The Death of The Cross - Chapter 4
Well might the apostle, as if in a burst
of holy admiration, cry aloud, as with trumpet voice, that heaven
and earth might hear, "Great is the mystery of godliness; God was
manifest in the flesh."
1Ti 3:16 A mystery indeed it
is, a great, a deep, an unfathomable mystery; for who can rightly
understand how the divine Word, the eternal Son of God, was made
flesh, and dwelt among us? "Who shall declare his generation?"
Isa 53:8 either that eternal
generation whereby he is the only-begotten Son of God, or the
generation of his sacred humanity in the womb of the Virgin, when
the Holy Ghost came upon her, and the power of the Highest
overshadowed her? These are the things "which the angels desire to
look into;" which they cannot understand, but reverently adore. And
well may we imitate their adoring admiration, not attempting to
understand, but believe, love, and revere; for well has it been
said,
Where reason fails, with all her powers,
There faith believes, and love adores.
Nor, if rightly taught and spiritually
led, shall we find this a barren, dry, or unprofitable subject. It
is "the great mystery of godliness;" therefore all godliness is
contained in it, and flows out of it. There never was, there never
will or can be a truly godly thought, feeling, or desire-no, not one
godly word or work, a godly heart or a godly life which does not
arise out of, and is not sustained by, the great mystery of an
incarnate God. There may be, indeed frequently is, as a legal
holiness, a fleshly piety, a tithing of mint, anise, and cummin, and
a profusion of good works, so called, independent of the grace that
dwells in the Lord the Lamb; but godliness, as consisting in a new
and heavenly birth, with all its attendant fruits and graces, can
only flow from the fullness of a covenant Head, communicating life to
the members of his mystical body. And this covenant Head, we know,
is the Son of God, once manifest in the flesh and now exalted to the
right hand of the Father. How clear on this point, that all life is
in him and out of him, are his own words of grace and truth:
"Because I live, ye shall live also;" "I am the way, the truth, and
the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by me;" "Except ye eat
the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in
you;" "I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abideth in me,
and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without me ye
can do nothing."
If, then, our hearts, as touched with an
unction from above, are bent after godliness, as a felt blessing;
if, as made daily more and more sensible of our miserable emptiness
and destitution, and the drying up of all creature springs of
happiness and holiness, we long more and more to realize the inward
possession of that promised well of water, springing up into
everlasting life, we shall desire to look more and more into this
heavenly mystery, and to have its transforming power and efficacy
more feelingly and experimentally made known to our souls. "If any
man thirst," said the blessed Lord, "let him come unto me and
drink;" and to show that not only should he drink for his own soul-s
happiness, but for the benefit of others, he graciously added, "He
that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly (or heart)
shall flow rivers of living water."
Joh 7:38 The whole of God-s
grace, mercy, and truth is laid up in, is revealed through, is
manifested by, the Son of his love; for "it pleased the Father that
in him should all fullness dwell;"
Col 1:19 and this as Immanuel,
God with us. Thus his sacred humanity, in union with his Divine
Person, is the channel of communication through which all the love
and mercy of God flow down to poor, guilty, miserable sinners, who
believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.
If blessed then with faith in living
exercise, we may draw near and behold the great mystery of
godliness. To tread by faith upon this holy ground is to come "unto
Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly
Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general
assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven,
and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made
perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the
blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than the blood of
Abel;"
Heb 12:22-24 for every
blessing of the new covenant, if we are but favoured with a living
faith in an incarnate God, is then experimentally as well as
eternally ours.
The last acts of the suffering obedience
of our adorable Redeemer are couched in the words of the apostle,
"And became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross."
Php 2:8 The death of Christ
was the fulfilment of the purpose for which he came into the world,
which was, "to give himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to
God for a sweet-smelling savour."
Eph 5:2 "Now once in the end
of the world hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of
himself."
Heb 9:26 The sufferings,
bloodshedding, and death of the Lord Jesus Christ were a sacrifice
offered for sin, and are therefore spoken of as a propitiation
Ro 3:25; 1Jo 2:2; 4:10 and an
atonement.
Ro 5:11
But in a sacrifice two
things are absolutely necessary: 1. That the blood of the victim should he shed,
for "without shedding of blood is no remission:" "It is the blood
that maketh an atonement for the soul;"
Le 17:11 and 2. That the victim should die;
for death being the penalty of disobedience,
Ge 2:17; Eze 18:4 the
sacrifice offered as an atonement for sin cannot be complete without
the death of the victim. In the sacrifice of himself, offering up
his sacred humanity on the altar of his Deity, the blessed Lord
accomplished these two essentials of a propitiatory offering.
