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HISTORICAL
MANIFESTATION OF THE REDEEMER:
Humbled and Exalted
as to the Redeemer’s Person
the Humiliation as to His Work
Subordination, Passion, and Death
its Stages
the Descensus
the Resurrection
as to the Redeemer’s Person and Work
as to His Incarnation and the Evidences of Religion
the Ascension and Session
HISTORICAL
THEORIES OF THE TWO ESTATES
Monothelitism Adoptianism
Nihilianism
Necessity of Incarnation Lutheran Communicatio
Idiomatum and Ubiquity
Krypsis and Kenosis
Depotentiation
Modern Theories and Speculations
Anointing Symbol;
Messianic Predictions of Scripture
Moulded in Later Judaism Expectation of the Christ
The Personal Unction
One Mediator
The Official Unction
Baptism of John and of Holy Spirit
Gradual Assumption of Offices
Personal
Permanent
Universal
The High Priest, and His Function
The Sacrifice
Its Rites
Presentation, Sprinkling, Burning, Meal
Its Various Kinds
Burnt-offerings,
Peace-offerings,
Sin-offerings.
All united in Christ
Sacrificial Seasons
Passover, Day of Atonement, Combined
Intercession and Benediction
the Jewish and Christian
Prediction
Assumption
Function The process of the
Saviour’s history passes through two stages of Humiliation and Exaltation, and
His mediatorial work divides into three branches as He is Prophet, Priest, and
King. The history of the
Redeemer is the history of redemption; and the history of redemption fills, so
far as concerns man, both eternity and time, both heaven and earth. The stages
of the Lord’s progression, most comprehensively viewed, have, to speak
paradox, no beginning and no end. His goings were from everlasting. From His
pretemporal, eternal existence, He descended to become the second Head of
mankind; was for ages an unrevealed Reality in human affairs; in the fullness of
time became incarnate; finished His work upon earth; ascended into heaven; and
will, when His work is a second time finished, assume a final manifestation
which only the day will declare. Thus His estates are manifold. But as the
revealed Redeemer, as the Christ under the burden of His Messianic office, His
estates are two: that of Humiliation and that of Exaltation. The Estate of
Humiliation may be viewed, first, with regard to our Lord’s Person, and,
secondly, with regard to His work: a distinction, however, which must not be too
precisely maintained, inasmuch as the two are inseparable. HUMILIATION
OF THE INCARNATE PERSON The humiliation of the
Person of Christ began with His miraculous conception, and ended with His
session at the right hand of God. But it may be unfolded as the humble
development of His human nature, and the obscuration of the Divine and personal
Sonship. I. Our Lord took our
manhood in its sinless perfection; but under the law of its development, and
with the natural infirmities to which sin had reduced it. 1. The term Development, as applied to human nature
in contradistinction from the Divine, and also as differenced from the angelic,
is of wide application. Humanity has a purely physical development: the
beginning of which was not in the first man, who passed only through its later
stages. It has an intellectual development, pertaining to the soul as acting in
bodily organization. It has a moral development: which, though we know it only
as a restoration from sin to holiness, may be predicated of sinless human
nature. It has an historical development: the union of all the former processes
in the accomplishment of the end destined for mankind in the eternal idea. To
all these our Lord submitted. He might have assumed our nature in its ultimate
perfection; but then the design of redemption would have been either unpurposed
or unaccomplished. He took into personal union with Himself the germ of all that
is called Man; and in His sacred Person the human nature was unfolded to its
final perfectness in His ascension. He was found
in fashion as a man;[1]
even
as we shall hereafter be found conformed to the fashion of His glorified
humanity. 2. Our Lord’s manhood was subject to the
infirmities of our mortal condition. He was sent in
the likeness of sinful flesh.[2]
Sin bruised His heel before He bruised its head. He was a Man
of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,[3]
in
a lower as well as in a higher sense: He experienced, that is, the griefs and
sorrows of our common human condition which we can understand as well as the
griefs and sorrows of His Messianic burden which pass our knowledge. After
recording His descent from the Mount, St. Matthew begins his record of His
miraculous cures of human disease by quoting the prophecy concerning the
Righteous Servant: Himself;
took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.[4]
This
passage has no other design than to include our physical distress in the benefit
of the great vicarious intervention. The Scripture preserves the silence of
Divine decorum as to the literal participation of our Lord in the ills of the
flesh. But it reveals to us His humiliation in assuming a nature of itself
unshielded from infirmity. 3. The communion of natures, or their
incomprehensible union in one Person, requires us to regard both the development
and the infirmity of the lower nature as the humiliation of the Son Incarnate.
That an integral part of Himself should pass from stage to stage towards
perfection, and in that passage should be marred as well as perfected, was the
voluntary abasement of the Eternal Son: after being,
found in fashion as a man, He HUMBLED
HIMSELF;
[5]
and
that particular element of humility, which preceded and was the condition of
every other, did not cease until the heavens received Him to glory. II. Nor must we shrink
from applying the term humiliation to our Lord’s Person as Divine: not to His
Divinity, which is immutable Eternal Spirit; but to His Person as Divine-human,
and therefore to the Divinity as hiding for a season the manifestation of its
glory under the veil of the flesh. 1. We must begin with a
qualification. If, in the Person of the Mediator, we require the verity of the
unchanged Manhood, much more must we insist upon the verity of the unchangeable
Godhead. Sound theology is as tenacious of the Divine as of the human reality in
the One Christ. Any theory of the Redeemer’s humiliation which assumes the
possibility of His relinquishment or even suppression of any Divine attribute is
selfcondemned. Much more must we reject any theory that would make
the Eternal Son voluntarily reduce or retract His Divine Self into an abstract
potency or principle made concrete in human nature. It is only due honor to the
God Who was
manifest in the flesh[6]
that
this proposition should be left undefended: God in Christ is immutable, the
same yesterday and to-day and for ever.[7]
2. But the Person of the Christ was humbled during
His sojourn on earth; and that humiliation continued until He finally entered
the heavens. Hence while the Son tabernacled with us He did not in the exercise
of His ministry and in the work of redemption manifest His Divine attributes
beyond the extent to which His perfect human nature might be the organ of their
manifestation. The glory
as of the Only-begotten[8]
witnessed
by the Apostles was only what might be seen in the Incarnate Person: He manifested
forth His glory,[9]
but
not to the uttermost. This may be more clearly formulated in three ways. (1.)
The Incarnate Son was SUBORDINATE
TO THE FATHER in a specific humiliation which did not continue,
as touching His Person, after the ascension. Undoubtedly there is a sense in
which His subordination still continues, as there is a sense also in which it
will continue for ever in His fellowship with human nature. But, until the hour
when He could say, all
power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth,[10]
He
was, as the Servant of God and of man, in a deeply humbled and very special
state of subjection. From the first words concerning His mission, I
must
be in My Father’s will,[11]
down
to the last, My
Father is greater than I, [12]
this
truth rules all the Redeemer’s relations to His God and our God. (2.)
He was UNDER
THE GUIDANCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT during His earthly life
rather than under the independent agency of His Divine personality. Our Lord’s
human nature was sealed and consecrated and enriched with sevenfold perfection
by the Spirit given to Him not by
measure.[13]
This
particular subordination ceased when He who received became the Giver of the
Holy Ghost: indeed, it may be said to have ceased when the Redeemer laid down
His life OF
HIMSELF, and through
the ETERNAL
SPIRIT, [14]
His
own essential Divinity, offered
Himself to God for us. Until then, however, the Son as such
did not act through His human nature alone. His own Divine supremacy is in
abeyance, and, as the Representative of man, He is, like us, led
of the Spirit.[15]
(3.)
Hence the marked prominence which He gave always to His HUMAN
NATURE as
the organ of His self-revelation. Until the ascension, He spoke of Himself
chiefly as the Son of Man: a title which at once declares His unity with the
human race as its Representative and His submission to humanity as the sphere,
and as it were the only sphere, of His temporary and temporal
self-manifestation. These are the elements
and factors in the humiliation of the Divine-human Person. Their combination
presents to us an un-fathomable mystery. Separately and conjointly they pervade
the evangelical narrative, and equally the later Scripture based upon it. From
deeper and bolder investigation we are repelled by the limitation of our
faculties. Moreover, all that can
be further said must needs occupy attention when the humiliation of the
Redeemer’s work is considered, and the historical controversies on the subject
rise before us. HUMILIATION
OF THE REDEEMING WORK
Viewed in relation to
His work the humbled estate of Christ began with His baptism and ended with His
descent through death into Hades. It may be regarded as His personal submission
to be the Representative of a sinful race; and as His obedience to the
Father’s redeeming will. These converge to His Passion and Death, in which the
Redeemer’s humiliation was perfected. THE
REPRESENTATIVE OF SINNERS
That our Lord humbled
Himself to be the REPRESENTATIVE
OF SINFUL MAN is the first key to the solution of His entire
history on earth. God
sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law;[16]
made
under
law generally,
the Mosaic only included; and made
under
law: genómenon,
the same aorist participle that is used for the Incarnation, thus showing that
He was born under conditions of law. Now Christ was man, the Seed of the woman,
before He was Jewish man, the Seed of David: as the Seed of Abraham He was both
in one. 1. The history of the Messiah gives us His
humiliation as exhibited in His Israelitish relations first; or rather His human
humiliation first under its Israelitish aspect. Of this His CIRCUMCISION
was
the sign and seal. THAT
HOLY THING[17]—our
Lord’s human nature—underwent the rite that signified at once initiation
into the Hebrew covenant and the obligation to put away human sin. This rite was
in the case of our Lord the symbol of all obligation to the old law until He
Himself abrogated it, and His unconscious submission to the imputation of sin
even as His baptism was His conscious submission to it. Hence He was presented
in the Temple, though Greater than the Temple; became in His twelfth year a Son
of the law; and honored down to the end every Divine ordinance and legitimate
tradition in the old economy. 2. But He was the Representative of sinful mankind.
When He appeared unto Israel He appeared to the race of man. His Baptism and
Temptation were of universal import in this respect. He came to His BAPTISM
as
the Lamb
of God which taketh away the sin of THE
WORLD:[18]
though sinless, and
incapable of sin, He was in the river He repelled temptation as the Son of God incarnate,
Who, by the necessity of His Divine personality, could not be tempted
with evil;[22]
but
He repelled it in terms of human rejection, giving His example to tempted
mortals by the use of Scripture appropriate to sinners. He was made under law in
this sense too, that He underwent the human probationary test in which He was
not found wanting. In the SINLESS
HOLINESS of His life, also,
He was the Representative of sinful humanity: presenting to God the perfect
obedience due from mankind, and to man the perfect example which, through the
virtue of His expiatory death, man should be able to imitate. But here we must
modify the sense in which He was under law. It is the characteristic of
evangelical righteousness that it is not
under the law;[23]
that
its obedience is from within; and if this is true of the servants, much more was
it true of the Master. His holiness was not the fulfillment of duty imposed on
Him; but the new and Divine expression in His life of the commandment itself In Him, as in us, it was the perfect love of God
and perfect charity to man: love in Him, as in us, was the
fulfilling of the law.[24]
Finally,
in His VICARIOUS
PASSION, in His voluntary endurance of the penalty of
human sin, He was the Representative of sinners: literally made
under the law.[25]
How
literally is proved by three passages, which may be combined into one: Christ
was made sin
for us. Who knew no sin;[26]
hath
redeemed
us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us;[27]
was
made
under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.[28]
3. Being
found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself:[29]
the
voluntary humiliation which made the Holy One a Representative of sinners
extended over His whole life. It is impossible to point to any crisis when it
began. The shadow of His cross fell upon His entire path, though it did not
betray its influence on His thoughts and feelings and words until the hour
approached; until about the period when from the Tabor of His transfiguration He
lifted up His eyes and saw the Moriah of His sacrifice, after which He began to
speak to His disciples of His coming betrayal and death. Nor dare we curiously
inquire into the secrets of our Lord’s internal consciousness as bearing this
relation to mankind. Suffice that through this His
visage was so marred more than any man; that this made Him a
Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.[30]
To
be numbered
with the transgressors; and
that, not only by the transgressors themselves, but by His Father, Who put
Him to grief![31] OBEDIENCE
All this finds its
fuller Scriptural expression in the OBEDIENCE
which
the Incarnate Son rendered to the Mediatorial Will of the Father. The term is
generally limited to the active and passive righteousness; but, before
considering it in that more restricted sense, we may refer it to the general
subordination of the Redeemer during the whole course of His humbled estate. 1. He who is the Lord of all entered the world as
the Servant of God. I
came down from heaven, not to do Mine own mil, but the will of Him that sent 2. But the Obedience of Christ may be more
specifically viewed as the one great act of reparation to the Divine law which
He accomplished on the behalf of mankind: His Active and Passive Righteousness,
which are one. In His active obedience He perfectly fulfilled the obligation of
righteousness as the love of God and man; and thus it was proved that His
atonement was not needed for Himself. In His passive obedience He endured the
penalty of human transgression. But the relation of His one obedience to the
Atonement and our justification must be reserved for a later stage. Meanwhile it
is sufficient to mark the three cardinal passages in which it is referred to. For
as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of
One shall many be made righteous:[37]
this
includes the whole mediatorial work of Christ as the Second Adam, superabounding
against the sin of the race in the First Adam. Though
He were a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered:[38]
this
makes His great submission the voluntary act of the Eternal Son, Who needed it
not for Himself. Being
found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross:[39]
this
makes it the Divine-human act of the Redeemer consummated in death. Uniting the
three, we gather that the entire obedience of our Savior was one work, that it
was the act of the Divine Son, but voluntarily rendered in the nature of
mankind. THE
PASSION AND DEATH THE
DEATH of Christ was His perfect humiliation. Its atoning
character will be hereafter dwelt upon. For the present we must consider it as
an act of supreme submission, self-renunciation, and abasement. It was His
Passion generally, and His Crucifixion in particular. 1. The Passion or Suffering of the Redeemer must be
separated in thought from the precise manner of His decease. He was
obedient unto death.[40]
His
soul was exceeding
sorrowful, even unto death.[41]
He
was made a
little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death.[42]
This
was the penalty of human sin: not the destruction of soul and body merely, but
that severance of the spirit from God the uttermost terrors of which no mortal
has ever known. It was this which our Lord underwent. His physical dissolution
was after the manner of men: not of that did He say, Behold
and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow![43]
His
passion, or suffering, as a voluntary sacrifice for sin, brought with it the
death of the body as one of its effects. That crisis would have taken place in That was the death of
redemption. 2. The death of the Redeemer cannot, however, be
separated from His Crucifixion. He became
obedient unto death, EVEN
THE DEATH OF THE CROSS.[48]
The
sacred details of the scene of which the cross is the centre are given by all
the Evangelists, who here at last converge to a perfect unity: the harmony of
their narrative is broken by a few seeming contradictions, which appear on a
superficial view, but vanish before deeper investigation. The only one of these
that deserves mention is the apparent difference between the Synoptists and 3. Viewing the Passion
in its relation to the Crucifixion, we may venture to make a few further
remarks. (1.) As entering into the fulfillment of the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God,[56]
the
crucifixion may be said to have been an accident of the Passion. The Father made
the soul of His Servant an
offering for sin,[57]
and
His Son sin
for us;[58]
but
in what way that oblation should be offered was predetermined only in the
foresight of human malignity. The immolation on (2.)
The crucifixion of our Lord was, therefore, the fulfillment of prophecy: whether
the acted prophecy of type or the spoken prophecy of prediction. Isaac, the only
son of Abraham, bore the wood
of the burnt offering[61]
to
(3.)
The 4. Hence the cross was to our High Priest simply
the awful form which His altar assumed. His
own Self bare our sins in His own body on the tree:[71]
epi
to xulon,
as St. Peter invariably terms the Cross, and he only. The most affecting type of
the Eternal Son incarnate bore the wood on his shoulders to his 5.
But,
while the cross on which human malignity slew the Holy One is really the altar
on which He offered Himself, and we forget the tree in the altar into which it
was transformed, the Cross still remains as the sacred expression of the curse
which fell upon human sin as represented by the Just One. God made
Him to be sin for us Who knew no sin;[75]
and,
though it is not said that He made Him a curse for us, it is said: Christ
hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is
written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.[76]
In
His Holy Person sin was represented, and its penalty endured. It was condemned
in the flesh.[77]
But,
He who endured
the cross, despising the shame,[78]
thus
cast down the powers of evil, triumphing
over them in it.[79]
His
Cross is now the glory of Christianity. It is the seat whence the Prophet
teaches His highest lessons. It is the altar of His continually availing
sacrifice. And it is the throne of His Power as King in the universe. But the
Cross is no longer His or His alone. It is Divinely in
a figure transferred[80]
to
us. All our religion is the fellowship
of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death,[81]
and
bearing
His reproach.[82]
Our
sub-exemplar said, I
am crucified with Christ. LIMITS
OF THE HUMILIATION The humiliation of the
Redeemer, therefore, embraces the whole process of His incarnate life, from His
Conception to His Burial. These two extreme terms, however, must be carefully
defined. The first requires a distinction to be made between the Incarnation and
the Conception; the second, between the Burial and the Descent into Hades. (1.)
The Son of God might have exhibited His incarnate Person in majesty from the
beginning; in which case the Transfiguration glory would have been the rule and
not the exception. But, condescending to become incarnate, He was
conceived of the Holy Ghost and born after the manner of man. The distinction
between the Incarnation generally, and the humble manner of His assumption of
flesh, is subtle but not unimportant. (2.) And the end of His abasement was
reached when He became obedient
unto death.[83]
Obligation
went no further than the dissolution of soul and body. That separation was
attested by His entombment. But the burial itself has two aspects. It was the
descent of the body to the sepulcher; where the flesh of the Holy One of God saw
no corruption, being still part of His incarnate Person. Humiliation was
arrested at the moment that Death received the sacred Form, as the Baptist
received the Heavenly Candidate for baptism: COMEST
THOU TO ME?
[84]
Meanwhile
the exaltation of the Redeemer had already begun. For, His spirit, also part of
His incarnate Person, quickened by the Spirit of His Divinity, went down to the
nether world and received at the very moment of its severance from the body the
keys of Hades and of death.[85]
HUMILIATION
OF PERSON AND WORK ONE Having distinguished
between the humiliation of our Lord’s Person and that of His work, it is
expedient that we efface the distinction and regard His Person and His work as
one. Apart from the ministry
of redemption there is, theologically, no Person of Christ. Some important
results follow from this truth: first, the redeeming submission makes the
personal humiliation a profound reality; secondly, the inalienable Divine
dignity of the Redeemer gives its glory to the submission. 1. There is a sense in
which the Person of the Incarnate, as such, was incapable of abasement. His
assumption of a pure human nature, by” which the centre of His being, that is
His Personality, was not changed, was an act of infinite condescension, but not
of humiliation strictly so called. The self-determining or self-limiting act of
the Godhead in creating all things cannot be regarded as a derogation; nor was
it such in the specific union of Deity with manhood. But, as we shall hereafter
see that the Descent into Hades was the moment which united the deepest
abasement and the loftiest dignity of the Christ, so the moment of the
incarnation in the womb of the Virgin united the most glorious condescension of
the Second Person with His most profound abjection. His work began as a
suffering Redeemer, with the submission to conception and birth. Hence the
Person and the work cannot be separated. And the humiliation which the Redeemer
underwent must be regarded as the humiliation of the God-man. He assumed it,
even as He assumed the nature that rendered it possible. 2. As the glory of our
Lord’s Divinity was manifested forth in His Person and work, so that glory
shines through all the narratives of His humbled estate. Many lesser evidences
might be adduced; but we may be content with the three testimonies given by the
Father from heaven at the three great crises of that humiliation, and occasional
assertions of our Savior as to the voluntary and Divine character of His
submission. (1.) At the Baptism, which has been hitherto viewed
only as it was received by the Representative of sinners, the Divine attestation
was given: This
is My beloved Son.[86]
Here
was more than the perfect complacency of the Father in His Son now incarnate,
and the acknowledgment of the sinless development of the past; it was also a
symbolical exhibition of the Holy Trinity as to be revealed in redemption; and
the Triune glory, though it vanished from human observation, rested for ever on
the Saviour’s work. Midway in His career, or rather when preparing to
enter the path of final sorrow, our Lord received
from God the Father honor and glory[87]
on
the holy mount. That glory rests, slanting along a double perspective vista,
upon the two intervals, backwards to the Baptism and forward to the Passion.
Whatever other lessons the Transfiguration taught, it certainly declared that
the Holy Sufferer was the Divine Son; and that the brightness of the Father’s
glory in Him was only withdrawn or hidden, or veiled for a season. Finally, the
hour of our Saviour’s preparatory passion was magnified by a third
demonstration of the Father’s honor put upon His Son. He heard the Voice which
others did not distinguish; the Voice which declared that all the past of the
Redeemer had glorified the Divine Name, and that the still greater future would
still more abundantly glorify it: I
have both glorified it and will glorify it again.[88]
(2.)
On many occasions He asserted for Himself the Divine dignity which coexisted
with His humiliation. A Teacher
come from God,[89]
He re-uttered the law on
the Mount as His own, and the entire fabric of the Sermon asserts His supremacy.
