New Testament Commentaries, No. I: The Type
“For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” — Matt. xii. 40. “JTe teas delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” — Rom. iv. 25.
” Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as CJirist loas raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” — Rom. vi. 4.
WE have now the light of New Testament commentary to bring to bear upon the history. And the Lord Himself is the commentator. We will afterwards find that His comments set forth an analogy between Himself and Jonah in three points of view; in respect to a type — a contrasted parallel — and a sio-n. At present, we confine our attention to the consideration of the type.
It is evident, then, that our Lord invites a comparison, discovers a resemblance, institutes an analogy between the marvellous dealings of God with the prophet, and His own burial and resurrection. And this resemblance or analogy is, as we shall see, of that peculiar kind which we call a type. Now, in comparing the two — these two great interpositions of Godhead with Jonah and Jesus respectively — it is a matter of indifference which of them, in any particular point, is employed to throw light upon the other. The type, for the most part, will illustrate the antitype. But there may be points in which our clear knowledge of the antitype may be carried back to illustrate the type. This remark holds good in the case of the very first element of resemblance which we notice.
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I. In both cases there is a death and a resurrection.
The analogy which Christ institutes between His own experience and Jonah’s carries this in it: that, substantially, Jonah was, in the judgment, and by the hand of God, put to death and brought to life again. His life was forfeited; it was cancelled; and when, after three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, he was placed again on dry land, it was a new and fresh life on which he now entered. Substantially, Jonah underwent a death, a burial, and a resurrection. It is very remarkable indeed that Jonah speaks of his burial in the very same terms in which Messiah speaks of His: — “hell” and “corruption” “Hell,” — hades, or in other words, the state of the dead; the unseen world of disembodied souls, — on the one hand; and “corruption,” the pit, the grave, the prison of the untenanted body, on the other: — these are the terrible expressions which Jonah himself employs to describe his condition. For, in the first place, we hear him in the second verse saying: — “I cried by reason of mine affiiction unto the Lord, and he heard me; out of the belly of I tell cried I, and thou heardst me.” And, in the second place, in the sixth verse, where his faith is triumphing in his deliverance as if it were already come: — “The earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast Thou brought up my life from corrwption, O Lord my God.” Hell and corruption: — these are the terms by which Jonah designates his penalty — his penalty of the three days and three nights in the whale’s belly. And in what language does the Son of man speak in the Spirit concerning His endurance of three days and three nights in the heart of the earth? “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; ‘neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption” (Ps. xvi. 10). It is the language of burial and resurrection in both cases. Jonah’s life, then, was forfeited, cancelled, taken away and restored. It was a new life that Jonah had thereafter; newness of life. He was a new man; he was another creature; he was raised from the dead.
II. But secondly; in both cases, the death and burial are /^ judicial processes.
They are not in the ordinary course of nature: neither are they mere physical miracles; that is the least of it, in these tremendous movements. Each of them is a special, signal, judicial procedure; carried out by God, acting simply and strictly, as a judge, guarding the demands of justice, seeing to their execution and fulfilment. In one word: each of the processes is an atonement; an expiation; a sacrifice; pacifying the Divine Judge; satisfying Divine justice; abolishing guilt; restoring peace; effecting reconciliation.
Now the bringing out of the analogy, in this respect, will be helpful in showing that the death and resurrection of Christ constitute a proper, real, perfect, and proven satisfaction to the justice of God for the sins of His people; a doctrine, which almost all the theological heresies of the present day are, with more or less subtlety and refinement, labouring to overthrow.
It is assailed, for instance, by those who, under various coverts, deny that the law of God has any penalty, properly so called.
