(Continued from page 202.)
Evidently the dark cloud was gone before Jesus died, and He died in the light. The conflict was past, the enemy defeated, and He died in power and victory.
It lies at the root of all sound views of the sacrifice of Christ to keep clear sight of this element of active and positive triumph in the Saviour’s death. Christ, in His death, was both the Lamb and the Priest—the Lamb of God, bearing away the sin of the world; and the Priest, acting with God in our name, offering a slain Lamb—the Lamb of God—Himself—for a sacrifice and an offering of a sweet-smelling savour. He by Himself purged our sins (Heb. i. 2), Himself Priest and Lamb in one. The Godhead and the humanity united in one person rendered this amazing combination in His own personality possible; for, as Scripture puts it, the Eternal Son, because the children were partakers of flesh and blood, Himself also likewise took part in the same, in order that by death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. The natures were twofold; but the Christ, the person, was one. Having assumed human nature—that is to say, a united human soul and body—into union with His Godhead, He had power over the union of that soul and body with each other.
He had power to maintain and prolong it. He had power to abandon it if He chose; though He never did, and never will. He had power to suspend it; and, if suspended, He had power to restore it.
While maintaining, suspending, or restoring this union of His soul and body with each other, He maintains unbroken, all throughout, the union of each of them with His Godhead. By His own priestly act He Himself offered up Himself; He Himself, a Divine Person, a glorious, powerful, and acceptable Priest, offered up Himself—an infinitely worthy slain Lamb. An eternal, inviolable, omnipotent, Divine Person, having voluntarily taken our nature, having voluntarily taken our sin—holily acquiescing in and approving of the penalty of sin which is death (that very death of which the children had the dread and the devil had the power), He goeth forward in love, reverence, and obedience unto death, to His Father, the righteous Judge; and in virtue of His rights and power over the body which was prepared for Him, and in the spirit in which He assumed it (“Lo, I come; I delight to do thy will, O my God”), He presents Himself to His Father’s sword, for the separation from each other, but of neither from His Godhead (i.e. of neither from Himself—for in His Godhead is the eternal seat of His personality), of that soul and body, through which in death, in their separation from each other (His own power over each of them still abiding intact), He thus actively and lovingly offers Himself to God.
This is the sacrifice for our sins. Not Christ’s life taken away by force, but laid down of Himself. Halleluiah! Gloria in excelsis! This is the offering the sweet-smelling savour unto God. Christ’s whole self, in the separation from each other of His soul and body, which is the death of His human nature (a rather incorrect expression by the way, for it is of a person that you predicate death; but the expression is intelligible, and not fitted to mislead), in the separation from each other of His human soul and body, in which He was the slain Lamb—yet separated in His own sacrificial offering of Himself unto God, by His own act, in the performance of which He was while a slain Lamb a glorious Priest also—not dead even in death—not a dead Priest, but living—at once a slain Lamb and a living High Priest. This, this is the sacrifice for our sins. It was the whole person in the eternal life of the Godhead that was the Priest. It was the whole person, in the separation in death of the parts of the humanity that was the Lamb. And the whole person abode undiminished, undivided, even in death. Neither His soul nor His body was separated from His Godhead, nor therefore from Himself; for it is in His eternal Godhead that the seat of His unchanged and eternal personality rests for evermore. Had either His soul or His body—still more, had both His soul and His body, that is, His humanity—been separated from His Godhead, that would have been His falling under the power of death. That would have been death removing away His soul and body from Himself; asserting over them a greater power than His own, a power to seize and remove away from Him what He had not power to retain. They were separated from each other, and that was death; but not separated from Him. Jesus died according to the Scriptures.
But neither His soul nor His body was separated from His Godhead, nor (of course therefore) from Himself. In virtue of His Godhead, and by the power thereof, He kept them, each of them, still in union with Himself, though He offered them (and, of course, Himself in them) to Divine justice. When He offered them to the Father’s sword to separate them from each other, He so offered them, by His priestly act, to death, that He offered them therein, and Himself therein, in death, to God. He did not throw away His soul or His body; He did not suffer either of them to lapse out of His own power; for He did not suffer either of them to lapse out of union with His own person. He could not have offered them to God in death, if He had therein allowed them, or either of them, to fall out of union with Himself. How could He have been offering them unto God in death, if death had been removing either of them from Himself? or, if we should imagine death to have parted them, or either of them, from His person, and He had, simply by the power of His Godhead, laid hold of them in that state of separation from Himself, and offered them to God, as by His Divine power He might lay hold of and offer anything, yet how should that have been an offering up of Himself? But it is of the essence of His sacrifice that He offered Himself without spot to God.
