II.
(Continued from page 372).
2. What the Gospel Is
This leads me to the second question under the general topic of the gospel: We have seen what it is—good news; good news from God to man; good news of spiritual good, forgiveness and salvation; but even this view cannot be complete without considering whose, as well as what it is. It is not an impersonal or abstract gospel; it is not the gospel of man, nor yet of an absolute and distant God; it is the gospel both of God and man; it is described expressly in the text as the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I know of nothing in the Scriptures more habitually slighted and imperfectly apprehended than the names or titles of the Saviour. I could scarcely have repeated half a dozen words conveying less to multitudes of minds than those just uttered; which some of you perhaps regard precisely as you would the names and surnames of a friend or enemy; or even if you do admit the dignity of Him who is thus described, it is only in the general, and without any definite perception of the importance of the terms employed. So inveterate and hurtful is this habit, that it may be well, occasionally, to remember what we all know, if we would consider and apply it, that all names are originally significant—that divine names are especially and always so; that the names of the Redeemer were designed to be descriptive and expressive, not conventional and formal; and that when they are accumulated and combined, it is not without meaning, but every name is really suggestive of some great truth or important feature in the person or offices of Christ, and in the method of redemption. This, which is true in general, is emphatically true of the solemn nomenclature with which Mark begins his Gospel.
(1.) It is “the Gospel of Jesus,”
(1.) It is “the Gospel of Jesus,” that is, the good news of a Saviour: “Thou shalt call His name Jesus,” said the angel who announced His birth to Joseph, “for He shall save His people from their sins,” Even Joshua, whose name is identical in Hebrew, was so called prophetically, as the saviour or deliverer of Israel from enemies and dangers; and in this he was a type of Him who was to come, not as a military conqueror and earthly prince, though men so expected Him—not as the deliverer of the Jews from Roman vassalage, and the restorer of their ancient independence; but as a Saviour from a far worse bondage, and a more terrific ruin,—from perdition, from damnation; not of angels, not of devils, not of men without exception or discrimination, but of those predestinated to belief in Him—His people; the Saviour of His people—not from temporal or physical distresses, but from sin—not from the sins of others, but their own—not from its effects, but from itself—not merely in the life, but in the heart—not merely in the stream, but in the spring, the source, the principle, the essence. Yes, the gospel is not only good news of a Saviour, but of Him who came, of Him who was called Jesus, because He was to save His people from their sins.
(2.) But the gospel is also the gospel of Christ;
(2.) But the gospel is also the gospel of Christ; to many ears a mere tautology, an irksome repetition, an unmeaning pleonasm or superfluity, or, at the most, a simple combination of inseparable names, like Julius Caesar or George Washington. But I rejoice to know, my hearers, that “ye have not so learned Christ,” not even the name of Christ. The very children in the Sabbath school know better, for they know that Christ in Greek, and Messias in Hebrew, mean anointed, and that anointing was the Scripture symbol under the Old Testament for spiritual effusions, especially for those which qualified men for the great representative office of Prophet, Priest, and King, and that these offices themselves represent corresponding parts of the Redeemer’s work; in other words, that He was in the highest sense to be the Prophet, Priest, and King of His people—their Prophet to reveal the will of God respecting them; their Priest to expiate their guilt and intercede for them; their King to govern and protect them—that in Him these offices, before divided among many individuals and generations, were to meet and for the first time to be fully realized; all which is really expressed by calling Him the Christ or the Messias.
These are not scholastic subtleties nor technical distinctions, as some would fain persuade you; they are real—essential to a clear and full view of the office and person of the great Deliverer, the source and subject of the gospel, who was called Jesus as the Saviour of His people, and Christ as the Prophet, Priest, and King for ever.
(3.) But who is sufficient for these things,
(3.) But who is sufficient for these things, or who is equal to the great work shadowed forth by these signs, and more than royal titles? If the highest earthly wisdom is evinced in separating legal and judicial functions—in dividing among many what would too severely task the powers and try the integrity of one, what human subject can combine in his own person all that is expressed by these names It is clearly impossible. Their very application excludes the thought of mere humanity. The necessity of a divine person to assume this trust would be apparent, from the nature of the trust itself, even if it were not expressly added, that this gospel is the gospel of the Son of God, not in the attenuated sense which heresy would put upon it, but in that which the unbelieving Jews themselves attached to the expressions when they charged our Lord with blasphemy, for calling God His Father, and thus making Himself equal with God. The Son of God, not merely as a creation, or an object of affection, or a subject of adoption; but as a partaker of His nature, one with Him in essence, the same in substance, equal in power and glory. This is the last particular included in the description of the gospel. It is good news, from God to man, of deliverance from suffering and sin; the good news of a Saviour, of a prophet, of a priest, and of a king, not human, but divine, the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
II. Its Beginning
Having thus seen what the gospel is, and whose it is, it remains to consider still more briefly its beginning, under the two distinct questions:—1. Where did it begin of old? 2. Where does it begin now?
In answer to the first of these enquiries, I remark,—
(1.) In the Eternal Counsel of God
(1.) That the gospel, as a message of salvation, may be said to have begun in the eternal counsel of the divine will—in the eternal purpose of the God who sent it. There is no more injurious mistake than that of looking on the gospel as a sort of afterthought, or series of experiments intended to make good the failure of another method of salvation, and continually modified to meet emergencies as they arose. Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world, and though it may not be expedient to expatiate too freely in the bewildering mazes of this great truth, and especially to speculate upon it as a mere abstraction, apart from its connection with human duty, character, and destiny, we neither may nor can displace it as the deep and adamantine basis, upon which alone our hopes are founded. The gospel of Christ could never terminate in our salvation, if it had not first begun in God’s decree; let this, then, lie at the foundation, and from this let us ascend to explore the superstructure, and inquire what was the beginning of the gospel as a part of human history, and a phase of man’s experience.