A penalty is that which is inflicted in satisfaction for a precept broken. Moreover, through the intervention of penalty, responsible beings are left free to obey or disobey; and the majesty of law, and the claims and supremacy of the Lawgiver, are still maintained, still kept consistent with the moral freedom of the subject, whether he continue in subjection or not. Save for this, — the existence and infliction of penalty, — subjects may preserve the honour of the Lawgiver if they choose to obey: but the Lawgiver cannot preserve it Himself, when they disobey. In the former case, therefore, even, it is to tliey)i that He is indebted for His sovereignty; as is proved by the fact, that in the latter case He cannot maintain it. A state of things like this, were the destruction of moral government and the dethronement of the Moral Governor. A result so shocking, which would make all the universe a hell, is prevented through the maintenance of unbending law — law with its alternative of precept on the one hand, and penalty on the other; law which, ruling inflexibly, says, “Do this, and live” — or, alternatively, “The soul that sinneth shall die.”
The death thus threatened is penalty, not chastisement: designed simply to uphold the law, not to reclaim the rebel; to satisfy the justice of God, not to correct and purify the sinner. Those we speak of, would make all suffering remedial; corrective; keeping in view the reclaiming of the offending transgressor: not penal; expiatory; satisfactory to the justice of the offended Ruler. This doctrine is followed out most naturally, and most consistently, in the desire and the demand for the abolition of capital punishment. For if punishment is to be purely corrective, humbling, alterative, and purifjdng to the criminal, then by all means, whatever he has done, spare his life; place him under discipline; mitigate the severity of his suffering, as his evil disposition is ameliorated: and having kept him from damaging others, and done your best to benefit him, watch the moment when your process has been so successful that he can be trusted loose again; watch that moment, and liberate him immediately: — for, if you carry the process one iota further, you as much violate your principle concerning punishment, and inflict that thing which you hate, — a penalty, — as if you had taken away his life. The nature of punishment, as penalty, becomes obvious, in the case of capital punishment, — in the taking away of life; and this is the reason why it is objected to. Anything short of death may and ought to be inflicted in combination with efforts to benefit the criminal. And so, on account of this combination, the element of penalty may be lost sight of. And hence the punishment of crime, in its strict, original, pure, and proper import, is always capable of being misunderstood, where it amounts to something short of death. But death is obvious and simple penalty; not even professing to promote the good of the criminal, but to preserve the glory of law, and satisfy the justice of the judge. Hence perhaps we may see a reason why all the misery inflicted by God in penal vengeance on sin, is gathered up under the one title, “death;” — “The wages of sin is death” In that case, there is no escaping the conclusion that the punishment is penal, retributive, satisfactory to justice; and not remedial, corrective, beneficial to the sinner.
The doctrine that destroys the very notion of penalty must, of course, subvert the very idea of an atonement; an atonement properly so called; a real and proper sacrifice for sin, a true satisfaction to justice.
The truth and reality of the atonement are equally subverted by those who acknowledge nothing more specific in the nature and design of Christ’s death than a striking exhibition of God’s hatred of sin, — an expedient by which He can pardon iniquity, without detriment to His own character, or rather reputation, for holiness.
The death of Christ does indeed strikingly exhibit God’s hatred of sin, and very awfully illustrates His character as the Holy One, But it accomplishes these results, only in so far as it is, and just because it is, an atonement — a true and proper infliction of the penalty of the law — a true and proper satisfaction to the justice of the Divine Judge. If God’s hatred of sin be held to lie open to doubt or suspicion in connection with the pardon of sin, and if His holiness is supposed to be obscured by His taking sinners into His friendship, it is vain to point to the Cross and say: — No; behold there, and in the sufferings of His Son, the Divine hatred of iniquity, the Lord’s indubitable and unspotted holiness. I say, this is utterly a vain and ineffectual reply, if the Cross is merely an expedient for illustrating God’s character and protecting God’s reputation for holiness, and not a true satisfaction for sin. Nay, more: if it be no expiation of sin, but a mere scenic representation of holiness; — a scenic representation of God’s hatred of sin, got up to save God from misrepresentation when He abstains from punishing sin; — a scenic representation, where there is real suffering, but no real satisfaction; real sufferino- inflicted and endured, but no real satisfaction rendered or accepted: — then I say, this is fitted to misrepresent the character of God; to misrepresent it unanswerably, hopelessly, blasphemously. For, if the dying Christ, suffering unsearchable woe on the tree, suffers and dies in such circumstances, the character of God, both in respect of righteousness and love, is overthrown. Is it conceivable that He should pursue His dear Son to the dust of death, merely to save His own reputation in the eyes of His creatures, and to wipe away an objection which they had taken to His procedure?
