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The Glory of Christ in the Discharge of His Mediatory Office

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The Glory of Christ in the Discharge of His Mediatory Office

5 minuten leestijd Arcering uitzetten

The glory of Christ is proposed to us in what He suffered in the discharge of the office which He had undertaken. There belonged, indeed, to His office, victory, success, and triumph with great glory (Isaiah 63:1-5); but there were sufferings also required of Him prior to this: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:26).

But such were these sufferings of Christ that our minds quickly recoil in a sense of our insufficiency to conceive aright of them. No one has ever launched into this ocean in his meditations but has quickly found himself unable to fathom the depths of it; nor shall I here undertake an inquiry into them. I shall only point at this spring of glory, and leave it under a veil.

We might here look on Him as under the weight of the wrath of God and the curse of the law; taking on Himself and on His whole soul the utmost of evil that God had ever threatened to sin or sinners. We might look on Him in His agony and bloody sweat, in His strong cries and supplications when He was sorrowful to the death and began to be amazed in apprehensions of the things that were coming on Him — of that dreadful trial into which He was entering. We might look upon Him conflicting with all the powers of darkness, the rage and madness of men, suffering in His soul, His body, His Name, His reputation, His goods, His life; some of these sufferings being immediate from God above, others from devils and wicked men acting according to the determinate counsel of God.

We might look on Him praying, weeping, crying out, bleeding, dying — in all these things making His soul an offering for sin. So was He “taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? for He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression,” saith God, “of My people was He stricken” (Isaiah 53:8). But these things I shall not insist on in particular, but leave them under such a veil as may give us a prospect into them, so far as to fill our souls with holy admiration.

Lord, “what is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?” (Psalm 8:4). Who hath known Thy mind, or who hath been Thy counselor? “O the depth of the riches both of. the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33). What shall we say to these things? That God spared not His only Son, but gave Him up unto death (Romans 8:32) and all the evils included therein for such poor, lost sinners as we were; that for our sakes the eternal Son of God should submit Himself to all the evils that our natures are liable to and that our sins had deserved, that we might be delivered!

How glorious is the Lord Christ on this account in the eyes of believers! When Adam had sinned and thereby eternally, according to the sanction of the law, ruined himself and all his posterity, he stood ashamed, afraid, trembling as one ready to perish forever under the displeasure of God. Death was what he had deserved, and immediate death was what he looked for. In this state the Lord Christ in the promise comes to him, and says, “Poor creature! how woeful is thy condition! how deformed is thy appearance! What is become of the beauty, of the glory of that image of God wherein thou wast created? How hast thou taken on thee the monstrous shape and image of Satan? And yet thy present misery, thy entrance into dust and darkness, is in no way to be compared with what is to ensue. Eternal distress lies at the door. But yet look up once more, and behold Me, that thou mayest have some glimpse of what is in the designs of infinite wisdom, love, and grace. Come forth from thy shelter, thy hiding place. I will put Myself into thy condition. I will undergo and bear that burden of guilt and punishment which would sink thee eternally into the bosom of hell. I will pay that which I never took and be made temporally a curse for thee that thou mayest attain unto eternal blessedness.” To the same purpose He speaks to convinced sinners in the invitation He gives them to come to Him.

Thus is the Lord Christ set forth in the gospel, “evidently crucified” before our eyes (Galatians 3:1), in the representation that is made of His glory, in the sufferings He underwent for the discharge of the office He had undertaken. Let us then behold Him as poor, despised, persecuted, reproached, reviled, hanged on a tree — in all, laboring under a sense of the wrath of God due to our sins. To this end are they recorded in the Gospels, read, preached, and represented to us.

But what can we see herein? What glory is in these things? Are not these the things which all the world of Jews and Gentiles stumbled and took offense at — those wherein He was appointed to be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense? Was it not esteemed a foolish thing to look for help and deliverance by the miseries of another — to look for life by His death? The apostle declares at large that such it was esteemed (1 Corinthians 1).

So was it in the wisdom of the world. But even on the account of these things is He honorable, glorious, and precious in the sight of them that believe (1 Peter 2:6-7). For even in this He was “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24). And the apostle declares at large the grounds and reasons of the different thoughts and apprehensions of men concerning the cross and sufferings of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:3-6).

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Bekijk de hele uitgave van woensdag 1 maart 1995

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The Glory of Christ in the Discharge of His Mediatory Office

Bekijk de hele uitgave van woensdag 1 maart 1995

The Banner of Truth | 28 Pagina's