Christ the Redeemer

In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. — COLOSSIANS i. 14.

“YTO place touches us with a more melancholy sense of the fleeting nature of earthly glory, than an old deserted castle. All is gone but the main keep. Stoutly battling with time, as one not easily subdued, it stands erect in its ruin amid the grass-green mounds, that, like graves of the past, show where other buildings once have stood. Grey with moss, or mantled with ivy, the strong thick walls are slowly mouldering; and there is deep desolation in these silent courts. No step but our own treads the floor that in other days shook to the dancers’ feet; nor sound is heard in halls which once rung with music, and sweet voices, and merry laughter, but the moaning wind, which seems to wail for the wreck around it; or the sudden rush and flapping of some startled bird that flies at our intrusion from her lonely nest. If happily an empty chain hangs rusting in the dungeon where captives once had pined, how cold the hearth around whose roaring fires in long winter nights many a tale was told, and many a bright group had gathered, and the mother nursed her babe, and the father told his rapt and listening boys of stirring scenes in flood and field! In the grass-grown court below, where once they had mustered gay for the bridal, or grim for battle, the sheep are quietly feeding. And here on the battlement some pine, or birch, or mountain-ash, rooted in a crevice and fed by decay, lifts its stunted form, where the banner of an ancient house floated proudly in days of old, or spread itself out, defiant, as the fight raged around the beleaguered walls, and the war-cry of assailants without was answered by the cheers of gallant men within. Now all is changed — the stage a ruin, spectators and actors gone. They sleep in the grave; their loves, and wars, their fears, and joys, and sorrows — where ours, too, soon shall be — buried in its cold oblivion.

“Their memory and their name is gone.
Alike unknowing and unknown.”

And, greatest change of all, the heirs of those who reared that massy pile, and rode helmed to battle with a thousand vassals at their back, have sunk amid the wrecks of fortune. Fallen into meanness and obscurity, as humble rustics, they now, perhaps, plough the lands which once their fathers held.

Such changes have happened in our country. But changes corresponding to these never happened in ancient Israel. It was there, as in the heavens above us, whose luminaries, after a certain period of time has elapsed, always return to the same place in the firmament, and the same relative position to each other. The sun, for instance — although changing his place daily — shall rise and set, twelve months from this date, at the same hour, and appear at his meridian in the same spot as to-day. Corresponding to that, or like the revolution of a wheel, which restores every spoke to its former place, society — whatever change meanwhile took place in personal liberty or hereditary property — returned among the old Hebrews to the very same state in which it was at the commencement of those fifty years, whose close brought in the jubilee. “Then,” said Moses, “shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.”

In consequence either of his crimes or his misfortunes, the Hebrew was occasionally obliged to part with his paternal estate. His was sometimes a still greater calamity; for not only was his property sold, but his liberty. He became the bond-servant of some more fortunate brother. So matters stood till the fiftieth year arrived, and the jubilee was blown. At that trumpet sound — how fondly anticipated! how gladly heard! — the fetters fall from his limbs, and the slave of yesterday is to-day a freeman. At that trumpet-sound the beggar doffs his rags, the weary labourer throws down his tools. Marriage-bells never rang so merry as that blessed peal; it has changed the serf into a freeholder, a man of substance and position. And as, blown with the breath of liberty, trumpet replied to trumpet, and the sound of the jubilee, rising from valley to mountain, echoed among the rocky hills, and spread itself over the land from beyond Jordan’s bank to the shores of the sea, from the roots of snowy Lebanon to the burning desert — every man bade adieu to beggary and wandering and exile; like parted streams, divided families were reunited; long alienated possessions were restored to their original owners; and, amid universal rejoicings, feastings, mirth, music, and dances, every man returned to spend the rest of his days in his father’s house, and when he died, to mingle his own with ancestral dust. What a singular institution! As a civil arrangement, acting as a check both on excessive wealth and on excessive poverty, it was without a parallel in any ancient or modern nation. But it was more; it was a symbolical institution. More than in many respects a great social blessing, it had a deep, holy, spiritual meaning. Celebrated on the great day of atonement — that day when the goat, typical of Jesus, bore away the sins of the people — it was the symbol of a better restitution and a better redemption; and was, in fact, a striking, very beautiful, most benignant figure of the redemption which we have through the blood of Christ, even the forgiveness of sins.

