Pre-Existence

In ordinary biographies, a birth is the beginning. It was in the year 1483 that the mind to which we owe the Reformation commenced its existence; for it was then that Martin Luther was born. It was in London that the career began to which England is indebted for its great epic poem, and that other from which science received its mightiest modern impulse; for it was there that Milton and Bacon first saw the light of life. Having told us this, the biographer feels that ne has begun at the beginning; and with this statement coincides the consciousness of the individual himself. For, whatever the old philosophy may have dreamed about the pre-existence of spirit and the transmigration of souls, no man could ever seriously say that he had led another life before he was born. No man could ever tell incidents and experiences which had occurred to him in a state of existence anterior to the present. With us, to all intents, our birth is our beginning.

In the whole history of our species there has been only one exception. That exception occurred in the Holy Land eighteen hundred years ago. There was a Prophet in Galilee remarkable for the profusion and splendour of His miracles, and yet more remarkable for the beautiful innocence and majestic elevation of His entire career; and among the other peculiarities of a character unique and outstanding this was one: He was constantly and familiarly speaking of a life which He had led elsewhere; and though He had been born at Bethlehem in the reign of Augustus, it was evident that He never regarded that birth as His beginning. Speaking always of God as His father, on the eve of His expected martyrdom He concluded a solemn address to His chosen friends in these unusual words — “The Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came from the Father and am come into the world: again, I leave the world and go to the Father.” And so far back ‘did that existence extend which He had spent elsewhere, that His words once leading the Jews to think that He claimed an age anterior to ancient Abraham, He not only allowed it, but in words of deep significance answered, u Before Abraham was, I AM.” Nay, so remote was that anterior existence of His, that He speaks of it as oldpr than creation itself; and in the freest and most unreserved forth-pouring of His soul which the record has preserved — in that prayer which wound up the work given Him to do, and amidst whose closing accents He passed to the final conflict — in the explicitness of a high conjuncture, and in the fervour of filial confidence, His language is all a-glow with recollections of that blissful association with ilis Divine Father which He had enjoyed in the dens of a dateless eternity. “And now, O Father, glorify thou me, with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. Unto the men whom thou gavest me I have given the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.” “Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”

In harmony with which consciousness of His own is the style of His inspired biographers. True, they relate His birth; but with them His birth is not His beginning. It is His arrival from another sphere; it is His inauguration in human nature. It is an advent, an incarnation; it is not a new being called forth from the regions of nonentity. It is our world receiving a pre-existent visitor; it is our humanity iirining a celestial occupant; and when they chronicle the fact, Evangelists use language which at once lifts our eyes from the cradle, and sends our imaginations backwards far beyond the reign of the Caesars. In the prophetic description of His birthplace, Matthew quotes the words of Micah, of which the full context is, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” And he does not scruple to apply to the infant born there the words of Isaiah, “Behold, a virgin shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel; which being interpreted, is, God with us.” And in his allusion to the same great incident, John tells us, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God; and the Word was made flesh.”

As we purpose to review some of the incidents in the earthly life of Jesus Christ, it is right at the ouf set to avow our belief that His life on earth was a mere incident in an existence which had no beginning. We deeply feel that “great is the mystery of godliness;” at the same time we feel that revelation leaves us no alternative. If we accept the New Testament as a truthful record, we must receive the Lord Jesus as “God manifest in the flesh.” The proofs of this lie scattered over all the Scriptures, and they have fre quently been collected and arranged with admirablJB distinctness and irresistible cogency. At present, we must be content to indicate a few of those considerations which, we apprehend, will be deemed by candid minds conclusive.

1. And our first appeal is to Christ’s own language. There are some subjects to which He seldom adverted, apparently reserving it for another teacher to unfold them. For example, He seldom spoke of His office. Scarcely ever do we find Him in words express avowing His Messiahship; and it is only now and then, when the avowal was to answer some important purpose, or when to withhold it would have been disingenuous and misleading, that “He confessed and denied not,” “I am the Christ.” For instance, when the inquirer at Jacob’3 Well, impressed with His prophetic insight, and just as they were about to be interrupted by the return of the disciples from the village, — when she said, “When Messias cometh, he will tell us all things,” at such a moment, and after such a hint, to remain silent would have been to leave a soul in darkness; and so Jesus answered, “I that speak unto thee am he.” In the same way, when Peter made his memorable acknowledgment — “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God;” and when the high priest, in his judicial capacity, demanded, “I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell U3 whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God,” to have kept silence would have been to perplex His disciples and bewilder the world; and accordingly He gave an answer which left no doubt as to His Messianic character.

