BY THE REV. ALEXANDER STEWART, OBAN.
I.—The Servant: His Election.
THE Scriptures direct us to trace the work of salvation to its ultimate source in the everlasting love of the Father. The pure river of water of life proceeds in the first place out of the Throne of God. That is the boundless ocean which forms the fountain-head of Redemption. God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son. He sent Him. He appointed Him a work to do. He gave Him a people to save. Christ came into the world in the movings of His own free love, but He came as the Father’s servant.
In the passage before us it is the Father who is speaking, and He speaks as the great Prime-mover in the work of redemption. He speaks concerning Christ. The application of the words is for ever settled by the New Testament. The evangelist Matthew quotes this prophecy in connection with a certain incident in the life of Christ on earth, and tells us that in Him it found its fulfilment. And there is one central fact concerning Christ to which our thoughts are specially directed, and round which all that is here said regarding Him revolves. That is the fact that He is the Servant of Jehovah. This is the character in which we are called upon to consider Him. The Father is directing the attention of the Old Testament Church, and of all coming generations of men, to this wonderful field of Truth—the Servant, His work, His equipment for His office, His manner of discharging its duties.
And what is there so wonderful in this? Is there anything strange or unexpected in the fact that Jehovah should have a servant? The wonder is not that there is a servant, but the wonder lies in Who the servant is. The servant is the Son, the eternal, only-begotten, well-beloved Son of God. You must think of the servant in the light that falls upon Him from the glories of a past eternity. You must look at the office in the light of the person. Everywhere throughout the Scriptures you find these two placed side by side—the Son and the servant; the servant is the Son, the Son became the Servant. He who said, Behold my servant, also said, Thou art my Son. The Word that was made flesh and dwelt among us was in the beginning with God, and was God. The name of the child that was born in Bethlehem’s manger was the Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. He who made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, had been from everlasting in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God. It is when we keep this fact steadily before our view in approaching the consideration of this subject, that we shall see its high and mysterious glory. The servant is the Son of God.
The Son became the servant. There is no truth more frequently insisted upon by Christ Himself in the days of His flesh than that He was sent, and that He had received a definite commission from Him who sent Him. “I came not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me”—that is a truth that He reiterates in varying forms, but with unvarying emphasis. When He cometh into the world, he saith, “Lo, I come, I delight to do thy will, O my God.” He had not been long among men when He showed that wider interests were entrusted to His care than lay within the limits of Joseph’s workshop. “Wist ye not,” said he, “that I must be about my Father’s business?” He was diligent in season and out of season, denying Himself often the common necessities of life that He might minister to the wants of others, and the reason He gave for such intensity of application was this—”I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day. The night cometh when no man can work.” And at last when He had borne the burden and heat of the day unto the end, and already in the wilderness was tasting of the fruits of the Land of Promise, He was able to say, “I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” This is a truth that was ever present to His own consciousness in the world, and with regard to which He speaks with unmistakable clearness. He was the Father’s servant.
Now this central fact involves many others. It is manifest, to begin with, that it involves a previous engagement or contract. If you engage a servant to do your work you first of all prescribe his duties; you give him clearly to understand what you expect him to do, and what he may expect from you in return for his services. You make an agreement. And the fact that Christ speaks so plainly of a work that was given Him to do, of a will that He came to fulfil, of a commission that He came to execute, furnishes conclusive evidence of a previous engagement. His work was clearly defined; the terms of His commission were explicit; that points unmistakably to a compact into which He must have entered. It assumes, in a word, the Covenant of Grace.
And that covenant is brought before us, indirectly at least, in this passage. The servant is spoken of as the elect or chosen. He was chosen long before He appeared. He was chosen from everlasting. Salvation, as has been well said, is not an afterthought to remedy an unforeseen evil. Salvation was before the mind of God from eternity. From eternity He loved a people whom no man can number. From eternity He chose His own Son to be their Redeemer, and His servant. And shall I be allowed to say, that it is because of the love of the Father to the Son that He chose Him to be His servant? Will the thought be permitted that salvation was such a great thing in God’s eyes that He designed it among other things to manifest the love He bears to His own Son? The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hands. The choice was one that was sealed with the Divine delight. The delight of which the text speaks rested from everlasting on the Son as the chosen servant; it flowed out to Him in connection with His redemptive work. God sees the end from the beginning, and from the beginning He delighted in the accomplishment of all His purposes in His own Son. And He did not cease to delight in Him when He actually entered upon His service. Nay, rather is it not worthy of note that when He was yet with the Father, in the glory that He had with Him before the world was, He is spoken of as the servant; but when He was actually in the world, engaged in the performance of His appointed work, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, despised and rejected of men, the voice that once and again comes forth from the excellent glory addresses Him as the Son? When He was yet in the form of God He is referred to as My servant: when He was in the form of a servant He is addressed as My son. The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent—His choice of a servant.
The fact that He was a servant implies humiliation. He was in the form of God, and in the form of God it was impossible that He could serve; but He made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant. Christ, the Son of God, became man. The Word that was God was made flesh. He stooped to our nature. He humbled Himself. The Everlasting became an infant of days. The Almighty became conscious of weakness. The Ever-blessed endured the bitterness of suffering. The Living One tasted death. Do not forget when you read of Christ’s willingness to enter on His work that He knew what that work implied. Remember, when you read how He set His face on His task as a strong man rejoiceth to run his race, that His was not the zeal of unrealising ignorance. It was a zeal that went hand-in-hand with the fullest knowledge. He was under no delusion. He saw from afar every winding in His path of service. He saw the Cup, and the Sword, and the Cross, and the Shame; but for the joy that was set before Him He endured the Cross, despising the Shame, and is set down at the right hand of the Throne of God.