Man's Wounded God
Rhe title of the chapter is startling, and needs some explanation. In the previous chapter has been considered the coming into
heaven of God’s perfect Man, bearing in His body the marks of His wounding, the evidences of His dying.
Attention still being fixed upon Him, it must be remembered that in that glory as ever, two things are true concerning Him. First, He is God’s Man; and secondly, He is man’s God.
Apart from Him, man has no perfect understanding of God. In Him man finds the full and final revelation of the Father. It is impossible for men to come, either in understanding or in actual communion, to the Father save through the risen glorified Son.
To state this positively therefore is to declare that man approaching God, does so for evermore, as He has revealed Himself in and through Jesus of Nazareth. Thus the ascended One is man’s God.
It is impossible to omit from that ascended and reigning One the wounds He bears. They are part of His Personality, and speak of the fulfilment of a purpose which was the purpose of God, and which was carried out by God in and through Jesus. If the perfect Manhood of Jesus be the perfect unveiling before the eyes of men of the essential glories of God, so the wounded Personality of Jesus is the unveiling before the eyes of men of that wounding of the heart of God, through which His grace was manifested, and wrought its mightiest victory.
In Apocalyptic vision John saw “in the midst of the throne... a Lamb as though it had been slain.”! The reference is without question to Christ. Two things are manifest: firstly, that He occupies the position of proper Deity. He is in the midst of the throne. Secondly, that He retains the evidences of suffering. It is “a Lamb
*Rev. 5. 6.
as though it had been slain.” This double fact speaks for evermore of the deepest fact that lies behind man’s redemption. This fact is that of the pain of God. In the book of Proverbs, the preacher asks, “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; But a broken spirit who can bear?”
Therein is a recognition of the fact that while the spirit of a man gives him strength for bearing physical infirmity, the deepest fact of sorrow possible to man is sorrow of the spirit.
Bearing in mind that illustration taken from the lower realm of human experience, turn now to a passage in the prophecy of Isaiah. “I gave My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not My face from shame and spitting.”2 Whatever the local and incidental application of these words, there is a general consensus of opinion that they are Messianic in their final application, finding their perfect fulfilment only in the experience of Jesus.
Turning to another passage in the same prophecy, “Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.”3 The idea that He was smitten of God and stricken of God is not accurate. It is rather the portrayal of One Who in perfect co-operation with God is bearing the smiting and the bruising that comes upon human guilt through the operation of the inexorable law of God. The suffering Servant is seen here as receiving those stripes which will make possible the healing of such as ought to have borne their own penalty. The word to be specially noticed now is the word “smitten.” That is the word translated “broken” in the quotation from the Proverbs. While the wounding of the body of Jesus was the outward and visible sign, it was in the wounding of the Spirit that the deepest mystery of His atoning suffering lay. Thus in Jesus, God is revealed, not only in His love, in His holiness, and in His justice; but in His sorrow, and in His pain.
At this point there are strong divergences of opinion. It has
*Proy. 18. 14. “Isa. 50. 6. “Isa. $3.4, 5- been maintained that God is incapable of sorrow, and that it was only in the fact of His Manhood that Jesus suffered in the place of man. Such a conception of God would seem to be utterly unwarranted by the whole revelation made of Him in Scripture, and finally in the Person of His Son. If the Man was a revelation of God, surely the Man of sorrows was a revelation of the God of sorrow. This capacity for sorrow is most evidently pre-supposed in the injunction of the apostle, “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.”* The word “grieve” here is purely a word indicating sorrow. There is no suspicion of anger in it. The injunction does not mean, Do not make the Spirit angry. It most certainly means, Do not cause Him sorrow. The fact to be established is that of the possibility of sorrow in the consciousness of God. If once this is established, then a new light shines through all the book. The final proof of the proposition is most evidently to be found in the simplest statement concerning God, namely, “God is love.”* Love is the capacity for joy. It is therefore, moreover, the capacity for sorrow. Joy and sorrow are twin sisters. They are so closely related that it is impossible to have capacity for one, without having also capacity for the other. That Jesus was the revelation of God in His marvellous wisdom, in His splendid strength, no one denies. When against tyranny, and oppression, and wrong, His anger flamed, it is at once conceded that the indignation of God was being revealed. Can it then be denied that the tears He shed in presence of the grief of the bereaved sisters, were revelations of the exquisite tenderness of the heart of the Divine, or have we any right to affirm that when the Man of Nazareth gazed upon beautiful Jerusalem the curse alone was the revelation of the Divine will 2 Were not the tears, and the tones of emotion in the voice, equally means of manifesting to men the love and the sorrow of the heart of God. It must of course be at once granted that God can never have any sorrow which is merely that of limitation, or that caused by the sense of mystery. His sorrow must ever be that of sympathy with that which is the result of His entering into the actual experiences of another, and making His own what that other feels. To understand this is to read with new intonation the startling questions that occur in the first book of the Bible. When God cried to Adam, *Eph. 4. 30, * John 4. 8.