And yet, although seldom in words express claiming to be the Christ, He was constantly assuming it. Most of the miracles He wrought pointed this way, and were ever and anon suggesting to spectators the question, “When Messias cometh, will he do more miracles than this mm doeth?” and of His public sermons, as well as of His confidential addresses to His disciples, the drift was all in this direction — issuing invitations to the one, and giving instructions as to their future work to the other, which, in the case of any besides the promised Saviour, would have been irrelevant and meaningless. And as in regard to His office, so in regard to His person. As He seldom proclaimed His errand, so He did not often enunciate His intrinsic greatness: but as He was content to fulfil His mission, so He allowed His glory to reveal itself; and it was only when the interests of truth and goodness called for the confession, that the language of tacit assumption was exchanged for an articulate and audible avowal. But just as before the hostile high priest He confessed His office, so before the hostile populace He once and again confessed His celestial origin, “I and the Father are one;” “Before Abraham was, I am;” and the Jews, who well understood the language, took up stones to stone Him as a blasphemer; “because he who was a man made himself equal with God.” And just as to Peter in the presence of the twelve, He admitted His Messiahship, so to Philip in the presence of the rest He said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Believest thou not that I am in the Father and the Father in me?” And just as to confirm the faith of the Samaritan inquirer, He said, “I that speak unto thee am Messias,” so when to the faltering Thomas He gave the overwhelming token which transformed his incredulity into adoration, to his exclamation, “My Lord, and my God!” Jesus answered, a Thomas, because thou hast seen thou hast believed,” and accepted the God-confessing epithet. When we advert to the entire character of Jesus — when we remember how He “emptied himself and became of no reputation “— when we remember that it was His way not so much to lift up His voice as to let His light shine, so that His deeds rather than His words bewrayed His intrinsic majesty — when we remember how truthful and ingenuous, and how jealous of God’s glory He ever was, these repeated avowals acquire a vastly greater significance; and taken in unison with the entire style of the Saviour’s deportment, which was nothing less than a continuous response to the voice from the excellent glory, a This is my beloved Son,” we are shut up to the conclusion that in His own consciousness Jesus was God.

The opposite assumption, if fatal to the Saviour’s divinity, would also appear fatal to His simplicity and godly sincerity. It would imply that in a season the most solemn of all His history, when a disciple prayed his departing Master, “Shew us the Father,” instead of answering the prayer and shewing what was truly equivalent to the Father, He had appeased the anxiety of Philip with a play of words or a paradox. It would imply that “the Light of the world” — the reformer who was so possessed with the zeal of God’s house that He drove all intruders from the temple courts — was so little averse to usurp the Divine prerogative, that when again and again the Jews understood Him as asserting His equality with God, rather than undeceive them He allowed them to take up stones to stone Him. It would imply that He who quoted to the tempter that Scripture, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve,” in accepting Himself the worship of Peter and Thomas and others, was after all less scrupulous than the angel who started back from John’s adoration, “See thou do it not; for I also am of thy fellow-servants the prophets: Worship God.”

2. The consciousness of the Saviour is amply borne out by the language of the sacred writers. “God hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son — the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.” “Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.” “For in him (Christ) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” 11 Whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.” * Expressions like these, direct and indirect, constantly occurring, shew that to the habitual thoughts of primitive discipleship, the Saviour was nothing less than Divine. Nor is it only in didactic discourse that such assertions are continually repeated, but the whole apostolic history goes on the assumption of the Saviour’s omnipotence and omnipresence; and it is impossible to read the Book of Acts without perceiving that every disciple of that early age was in daily life, as well as in extreme conjunctures, expecting the fulfilment of his Master’s promise — a promise which only a Divine Person could fulfil — “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

3. There are Scripture proofs of another class which we think carry with them a peculiar charm and conclusiveness: we mean those passages in the Old Testament which are undoubtedly applied to the

* Heb. i. 1, 2; 1 Tim. iii. 10; Phil. ii. 5-7; Col. ii. 9; Rom. ix. 5.