While He vindicated His own observance of Sabbatic ordinance as real and true,
He declared Himself Lord
also of the Sabbath;[90]
and,
honoring the Before He bequeathed His peace He left them this
legacy, showing by its most affecting illustration in Himself the eternal
connection between humility as the source and peace as the result. The Feet
washing was the symbolical representation of His entire way of lowliness; and in
it the Master
and Lord[98]
set
the seal of Divine dignity on His earthly condescension. When, drawing very nigh
to the lowest limit of His abasement, He said, Believest
thou not that I am in the Father, and
the Father in Me?[99]
and,
more than that, He
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father, He Himself declared
that the whole of His past career had been a manifestation of God in the flesh: I
and My Father are one.[100]
We
have not, however, isolated passages only to rely on. The whole history of our
Lord’s humbled estate in the Gospels, and the exposition of it in the
Epistles, alike proclaim that in the mystery of His condescension to the lowest
depth His glory was revealed. As the Incarnate Son He said of Himself: Ought
not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?[101]
But
the glorification of Divine love waited not for the ascension. The Divine majesty of the Son was most richly and
blessedly manifested IN
the
redeeming sorrows and not alone AFTER
them. To the
Christian sentiment the obscuration of the Cross is the very darkness
which
God makes His secret
place. [102] The Redeemer’s Estate
of Exaltation may be viewed in its historical stages as a process: the Descent,
the Resurrection, and the Ascension; and with reference to its completeness as
affecting the Person and the Work of the Redeemer. These, however, need not be
separated: the latter branch may be merged in the former, partly because it has
been anticipated in the Humiliation, and, partly, because it enters into the
discussion of the Three Offices. The process of the
Redeemer’s exaltation, like that of His humiliation, is matter of Scriptural
testimony alone. We are taught that it began with the Descent into the invisible
world; that it was continued in His Resurrection; and that it was consummated in
His Ascension and Session at the right hand of God. THE DESCENT Between the lowest
point of our Lord’s humiliation and the beginning of His glorification there
was, there could be, no interval. In fact, the critical instant of His death was
at the same time the critical instant of His commencing triumph. Here we must
consider what the Descent into Hades imports, and how it belonged to the
exaltation of Christ: but in few words, as the light of Scripture here soon
fails us. 1. The phrase Descent into Hell, Descensus ad
Inferos, is not in the New Testament. St. Peter, bearing witness to the Lord’s
resurrection, quotes the words of David:[103]
Thou
wilt not leave My soul in Hades; neither wilt thou give Thine Holy One to see
corruption.[104]
The
Greek “Aidos
Hades,
answering to the Hebrew Sheol, signifies the Unseen State; which again
corresponds with the English Hell, according to its simple original meaning of
Covered or Hidden Depth, and without reference to punishment endured in it. Into
this State of the Dead our Lord entered: as to His body it was buried and
concealed in the sepulcher or visible representative of the invisible Hades into
which He entered as to His soul. It is observable, however, that 2. But that this
descent into Hades was at the same time the beginning of His exaltation is
evident from the following negative and positive considerations. (1.) Negatively, when our Lord cried It
is finished![106]
The
abasement of the Representative of mankind ended. The expiation of sin demanded
no more: it did not require that the Redeemer should be kept under the power of
death. After the tribute of His voluntary expiation death had no
more dominion over Him.[107]
He
triumphed over all the enemies of salvation on the cross. Death was at once His
last sacrifice, His triumph, and His release; it
was not possible that He should be holden of it:[108]
not
only because He was the
Prince of Life, but because the law had no further claim. When He
offered up His holy spirit, wrath to the uttermost was spent upon human sin; bat
He Himself was never the object of wrath, and the Father received the spirit
commended to Him as a sufficient sacrifice. The Holy One could not endure the
torments of the lost: the thought that He could and did is the opprobrium of one
of the darkest chapters of historical theology. Not in this sense did He make His
grave with the wicked.[109]
(2.)
Positively, He triumphed in death over death. First, in His one Person He kept
inviolate His human body, which did not undergo the material dissolution of its
elements: not because, as it is sometimes said, He was delivered from the grave
before corruption had time to affect His sacred flesh; but because the work of
death was arrested in the very instant of the severance of soul and body. As His
spirit dieth
no more,[110]
so
His body saw
no corruption.[111]
The
unviolated flesh of our Lord was, till the moment He was quickened, a silent
declaration of perfect victory: His Divinity never left His body, any more than
it forsook His spirit in its passage to the world of spirits. Secondly,
according to the testimony of two Apostles, our Lord triumphantly descended into
the lower world, and took possession of the kingdom of the dead. To
this end Christ both died, and, having
died, lived,
that He might be Lord both of the dead and living:[112]
these
words indefinitely distribute the mediatorial empire over man into its two great
provinces. He died, and in death took possession of the Dead; He revived, and
ruleth over the Living. Who
shall descend into the deep?[113]
(that
is, to bring up Christ again from the dead): here the deep, or the abyss, must refer to the
great Underworld. Now
that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended [first] into the lower
parts of the earth?[114]
whence,
in the strong figure of Scripture, He
led captivity captive.[115]
Triumphing
over all
the enemies of our salvation—sin, death, and Satan—in
it, the
cross, He declared His triumph in the Descent. Quickened
by the Spirit of
His Divinity, by
which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison:[116]
the
historical sequence—He
went, by the resurrection, Who is gone into heaven—indicates,
and will allow no other interpretation, that in the Interval the Redeemer
asserted His authority and lordship in the vast region where the
congregation of the dead[117]
is
the great; aggregate of mankind, the great assembly to which also we may apply
the words, In
the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.[118]
THE RESURRECTION The Resurrection of our
Lord, viewed in its widest import, is His exaltation. It is the perfect opposite
of His humbled estate. As a fact in His history it is only a stage in the
process of glorification; but the general strain of the New Testament teaches us
to regard it as absolutely the counterpart and antithesis of His humiliation. If
His death is the limit and measure of the Obedience, His resurrection is the
substance and sum of His dignity and reward. The preaching of the Apostles
everywhere gives prominence to these two truths as the pillars of the Christian
faith; and the evidence of the supreme miracle of the resurrection of Jesus is,
both as internal and external, sufficient to establish the dignity of His Person
and the authority of His work. This point of view alone commands all the
elements of the doctrine of Christ’s resurrection. IN
ITS DOGMATIC RELATIONS The Resurrection was
the glorification of the Redeemer’s Person and the seal of His atoning work. I. His rising from
death Divinely vindicated the Redeemer’s Person. As such, it was the
demonstration of His Divinity, as effected by His own power; and, as effected by
the Father, the declaration of His Incarnate dignity: both, in the unity of the
Holy Ghost, merged into the Godhead generally. 1. It is remarkable that in all our Lord’s
predictions of His resurrection He makes Himself the Agent. His first allusion
to it was among His earliest predictions: Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up;[119]
and
His last was among His latest: I
lay down My life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from Me, but I
lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and 1 have power to take it
again.[120]
It
may be objected that the words follow: this
commandment have I received of My Father. But the mediatorial
law of obedience included both death and resurrection; and, as certainly as the
commandment implied a personal voluntary surrender of life, the offering of
Himself in death, so certainly it implied the personal voluntary resumption of
that life. The mediatorial authority is distinct from the Divine power inherent
in the Son: this latter being the foundation of the former. He who was the Seed
of David after the flesh was declared
to be the Son of God with power,[121]
the
Son of God no longer in weakness and obscuration, according
to the Spirit of holiness. His
Divine nature, by
the resurrection from the dead. Hence the most general statement is that He
rose again the third day:
the
words containing rather an active than a passive meaning.[122]
2. Like every other
event in the history of the Mediator, the resurrection is ascribed to God the
Father. (1.) He was
raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father:[123]
that
Father
of glory whose
glory had its utmost manifestation in the power wherewith it wrought
in Christ when He raised Him from the dead,[124]
and,
as St. Peter adds, gave
Him glory.[125]
Hence
the glory of God the Father is His power in its exercise; and its result is the
Son’s resurrection. He to Whom the Incarnate offered the sacrifice of His
humiliation bestowed upon Him the reward of His resurrection. When the Redeemer
prayed, Glorify
Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee,[126]
He
had in view both His death and His rising again from the dead. As the crucified
and risen Son He was glorified by the Father. (2.)
It was not only, however, the resurrection to glory and reward: it was also the
Father’s testimony to the perfection of His Divine-human Person as the Son. 3. Generally, God
absolutely, without distinction of Persons, is said to have raised up the
Savior. (1.) This is in harmony
with the tenor of Scripture, which speaks everywhere of the processes of the
mediatorial history being under the arrangement and ordering of God. The resurrection of the Mediator is ascribed to God
always when the Messianic subordination is implied or made prominent: Him
God raised up the third day,[130]
the
same who anointed
Jesus of (2.)
It is referred to God also when Christ’s resurrection is connected with ours;
the demonstration of Divine power being made emphatic: the
exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the
working of His mighty power, which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from
the dead.[131]
So
in that remarkable passage: but
if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that
raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His
Spirit that dwelleth in you.[132]
This
text, thus read, seems to imply that the Holy Ghost was the Agent in the
quickening of Christ, and will be the Agent in ours. But another reading is to
be preferred: diá
toú enoikoún, on account of the Spirit that dwelleth in us. The
Holy Ghost is, strictly speaking, the Agent in spiritual quickening alone. (3.)
But it must be remembered that here, as everywhere in relation to the
Mediatorial Trinity, all actions proceeding ad extra are referred
interchangeably to the several Persons of the Trinity. The Father and the Son
and the Holy Ghost are one in the sending and raising up and dominion of Him Who
is, not the Christ of the Father, but THE
CHRIST OF GOD[133]
or
THE LORD’S
CHRIST.[134]
II. The resurrection
was the seal and glorification of His redeeming work. This may be viewed in
regard to the three offices hereafter to be mentioned individually, and to the
claims and character of the Messiah generally. Reserving the latter for the next
Section, let us mark how the Author and Finisher of the Christian Faith was in
the several offices in which He laid the foundations of that Faith justified or
approved by His resurrection. 1. As the Prophet or the Apostle of revelation He
appeals to all His works for the authentication of His teaching generally, and
to His resurrection in particular as the crowning work by which He would
vindicate His claim to be the Supreme Oracle to mankind. His first emphatic and
distinct prediction to the people at large was that concerning the raising of
the temple
of His body.[135]
He
again and again foreannounced it, calling attention to the
third day;[136]
and
His resurrection on that day was the seal and confirmation of His prophetic
mission. Not only so, however: it was also the entrance of the Prophet on a
wider sphere of teaching and influence for the whole world, and the preliminary
seal of that new function. It confirmed at once the words already spoken on
earth, and
the words that should be spoken from
heaven.[137]
Thus,
viewed in relation to the past, it was the ratification of His claim as a
prophetic Teacher; viewed in relation to the future, it was the credential of
His eternal teaching after its first principles had been given below. 2. As the High Priest
of the atoning sacrifice our Lord was justified in the resurrection. It declared
that His propitiatory offering was accepted as salvation from death, the penalty
of sin; and that the Spirit of a new life was obtained for all: both these in
one, and as summing up the benefits of the Atonement. (1.) As the Divine-HUMAN
Representative of
mankind Christ was
delivered for our offences;[138]
as
the Divine-human Representative He was
raised again for our justification. The strong evidence both of the vicarious character
and of the validity of our Lord’s sacrifice is given in His resurrection. His
release from death declared that He died not for His own sin, and that His
atonement was accepted for mankind: Who
is he that condemneth?[139]
It
is Christ that died, yea rather, that was raised. The
resurrection establishes the atoning character of the death. (2.)
His resurrection is the pledge of life—perfect and consummate life in every
definition of it—to His people. On it depended the gift of the Spirit of life,
the fruit of the Ascension. The Lord rose again as the First begotten from the
dead, the First
fruits of them that slept.[140]
If
we died with Him, we shall also live with Him.[141]
Because
I live, ye shall live also.[142]
3. As King our Lord was sealed, anointed, and
crowned in the resurrection. In virtue of His Divinity, on the one hand, and, on
the other, in anticipation of His atoning work, He was King even in His
humiliation, and taught and acted as such. Though He spoke of the kingdom of
heaven, and of the kingdom of God, He also spoke of His own kingdom: My kingdom
is not of this world,[143]
He
said to His judge; to His disciples: and
I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me; that ye may
eat and drink at My table in My kingdom.[144]
But
it was not until His resurrection that He was clothed with mediatorial
authority, according to the set time and order of the economy of grace. From the
sepulcher He went to the mountain in EVIDENCES
OF THE RESURRECTION
The Resurrection was
the assurance and infallible proof of the Messiahship of Jesus. It was the
Divine demonstration of the truth of the Christian revelation, and itself was
demonstrated by sufficient evidences. 1. The one great
argument of the New Testament is that Jesus of Nazareth, rejected and crucified
by the Jews, was their Messiah and the world’s Christ, the Son of God and the
Son of man. Before His death His Divine credentials of word and work approved
Him. To them He made His appeal. But He also appealed by
anticipation to His own future resurrection. This was His first public pledge
laid down in the 2. But for all ages and all times the one
demonstration of the Christ and His religion is His rising from the dead. This
is the view taken of it by the preachers of the Gospel in the Acts and the
teachers of the Christian Faith in the Epistles. They point to it in every
discourse as their own great credential, and as confirmed by the Holy Ghost
accompanying their words. They preached Jesus
and the Resurrection.[148]
II. Hence the evidences
of the Fact are sufficient. They are of two classes: first, the witness of those
to whom our Lord appeared; and, secondly, the witness of the Spirit after His
final departure: these, however, are to be combined for ever. The external
evidence is not alone; nor is the spiritual evidence of the Christian Faith or
demonstration of the Holy Ghost without a basis of facts which He thus
demonstrates to be true. 1. No part of our
Lord’s history is more minutely recorded than the history of the Forty days,
which must chiefly be regarded under this aspect, as a continuous practical
proof of the verity of His resurrection to His own chosen witnesses. (1.) These witnesses were selected as such: Him
God raised up the third day, and showed Him openly; not to all the people, but
unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with Him
after He rose from the dead.[150]
The
Lord never appeared to the Jews after their rejection of Him: the day of their
visitation was over. This also was foretold: I go
My way, and ye shall seek (2.)
Though the witnesses were chosen, Christ was, according to St. Peter, openly
shown of God; and the four Evangelists record the reasons of His prearranged
appearance. Five times He showed Himself alive on the day of His resurrection:
to Mary Magdalene, [153]
to
another company of women, [154]
to
Peter, [155]
to
two disciples on the way to Emmaus, [156]
to
the Eleven.[157]
To
these must be added another (3.)
The Lord’s occasional visits were accompanied by many
infallible proofs;[160]
by
many signs, tekmeeríois,
which could not deceive those who witnessed them. First, He distinguished the
day of His resurrection, the third day, by a more abundant exhibition of those
signs. The third day was connected with the ancient type of the wave-offering,
as the three days and three nights with the prophet Jonah: both meaning,
according to Hebrew computation, one whole day and two fragments. On
the morrow after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it;[161]
the
first fruits of harvest were waved before the Lord, and the lamb sacrificed,
thus typically uniting the paschal atoning sacrifice of Christ and its Easter
acceptance. On the fourteenth Nisan our Lord died, having eaten His Passover on
the preceding evening. The paschal Sabbath was the day of His rest in the grave;
on the sixteenth He rose; and to give evidence of the honor put on this third
day, which was to become the first, He appeared many times. Secondly, He took
more than one opportunity of showing the marks, tekmeería,[162]
of
His hands and His feet, and of exhibiting the verity of His body: even eating
and drinking with His disciples. Into the mystery of His double relation—to
the present world in a body that might be nourished, and to the spiritual world
in a body which suddenly appeared within closed doors—we cannot penetrate.
Suffice that the Lord added this special miracle of an occasional resumption of
His physical relations in order to demonstrate the reality of His resurrection. He could undergo the
Transfiguration at will, and by it closed every interview, and all His
appearances, until the ascension. Thirdly, the tokens of the reality of His
resurrection were the perfect identity of His human affections. He tarried to
convince the doubters by the Old Testament, and by exhibition of Himself; to
pardon the transgressors who had forsaken Him, especially Peter, who had added
denial to his abandonment, and had a private interview for his personal pardon
before the public interview for his official pardon; and to teach the things
concerning His kingdom. He thus showed Himself to be the same Jesus. 2. The evidence of our
Lord’s resurrection contained in the New-Testament records is unimpeachable.
Its assailants have always employed one of three methods of resisting it. (1.) They sometimes adopt the transcendent
principle of skepticism: the absolute rejection of this supreme miracle, simply
because it is miracle. To this all assaults on this fundamental fact of
Christianity come at last. The cumulative force of the evidences of every kind
is such that it cannot be resisted by those who believe in revelation and the
possibility of miraculous intervention. Those who reject the Lord’s
resurrection on this ground therefore reject with it all Divine revelation; they
persistently refuse to consider the evidences of it: not persuaded, incapable of
being persuaded, though
One rose from the dead.[163]
(2.)
Certain theories are devised which may account for the universal acceptance of
the fact on the part of the disciples. These may be reduced to two: either the
first preachers of Christ’s resurrection were impostors; or they were
enthusiasts, who, having once listened to the visionary tale of a supposed
appearance of Christ, propagated the delusion, and recorded it in legendary
narratives. But a careful consideration of the character of the Apostles, of the
simplicity of their faith in the resurrection of their Lord, of the
self-sacrificing labors by which they sealed their testimony even unto death,
will teach every candid mind that neither of these can be the solution. And the
narratives themselves in their coherence and tranquil consistency irresistibly
plead their own cause. (3.) These narratives
are sometimes subjected to a process of examination which detects in them
inconsistencies. It is true that there are certain differences in the minute
details of the day of the resurrection, even as there are differences in the
accounts of the Lord’s earlier history. But it must be remembered that the
witnesses give independent evidence, and that each records something not
mentioned by the others. Every Evangelist has his own design: St. Matthew, for
instance, keeps the final Mountain and Commission in view; St. Luke, Emmaus and
the Ascension; St. John, the more public appearances of the Risen Lord,
concerning which he says that he records as the third what was really the
eighth. St. Luke’s Gospel seems to make the Lord’s final departure take
place on the evening of the resurrection; but he himself, in the Acts, mentions
the forty days. The third Evangelist has two accounts of the Ascension, entirely
different in detail but the same in fact; just as he, a careful historian, gives
three narratives of Christ’s appearance to Saul, in which the minute
differences—such as that the companions of the Convert in one account see
without hearing, and in another hear without seeing—only confirm the accuracy
of the narrative. 3. The supreme Witness
of the resurrection of Christ was the Holy Ghost. To His evidence our Lord
referred before He departed. The Spirit accompanied the testimony of the
Apostles; He has made the Christian Church the abiding demonstration of the life
of its Head; and He gives His assurance in the hearts of all to whose penitent
faith He reveals the ascended Savior. (1.) The Apostles
preached the Lord’s resurrection as witnesses who were sustained by the
Spirit’s higher testimony: literally, a witness through, and in, and with
their preaching. And
we are His witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost, Whom God
hath given to them that obey Him.[164]
While
St. Peter preached the Risen Jesus to Cornelius the
Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the Word.[165]
This
was the reason that with
great power gave the Apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus;[166]
it
was because they declared it with the confidence of personal assurance, God
also bearing them witness, both by signs and wonders, and by divers powers, and
gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to His own will.[167]
(2.)
The history of the Christian Church, with its institutions, is one continuous
and everenlarging demonstration of the unseen life of its Ruler. The Lord’s
Day, which has been kept as the memorial of the resurrection from its very
morning, is itself testimony that there was never a time when the clear faith in
that vital Fact was not held. Similarly, the Eucharistic celebration has from
the beginning avowed reliance on a Death once suffered and in a Life which has
not been continued upon earth. From the day of Pentecost the Church has been
opposed by principalities and powers, human and superhuman; but never has the
resurrection of its Head and Defender been successfully assailed. (3.) The most universal and best evidence is the
influence of the unseen Redeemer by His Spirit in the hearts and lives of
believers. The later New Testament dwells on the working in us of the mighty
power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead.[168]
The
spiritual life of those who accept the Savior is to themselves a ground of
assurance that needs nothing to be added. They receive the records because they
are bound up with the Scriptures of truth; they believe the Event recorded
because it took place in harmony with ancient prediction, according to the
Lord’s own word, and in consistency with His own Divine power. They know that
no argument was brought against the fact by those who were most interested in
denying it at the beginning; and that no argument has been brought since that
has any force. But their infallible evidence is the life of their own souls. THE
ASCENSION AND SESSION
The Ascension of our
Lord is the historical term and end of His Exaltation; and, as such, may be
viewed in its preliminaries, recorded by all the Evangelists; as an actual event
recorded by St. Luke mainly; and in its sequel including the entire Apostolical
testimony to His Session and Intercession. I. The narrative of the Forty Days describes, not
only the sequel of the resurrection, but also the preparation for the ascension.
The seven weeks of interval corresponded to the seven weeks numbered from the
wave-offering, the type of CHRIST
THE FIRST-FRUITS. [169]
But
nothing in Old-Testament symbol or type points to the fortieth day as that of
the Saviour’s going up. That day was chosen by our Lord: but not arbitrarily.
In His love to His disciples and in His wise provision for the future He gave to
them the larger part of this time. It may be supposed that His main purpose was
to wean them from their dependence on His personal and visible presence. Hence
the gradually diminishing appearances. Hence that one preliminary note of the
ascension: Touch
Me not, for I am not yet ascended![170]
This
explains the blended remembrances of the past and anticipations of the future:
of which the last chapter of The resurrection was the final removal from the
conditions of human life; and, so far as concerned Himself, there was no reason
to keep Him on earth. His tarrying so long in a midway condition was due to His
tender concern for His disciples. And the result was that when He finally
departed they were fully prepared for the new economy of His spiritual
manifestation; they surrendered Him resignedly to the heavens which must
receive Him;[171]
and
they returned
to II. The history of the
Event is recorded only by St. Luke. His account in the Gospel describes it
rather as the end of the Lord’s life on earth, in the Acts with reference
rather to His mediatorial work in heaven and final return to finish redemption. 1. The Ascension was
the end of the Saviour’s earthly course. (1.) Until that day Jesus went
in and out among us;[173]
and
His life had been spent amidst unglorified human conditions. The forty days were
also days
of His flesh,[174]
for
all His manifestations were in many respects like those of former times: the
spiritual vanishings were anticipations of the ascension, and are not alluded to
save as marking the appearances themselves. (2.)
Hence the clear historical narrative which runs on with a continuous detail of
what Jesus
began both to do and to teach until the day in which He was received up.[175]
The
Lord led
them out as far as to It was not, as before, a disappearance into
Hades—between which and the upper world the Forty Days alternated—but a
local withdrawal into what is called the
Presence of God,[178]
concerning
which we cannot and we need not form any conception. During His life He spoke of
His ascent as belonging to His incarnation: the Son of Man was in heaven, and
had ascended
up to heaven,[179]
in
virtue of the hypostatic union. But in this final going up the heaven
must receive[180]
Him:
words which must retain their full significance, though they are quite
consistent with His receiving the heavens. (3.)
The Apostles were witnesses of this event. The Resurrection neither they nor any
mortal witnessed; but the Forty Days were a continuous evidence to them that
their Lord had risen. The entire community of believers was not summoned to 2. As the beginning of a new life the ascension was
the passing into a new sphere of mediatorial action, the taking possession of the
Presence of God for
His people, in a departure from earth which preceded a return from heaven or His
appearing the
second time.[181]
(1.)
