The Saviour's Person
I HERE are different ways of making a present. When it is such a thing as money, or bread, or clothing, it is not only given, but given away by the giver, and not only taken, but taken away by the receiver. Such things are enjoyed apart from the person from whom they come; sometimes, indeed, with grateful remembrances of his kindness, but quite as often amid thankless indifference and thoughtless neglect. But gifts may be offered in a different form. A benevolent man, touched by the ignorance of a community, may make them a present of a teacher, or touched by their ailments, a present of a doctor; that is, he may provide for the maintenance of such persons, and arrange with them to labour in the district. Or better stilly he himself may settle among the people, and devote his whole time and energy to the task of removing their ignorance and relieving their sufferings. In this case, the present, though given, is not given away, and the benefit, while taken, is not taken away. By the nature of the case the present is connected with the person of the donor, and the benefaction depends on personal intercourse with him. Those who wish to get the benefit must come into a direct and friendly relation to him: and, supposing him to be perfectly qualified for his work, the degree of benefit they receive will depend on the amount of respect they cherish for his person, the eagerness with which they receive his instructions, and the heartiness with which they commit themselves to his guidance.
It is much more after the latter of these methods than the former that God makes his great gift to men. This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son, (i John v. ii.) All that enters into the composition of eternal life GocPs gift to sinners has been committed in the first instance to the Son. All the qualifications for procuring it centre in Him; the work to be done for it was done by Him; and all the blessings it consists of are stored or deposited in Him. If we would have eternal life therefore, we must come into personal communication with the Son. He gives it, but He does not give it away. If we would take it, we cannot take it away. We must take it by receiving Christ in whom it subsists, partly in the same way as the Hebrews in Egypt could obtain deliverance only by receiving Moses, the appointed deliverer. They had a distinct promise of deliverance and national life, but when the time came for its fulfilment, it was found to be inseparably connected with the person of Moses. To reject Moses was to reject deliverance; to receive Moses, and give all due honour to him and to his messages, was the way to salvation. So for us, likewise, to receive Christ, is to secure life; to reject Christ, is to reject life. For he that beHeveth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.’
Two grand inquiries fall to be made respecting Christy viewed as the Being in whom eternal life subsists for the benefit and salvation of men. The first inquiry has respect to his person, the second to his work. Who is He, and what has He done? What assurance does the nature of the case afford to the mind and conscience of man, that He is qualified to bestow the life which He offers, and that in closing with His offer, and committing ourselves to His guidance, we shall be conducted to those realms of glory which our wistful hearts sometimes dream of, as some captive soldier in a lonely dungeon may dream of the festive gatherings of his youth, as of scenes which it were almost, and yet not quite, vain to hope ever to see again.
It is to the testimony of Gods word we must look for our guidance on both these questions. Reason, by herself, is quite unable to thread her way through the darkness and difficulties of such inquiries and even when the lamp of Revelation is employed to light our path we are compelled again and again to hold up our hands in amazement, and to say, Great is the mystery of godliness! ’
That a great mystery attaches to the person of Christ, according to the received view of it, every one will surely allow. The union of the two natures, finite and infinite, in one person, transcends the compass of our faculties, and when we try to fathom the subject we find ourselves in wandering mazes lost, If our spirit be humble and child-like as it ought to be, we shall be content to believe where we cannot hope to comprehend, and willing to adore at the base of heights to whose cloud-capped summits we dare not, in this life at all events, think of climbing.
So also, although some are less ready to ac-Knowledge it, there is a mystery about Christs work. The fancy of some is, that in this department all can be made clear and level to an ordinary capacity; that all about that righteousness which is like the great mountains and those judgments which are a great deep — all about the relation of the Judicial to the Paternal, all about atonement, satisfaction, and reconciliation, can be made as plain as a rule of arithmetic! Surely it is wise to believe that a shade of mystery must lie upon the work as well as upon the person of the Saviour. It is wise for us to believe this, while firmly repudiating the opposite error that everything about the work is involved in impenetrable obscurity. We know in part indeed, but we do know a part. Let us be content with the part we may know. There are glorious things revealed concerning the work of Christ, enough to assure the most rigid conscience that every demand of divine righteousness is satisfied in it, and that the acceptance of the sinner for Christs sake is not more subservient to his welfare than to Gods glory. But for the most part, what the Bible brings before us is the simple fact that Christ hath once suffered for sin, the just for the unjust.
