Christ Pours the Sins onto the Devil
Smith teaches that Christ will place the sins of the saved upon the head of the devil. The Bible says that God laid them upon Christ on the cross — and that in Him there is now no condemnation.
By Rodrigo Custódio ·
The moment
On Thursday, July 15, 1880, issue number 27 of the sixth volume of the Signs of the Timescirculated in Oakland, California, the weekly founded by James White. Exactly one week after denying that Christ was the antitype of the scapegoat, the paper returned to the theme — now to conclude the series "The Purification of the Sanctuary" with the practical application of that thesis.
On page 319, the article by Uriah Smith — closed on the following page with the signature "U. S." — describes in four points the correspondence between the ritual of Leviticus 16 and the final events: the great offering made at Calvary, the sins carried into the sanctuary by the blood of Christ, and then the outcome. It is in this third point that the sentence summarizing the whole doctrine appears: once the ministration is finished, Christ will remove the sins of His people from the sanctuary and place them upon the head of the devil.
Engraving of a desolate wilderness under a storm: the "uninhabited land" to which the scapegoat was sent, according to Leviticus 16:22.
The article even anticipates the obvious objection — that sins cannot be suffered twice, and that it would be absurd for Satan to suffer for sins already atoned for — and rebuts it. In other words: the paper knew exactly the size of the theological problem it was creating, and insisted on it nonetheless. The doctrine is not an accident; it is a deliberate choice, defended against the very objections it raises.
The absurdity
Here is the sentence, ipsis litteris, at the heart of page 319:
"he will remove the sins of his people from the sanctuary, and place them upon the head of their author, the antitypical scapegoat, the devil."
Source: Signs of the Times, vol. 6, no. 27, July 15, 1880 — p. 319.
The original passage highlighted on page 319 of the July 15, 1880 edition, in which the paper describes Christ transferring sins to the head of the devil.
Note the sequence: Christ finishes His ministration and, instead of declaring the sins forgiven and forgotten, He "removes them from the sanctuary" and "places them upon the head" of the devil. The Savior becomes a kind of conveyor, and Satan becomes the final depository of the guilt of the redeemed. The article completes the picture in the following point: "the devil will be sent with them into an uninhabited land."
Why this is serious
This doctrine turns the atonement into a two-delivery process. In the first, Christ dies and carries the sins into the sanctuary — where they remain, apparently, awaiting dispatch. In the second, Christ takes them out of there and dumps them upon the head of the devil. Now, if the sins had to be carried once more, by another bearer, then the cross did not truly remove them: it merely transferred them from one place to another. The finished work becomes a work in transit.
There is also a logical problem that the article itself acknowledges and does not resolve: if Christ has already suffered for the sins, how can Satan suffer for them afterward? The paper admits that "some will be ready to say" that this is absurd — and proceeds anyway. When a doctrine has to run over its own objection in order to survive, it is a sign that it died in logic before it was born on the page.
Period cartoon: a preacher points to the figure of the devil before a laughing crowd at a country fair — the involuntary satire of a doctrine that puts the Savior at the service of the accuser.
And most serious of all: the doctrine gives the devil a role in salvation. If the sins of the saved end up upon the head of Satan, then Satan participates — even if only as a receptacle — in the outcome of redemption. The enemy, whom the Bible calls the accuser, becomes a part of the mechanism of grace. It is a theological promotion of the devil that no page of Scripture authorizes.
For the simple believer of 1880, the message was devastating: his confessed sins were not forgiven and forgotten — they were stockpiled in the sanctuary, awaiting the day when Christ would throw them upon the devil. Forgiveness became postponement, and the assurance of salvation became a celestial bureaucratic pending matter.
The verdict of the Scriptures
The Bible declares closed the case that the paper reopens. The author of Hebrews writes that Christ "has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26). To put away — not to stockpile, not to transfer, not to dispatch later. And he continues: "when he had offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, he sat down at the right hand of God... for by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Hebrews 10:12-14). A single sacrifice, a definitive perfecting, for all time.
Isaiah had already recorded the destination of sins: "the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6). On Him — Christ — on the cross, once for all. Peter confirms: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). John adds: "the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). Cleanses — present tense, complete, with no second shipment.
And as for divine "forgetting," the promise is explicit: "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more" (Hebrews 10:17). Sins that God does not remember need no scapegoat, no wilderness, no sin-bearing devil. Micah celebrated: "you will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:19) — into the sea, not upon the head of Satan. "As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12).
For those who are in Christ, the verdict has already been handed down and admits no appeal from the accuser: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). None — not "condemnation pending transfer." The cross did not forward our sins to another bearer; it nailed them to the tree, once for all, in the body of the only Substitute whom God accepts.