1. His blood was shed upon the cross-the
actual living blood of his sacred humanity. It is therefore called
"the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and
without spot,"
1Pe 1:19 and "his own blood."
Ac 20:28; Heb 9:12 It was
precious as flowing from his sacred humanity; precious, as stamped
with all the validity and merit of Deity; precious in the sight of
God as a sweet smelling savour; and precious in the hearts of his
people as cleansing them from all sin. Sin is an evil so dreadful,
so hateful and abhorrent to his righteous character, so provoking to
his justice and holiness, that God could not pardon it unless an
atonement were made adequate to its fearful magnitude. Thousands of
rams and ten thousands of rivers of oil could not atone for sin. Did
all men consent to give their firstborn for their transgression, the
fruit of their body for the sin of their soul,
Mic 6:7 all could not suffice
to outweigh the magnitude or sin. Lebanon is not sufficient for a
burnt offering. Nothing short of the blood of the only-begotten Son
of God could be an atonement of sufficient worth, of equivalent
value.
2. But the death of the
victim was also required. He who freely and voluntarily stood in the
sinner-s place must die in his room, or the substitution could not
be effectual Here then, we see the mystery of the death of Jesus.
There was no natural mortality[1][i]
in that sacred humanity which the Lord assumed in the womb of the
Virgin. And yet he took a nature which could die by a voluntary act.
The whole of his obedience in his state of humiliation was
voluntary. Therefore the last act of it was as voluntary as the
first the death on the cross as much as the assumption in the
Virgin. The Lord-s own words are decisive here: "Therefore doth my
Father love me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again.
No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power
to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment
have I received of my Father."
Joh 10:17-18
The very merit of his obedience unto
death whereby it became capable of being imputed for righteousness
to the church of God consisted mainly in two things: the dignity of
the obedient Sufferer and the voluntariness of the sacrifice as an
act of obedience to the will of God. Had our blessed Lord not been
God, and that as the eternal Son of God, There would have been no
merit in his sufferings, blood shedding, and death. As the brightness
of God-s glory and the express image of his Person, as his
co-eternal Son he thought it not robbery-no unhallowed, disallowable
claim, to be equal with God;
Php 2:6 and therefore the very
infinity of Deity itself attached to his words and works so as to
stamp efficacious merit upon them. It was not because his humanity
was perfect that it was meritorious. Had his humanity been as
perfect as it was, if Deity were not in conjunction with it, no
merit could have been attached to it any more than there was merit
in the obedience of Adam, or in that of an angel. But being God as
well as man, the merit of Deity was stamped upon all the acts of the
obedient suffering humanity, so that, as we have sometimes said,
Godhead was in every drop of his precious blood.
Again, if the life of the blessed Lord
had been violently taken away, contrary to his will, where would
have been the obedience unto death? Had he been killed, so to speak,
by the cross-had died because he could not help dying, had his life
been violently torn from him, where would have been the laying down
of his life as the last act of his voluntary obedience? What power
could man have had over him? Had he so willed, he could have freed
himself from the hands of his enemies. Therefore he said unto
Pilate, "Thou couldest have no power at all against me except it
were given thee from above."
Joh 19:11 And again, "Thinkest
thou that I cannot pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me
more than twelve legions of angels?"
Mt 26:53 When, then, the band
of men and officers from the chief priests came to take him with
lanterns, and torches, and weapons, he freely "went forth" to yield
himself up; but when he said, "I am he," or rather, as the words
literally mean, "I AM," the glory of his eternal Deity so flashed
forth, that "they went backward, and fell to the ground."
Joh 18:3-6
Thus truly was he "brought as a lamb to
the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he
openeth not his mouth."
Isa 53:7 What heart can
conceive, what tongue express what his holy soul endured when "the
Lord laid upon him the iniquities of us all"? In the garden of
Gethsemane, what a load of guilt, what a weight of sin, what an
intolerable burden of the wrath of God did that sacred humanity
endure, until the pressure of sorrow and woe forced the drops of
blood to fall as sweat from his brow. The human nature, in its
weakness recoiled, as it were, from the cup of anguish put into his
hand. His body could scarce bear the load that pressed him down; his
soul, under the waves and billows of God-s wrath, sank in deep mire
where there was no standing, and came into deep waters where the
floods overflowed him.