to bring us unto God, And the chief texts that in all ages and communions have brought peace and joy to stricken sinners, that have been like lamps from heaven to numberless death-beds are those M^hich set forth the work of Christ in its simplest and broadest aspect — ‘Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world;” Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out; The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin/
If we follow the light of Scripture on the subject of Christ’s person we shall find these three things taught concerning it: — Firsts that Jesus Christ is the Eternal Son of God; second, that He became man; and third, that He was both God and Man in One Person, and will so remain for evermore.
I. Jesus Christ is the Eternal Son of God. The most cursory reader of the Bible must see that, according to its teaching, Jesus Christ is the Son of God in a sense in which no other being is His son. He is the ‘only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, So pecuUar is His claim and so unique is the relation, that as God is emphatically called ‘’ The Father, so Jesus is as emphatically called The Son, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name that will He do, that THE Father may be glorified in the Son.’ The doctrine established by this very remarkable mode of expression is that of the Eternal Sonship, It is a doctrine that may be said to flow from God’s Fatherhood. If God be eternally the Father, He must have eternally a Son. There cannot be a father without a son, and there cannot be an eternal father without an eternal son. It is the property of the Father eternally to beget, and the property of the Son to be eternally begotten. The subject is awfully mysterious. St Augustine tried to bring it a step nearer to us by a simple illustration. He supposed a lake to have existed from eternity, with a flower on its margin, and a light falling on the flower. The flower in that case must eternally have had a shadow. It is the property of the flower eternally to produce the shadow and the property of the shadow to be eternally produced by the flower. Such was St Augustine’s faint attempt to illustrate a relation of which no adequate conception is possible to us certainly not in the life that now is, and it may be not even in that which is to come.
Two things however, may be noted concerning this relation — one as to what it does not imply, the other as to what it does.
It implies no inferiority. The Son is not inferior to the Father. He is the same in substance, equal in power and glory. He is the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person. He is uncreated Light of uncreated Light, very God of very God, the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. The seraphim in His presence veil their faces and their feet, crying, Holy, holy, holy. Lord God of hosts.-* Like the Father, He dwells in light inaccessible and full of glory. The angels worship Him as they worship the Father. His voice, equally with the Fathers, summons the things that are not into being. And like the Father, He is separated from the highest angel by a gulf infinitely wider than that which separates the highest angel from the meanest insect — the gulf in a word that separates the creature from the Creator the finite from the Infinite, the child of yesterday from the Eternal God.
The other thing to be remarked of this relation is, that it implies great tenderness and gladsomeness of feeling. It invests the fellowship of the First and Second Persons with the indescribable charm of kinship,, the kinship which subsists between a father and his son. It is not easy to define, even in the case of a human relationship, the nature of that peculiar joy which kinship adds to the fellowship of congenial hearts. It is, of course, far more difficult to comprehend the nature or the force of this element ia the case of Divine Persons. But of the reality of it we have some remarkable glimpses. Where is the Sons characteristic place? In the bosom of the Father. What is the Father’s feeling to the Son?
Behold my servant whom I uphold mine elect in whom my soul delighteth 1 ‘If paternal feelings dispose to a more tender protecting love they must have had this effect in the case of God. And this makes it the more wonderful that He should have given up His. Son to agony and death to take away the sins of the world, and gives an unanswerable emphasis to that challenge of the Apostle, He that spared not his own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall he not with Him also freely give us all things?