Before turning your attention to the redemption, of which that jubilee was such a remarkable figure, let me by way of warning remark —

I. Our redemption is not, like that of the Hebrews, a simple matter of time.

Every fifty years, and in certain cases every seven years, redeemed the Hebrew, and restored him to the enjoyment of his property. “If thy brother,” said God, “an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty.” Thus, time set free the Hebrew slave, and, as its finger moved over the face of the sun-dial, pointed him onwards to freedom. Everywhere, and in its most ordinary course, time works many changes — the young grow old, and raven locks grow grey; the poor rise into wealth, while the rich sink into poverty; old families disappear, and new ones start up — like mushrooms. And, constantly changing the condition of society, as he turns the wheel of fortune, Time is altering the form even of this great globe itself. The proudest mountains are bending before his sceptre, and yielding to his silent but resistless sway. Nor is there a tiny stream that trickles over the rock, and, often hid under the broad fern, and nodding grasses, and wild flowers that grow on its narrow banks, betrays itself only by the gentle murmur with which it descends to join the river that receives its tribute, and rolls it onward to the ocean, but — teaching us in the highest matters not to despise the day of small things — is wearing down the mountain, and filling up the sea. Through the agencies of heat and cold, dews and rains, summer showers and winter snows, time is remodelling the features of our world, and — perhaps in that symbolizing the onward progress and future condition of society — reducing its various inequalities to one great common level.

But amid these changes shall years change, as a matter of course, the condition of a sinner? Shall they redeem him, for instance, from his slavery, or even relax the chains of sin? In the course of time you will grow older, hut not of necessity better. On the contrary, while the Hebrew slave was, by every year and day he lived, brought nearer to redemption, and could say, on such a day and at such an hour I shall be free, it is a solemn and awful fact, that the longer you live in sin, the more, distant, more difficult, more hopeless, does your salvation become. “The last state of that man is worse than the first.” Let us not flatter ourselves with the very common hope, I shall grow better as I grow older. That is very unlikely to happen. The unconverted are less likely to be saved at the jubilee age of fifty than at five-and-twenty — in their seventieth than in their seventh year. “Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” Do you say, in reply, But what then am I to do? Can I redeem myself? Assuredly not. But are we, because we can be redeemed only through the blood of Christ, to sit still; as if that redemption would come like a jubilee in the common course of providence, or time, or nature? No. We are to be up and doing; since, in a sense, it is as true of a soul’s as of a nation’s liberty —

“Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.”

I do not say that we are to rise like an oppressed nation which wrings its liberties from a tyrant’s hand; nor that we can purchase redemption, as we bought with our millions the freedom of West Indian slaves; nor that through works of righteousness that we do or have done, we can establish any claim whatever to its blessings. By care and industry you may acquire goods, not goodness; money, but never merit — merit in the sight of God. And yet I say, in God’s name, “labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life;” “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;” “give diligence to make your calling and election sure;” “take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart, and with all your soul.” There are various ways of being diligent. One man, seated at the loom, is busy with the shuttle; another, at the desk, with his pen; another, in the field, at his plough; another bends to the oar, and, ploughing the deep, reaps his harvest on the stormy waters; another, seen through the smoke of battle, is straining all his energies on the bloody field, winning honours with the bayonet’s rush and at the cannon’s mouth. And, though men may call him idle, yonder poor beggar, who, in orphan child or infirm old man, claims our pity and reproves our indolence, is busy also — diligent as the others. His hand is not idle, it is busy knocking; nor are his feet, they bear him weary from house to house, from door to door; nor is his tongue, it pleads his poverty, and tells his tale of sorrow .; while, pressed by necessity and earnest of purpose, out of his hollow eyes he throws such looks of misery, as move compassion and melt the heart.

And such as that suppliant’s, along with the use of other means, are the labours, the diligence, to which God’s gracious mercy and your own necessities call you. Unable to save yourselves, be it yours to besiege with prayers the throne of grace. Learn from Simon Peter what to do, and where to turn; not Peter sleeping in the garden, but Peter sinking in the sea. One who in his boyhood had learned to breast the billow, and feel at home upon the deep, he makes no attempt to swim; the shore lies beyond his reach, nor can boldest swimmer live amid these swelling waters. His companions cannot save him; their boat, unmanageable, drifts before the gale, and they cannot save themselves. He turns his back on them. He directs nor look nor cry to them; but, fixing his eyes on that divine form which, calm, unmoved, master of the tempest, steps majestically on from billow to billow, the drowning man throws out his arms to Jesus, and cries “Lord, save me.” Did he cry in vain? No more shall you. Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost; nor did he ever say unto any of the sons of men, Seek ye me in vain.