For mark this also. If there be no real satisfaction to Divine justice in the Cross, and no such satisfaction necessary; if God may pardon sin without a sacrifice of expiation and atonement; then the objection to His doing so is false. He does it without detriment to His holiness, or to any element in all His glorious character. In that case the objection against which the Cross is pleaded as a reply is groundless. The objection is based on a mere delusion. And is God’s dear Son to agonise in body and in soul on the tree of Calvary, in order to furnish, by His groans and death, an answer to a false and groundless objection? Is that
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a procedure of Divine love? Is that a dictate of Divine righteousness? Is that like the way of the Divine wisdom? Could not God rather have directly enlightened the blinded minds of the objectors, and shown them the groundlessness and untruth of the objection? Nay rather; having the hearts of all men in His keeping, could He not have prevented the objection ever rising to their fancy at all, seeing that (by the supposition) it is false and groundless? Surely the expedient needful on God’s part in such a case is plain enough; namely, one or other of two very simple alternatives; — a more effectual ruling of men’s minds, or a more effectual revelation of His own. In either of these two ways this false objection might have been dealt with, and not only answered but annihilated or prevented. Then, if so; and if, therefore, the inexpressible agonies of Christ crucified are brought in merely to provide an antidote to a misconstruction and misrepresentation of God’s procedure, into which none but the ignorant could be misled, and which they would abandon when properly instructed and enlightened; are we not compelled to raise now the very objection in resistless force, which, in a form having in it no force at all, the Cross has been needlessly introduced to remove? — an unanswerable objection to the righteousness of God now, when we see Him punishing the innocent as a stroke of policy merely, and because it is expedient!
If the Cross is to be represented as an answer to an objection at all, it is a forestalling answer. It is an answer to an objection which, without the Cross, would be well-grounded and true; — an objection which, instead of needing increase of light to remove it from the minds of the ignorant, the enlightened and the holy would feel the force of, just in proportion to their light and holiness. Nothing can so tremendously confirm that objection to the forgiveness of sins as “Broad School” evasions of the propitiatory nature of Christ’s death; and nothing can more gloriously remove it than the old evangelical doctrine of the Cross. The cross of Christ, as a real and proper atoning sacrifice, is not designed to dispel a mere ambiguity about the holiness of God, but primarily and immediately to meet a real claim of His justice, and to constitute a real satisfaction to His justice. It is not merely necessary that God should appear to be just, but that He should he just in pardoning iniquity, transgression, and sin. A mere expedient to save ci’ppearaiices is degrading in Divine transactions; most of all degrading as an explanation of that grandest Divine transaction that lights up the character of God from eternity unto eternity. By the ever-wondrous Cross of the Son of His love, God secures no appearances. He achieves the reality. By that Cross it is not merely represented, but achieved, that God is just in justifying the ungodly who believe. But it is as a true satisfaction for sin that the Cross achieves this glorious result, and confers on Him who died upon it the name of “Jesus” — Saviour. He is not our Saviour, on Broad School principles. On their own showing, He may in some sense be the Saviour of God’s reputation, but in no sense the Saviour of men’s souls. On their views, man can be saved without Him, and saved too without any detriment to God’s character, though God’s reputation might suffer in the eyes of some of His [creatures. How shocking! The Evangel which these men would overthrow makes the Cross of Christ a school of light, overflowing with the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But it does so, by making that Cross a real atonement — a true, and proper, and perfect propitiation. Obliterate this view of the Cross, and we know no instrument so powerful as that very Cross itself by which to bury in eternal darkness both the character of God and the hopes of men.