Most High, but which in the New Testament are as distinctly transferred to Jesus Christ. In the forty-fifth Psalm we read, “Thy throne, 0 God, is for ever and ever: the sceptre of thy kingdom is a right sceptre.” But in the first chapter of Hebrews we are told that these words are spoken by the Father to the Son. In the sixth chapter of Isaiah we have a magnificent description of God’s glory, — Jehovah sitting on u a throne high and lifted up,” and “his train filling the temple,” whilst seraphs veil their faces with their wings, and make the temple vibrate -with their hymns of rapture. But in the gospel of John we are told that the spectacle which was on this occasion vouchsafed to Isaiah was a vision of Christ’s glory.

Amongst geographers there have sometimes been disputes as to the identity of a river. They have debated, for instance, whether the Quorra were the same as the Niger; but when a boat launched on the Niger, after a few weeks made its appearance floating on the Quorra, there was an end of the argument: the names might be two, but the streams were demonstrably the one the continuation of the other. And sometimes a critic, indignant at an anonymous author, has shewn how much better a well-known writer would have handled the self-same subject — when it turns out that the nameless and the well-known personages are in this instance identical. In the hundred and second Psalm, eternity and unchangeableness are ascribed to the Great Creator; and there is no opponent of the Saviour’s divinity who would not sing that psalm as a fitting ascription to the Most High God: when, behold! the Epistle to the Hebrews informs us that it is a hymn of praise to Jesus Christ! To hail any creature, and say, u Holy, holy, Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of thy glory,” we shall be told, by those who view Christ as a creature, is blasphemy. And yet when we push our inquiry up the stream of time, and go back to the period to which John the Evangelist sends us — seven centuries before the advent — we find this identical anthem sung to. Jesus Christ by no meaner worshippers than the heavenly seraphim! *

Perhaps there is no doctrine on which the oracle has pronounced so plainly and so positively; and when to the direct and absolute deliverance of Scripture, you add all its incidental confirmations, the proof becomes not only irresistible, but almost redundant and oppressive. For instance, if Jesus be not a partaker of the Divine nature, how strange and unaccountable the solemnity which encircles His person whenever He is introduced in the Word of God!” How comes it to be such a crime to trample on His blood; and why is the man who loves Him not l an

Compare Ps. xlv. 6 with Heb. i. 8; Ps. cii. 25-27 with Heb. i. 19-U; Isa. vi. 1-4, 9, with John xii. 39-41.

anathema?’ Wherefore is it represented as such a stretch of Divine munificence, that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, if that Son were a mere man or a mere archangel? And when Howard and other men have impoverished themselves for their fellow-men, why should it be deemed such peerless generosity, ‘Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, for your sakes he became poor; that ye, through his poverty, might be rich?’ And if the mind of the Saviour were finite, how should it need a special prayer i that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend, with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge?’ “* If Christ were a creature, how could He promise to numerous disciples, “Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world?” And how shon 1 He associate His name with the Name supreme in such a symbol as the baptismal dedication, “Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost?”

Is there an attribute or an act of the Most High which is not ascribed to Jesus Christ? For example, does Jehovah claim eternal existence as His prerogative?” Thus saith Jehovah, I am the first, and I

* Wardlaw on the Socinian Controversy, pp. 46-48.

am the last, and “besides me there is no God.” But in the Apocalypse Jesus says again and again, u I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” Does Jehovah claim as a Divine distinction an all-pervading and all-perceiving presence? Doe3 He promise to the Church of old Israel, u In all places where I record my name, I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee?” And does He say, “The heart is deceitful above all things; who can know it? I Jehovah search the hearts; I try the reins?” But has not Jesus promised to the Christian Church, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them;” “Then shall all the churches know that I (Jesus) am he that searcheth the reins and the hearts?” Is creation the work of Omnipotence, and must “the gods who have not made the heavens perish from the earth?” But “all things were made by the Word, and without him was not anything made that was made.” “By him,” that is, by God’s “dear Son,” “were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”