1. The next great fact taught us as to the person of Christ is, that He became man. He took to Himself a true body and a reasonable soul. He became a true brother of our race, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; was acquainted with all our human feelings — our sorrows, and weaknesses, and trials — all but sin. The Scriptures, while they are so explicit in affirming Christs proper Divinity, are at equal pains in affirming and illustrating His true humanity. He entered the world as we enter it, for He was born; He left the world as we leave it, for He died. And no little care is taken to fill up these, the great outlines of His human life. We have the picture of the young mother, weary and travel- worn, reaching Bethlehem in much the same condition as Rachel had approached it centuries before; taking refuge in the stable, bringing forth her babe there, wrapping Him in swaddling bands, and laying Him in the manger. We are told of the flight into Egypt, caused by the cruel plot against His life, for even His life had to be protected by the same contrivances as ours. We have His return to Nazareth, where He was subject to His parents, and His growth in stature and in wisdom, and in favour with God and with man. We have the incident of His being lost at Jerusalem, and the picture of the commotion when that loss became known, just as there would be in any of our own households if one of our children was lost; we read of the mothers joy, and the mother’s impatience too, on finding
Him; and lest we should forget His Divinity amid such multiplied tokens of His humanity, we have the wonderful reply to His mother — the solitary floweret, as it has been called, from the enclosed garden of the thirty years — ‘Wist ye not that I must be about my Fathers business? In riper years we see Him in all the ordinary conditions in which the poorer class of men are found: wearied with heat and travel, sitting on a well; wearied with work and teaching, retiring for rest to the quiet hills, or putting off in a boat to be refreshed by the cool lake-breeze; we see Him eating, drinking, hungering, thirsting, sleeping, sorrowing, rejoicing, praying, shuddering, weeping. We see Him shrinking from agony and death, as we too shrink from them, then bracing Himself to meet them, and going forth in defiance of them, clad in divine armour and strong in divine strength. We see Him on the cross, committing His poor mother to the care of a humble disciple, expressing the common sensation of dying humanity, ^I thirst — uttering
His last word, drawing His last breath, when His head droops as ours would droop, and He gives up the ghost. What a mystery is this incarnation, and yet what an undeniable fact! Is it not true that many excellent Christians think of it too little, go too seldom to the cradle of Jesus? True, there Is an overwhelming attraction to the cross. The cross speaks to us of completed redemption, of an everlasting and all-sufficient righteousness, and when our souls are agitated by guilt and conscious unworthiness, its voice comes to us like the words of Jesus over the Sea of Galilee, Peace, be still.^ But if Calvary has its overwhelming attraction, Bethlehem has its attraction too. That stable is a wonderful school for faith and joy, and has lessons that make it good for us to be there. It teaches us that for evermore the life of Jesus has been poured into the current of our human life, that the Eternal Son has joined Himself to us for ever, that on our dishonoured escutcheon the Prince of Heaven has quartered His arms, never to be effaced. O fact full of hope and blessing! O Elder Brother, thou wilt not cast off any of Thy brethren when they come to Thee, bedraggled and tattered though their garments be, and though their hearts and lives be defiled a thousand times worse! Strong Son of Man, Thou- wilt not leave any fallen and crawling member of Thy race who looks wistfully to Thee, till Thou hast brought him among the many sons to glory, till Thou hast washed him, and cleansed him through the washing of water by the word; and till Thou hast presented him to Thyself a member of Thy glorious Church, without spot or wTinkie or any such thing!
Let us mark another fact, too, both in the incarnation and the death of Jesus. In the life of every human being, the two things that are most beyond his control are his birth and his death. Except in the case of those who sinfully or insanely take their death into their own hands, no choice is afforded us; we can but bow to our destiny in the one and in the other. In the case of Jesus, on the other hand, both His birth and His death, and all the circumstances attending them, were subject to His own calm determination. He willed to be born, and He willed to die, knowing the humiliation and sufferings attending each. He willed to be born among the beasts at Bethlehem; He willed to die amid thieves and fiends at Calvary!