“Where art thou:”* it was not so much the voice of outraged holiness, speaking in anger, as a violated love, wailing in compassion.
Jesus the wounded is therefore in expression to man, and in the fact of His own Personality, man’s wounded God. As the God-man on the earth was the Revelation of the Father in all the wondrous facts of His Personality, so the Lamb slain in the midst of the throne is still the Revelation of the Father in the unsullied light of the heavenly places. The harmony between Father and Son is unbroken. In the High Priest, Who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, there exists One Who expresses thus the fact of God’s consciousness of all human infirmity and all human sorrow.
The risen and ascended God-man, having received His Name, now assumes His place in the economy of God, and the Divine purpose is declared that every knee shall bow in submission; and every tongue shall confess in acclamation that He is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Thus we may see in Him the order of a new economy as to its central Personality, and as to the nature of its administration.
I. The central Personality being that of the ascended Man, is described as a “Lamb as though It had been slain,” and the throne is the symbol of order. That order had been violated through the terrible catastrophe of human sin. There was no possible way for its restoration but the way of the Cross. Jesus of Nazareth having wrought righteousness in life, and atonement in death, and having received the seal of perfect victory, in the miracle of resurrection, now passes to the very throne of power.
While it is thus seen that the only way to the throne was the way of the Cross, it is at once demonstrated that there could be no issue to the Cross of Christ other than His crowning and the ultimate restoration of the lost order. The ascended Man of Nazareth in the midst of the throne is none other than God the Son, invested in the counsel of the ever-blessed Trinity with all authority, upon the basis of redemption work accomplished, and victory won over all the enemies of the human race.
Il. The issue of this is self-evident. The Man of Nazareth in 1Gen. 3. 9.
the midst of the throne, occupies the seat of final authority, and therefore constitutes the last court of appeal. There can be no appeal beyond that throne. His word is the universal law, His verdict the irrevocable sentence. As in resurrection, God rejected man apart from Christ, so in Christ’s enthronement, He receives man in Him. Thus those who are united to Him are already seated in Him in the heavenlies. For evermore therefore the word of the Church is that which so often occurred in apostolic preaching, “Jesus is Lord.”1 It is the word of salvation to the individual, the word of reconstruction to society, the word of ultimate deliverance — to all the nations. Herein therefore lies the true centre of sin, as He Himself said, “of sin, because they believe not on Me.”? It is still true of the world at large that “Our Lord is now rejected, And by the world disowned.
By the many still neglected,
And by the few enthroned.”*
Yet He is God-enthroned, and the future of an individual, of society, of a nation is being determined by the relation of each to Him. The Man of Nazareth, ascending on high, led captivity captive, and passed beyond all principalities and powers, yea, beyond every name that is named to the very throne of God, and there to-day He sits, still rejected by men, and yet being crowned by thousands who listening to His voice, obey it.
It is impossible to pass from this contemplation of the ascension of Jesus to the centre of all government, and to see in Him man’s wounded God, without becoming conscious of a great comfort and of a great strength. The comfort ever comes as we behold on the throne of the Eternal, One Who bears amid the dazzling splendour, marks that tell of His having suffered and died for us men, that He might bring us into union with His unending joy and eternal Love.
Moreover, when the work presses, and the battle thickens, and the day seems long in coming, it is good for the heart to remember that the present conflict is with defeated foes, and that there is no room for question as to the final issue, for the Man of Nazareth is not only seated in the place of authority, He carries forward the work of active administration. This is a fact too often forgotten
*I Cor, 12. 3. ‘John 16. 9. *Major Whittle.
amid the turmoil and the strife. High over all the thrones of earth, stands that throne of the Eternal, and seated on it is the ascended Man, watching, ordering, preventing, and through all the apparent chaos, moving surely towards the ultimate triumph of the Infinite Love. He initiates the true policies, selects the proper agents, and even when man least understands, moves ever onward.
In the Person of the crowned Man of Nazareth justice acts for evermore in mercy, and mercy moves in unerring justice. Justice acts in mercy by pardoning, purifying, perfecting upon the basis of that Passion, the signs of which are in the evidences of the slaying. Mercy operates in justice by the justification, sanctification, glorification of those who submitting to the King, receive the blessing of the Saviour.