BY THE LATE REV. CHARLES C. MACKINTOSH, D.D.,
OF TAIN AND DUNOON.
“For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.”—2 COR. viii. 9.
TO attempt to define the word grace were to obscure it. We might call it rich, undeserved mercy, or exceeding great kindness, but the words that follow it are its best definition: “Ye know” what He did, “that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.” The meaning of the word here, then, is something different from its ordinary meaning. It includes that, but it includes something more. It is not only, Ye know that your redemption by Christ is all of pure, free, undeserved mercy; but it is, Ye know what astonishing mercy this is, what surpassing grace—the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the work of redemption we have the most wonderful display of all the divine perfections, but it is grace that shines the brightest. We have the manifold wisdom of God, the exceeding greatness of His power, the untainted purity of His nature, His unalterable and unbending rectitude, His fixed inviolable truth; we have them all displayed, and—what of itself were sufficiently wonderful—displayed in conjunction with grace. But we have also a more marvellous display of them through the exercise of grace. As, therefore, grace is the central and most brilliant star in the constellation, so the display of all the other perfections tends to its still brighter display. They shine forth to invite us to gaze most fixedly upon grace, as that wherein most of the divine character is to be seen.
The grace of God in redemption is sometimes set forth to us by the Father’s giving His only-begotten Son, by His not sparing Him, but delivering Him up for us all; in other places by the Son’s voluntarily undertaking and executing the work of our redemption. The work is all of grace. The character of those who are redeemed shows that it must necessarily be of grace. But it is the worth and the humiliation and the sufferings of the Son of God that teach us the abundance and the altogether unspeakable character of this grace. It is important indeed for us to remember that, while the grace of redemption, in its super-abounding and manifold manifestation, is brought before us thus in order that the poor weak faith of the sinner may find some resting-place while conversing with so sublime a subject, we must not think of it as though the grace of one of the Divine Persons in the glorious Trinity was more wonderful than that of the other two. The grace of the Father is the grace of God manifested to us. It is through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit, that we approach the Father. But the grace of the Father in sending the Son, and of the Son in voluntarily undertaking the work of redemption, and of the Spirit in applying it, are but one and the same abounding grace of God, “reigning through righteousness unto eternal life.” Yet it is in the Lord Jesus that this grace flows forth; it is through His incarnation and death that it reaches sinners; it is in Him that it is made known to them; and it is by Him, as the Mediator, that we approach grace in its fountain, and taste that God is good.
In contemplating this surpassing grace of the Lord Jesus, let us consider four things:—
I.—The pre-existent state of Christ. “He was rich”—rich in all the treasures of divinity. From everlasting He was in the form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God. The self-existence, and eternity, and immensity, and omnipotence, and omnipresence of God—these were His own eternal possessions. The dominion of God was His; the crown of the universe encircled His brow. The uncreated glory, the harmonious and matchless perfections, the all-sufficiency, and infinite self-delight and blessedness of the Godhead were His. He had a glory with His Father before the world was; dwelling in His bosom, and being with Him; the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person; and enjoying unceasingly the expression of the Father’s infinite complacency and delight. He was thus, in every possible respect, infinitely and unchangeably rich. It was impossible that through the future eternity His riches could be either increased or diminished. His glory would have been as resplendent though no creature had ever been formed to behold it, and His blessedness as perennial though the redeemed world had been left, with the angels that kept not their first estate, to perish. It is impossible, therefore, that the purpose of redemption can have taken its rise in a desire to increase this glory or this blessedness. Here, indeed, we are to take heed lest we “darken counsel by words without knowledge”; for “who by searching can find out God? who can find out the Almighty unto perfection?” “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world”—from everlasting. But it is essential for us to know and to remember that as our Redeemer is the mighty God, so He was absolutely independent of His creatures, enjoying infinite and perennial blessedness in Himself. It is necessary for us to know and to remember this, that we may trace redemption to its source, as it regards us—free and rich grace exercised towards the miserable and the guilty. It is necessary for us also to contemplate fixedly—and to contemplate till we are taught to adore and wonder—the riches and glory of the Redeemer as truly and everlastingly God. Without such a contemplation as this we shall never arrive at a discovery either of the magnitude of redemption in itself, of the grace of the Lord Jesus manifested in it, of the security of the foundation laid in Him, of the splendour of His righteousness, or of the preciousness of His blood as the Son of God. Nor shall we otherwise be taught, in our dealings with this Blessed One, to adore and to tremble while we believe and hope. Our Redeemer is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh; He is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley; but He is also the brightness of His Father’s glory and the express image of His person, in whose presence the seraphim and cherubim cover their faces with their wings, saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
