The Satisfaction of the Messiah

‘*He shall reign from pole to pole
With illimitable sway;
He shall reign, when like a scroll
Yonder heavens have passed away.
Then the end; beneath His rod
Man’s last enemy shall fall.
Hallelujah! Christ in God,
God in Christ, is all in all.”
MONTGOMERY.

ISAIAH liii. 11.)

ATISFIED! Very few can say that word on this side of heaven. The alpine climber cannot, so long as inaccessible summits rear themselves beyond his reach. The conqueror who has overrun the world cannot; he weeps because there are no more worlds to conquer. The philosopher cannot, though he has discovered the hidden harmonies of Nature, and unveiled her ancient order; for his circle of light only extends the circumference of the dark unknown. Even the Christian cannot say it, since he has not yet attained, neither is already perfect. But Christ shall be satisfied, and is already drinking deep draughts of the joy set before Him when He endured the cross, despising its shame.

There is no satisfaction for those who are self-centred; and we say reverently that God Himself could not have known perfect blessedness unless He had been able to pour Himself forth in blessing upon others. We are therefore conscious of a fitness in meeting this allusion to the satisfaction of Christ amidst these words that speak of his sacrifice unto death.

Whatever may be the character of that joy which He had with the Father before the worlds were made, it surely will pale in intrinsic value before that joy which for evermore will accrue to Him as the interest upon his expenditure at Calvary.

We might put the truth into four sentences. There is no satisfaction apart from love. There cannot be love for sinning suffering souls without travail. There cannot be travail without compensating joy. In proportion to the travail, with its pangs and bitterness, will be the resulting blessedness.

I. THE TRAVAIL OF CHRIST’S SOUL. — He suffered because of his quick sympathy with the anguish that sin had brought to man. He probably saw, as we cannot, the timid oppressed by the strong; the helpless victim pursued by rapacity and passion; mothers weeping over the children that had been torn from their forlorn and desolate hearts. He heard the wail of the world’s sorrow, in which cries of little children, the shriek or moan of womanhood, and the deep bass of strong men wrestling with the encircling serpent-folds, mingle in one terrible medley. He sighed over the deaf and dumb, had compassion on the leper, wept at the grave. As the thorn-brake to bare feet, so must this world have been to his compassionate heart.

He must also have suffered keenly by the rejection of those whom He would have gathered, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wing, but they would not. Was there’ a contemptuous name they did not hurl at Him; an insult that did not alight upon his head; an avenue along which man’s hate can reach the heart of his fellow-man, which was not trodden bare by those who repaid his love by a hate which had the venom of hell in it, as his love the fragrance of Paradise?

But these elements of pain are not to be compared with that more awful sorrow which He experienced as the substitute and sacrifice of human guilt. In a following verse we are told that “He poured out his soul unto death.” It was a voluntary act to which He was nerved by the infinite love that dared to make his soul an offering for sin. What did Jesus suffer on the cross? The physical pain that racked his body was probably hardly perceptible to Him amid the pressure of those stripes with which we are healed. He was wounded, not in his tender flesh only, but in his holy loving heart. He was bruised between the millstones of God’s justice and unswerving fidelity to truth. He was stricken because He received into his soul the penalty of human guilt. He stood before the universe charged with the sins of the race, and their consequence. He tasted death for every man. He was so identified with sin, its shame, suffering, and penalty, that He deemed Himself forsaken by God. In that one act of the cross: He put away sin, exhausted the penalty, wiped out the guilt, and laid the foundation of a redemption which includes the whole family of man.

It could not be otherwise. He could not have loved us perfectly without becoming one with us in the dark heritage of our first parent. Son of Man as He was, though Himself sinless, He could not but be involved in the entail of condemnation which was the lot of the human family. With us, and for us, He must suffer. With us, and for us, He must die. With us, and for us, He must meet the demands of a broken law, and satisfy them eternally.

Dost thou love Christ? The first duty He will lay on thee will be love to others. He will tell thee there is no true love for Himself which does not go out for those whom He has loved. The same sentiment of the human heart, which has an aspect towards Him, has at the same time an aspect towards all. And if thou dost truly love, thou too shalt find thy meed of soul-travail. Thou too wilt have to go without the camp, bearing his reproach. Thou canst not love men into life without suffering with them, and for them — not to the same extent that Christ suffered, but in thy measure. Think it not strange when that fiery trial comes; but rejoice that thou art called to be a partaker of the sufferings of Christ, that at the revelation of his glory thou mayest rejoice with

exceeding joy.

II. THE CERTAINTY OF INFINITE COMPENSATION. — * He shall see.” It is impossible to suffer voluntarily for others, and not in some way benefit them. Of course, there is pain in the world which is punitive, deadly. The pain which is the result of pride, that frets and chafes against the rule of the Almighty; like the sea churning itself in yeasty rage at the foot of the cliffs. The pain of those that fling themselves on the serried ranks of God’s order and law; like the French cuirassiers on the English squares on the field of Waterloo. The pain of those that suffer for the pain they have themselves inflicted.

There is other pain which is remedial and life-giving. The pain of the mother bringing forth her first-born. The pain of the woman’s nature that clings to a prodigal — husband, brother, or son — sharing his shame; agonizing in his repeated outbreaks; and by tears, prayers, and sacrifice, winning him for God. The pain of nature, groaning and travailing with the genesis of the new heavens and earth. The pain of the Saviour, giving life and salvation to myriads born again into the Kingdom. The pain of the Spirit, groaning within the saints, and ushering in the Church of the First-born. The pain of the children of God, who groan within themselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body.