3. Jesus was and continues to be both God and man for ever. It is not necessary here to do more than allude in passing to various other views that have been held on the person of Jesus: as, that He had only the appearance of a body — the error so warmly denounced by St John; that He had not a human soul, but that His divine nature was His soul; that the two natures subsisted in two persons very intimately connected; or that the two natures were blended into one compound nature, possessing the properties and qualities of both. Our doctrine is, that the two natures, with their distinct properties and qualities, belonged to Christ, yet that they made but one personality, one being, one Christ. And this is gathered from the texts in which the same being is spoken of as both God and man, and the attributes, now of God and now of man, are ascribed to His one person. Feed the flock of God, which he hath purchased with his own Hood, I am the bread of Life.^ ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.^ Who made these statements? ‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? asked the Jews, and are not his brethren with us?’ Yet the carpenter’s son, the same who went out one morninff in search of a fio; or other morsel to break His fast, claims not only to have, but to be the Bread of Life, and He who begged of the woman of Samaria a draught from Jacob’s well, claims not only to have, but to be the Water of Life. It is the same I who on the cross says, I thirst,’ and in the streets of Jerusalem, ‘If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.’ In the same J, the necessities of the human being and the infinite powers of the Mighty God are blended! How soon do we get beyond our depth when we occupy ourselves with such a theme! Like bathers on a sloping beach, we go out but a yard or two, and immediately we are in deep waters; or like Noahs dove, we roam hither and thither, but find no rest for the sole of our foot. After all, is it wonderful that it should be so? ‘Canst thou by searching find out God j canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is high as heaven, what canst thou know; deeper than hell, what canst thou think? The measure thereof is longer than the earth and broader than the sea, If in His unity even, God is incomprehensible, what must He not be in the Trinity of Persons? And what must He not be in the incarnation of one of these Persons, and the assumption of a creatures finite nature into union with His infinite nature in one person for ever?
But little though it be that we can understand of this great mystery, we see enough to assure us that from the wonderful constitution of His Person, Jesus Christ is amply sufficient for the work
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of redemption. There are cases in which a practised eye can tell beforehand whether or not a beam be equal to a weight, whether or not a back be equal to a burden. There is a large waggon, with goods piled heavily aloft, making no contemptible load; but here is a team of the strongest and noblest horses, and before they begin to pull, we know instinctively that they are able for the effort. There is a brawling stream, rushing through its channel of rock as if it would sweep all before it; yonder is a single plank wasted through long exposure, so palpably frail, that you cannot think of intrusting yourself to it; but here, a little further down, is a strong iron bridge spanning the stream; you have not a doubt but that it is sufficient for your weight, and that you may cross in safety. There is the awful burden of human sin, rising up like a mountain to heaven, and defying all mans resources and skill to remove it; but here is One who is at once the Son of God and the Son of Man, travailing in the greatness of His might, and constraining us to say Who art thou O great mountain? Before this Zerubbabel, thou shalt be a plain, If power, worth, and dignity be needed for the work of redemption, they are brought to the task in infinite degree by the Son of God; if sympathy, brotherhood, and a capacity of suffering be needed, they are brought in all fulness by the Son of Man. We have but to look at this Lamb of God to be convinced that He can take away the sin of the world. We have but to examine this foundation-stone, elect and precious, to see that it is fitted to bear the superstructure of the Church of the redeemed. ‘Behold my servant, whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my Spirit upon him, he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.... He shall not fail or be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his law.-*
In a somewhat less exalted point of view, it is most instructive to remember that Jesus Christ was successively an infant a child a boy a young man and a man of mature strength and years. An infant with that which is so characteristic of infancy its utter feebleness, its helpless and absolute dependence upon others; a child, obedient to His parents, accustoming Himself to control every desire of His own and conscientiously act in compliance with their will; a boy, and even then glad when it was said to Him, ‘Let us go up to the house of the Lord, and intent upon His Fathers business; a young man, quiet, modest, unobtrusive, calmly preparing Himself for the business of His after-life; and finally a man, toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,^ bravely fighting lifers great battles, and bent on finishing the work that was given Him to do. And He knows and understands all about these several stages of life. Let each of us lay hold of the great privilege of brotherhood with Him, claiming His sympathy and help, setting His high example before us, and aspiring to walk in His footsteps. For we have not an High Priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without