With the Lord’s ascension is always connected the priestly office of
intercession wherein as the High Priest He pleads His propitiation
for the sins of the whole world,[182]
and
as His people’s Surety pleads especially for them. We
have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous; Who is passed into
the heavens,[183]
even
as His type entereth
into the holy place every year.[184]
And
the government of the Church is in His hands, as seated on the mediatorial
throne: to exercise the dominion He went up, even as He came down to obtain it
through death. Hence it is said to be a dignity with
His right hand[185]
conferred
on the Son by the Father, and to be the reward of His humiliation unto death. In
this sense heaven is the centre of the universe, from which the heavens, the
earth, and things under the earth are surveyed and governed by the Incarnate
Lord. But the further consideration of this subject belongs to the doctrine of
the Offices of Christ. (2.)
The account of the Acts connects the departure of our Lord with His return:
hence the prophetic Mount
called Olivet[186],
the
new angelic announcement which in every word respects the future and not the
past, and the emphasis laid upon the first Promise of the perfected Christ: This
same Jesus, Which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner
as ye have seen Him go into heaven.[187]
The
Second Coming is predicted as soon as the first is past; this being the link of
continuity between the old covenant and the new: in both there is a great
expectation of the Savior. Meanwhile, the theological bearing of the Ascension
of our Lord is most affectingly taught in connection with the doctrine of His
people’s union with Him. In virtue of this, believers are blessed with
all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ;[188]
and
seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of
God.[189]
And,
according to the last words of the New Testament, their one deep longing is to
see Him again: Even
so, come, Lord Jesus![190]
III. The sequel of the
Ascension is the Session at the right hand of God in heaven; with its
attestation on earth, the Pentecostal descent of the Holy Spirit, the Promise of
the New Covenant. 1. The Session was the subject of our Saviour’s
prophecy, equally with the events that preceded it. His first reference to it
was indirect: He
saith unto them, How then doth David in Spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord
said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, till I make Thine enemies Thy
footstool?[191]
Afterwards,
in His own day of judgment, when He was adjured by the high priest and confessed
Himself the Son of God, He varied the phrase: Hereafter
shall ye see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power.[192]
This
emphatic twofold allusion of Christ is echoed throughout the New Testament, and
rules all that follows. (1.)
The Apostle Peter speaks of Him as raised by
the right hand of God[193]
to
sit on
the right hand of God.[194]
And
he constantly refers to the Session, sometimes with and sometimes without the
term, to express the mediatorial authority of Christ as an administration of the
power of God: to shed forth the influences of that Holy Ghost Who represents
upon earth the Lord’s administration in heaven. But St. Paul is the elect
expositor of this authority, and he sums up the entire doctrine in his Ephesian
Epistle He
raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly
places, far above all principality, and power and might, and dominion, and every
name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come;
and hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over all
things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that fillet all in
all.[195]
(2.)
Hence the Ascension is described as the beginning of a supreme authority which
is to end when He hath
put all enemies under His feet.[196]
Until
then our Lord’s Session is passive also, as in the attitude of expectation: But
He, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right
hand of God; from henceforth expecting till His enemies be made His footstool.[197]
But
Stephen, for his assurance in death, saw the
Son of Man STANDING
on
the right hand of God.[198]
(3.)
But, lastly, this delegated and terminable authority is based upon an eternal
prerogative of Session: He who sat
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high was THE
SON,
Whom
He hath appointed heir of all things, by Whom also He made the worlds; before His
incarnation being
the effulgence of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding
all things by the word of His power.[199]
Nor
could He have sat on the right hand of God, in universal supremacy, had He not
in His eternal dignity been in the
Bosom of the Father.[200]
2. The Pentecostal gift of the Holy Ghost was at
once the immediate proof of the verity of the ascension, and demonstration of
the authority to which it led. The prediction of the Psalmist, Thou
hast received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God
might dwell among them,[201]
was
interpreted both by our Lord and by (1.)
For this there were Ten days of preparation. Whether or not the disciples
connected the promised Gift with the Fiftieth day, the end of the seven weeks,
we cannot tell: probably they did. The indefinite not
many days hence[203]
might suggest to the
presentiment of some among them what others were not prepared to infer.
Evidently their Master’s purpose was to make this interval a period of
discipline: without His personal presence in the flesh, and without His
spiritual manifestation by the Holy Ghost, they were reduced for a season to a
midway condition of which there is no parallel. But these days were days of
prayer; of personal and united preparation for the most glorious revelation
heaven had ever sent down to earth. The circle of the Apostolic company was made
complete by the choice of St. Matthias; and this by lot, as in an intermediate
dispensation between the Lord’s departure and the coming of the Spirit. Thus
the organic body prepared for the Spirit by the Lord Himself was made whole
after the great breach that had been made in it. And the individual believers
were prepared for the high Gift by meditation upon their own powerlessness and
need, and by fervent prayer for its bestowment. Hence the history of the Eve of
Pentecost is narrated in the Acts with careful precision as the record of the
final preparations for this consummate fullness of time, the descent of the Holy
Ghost. (2.)
The Gift itself was the demonstration of the Session of Christ at the right hand
of God. Having
received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this,
which ye, now see and hear.[204]
SCRIPTURAL
DEVELOPMENT OF
THE TWO ESTATES The Two Estates of the
Redeemer are exhibited throughout the Scriptures with the same precision and
uniformity as that which we have marked in the doctrine of the Two Natures in
the Incarnate Lord. But we need not trace so carefully the process of Biblical
teaching on this subject, as it has been to a great extent anticipated in the
development of the doctrine of Christ’s Person. I. In the Old Testament
the history of the future Minister of redemption is foreshadowed as a career
leading through deep humiliation to glory; the Messiah being a mediatorial
Person, whose attributes are Divine and human, but Who always occupies a
subordinate position in carrying out the Divine counsel. The first distant
intimation of this is the phrase Angel of Jehovah, where Jehovah is the Agent of
Jehovah. In due time the term Messiah, or The Anointed, prophetically designated
the same Angel as incarnate: the future Revealer of the Divine will,
Propitiation for human sin, and Ruler of a saved and ransomed people. But this
Messiah is described as consecrated for God by God, first to a state of the
deepest depression and then to a state of the highest majesty In Isaiah’s
prophecy, which gave our Lord His own term Minister, the coming of the Incarnate
is predicted as that of a Servant. All the Psalms and the Prophets, however,
agree in ascribing to the Redeemer a subordination to God which is made
mysteriously consistent with Divine titles and honors. In Him the Alpha and
Omega meet. II. Our Lord never
defines the secret of His incarnate Person; never speaks of His two natures as
united in one; nor does He once propose the mystery of His examination and its
results to the acceptance of His disciples. He reveals it distinctly but does
not distinctly explain it, thus tacitly rebuking beforehand the future
presumption of speculative theology. We must consider only therefore the kind of
testimony which He gives as to the two Estates respectively. 1. In many ways He
declares His subordination in His humbled state; but always speaks of it as a
voluntary submission. (1.) He terms Himself the Son of Man rather than
the Son of God, though not refusing the latter name. He speaks of Himself as
come not
to be ministered unto, but to minister;[208]
of
His doctrine as what
My Father hath taught Me, and the things
which I have heard of Him:[209]
of His mediatorial work as
a commission or commandment received
of My Father,[210]
for
the strength to accomplish which He prayed, while for its gradual disclosure, or
the hour of each crisis, He waited: Of
that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven,
neither the Son, but the Father.[211]
He
spoke of God as apart from Himself: His God as well as ours. He said, My
Father is greater than I,[212]
when
speaking of His going to Him through the way of humble suffering. Not so much in
individual passages, as in the uniform tone of His self-disclosure, we mark the
Redeemer’s strict subordination to the Father as the God and Head of the
redeeming economy. (2.)
That the incarnate Jesus in His humbled estate voluntarily made Himself subject,
while retaining the eternal dignity of His Divinity, is obvious from these
assertions of His oneness with the Father to which reference has already been
made, from His demand of honor equal to that paid to the Father, and especially
from His anticipation of a return of the glory which He surrendered in His
incarnation. There are some passages in which the voluntary subordination and
the coequal dignity are combined in a manner that ought not to be misunderstood.
For
as the Father hath life in Himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life
in Himself. [213]
I
came forth and am come from God; neither came I of Myself, but He sent Me.[214]
The
profoundest word, however, is not in St. John, but in St. Matthew: All
things are delivered unto Me of My Father; and no one knoweth the Son, but the
Father; neither doth any know the Father save the Son.[215]
(3.)
Hence we are constrained to interpret our Lord’s testimony to His exinanition
in a sense that shall make it consistent with His consciousness of equality with
the Father. This is the great difficulty of the subject; but it
is a Scriptural difficulty, committed to humble faith;
and this doctrine of
a relative and only mediatorial inferiority is much more consonant with the
Christian idea of God than the theories of a contracted or depotentiated
Divinity which are invented in its stead. 2. The Saviour’s
testimonies to His state of dignity are in word before His ascension, in word
and manifestation afterwards. (1.) It is important to
consider in what way our Lord was wont to look forward to His future dignity.
Here we mark the same twofold strain that we find throughout the subject. On the one hand, He speaks of His exaltation as
simply the avowal to the universe of His true character and dignity. No
man hath ascended into heaven, but He that descended out of heaven, even the Son
of Man which is in heaven:[216]
the
Savior, foreseeing His ascension, speaks of it as adding nothing to His real
dignity, because He is never out of heaven. Human nature in contact with Him is
already exalted. He who heard these words had just before heard the Lord say: Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.[217]
But
when the Lord at the close prayed for His coming glorification we understand
that Jesus, for
the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross,[218]
anticipating
His reward. (2.)
After His ascension the Redeemer most expressly teaches us the continuance of a
mediatorial subjection in harmony with the essential Divinity of His
Divine-human Person. As to the fact of the abiding subordination, He speaks of
Himself as the Minister of redemption precisely in the same terms as while on
earth. There is literally no difference. He bids His servants speak of Him as
the Prince and the Savior Whom God exalted
with His right hand,[219]
as
the Son or the Servant sent
to bless.[220]
There
is no more glorious manifestation of Christ than that to Saul in his conversion,
and there we hear our Lord saying that his office should be to turn men from
the power of Satan unto God . . . by faith that is in Me.[221]
So
in the Epistle to the Church of Philadelphia He speaks of the
temple of My God and
the
name of My God:[222]
reminding
us of the words before the ascension, My
Father and your Father, My God and your God.[223]
But
that this continuing ministry is consistent with His supreme Divinity, we have
the Apocalyptic testimony When III. The Two Estates
occupy a prominent place in the Apostolical theology. It will be expedient to
refer only to a few salient points: the subordination generally; its continuance
until the last day; its continuance for ever. 1. The subordination of our Lord is in one sense
limited to the days of His flesh, and ends with His exaltation at the ascension.
One passage is entirely dedicated to this subject: that in the Epistle to the
Philippians which makes the voluntary condescension of Christ the example of
Christian humility. The Eternal Son, retaining His equality with God, and still
being in
the form of God, yet
made
Himself of no reputation,[226]
or
emptied Himself. It is too often forgotten that the subjection of Christ is here
altogether voluntary; that it is matter of self-imputation rather than of an
impossible reality. As in
the form of God, Christ was still the possessor of Divine
attributes, but He did not use or manifest them. He
thought it not robbery to be equal with God: He did not, as to His human nature, think fit to
arrogate the display of His equality with God. But it was in
the form of a servant that
He
humbled Himself; while
His examination was that of the God-man, in respect, however, to His Divinity as
making the manhood its organ. 2. The exalted state is, further, not described as
the resumption of our Lord’s pretemporal glory apart from His incarnate
subjection. Though the fullness
of the Godhead[227]
is
in Him, it is in Him bodily,[228]
and
as flowing from the pleasure of the Father: the eternal generation was not an
act of the Divine will, but in the necessity of the Divine essence; but it
pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell after the ascension. Hence
in the Corinthian Epistles we have some distinct exhibitions of the
subordination. The
Head of Christ is God:[229]
this
is perhaps the most striking expression of the fact that even in heaven the
Incarnate is mediatorially subject. And
Christ is God’s[230]
declares
the same truth. But it is the current doctrine of the Epistles; and finds its
reason as well as its expression in the sequel of the passage above quoted: therefore
God also hath highly exalted Him![231]
3. There is a sense, however, in which the
subordination is represented as abiding eternally. Only one passage expressly
refers to this; but it is one which is exceedingly explicit, and gives so much
prominence to the subject that we must not pass it by as belonging to the hidden
and reserved mysteries of the Christian faith. Then
shall the Son also Himself be subjected to Him that put all things under Him:
autós ho Huiós hupotageésetai.[232]
Here,
theologically at least, we might take a middle signification: the Son shall subject
Himself. It
is indeed as if, at the close of the redeeming economy, He reaffirms His
original assumption of our nature. He will not fold it or lay it aside as a
vesture. Remaining in the unity of the Father and the Holy Ghost—God shall be All
in all—He
will end the whole history and mystery of redemption by ratifying His
incarnation for ever. 4. Before leaving the Scriptural view of this
subject we should observe that the sacred writers give no formula to express the
mediatorial relation of the Son incarnate to the Father and to the Holy Trinity.
All that is meant by subordination is asserted, but the word is not used; nor is
any synonym employed until the subjection of the last day is referred to. This
is a remarkable circumstance and points to a striking theological paradox. It
might seem that the following was the order of the Lord’s historical process:
The Logos in the Trinity, the humiliation of the incarnate state, the elevation
to supreme dignity after the resurrection, the abdication at the close of all
mediatorial authority as such, and the voluntary continuance of the Son as
incarnate in a subordination to the Eternal Trinity that does not impair the
dignity of the Son as God in the unity of the Father and of the Holy Ghost. The
union of man with His Creator is thus made perfect: not by Pantheistic
absorption into the Godhead, but by union with God in the Son. The Lamb is
in the midst of the throne;[233]
and
He is the
Head of the Church, the Savior of the Body,[234]
for
ever. The earlier
developments of historical Christology were limited to the relation of the two
natures in the one Person of the Christ Subsequent controversies had reference
rather to the nature of the subordinate estate into which the Redeemer
descended. At the Reformation the characteristics of the Divine-human
humiliation on the one hand, and on the other its reversal in the ascended
dignity, were profoundly studied and became the ground of many divisions. A few
general remarks will be enough to indicate the direction which theological study
here takes: first, in mediaeval theology; then in the theories of Lutheranism;
and,
lastly, in some miscellaneous tendencies of modern thought. I. After the settlement
of the Four Ecumenical Councils the Christological discussions reappeared in
controversies referring rather to the degree in which the Divine Person partook
of the humiliation of the human nature. Four speculative tendencies may, without
violence, be brought into relation with each other. 1. First the
Monophysite and Monothelite errors made our Lord’s humbled estate a real
renunciation of both His natures, without seeming to do so. These were simply
the reflex of the Eutychian heresy, which has never vanished from theology. (1.) The Monophysite
dogma has been called Theopaschitism, because its tendency was to assign one
nature as well as one Person to Christ, Who therefore as a composite Godman was
crucified: the emphasis of course resting on the Divine nature which absorbed
the human, the passion was exaggerated into a suffering of God Hence the name.
This error was held in a great variety of forms; in its one general principle it
was the link of transition between pure Eutychianism, which absorbed the man in
the God, and the philosophical Eutychianism of modern Lutheran theories.
Monophysites are supposed to linger only among the Eastern sects: in reality the
divines of the Depotentiation school are their representatives. (2.) The Monothelite heresy was the same with a
difference: the former error just mentioned had reference to the human nature of
Christ generally; this latter to His single will only. Now if there was in
Christ only one will, there could be only one nature; for the will cannot be
divided. Hence the humanity was abolished in this dogma, and the humiliation of
the Son of God was His sinking to such a point as to say The true doctrine taught indeed ONE
THEANDRIC, OPERATION, but as the result of two
wills, the human being of necessity submissive to the Divine or necessarily one
with it in act. 2. The heresy sometimes
called Adoptianism was taught by two Spanish divines in the eighth century, and
was condemned at the Synod of Frankfurt, A.D. 794. It was really a revival of
Nestorianism; as it kept apart the Divine and the human son-ship of our Lord,
making the human nature partaker of the Divine Sonship only by an act of
heavenly and gracious adoption. Thus the humbled estate of the God-man was
merely the expression of His alliance with a human person of consummate and more
than human excellence. Alcuin and other opponents of this view laid great
stress on the fact that the humiliation of Christ was His union with our nature,
not with a human individual: “In absumtione carnis a Deo, persona perit
hominis, non natura.” 3. The term Nihilianism is suggested by a controversy
once vigorous, but of little importance save as the expression of an erroneous
protest against a still greater error. It took up the word that defeated the
error just mentioned—that is, the IMPERSONALITY of our Lord’s human
nature—and defended the position that the Second Person underwent no change
whatever through the assumption of flesh. The notion was condemned by the
Lateran Council of A.D. 1215, as tending to reduce the Incarnation to a
nullity. It was the very opposite of Theopaschitism before, and of the
Depotentiation theory that followed, the Reformation: these errors both being
based on the assumption that God in one of the Divine Persons is capable of
being reduced to such a point as to combine with a finite personality as its
power and energy. But error cannot cast out error; and this theory perverted the
true dogma of the impersonality of the human nature of our Lord by excluding the
reality of a human presentation of His Divine human Person. It went far towards
abolishing the Humbled Estate, and leaving only a Docetic Christianity. 4. Very much more
interesting was the mediaeval discussion as to whether the suffering of the
God-man was essentially necessary, or whether His union with human nature was
attended with humiliation only on account of sin. While the question is confined
to these limits the answer is plain enough: we know of no manhood as the object
of the Redeemer’s condescension apart from sin, and of no Mediator who was not
made sin for us. But the question does not rest there 5. This beautiful
speculation involves another topic of very great importance. The question is not
simply whether or not human sin rendered necessary the Incarnation, but whether
man was not really the created expression of God’s eternal idea in His Son.
The Infinite and the finite were one in Him. The universal Spirit in God found
its incarnate embodiment, realized itself, in humanity as conceived in the
historical Jesus. The Pantheistic Christology of Duns Scotus in the early middle
ages laid the foundation for modern German transcendental philosophy, which,
whether in Kant or Hegel, is intimately bound up with the necessary evolving of
the Trinity through Christ. But from these speculations we must turn away. II. At the Reformation,
the Lutheran and the Reformed dogmas concerning our Lord’s Two Estates widely
disported. 1. The Lutheran was based upon the principle of a COMMUNIO
NATURARUM, or COMMUNICATIO
IDIOMATUM: the latter
implying that the attributes of the Divinity were imparted to the manhood in the
unity of the Person; the former implying further that the one nature is
interpenetrated by the other, that what one nature is and does the other is and
does. The “Natura humana est in Christo capax Divinae.” The Reformed
doctrine denied this: “Finitum non est capax Infiniti.” It asserted that the
humanity of Christ never was nor ever could be possessed of Divine attributes.
It may be well to consider more at large the Lutheran dogmatics on this subject.
It divides the Communicatio Idiomatum, or interchange of attributes, into three
branches. (1.) The GENUS
IDIOMATICUM: this signifies the use of predicates taken from
either nature and applied to the whole Person. (2.) The GENUS
AUCHEMATICUM SEU MAJESTATIGUM: this signifies the ascription of Divine
attributes to the human nature, in the POSSESSION
from the conception, in the
full USE from
the ascension. (3.) The GENUS
APOTELESMATICUM: this signifies the
ascription of mediatorial acts to the One Agent. It is obvious that the second
of these contains the peculiarity of Lutheran doctrine. The Reformed
theologians, and the great body of the Christian Church, have always denied the
communication of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence in any sense to the
human nature of our Lord. 2. The application of
the theory to the Two Estates may be traced in two opposite directions: first,
in regard to the deification of the human nature generally in the ascension, and
particularly the ubiquity of that nature in the Eucharist; secondly, in regard
to the more modern theories of retraction or depotentiation of Divinity in the
Incarnate Man. (1.) In the Lutheran theology the ascension of
Christ is regarded as the assumption of His human nature into the full dignity
and use of all Divine perfections. During His humiliation He possessed the
attributes of omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence, but voluntarily
declined to exhibit them. After the exaltation there was in Him the
fullness of the Godhead bodily.[235]
His
body became not merely the organ of these attributes, but itself possessed them.
He entered not into the local heaven, but into the immensity of God. The heavens
did not receive Him, but He received the heavens: so are the words hón
deí mén déxasthai áchri [236]
translated
by the advocates of this view. (2.)
Hence the soul and body of Christ have the ubiquity of the Godhead. Not,
however, that the actual flesh of the Redeemer can be literally extended to
infinity; but that the hypostatic union gives the Divine power and knowledge to
the Glorified Man, and therefore the omnipresence also. The application of this
doctrine to the Saviour’s offices will be hereafter seen. Suffice here to
observe that it is made to explain the anomaly in the prophetic office that the
Divine-human Revealer was ignorant of some things while on earth: in Him now are
hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The Glorified King now sways the
destinies of the universe as God-man: while on earth He had, no such authority
save in the unity of the Triune God. As Priest the Redeemer gives the virtue of
omnipresence now to the sacrifice He offered for sin, dispensing to the
communicants at the Eucharist His glorified body and blood at every altar. The
theology of Lutheranism generally attaches much importance to the physical
aspect of redemption. It seems to regard
corporeal embodiment as “the end of all God’s ways:” to use the favorite
language of some of its modern exponents. (3.) In the beginning of the seventeenth century a
controversy on this subject sprang up in Lutheranism. One party maintained that
the humiliation of Christ was the hiding of Divine attributes which in His human
estate He possessed: this idea of krypsis, or concealment, gave them
their name of Kryptists. Another party affirmed that there was an actual kenosis,
or emptying Himself, of the Divine attributes which belonged to the human nature
in virtue of the hypostatical union: hence they were Kenotists. The former view
invested Jesus as man with omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence from the
moment of the Conception; but this possession was veiled during the earthly
life, and avowed only after the Ascension. The latter regarded Him as having the
ktoosis
or
possession of these attributes from His birth, but as utterly renouncing their chresis
or
use until He was glorified. The former view, held by the (4.) During the present
century the condescension of the Son of God in the Incarnation has been
profoundly studied by German and French divines under the influence of a certain
Eutychianism that has never ceased to cling to Lutheran Christology, but
modified by the transcendental philosophy which sees in Christ the developing
body of the Spirit of the Godhead coming to perfect personality in the Holy
Ghost. The various opinions to which the names of individual men are attached
need not be discussed at length; that would be to exaggerate their importance.
