The Christ of God

IT DO not know that I can preface the following Chapters more suitably than by quoting the words of the Apostle John in his First Epistle: —

That which was from the beginning,

Which we have heard,

Which we have seen with our eyes,

Which we have gazed upon,

Which our hands have handled,

Of the Word of life;

For the life was manifested,

And we have seen it,

And bear witness,

And show unto you
That ETERNAL LIFE

Which was with the Father,

And was manifested unto us.

In such marvellous words does the beloved disciple describe the Person of Him who is ‘ the Christ of God.’ Let them suffice for an introduction to this volume. They give us some insight into the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord: naming His eternal name; proclaiming His eternal ancestry; showing us the mystery of His ineffable Person; introducing us into the fulness

VI

of His love; giving us a glimpse of His glorious light; exhibiting Him as the fountainhead of life; demonstrating to us the absolute certainty of the things made known concerning Him, so that there might not be on any mind the shadow of a doubt concerning either His grace or His glory.

Then, after the wondrous enumeration which He has thus given, the apostle thus announces the meaning and bearing of ajl this upon our own Christian life, — the life which begins in believing

’ o o

the record which God has given of His Son: —

‘ That which we have seen and heard declare we unto

YOU, THAT YE ALSO MAY HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH US: AND TRULY OUR FELLOWSHIP IS WITH THE FATHER, AND WITH HlS SON JESUS

Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your j oy may be full. ’

Tor nothing less than the fulness of joy is meant to be the portion of him who believeth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and nothing short of walking in the light of God ought to be the life of him who has received this Christ, and in receiving Him, has become a son of Him of whom it is written, ‘ God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.’

The Change, Nov. IS 73.

Let us read these words as the utterance of the divine mind concerning Him who is called ‘ the Christ of God’ (Luke ix. 20), or ‘the Lord’s Christ’ (Luke ii. 26), or ‘Christ the Lord’ (Luke ii. 11). Let us learn from them also the divine estimate of Him whom man refused to love, who was ‘despised and rejected of men,’ who ‘came unto His own, and His own received Him not.’

That peculiar name, ‘the Christ of God, em¬ bodies in it not so much the thoughts of God as

the thought of God, the summing up of all His thoughts, the one great idea, the root and centre of all others, containing in it that which it will require eternity to evolve: for He to whom that thought pertains is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last. (Rev. i. 8, 11, 17.)

That great thought, thus embodied in the person of the Christ of God, concerns us. It does not name us, nor our earth, and yet it has respect to both; and, in the history of this Christ, our own everlasting history is contained. The right know¬ ledge of Him, then, must be of infinite moment to us. To know Him rightly must be our very life; to know Him wrongly, or not to know Him at all, must be very death.

This great thought of God contains in it all that is worthy of the name of truth; and especially does it contain the highest form of truth, or that which we call wisdom, for wisdom is but the purest and highest kind of truth; and the know¬ ledge of the highest form of truth must bring with it the highest form of light, and peace, and liberty. ‘ We know the truth, and the truth makes us free’ (John viii. 32): for all error is bondage, it may be of the mind, or the conscience, or the heart; all error is darkness and disquietude: it is truth that illuminates and gladdens. The Christ, as the Truth, liberates us, as the Truth He gives peace, as the Truth He enlightens. For Him there can he no substitute to man. The fulness deposited in Him is to he found nowhere else. He only is * the Wisdom of God,’ and it is that Wisdom with which man has to do. He needs it, and it was appointed for him. When Jesus said, ‘ Learn of me,’ He spoke as the Wisdom of God, offering to reveal to us that wisdom in which rest is contained for the weary. For true wisdom is true rest, and divine wisdom is divine rest.

But this wisdom expresses itself in a purpose. That purpose is the result of thought, and the embodiment of this highest wisdom. God’s purpose in regard to man and man’s world is wrapt up in ‘ the Christ of God.’ This is called f the mystery of His will, according to His good plea¬ sure which He hath purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fulness of the times He might gather in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him, in whom we also have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the

4 The Christ of God.

purpose of Him who worketh all things after THE counsel of His own will, that we should he to the praise of His glory’ (Eph. i. 8-12).

God’s purpose, then, takes definite form in Christ, and all the various parts of that infinite purpose are connected with Him. The purpose is, like the Purposer, eternal, but the form of it belongs to time. The first announcement of the purpose was in Paradise, to our first parents; the first visible unfolding of it was at Bethlehem, and seemed nothing but a small fragment of human history, the birth of a poor Jewish child, in a southern village of Palestine, under the open sky. They who saw this did not comprehend it, nor read in it anything great or glorious. They could not have fathomed it, even had they tried to do so; but they did not try, because it seemed too insignificant to touch upon anything but the interests of an obscure Galilean family. Angels might see something of its hidden magnificence; man did not. It was a seed, the growth and fruit of which were to spread over the universe, and reach on into the ages to come; but the seed was unrecognised by human eyes: no one saw in it the greatest of all the great things that had come to pass from the beginning of time. In its undeveloped glory it lay as a common piece of Jewish village-story, none understanding the difference between that birth and any other birth that had there taken place; none reading in it the first visible revelation of Jehovah’s eternal purpose, nor imagining the wonders of grace, and power, and wisdom which were wrapt up in it, and to emerge from it in the fulness of time. Who among the ten thousands of Israel connected with that child the destinies of the universe? And how many, even of believing Israelites, gathered around that stony cradle, to sing the ancient song they knew so well: ‘ Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace ’? (Isa. ix. 6.) His mother might ‘ keep all these things, and ponder them in her heart’ (Luke ii. 19); but how little did even she comprehend the breadth and length, the height and depth, of the infinite plan thus visibly announced! Yet in that cradle was deposited the eternal purpose, and that mother’s arms encompassed that purpose as they clasped the babe on whose history all history was to turn.

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