He offered his soul for sin, and came to redeem us from all iniquity. Let us now

II. Consider Christ as the Redeemer; not as a Redeemer, but the Redeemer.

There is no other. “There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” All the types and symbols of the Saviour teach you this. There was one ark in the flood — but one; and all perished save those who sailed in it. There was one altar in the temple — but one; and no sacrifices were accepted but those offered there — “the altar.” as the Bible says, that “sanctified the gift.” There was one way through the depths of the Red Sea — but one; and only where the water, held back by the hand of God, stood up in crystal walls, was a passage opened for those that were ready to perish. And even so, there is but “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;” as our catechism says, “The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ.”

This truth is, in a certain sense, and to some extent, acknowledged by all churches which call themselves Christian. They all profess to give Jesus the honours of salvation; not excepting, on the one hand, those which, denying the divinity of our Lord and the doctrine of the atonement, extract its vitality from the Gospel; nor, on the other hand, those Greek and Roman churches, which, by their additions and traditions, have buried the Rock of Ages beneath a great heap of rubbish. While, how ever, they appear to regard our Lord Jesus Christ as the Redeemer, and so seem to travel on in company, no sooner is the question started, in what sense he is a Redeemer, than we arrive at a point where they take different paths, and are led, as they advance, wider and wider asunder. That question introduces us, in fact, into a great controversy. I do not intend to enter into it; but I will affirm, that whether the weapons were sword, pen, or tongue, no conflict that affected the sacred cause of liberty, the rights of man, the honour or interests of nations, ever involved such important, vital, transcendent interests, as are staked in the battle that has been waged around Christ’s cross, and about the question, how he saves, in what sense he is a Redeemer.

The first and most notable champion who appeared on the field was the apostle Paul; and as, panoplied from head to heel in the armour of God, he stalks into the arena, and, looking undaunted around him, is ready to fight and to die for the truth, observe the motto on his battle-shield, “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” It is not simply Jesus Christ; though, given by an angel and full of meaning, that was a great name. Nor is it Christ come, nor Christ coming, nor even Christ crowned; but Christ dying on a cross, “Christ, and him crucified.” Life to sinners through a Saviour’s death, salvation by substitution, redemption through blood — that blood the ransom and Jesus the Redeemer — was the substance of all Paul’s sermons, the theme of his praise, the deepest -rooted and most cherished hope of his heart. He lived and died in that faith; and, though that tongue of power and eloquence be now silent in the grave, he proclaims to listening angels in heaven what he preached to men on earth. He proclaims it, not in sermons, but in songs; for in that serene and better world, where 110 storms disturb the church, nor controversies rage, nor clouds obscure the light, they sing, salvation by the blood of Christ. May we cast away all other hope! — and, with our whole hearts embracing that, we shall one day join the vast congregation whose voices fell on John’s ear as the sound of many waters, while in harmonious numbers and to golden harps they sung before the throne, “Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.”

And for more fully understanding and appreciating this doctrine, I remark —

1. Christ does not redeem us, as some say, by simply revealing the truth — save us by merely as a prophet shewing the way of salvation.

The pathways on the deep along our rugged coasts, as well as our streets, are lighted; and yonder, where the waters fret and foam and break above the sunken rock, the tall light-house rises. Kindled at sundown, it shines steady and clear through the gloom of night, warning the seaman at the wheel of the danger he has to avoid, and shewing him the course he has- to steer. Now he who reared that house and kindled its blessed light, and thus saves many a bark from shipwreck, many a sailor from a watery grave, may be called a saviour. In one sense he is the saviour of all who, bravely ploughing their way through the black midnight over the stormy deep, hail that light as it rises on them like a star of hope — and, seeing it, know how to steer, to take the roads, to clear the bar, to beware the reef, and bring their bark in safety to the desired haven. But if Christ is a Saviour only in that sense, simply because he brought life and immortality to light, then he is not the only Saviour. From the “Sun of Righteousness” he changes into a star, and in that heaven, where he shone without a rival, he takes his place but among the luminaries of the church; one of many, he is only a pure and bright and beautiful star in that brilliant constellation, which is formed of Moses, the prophets, those seers and sages and inspired apostles, by whose voices and pens, in the days of old, God communicated his will to man.