It will be enough to mention the one element common to them all: namely, that of
a literal merging of the Divinity of the Son into the finite Spirit of the Man
Christ Jesus. The general idea takes many forms: sometimes simply Pantheistic,
the Eternal Spirit thinking itself as a Person in Christ; sometimes purely
Eutychian, God the Son contracted into humanity, and both growing together to
perfection; sometimes Apollinarian, the Potency of the Son working dynamically
in the psychical soul and flesh of Jesus. But all these hypotheses have been
shown by anticipation to be incapable of resisting the simple argument of the
essential Immutability of the Divine nature. III, Many modern
theories have been revived from antiquity or invented afresh which have striven
to break the fall of the Divine into the human, the chief of these being the
interposition of a human pre-existent soul of Christ. 1. The one fundamental principle in these sporadic
speculations—they have never been formulated in any Confessions—is that the
pure humanity of our Lord was as independent of the race of man as that of Adam
was when he came from the Hand and Breath of his Maker. Denying, with the
Scripture, that Jesus owed anything to a human father, they deny, without or in
opposition to Scripture, that He derived anything from a human mother. The
Virgin was no more than the instrument or channel through which a Divine
humanity, existing before the foundation of the world or from eternity, was
introduced by the Holy Ghost into human history. The passages relied upon for
the maintenance of this notion are such as that in which our Lord says, I
came down from heaven,[237]
and
the
Second Man is [the Lord] from heaven,[238]
which,
with some like them, are made to signify that the human nature as well as the
Divine was pre-existent in eternity. 2. Modern Mysticism has furnished in Behmen, Poiret,
Barclay, AEtinger, Goschel, Petersen, and others, the most attractive forms of
this theory. In them the pure ideal humanity of Jesus—which it is hard however
to conceive as purely ideal—was one with the Word from eternity, as it were in
a pretemporal incarnation. After the fashion of that humanity man was created:
and the incarnate Jesus of history literally came
unto His own.[239]
AEtinger, one of the most
unexceptionable of Mystics, says: “Because Wisdom, before the Incarnation, was
the visible Image of the invisible God, therefore the Son, in comparison with
the Being of all beings, is something relatively incorporeal, although He too is
a pure spirit. The heavenly humanity which He had as the Lord from heaven was
invisibly present even with the Israelites. They drank out of the rock.” But
in all these speculations the Incarnation is antedated; or, rather, it is not
the Son of God Who becomes flesh but the Son of God already in the heavenly
nature of mankind. 3. Swedenborgianism, in
its theological system, has on this subject as on every other, a peculiar
revelation. Swedenborg asserted the unity of God, and strove to reconcile with
that the Deity of Christ. His theory established a kind of hypostatic union
between the Father and the Son in the One Christ, the only God in the universe.
The Incarnation he viewed in an Apollinarian way: the eternal God, eternally
God-man, manifested Himself in the animal soul and psychical body derived from
the Virgin; but the material body was finally absorbed and glorified. This is
literally a composite of nearly all the heresies of antiquity. But its
peculiarity as to the person of Christ is that it gives Him, like all other men,
both a material body and a spiritual, the former corresponding with the world of
sense, the latter with the spiritual world which He never left. The Christ of
this system is the one eternal Jehovah, God and Man in one. 4. Others, of whom
Isaac Watts may be regarded as the representative, have held similar views as to
the pre-existent humanity of Christ. Their starting point is the same as the
Lutheran, that the human spirit is capable of expansion to infinity. Now the
pre-existent soul of Christ was, in their view, created and personally united
with the Logos: here Orthodoxy and Arianism unite. This already incarnate Logos
became incarnate on earth by assuming the animal life of a natural body: here
Apollinarianism, as so often elsewhere, steps in. Accordingly, all the
humiliation of our Lord consisted in this transcendent human spirit being bereft
of its knowledge and passing through all stages of exinanition until the
ascension restored it to its perfection. But in this case the Man Christ Jesus
is not strictly one of us. There is an enormous addition made to His Person; but
there is no relief afforded to the difficulties of His humiliation. THE
THREE OFFICES OF THE CHRIST
Jesus is, in virtue of
His incarnation, the Anointed Mediator between God and man. To the offices of
His mediatorship His incarnate Person was specifically anointed at His baptism,
and thus He became the perfected Christ of God. His work was the fulfillment and
consummation of the ancient prophetical, priestly and regal functions to which
the typical servants of God under the old economy were anointed. These offices
He began to discharge on earth, and continues to discharge in heaven. While
considering them as distinct, it is important to remember that they are one in
the mediatorial work; and that the integrity of evangelical truth depends upon
the faithfulness with which we give to each its due tribute in the unity of the
two others. The division of the
mediatorial work into Three Offices is based, as will be seen, on the
Scriptures, both of the Old and of the New Testament, but it is not formally
stated in them. It was current in later Judaism; is distinctly to be traced in
the early Fathers, especially Eusebius, Cyril of The Redeemer of
mankind, whose advent in the fullness of time is the supreme verbal and typical
prophecy of the Old Testament, was marked out as THE
LORD’S
ANOINTED or
THE CHRIST.
This appellation was not at first given to Him directly, but indirectly as He
was represented by those who in the Theocracy were anointed to their office. In
some passages however the future Savior is predicted by this name; and when He
came into the world He was the fulfillment of a general expectation of the
Messiah as hereafter to come in one or all of these three offices. I. Anointing was from
early times a symbol of consecration to God: to the Divine possession and to the
Divine service. 1. Generally, it signified human dedication and
Divine acceptance. So, in the first recorded instance of its use, Jacob took
the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and
poured oil upon the top of it,[240]
because
it was revealed to him, the
Lord is in this place. More particularly it was
the symbol of light and peace and joy: of light for prophetical illumination, of
peace for priestly atonement, of joy for regal government as the presence of God
with His people. 2. This anointing oil was the emblem of the Holy
Ghost, the Spirit of consecration. As blood was the expiatory symbol, water that
of purification, and light of God’s accepting presence, so oil was the symbol
of sanctification generally as mystically combining all these. This symbol in
its most perfect form, the holy
anointing oil,[241]
was
a peculiar confection, like everything pertaining to the sanctuary after a
Divine pattern, and never to be used save in connection with Divine uses, for
the priesthood and the sanctuary; it was not to be privately prepared, nor to be
poured
upon man’s flesh or
the
stranger. It is holy, and it shall be holy unto you. Thus the precious ointment,
the ointment of the apothecary, was the elect typical emblem of the Holy Ghost
in His special relation to the unction of Christ, and in His general relation to
that of the saints who share the sacred unction. II. Anointing oil was
used for the consecration of the priesthood and of the prophets and rulers;
especially of the high priest and the kings in the ancient economy. 1. The priests were anointed, as also the furniture
of the sacrificial service: all things were both sprinkled with blood and
anointed with oil. And
thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them.[242]
And
Moses took of the anointing oil, and of the blood which was upon the altar, and
sprinkled it upon Aaron, and upon his garments, and upon his sons, and upon his
sons’ garments with him; and sanctified Aaron.[243]
The
anointing oil was therefore as essential and as pervasive as the blood, its
correlative symbol: the expiatory atonement and the consecration of the Holy
Ghost being co-ordinate. After the first institution the
priest that is anointed[244]
signified
the High Priest: it is to be supposed that the successors in the ordinary
priesthood were not consecrated by this symbol. The prophets were set apart in
the same way. Moses, the head of the prophetic order, who anointed the priests,
did not himself undergo the rite. The Spirit anointed him without the emblem.
But Elijah was commanded to anoint Elisha to be prophet in his room.[245]
As
to the kings, the testimony is more clear. Elijah anointed Hazael to be king,
which points back to an earlier ordinance.[246]
The
judges were not thus instituted. Joshua received the imposition of Moses’
hands as one on whom the Spirit of consecration had already fallen.[247]
But,
when Saul was given to 2. Thus the anointing oil, the symbol of the Holy
Ghost, had various meanings in the typical economy: meanings which were
afterwards one in Christ. The prophetic anointing signified rather the setting
apart of an organ for occasional influence: it pointed out one in whom the
Spirit was already present. The priestly anointing indicated not so much mere
appointment as consecration to the Divine service. The regal anointing
superadded to the other meanings that of the permanent divine indwelling: the
king was God’s representative alone. The prophet and the king represented God
and not man: the former, occasionally; the latter, permanently. The priest
represented God to man, and man to God; his consecration was abiding, and
affected all things connected with him. As in the case of the altar, whatsoever
toucheth them shall be holy.[250] III. There are a few remarkable passages in which
the future Redeemer is foreannounced as the Anointed One, the preeminent mashiychekaa,
and in relation to these three offices distinctively. 1. The Psalms open with the Great Name of the
future, which was to be sanctified for ever as common to Christ and His people: The
rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against His anointed.[251]
Here
is the regal office; and this is echoed in a later Psalm: God,
Thy God, hath anointed Thee,[252]
where
the prophetic office is also referred to, and the priestly consecration is
scarcely hid. 2. The Anointed One speaks of Himself through
Isaiah: The
Spirit of the Lord [God] is upon Me;[253]
because
the Lord hath anointed Me to preach good tidings.[254]
Here
is by our Lord’s own interpretation the prophetic office: the only passage of
this class which He quotes. Others He left for the use of His Apostles. 3. Daniel closes the Messianic prophecy proper by
giving the name Messiah to the Future Redeemer, specifically as High Priest, but
including His other offices. Three times he mentions the word. After
threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself: seventy
weeks are determined . .
. to
make reconciliation for iniquity .
. . and
to anoint the Most Holy.[255]
But
He is Messiah
the Prince; and
His coming was to seal
up the prophecy. Here are all the offices combined; this distinction
and combination are the glory of Daniel’s predictions. IV. Hence in later
Judaism a clear testimony was borne to the union of the three functions in One
Supreme Person; and the Savior when He came found among the people a general
expectation of the Messiah or Christ. He appealed to it as everywhere latent. 1. The Targums, or
Chaldaic paraphrases of the Scripture substituted for the Hebrew text in public
reading after the Captivity, exhibit in very many passages a clear view of the
Messiah in His offices. They call Him God; the King; the Prophet; the High
Priest upon His throne; the promised 2. The state of Messianic expectation in the time
of our Lord may be gathered from the Gospels with great precision. The Christ
was to come of
the seed of David and
out
of the town of 3. It is well known
that at the time of our Saviour’s advent the world at large was familiar with
the Jewish expectation, and even shared it. The Desire of the People was the
Desire of the Nations also. The coming of the Magi was a testimony to this: the
blessing of the Spirit resting upon the seed sown in the Captivity. Outside the
Scripture we read: “ Percrebuerat Oriente toto vetus et constans opinio esse
in fatis ut eo tempore Contending with the Jews the Apostles constantly
made it their aim to prove that Jesus was the Messiah: so As the Messiah or
Christ of Fulfillment our Lord accomplished in Himself all the types and symbols
and prophecies of the Old Testament. The holy oil of unction is in the New
Testament the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of Christ’s anointing in two senses:
first, as consecrating His Person in the Incarnation; and, secondly, as
consecrating Him to His offices at the Baptism. THE PERSONAL UNCTION Our Lord in His Person
is the Lord’s Anointed. As such He is the Messiah of the Old Testament come in
the flesh; and the Mediator between God and men in both natures as united in one
Person. I. At the Saviour’s birth He was declared to be a
Savior, which is Christ the Lord; Simeon
saw the
Lord’s Christ.[276]
And
He was so called, not in anticipation only, but because in His incarnation or
conception His human nature was sanctified and consecrated, essentially
separated from the sin of our race by the Holy Ghost. The body of humanity thus
prepared for Him He assumed before it came to personal and independent
subsistence, and insured its eternal sinlessness. He was the Lord’s Christ,
even as He was Jesus, from the instant of His conception. And, as the term
Mediator is bound up with the term Christ, He was the Mediator in His
incarnation, before the mediating act of atonement was accomplished. II. Hence all the
future functions of the Christ must be attributed to neither of His natures
distinctively, but to His one Person. Our Lord, as Mediator, is not divided. 1. He sustains no office which is not based upon
His Divinity, and executed through His human nature. As Prophet He is still the
only-begotten God, Which
is in the bosom of the Father,[277]
Whom
as Man He hath declared
to
men. As Priest He is the Son Who learned
obedience by the things which He suffered;[278]
it
behoved Him, as
the Son, to
be made like unto His brethren,[279]
and,
taken
from among men, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.[280]
The
Church
of God, or
the Lord, was
purchased with His own blood;[281]
and
the High Priest offered Himself through
the Eternal Spirit[282]
of
His Divinity. So also His Kingly authority, exercised in human nature, requires
as its foundation the Divine dignity of the Son Who
upholdeth all things by the word of His power.[283]
The
first verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews contain the three offices of the one
Incarnate Person in their most complete and grandest exhibition. 2. The Incarnate Person is the one Mediator: not
the human nature as some Romanists have affirmed; not the Divine nature as
Osiander and some other Protestants maintained; but the one Theanthropic Agent
whose mediatorial volition is one in the unity of the Divine and human wills.
Hence the word Mediator has a unique meaning as descriptive of the Christ: There
is one Mediator between God and men, rather, of
God and men, the Man Christ Jesus,[284]
rather,
In the former—His
incarnate mediation—He had and could have no type. As the one Mediator His
Person Incarnate is the Agent of all His doctrine, of all His sacrificial acts,
and of all His authority as King. He teaches as the Word speaking in human
language; He atones and intercedes as the High Priest taken from among men, but
first given to man as the Son; and He rules as the Eternal Son to Whom in the
flesh all power is mediatorially and economically committed. 3. It follows that our
Lord, as in His own Person the fulfillment of the promises concerning Christ,
gathered all types into one before He entered upon the distributive functions of
His several offices. He is the unity of God and man; and the unity of all the
distinct elements of the predicted Mediatorial Ministry. No one man ever united
the three offices. Moses was prophet or lawgiver, but, strictly speaking,
neither priest nor king. David was king and
prophet, but not priest. Melchizedek was priest and king, but not prophet.
Ezekiel was prophet and priest, but not king. And where the functions were
united in one person, they were still distinct: he who occasionally prophesied
might occasionally act as priest. Though each office was permanent in some
cases, as in Moses, Aaron, and David, never were two or three of these offices
permanent in one office bearer. But in the one Person of the Incarnate all these
offices are united, in their perfection, in their constant exercise, and each as
necessary to the other. He is always the Light of the world, always the Life of
redemption, always the Ruler of mankind. OFFICIAL
UNCTION AT BAPTISM
Our Lord’s second or
official unction was received at His Baptism, which was His public designation
or sealing to the Messianic office, and the full equipment of His human nature
for its discharge. After His baptism He assumed at successive intervals the
three offices distinctively; and began to fulfill them. After His ascent He
continued them all in perfection; and will not lay them down until the end. The
beginnings of the Messianic work are recorded in the Gospels; its consummation
is exhibited in the Apostolic testimony. I. The Baptism of
Christ to His office was the effusion upon Him of the Holy Spirit: marking Him
out as the Messiah, and at the same time replenishing Him, as to His human
nature, with all Messianic gifts. This outpouring from heaven was preceded by a
baptism of water, shared by our Lord with men generally as the baptism of
repentance, but which had a special twofold significance in regard to Him. 1. Jesus was baptized by His Forerunner, who was
both the representative of the old economy and the preacher of repentance for
the new. (1.) In the former relation the Baptist performed on the Person of the
Christian High Priest the washing which preceded His anointing with the Holy
Ghost. The typical high priests in particular were washed before they were
anointed; and anointing generally was preceded by baptism. (2.) In the latter
relation the preacher of repentance administered the baptismal pledge of
penitent waiting for the Messiah, to One who, though the Messiah Himself, was
also the representative of sinful man. Thus in the case of our Lord’s descent
into the Jordan two ends were accomplished: on the one hand, He was baptized as
the Head and Surety of the human race assuming in its symbol the transgression
of mankind; and, on the other, He was designated as the Messiah in whom were
combined all the offices to which His types were of old anointed. In the former
sense His baptism represented a sin assumed but not shared; He was already numbered
with the transgressors[285]
at
the 2. The Baptism of the
Holy Ghost must be viewed as the designation of Christ to His work as the
Representative of the Holy Trinity, and the equipment of His human nature with
all the gifts necessary for His mission. (1.) When John was sent to his ministry he was told
that the Messiah would be indicated to him by a higher baptism than his own: Upon
Whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same is He
which baptized with the Holy Ghost. The symbol was beheld by the Baptist, who came, baptizing
with water, that
the Baptizer with the Spirit should
be made manifest to (2.)
According to the ancient prophecy, the Spirit was to descend upon the Messiah in
the sevenfold unity and distribution of His perfect gifts. It was said of the
Branch of the root of Jesse: and
the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of
the fear of the Lord.[290]
Concerning
this gift which replenished the human nature of the Redeemer, or His Person as
represented by His humanity, the Baptist said: God
giveth not the Spirit by measure [unto Him].[291]
And
it is this gift that He distributes to His people: what He has for us without
measure He distributes by measure to us. Long afterward he who testified of
these things gave the first and the last formal expression of the privilege of
believers to share their Master’s anointing: ye
have an unction from the Holy One,[292]
where
the chrísma
is
from the Holy One who needed no anointing for His own soul but reserved it for
ours: that we might be Christians as He is the Christ. The
disciples were CALLED—but
not MADE—Christians
first in II. Our Lord formally
assumed His three offices at certain set times, each of which is solemnly
recorded by an Evangelist. 1. As the Messiah
generally He always spoke and acted as having in Himself the unity of these
functions from the beginning. But during His humbled estate, and until He had
fulfilled His chief office, that of making atonement, He maintained a certain
reserve, and only by degrees declared the full mystery of His work. He began by
declaring Himself to be the Lawgiver and Teacher: that is, by assuming His
prophetic office. And this function He discharged alone until the eve of His
departure; when, in His self-consecrating prayer, He assumed the ministry of His
High-priesthood, and offered Himself a sacrifice for sin. Having accomplished
that, He assembled His disciples around Him after the resurrection and assumed
His royal authority: the power given to Him in heaven and upon earth. 2. But this was also IN
heaven FOR
earth;
the Savior ascended to discharge all His offices above; and the Acts and the
Epistles contain that full theological development of their meaning which was
not possible until the Holy Spirit had come down at Pentecost. The later New
Testament is no other than the expansion of the Saviour’s own doctrine
concerning His Messianic work. We must therefore take each several office and
consider our Lord’s own testimony and that of His Apostles based upon it. 3. The offices of Christ will be laid down at the
last day. Though He will for ever retain the hypostatic unity of His Person, the
mediatorial economy will cease. Not the regal office alone will terminate, but
all His offices. He will come without
sin:[294]
that
is, without His priestly relation to sin. He will no longer be the Revealer; for
God shall be all
in all.[295]
But
this will be viewed hereafter with respect to the several functions. Christ as Prophet is,
generally, the perfect Revealer of Divine Truth to mankind: as such He comes
with His supreme credentials, the Truth, and the Light of men. More particularly
He was, during His earthly ministry, the Lawgiver and the Preacher of the
Gospel: each distinctly, but both in one. This office, filled by Himself, was
fulfilled through His word by the Holy Ghost. A distinction must be
noted here between the absolute or universal office of Christ as Revealer, and
His economical office as the Minister of His own generation. It may serve a good
purpose to consider the latter first as being transitional to the former. THE PERSONAL MINISTRY Here, then, we may
consider the Ministry generally, and then its two branches. I. Our Lord’s
personal prophetic ministry constitutes the substance of the teaching of the
Word in the Four Gospels. 1. It was strictly a continuation of the ancient
prophetic economy, according to the argument of St. Stephen: This
is that Moses, which said unto the, children of 2. Hence the Redeemer’s mission was confined to
the ancient people: I
am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of 3. The Saviour’s
personal ministry was that of an extraordinary Prophet raised up to introduce a
new dispensation of which He was Himself the herald. He blended in His own
Person the ancient Prophet and the more modern Rabbi: sent sometimes suddenly
under a Divine extraordinary afflatus, like a Zealot responsible only to God; or
lifting up occasional burdens, subsequently written down, after the more
ordinary though still extra-ordinary manner of the prophets; and also gathering
around Him a body of disciples whom He taught out of the law, according to the
usage of the Rabbinical schools. 4. The style and methods of our Lord’s teaching
were such as to mark Him out from every other teacher. Its characteristics were
unshared: as His form and features, for ever lost to human knowledge, were His
own and no other’s, so was it with His ordinary communications. He possessed
or rather condescended to assume in its perfection the gift of persuasive
speech: as it was predicted that He should be fairer
than the children of men, so also it was said of Him,
Grace
is poured into Thy lips.[307]
They
confessed; it who were astonished
at His doctrine, for His word was with power,[308]
as
also those who were disarmed by its grace: never
man spake like This Man.[309]
His
method of teaching by parable was original and unrivalled: there is scarcely any
trace of its use in the Old Testament; and such allegories as are found in other
Oriental teaching and in the Talmud are in perfect contrast to our Lord’s. His
illustrations from nature and life are confessed to be the most beautiful in
literature even by those who are unwilling to admit that they sprang from One
Who knew the mysterious symbols of nature because He ordained them and Who was
perfectly acquainted with the human heart. His method of dealing with enemies,
or captious censors, betrays the presence of every element of dialectic or
Socratic skill. And, like almost all great teachers, He had the esoteric
instruction for the more susceptible and humble, to unfold the mysteries which
were veiled from the prejudiced in parabolic disguise. Moreover, He aptly
appropriated the good of the Rabbinical theology, and knew how to accommodate
Himself to current delusions while correcting them, as in the case of His appeal
concerning the casting out of the demons by the children of His enemies. Jesus
also was the supreme Master of the symbol and symbolical action; and to that
Christianity owes much. But, on this whole subject it is difficult to speak with
fullness or precision, as our Saviour’s personal instructions have come to us
through the medium of His servants. He has left us nothing under the direct
impress of His own hand. 5. It is important to
remember that throughout our Lord’s ministry He was at once the Minister of
the circumcision and the Revealer of all truth for the world. The blending of
these gives an indescribable and most wonderful grace to His teaching. But this
leads us to a higher view than that which has hitherto been taken. II. Jesus Christ was
the last Lawgiver, and the First Evangelist of His own glad tidings; His whole
ministry united the Law and the Gospel in their essential elements. 1. As the LAWGIVER, like
unto Moses [310]
but
greater than he, our Lord assumed His function on the Mount of Beatitudes. He
rose up out of the Old Testament as the Witness and Embodiment of its truth, and
was in no sense its destroyer. He came not to abolish but to fulfill ancient
Scripture, and that in three senses: first, to fulfill its meaning in Himself as
it was all one prophecy of Him; secondly, to discharge it of its functions as it
was the law of a transient ceremonial economy which He appeared to end; and,
thirdly, by republishing its moral teaching in harmony with the new dispensation
as a dispensation of the Spirit and of love. (1.)