Ps 69:1-2 And how could it be
otherwise when that sacred humanity was enduring all the wrath of
God, suffering the very pangs of hell, and wading in all the depths
of guilt and terror? When the blessed Lord was made sin (or a sin-offering)
for us, he endured in his holy soul all the pangs of distress,
horror, alarm, misery, and guilt that the elect would have felt in
hell for ever; and not only as any one of them would have felt, but
as the collective whole would have experienced under the outpouring
of the everlasting wrath of God. The anguish, the distress, the
darkness, the condemnation, the shame, the guilt, the unutterable
horror, that any or all of his quickened family have ever
experienced under a sense of God-s wrath, the curse of the law, and
the terrors of hell, are only faint, feeble reflections of what the
Lord felt in the garden and on the cross; for there were attendant
circumstances in his case which are not, and indeed cannot be in
theirs, and which made the distress and agony of his holy soul, both
in nature and degree, such as none but he could feel or know.
He as the eternal Son of
God, who had lain in his bosom before all worlds, had known all the
blessedness and happiness of the love and favour of the Father-his
own Father, shining upon him, for he was "by him as one brought up
with him, and was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him."
Pr 8:30
When, then, instead of love he felt his displeasure, instead of the
beams of his favour he experienced the frowns and terrors of his
wrath, instead of the light of his countenance he tasted the
darkness and gloom of desertion-what heart can conceive, what tongue
express the bitter anguish which must have wrung the soul of our
suffering Surety under this agonizing experience?[1][ii]
A few drops of the wrath of God let down into the conscience of a
child of God have made many a living soul cry out, "While I suffer
thy terrors I am distracted; thy fierce wrath goeth over me; thy
terrors have cut me off."
Ps 88:15-16 But what is all
that Job, Heman, Jeremiah, or Jonah experienced, compared with the
floods of anguish and terror which all but overwhelmed the soul of
our blessed Lord? We therefore read of him in the garden, when the
first pangs of his agony came on, that he "began to be sore amazed,
and to be very heavy;" and this made him say to his three disciples,
who were to be eye-witnesses of his sufferings,
1Pe 5:1 "My soul is exceeding
sorrowful, even unto death."
Mr 14:33-34 So great was that
load that his human nature must have sunk beneath the weight his
body and soul been rent asunder, but for four sustaining props: the
power of his Deity, for though that purposely did not display its
strength, it remained in firm union with his sacred humanity; the
help and support of the Holy Ghost sustaining his human nature under
the load laid upon it; the joy set before him, which enabled him in
the prospect to endure the cross, despising the shame;
Heb 12:2 and the strengthening
of the ministering angel sent from heaven.
Lu 22:43 Thus supported and
sustained, our gracious Redeemer sank not in the deep waters, but,
as our great High Priest, "offered up prayers and supplications,
with strong crying and tears, unto him that was able to save him
from death, and was heard in that he feared"
Heb 5:7
not as some have foolishly thought and said, fearing the miscarrying
of his undertaking, or that he should sink into hell, but because he
feared his heavenly Father with the reverence of a Son[1][iii]
for filial fear, with every other grace, was in the heart of Jesus
as his treasure.
Isa 11:2-3
Let us ever bear in mind that the
sufferings of the holy soul of Jesus were as real, that is, as
really felt, as the sufferings of his sacred body, and a thousand
times more intense and intolerable. Though beyond description
painful and agonizing, yet the sufferings of the body were light
indeed compared with the sufferings of the soul. It is so with the
saints of God themselves, when the Lord lays judgment to the line
and righteousness to the plummet in their conscience, and lets down
a sense of his anger and displeasure into their soul. What is all
bodily suffering compared to a sense of God-s displeasure and the
arrows of his wrath sticking in the conscience? So it was with our
great High Priest, when both as sacrificer and sacrificed, alike
priest and victim, he was bound with the cords of love and obedience
to the horns of the altar.
Ps 118:27 Surely never was
there such a pang since the foundations of the earth were laid as
that which rent and tore the soul of the Redeemer when the last drop
of agony was poured into the already overflowing cup, and he cried
out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Nature herself
sympathized with his sorrow, and was moved at his cry, for the earth
shook, the sun withdrew his light, and the graves yielded up their
dead. Yet thus was redemption-s work accomplished, sin atoned for
and blotted out, the wrath of God appeased, everlasting
righteousness brought in, and the church for ever reconciled and
saved.
When, then, the Lord had been fully
baptized with his baptism of suffering and blood, when he had drunk
the cup of sorrow and anguish to its last dregs, and had rendered
all the obedience which the law demanded and the will of God
required he cried out with a loud voice that heaven and earth might
hear, "It is finished!" and then, and not till then, he meekly bowed
his head, laid down his life, as the last act of his voluntary,
suffering obedience, and gave up the ghost.