See you not, then, how glorious was the triumph here achieved over him that had the power of death? Christ has evidently defeated him. Bearing the sin of the world, and dying a vicarious death, weighted with the agony of the cross, with all its shame and woe; dying beneath the wrath of God and the curse of an all-holy Law—a Lamb against whom the Father has been saying, “Awake, O sword, against the Man that is my fellow; smite the Shepherd”; dying thus, He nevertheless prevails, though nailed to His cross, to defeat His foe. This Priest even in dying—yea, very specially in dying—is a Priest after the power of an endless life. This death of His is no victimising of Him. He is living in it, living through it, living more powerfully than ever while He is dying it. This death is the most livingly active work He has ever yet “accomplished” (Luke ix. 31). It is the grandest act of His priesthood, instinct with the most vital, and what will prove to ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, the most vitalising and quickening efficiency.
It would have been the death of His priesthood, it would have been the destruction of His priesthood’s life and energy, had He failed to defeat him that had the power of death. Like the priests under the law, He would not have been suffered to continue by reason of death. He would have died out of His priesthood. As it was, He died in His priesthood. He died, with His own will, in the very forth-putting and mightiest exercise of the endless life of His priesthood. Ay, He died into the perfection and reward and eternal life-giving glory of His priesthood. The word of the oath made the Divine Son a priest for ever; was, then, the fundamental act of His priesthood to destroy
His priesthood’s chiefest glory—its ceaseless activity—its quenchless, endless life? That fundamental act was the laying down of His life, that life which was His in virtue of the vital union of His soul and body with each other. But in the very shrine and sanctuary of inviolable Godhead, into which Satan in vain sought access, the Divine Priest transacted, in the power of an endless life, this voluntary death-defeating death of His, this laying down of His life by Himself, this offering of Himself into God! In the most secret, sacred shrine and inmost sanctuary of Godhead—in the bosom of the Father, into which His soul had been afresh committed—Satan standing without, baffled and afar off indeed—Christ Himself “accomplished his decease” at Jerusalem—master of His life to the last moment, no man, taking it from Him, but laying it down of Himself; none able to help, none able to hinder; Himself offering to the devouring sword’s judicial power of separation that soul and body which were His own, which were Himself, in virtue whereof He was the Son of Man, and in which He was the same one only person He had been from all eternity—the Son of God, and daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing also in the habitable parts of the earth, His delights being with the “sons of men.” Yet all the while He was retaining them in union with Himself, neither of them in the power of any other person, because neither of them beyond His own power and neither of them disjoined from His own person; Himself offering them in their peculiar union with Himself—so peculiar, and yet still so perfect, that in offering them, He was offering nothing less and nothing other than Himself unto God. “Christ through the Spirit offered himself without spot unto God” (Heb. ix. 13, 14).
And as it was Himself that was offered, so it was Himself that was buried. When the lifeless body of the Son of God was carried to the grave, it was as much in union with the Godhead as when, by the word of His lips, He raised Lazarus from the dead. That body was not His mortal remains, as we speak. It was Himself. It was Christ. It was the Son of God. It was the Holy One of God. It was not separated from His person—His Divine person—as in death our bodies are separated from our souls. It was not Christ’s mortal remains that were buried. “Christ was buried; and rose again”—not merely was raised—“according to the Scriptures.” What saith He Himself on this point? Addressing the Father, to whom He alike offered and committed Himself in death, in the hope of His resurrection, He saith “Thou wilt not leave my soul in the state of the dead,” this much concerning His soul. And what concerning His body? Neither wilt Thou suffer my remains to see corruption? No. “Neither wilt Thou suffer thine Holy One—neither wilt Thou suffer myself—to see corruption.” The person was one and undivided (is Christ divided?—I Cor. i. 13); the Priest was living, triumphantly discharging His office; He was a Divine, undivided, living Person and Priest; though as to His humanity He was dead. There was in this Person, this Priest, the
power of an endless life—a life never for a moment suspended—never more powerful and vigorous than in the epoch and instant of death on the cross; vigorous thereafter in maintaining in union with Himself both soul and body in their separation from each other—the soul in paradise, the body in the tomb—gloriously vigorous again in bringing them into mutual union once more when He rose from the dead. For not merely was He raised from the dead. But He raised Himself. “He rose again according to the Scriptures.” Thus He had power to lay down His life, and He had power to take it again. The commandment He had received from the Father embraced the one as much as the other. Satan was manifestly defeated. He was obviously deprived of the power of death. In that respect Christ defied, baffled, and defeated him. Such was his defeat.