Now this feature — this fundamental feature — in the atonement, as an infliction of real penalty; no mere scenic representation of holiness, but a real satisfaction for sin — is well illustrated by the resemblance, the type, which we are now considering. For manifestly Jonah’s being cast into the sea — his being “three days and three nights in the whale’s belly” — was of the nature and had. the effect of expiation, atonement, sacrifice, satisfaction, in the true and proper meaning of these terms. Jonah’s crime offended Divine justice. Justice pursued, afflicted, detected, exposed, demanded the criminal. Every effort of his own to conceal himself, and every effort of others to save him, were useless. Justice had its one simple, unalterable, inflexible demand. Justice demanded him. And when the demand was met, justice was satisfied; “the sea ceased from her raging.” Here is the true and proper notion of a sacrifice for sin, an atonement, a satisfaction to Divine justice, a pacification of Divine anger. The
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idea of substitution also comes in to complete the resemblance; for though at first sight it does not seem to hold good, but rather the contrary, — seeing that on the one hand, Jonah was guilty and the crew innocent, and on the other, Jesus was holy and His people guilty, — yet in reality it does hold very exactly, the force of the type being held to begin as it ought to do, after Jesus is supposed to be embarked with us; united to us; made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
But the power of the analogy is not yet fully brought out by any means. And its full strength comes out just at that point where a little more examination might seem to prove that it breaks down. For it may be said, If you make Jonah’s sufferings a real atonement and satisfaction, then it seems to follow that he needed no forgiveness for his offence against God in fleeing from His presence; he needed not to draw upon the Divine mercy, for he satisfied Divine justice; and bearing the penalty in his own person, he offered a sufficient sacrifice for his own sin. And thus in bringing out the clear resemblance between the type and the antitype, we would place them on a level with each other, and make Christ’s own atonement not the only one. But is it not a clear doctrine of Scripture that there is but one sacrifice for sin, and that no other atonement can be accepted? that no sin can be forgiven save on the ground of that atonement alone?
Certainly the one only expiatory, guilt-removing sacrifice of atonement is that of Christ; and any view of Jonah’s sufferings inconsistent with that doctrine must be false. Any discussion, also, of the type which would make it supplemental to the antitype, and thereby argue the antitype imperfect, must proceed on some grievous error.
To preserve the perfection of the antitype, shall we then deny the reality of the type? Shall we say that the type was not a real atonement, but merely a representation of an atonement? With all submission, this would seem the very worst method of illustrating and maintaining the perfection of the antitype. For the perfection of the antitype implies reality in the type; but a type in which atonement is not real, but only representative and scenic, would be a poor means of exhibiting an atonement that is real and perfect. It was real — not scenic or pictorial — healing; real healing, though in a lower sphere — the sphere of bodily
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disease — that the brazen serpent conveyed. And without this, it would have but poorly conveyed instruction concerning real healing in the higher sphere of moral remedy and spiritual salvation.