(2.) In the Old Testament
(2.) I remark, then, in the next place, that the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ was not in the New Testament, but in the Old; it began in the simple first promise to our fallen parents; in their sacrificial offerings; in the bleeding lambs of Abel’s altar; in the simple faith and worship of the patriarchs. It began afresh in the Mosaic legislation, in the ceremonial law, with its passover and pentecost, and great day of atonement; with its sabbaths and its jubilees, its priests and Levites, its animal and vegetable offerings, its smoking altar and its shed blood. All these were worse than useless, worthless to man and insulting to God, except so far as they were typifying and symbolizing the “beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.” Once more it may be said to have begun in the predictions of the prophets, who declared in words, as the legal service did in acts, the coming Saviour, and not only foretold, but exhibited to all believers, “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.”
(3.) In the Ministry of John the Baptist
(3.) Passing over the long interval between the Old and New Testaments, and coming nearer to the actual appearance of the promised Saviour, His gospel may be said to have had a new beginning in the preparatory ministry of John the Baptist. If not expressed, it is at least implied and necessarily indicated in Mark’s introductory expression, that John the Baptist’s preaching in the wilderness the baptism of repentance, with a view to the remission of sins, was the beginning of the gospel—its immediate precursor, the appointed preparation for its full disclosure, so that John’s instructions and his baptisms derived all their worth and meaning from the fact that, in the verse explained, they were the actual beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. We find, accordingly, that when John’s ministry was closed, and that of Christ Himself succeeded, it was at first a mere continuation of John’s preaching, that the burden of both cries was, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! From this beginning, and from those already mentioned lying further back in all the prophecies, the ceremonies of the law, the religion of the patriarchs, and the decrees of God,—from these beginnings, the gospel in the hands and in the mouth of Him who was at once its author, and its subject, and its finisher, was developed by degrees—in His divine instructions, in His miracles of mercy, in His perfect example, but above all, in His faultless obedience and atoning passion, in His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, in His session at the right hand of God, in the effusion of His Spirit, the erection of His Church, the diffusion of His doctrines, and the conquest of the world; that system, whose beginnings we have traced, became the glorious gospel of the grace of God, even the gospel of your salvation.
2. Where does this gospel begin now?
This reference to the bearing of the gospel upon human destiny brings us to the last remaining question suggested by the text, to which the answer must be still more brief than to the one before it—serving rather as a practical improvement than a further explanation of the subject.
There is a sense in which this question would be senseless and irrelevant. The foundation is already laid, and neither need nor can be laid again. The sacrifice for sin has been already offered once for all, and if that be rejected, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall destroy the adversary. It were worse than vain, my hearers, to seek any other gospel than that which has begun already in the divine decrees, in the law, in the prophets, in the preaching of John, and in the saving work of Christ Himself. There are other gospels, but of such, and of such as preach them, though it were an angel from heaven, Paul has said, Let him be anathema.
But although the gospel can, in this view, have no more beginnings, yet in the subjective sense of something which may be embraced in the personal experience, and must be so embraced to secure salvation, we may ask in conclusion, as we asked before, Where does the gospel begin now? Without repeating what has been already said as to its ultimate source and indispensable foundation, I may say,—
(1.) In Religious Education
(1.) That it begins for the most part in religious education—in that simple teaching at paternal knees and on maternal bosoms, which, in our happy, highly favoured times, supplies the place of those remote and long protracted means by which the world was prepared of old for the appearance of a Saviour. How many children of the Church forget, how many pious parents insufficiently consider, that these lispings of religious truth to infant ears, which may even seem to be to themselves superfluous, may be intended by divine grace, and realized by those who scarcely can be said to hear them, as the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
(2.) By Divine Grace
(2.) I say intended by divine grace, for I need not add that even these distilling dew-drops of infantile training can avail nothing without superhuman influence, without the moving of the Spirit on the waters; sometimes in immediate succession to the early training without any interval of vice or unbelief; sometimes after peaceful interruptions, during which the seed sown seems to have long perished—but no; sometimes when least expected, a new life is infused into the dead mass of apparently unprofitable knowledge, the seed long buried shows itself, the tears of the departed glisten still about the leaves of the plant, and under heavenly culture and divine direction it springs up, first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. To that man the gospel has a new beginning; as in one sense the original instructions of his childhood, so in another the first movement of divine power on his heart and conscience, is to him the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.
(3.) Providential Recommencements
(3.) Lastly, in addition to these doctrines and gracious beginnings, there are what may be called providential recommencements of the gospel, both to communities and to individuals. I need not specify, under the latter head, seasons of affliction, or, under the former, seasons of revival. These I must leave, with a bare suggestion, to your private meditations. I will only hint in closing the subject, that to a whole church even trivial incidents or epochs in their history may mark such a revival of the gospel in its power as I have suggested. A change of local situation, or of pastors, the return of one after a temporary absence, nay, the very re-assembling of the people after periodical dispersion, though entirely insufficient of themselves, may, under the divine direction, be the signal for new zeal upon the part of true believers, and for new attention in the unconverted, and to both, in an important sense of the expression, a beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God. That I may not close without a word of application to the individual as well as the collective audience, let me say to you, my friend, who may be here to-day apparently by accident, or, if a stated worshipper in this place, yet a stranger to the covenants of promise, that you have only to accept of that which is so freely offered; you have only to repent, and to believe, and to throw yourself into the outstretched arms of mercy; you have only to consent to be made holy and happy in the way of your own choosing, and this favoured hour, this otherwise imperfect service, shall be remembered by you to eternal ages, as having been to your soul, through divine grace, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God.