- But Christ not only defeated him that had the power of death, but destroyed him.
Christ did more than defeat His adversary; that He evidently did before dying, and the voluntariness of His death proves it. He defeated him before He died; but in dying, He destroyed him. The vicariousness of His death proves that.
When Satan was defeated and repulsed, all that was proved was that he had no power of death over Christ; and this was proved before Christ died. But though Satan fled defied and defeated, he carried with him the power of death, which he held over the children, and it was only through death that Christ pursued his routed enemy into the depths of his own domains, and there spoiled and destroyed him—spoiled him and made a show of him openly. Christ died voluntarily; and hence the proof that Satan had no power over Him, but had fled and left both the victory and the field to Jesus. The life which Jesus was now about vicariously to lay down was hereby evidently seen to be vicariously laid down—was seen to be laid down wholly and exclusively for the sheep—no one taking it from Him; He was laying it down of Himself, and laying it down for them. The bond of death under which they were subject to bondage Christ had taken on Himself, and now cancels by fulfilling it. That same bond formed the legal instrument by which alone Satan held the power of death. Founding on the righteousness and consequent certainty of our deserved penalty, he wielded it to all effects as a charter granting him the power of death over his miserable slaves. In vain he essayed to wield the same over their great Deliverer. The prince of darkness and the king of terrors Christ repulsed before He died. They had no power over Him; but by dying, by filling up and thereby blotting out the handwriting of ordinances, the charter, the dark diploma of death. He pursued the enemy, mightily entered his peculiar dominions, pressed His triumphant way to the very heart and citadel of them, overthrew in reigning righteousness the foundations of his power; and when Satan looked upon the handwriting of ordinances which condemned the children to death,
after Christ’s death had been recorded there he saw that once irrefragable document was clean obliterated—that the death it had formerly denounced amidst thunder and lightning, and the tempest, and the voice of words, was all executed, endured, and gone; that the only plea on which he had been accustomed to rest his malignant power was thus torn from his grasp; that the whole and very death by the power whereof the tyrant tyrannised, and in the face whereof the children trembled, was annihilated, while the Conqueror, who had endured all that death, was in death itself living in the power of an endless life, traversing the realms of the dead in the power of the life everlasting.
O most blessed and glorious scene of triumph! To breathe the air of it is immortality. Before Christ died, death and he that had the power of death fled from the field to their own dark domains, leaving Christ’s human nature still living on the cross. Thereafter, not subject to their power, and relieved even of their presence, free and unembarrassed, and of His own proper will and power, He offereth Himself in death to the Father. And thus by His own living energy offering up His soul and body in death, yet retaining them in union with Himself—as with His soul in one hand and His body in the other—master of all that was His own, of all that was Himself, by the gates of death He enters the realm of death; in the power of his unvanquished, undivided, undiminished, mediatorial Divine person, He traverses all its range from east to west, from north to south; tramples down all its power, carries its captivity captive, spoils and destroys its prince—through death destroying him that had the power of death—through death lighting up with life and glory the region of the shadow of death—His victorious, majestic, Divine person being at once the dismay and destruction of the tyrant; “O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction,” and the joy and deliverer of the bond-slaves “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away; I will ransom thee from the power of the grave, I will redeem thee from death; for lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, and the time of the singing of birds is come. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”
II. Thus the train of thought merges into the second doctrine of our theme, namely, that Christ “through death delivers them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
And this follows at once from the great, all-pervading truth that Christ’s people have union and communion with Him by faith. Bring in this principle of union with Christ in the matter and epoch and victory which we have been considering—bring in the principle and import of your union by faith with Christ, as in the very instant of His voluntary, vicarious, victorious death—you are entitled to realise yourself as having fellowship as in the very moment and in the whole import of that victory. Is it not said by the Spirit concerning the
believer that he is dead with Christ, that he is crucified with Christ, that he is raised up together with Christ, suffering with Christ in His temptations, sitting with Him in heavenly places? Come, then, and join yourself on with Christ in His peculiar act of, through death, destroying him that had the power of death. You may do this, and do it now, though that victorious act of His was completed so many centuries ago. It was a victory so complete as to be not transient, but perfect and permanent. Satan felt the full meaning of despair, the eternal impossibility of ever having a chance again, when he heard the conquering cry, “It is finished.” ‘Tis a grand distinguishing peculiarity of Messiah’s work, this permanence. The present tense—the perpetual present—applies to it more appropriately than any other. “It is finished”—so finished, so perfected, as to be always fresh and new, and presently powerful, exactly as in the instant of its first transacting. His blood cleanseth now precisely as in the moment of its being shed. In like manner this victory of Christ over death was in the power of an endless life, and it liveth and abideth for ever. Christ adopts you into the participation of it now by faith, precisely as if in that very moment He had carried you with Him in His triumphal entry into the realms of death. Would you have been afraid then? There is no more reason for being afraid or subject to bondage now.