The fact in the case before us is this. Jonah’s being “three days and three nights in the whale’s belly” was true and real satisfaction to justice and expiation of offence, in a lower sphere; and thus becomes a true type of real and perfect expiation in the ultimate and highest sphere, the moral government of God; expiation effected by the sacrifice of the Son of man, and sealed by His being “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
God, be it observed, may carry on one government within another. There may be His universal government, embracing heaven and earth and hell, — all responsible beings. It is the law of this government that we have violated by our apostasy and sin. It is the law of this government which God maintains, consistently with the forgiveness of sin, in His dispensation by Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Through that mediatorial dispensation, the anomalies of the world’s history will at the judgment-day be brought into final harmony with the simpler elements of God’s universal government, as these are exhibited in heaven, the home of the holy; in hell, the prison of the wicked. That Saviour, in whose person and work salvation and judgment are stored up, is the head of all principality and power. Personally He is God, God manifest in the flesh; and officially He is head over all things unto the Church, which is His body. And having stood in the room of the body, the Church, made sin for them that they might be made the righteousness of God in Him, He expiated their sin, pacified their offended Judge, satisfied Divine justice, magnified the Divine law, reconciled the Divine Father. Those who acquiesce in this arrangement, and, owning righteous liability to wrath, are content in faith and gratitude to take this expiation and satisfaction for their shield and their glory, stand right with Divine justice and are justified by the Divine Judge freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood. Entitled hereby to the favour and blessing of God, they obtain the Divine Spirit to purify and refine their moral nature into the Divine image, and are ultimately advanced to the Divine fellowship in glory among the principalities and powers of light. Those, on the other hand, who reject the great salvation, and live ungodly and impenitent and unbelieving, have their portion assigned at last in hell among the principalities and powers of darkness. And thereafter the universal moral government of God — simplified from the elements with which the anomalous estate of the human race as under a dispensation of forbearance at present complicate it — will move forward; unmingled love resting on the holy, unabated wrath on the wicked. Meantime, through the atonement of the Cross, the real and proper satisfaction for the sins of the elect, God is righteous in prolonging the probation of an apostate race; righteous in forbearing with the wicked; righteous in condemning those who reject the redemption; and righteous in forgiving and justifying them that believe. And in reference to His universal government; in relation to Himself as the universal and Eternal Judge, and to His necessary, universal, unchangeable Moral Law; in respect of guilt, in its strict and ultimate and essential nature, as consisting in liability to the wrath of the Eternal Judge and to condemnation under the penalty of the eternal law; it is impossible that there can be any atonement besides that of God’s Eternal Son in human flesh upon the cross. “By His one offering He hath for ever perfected them that are sanctified” (Heb. x. 14).
But while, in regard to the universal government of God, against which all sin in its essential nature is committed, there can be but one atonement, that of Christ upon the tree, is it not quite conceivable that there may be minor governments conducted within the universal one, quite consistent with it; highly fitted to illustrate it; having laws of their own; these laws penalties of their own, penalties which may give scope for atonements also; atonements as real as these penalties, these laws, these governments are; atonements which, just by being thus real and true and proper inflictions of penalty, satisfactions of law, and in maintenance of government, become, not scenic representations, but typical realities, real types of the true, real, and all-perfect atonement by the death of God’s Eternal Son? On this principle, the whole system of atonements under the Levitical economy is to be explained; and their illustrative, and especially their demonstrative and typical value, brought out. And it is this principle that will show the full force of the type of Jonah. As universal Moral Governor, — Governor of all the universe, of all responsible beings, and among others, the human race, — Jehovah was governor of the children of Israel regarded as men. But besides this, and besides all that in this capacity He revealed of Himself, He condescended to come into another and more specific relation towards them as Israel. He set up among them and over them as Israel, another government, more peculiar. He became their local, national King. Their government was a theocracy. God was at the head of it. It remained, however, the Jewish government, though God was at the head of it. It was embraced under, but not identical with. His great moral government over all. That government, local and national, like any other local and national government, — not any less because Jehovah was the national King, — had laws peculiar to itself; these laws, their penalties. Satisfaction, therefore, might be rendered, or sacrifices and atonements brought in, if such were the will of the King; and these atonements, though they left the element of offence against God as universal Ruler unatoned for, might really atone for offence against the minor government; and thereby really typify, to spiritual intelligence, a coming atonement satisfactory in relation to the universal government, — and greater, as that government, embracing all the universe and all eternity, is greater than the local and temporary government over Israel, ranging, as it did, over only a few miles in space and a few years in time.