All previous lawgiving, whether engraven on the fleshly tables of the heart of
universal mankind, or on the Mosaic tables and in the Mosaic books, was
fulfilled in the revelation of Jesus, the Incarnate Expression of God’s will
to man. Christ
is the end of the law:[311]
and
in this sense pre-eminently, that all revelation, both of the wrath and of the
mercy of God, was complete and fulfilled in His Person. He came as the
Representative of all written and unwritten revelation: so entirely to take its
place that in His presence there was necessity for nothing more: whether He
would or would not supersede all, it remained for Him to show. On earth as well
as in heaven there was no need of the sun, the Lamb was the light thereof. He
said, I am
the Light of the world,[312]
and
I
am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.[313]
But
He was pleased to continue still the dispensation of word and ministry that He
for a time suspended. The ancients gave Him their books, and He resanctified
them for His Church. When He retired He continued His function by a more
enlarged revelation through His Apostles. (2.)
Our Savior, the final Lawgiver, abolished the old law, and all that it
contained, so far as it was the basis of a covenant between God and a peculiar
people. As a code of the Theocracy, the law was political, ceremonial, and
moral: three in one and inseparably in one. This law our Lord carne to abrogate:
it was done away in Him, because the new covenant was to be no longer with one
nation, and no longer based upon types, but to be confirmed in Christ with all
nations on the basis of the accomplished redemption. The entire economy commonly
called the Law, as one, and therefore as such including the moral law in its
statutory form, was abolished in Christ, Who established a new legislation,
known variously as the perfect
law of liberty,[314]
the
law
of faith,[315]
the
law
of the Spirit of life.[316]
(3.)
But the moral law, written on the heart and on the two tables, Jesus reuttered. Extracting it from its
place in the Legal Economy He gave it all its honors in the Economy of Grace.
Though He abolished it as a condition of salvation, He confirmed it as a rule of
life. To be more particular: He renewed it first as it was a schoolmaster, to
teach the sinner his sin, and bring him to his Savior; and then as a rule and
standard of holy living; but, for both purposes, the whole law is exhibited in
its internal character as a spiritual rule and in its great principle as perfect
love. As the Lawgiver our Lord expanded ethical teaching into an infinite extent
and breadth by a spiritual interpretation; and condensed it all again into a
perfect simplicity by reducing it to love. The spiritual application multiplies
the precept past any limits; the reduction of all to charity makes it simple and
comparatively easy again. But the Savior as Lawgiver presides over another
department of theology, that of Christian Ethics, to come hereafter . 2. The New Legislator opened His ministry on the
Mount; but as the Prophet, preaching His own Gospel, greater than Isaiah but
like him, our Lord announced His function formally in the Synagogue at (1.)
The Gospel proper, as the glad tidings of redemption through atonement and the
forgiveness of sins, could not be fully preached before the Cross. Jesus, during
His life on earth, was rather a Lawgiver than an Evangelist. But when He said in
His own synagogue, This
day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears,[318]
He
began to preach the great deliverance. The text He chose was the most
comprehensive that prophecy afforded for the description of the effects of
redemption as finally administered to its objects. Concerning this opening stage of His ministry St.
Matthew records that Jesus
went about all (2.)
The preaching of the future Gospel was always predictive; but Christ was more
expressly the Prophet of His own kingdom in His foreannouncements of its history
and destiny. As all prophecy from the beginning of the world had respect,
directly or indirectly, to the kingdom of the Messiah, so the Great Prophet and
consummator of the prophetic word constantly spoke of the future of His Church.
Towards the end of His ministry almost all His discourses were directly
prophetic; and His last utterances were almost entirely limited to predictions. (3.) Both the preaching and the prophecy of the
Gospel kingdom our Lord continued after His departure by the ministry of His
Apostles. As they wrought greater
works[322]
than
He, so they spoke greater words than His; but as in the former they were only
the instruments of His higher and more spiritual energy, so they were only the
speakers of His words, which could not be spoken until He had accomplished His
work on the cross. St. Luke speaks of the Divine-human ministry as of all
that Jesus began both to do and teach.[323]
After
His ascension He continued all His offices: all through His own activity, but
with a difference. The High-priestly function He discharges alone: the Kingly by
the Holy Ghost; the Prophetic by the Spirit through the Apostles. In the nature
of things He could not perfectly preach His own Gospel; nor could He give
explicit prophecies of the last dispensation until the former dispensation was
fully ended. He Himself in His own Person only began: He perfected nothing. His
words were seed in the hearts of the Apostles, to bear fruit in due season. The
Spirit Whom He would send was the
Spirit of truth,[324]
and
would guide them into all its developments; but only as bringing their
Master’s own words back to their memory. Precisely what the Redeemer did for
the old Law—recall it to the people’s remembrance with enlarged
interpretation—the Spirit did for the Redeemer’s own ministry. This has
reference to every part of His prophetic office. THE
UNIVERSAL MINISTRY
Jesus never formally
assumed the prophetic office in its highest meaning, in that meaning which was
peculiar and unshared: which He could not indeed assume because He was never
without it. He spoke as One who not only brought the final revelation with Him,
but as being Himself that revelation;
He distinguished
Himself from all other teachers by the assertion of absolute personal authority;
He accompanied His teaching with credentials of miraculous works wrought in His
own name; and, lastly, He came as the Prophet of mankind, making provision for
the continuance of His doctrine for ever. 1. While He appeared as a second Moses Jesus
distinguished Himself from human teachers as being Himself the revelation of all
truth. He never appropriated the name Prophet, or Rabbi, or Seer, though He did
not decline these titles when given to Him. But again and again He asserted
concerning Himself such prerogatives as could belong to no human agent of Divine
instruction. He said of Himself, I
am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.[325]
All
things pertaining to man’s life, present and future, to his salvation and
spiritual interests in time and eternity, our Lord connects with His own Person
and manifestation. Not only is He the Giver and the Medium of the
gift: He is the Gift itself. Receiving what is His depends upon receiving
Himself. He is all the truth, as it respects our race, concrete and personified.
All revelation is in His Person: He is the union of all that is God and all that
is man, and nothing beyond this has vital concern for mankind. Here is the great
distinction between Christ and every other prophet. He is God and He is Man; and
His Person is the compendium and substance of all that may and must be known
concerning both. In this highest sense He is neither a prophet nor a seer: He
declares Himself. Even God is revealed only as connected with Him: as His
Father. This glorious distinction pervades our Lord’s words. When He promises
the Spirit to guide His disciples, it is Himself Whom the Spirit is to expound:
we must connect I
am THE TRUTH with the
Spirit of truth and He
will guide you into all truth.[326]
I
AM THE TRUTH was
the loftiest word of Christ the Prophet. 2. In His mediatorial
person, however, our Lord condescended to be literally a Prophet. He used His human nature as the organ of His
revelation, and as Man speaking to men was the consummate agent of Divine
counsel for mankind. He was the perfect naabiy,
which means the Interpreter of God, or one who pours forth the Divine words.
Thus He said of Himself, My
doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me:[327]
not
meaning literally that it was not His, but that it was not His as distinguished
from God. As
My Father hath taught Me, I speak these things:[328]
words
which must be connected with what follows, and
He that sent Me is with Me. He was also the perfect chazah,
Seer, or, more poetically, chazeen.
What
He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth:[329]
this
was declared by the Baptist concerning Christ, of Whom he also said, He that
cometh from heaven is above all. Through the eyes of His human spirit the God-man
saw the mysteries of His own kingdom. As Prophet and Seer in His incarnate
Person He was in some sense limited. In the unity of His Father and the Holy
Spirit He was a Revealer to Himself in His own human faculties of the
treasures of wisdom and knowledge, hidden[330]
in
Himself for a season from His own humanity, and gave His mortal vision to behold
what He communicated. In His prophetic knowledge and utterances we see what the
human mind is capable of knowing in union with the Divine. After His
resurrection, or rather after His ascension, there was no longer any restraint,
and the human faculties of the Divine-human person were the organ of the perfect
revelation of all such knowledge as man can ever have on need. 3. The Credentials of
our Lord’s prophetic office were in harmony with His twofold character, as
sent first to His own generation and thus raised up for the world. (1.) As a Minister of
the Circumcision He gave such demonstration by miracle as became an
authoritative messenger from God: precisely so much and no more. The leading
wonders and signs of the ancient prophets were types of His miraculous works,
which as performed by Himself or His Apostles—for their works were His—ended
the reign of evidential signs. (2.) But, as the Supreme Revealer, He did not lay
stress on His miracles, because He was Himself the Miracle of miracles. All that
preceded and followed were only faint preludes and echoes of His one great
Wonder, the manifestation of God in the flesh, His resurrection from the dead,
and His glorification of human nature. If
ye believe not that I AM,
ye
shall die in your sins, and,
when
ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I AM.[331]
Here
was the secret of the authority with which He spoke. His words and His actions
had in them a Divine and irresistible self-evidencing attestation. He never used
the language of an Old-Testament prophet, The
Word of the Lord came unto
me, [332]
or
the
Spirit of the Lord came[333]
upon
me, but, Verily,
verily, I say unto you![334]
He
did not lay claim to inspiration, the influence under which the prophets poured
forth their words and the seers saw their visions: He was not God-inspired but
God Incarnate. Hence the constant tenor of His declaration to the effect that every
one that is of the truth heareth My voice,[335]
and
that if
any man will do, or
wills
to do, His will he shall know of the doctrine.[336]
HEAR HIM!
[337]
was
spoken concerning the Revealer when His Divine nature was made more intensely manifest
in the flesh at
the Transfiguration. 4. Finally, the
Ministry of Jesus as the Apostle of our profession was the final revelation for
the world. It is important to mark this, as it has a close connection with the
ultimate appeal on every theological subject and the rule of faith in the
Christian Church. In Him all past, present and future teaching was one. (1.) Our Lord always
assumes a tone of absolute finality. With Him the prophetic office ceased:
prophecy, like the law, found its end in Christ. There is no other revelation,
no other messenger from God after Him. Whatever other teachers arose were simply
men from His feet, bearing His words and expounding them more fully under the
influence of the Spirit. Nothing can be more express than His assertions that
every future word of instruction should be only His own word continued and
developed. (2.) Before He departed He made provision for the
continuance of His own function in the Christian Church. Without doubt He
executes His prophetic office from His throne in the heavens. His Apostolic
company perpetuated such of His words as were of permanent value for mankind.
One of that company was brought under teaching who ever declared that what of
new or enlarged doctrine he had for the world was given him by revelation of
Christ, and it was he who said, Let
the word of Christ dwell in you richly.[338]
Our
Lord Himself repeated from heaven His direct instructions: the Seven Churches
received them for all By His last inspired Apostle, however, He has said that
all Christians have
an unction from the Holy One, and so know
all things.[339]
Thus
by His Spirit, who is this Unction, the Supreme Revealer continues to execute
His prophetic office in the Church generally, and in every individual Christian.
The central and most
important office of our Lord’s mediatorship is His priesthood, of which the
high priest, as the representative of the Levitical system of expiations, was
the type. As Prophet our Lord predicted and asserted His sacrificial work; but
He more formally assumed it on the eve of His passion, and after His ascension
revealed its full import by the Apostles. According to their teaching the
Saviour’s priestly office consists of Offering and Presentation of Himself the
sacrifice, answering to His death and ascension; also of Intercession and
Benediction, both based upon the sacrificial Atonement, and connected with the
administration of salvation. Much of our Lord’s
prophetic ministry as the Prophet of His own dispensation was occupied with the
announcement, prediction and exposition of His priestly atonement. 1. When He began to preach He took up His
forerunner’s word, which was twofold: Repent
ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand![340]
and,
Behold
the Lamb of God, Which taketh away the sin of the world![341]
Very
gradually, and by hints left for future enlargement, He unfolded the doctrine
both of His priesthood and of His kingdom. Though He never called Himself a
Priest—not even indirectly, as He called Himself Prophet and King—He
constantly used language which only this office explains. He did not actually
say that He was the High Priest, the Sacrifice and the Offerer; nevertheless He
applied to Himself and His mission almost every sacrificial usage and every
sacrificial idea. This will appear evident from a cursory examination of the
Gospel of St. John, in which we find the sacerdotal office made prominent: the
Synoptists keep rather in view the regal. 2. It is observable that our Lord before the
Transfiguration did not dwell much on His coming death. According to St. John He
had spoken of Himself as the
Bread of God which cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto the world;[342]
this
however was based rather upon the manna
in the wilderness[343]
than
upon the sacrificial feasts, though the transition to the latter is found in the
words: the
bread that I will give is My flesh, [which I will give] for the life of the
world.[344]
On
the Holy Mount our Lord was evidently prepared for the last stage of His
mediatorial history on earth. The subject of discourse was the decease
which He should accomplish at Still, while His language and teachings revolved
around the altar, they were not directly sacrificial, even when He spoke of the
Son of Man come not
to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.[347] 3. It was on the eve of the Sacrifice of the Cross
that our Lord solemnly assumed His sacerdotal function: first, by the
institution of the Supper, the memorial sacrifice of Christianity; and,
secondly, by what is sometimes called the High-priestly prayer; the symbolical
Feet washing having been interposed with an affecting relation to both. The
sacramental institute is pervaded by sacrificial ideas: it exhibits the true
paschal Lamb Whose blood is at the same time shed for the remission of sins in
virtue of a new covenant ratified by blood of propitiation, and the benefit of
Whose death is celebrated in a continual peace-offering feast. The High-priestly
prayer was the self-consecration of Jesus to the final endurance of the sorrows
of expiation. All the Messianic offices are hallowed in that supreme Prayer. The
prophetic: I
have given them Thy word; the
regal: as
Thou hast given Him power over all flesh; the priestly: I
sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified.[348]
But
it is pre-eminently the consecration prayer of the High Priest: the formal
assumption, in the presence of the cross, His altar, of His atoning work. 4. After Pentecost the sacerdotal office of Christ,
previously the least prominent, takes the leading place. Its full exposition is
mainly to be found in the Epistle to the Hebrews; but every other document of
the New Testament contains explicit references to some of its relations. Taking
that Epistle as the text, and the rest as illustrative, we may view all under
the two aspects of Sacrifice followed by Presentation, and Intercession followed
by Benediction. But first the mediatorial character of the Redeemer as High
Priest must be viewed as the foundation of the whole, its leading elements being
these: in the presentation of the sacrifice the High Priest represented the
people to God; in the benediction He represented God to the people. He was in
ancient times, and is in Christ, taken
from among men;[349]
but
then as now his function looked towards both heaven and earth. THE
HIGH PRIEST AND CHRIST
The High Priest
represented the priesthood generally, and was the type of Christ as the
universal Antitype of all sacerdotal persons and ministries. We need only
observe the points of correspondence, as also the points of difference, between
type and Antitype: especially in regard to the high-priestly vocation,
consecration, and functions. 1. The vocation of the priesthood generally, and of
the high priest in particular, was connected with the Levitical typical service
alone. Before the time of Moses, the natural head of every family was also its
religious head: wherever Abram went he built
there an altar unto the Lord;[350]
and
when the paschal sacrifice was instituted, the father of the family discharged
the priest’s function. Moses absorbed for a season all offices into himself,
that they might be again distributed. He was not only the lawgiver but the
priest also: as it is written, and
Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basins; and half of the blood he
sprinkled on the altar.[351]
He
assigned the priesthood to his brother Aaron, as the head of an hereditary
sacerdotal order: the rest of the same tribe being set apart to subordinate
ministries. Hence there were Levites not priests; ordinary priests of the
Levitical tribe; and the hereditary high priest or head of the family of Aaron.
This Chief Priest was therefore the representative of all, called from out of
the people to represent the people as seeking approach to God by sacrificial
gifts. In the New Testament we are told that no
man taketh the honor unto himself, but when he is called of God, as was Aaron.
So Christ also glorified not Himself to be made a high priest; but He that said
unto Him, Thou art My Son, to-day have I begotten Thee.[352]
The
eternal Son, begotten of the Holy Ghost in human nature, was fully constituted
the Messiah, and given to the world as such, in the Incarnation as finished in
the resurrection. Hence He was named
of God a high priest after the order of Melchisedec:[353]
his
high-priesthood was solely of Divine origin, it was that of a king also and it
was eternal. 2. The ceremonial of consecration, as used by
Moses, began with washing at the door of the tabernacle; [354]followed
by investiture with the high-priestly array; and upon the sacred person thus
washed and clothed the oil of anointing was poured forth.[355]
In
connection with this a sin-offering was sacrificed for removal of guilt, a
burnt-offering to express entire consecration, and a peace-offering to show
God’s acceptance. But the oil was the sanctification: and
he poured of the anointing oil upon Aaron’s head, and anointed him, to
sanctify him.[356]
The
high priest was wayimshach:
the priest who is higher than his brethren, upon whose head the anointing oil
was poured,[357]
poured
in abundance. Our Lord was consecrated to His office by the Holy Ghost Whom He
received without measure: Him
hath God the Father sealed.[358]
All
other particulars of the typical consecration fell away, unless the baptism of
Christ responded to the washing of the High Priest. But the essential difference
was in this, that Christ, while He received as incarnate the Spirit of
anointing, did also consecrate Himself: for
their sakes I
SANCTIFY MYSELF.[359]
By
the Divine glory of His Sonship He dedicated His Person and His being to the
propitiation of the sins of men. 3. The function of the
High Priest requires careful consideration in its typical reference to the Great
Antitype. (1.) As to his person and his office a mediator
generally, for all the people and for every individual he was the one and only
priest. He was the embodied unity of the priesthood: he alone virtually
represented the people to God and God to the people. His garments indicated
this: without his distinctive vestments he was a common man. The breastplate, as
also the shoulder-pieces attached to the ephod, bore the names of the tribes
upon it: he who wore this sacred symbol represented all the tribes of the
congregation, bearing them as it were both on his heart and on his shoulders.
Hence also upon his diadem was the inscription HOLINESS
TO THE LORD . . . And
it shall be upon Aaron’s forehead, that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the
holy things, which the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts;
and it shall be always upon his forehead, that they may be accepted before the
Lord.[360]
The
antitypical High Priest, the Redeemer of mankind, was the Representative of the
whole world, bearing the sins of His people upon His heart, and the government
of them upon His shoulders, presenting them before God as expiated and
reconciled. (2.)