So thoroughly intermingled with the whole texture of New Testament Scripture is the Godhead of the

Saviour, that no criticism which does not destroy the book can altogether extinguish its testimony. We have seen a copy of the Gospels and Epistles which was warranted free from all trace of the Trinity, but it was not the Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. We beheld it, and we received instruction. It did not want beauty; for the Parables, and the Sermon on the Mount, and many a touching passage, still were there. But neither would a garden want beauty if the grass plats and green bushes still remained, though you had carefully culled out every blossoming flower. The’ humanity of Jesus still is beautiful, even when the Godhead is forgotten or denied. Or rather it looked like a coronation tapestry, with all the golden threads torn out; or an exquisite mosaic from which some unscrupulous finger had abstracted the gems and only left the common stones: you not only missed the glory of the whole, but in the fractures of the piece and the coarse piaster with which the gaps were supplied, you saw how rude was the process by which its jewels had been wrenched away. It was a casket without the pearl. It was a shrine without the Shekinah. And yet, after all, it was not sufficiently expurgated; for, after reading it, the thought would recur, How much easier to fabricate a Gnostic Testament exempt from all trace of our Lord’s humanity, than a Unitarian Testament ignoring His divinity!

Nor is the subject we have now been handling a barren speculation — a mere dogma in divinity. It lies at the very foundation of the sinner’s hopes — it is full of strong consolation to those whose awakened consciences crave a mighty Redeemer. The demerit of sin is enormous. Considering the Majesty which sin insults and the law which sin violates, it is scarcely possible to exaggerate its turpitude, and it is impossible to see how a creature can exhaust its penalty. But Jesus is divine. The Surety is all-sufficient. The victim is God’s own Son. “Christ with his own blood hath entered into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.” “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” When we remember that God’s servant was in this case God’s Son, we can understand how by His obedience “God’s righteous servant shall justify many.” And when we recollect that He who poured forth His soul an offering for sin was the Creator of the ends of the earth, who faiuteth not, neither is weary — when we remember that to all the sufferings of the Surety this value was given that they were the sufferings of innocence, this virtue was given that they were the sufferings of one who thought it no robbery to be equal with God — when we remember that on the cross of Calvary it was u God who did sacrifice to God,” we can see at once how precious is the blood then shed, and how it ckanseth from all sin. No wonder that in Him was life, and the life was the light of men. For His people Immanuel has gained the privilege of being their second Adam — their new and nobler head — restoring that life which their first father forfeited; and the safest existence in the universe is the life which is “hid with Christ in God.”

Which leads us to remark, in conclusion, How secure are the friends of the Saviour! Our souls are lost, and were they this night saved and given back into our own keeping, we should soon lose them again. And were the best and holiest man we ever knew standing surety for their salvation, we should still have cause to tremble; for after the case of David and Petar, we see what dire disasters may befall the fairest and stateliest goodness of this world. Nay, were an angel from heaven undertaking to keep these souls, we might still have cause to hesitate; for there have been even angels who kept not their first estate, and how shall the kindest angel answer for my sin? But, reader, He who asks the keeping of your soul is Jesus, the Son of God — that Saviour who has at His command infinite merit to atone for its sin, and the might of omnipotence to guard it from danger — that Saviour who is one with the Father, and who can say, “To my sheep I give eternal life; neither can any pltick them out of my Father’s hand.” Ah, brother, an immortal soul is a pearl of great price, and that soul alone is safe whose Kedeemer is mighty. But were it possible to take your soul in your hand, and transfer it as completely away to Him as you might open a casket and give away the gem, so that for years and ages you should see it no more, it were a wise and safe consignment. But how is it that Jesus does? The soul thus surrendered He takes, and puts His own royal mark upon it, and, though left in the casket of clay for a time, it is as safe as any jewel in His crown. But He does not forget it. He confides it to the care of that Heavenly Artist who polishes its rough surfaces and grinds away its disfiguring flaws; and by the pains taken with it — by the old things passing away and the new things appearing — the believer knows that Jesus has accepted this deposit, and will claim it in the day when He makes up His jewels. And when guilt upbraids him, or Satan sifts him, or the King of Terrors puts all his courage to the test, that joyful believer can exclaim, “I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.”