And thus indeed it was. Jehovah, besides their governor in the sense in which He is the Moral Governor of all, was the national King of Israel. His throne, and court, and camp were amongst them. And this fact is sufficient to remove the calumny which shallow infidels have often brought against some portions of the Jewish code, as sanguinary and severe. Why should God doom to death, the man in Israel who should have dealings in witchcraft? Simply, because Jehovah was King, special King of the nation; and to seek knowledge and counsel — knowledge of fact, or counsel and instruction for duty — from other invisible power, was treason; a crime punished in every kingdom with death. Why should God pursue Achan with death, not turning from the fierceness of His anger, till the offender was stoned, and a heap of stones raised over him? Because Jehovah was King; and the King had taken the field; and His subjects were an army, and were under martial law: and the plain instructions of the King, the Generalissimo, being violated, the summary and brief procedure of martial law was the order of the day, — as in any other army, and under any general maintaining discipline among his troops, it would have been. And why should God pursue Jonah even unto death, for the sin of his fleeing from His presence, and refusing to carry His message to Nineveh? Because Jehovah was King: and Jonah, His aid-de-cainp under orders, became a vile deserter; and under any king would have been in like manner, to the utmost of that king’s power, pursued, arrested, and subjected to desertion’s penalty, which is death.
It is this very simple, but valuable view of God’s Jewish, local, national, temporary government, as within His government universal and eternal, which enables us to see in Jonah’s sufferings a real and proper expiation of a real offence against a real government and law; and yet a type — yea, thereby a real and true type — of the one only atonement wdiich satisfies for the breach of the eternal law, and satisfies the demands of eternal justice. Jonah’s primary and ultimate guilt against God, as the universal Moral Ruler, could be removed only by the great atonement, of which his own sufferings were a type. In the sphere of that government, there is but one atonement; and it is complete: for in the sphere of that eternal government, the Eternal Son in human flesh, through the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God. In the limited and local sphere of the national and temporary rule that God instituted over Israel, the particular and additional element of Jonah’s sin being not only an offence against the universal government of God, but against the Jewish theocracy, — this might be atoned for, justice in this respect might be satisfied — by Jonah’s own anguish in his marvellous burial and baptism of wrath — his marvellous and living grave in the deep. Hence the final argument from the analogy takes this form: — If in the sphere of the limited and temporary theocracy in Israel, three days’ and three nights’ burial in the deep cleansed an offender from the guilt of his offence against God as Israel’s king; then, in the universal sphere which embraces all worlds, — all earth, and heaven, and hell, and an eternity, — how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so was the Son of man three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. For “He was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification” (Kom. iv. 25).
in. The burial and resurrection of Jonah constituted the gate
/ by which the word of Jehovah passed forth from the Jewish to
the Gentile world. And in like manner in the antitype. The
death and resurrection of Christ was the breaking down of the
middle wall of partition.
In point of fact, it was only by his burial and baptism in the deep that Jonah became a prophet to Nineveh. That work of God, as matters stood, could not be accomplished otherwise. The obstacle to it could be removed only in this particular way. But this was successful. It was the means of carrying forth, from the limited and local Jewish theocracy, the message and revelation of God to a wider sphere. And thus the temporary and national government showed symptoms and capacities of world-wide expansion. But the perfection of this is found in the antitype. For an apostle, speaking of this expansion of the Church, thus testifies to Gentile converts: “Remember that when ye were without Christ ye were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in Himself of twain one new man, so making peace; and that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby; and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh” (Eph. ii. 11-17).
The carrying forth of the message to the Gentiles is thus attributed to the death of Christ. In a parallel passage in the similar Epistle to the Colossians, Paul refers more distinctly to the burial and resurrection. “Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath He quickened together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses: blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross” (Col. ii. 12-14).
Always have the Gentiles been indebted for the Divine message to a prophet three days and three nights under the penalty of death: in the case of Jonah, with Nineveh; in the case of Jesus, with the world.