But the high priest represented God also to the congregation: the breastplate
with its inscription was called the Urim and Thummim, that is, Lights and
Perfections; being the same precious stones which bore the names of the tribes
regarded as pledges of light by inspiration from above on all occasions of
public appeal to God. In this prerogative of the high priest he was the type of
the prophetic as well as priestly office of Him who came as the Apostle
and High Priest of our confession.[361]
The
office of blessing the congregation was common to the priesthood, but in its
highest annual discharge on the day of atonement, when the nation was accepted
as a whole, it was the high priest’s act alone, as will be hereafter seen. The
Epistle to the Hebrews—the Temple Epistle—shows at length that Jesus is the
supreme High Priest, the Antitype of Aaron, not only for men in things
pertaining to God, but also for God in things pertaining to men, the former and
the latter being included in one sentence: A
merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make
propitiation for the sins of the people.[362]
THE
GENERAL PRIESTLY FUNCTIONS
The offering of the
sacrifice by the Christian High Priest exhibits the unity and consummation of
all the sacrificial elements in the ancient offering, as also of all the kinds
and seasons of sacrifice, including the whole economy of the Levitical
institute. THE
RITES OF SACRIFICE
The Levitical sacrifice
consisted of the presentation of a victim, with imposition of hands; the
slaughtering, and sprinkling of the blood; the burning of the victim, and the
sacrificial feast. These were not combined in every sacrifice; but they all
belonged to the expiatory ceremonial, viewed as complete in itself and as
hereafter to find its perfection in Christ, the Compendium of all oblations. I. The PRESENTATION
of
the victim and LAYING
ON OF HANDS were both the acts
of the guilty offerer of the sacrifice. 1. The place was the court of the sanctuary,
whither the transgressor came indicating his desire to find his offended God in
His holy dwelling-place. The victim was spotless, examined and approved as such:
it was provided by the offerer himself, according to the prescription of the
law, as the substitute of his own forfeited life. Its spotlessness was simply
typical of the perfect sinlessness of the Lamb
without blemish and without spot.[363]
That
Holy Victim offered
Himself without spot to God,[364]
being
Himself the representative of the sinner who offered; but He was also delivered
up for us all[365]
by
the Father, Who provided a sacrifice for the guilty race. The New Testament does
not speak either of the Church or of the individual as providing an oblation. It
is the prerogative of the Divine love to furnish sinful man with his
sin-offering: as on that early typical mount it was said, God
will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt-offering.[366]
JEHOVAH-JIREH
is
the eternal law of the atonement between God and man. 2. The imposition of hands was not so much
symbolical of the transfer of sin or guilt as of submission to the Divine
appointment and consequent dedication of the animal to be the medium of
atonement. It was essentially therefore the deed of the delinquent, who not only
touched but leaned on his victim: and
he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be
accepted for him to make atonement for him.[367]
It
was his act of faith in the ordinance of God;
and
has its fulfillment in the faith of the sinner who makes the death of Christ his
own. II. THE
SLAUGHTERING AND SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD FOLLOWED:
these being universal and always united. 1. The Slaughtering, or shechiyṭah
had
for its object the obtaining of the blood, to be presented to God for expiation:
it was perhaps also the expression of a poena vicaria; though it was the offerer
himself who slew the victim, and not the priest, except in the case of offerings
for the nation. The victim was slain by the transgressor as the acknowledgment
of his own desert of death. Our Lord laid down His life of Himself, and gave up
His spirit voluntarily as a sacrifice; but by
wicked hands He
was crucified
and slain.[368]
The
sinful world consummated its sin by slaying the sacrifice for its sin; its
greatest iniquity was in that deed, but the Savior made ‘His death His own
act. He
put away sin by THE
SACRIFICE OF HIMSELF.[369]
Though
it is only the apostates who crucify
to themselves the Son of God afresh,[370]
yet
every penitent believer presents the death of Christ as representing His own
death; and the Church in the Holy Supper commemorates it as suffered for all. 2 The priest alone sprinkled the blood, or applied
it to the purpose of expiation, around the altar, first towards the curtain that
concealed the mercy-seat, and then, in the highest expression of the symbolical
act, on the Kapporeth or mercy-seat itself. For
the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar
to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh an
atonement for the soul.[371]
Two
terms are here observable, lakacot,
to
make atonement, is
literally to cover: that is either the soul of the offerer as guilty, so that he
is seen as under the pure life that on the altar screens him, or the condemning
sentence of the covenant-testimony deposited beneath the mercy-seat. Again, the
blood maketh an atonement, kippur, by
means of or
in
virtue of the soul in it.[372]
This
is the true rendering; and it signifies that the innocent life which had been
taken before the altar as the vicarious representative of the offerer is on the
altar accepted of God representatively. Thus the sprinkling was the second or
more effectual PRESENTATION
without which the first was
not perfect. The Redeemer’s atonement was fully accomplished when His blood
was shed; but it was not declared to be accepted until He presented it in the
heavens: By
His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption [for us].[373]
And
He through
the Eternal Spirit OFFERED
HIMSELF without
spot to God. The
symbol of sprinkling is used with two applications; heavenward, for the
propitiation of Divine displeasure; earthward, for the expiation of guilt. The
sprinkling of the conscience signifies the application of the virtue of the
expiation to the believer whose guilt is cancelled or negatived for the sake of
Christ. Bat the term is sometimes varied in the evangelical use: occasionally it
is the washing away of sin, or the purging of the conscience. III. THE
SACRIFICAL IDEA WAS COMPLETED BY THE BURNING OF THE OFFERING AND THE SACRIFICIAL
MEAL OR FEAST, which are closely
united in their symbolical significance. 1. The term used for burning is one that signifies
to make to go up in vapor: the essence of the sacrifice ascends to God with
acceptance. Therefore it could not directly symbolize the punishment of
perdition: though as burning on the altar it was a symbol of the punitive
justice as well as the sanctifying power of the Divine Spirit. The fire that
consumed the offering, or parts of it, came from God: on that great first day of
Levitical sacrifice there
came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the
burnt-offering and the fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and
fell on their faces.[374]
It
was kept up continually by the morning and evening sacrifice: the
fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out.[375]
This
signified that the entire service of sacrifice was to be well-pleasing for ever,
from generation to generation, for His sake Who hath
loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a
sweet-smelling savor.[376]
Although
the symbol had its highest fulfillment in the perfect self-surrender of Jesus,
it had reference also to us and our oblation of ourselves. The beneficiary of Christ’s atonement must be
sprinkled with His blood for the covering of his person as guilty; and he must
yield himself with Christ as a whole burnt-offering made acceptable by the Holy
Ghost: the one without the other can never avail. No less than this is meant by,
I
am crucified with Christ.[377]
2. Every sacrifice surrendered its life in its
blood; some sacrifices were wholly destroyed; but in the peace-offering part was
burnt and part reserved for a feast. This was the highest result of the
ceremonial as expressing the communion between heaven and earth. In other
sacrifices Jehovah received through the priests part of His portion: and what
was burnt was also the
bread of their God.[378]
And
the priest shall burn it upon the altar: it is the food of the offering made by
fire unto the Lord.[379]
THE VARIOUS OFFERINGS The various sacrifices
themselves may be blended into unity. They were divided anciently into
burnt-offerings, peace-offerings, and bloodless gifts: to these were added, in
the Levitical economy, sin and trespass offerings. All oblations of every kind
were under the jurisdiction of the high priest, and were consummated and summed
up in the one sacrifice of Christ I. The primitive
sacrifices, which prefigured the Atonement long before the Levitical service,
and corresponded therefore to the Gospel before the Law, are to be traced up to
the earliest times, even to the very gate of 1. The origin of sacrifice is not matter of express
revelation. But the almost universal prevalence of oblations, bloody and
unbloody, indicates its Divine appointment. The primitive record in Genesis is
as dim in its utterance on this subject as it is upon sin generally and the
atoning Redeemer. We read of sacrifices offered by Cain and Abel: by the former
unbloody gifts, by the latter slain victims. The
Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his
offering He had not respect.[381]
The
reason of the difference lay in the disposition of the offerers. By
faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain:[382]
his
offering was a gift, but it was also an expiatory typical sacrifice, which
Cain’s was not. And there can be little doubt that the faith which rendered
that primitive oblation acceptable was faith in the Great Sacrifice of the
future. Thus the first account
of approach to the Supreme by sacrificial offerings teaches, when interpreted by
the New Testament, that it was not enough to draw nigh with gifts betokening
gratitude and self-surrender; but that every oblation of thanksgiving must needs
have in it a propitiatory element. This primitive oblation therefore gave the
law for all subsequent worship as culminating after long and various
developments in the Christian atonement. 2. The BURNT-OFFERING,
laolaah,
was the earliest, most common, and most comprehensive of the oblations dedicated
to Heaven as Korban or Gift. Its pre-eminence was its symbolical meaning, that
combined in one the expiatory shedding of blood and the perfect offering of the
self: hence it underlay, surrounded, and perfected all other oblations from the
beginning of sacrificial communion with God down to the Perfect Sacrifice. It
was this which Noah presented at the second beginning of propitiatory oblations.
He offered
burnt-offerings on the altar. And the Lard smelled a sweet savor; and the Lord
said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground.[383]
Jehovah
accepted the expiation of the Patriarch; and smelled afar off the sweet savor of
the Perfect Sacrifice for the guilty world. Abraham was commanded to take his
only son Isaac into
the The double character assigned to them is stated at
the outset of Leviticus. And
he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be
accepted for him to make atonement for him.[386]
After
the sprinkling of the blood fire was put upon the altar, the wood laid in order,
and it became an
offering made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the Lord. This
twofold character further gives it special significance as it respects the
Supreme Antitype and His people. Christ
also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to
God for an odor of a sweet smell.[387]
Here
the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ is the freewill burnt-offering of His
perfect love. And in that it is the example of the offering of His people: as
the sin-offering proper He does not admit us so directly to share or continue or
fill up His sacrifice. 3. The PEACE-OFFERINGS—whether
thank-offerings, vows, or freewill gifts—were combinations of expiatory and
dedicatory sacrifice: but they represented the gifts of the offerer rather than
himself the giver. Like the burnt-offering they signified at once the
consciousness of sin and the thankfulness for deliverance from it. They were
presented, so far as they were expiatory, for the re-establishment of a state of
grace; and, that being accomplished, as the joyful expression also of acceptance
with God. These all found their antitype in the Paschal Lamb: He
is our Peace,[388]
Whose
oblation we present in faith for the forgiveness of sins, and receive
sacramentally as the pledge of that forgiveness. It may be added that the
meat-offerings and drink-offerings which were connected with the daily burnt
sacrifice, as also with the other peace-offerings, belong to the general idea of
Divine acceptance and communion with the worshippers. Our present purpose does
not require a minute investigation of them. Suffice that they in some sense
mitigated the sternness of the ancient institute; and that they all find their
end and perfection in the Christian Supper. II. Peculiar to the Levitical economy were the SIN-OFFERINGS,
and their modification, the TRESPASS-OFFERINGS.
These were intimately connected with the giving of the law, as containing the
more express revelation of the nature of sin, and as the basis of a preparatory
covenant of typical sacrifice for its expiation. We have here chiefly to do with
these offerings, including their more stern and their more joyful
accompaniments, as the preeminent type or prophetic symbolical foreshadowing of
the Christian Atonement. 1. It is impossible to
formulate with precision the difference between the sin-offering and the
guilt-offering in the Levitical institute. Both were expiatory sacrifices for
SIN, as being offence against positive law and ceremonial ordinances, committed
in ignorance and inadvertence; that is, not with a high hand and in deliberate
rebellion. But the trespass-offering was always presented for individual error:
the sin-offering not always. The former respected violation of the rights of the
covenant, the latter rather neglect of its precepts. Hence the former had more
to do with transgressions touching property, the latter with transgressions of
law. The trespass-offering connoted the idea of SATISFACTION:
and
he shall bring his guilt-offering to the Lord, a ram without blemish out of the
flock, according to thy estimation, for a guilt-offering, unto the priest; and
the priest shall make atonement for him before the Lord, and it shall be
forgiven him.[389]
The
sin-offering connoted rather the idea of EXPIATION
through
the sacrifice of a pure life. But in the supreme and universal oblation of
Christ the distinction is done away for ever. He is at once the Satisfaction of
every Divine claim, and the Propitiation for every human offence. 2. The sin-offering, of which the guilt-offering
was only a species, brought into distinct prominence the expiatory character of
the sacrificial institute, which, before the giving of the law, was to a certain
extent veiled and hidden. It was from the beginning itself called SIN,
chataat,
LXX. amartia,
peri ths amartias, for sin; even
as the guilt-offering was itself called GUILT, ASM. Hence our Lord is said to
have been made sin
for us, Who knew no sin,[390]
and,
at His second coming, will appear
without sin unto salvation.[391]
The
sacrifice was, so to speak, the embodiment or incarnation of sin; and, where the
offering made atonement for all the people, the flesh was burned
without the camp.[392]
No
sin offering, whereof any of the blood is brought into the tabernacle of the
congregation to reconcile withal in the holy place, shall be eaten.[393]
But
in the lower and more individual grades of the sin-offering there was a marked
difference. In
the place where the burnt offering is killed shall the sin offering be killed
before the Lord: IT
IS MOST HOLY.
The
priest that offereth it for sin shall eat it:[394]
though
not the transgressor himself. It might seem that when the flesh was eaten by the
priests their official sanctity neutralized the impurity of the victim. Our
Great High Priest was MOST
HOLY though bearing the sins of
the world; and, though He represented the sin-offering that must not be eaten,
He was nevertheless the Offering of which we all partake as priestly offerers. And
the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.[395]
This
gives the idea both of expiation and of substitution. His soul was made an
offering for sin. Jesus
was the reality of that which the sin-offerings only typified. But
in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year:[396]
a
remembrance made, not only every year, but on every occasion of their
presentation. They only taught the evil of sin and the need of atonement: there
could be nothing homogeneous between an animal victims and a human transgressor.
They accustomed the people to the thought of a SUBSTITUTE;
but we, in the Fulfillment, see that the Supreme SIN-OFFERING
has
expiated sin itself, and not merely offence against the Levitical institute;
that He is the atonement even for those offences with a high hand of whose
perpetrator it was said: that
soul shall he utterly cut off; his iniquity shall be upon him.[397]
In
Him is all the virtue, and none of the defect, of the ancient types. 3. The distinction
between two kinds of sin-offering, one for the whole congregation, the other for
individual transgressions, must be constantly borne in mind. (1.) The latter had less direct relation to the
Christian Sacrifice: being designed to make atonement for offences against the
Theocratic code not willfully committed but through ignorance or rashness or
levity. This qualification perpetually occurs as restricting the efficacy of
these offerings for sin. If
any one of the common people sin through ignorance, bishgaagaah, while he doeth
somewhat against any of the commandments of the Lord concerning things which
ought not to be done, and be guilty; or if his sin, which he hath sinned, come
to his knowledge, then he shall bring his offering . . . . And
the priest shall make an atonement for him, and it shall be forgiven him.[398]
Here
it is to be observed that the Hebrew word used signifies transgression or ERRING
through
the predominance of the evil principle within, in contradistinction to sinning
presumptuously or with
a high hand,[399]
bªyaad
raamaah. For
the latter, class there was no sin-offering. Hence the Psalmist’s prayer: Who
can understand his errors? cleanse Thou me from secret faults. Keep
back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins.[400]
For
the former there was cleansing; from the latter the petitioner sought only
restraint. And in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said that the high priest
offered for
the errors of the people,[401]
for
their agnoeemátoon,
and
not for their willful violations of the covenant. Herein the type fell
immeasurably below the Antitype. The expiation of Christ avails for every sin
that is confessed over the Atonement: if
any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous:[402]
and
He is the propitiation for our sins. Yet the severity of the restriction in the type is
also pressed into the service of Christian caution. Though the Great Sacrifice
avails for all sin, there is no atonement for the obstinate rejector of that
sacrifice. If
we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there
remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.[403]
As
there were sins unatoned for in the Theocracy, so also there
is a sin unto death[404]
under
the Gospel (2.)
The daily and annual sacrifices for the sin of the people covered the guilt of
all the congregation as such, and availed, on behalf of all who put their trust
in the Divine ordinance, for the expiation of every kind of offence not already
punished by excision. The blood of these was sprinkled before
the Lord towards
the Holiest, and upon
the horns of the altar of sweet incense;[405]
on
the great day of atonement upon
the mercy-seat.[406]
But
of this more hereafter. 4. The sin-offerings of the Levitical economy had
sometimes connected with them certain peculiar Purifications of the individual
and of the community, regarded as having contracted defilement: leprosy; contact
with dead bodies; suspected crimes, such as adultery and murder; the blood
guiltiness of the community when the manslayer was not discovered. The
diversified ceremonies superadded to the sacrifice which generally accompanied
them pertained to what the New Testament terms the
purifying of the flesh.[407]
They
had mainly to do with the Theocratic relations of the parties; but were all
typical of the defilement of sin, and are often referred to as illustrations of
the purifying effect of the Atonement. They have done much to mould the
phraseology of the Christian covenant; but of themselves belong rather to the
archaeology of the ancient people. III. The Redeemer of mankind represented in Himself
every expiatory offering of every kind, and in His one oblation offered once all
other oblations have found their end and spiritual perfection. He is the One
Sacrifice for sin presented by Himself, the High Priest, for and on behalf of
mankind represented by Him. He is the VICTIMA
SACERDOTII SUI ET SACERDOS SUAE VICTIMAE. As, in the Epistle to the Romans, He is the end
of the law for righteousness,[408]
so,
in the Epistle to the Hebrews, He is the end of the sacrifices for eternal
redemption.[409]
But
here two important cautionary suggestions must be made. 1. The entire system of ancient sacrifices was but
the shadow of an eternal substance. The Epistle which gives us the authentic
valuation of the old economy tells us that it
is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins;[410]
that
the law could not make
the comers thereunto perfect[411]
in
freedom from the conscience
of sins. They sanctified only to
the purifying of the flesh.[412]
On the one hand, they
availed only for the maintenance of a national and individual relation to the
Theocracy. On the other, they made no provision for deliverance from guilt as
violation of the moral law. The true secret of the peace which was pronounced
upon penitent and sincere offerings was reserved: to be made known when the
figure for the time then present[413]
should
be superseded by the Reality. And, with regard to this, the sincere Hebrew and
the sincere Gentile were on a level: only that the former had the revelation
that constantly announced a future Redeemer, and might mingle with his merely
carnal ordinances a dim faith in the yet unrevealed Atonement. 2. But, this being true, the figurative and typical
institute gave profound suggestion of the nature of that future propitiation. It
told of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, which in its endless varieties was so
rigorously watched by the Holy One of Israel, and demanded such varieties of
sacrifice. The meaning of the sacrificial phraseology must not be lost when it
is transferred to Christian times, as many vainly affirm: that meaning is
glorified in the spirit, but its body and its letter is still of Christ.
Patterns only, they were still patterns
of things in the heavens.[414]
Many
terms are given to oblivion in the Gospel; but EXPIATION
as
the ground of REMISSION
through the shedding of SACRIFICIAL
BLOOD are words to be had in everlasting remembrance. If
the economy of typical propitiations had no permanent significance, but
introduced a system in which no atonement was offered to justice, the
New-Testament Epistles must have been written in a totally different style. THE
SACRIFICIAL SEASONS
The various holy
seasons and festivals of the old covenant were also summed up and abolished in
the one High-priestly function of Christ. There were the Daily Service; the
Sabbatic Days; the Three Feasts, and the Great Fast. In the year there may be
said to have been two main cycles: the Passover, with the days of Unleavened
Bread, and the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost for the spring; the Day of Atonement,
the Feast of Tabernacles, with its Azereth for the autumn. All these were under
the supervision and control of the high priest; and they were all done away by
being glorified in the mission and work of the Redeemer. The Passover and the
Day of Atonement will for our purpose adequately represent the entire series. THE PASSOVER The Passover was at
once a sacrifice for sin and a peace-offering. Unless we admit this combination
we miss the design of the institute and lose its profound connection with the
Christian Sacrifice. 1. The Angel of the
Lord passed over or spared all the houses which were sprinkled with the blood of
the paschal lamb; but sprinkling generally, at least sprinkling with blood,
connoted the idea of expiation. The representative of the household confessed
that deliverance was of the grace of God alone; and the people as a whole at the
beginning of every ecclesiastical year renewed the covenant with God by
sacrifice. As a sin-offering it was also a peace-offering: celebrating as a
national expression of gratitude the redemption from 2. Christ
our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast.[415]
These
words, though standing alone in this form, must be understood according to their
plain import as throwing a flood of light on the ancient institute and on its
spiritual significance. In virtue of the blood of Jesus the spiritual 3. The Passover was prolonged for seven days to
give the feast the covenant character of perfection: the seven days were the FEAST
OF UNLEAVENED BREAD which gave it its name. On the first day after the proper Passover was the
offering of the wave-sheaf. Seven full weeks after that wave-offering came the FEAST
OF WEEKS, the celebration of the completed harvest:
hereafter to be abolished and glorified in the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on
the day which was known as the Pentecost. With this feast the fulfillment of the
Old-Testament paschal festival was complete. The characteristic of the whole
solemnity was the festal commemoration of deliverance from THE
DAY OF ATONEMENT The Day of Atonement,
on the tenth of Tisri, the seventh month, effected an annual reconciliation
between God and the collective people; and was the chief, inasmuch as it was the
most comprehensive, typical and symbolical Old-Testament prefiguration of the
Christian mystery. As such it combined most of the other elements of the
sacrificial economy, and added not a few of its own. It was the day of the high
priest pre-eminently, when his function culminated. On other days acting by
delegates, on that day—THE
DAY,
Bªyowm,
of the Talmud—he administered his office almost alone: the sublimest of all
typical figures. 1. The sacrifices he first offered for himself
showed the distinction between the type and the Antitype: as the representative
of the people, and also one of them, he needed atonement for himself and his
priestly order and the very sanctuary that
remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness.[417]
The
holy places however were purified by the sprinkling of the blood of the victims
offered for priest and people, probably mingled, and not by any distinct
sacrifices ordained for that purpose: their uncleanness resulted from the sins
of those who entered them. 2. The high priest’s typical relation to Christ
was shown in his transaction with the two goats respectively. [418]
One,
chosen by lot, he offered for a sin-offering. Its blood availed for universal
expiation: for all the transgressions of all the people, as sprinkled upon the
mercy-seat seven times; for the altar and sanctuary without as sprinkled also
upon them. The counterpart victim, the Scapegoat, was the
symbolical BEARER
AWAY of
the iniquities which the other goat BORE. Upon its head the
high priest confessed all
the iniquities of the children of 3. But that which made this the Supreme Solemnity
of the Levitical economy was the fact that then only was the blood of expiation,
of which Jehovah said, I
have GIVEN IT
TO YOU upon
the altar to make an atonement for your souls,[420]
brought
within the veil, into the very presence of God where the law within the ark
testified against the transgressors. Then were all the other forgivenesses of the year
confirmed; then all defects in forgiveness repaired, saving only as touching
those high-handed acts of rebellion which found no place of repentance. The
assurance was that
ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord.[421]
Hence
in the Great Fulfillment the Christian High Priest hath entered into
heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.[422]
But
the typical high priest went out again from the face of Jehovah. The process of
expiation must be repeated annually. Jesus needs not to offer
Himself often: His
one oblation covers the whole sphere of human sin from the beginning to the end
of its continuance on earth. And His abiding within the Veil is our security. THE
PASSOVER AND DAY OF ATONEMENT COMBINED The entire doctrine of
the Atonement is based upon the Christian fulfillment of the prophetic and
typical meaning of these two solemnities, the Paschal Feast and the Atoning
Fast. A combination of their elements is necessary. Neither is sufficient of
itself. But, united, they
furnish a most impressive and comprehensive view of the central Christian
mystery. 1. As the Passover predominates in the Gospels, so
the Day of Atonement takes the lead in the later New Testament, especially in
the Epistles to the Romans[423]
and the Hebrews, neither of
which alludes to the paschal solemnity. The former points every allusion to the
subject with a reference to the great Fast day: it makes Christ Himself the
propitiatory, or mercy-seat, or propitiation, set forth in the mind of God and
upon the scene of transgression, for the remission of human sins in the past and
the present and the future: while it does not exclude the intercession of
Christ, it dwells rather on the offering in the outer court. Moreover, it
connects the whole rather with the idea of righteousness than with the idea of
sanctification: combining in one the evangelical court and the evangelical
temple. In the Epistle to the Hebrews[424]
the
great day of expiation occupies a very large place. The sacrifice in the outer
court and the presentation within the veil fill up the central chapters of the
treatise. 2. As united they
demonstrate typically what the Christian atonement demonstrates really, the
absolute necessity of satisfaction to Divine justice in order that the Divine
love may be glorified; that therefore the God who is offended Himself provided
the Supreme Sacrifice; that the virtue of the atonement, apprehended by faith,
secures the perfect abolition or canceling of sin and its punishment; that the
one Redeemer Who offered His life on the altar of the cross ever liveth to
present His intercession for His people on earth. 3. They further teach in their unity that the
benefit of the supreme expiation belongs to the company of Christ’s people as
such. That is the general lesson taught by the types of the Levitical economy.
