---
title: 'Dabney on the Amazing Wisdom of God in Providing For the Salvation of Sinners'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2024-04-14
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2024-dabney-on-the-amazing-wisdom-of-god-in-providing-for-the-salvation-of-sinners
---

# Dabney on the Amazing Wisdom of God in Providing For the Salvation of Sinners

“This, then, is our conclusion concerning the bitter death of the holy Messiah as given in the inspired words of Isaiah liii. 5, 6: ‘But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.’ Is this an astonishing doctrine? Is the conception above the range of human imagination. So let it be. It may be that only the divine wisdom was adequate to excogitate it, and only the infinite divine love was capable of applying it for the salvation of enemies. We thank God that it is not a deduction or invention of man’s philosophy, but a revelation from omniscience.

But after God has authorized us to think this thought, we find in it nothing but supreme reason, justice, holiness, and benignity. These high revelations of the necessity of satisfaction for sin, grounded in the immutability of God’s distributive justice, complete, and exalt our conception of him and his government.” — [**Robert L. Dabney**](/authors/robert-lewis-dabney), *Christ Our Penal Substitute* (1898), pp. 107-108