II.—The objects for whom the Lord Jesus became poor. They were creatures. Had they, as such, been answering the end of their creation, His power would have protected and His goodness would have blessed them; but here would be no call for any new exhibition of His character. They were miserable. Were it possible for misery to exist in the universe of God without sin as the cause of it, there would have been room for the exuberant manifestation of the divine compassion. But they were rebels. They had been created after His own image, they had been placed under His gracious and happy government, and they had rebelled against Him; they had dared to attempt to live without God. They were enemies—haters of God, of His attributes, and of His laws. They were enemies without cause, and yet bitter enemies. Their enmity, too, was of a character that no kindness or grace in itself could overcome or subdue—an increasingly bitter enmity—an enmity unmixed and pure; an enmity that nothing else would satisfy than that God should cease to be God. They were unholy and polluted. Every faculty of their souls was tainted and leprosied with the abominable thing; the very sight could not be borne by infinite purity. Such is our condition, as described in the Word of God, and such is it known and felt to be by all who understand the words, “If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” Here, then, was room for loathing, for abhorrence, for hatred; but what room was there for love? Could rebellion excite it? Could pollution excite it? Here was room for the manifestation of justice; for manifesting to the universe—as had been done in the case of the angels that kept not their first estate—that God’s authority was not to be trifled with. Here was a call for a second and a more appalling exhibition of His hot displeasure against sin. Their eternal misery would not have shaken His happiness; nay, it would have been a standing memorial of His rectitude and His goodness. And yet grace and mercy towards a portion of these vile traitors began to move in the breast of the everlasting Son, and to sue for exercise. Here we are lost—lost in the attempt to fathom what cannot be fathomed; nay, to understand the possibility of such feelings in any other way than this—that “He is God.”
That this grace of the everlasting Son was sovereign, we know. The angels that sinned did not experience it. But that it is also pure grace and pure surpassing love, we know. It leaped forth from its fathomless depths in the bosom of the Divine Son, and it terminated in electing grace on a portion of Adam’s rebellious and polluted family. Once fixed upon them, the horrors of their condition were brought before its view; the pit, the horrible pit, in which they lay, and the dark and dreary eternity in the distance. It cried for their deliverance; it desired it earnestly. This view of grace, and grace alone as it regards the redeemed, prompting the Son of God to interfere for their redemption, is perhaps too dazzling for the saints in this world; so that they seek to relieve it by contemplating especially the glory rebounding, from its exhibition, to the divine perfections. And yet, while the purpose and end of its exhibition must necessarily terminate on God, it is to its objects pure unmixed mercy and grace.
But how could this mercy and grace be exercised? Here was rebellion; how could it be forgiven? Here was guilt; how could it be cancelled? Here was pollution—entire and increasingly dark pollution; how could it be approached? How could it be overcome? Was justice to sheathe its sword and withdraw its claims? This were impossible, for where then would be the divine glory, the divine purity, the divine truth, the divine unchangeableness? Where would be the security of protection and blessedness to the loyal subjects of the divine government? Where the equity of the sufferings of the fallen spirits? How again could the infinitely holy God return to the temple whence He had been driven? How could He look to the soul that had dislodged Him, and that had admitted to its throne His arch-enemy? How could He come forth to it except to consume it? Or if grace sued for its renovation, and if almighty grace could contemplate so marvellous a work, yet where were the security for the divine honour and the divine purity in accomplishing it? Unless justice, then, were satisfied, and the divine honour maintained, it was impossible either that mercy could be exercised towards the rebels, or that almighty power could go forth on the ground of this satisfaction to reconcile and reclaim them. But where was this satisfaction to be sought except from the guilty? And if from them, how could they render it except in suffering the vengeance of eternal fire? Such thoughts as these are not foreign to the subject of our contemplation: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” What of the seraphim and cherubim, and all the angelic host, after they had witnessed the casting down of their rebellious brethren and their binding in everlasting chains, had been told that towards another band of traitors mercy was contemplated, and had been told nothing of the plan devised for securing its honourable and triumphant exercise. Would not the subject have been to them utterly dark and incomprehensible?
Let us here, then, adore and admire divine and unsearchable wisdom, and especially the exhibition of infinite grace: “He became poor.”
III.—”The Lord Jesus Christ became poor.” While the Scripture warrants, and indeed requires, us to say that in no other way could grace be exercised, yet the Lord Jesus’ undertaking to cast up the highway by which He could reach our world, was a free and voluntary undertaking.