Jesus draws near to you in the preaching of the Cross and the call of the Gospel (both of which, to them that believe, are the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation). He sets Himself forth to you therein very specially, as manifestly crucified. Altogether unlike the “Scotch Pulpit” (so-called) of the current day, in which, to the indignation and astonishment of all Christian readers, Christ is not set forth—not to say “manifestly crucified,” but not even perceptibly in that aspect at all. All Gospel divine dealings with your soul for its salvation point first of all, and last of all, and throughout all, to Christ and Him crucified. He deals with you, chiefest of all, exactly anent His crucifixion and His death. He will have you meet Him and strike hands with Him exactly here—at His Cross—or not at all. Precisely as if He were this moment about to “accomplish” that decease at Jerusalem, He draws near and says, “O my brother, partaker of flesh and blood as I am, I am going to pursue your routed host—death, and him that hath the power of death, and the principalities of darkness; wilt thou go with Me? Wilt thou cast in thy lot with Me, and die with Me? See how different a thing this dying is when you find it in Me—not falling under the power of death, but conquering death, destroying him that hath the power of it. I go not as the victim of death, but as the mighty Conqueror of death. Wilt thou seize the opportunity and go with Me? Thou mayst have thy physical pain, O my brother, O thou partaker of flesh and blood—thy pain, hard for flesh and blood to bear. But seest thou not how in this also I have fellowship in thy suffering, as thou hast in my victory?
For because the children were partakers of flesh and blood, I also myself likewise took part in the same. And now, seeing I am death’s plagues and death’s conqueror, do thou also thyself likewise take part with Me in the same—in the same victory and endless life.
Behold I descend as the life everlasting into the valley and shadow of death; and even there—there very specially—I am the light of life, shedding light and glory over all the realm; and even there, therefore—yea, very specially there—if thou go with thy Lord, even there thy Lord shall be thine everlasting light and thy God thy glory. Seize this instant—the instant of my victorious descent into the realm of death—for examining what to thee, in fellowship with Me, the valley and the shadow of death will be. And as I go down into that dreadful realm, and pour the floods of light and glory round all its dark domains, and trample down all its boasted power and dominion; and thou seest all shades of terror put to flight, all principalities of tyranny stripped of every shred of energy, and trembling in dismay and in fast-coming conscious rottenness; and as thou tracest to my person, standing here, all the light and glory and triumph and endless life that are quenching the power of death in death’s own domain, bear in mind concerning the place where I now am, and concerning the just effect of my being there, that if any man will be my disciple let him follow Me, and where I am, and as I am, there and so shall my servant be. Very specially, concerning my descent into the realms of death are the path of life, the gate of heaven, and the very vestibule of glory.” Just as for malicious apostates there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, so for humble believers there remaineth now no more death, but only a sleep in Jesus. It is enough. Halleluiah! For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, and reigneth to keep His people’s souls alive even in famine. Where is thy sting, O death? Begone, thou helpless, stingless, toothless shade! We shall not die, but only sleep—
“Asleep in Jesus! blessed sleep,
From which no soul awakes to weep.”
We shall be satisfied when we awake in thy likeness, O Lord our God. Even now our cup runneth over. Christ hath abolished death, and given us the morning star. Goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.