IV. The analogy holds further in this respect, that the experiences of Jonah and Christ constitute, each in its own sphere, an enforcement of the message which each brings to the Gentiles. Our Lord Himself informs us that Jonas was a sign to the Ninevites. He not merely speaks of the “sign of Jonas” as something which should be ffiven to the oeneration to whom He was then addressing Himself; an idea for which there might be some apparent ground if we had only Matthew’s statements to go upon: “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas” (chap. xii. 39; xvi. 4). But in the gospel of Luke we have this particular added, namely, that Jonas was a sign to the Ninevites: “For as Jonas was a sign unto the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation” (chap. xi. 80). And in what respect was Jonas a sign unto the Ninevites? Clearly in the analogous respect in which the Son of man was to be a sign to that generation who heard His doctrine, and should hear His future history; in respect, namely, of His three days’ and three night’s endurance of the penalty of death. This is the sign of the prophet Jonas, repeated in the case of the Son of man: in this sense he was a sign to the Ninevites. Clearly, therefore, it follows that the Ninevites were informed of the prophet’s marvellous experience, as condemned and delivered unto death for offending the God, the King of Israel, and raised again in justification. The prophet himself has left no record of the fact that he
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gave them this information: yet the Lord is the best of commentators; and it is argued by “good and necessary inference” from the Lord’s method of employing and improving the history of Jonah as his type, that Jonah proclaimed to them the terrible death which he endured, and the blessed resurrection which he experienced; and these events as transpiring in such intimate connexion with his bringing to them the solemn message of death, — “Forty days, and Nineveh shall be destroyed.” And can we for a moment doubt that while the message spoke of nothing but death, of wrath, of destruction; and while the prophet would enforce the terrible certainty of retribution by narrating the inflexible pursuit of himself, even unto death, which this God conducted when he refused obedience; can we doubt that the mercy and miracle of their prophet’s resurrection was at once the ground and the gleam of hope which they caught hold of, as an encouragement to repent and call upon the Lord? The message, indeed, was all for death; and the sign alone contained a ground of hope, while a seal of death was in it too. Yet “the men of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonas.”
How is it, now that “a greater than Jonas is here “? The death and resurrection of Christ are to us the sign and evidence of the truth of His mission, the seal and enforcement of His message. Apostles uniformly grounded their appeals to Jews and Gentiles on the burial and resurrection of the Lord. The hinge of Peter’s sermon on Pentecost was this: “Him hath God raised up, having loosed the pains of death.” And again: “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses.” It is in like manner the burden and the strength of Paul’s sermon at Antioch. “God raised Him from the dead.” And both Peter to the Jews, and Paul to the Gentiles, quote and comment upon that 16th Psalm, so evidently the experience of Messiah’s soul, and expressive of Messiah’s hope and triumph, while it seems to have afforded Jonah a vocabulary of expression too: — “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption.” Sealed, attested, and enforced by this Divine Prophet’s burial and resurrection, there comes a message to us, as there came a message to Nineveh. It is a message not of death, but of life: — “He whom God raised up saw no corruption. Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by Him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses.” What say you, brethren, to the message, which in the name of the risen Jesus we bring; which rather the risen Jesus Himself brings by our word and witness-bearing? If the strait message of death to Nineveh seemed to have one small glimpse of hope faintly gleaming or glimmering upon it from the mercy and the power of God in raising up the witness-bearer from the deep, shall the message of eternal life, sealed by the resurrection from the dead of the Son of man, and irradiated with infinite glory and infinite love, have no weight with you? Oh, do not you who embrace it glory in it as a message of unmingled and eternal life, because you see all the death already suffered by the Son of man? And ye who reject it, Oh, do you not see that there can remain nothing but a fearful looking for of vengeance — a vengeance which, though threatened strongly on Nineveh, was loosed by their receiving the risen Jonah; but which in your case must be sealed eternally by your rejection of the risen Christ? “For the men of Nineveh shall rise up in the judgment with the unbelieving ones among you, and shall condemn you: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here” (Luke xi. 32).
V. Jonah’s experience was his preparation for new loyalty / and obedience; and in the kingdom of Christ, Christ’s risen life ‘’ is the source, in like manner, of newness of life and service.