Many of those, indeed, who were inspired to reveal the will of God for the salvation of men, had more to do instrumentally in revealing that will than Jesus Christ. No book bears his name. He wrote no epistle; and the truths that actually dropt from his lips, so far as they are recorded, form but an insignificant portion of those Holy Scriptures which are our chart and charter. Yet who but he is set forth as the Redeemer and Saviour of sinners? Where is Moses represented as such? or David? or Isaiah? or Paul? Where is it said, Believe on Paul, and thou shalt be saved; whosoever believeth on Paul or Peter, hath everlasting life, and shall never perish? Nevertheless, compared with our Lord Jesus Christ, sec how much Paul did in actually revealing the will of God to men. Jesus preached three years; but Paul thirty. Jesus preached only to Jews; but Paul to Jew, and Greek, and Roman, Parthian, Scythian, barbarian, bond and free. Jesus numbered his converts by hundreds; Paul his by thousands. Jesus confined his labours to the narrow limits of Palestine; Paul overleaped all such bounds; he took the wide earth for his field, and, flying as on angel’s wings, he preached the Gospel alike to the bearded Jew, the barbarians of Melita, the philosophers of Athens, and in the streets and palaces of Rome to the conquerors of the world. Yet look at this great apostle; he lies as low at Jesus’ feet as the woman who washed them with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. He wore chains for Christ, and gloried in them; nor was ever queen so proud of her diamond coronet, nor man in office of his chain of gold, as he of the iron manacles he wore for Christ, and boldly shook in the face of kings. To serve the cause of Jesus he could submit to be beaten, and scourged, and starved, and stoned, and cast at Ephesus to hungry lions; but one thing he could not bear — grief and horror seize him when he finds himself set on a level with his master. To a divided church, rent by factions and full of partisanship, where one is crying, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, and a third, I am of Cephas, and a fourth, I am of Christ, he turns round with indignation to ask — “Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?” In whatever others may glory, he ascribes all the glory of redemption to the cross of Christ; and, rebuking that party spirit and respect for human authority which is still too prevalent among us, he exclaims — “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

2. Our Lord does not redeem us, as some say,
simply by his example.

That man is, in a sense, my saviour, who leads me safely along any dangerous path. The brave guide, for instance, who, high up on the beetling precipice, appears to shuddering spectators below like an insect creeping along its face, who now plants the point of his foot in that crevice, now poises himself on that rocking stone, now, laying strong hand on a friendly root, with a thousand feet beneath, swings him self round this dangerous corner, now, with arms stretched out, and with more than a lover’s eagerness, embraces the rock, and now steps lightty along the fallen tree that bridges the fearful chasm, and so, going before, shows me where to turn, and what to hold by, I regard — and on looking back at that tremendous path, and horrible abyss — regard with gratitude as my saviour. But for him, I had never achieved the passage; my body had been mangled, and my unburied bones left to bleach in the depths of that dark ravine.

And in a corresponding way, according to some, our Lord redeemed us. He set us such an example of every virtue, of patient endurance, of living, suffering, dying, that we also, by closely following his footsteps, may reach the kingdom of heaven. Alas for our safety! farowell to the hope of heaven, a last farewell, if it turn on that. What a delusion! God knows, if it had not been for the everlasting arras that caught us when falling, and often raised us when fallen, and for the overflowing love that has pardoned a thousand and a thousand sins, I, and you, and all, had perished long ere now. We had never stopped falling, till, like a stone that, rolling down the hill-side and bounding from crag to crag, at length, with a sullen sound, plunges into the lake, we had been lost in hell. Follow his example! Tread his footsteps! Live as he lived! Walk as he walked! Who is sufficient for these things? No woman ever bore such a son as Mary’s; for in him a clean thing came out of an unclean. Death has darkened many a house and church and land, but never extinguished such a light as was quenched in blood on Calvary; it was as if he had raised his arm and plucked, not a star, but the sun from heaven. This earth was never trodden by such feet as walked the Sea of Galilee, and were nailed upon the cross. For more than thirty years they trod earth’s foulest paths, and, when heaven received him back, had neither spot nor stain. And as he lay dead three days in a grave, which, respecting its prisoner, did not dare to mar his face, or touch him with its corrupting finger, so in a world that has been the grave of virtue and holiness and piety, he passed three-and-thirty years amid corruption uncorrupted, a friend to harlots, a guest of publicans, associated with sinners, yet sinless, holy, harmless, undefiled — like oil among water, separate from sinners.