If we would seek the universal effect and influence of the redeeming Sacrifice
we must go behind and beyond the Mosaic institute, to the primary sacrificial
oblations which were before the Law. There we find Him in Whom should all
the nations of the earth be blessed.[425] 4. When combined they also proclaim that the
redeemed estate of the people of God, the children of redemption and of the
sacrificial covenant, is one of mingled fasting and feasting. If the Passover
was the Great Feast, the Day of Atonement was the Great Fast: but they are
united in the Cross and its commemoration. In other words, there is a
foreshadowing of the truth that stamps its solemn impress on the writings of the
Apostle Paul: the Christian life is a union with Christ in His suffering and in
His joy, in His life and in His death, in the process and in the result of His
atonement. The joy, however, predominates; for He
hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows;[426]
borne
them away into the land of forgetfulness. The Day of Atonement has no
sacramental commemoration as such: Christ
our Passover is sacrificed for us; let us keep the Feast.[427] INTERCESSION
AND BENEDICTION
It was the preeminent
function of the high priest to present the blood of atonement, and thus silently
to intercede for the whole congregation once in the year; though the priestly
service generally was one of perpetual mediation and intercession. The Blessing
of the people was also the special office of the priests, to be discharged after
and on the ground of the sacrificial offerings. Our Lord’s Intercession is the
presentation of Himself in heaven to the Father after His self-oblation on
earth; not without special prayer for its objects. His Benediction is imparted
by the Holy Ghost, and is bound up with the administration of all the blessings
of the new covenant. While Intercession is more directly connected with the
sacrificial office, Benediction is linked with all the offices of the Christ. It
is the final consummation of each. INTERCESSION
I. The intercession of
the high priest was expressed typically by the incense before the mercy seat in
the Holiest on the day of atonement. David says generally: Let
my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense;[428]
and
in the New Testament we read generally again of the golden
bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of saints.[429]
But
the incense offered by the high priest was strictly connected with his typical
mediatorial relation:[430]
And
Moses said unto Aaron, Take a censer, and put fire therein from off the altar,
and put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an atonement
for them.[431]
Moses
himself, without the incense, had interceded in words. This was an
extraordinary, and, as it were, irregular procedure; and is the solitary
instance of the incense representing the atonement. The prayer of Moses and the
censer of Aaron alike typified the intercession of Christ, Who intercedes both
by the presentation of His sacrifice and by the virtue of His prayer. At first
the high priest himself burnt sweet
incense every morning as also at
even . . . a perpetual incense before the Lord on the altar for that purpose which was before
the veil that is by the ark of the testimony.[432]
Hence
we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews of the Holiest
of all, which had the golden censer, and the ark of the covenant.[433]
This
discrepancy is to be explained by the fact of the intimate, connection between
the two. The daily incense was the symbol of the intercession that daily allayed
the Divine displeasure; but it was on the day of atonement that this symbol had
its highest meaning. That
the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony,
that he die not:[434]
these
last words belonged to the type only, but the general truth remains that the
incense of intercession covered the mercy seat simultaneously with the blood of
atonement, and blended with the thick cloud of the Divine glory. So the mystical
temple of the Prophet’s vocation was
fitted with smoke:[435]
the
smoke of the same intercessory incense which fills the temple where Jesus the
High Priest presents His eternal sacrifice. II. This antitypical
intercession of Christ is variously set forth in the New Testament, especially
in the Temple Epistle. 1. It is the presentation of HIMSELF
before
the Father on our behalf. By
His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption:
ONCE FOR ALL.[436]
He is not represented as carrying His atoning blood with Him: the exhibition of
His Sacred Person is enough. A careful consideration of the classical passage in
the Epistle to the Hebrews will shed much light upon this. The English
Authorized Version mentions three appearances of Christ as marking the
historical process of the Atonement. The three terms in the original are
different and carefully chosen: the middle one expressing the fact that the Son
of God in our humanity manifests Himself before His Father and our Father
without a veil. At
the end of the ages He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself:[437]
pefanérootai,
was manifested as God in the flesh. This is closely, indeed indistinguishably,
connected with His entering into
heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us: emfanistheénai, to
present Himself boldly and abidingly without any protecting cloud of incense.
This silent intercessory appearance shall end when He will appear
a second time without sin unto salvation: oftheésetai, He will be seen of angels
and men in His majesty, without the humiliation of His sacrificial connection
with sin. St. John expresses the same truth: If
any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous;
and He is the propitiation for our sins.[438]
He
is Himself the Propitiation and the Advocate: Himself, which is more than His
blood or His life. The virtue of His sacrifice is the value of His Person. The MERIT
of
Christ is the power of His intercession; and that merit is not simply the fact
of His voluntary self-sacrifice, but His self-sacrifice as that of the Son of
the Father’s infinite complacency. His merit is the worthiness of His
Incarnate Self. His Presence in heaven is His all-effectual plea. Three
important truths arise here to our notice. (1.) The intercessory presentation of
Himself in heaven is not, as the Socinians and those who follow them assert, the
beginning of His priestly function. Christ
was once offered to bear the sins of many:[439]
hápax
prosenechtheís eis tó polloón anenengkeín hamartías, sacrificial terms
which had their full meaning already in the Cross. (2.) There is, however, no
continuation of the sacrifice in heaven; and there can be no continuation of it
upon earth. The Atonement is gone up FOR
A MEMORIAL BEFORE GOD [440]
for
ever; and the Romanist Sacrifice of the Mass has no sanction, but is utterly
condemned, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. As
it is appointed unto men once to die[441]
for
their sins, so Christ was in the deepest truth APPOINTED
TO DIE ONCE for
expiation of sins, but only once. (3.) Lastly, the unity of the Atonement on
earth and the intercession based upon it in heaven must be most carefully
maintained. The NOW
to
appear marks the whole period from Calvary to the Judgment
as the Day of Grace, and of the PUTTING
AWAY OF SIN, the athéteesin
teés hamartías.[442] 2. The intercession of our Lord is also direct
supplication on behalf of its beneficiaries: the words which describe it prove
this. He
maketh intercession[443]
for
us: the term entungchánei
generally
used of oral supplication either for or against its objects. And Jesus
Christ the Righteous[444]
is
called our parákleeton
with the Father, our
Advocatus or Intercessor, fulfilling His promise that He would pray
the Father[445]
for
His disciples, and thus continuing in heaven the High-priestly prayer begun on
earth. As to the speech of the glorified Son Incarnate, the tongue not of men
nor of angels, the unspeakable words which it is not yet lawful either to hear
or to utter, it is needless to inquire. Suffice that the Saviour’s
intercession has all the effect of what below is called intercessory prayer. As we must not refine away the truth of His being touched
with the feeling of our infirmities,[446]
so
we must not make the God-man above a Silent Representative of our humanity. III. The objects of His
intercession are the world, the mystical Church of His people, and every
individual who appeals to Him. 1. By His presence in heaven Christ is the Pleader
for the world, that is for the humanity, human kind, or human nature, which He
represents. The high priest entered into the inmost sanctuary of the temple on
behalf of the covenant people: the blood which he sprinkled was accompanied by
incense, which he waved, without a word, not to protect himself from the
insufferable glory of God, already dimmed by the thick
darkness[447]
of
the cloud, but to prevent the Divine justice from causing his death as the
representative of the people. This incense signified the intercession of Christ,
whose presence in heaven keeps the sinful earth in being; I
bear up the pillars of it.[448]
It
availed from the beginning by anticipation; on no ground can we understand how a
guilty race should be propagated under the moral government of God save that the
intercession of the Second Adam began when first it was said: the
plague is begun. Hence
Isaiah, going beyond the Levitical economy, says that He
made intercession for the transgressors:[449]
this
in the widest meaning of the word. 2. It is true, however,
that the specific intercession of Christ is limited to His prayer for His own
people. Before He departed He poured out an intercessory supplication which was
the earnest and the type and the pledge of His future pleading for His Church as
united by faith with its Living Head. (1.) This intercession is only for His own: not
because the Redeemer forgets the world which He came to save, but because it is
of a character distinct, and appropriate only to His people’s relation to Him.
It is not only request on their behalf, but the sacred demand of Christ on
behalf of Himself as represented in His people. They are His other Self, YET
NOT ANOTHER. Father,
I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am.[450]
It
is rather stipulation than intercession: théloo
rather
than eroto.
Hence Jesus, because
He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore He is able to
save them to the uttermost (or
perfectly and evermore) that
come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.[451]
He
hath brought them to God, but also brought them to Himself; and only asks the
portion that falleth to Him. He demands rather than asks for them, as united
with Himself and part of Himself, all that is His: that
the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.[452]
The
Father’s love is arrogated for them as of necessity, because the Beloved Son
of the Father is in them both collectively and individually. (2.)
The Saviour’s intercession as High Priest makes acceptable both the persons
and the worship of His people. Grace is given
freely in the Beloved.[453]
They
offer
up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.[454]
His
is the much
incense, that He should add it unto the prayers of all saints:[455]
the
angel to whom it was given was only a ministering priest or Levite under this
great High Priest. And in order that all the service of those who are priests
with Christ may be well pleasing, the Holy Ghost represents the Supreme
Intercessor within their hearts. The
Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be
uttered.[456]
And
He that searcheth the Hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, for He
maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God according to the
will of the High Priest also. There is no more impressive view of the heavenly
pleading within the veil than that which makes the voice of the Holy Ghost
within our hearts its echo. This concert of the Two Intercessors—the One
within the shrine above, the other within the shrine of our spirits, but both
agreeing in one—is the infallible guarantee of our communion with God and
acceptable prayer. (3.)
This intercessory pleading is the Scriptural expression for that perfect
sympathy of our Lord with His members on earth which His community of nature
gives Him, in virtue of which He is their Paraclete or Advocate or Helper,
succoring them in temptation, strengthening them for duty, and imparting to them
seasonable help. He knows the secrets of all hearts as God: but His humanity
gives Him a knowledge that He could not without it have, and the Scripture lays
much stress on the benefit of this. Wherefore
in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren . . . . For in
that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are
tempted.[457]
His
sympathy does not spring from remembrance of sin or fall or danger of falling;
but from His human experience of the devices of Satan haunting the accesses of
our nature. In His atoning passion He Who knew no sin yet became acquainted with
it as only God incarnate could become; so also in His administration of His
atoning grace He knows, as only God incarnate can know, our need. 3. But this leads to the individual bearing of our
Saviour’s intercession. The
Head of every man is Christ:[458]
the
High Priest over the whole house has a special relation to every worshipper. He
is the Representative of the whole Church, and of every several branch, in His
intercession: it was the Church of Laodicaea, neither hot nor cold, concerning
which He said, I
will spue thee out of My mouth,[459]
or
drop its name from His heavenly Litany. But His heart is also the faithful
Friend of sinners, and faithful to every mortal transgressor as his own High
Priest. As surely as the Atonement availed for the entire family of Adam, so
certainly the pleading of Christ on the ground of the atonement may be appealed
to by every representative of that family. (1.)
This is the strength of the penitent’s heart in approaching the God of
justice. The one
Mediator between God and men[460]
makes
intercession for all that
come unto God by Him. For through Him we both[461]—Jews and Gentiles,
saved and unsaved—have
access by one Spirit unto the Father.[462]
Every
man living and sinning on earth has, if he will only use it, an introduction, prosagoogeén,
a
right of humble approach to God. He has not only the ground of confidence that
an accepted propitiation for his race gives, but also the assurance of a Divine-HUMAN
Representative
who loves his own individual soul, and has left on record this unrevoked and
irrevocable word: him
that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out.[463]
If
He will not cast him out, most surely the Father behind Him will not. (2.)
Especially is this true of the believer. On the basis of the Atonement he is
accepted in Christ; but he might be tempted to think, nor would it be an
unreasonable temptation, that, having sinned against the grace of that
Atonement, his hope must perish. But his Head above is a living, unchangeable,
ever available Pleader for him. If
any man—any
Christian man—sin,
we have an Advocate,[464]
Who,
in the court of heaven, vindicates the rights of His sacrifice offered on earth.
For every believer He is at once a Propitiation and a Paraclete in the presence
of the Father. BENEDICTION
1. The solemn
Benediction which attested Divine acceptance was expressly provided for in the
Levitical service. It was an integral part of the high priest’s duty, which,
like almost all others, was committed in due time to the priesthood generally.
At the first consecration of Aaron and his sons, after the offerings were
presented for the host, Aaron
lifted up his hand toward the people, and blessed them.... and the glory of the
Lord appeared unto all the people.[465]
The
evidence of that verbal blessing was that there
came a fire out from before the Lord, and consumed upon the altar the
burnt-offering and the fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and
fell on their faces. Of the
priests the sons of Levi[466]
it
was afterwards said, that them the
Lord thy God hath chosen to minister unto Him, and to bless IN
THE NAME OF THE LORD. The stress must be laid upon these last words:
God alone is to be blessed in Doxology, and God alone blesses in Benediction,
whether in Old Testament or New. The blessing was not only, however, in the name
of the Lord; it was also the name of the Triune God Jehovah impressed upon the
people, making them His own. Speak
unto Aaron and unto his sons, saying, On this wise ye shall bless the children
of Israel, saying unto them, The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make
His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up His
countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And they shall put MY
NAME upon
the children of Israel; and I will bless them.[467]
Here
are united the blessings of universal providential care, of mercy for sin, and
of internal peace: for the people generally and for every individual worshipper
prepared to receive it. Two things are to be observed in passing. 1. As we have seen that the symbols of sacrifice
within the veil pointed mysteriously but certainly to the Triune God, so also
did the Benediction which sealed to the worshippers the acceptance of those
sacrifices. Three names, yet to be revealed, are alone wanting to make the
Levitical Blessing the distinct benediction of the Holy Trinity. The benediction
IN ACT,
the effusion of the Divine glory, found its great realization, though itself a
reality, when God shined
in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of [Jesus] Christ.[468]
His
is the Face of God turned on the penitent in GRACE, whether in this world or the
next. The benediction IN
WORD found its highest
fulfillment in the testimony of the Divine Spirit, giving PEACE
through the
assurance that we have grace freely
bestowed on us in the Beloved.[469]
2. The ancient Benediction was not only typical; it
was more than a mere form of words; it was a reality, pronouncing over the
people, and every individual who sincerely complied with the conditions of the
old covenant, an acceptance the true and eternal ground of which was as yet not
made known. It has already been seen that the Levitical economy, as such and in
its specific prescriptions for the atonement of individual and national
offences, aimed only at the maintenance of external legal relations to the
Theocracy. But, underlying and surrounding all these, was the great typical
system of sacrifice that was accepted for the sake of the Coming Atonement, the
undisputed virtue of which secured the effectual acceptance of God. There was a
pretermission or páresin
of
all sins for a season, until the fullness of time confirmed this into an aphesis,[470]
or
full forgiveness. II. It is the prerogative of the One Mediator
between God and man that He is not only the Minister of blessing, but that He is
also its Source.[471]
He
is God and the High Priest in one. He is the Antitype of Melchisedec, who met
Abraham, higher
than he, and blessed
him and
all the Levitical priesthood in him. The benediction of Jesus is the benediction
of God Incarnate, and it is no less than the administration of all the benefits
of the evangelical covenant: the
promise of eternal inheritance.[472]
1. The blessing of our High Priest is deliverance
from sin. It is the
blessing of Abraham,[473]
that
is, the
righteousness of faith,[474]
and
the
promise of the Spirit through faith: that Spirit being the sanctifying power of the
Gospel. God,
having raised up His Servant sent Him to bless you, in turning away every one of
you from his iniquities.[475]
Comparing
these passages, which are one in the unity of the blessing of Abraham, we gather
that the Christian High-priestly benediction is our deliverance from all sin. 2. Hence it is the impartation of all
spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.[476]
The
term BLESSING is
one that cannot be defined: it is the gracious mystery of the manifestation of
the Supreme to His people in grace. It is a gift without a definition; including
all the individual benefits that may be put into words, it surpasses each in
particular and surrounds the whole. It is the unbounded sum of all that has been
procured for the redeemed children of men: first, as the restored prerogative of
the creature resting in the Creator, and, secondly, as the superadded
blessedness of a nearer than creaturely union with God in Christ. 3. This Benediction is
imparted through the Holy Ghost. He is the Vicar of Christ, and the Agent of His
will, and the Medium of every benefit of His passion. Therefore the more full
consideration of this subject belongs to the next department of our Theology. Meanwhile, it must be
remembered that the Blessing of the Gospel is obtained by Jesus the Priest,
announced by Jesus the Prophet, imparted by Jesus the King, through the
Mediatorial Spirit of the new economy of grace. THE
JEWISH AND THE CHRISTIAN TEMPLE Before we pass to the
Kingly Office of Christ we must linger for a while on the scene of His
High-priestly function, which is, whether on earth or in heaven, the Temple, or
Tabernacle: the place of special Divine revelation to man. I. In the Old Testament
we see the progressive stages of the history of sacrificial worship converging
towards the Christian Temple. 1. Before the Levitical economy the Altar stood
alone under the heavens: the mizbach,
the first record of which is that Noah
builded an altar unto the Lord, a thusiasteérion,[477]
so
termed from the burnt offerings SLAIN
before it. From that
time the patriarchs raised altars where God revealed Himself, as Abram builded
an altar unto the Lord, Who appeared unto him.[478]
When
the law was given on Sinai Jehovah said to His people: Ye
have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. Ye shall not make with Me
gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold. An altar of earth
thou shalt make unto Me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and
thy peace offerings, thy sheep and thine oxen: in all places where I record My
name I will come unto thee, and I will Mess thee.[479]
From
that time there was to be no longer an altar in every tent. 2. The Mosaic Sanctuary was a Tabernacle, ‘ohel
mow`eed,
the Tent of congregation, where God met His people; also the mishkan
haa`eedut,
the Tabernacle of Testimony, or of Covenant revelation. The innumerable details
of the economy of this domain of the high priest’s function belong to
archaeology: only the leading points need to be referred to here, and those only
as pertaining to the Mosaic Sanctuary. There was a threefold division. In the
Court, surrounding all, the Covenant People assembled; and this, in the later
Temple, made silent provision for the future ingathering of the Gentiles. Here
was the Altar of Burnt-offering. The sanctuary proper, the Holy Place, haqodesh
admitted
the priests only; it had the Table of Shewbread, the twelve loaves of which
renewed every sabbath were a permanent meat offering in acknowledgment of the
Divine gifts; opposite to this the Golden Candlestick, with seven lamps, the
symbol of God in His Holy Spirit for ever enlightening the Temple; and between
them, over against the ark of the covenant, the Altar of Incense, representing
the daily intercession of the priesthood and the daily prayers of the
congregation. Into the Holiest of All, the Most Holy Place, haqaadaashiym
qodesh the
high priest alone entered once in the year. There was the Ark, the most
comprehensive symbol in the ancient worship: the Ark
of the covenant,[480]
which
had in it the
tables of the covenant, the
conditions of God’s good will towards His people, and at the same time the
testimony of His people’s sinfulness; the Ark of the throne of God, because
His glory as a thick cloud rested on the Kapporeth or Mercy-seat, which covered
the record of transgression from the Divine eyes. Over the Propitiatory were the
Cherubim, so important in the symbolical drapery of the curtains, of which it
was said: O
Shepherd of Israel, Thou that dwellest between the Cherubim, shine forth![481]
These
represented all the Divine attributes in their universal manifestations: barring
the entrance to Paradise and watching the way of return. But they have faded
away in Christ. 3. The Tabernacle, with
all its divisions, was one under the supremacy of the high priest Every figure, symbol, and act within it—from the
laver at the entrance to the thick cloud of the Divine glory never seen but by
faith—paid its tribute to the great Fact: there
I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above, the mercy-seat,
from between the two cherubims.[482]
It may not always be possible to trace the connection; nor is it necessary. We
must be content with observing the typical allusion of the whole to the
Christian temple in which the Supreme Sacrifice was once offered WITHOUT
the
veil, and then presented WITHIN
it. II. The new temple is
as conspicuous in the Evangelical revelation as the old temple was in the
Levitical economy. 1. It is the glory of the Christian Offerer that He
is the Antitype not only of the typical high priest, and of all the offerings He
presented, but of the place itself in which He offered. Nor is there anything
more impressive in the Great Fulfillment than the truth that the Incarnate Son
is as incarnate Himself the Temple. His first prediction concerning His own
Person declared this: destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up: He spake of the temple of His
body.[483]
His
human nature—our human nature—is the shrine in which the Word,
Whose
Glory
was
as
of the Only-begotten, became flesh and dwelt among us.[484]
This
central truth throws its beams backwards to Paradise and forwards to the
Consummation: giving unity to all the Scriptural records of God’s dwelling
among men. In Eden the Divine Presence, with the guardian
Cherubim, had its ark. After the Fall the
Presence of the Lord[485]
was retained upon earth
until the Flood. It then became the Glory
of the Lord, kªbowd, over the Ark of the
Covenant: permanent, as distinguished from occasional Theophanies, and as the
type of the final indwelling of God in our nature. The later Jewish theology
gave it the name SHEKINAH,
as the tabernacle was formerly called mishkan
Yahweh, the dwelling-place of Jehovah. But now in Christ
Jesus, the Incarnate Son, God is abidingly manifest
in the flesh.[486]
The
ancient symbol was the object only of faith: the Reality is object of faith
also, but the Apostles could say, We
beheld His glory;[487]
and
He Himself said, he
that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.[488]
When
He appeared it was already true that the
tabernacle of God is with men,[489]
though
another fulfillment was in the future. The true theology of our Lord’s Person
holds that He inhabited human nature as His temple: He enters or is
come into or
in[490]
the
flesh. Not that the Divinity is the High Priest and the flesh the temple. There
are indeed two passages that seem to warrant such a view. Jesus is said to have
consecrated for us a new and living way of access to God through
the veil, that is to say, His flesh:[491]
in
His human nature He suffered; and the rending of that veil opened the way into
the Holiest. But the rending of His Holy Flesh did not rend asunder His one
Personality: He through
the Eternal Spirit[492]
offered
Himself in
heaven when that sacred curtain was repaired. But it must be remembered that He offered
HIMSELF.
We must beware of the temptation to refine upon these distinctions; and not
think it necessary to harmonies all the various sayings of Scripture on the
great mystery which rises above all figures and analogies. 2. The Body of our Lord, in another view, is the
mystical fellowship of His saints. In that Jesus is High Priest, and all who are
His partake of His priesthood. (1.) First, the Church as such is the sphere of
the High Priest’s function. He is Himself its Shekinah, whose glory from the
Holiest, blending with the Sevenfold Light of the Spirit from the Holy Place, is
the FULNESS OF GOD
[493]
for
which the Apostle prays. Whosoever is in Christ lives and moves in Him as a
Temple: ye
are the Temple of the living God.[494]
In
Him all
the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord.[495]
Thus
is fulfilled the mystic prophecy of the precious ointment that
ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard.[496]
The
unction of the High Priest descends upon all His members, for He and they are
one; while, in the sublime confusion of figures, those who form the spiritual
house, and
holy
priesthood, offer
up themselves as spiritual
sacrifices.[497]
(2.)
