in that all have sinned." And in the judgement every man is rewarded for every deed, whether it be good or whether it be evil. This, none can deny." (Herald of the Morning, August 1878 p. 26)
The irony here is that although Jehovah's Witnesses accuse Barbour of rejecting the ransom, they essentially agree with his viewpoint. They believe that Christ simply removed the death penalty that was hanging over your head, but that your sinful state remains.
Russell's rebuttal appeared the very next month:
"And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years and Adam died." Here was the execution of the penalty on Adam himself; hence Christ did not die instead of Adam for Adam himself died.
A physician prescribes a remedy for you and yet he does not do it instead of you. And it is in this sense Christ died for us, the just for the unjust. He is the great Physician, the restorer of all things. And thus he buys the right to regenerate mankind by ransoming them from the grave."
"I believe it is possible for a man to live without sin, but only by the grace of God. It is not forgiveness, since the natural man can be forgiven; but it is the free gift of God that is, the implanting in him of a new nature." (Herald of the Morning September 1878 pp. 40 & 42)
This is again ironic because Russell's views on grace and being born anew are far more mainstream than what Jehovah's Witnesses teach today.