The earth is full of each kind of pain; but the first is characteristic of the first Adam; the last, of the Second. The first belongs to an order which is destined to vanish away; the last to an age, the dawn of which, as sighted from the highest peaks of saintliness, is fairer than any light which has ever broken on the eyes or hearts of man. Woe be to thee, O son of man, if thou knowest nothing of this blessed travail; if thou hast never known what it is to be in anguish for the souls of others; if thy bosom has never been rent with strong cryings and tears; if thou hast never known the wish to be accurst from God, so that thou mightest win thy brethren according to the flesh! Blessed art thou if thou knowest aught hereof! Thy pain may sometimes seem abortive — the mighty throes that rend thee for the souls of others appear in vain; but it is not really so. Drop by drop thy tears shall presently turn the scale. Patience shall have her perfect work. The laws of the harvest in this sphere are as certain in their operation as in that of nature. God guarantees the results. He is faithful.

Thou shalt come again, bringing thy sheaves with thee: they that sow in tears shall reap in joy. In the golden future, if not before, thou shalt meet again each tear and sigh, and pang and prayer, transfigured in the result.

III. THE NATURE OF CHRIST’S COMPENSATION. — It will come: (1) Ju the glory that shall accrue to the Father. lt has been the one aim of the Second Person in the Holy Trinity, to reveal the character and glory of the First, that all intelligent and holy beings may love Him. He has done this in creation; in the government of the worlds; but, above all, in his cross. There we behold righteousness and peace kissing each other; the wisdom that invented a way of salvation consistent with the claim of moral law; the faithfulness which, in the fulness of the times, fulfilled the earliest promise; and, above all, God’s love. To Calvary shall wend the intelligences of every sphere, to acquire new and enlarged conceptions of the Divine character. And as age after age increased powers of vision reveal fresh wonders in the Cross, Christ shall see of the travail of his soul.

(2) In the redemption of untold myriads. Great as the harvest of sin has been, we believe that the saved shall vastly outnumber the lost. Nothing less will satisfy Christ. Remember that in the first age, before mention is made of the latter triumphs of the Gospel, John beheld in heaven a multitude which no man could number. This was but the first-fruit sheaf: let who will compute the full measure of the harvest! The martyr throng; the Christians who were recognised by no fellow-believer, and numbered in no church; the babes caught ‘to his bosom; the Godly souls in every nation, like Cornelius, ‘who have been saved by virtue of a death of which they never heard; the myriads that shall be gathered in during the

Millennial age — /hese are streamlets that shall swell the river of the ransomed to overflowing. In them shall Christ see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied.

(3) Jn the character of the redeemed. He shall present them to Himself without spot, or wrinkle, or any.such thing. He shall present them to his Father with exceeding joy; the devil’s handmark obliterated from their character; the Father’s image complete. Think you when Jesus takes to Himself his peerless Bride, purchased by his Blood, sanctified by his spirit, adorned in her marriage array — that He will not see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied?

(4) In the destruction of the devil’s work. What is involved in the majestic promise that He should destroy the works of the devil, is not yet made manifest. In due time we shall see it all. The mists that now veil the landscape, the scaffolding which hides the building, will be removed. We shall see what God means. The curse gone from nature. Grace abounding much more where sin and death had reigned. Man lifted nearer God than he could have been had he dwelt for ever in an unsullied paradise. The kingdoms of this world, and of all other worlds, become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. Then, as the hallelujah chorus breaks from millions — like the triumphant shout from the lips of the emancipated Israel; as the waves of harmony break around the sapphire throne in tumultuous melody; as the forms of monster evils lie strewn around the shores of the crystal sea mingled with fire — Christ shall see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied.

IV. THE GREATNESS OF THOSE RESULTS. — (1) They must be proportionate to the glory of his nature. It is not difficult to satisfy, at least temporarily, a little child. Imperfect knowledge will hush its curiosity, trifling toys please its fancy. But as its nature develops, it becomes increasingly hard to content it.

But surely there is more difference between the capacity of an angel and that of a man, than between the capacities of a man and a babe. If a man requires for his satisfaction more than a child, how much must not the capacious bosom of an angel need! The power for which men contend is child’s play, to those who control the rush of winds, and regulate the motion of worlds! The knowledge that men esteem as marvellous, to an angel is but the prattling of a babe. How much would have to be accumulated, ere an angel could say, “It is enough, I am satisfied”! But, great as an angel is, his capacity is limited and finite. What then must be the measure of that blessedness, of that harvest of souls, of that result of his travail, which can content the Divine Redeemer? His nature is so vast that nothing short of a seed like the stars in the sky, or the sand on the shore, can satisfy.

The immeasurableness of the results of redemption can only be estimated by those who consider the immeasurableness of the Divine nature of the Redeemer.

(2) They must be proportionate to the intensity of his suffering. The results of God’s work are always commensurate to the force He puts forth. You cannot imagine the Divine Being going to an immense expenditure without a sure prescience that He would be recouped. When He puts his hands to a work, it is because He knows that He can carry it through, and that the golden gain will be satisfactory remuneration. When therefore we behold the Son of God emptying Himself, stooping to the humiliation of Bethlehem, the anguish of Golgotha, the death of Calvary, we know that the spoils which will fall to his share, when He divides them with the strong, will not be unworthy or inadequate.

Satisfied! We shall hear his sigh of deep content, and see the triumph on his face. We shall witness the sublime transference of the kingdom to God, even the Father. We shall see the satisfactory termination of the mystery of evil. And if Christ is satisfied, we shall be. On this let us rest. And when our hearts misgive us because of the waste and havoc, the tears of blood, the awful suffering, that sin has brought into the universe of God, let us assure ourselves that all will yet be well; and that we shall drink deep draughts of the satisfaction of our Lord, when we see of the travail of his soul, and are satisfied.