“He became poor” in assuming our nature. We are not to think of the words, “he became poor,” as though they implied that He ceased to be what He was—very and eternal God; for in Him, when incarnate, “dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” But He came to be that which He had not been; He became the opposite of all that He had been; and to all outward appearance—to the eye of flesh and blood—He was poor. Though unchangeably rich in all the glories of divinity, He emptied Himself of them as to their outward manifestation and cast a veil upon their brightness. It behoved Him, in the wondrous work He meditated, to leave them behind Him. Indeed, had He appeared with them, they would have consumed sinners, and even His people could not have borne their fulgence. Therefore, in infinite self-humiliation, He cast a veil upon them, and appeared among His creatures and subjects not “in the form of God,” but “in the form of a servant,” and though some rays of His divinity broke forth in His mighty works, though its glory broke forth on the mount of transfiguration, and though the eye of faith “saw his glory,” yet outwardly and to the eye of sense He seemed but as a man—as if He were one of us; and He was content to appear so. To estimate the grace of Christ in this it were necessary for us to know how infinitely worthy that glory which He veiled was to be admired and adored; to know the infinite complacency with which He Himself must have regarded it, and His consciousness of His claims to the admiration and adoration of the universe. We must know it then as “passing knowledge.”
He became poor in assuming our nature. He became truly bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. And who can estimate this grace, or fathom this condescension? “Great,” indeed, “is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.” He took it upon Him, and assumed it into intimate and indissoluble union with His divine Person; and though He took it sinless—as pure from all stain as it was in Adam when he was created—yet He took it after it had become fallen and sinful. He appeared “in the likeness of sinful flesh.” Here, indeed, was poverty and humiliation. This is more a subject for thought and contemplation than for language; but surely the little that many nominal Christians find to wonder at in the incarnation of the Son of God is a proof that they have never fixedly contemplated or rightly understood it. “Flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” Believer, adore that grace that led the Lord Jesus to take on Him not the nature of angels but the seed of Abraham, and that led Him to become your brother, like unto you in all things, yet without sin.
He humbled Himself even as a man. He was born in a stable and laid in a manger, as though He were unworthy of a house to receive Him. He laboured as a carpenter, as though He needed to make His bread by the sweat of His brow. For the last three years of His life He was often homeless, not knowing where to lay His head, and was indebted for the supply of His wants to the attentions of His followers. And yet He was the King of kings and the Lord of all. Believers, draw near and adore while you hear the joyful sound that to you has been born a Saviour, Christ the Lord; and see here, too, how the ineffable condescension and humiliation of the Son of God has dignified and ennobled poverty, and stamped all the vain pomp and glory of this world with beggary. Are you poor? Remember that Christ was poor.
Not only this, but He submitted to be counted a worm, and no man. “He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” He went about exhibiting holiness in its pure and divine beauty, doing good unceasingly, and publishing salvation; proclaiming His own surpassing grace, and inviting the guilty and the miserable to come to Him. And yet slander, contempt, reproach, and persecution were His portion. He, the Holy Lamb of God, was called a glutton and blasphemer. His mighty works of love and mercy were attributed to Belial, and the Gospel of His grace was met by, “He hath a devil, and is mad; why hear ye him?” He submitted to it; He had prepared Himself for it. He submitted to it from vile hypocrites, from a generation of vipers, from those whom He came to save, from those whom in a moment He could have consumed. He submitted to it patiently and meekly. He submitted to it till it broke His heart. He was a man of sorrows. Never had earth such a tenant, and yet never was such reproach the portion of any of its inhabitants. No one welcomed the Son of God or spoke well of Him till He Himself had, by an act of new-creating power, put it into their hearts to do so. Scarcely had He entered the world as the “child born” when His life was sought to be taken away; and almost the first opening of His sacred lips to proclaim His Gospel was met by an attempt to stone Him. He bore it all, for He had set His face as a flint. The exhibition and manifestation of His grace rose and brightened with the calumny and enmity that it excited. He was at length seized by wicked hands, dragged before an unrighteous tribunal, and there iniquitously condemned, spit upon as the very refuse of all things, scourged, crowned with thorns, and finally, in the most painful, excruciating, and ignominious manner—as though human or diabolical ingenuity could not do enough to testify the feelings of loathing with which He was regarded—put to death between two malefactors. And this Sufferer was the everlasting and ineffably rich and glorious Son of God, the infinitely holy, the all-sufficient and Almighty Creator and Governor of the universe. Surely here was poverty. Believer, sit down at the Cross, look upon Him whom you have pierced, and bemoan yourself as one of that murderous race that killed the Prince of Life. Surely we have here proof enough of the inherent depravity and devilish enmity of the heart. Adore, too, that surpassing grace that led Him to bear this unparalleled and never-to-be-paralleled load of calumny, shame, scorn, reproach, and pain. It was your sorrows that He bore. He has gone before you in the wilderness to take the sting out of your sorrows. But, oh, learn to feel from home in that world where your Lord was crucified.