And every individual Christian is said to be a temple in which our High Priest
dwells: the whole economy of communion with heaven being translated into the
believer’s heart, in which he is exhorted to sanctify
the Lord Christ.[498]
This
indwelling of the High Priest is the highest and deepest characteristic of
personal religion: it is that ABODE
WITH HIM [499]
which
the Savior reserved for His last promise to any individual on earth, as well as
His last promise to any individual from heaven: I
will come in to him.[500]
3. But there is a yet wider view. Heaven and earth
make the New Temple in which our High Priest ministers. It is a sanctuary not
made with hands.[501]
Heaven
is the Holy of Holies, into which He has entered with the virtue of His
sacrifice. There are the cherubims of glory without the symbol, beholding not
the mercy-seat sprinkled with blood, but the Person of Jesus Who without blood
and without the incense presents Himself boldly for us that we also may come
with boldness. Following out the symbol to its issues, the expositor of the
Christian temple says that it was necessary that the
heavenly things themselves[502]
should
be purified with the letter
sacrifices: not that heaven itself needs sprinkling, save
through the One Propitiation of its God. The Holy Place is done away in a
certain sense: there is but one Priest, and all believers are a royal priesthood
who offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. In
that outer court our Lord’s altar, the Cross, was once erected. It is gone,
and yet the Apostle says, We
have an altar![503]
disguising,
and yet scarcely disguising, his allusion to the cross. In this outer court
there is no distinction of Jew and Gentile: Christ hath broken
down the middle wall of partition.[504]
Nor
is there any other distinction. The whole family of believers as yet in
probation occupies the GREAT
HOUSE [505]
in
which there are
many mansions.[506]
But
the strange paradox remains that, while Christian men in the militant church are
on the pavement of the outer court, they are at the same time in
heavenly places in Christ.[507]
Hence
they are exhorted with
boldness to enter into the Holiest[508]
above
almost in the same sentence that speaks of
our not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together[509]
below.
But these subjects belong rather to the doctrine of the Church. 4. There is one other
application of the High-priestly function of our Lord to which it is important
in this place to refer, however slightly. The entire scheme of the Christian
atonement belongs to this office of the Messiah. Not as the Teacher, nor as the
Ruler, does He save the world: save as teaching the principles of His
sacrificial work, and administering the blessings it has purchased. It will
hereafter be seen how much the doctrine of the Atonement is bound up with the
Divine government of a Lawgiver Who administers His law in a new court, the
Court Mediatorial. There He exacts and receives what theological language terms
satisfaction. But it must always be remembered that the Temple is the true
sphere of atoning sacrifice. The evangelical Hall of judgment is no other than a
Court of the Temple. And it is something more than a mystical fancy which
regards the Veil as separating between the outer sanctuary where the oblation
that satisfies justice is offered, and the Holiest where it is presented for
Divine acceptance. Our Lord’s Atonement is the SACRIFICIAL
OBEDIENCE or
the OBEDIENT
SACRIFICE which hath put away sin: the Obedience was rendered
in the outer court where blood reigns unto death, the Sacrifice was offered in
the inner shrine where mercy reigns unto life. In Christ all these things are
one. And this unity is the main object of the Evangelical discussion of the
Epistle to the Hebrews. On all other matters, even of an economy that was
Divine, it is very brief and never solicitous to expatiate: of
which we cannot now speak severally.[510]
The Kingly authority of
Christ is grounded on His sacrificial death: as its high reward; as the medium
of carrying out its ends; and in its highest exercise the bestowment of the
blessings purchased by His Atonement. This mediatorial dignity was arrogated by
Himself on earth by anticipation and in virtue of the Divinity of His Person.
After the resurrection He formally assumed it on the Mountain in Galilee; He
then ascended to His throne in heaven for its exercise; and thence sends forth
His Apostles to declare and enforce His royal prerogatives. The Kingdom of
Christ is exhibited in their writings as the kingdom of grace: administered in
the world by His Providence, in the Church, and in the hearts of believers. As
such it will terminate with the final judgment; but as the kingdom of glory,
already begun, and to be consummated at the great day, it will be everlasting. I. Understanding by the title King the Redeemer’s
mediatorial government generally, we may say that it occupies the foremost place
in the Old-Testament prediction, and was accordingly
assumed by our Lord as His own from the beginning. The earliest and most
glorious prophecies which, went before on the Deliverer proclaimed His supreme
authority. Such were the Protevangelium;[511]
the
promise to Abraham;[512]
the
blessing of Jacob;[513]
and
the predictions to David.[514]
The
Psalms open with the kingly supremacy of the Christ, and make this their ever
recurring keynote.[515]
The
Prophets set out with this theme: it begins prophecy proper in Isaiah, and, as
has been seen, runs through the whole series of the Messianic prophets, who
invariably connect the announcement of the Saviour’s SUFFERINGS
with
THE GLORY THAT
SHOULD FOLLOW. The teachers in Judaism,
after the Captivity, introduced a different view. They took the sufferings of
the Servant of Jehovah[516]
to
themselves and their own nation, and a carnal view of the reign of their Christ
predominated: their favorite name for Him was KING
MESSIAH.[517]
The
Jews of Egypt differed from those of Palestine in not localizing the scene of
the Messiah’s government in Jerusalem, and generally in understanding His
kingdom to be moral and spiritual. II Our Lord opened His mission by proclaiming, not
His own kingdom, but the kingdom of heaven and of God. On the nature of that
spiritual government He discoursed largely; but it was not until the close of
His ministry that He represented Himself as the Supreme Ruler in it. His
authority till then was that of the Teacher only: as exercised upon the Mount of
Beatitudes,
and vindicated for
Him on the Mount of Transfiguration. His mediatorial kingdom as such was to be
specially based upon His atoning death as the Divine-human Representative of
Mankind. The relation between His regal government and His expiatory humiliation
was declared by Himself on the eve of His passion, and is much dwelt upon by His
Apostles. It is placed before us under two aspects. 1. By undergoing a substitutionary death for
mankind the Redeemer obtained both a judicial and a moral right to the human
race. (1.) He redeemed it from the bondage of sin and the doom of death. But in
His own language and in His servants’ Satan represents that bondage as the god
of this world.[518]
Approaching
His cross our Lord said: Now
is the judgment of this world; now shall the Prince of this world be cast out.
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.[519]
The
alien power was cast out in the court of judgment, and it was decided that the
world belonged to Him Who died
and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.[520]
But
this was only the vindication of an authority which had been virtually His from
the beginning; since He had been the King uncrowned, because the
Lamb slain, from the foundation of the world.[521]
(2,)
His moral right is that which the infinite benefit of His passion confers; and
it is this which draws men to His feet. It is the gracious and effectual sway of
the atoning sacrifice on all who accept its propitiation: ye
are bought with a price.[522]
2. The self-renunciation of Jesus receives
universal government as its reward. He obtained as a gift the dominion over
mankind: Glorify
Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee: as Thou hast given Him power over
all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him.[523]
But
He also received the mediatorial government of the universe: Wherefore
God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him the name which is above every
name.[524]
Whether
or not the virtue of His passion extended to other worlds, certainly its reward
and honor extends to them. III. After His
resurrection He formally assumed His regal sway. 1. It was on the Mountain of Galilee, to which He
summoned His Apostles and disciples, and virtually the whole company of
believers, that He for the first time announced His absolute authority in human
affairs. Above He had said, All
Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine,[525]
with
a wider and deeper meaning; but now He declares, All
power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth:[526]
all
power in heaven AND
earth, in heaven FOR
earth.
Having already proclaimed His rule below as Lord
of the dead,[527]
and
having declared it in the midst of His brethren on earth, He then ascended up to
exercise it for ever. 2. Hence it is obvious
that the regal office of Christ must not include His government of the universe
as the eternal Son. And further we are prepared for the doctrine of St. Paul,
that the jurisdiction obtained by the Mediator will, after all its designs are
subserved in the salvation of the saints and the subjection of His enemies, be
surrendered to the Father, and mediatorial authority shall cease. It began after
the Cross, and will therefore end when the redeeming design is fulfilled. IV.
The formal analysis of the Redeemer’s regal office, set forth in the Acts as
exercised on earth, in the Apocalypse as exercised in heaven, and in the
Epistles theologically described, can only be summarized here. Almost every
topic finds its more appropriate place hereafter in the Administration of
Redemption. 1. The kingdom of
Christ is the Christian Church or the kingdom of grace. As such its treatment
must be reserved for a later stage. Meanwhile, some points of importance require
brief notice. (1.) This kingdom is in its widest meaning the
re-establishment of the Divine authority over man. It is the
kingdom of heaven, because
its Ruler is ascended into heaven, and there sits upon the throne of saving
authority; because its object is to restore the principles of heavenly obedience
upon earth, according to our first great prayer: Thy
kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven;[528]
and
because it will be consummated when earth becomes heaven and heaven earth to
mankind. It is the
kingdom of God, because the Incarnate Ruler is Himself Divine; and
it is thus also distinguished from the
kingdoms of this world [529]
which
are ordained of God to be the types and reflections of His supreme rule. Hence
the Church, as the kingdom of Christ, is essentially a spiritual authority over
spiritual subjects. Whatever relation it may sustain to the transitory
governments of time, it is entirely independent of them. And, whatever
externality it may assume for a season, its profound and abiding character is
the internal and spiritual reconstruction of the THEOCRACY
in
which God, now the God-man, rules over a saved mankind. (2.) It has indeed an
outward organization: laws and administration of law, rulers and submission to
rulers, terms of admission and penalties of excommunication. But all these are
connected rather with the Visible Church, or visible Churches, than with the
Kingdom of Christ, which is the glorious restoration of Divine authority over
man: one, spiritual, ever enlarging and tending to its consummation in heaven.
The KINGDOM has
a meaning which the CHURCH
has not. 2. This will be further
apparent if we consider how habitually the kingdom of our Lord is declared to be
set up within the individual heart. It is the interior life of religion, and
coincides with the imparted blessings of personal salvation under the New
Covenant, and the ethical relations which result from them. There is no view of
personal religion more comprehensive than that which makes it the absolute sway
of One Ruler within the heart. 3. It is the jurisdiction over the world for the
sake of the Christian Church. The New Testament abounds with testimonies, which
find their highest expression in St. Paul’s words concerning the mighty power
that hath
put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over all things to
the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.[530]
The
providential government of human affairs is in the hands of Christ for the sake
of the Body of a new mankind which He is gathering and sanctifying to Himself.
(1.) Hence the kingly office of the LORD
OF ALL [531]
is
exercised in the protection of His people; He is the Captain
of their salvation:[532]
He
hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written: KING
or KINGS,
AND LORD OF LORDS. [533]
(2.)
It is the Headship of a conquering Gospel which must in some sense win the
world, subjugate and suppress Satanic powers, and rescue mankind as such. When
our Lord first announced His authority He added the words: Make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I
have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world.[534]
He
Whose Name is ABOVE
EVERY NAME[535]
here
pays fealty to the Holy Trinity whose Representative He is. But the final
accomplishment of the designs of heaven is bound up with obedience to Himself.
For that He waits on His throne. With this Lo we may connect another in the Old
Testament: Lo,
My Servant, Whom I uphold! He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till He have
set judgment in the earth.[536] 4. The last function of mediatorial sway will be
the final judgment; when the High Priest shall no longer intercede for the world
nor the Prophet teach mankind, but the Son
of Man, Who is also the
King, shall sit
upon the throne of His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all nations:[537]
gathered
for the first and last time that He may separate
them again to be united no more. 5. While the Mediatorial King will lay down His
authority, the same King, as Head of the Church, shall reign for ever. And
of His kingdom—as
the indwelling of the supreme glory of the Godhead in mankind—there
shall be no end.[538]
But
these are subjects that belong to Eschatology.
[1] Phil. 2:8 [2] Rom. 8:3 [3] Isa. 53:3 [4] Mat. 8:17; Isa. 53:4 [5] Phil. 2:8 [6] 1 Tim. 3:16 [7] Heb. 8:8 [8] John 1:14 [9] John 2:11 [10] Mat. 28:18 [11] Luke 2:49 [12] John 14:28 [13] John 3:34 [14] Heb. 9:14 [15] Gal. 5:18 [16] Gal. 4:4 [17] Luke 1:35 [18] John 1:29 [19] Isa. 53:12 [20] Mat. 3:15 [21] 1 John 3:5 [22] James 1:13 [23] Rom. 6:14 [24] Rom 13:10 [25] Gal. 4:4 [26] 2 Cor. 5:21 [27] Gal. 3:13 [28] Gal. 4:4,5 [29] Phil. 2:8 [30] Isa. 52:14 [31] Isa. 53:3,12,10 [32] John 10:18 [33] John 14:28 [34] Mat. 19:17 [35] Mark 13:32 [36] John 20:17 [37] Rom. 5:19 [38] Heb. 5:8 [39] Phil. 2:8 [40] Phil. 2:8 [41] Mat. 27:38 [42] Heb. 2:9 [43] Lam. 1:12 [44] Psa. 69:20 [45] John 19:34 [46] John 19:36 [47] Mark 15:34 [48] Phil. 2:8 [49] 1 Cor. 5:7 [50] 1 Cor. 15:23 [51] Luke 23:54 [52] Mat. 26:5 [53] John 13:1 [54] Mat 26:17 [55] Luke 22:15 [56] Acts 2:23 [57] Isa. 53:10 [58] 2 Cor. 5:21 [59] Acts 2:23 [60] 1 Cor. 2:8 [61] Gen. 22:6 [62] John 3:14 [63] Isa. 53:5 [64] Zec. 12:10 [65] Psa. 22:16 [66] John 12:33 [67] John 18:32 [68] John 18:37 [69] John 8:44 [70] Luke 23:34 [71] 1 Pet. 2:24 [72] Heb. 11:19 [73] Heb. 13:10,12 [74] Heb. 9:26 [75] 2 Cor. 5:21 [76] Gal. 3:13 [77] Rom. 8:3 [78] Heb. 12:2 [79] Col. 2:15 [80] 1 Cor. 4:6 [81] Phil. 3:10 [82] Heb. 13:13 [83] Phil. 2:8 [84] Mat. 3:14 [85] Rev. 1:18 [86] Mat. 3:17 [87] 2 Pet. 1:17 [88] John 12:2 [89] John 3:2 [90] Luke 6:5 [91] Mat. 12:6 [92] Mat. 17:26 [93] John 5:26 [94] John 10:18 [95] John 19:30 [96] John 10:18 [97] John 11:15 [98] John 13:13 [99] John 14:10,9 [100] John 10:30 [101] Luke 24:26 [102] Psa. 18:11 [103] Acts 2:30,31 [104] Psa. 16:10 [105] Acts 13:29,35 [106] John 19:30 [107] Rom. 6:9 [108] Acts 2:24; 3:15 [109] Isa. 53:9 [110] Rom. 6:9 [111] Acts 13:37 [112] Rom. 14:9 [113] Rom. 10;7 [114] Eph. 4:8,9 [115] Col. 2:15 [116] 1 Pet 3:18,19,22 [117] Pro. 21:16 [118] Psa. 22:22 [119] John 2:19 [120] John 10:17,18 [121] Rom. 1:4 [122] 1 Cor. 15:4 [123] Rom. 6:4 [124] Eph. 1:20 [125] 1 Pet. 1:21 [126] John 17:1 [127] Acts 13:33 [128] Luke 2 [129] Acts 13:32 [130] Acts 10:38,40 [131] Eph. 1:19 [132] Rom. 8:11 [133] Col. 2:2 [134] Luke 2:26 [135] John 2:21 [136] Mat. 17:23 [137] Heb. 12:25 [138] Rom. 4:25 [139] Rom. 8:34 [140] 1 Cor. 15:20 [141] 2 Tim. 2:11 [142] John 14:19 [143] John 18:36 [144] Luke 22:29,30 [145] Mat. 28:18 [146] Mat. 12:40 [147] Mat. 22:29 [148] Acts 17:18 [149] 1 Cor. 15:14 [150] Acts 10:40,41 [151] John 8:21 [152] Luke 16:31 [153] Mark 16:1 [154] John 20:1 [155] Mat. 28:1 [156] Luke 24:13,33,34 [157] John 20:19,24 [158] Mat. 28:16 [159] John 21:1 [160] Acts 1:3 [161] Lev. 23:11 [162] Luke 24:39 [163] Luke 16:31 [164] Acts 5:32 [165] Acts 10:44 [166] Acts 4:33 [167] Heb. 2:4 [168] Eph. 1:19,20 [169] 1 Cor. 15:23 [170] John 20:17 [171] Acts 3:21 [172] Luke 24:52 [173] Acts 1:21 [174] Heb. 5:7 [175] Acts 1:1,2 [176] Luke 24:50,51 [177] Eph. 4:10 [178] Heb. 9:24 [179] John 3:13 [180] Acts 3:21 [181] Heb. 9:24,28 [182] 1 John 2:1,2 [183] Heb. 4:14 [184] Heb. 9:25 [185] Acts 5:31 [186] Acts 1:12; Zec. 14:4 [187] Acts 1:11 [188] Eph. 1:3 [189] Col. 3:1 [190] Rev. 22:20 [191] Mat. 22:43,44 [192] Mat. 26: 64 [193] Acts 2:33 [194] 1 Pet. 3:22 [195] Eph. 1:20-22 [196] 1 Cor. 15:25 [197] Heb. 10:12,13 [198] Acts 7:56 [199] Heb. 1:2,3 [200] John 1:18 [201] Psa. 68:18 [202] John 16:7 [203] Acts 1:5 [204] Acts 2:33 [205] Eph. 4:8,12 [206] Psa. 68:18 [207] Eph. 3:19 [208] Mat. 20:28 [209] John 8:26,28 [210] John 10:18 [211] Mark 13:32 [212] John 14:28 [213] John 5:26 [214] John 8:42 [215] Mat. 11:27 [216] John 3:13 [217] John 2:19 [218] Heb. 12:2 [219] Acts 5:31 [220] Acts 3:26 [221] Acts 26:18 [222] Rev. 3:12 [223] John 20:17 [224] Rev. 22:13 [225] Rev 1:17,18 [226] Phil. 2:2-8 [227] Col. 2:9 [228] Col. 1:19 [229] 1 Cor. 11:3 [230] 1 Cor. 3:23 [231] Phil. 2:9 [232] 1 Cor. 15:28 [233] Rev. 7:17 [234] Eph. 5:23 [235] Col. 2:9 [236] Acts 3:21 [237] John 6:38 [238] 1 Cor. 15:47 [239] John 1:11 [240] Gen. 28:18,16 [241] Exo. 30:22-33 [242] Exo. 30:30 [243] Lev. 8:30 [244] Lev. 4:3 [245] 1 King 19:16 [246] 1 King 19:15 [247] Num. 27:18,23 [248] 1 Sam. 10:1 [249] 1 Sam. 16:13 [250] Exo. 30:29 [251] Psa. 2:2 [252] Psa. 14:7,2,8 [253] Isa. 61:1 [254] Luke 4:18 [255] Dan. 9:24,25,26 [256] John 7:42 [257] Mat. 12:23 [258] Mat. 17:10 [259] Mat. 2:4 [260] Luke 2:26 [261] John 1:41 [262] John 7:31 [263] Mat. 2:2,4 [264] Luke 23:2 [265] John 6:14,15 [266] John 7:40,41 [267] John 4:25 [268] Luke 1:68 [269] Luke 1:77 [270] John 1:29 [271] John 11:27 [272] John 12:34 [273] John 6:51,52 [274] Mat. 16:22 [275] Acts 17:3 [276] Luke 2:11,26 [277] John 1:18 [278] Heb. 5:8 [279] Heb. 5:1 [280] Heb. 2:17 [281] Acts 20:28 [282] Heb. 9:14 [283] Heb. 1:3 [284] 1 Tim. 2:5 [285] Isa. 53:12 [286] 1 John 5:6 [287] John 1:31,33,34 [288] Mat. 3:16,17 [289] John 1:31 [290] Isa. 11:2 [291] John 3:34 [292] 1 John 2:20 [293] Acts 11:26 [294] Heb. 9:28 [295] 1 Cor. 15:28 [296] Rom. 15:8,9 [297] Acts 7:37 [298] Luke 7:16 [299] John 4:19 [300] Luke 24:19 [301] Mat. 11:9 [302] Heb. 1:1 [303] Luke 4:24 [304] Mat. 15:24 [305] Mat: 4:15,16 [306] Rom. 15:8 [307] Psa. 14:2 [308] Luke 4:32 [309] John 7:46 [310] Deu. 18:15 [311] Rom. 10:4 [312] John 8:12 [313] John 14:6 [314] James 1:25 [315] Rom. 3:27 [316] Rom. 8:2 [317] Luke 4:16 [318] Luke 4:21 [319] Mat. 4:23 [320] Luke 24:47 [321] Mat. 28:20 [322] John 14:12 [323] Acts 1:1 [324] John 16:13 [325] John 14:6 [326] John 14:6,17; 16:13 [327] John 7:16 [328] John 7:28,29 [329] John 3:31,32 [330] Col. 2:3 [331] John 8:24,28 [332] 2 Chro. 15:1 [333] John 10:7 [334] John 18:37 [335] John 7:17 [336] Luke 9:35 [337] 1 Tim. 3:16 [338] Col. 3:16 [339] 1 John 2:20 [340] Mat. 3:2 [341] John 1:29 [342] John 6:33 [343] John 6:49 [344] John 6:51 [345] Luke 9:31 [346] Mat. 17:5 [347] Mat. 20:28 [348] John 17:14,2,19 [349] Heb. 5:1 [350] Gen. 13:18 [351] Exo. 24:6 [352] Heb. 5:4,5 [353] Heb. 5:10 [354] Exo. 29 [355] Lev. 8 [356] Lev. 8:12 [357] Lev. 21:10 [358] John 6:27 [359] John 17:19 [360] Exo. 28:36-38 [361] Heb. 3:1 |