Contemplate Jonah as he stands again on the dry land, on the margin of the deep. He is a new man; he is another creature. He has a new life; a new position towards God; a new career opening up before him. Any obstacle to that new career, any drawback on this new life that might be supposed to arise from the past, is gone; for the past itself is gone. His old life is entirely cancelled; all its guilt obliterated; all its sin atoned for; all its evils, interruptive of Divine fellowship and blessing, abolished — left behind in the depths of the sea. For he is dead to the past: and it has no more hold upon him; no more dominion over him; no more evidence against him; no more wrath in store for him. Oh the blessedness of sacrifice, of atonement! — a
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blessedness depending on atonement being real, proper, and perfect — the blessedness of satisfaction to justice; the satisfaction that is given in death, accepted and sealed in burial, witnessed and proclaimed by resurrection. Blessed is the man whose sins are covered, to whom the Lord imputeth no iniquity; in his spirit surely there need be no guile. Freed by perfect death from guilt — “for he that is dead is freed from sin” — the path of life is before him. The pulse of life beats strong within him. A new career opens to him. A charmed life now is his. “Lord, here am I: send me.”
Thus would Jonah feel. Thus did Jonah give himself now to newness of service and in newness of spirit; — his risen life free from the load of guilt; lightened of the dread embargo of death and condemnation; elastic, infallible, bounding, free! What though the city be exceeding great and wicked? What though the message be mysterious and sad? Jonah hesitates not, nor halts any more. It is the risen, redeemed, charmed, infallible life of God’s reconciled child. “Lord, here am I: send me.”
And is not this, O believer in a risen Christ, is not this the type and fashion of your life of faith? For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so have you in Christ been three days and three nights in the heart of the earth: and your life now is a risen life. There is no new life, no spiritual life, in all the race of Adam, save that which accrues from participation in the risen life of Christ. If you are quickened, it is in Christ. If you are raised up, it is together with Christ. If you sit in heavenly places — in the sphere of the spiritual and redeemed life — it is in Jesus Christ.
And in what does the risen life of Christ consist? and what is its source? And in what does it differ from His life in the days of His flesh? In the days of His flesh He rather lived our life than His own. He lived under the law; in our relation to the law, and under its condemnation; and he might well have said, “Behold, I die daily.” For as He bare the wrath of God; and just as in His favour is life, so in the wrath of God is death. For us, all the days of His flesh, He was made sin; and the wages of sin is death. But He died the death to an end — He died it all — He died it out. He died death dead, and done. The Son of man was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth; but
God loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be holden of them; and as it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. And as He rose, no bond of law kept hold upon Him any more; no condemnation laid its taint upon Him any more; the glory of His Father’s unmingled and eternal favour shone upon Him now for evermore; and in His Father’s favour He had life, His risen and eternal life. 0 poor and contrite sinner! that life was for thee, and is thine. That glory of the Father; that favour which is life; that loving-kindness which is better than life; are thine. This is thy risen life in Christ. For “we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. vi. 4).
Oh! with what freshness, — as of the morning light of an eternal Sabbath; and with what force, — as of the eternal power of Messiah’s resurrection; may that blessed appeal now break upon our ears: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God” (Col. iii 1).
Noie. — In a volume like this, it would have been out of place to deal much more fully with the various Broad School evasions of the Atonement. They all embody a denial of its nature and design as a Propitiation. And when that is denied, it is of no consequence what is set up as a substitute for it. All these evasions are thoroughly excluded by the Westminster Confession, chap. viii., passim, and chap. xi. sec. 3. They destroy all evidence alike of Highteousness and Love in the Divine administration. And, so far as they are embraced, and their legitimate spiritual influence is not counteracted, they render true conviction of sin, gracious contrition of heart, and conscious reconciliation to God, impossible. Their prevalence cannot but move every intelligent reader of Holy Scripture to the deepest grief.