2. It is not enough to consider the death of Christ only as propitiatory, or as standing alone in relation to our redemption. We have seen how it secured our propitiation, and in what sense it has a unique place in relation both to our Lord Himself and to man. There remains the further aspect of His redemptive work, in which it is regarded as effecting our reunion with God by delivering us from the power of sin, and by filling us with the Divine gift of life. This, it should be noticed, is the conception of our Lord's work which was chiefly in the minds of the early Christian writers, though in almost all it was combined with the acknowledgment of His deliverance of man from guilt and from the wrath of God by His representative propitiation[233]. But to their consciousness the power of sin and of the spiritual forces with which man is surrounded was so continually present, that they were naturally inclined to look mainly at that side of the Atonement which represents it as the victory over sin and Satan and the restoration of man to the life of God. And this view, though by no means to the exclusion of the propitiatory aspect, is amply justified by the Bible. Considered as restoration, there seem to be three grades or stages of redemption indicated in the New Testament. First, there is the unanimous declaration that the object of our Lord's life and death was to free us from sin. In the most sacrificial descriptions of His work this further result of the Atonement is implied. The 'Lamb of God' is to 'take away the _sin_ of the world'; His Blood was to be 'shed for the remission of _sins_'; by 'the precious Blood of Jesus Christ as of a Lamb without blemish' men were 'redeemed from their vain conversation'; He 'gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all _iniquity_.' In the next place, this deliverance from sin is identified with the gift of life, which is repeatedly connected with our Lord's life and death. 'I am come that they might have life'; for 'I will give My flesh for the life of the world.' 'He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again.' He 'bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins might live unto righteousness.' Lastly, this new life is to issue in union with the life of God in Christ. 'Christ suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.' 'In Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the Blood of Christ.' In such passages the Apostles are only drawing out the meaning of our Lord's own declaration, 'I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.'