Again, I ask, who is sufficient for these things? What man liveth and sinneth not? Who has not often to cry — “Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not;” and, when once down, what stops him from going straight down to hell, but the promise, which faith catches and holds and hangs by, “I will heal their backsliding, and love them freely?” We should certainly attempt always to follow Jesus, to walk as he walked, to speak as he spake, to think as he thought, and to mould our whole conduct and conversation on the pattern that he hath left us; yet our best attempts will leave us more and more convinced that our only hope for redemption, salvation, forgiveness, lies in the mercy of the Father and the merits of the Son. Pray for and make sure of an interest in these, for even after we have been made new creatures in Jesus Christ, the most that we can do — nor that without the aids of the Holy Spirit — is to creep along the path which the Saviour walked, and leave the mark of our knees where he left the prints of his feet.

3. Christ has redeemed us by suffering in our room and stead. Our ransom was his life, the price of our redemption his blood.

“Without shedding of blood is no remission;” “the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin.” This is the grand truth, the central doctrine, the culminating point of the Gospel. It rises lofty above all others. And, as some Alpine summit, crowned with snows and piercing the blue skies, rises up bright and clear, to catch the rays of the morning sun, and be descried from a far long distance, so the doctrine which cheers us, caught the eyes and revived the hearts of Adam and Eve amid the withered bowers of Eden. The promised seed was to bruise the serpent’s head, and that serpent was to bite His heel. There was to be salvation, but salvation through suffering; and, as could only be, salvation through the suffering of a substitute. It was as a substitute for sinners that Jesus was daily set forth in the sacrifices of the Jewish altar; and to one of these, as very graphically exhibiting the connection between bloodshed and sin forgiven, let me request your attention.

The offering I refer to was made on the greatest of all ceremonial occasions — the day of atonement. Two young goats, kids of the goats, are selected from the flock, and presented before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle. These young, innocent, spotless creatures, standing there in the sight of the silent solemn multitude, are a double type of Jesus, when, in the councils of eternity, he presented himself before Jehovah, saying, “Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me) to do thy will, 0 God.” The lot is cast — one for the Lord, the other for the scapegoat — to determine which shall represent our Saviour in the act of his death, and which in the fruit of his death, namely, the bearing away of the sins of the people. The first falls as a sin offering. The High Priest, having caught its flowing blood in a golden bowl, enters within the veil, and, alone, sprinkles it upon and before the mercy-seat. Coming forth, he goes up to the living goat; standing over it, he lays his hands dpon its head; and, amid solemn silence, confesses over the dumb creature all the iniquities, and transgressions, and sins of the children of Israel. The prayer finished, that goat bears on its devoted head the guilt of the people as it has been ceremonially transferred from them to it by these blood-stained hands, and that holy prayer. And now, observe the act which foreshadowed how Jesus, by taking our sins upon him, bore them all away. The congregation opens, the vast crowd divides, forming a lane that stretches away right from the tabernacle into the boundless desert. While every lip is sealed, and every eye intent upon the ceremony, a man steps forth — a “jit” man; and, taking hold of the victim, he leads it on and away through the parted crowd. All eyes follow them. Amid the haze of the burning sands and distant horizon, their forms grow less and less, and at length vanish from the sight. He and that goat are now alone. They travel on and further on, till, removed beyond the reach of any human eye, far off in the distant wilderness, nor man nor house in sight, he casts loose the sin-laden creature. And when, after the lapse of hours, the people descry a speck in the extreme distance, which draws nearer and nearer, until, in a solitary man who approaches the camp, they recognise the jit man who had led away the sin-laden victim, the people see, and we in figure also see, how our Lord, when he was made an offering for sin, took the load of our guilt upon him — bearing it away, as it were, to a land that was not known. “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”

Let faith seize the reality of which that ceremony was the shadow. Behold Christ suffering for his people, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God! He bore our sins away on his head in that thorny crown, and on his shoulder in that heavy cross; and, most of all, amid that awful darkness, when he was indeed alone, and, cast off by God as well as man, his heart broke in that awful cry, ‘%Iy God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!” Relieved thus from his load of guilt, knowing that all his sins were then atoned for, and, in the witness of God’s Spirit with his own, possessing evidence that they are now forgiven, how happy should the believer be! Envying no man’s state, and coveting no man’s goods, with God’s peace in our heart and heaven in our eye, oh, may it be ours to say from sweet experience, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”