He became poor especially inasmuch as, though the Lord and Giver of the law, He yet became voluntarily subject to it. He placed Himself under the ceremonial law—a law implying in all its injunctions the pollution of its subjects—that He might redeem the Church from it. He placed Himself under the moral law in its requirements and sanctions as a covenant of life, as though He needed to work out life by personal obedience. He yielded obedience to it in a low and mean condition. He yielded it in the midst of rebels. He yielded it amidst unceasing difficulties and temptations. This is a sacred subject; but how gloriously does Christ’s obedience shine forth even in this, that amidst His unparalleled trials—trials differing from all that ever have been or will be endured in this, that He suffered innocently—His Father’s will never ceased for a moment to be regarded by Him with unmixed complacency and resignation. He knew no sin. He was conscious that He knew it not; and yet He was marked out as the alone exception to the rule of the divine government that connects suffering with sin. And how gloriously does His obedience shine forth in this also—that amidst the ingratitude, the sneers, the scorn, the enmity, the malevolence, and finally the murderous assaults of sinners, He yet never ceased to exercise towards them the purest benevolence and love. What mere created excellence could have come forth unsullied from such a trial? Who but the Son of God could have in such circumstances maintained his integrity?
He became poor, above all, in being “made a curse” for His people. He took upon Him the load of His people’s iniquities; and what a fearful load was this! He who knew no sin stood under it, as though He were a sinner—yea, the greatest sinner in the universe; as though He were that which He infinitely abhorred; as though He were the very personification of the evil and accursed thing. He was “made sin.” He submitted to feel the fearfulness of bearing such a burden, to feel the agonies of the punishment of sin, to feel the sharpness of the sword of inflexible justice wielded by almighty power. The wrath that the innumerable sins and incalculable guilt of His people merited fell upon Him, and He submitted to bear it. He submitted to be treated by His Father as though He were a sinner and a rebel—as though, instead of being the Son of His love, He were unworthy of His fellowship. He submitted to feel the hidings of His Father’s countenance, the unutterable—and to all creatures, inconceivable—agonies of His Father’s wrath. And though the contemplation of the cup filled Him with agony, though it forced from Him the cry, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” yet He went forward to meet it. He bared His breast to His Father’s sword, and drank the cup of His wrath to the very dregs.
Here, indeed, on the Cross it is that we see the poverty of the Son of God. Here let us behold Him enduring at once the greatest contempt and scorn, the most excruciating bodily pains, and the most torturing mental anguish, the hootings of men, the assaults of hell, and the dereliction of His Father—earth disowning Him; hell let loose against Him; heaven shut against Him. No answer to His cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Alone, and of the people none with Him; the infinite justice of the Godhead dealing with Him for the sins of an elect world, displaying its glory and concentrating its terrors. And is this indeed He who was in the bosom of God from eternity, and was God? Oh, let us behold the Lamb of God! Believer, draw near, and while you tremble at the sight of eternal, consuming purity, as manifested in His sufferings, adore Him who thus, by the Eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God. Adore especially that grace which led Him to encounter such untold and never-to-be-told humiliation and agony for such a wretch as you.
Finally, He became poor in giving over His sacred body to the power of the grave. as though it had a right to claim Him as its captive—as though death had come to Him, the Prince of Life, as the wages of sin. He who only is incorruptible submitted to it; He entered its prison. But let us bless God that it was impossible that He should be holden there, but that He rose a triumphant conqueror—the first-fruits and forerunner of a redeemed world—and that He is now exalted as a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. Here, then, tracing the steps of the poverty of God’s everlastingly rich and beloved Son, let us acknowledge that His grace passeth all knowledge.
(To be Concluded.)
OWING to the amount of Synod matter, we have to hold over the remainder of above Sermon, “Memoir of Betsy Lindsay,” A Review by Rev. J. R. Mackay, M.A., of “The Samaritan Pentateuch” by Rev. J. Iverach Munro, M.A., and other articles.