(Continued from Page 170) Jeremiah 23: 5, 6
How far Jeremiah himself, and the Church in his day, understood the character of the person here described, we cannot tell. The description was, assuredly, a very wonderful one. It began by comparing the promised Deliverer to a bud or tender shoot from a tree that had been cut down, and, apparently, dried up and dead; and it ended with ascribing to Him the great and fearful name of Jehovah. Such a description could not fail to astonish them. While it awakened their admiration, it must also have filled them with reverence. But it was eminently calculated, also, to command their confidence, notwithstanding the mystery which, to their eye, hung over the person and character of the promised King. His being the offspring of David gave them the assurance of His tenderest sympathy in all that concerned the well-being of Israel and Judah; and His being Jehovah gave them a stronger assurance still, that nothing could be too difficult for Him to accomplish, and that nothing would be left undone that was necessary for the wellbeing of His covenant people. They were, moreover, assured that the righteousness, power, and wisdom of this glorious person would be made available for securing the peace and prosperity of His people, inasmuch as He was to be their Righteousness, — or, in other words, He would make over to them all the benefits and blessings which, in virtue of His righteousness, were placed at His disposal.
We cannot easily conceive what were the ideas which the Church in Jeremiah’s day, and for ages after, entertained of the glorious person whose character, as here described, presented such a marvellous combination of humility and grandeur, of lowliness and of majesty. But we can conceive, — and it is delightful to dwell on the thought, — that in the midst of their tribulation, the promise must have brought to them great lightening of spirit and enlargement of heart. We can easily understand that, in the darkness which overwhelmed them, when they were carried captive into a foreign land, and sat disconsolate there, hanging their harps on the willows by the rivers of Babylon, this promise would be to them like the dawn of the morning, which, though distant, was to bring them light and liberty. We can conceive, that while they beheld the house of David sinking into decay, — while they saw the goodly tree, which God’s own hand had planted, cut down, withering and dying, — yet the promise would keep alive the hope that it would revive again, and that the tender shoot which was to spring from it would become a righteous Branch, even the Branch which God made strong for Himself.
Nor was there any state of weakness and depression to which the Church might be reduced, where this promise was not fitted to keep alive their faith and hope, inasmuch as, from the very nature of the promise, it was in a time of great depression and weakness that its fulfilment was to take place. With what admiration, then, should we contemplate the provision which was thus made for sustaining the faith and ministering to the consolation of the people of God, during the long period that elapsed between the captivity of Judah and the coming of Christ, — a period of much disaster and suffering to the Church! And how delightful the thought, that during the dark and cloudy day, the hearts of God’s people were comforted and refreshed by the assurance, that the days would come when the Lord would “raise unto David a righteous Branch,” and a King should “reign and prosper”, and should “execute judgment and justice in the earth;” that in his days Judah should be saved, and Israel should dwell safely; and that “this is His name whereby He should be called, THE LORD, or JEHOVAH, OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.”
And if we can thus enter into and sympathise with the feelings of the Church, the people of God in the old time, while they called to remembrance and pondered this precious promise, and prayed for its fulfilment, and felt their spirits refreshed and their hearts re-assured toward God in the sure hope that it would be fulfilled, — what should be our feeling in regard to it, when we reflect that it concerns us personally, as directly and as deeply as it concerned God’s ancient covenant people! And how greatly have we the advantage over them! Not only has the promise been fulfilled, but, in the very fulfilment of it, its meaning has been unfolded, as it was not and could not be to the Church of old.
To them there must have been something dark and mysterious in the person and character of the promised Deliverer, when He was represented as clothed in the condition of humanity, and, at the same time, as inherently possessed of the attributes and majesty of the Godhead. The prophets themselves diligently sought to understand the meaning of their own predictions, when, moved by the Holy Ghost, they testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. And the Church at large, therefore, must have, in like manner, longed to know when and how such a wonderful combination of lowliness and majesty should appear in the same person, — how a shoot from the stem of Jesse should, at the same time, be Jehovah the righteousness of His people. To us the mystery has been revealed, so far as it can be to our limited understanding. The first part of the prediction has been fulfilled and explained in the history of the Saviour’s birth, as the son of Mary, the humble and lowly descendant of the royal house of David; and what is all that we find recorded in the New Testament concerning the person, and character, and mediatorial work of the Lord Jesus Christ, but just one great commentary on the concluding clause of this verse, “And this is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD, or JEHOVAH, OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS?”
This passage, then, contains a very concise, but a very comprehensive summary of the whole scheme of redemption, — and a summary which the New Testament Scriptures have rendered as clear as it is comprehensive. It states, in a very definite and emphatic manner, the great principle on which that scheme rests, — namely, righteousness. It declares, what the whole tenor of Scripture testifies, that the only ground on which God can pass sentence of approbation on any of His intelligent creatures is perfect righteousness. As the Lawgiver and Judge, He must assert and vindicate the authority of His law, without concession and without compromise.
If an intelligent creature, therefore, transgresses that law, he must fall under its condemnation; and, for any thing that he can do, under that condemnation he must remain. And herein lay the apparent impossibility of fallen man ever being restored again to the favour and fellowship of God. To the highest and holiest of God’s intelligent creatures, it must have appeared absolutely impossible. Indeed, the higher and holier that they were, the more hopeless must the condition of fallen man have appeared to them; for the more that they understood and revered the divine character, the more clearly would they see the inseparable connection between sin and punishment. If sinners of mankind think it an easy thing for God to pardon the guilty, it is only because they know nothing of God, and see little of the true character of sin as rebellion against Him. It is very different with unfallen angels. They see wonders in the plan of man’s redemption, into which they desire to look. Indeed, it is an unfathomable depth of love, and grace, and wisdom. If it be only on the ground of a perfect righteousness, — an unsinning obedience, — that God can look on an intelligent creature with approbation and favour, then, on this principle alone, man, having sinned, was for ever shut out from that favour and approbation. Nor would the obstacle that stood in the way of his restoration have been removed, even if he had been both able and willing to turn from sin, and, from the moment of his so turning, to yield a perfect and unsinning obedience. He was, in fact, neither willing nor able to do so; for he fell under the power as well as the condemnation of sin. But even if he had, it would not have availed, inasmuch as the authority of the law required to be asserted, and its honour vindicated, on account of sin already committed.
Two conditions, then, required to be fulfilled, to place fallen man on the ground of a perfect righteousness, — the only ground on which God can treat him with favour and approbation. The one of these conditions was the bearing of the punishment due to sin already committed, — the other was a perfect compliance with the demands of the law, in the way of obedience. The latter was impossible on the part of man himself; for, in consequence of his fall, he had become carnal, sold under sin. The former, — that is, bearing the punishment of sin, — would have been to give him over to the endless endurance of the divine displeasure. Man’s condition, therefore, was helpless, hopeless, desperate, for any thing that created power could do. No man could save himself, or by any means redeem his brother. And it is in providing for the accomplishment of the seemingly impossible object of restoring guilty, sinful men to favour and communion with God, that the plan of redemption has made known, even to principalities and powers in heavenly places, the manifold wisdom of God.
The ground of man’s acceptance, as we have already seen, and the only ground, is a perfect righteousness; and that he could ever stand on such ground was to all appearance an inconceivable, an impossible thing. But it has been accomplished. In the covenant of grace between God the Father and God the Son, it was provided, on the one hand, that the Son should work out a perfect righteousness, in the name and on behalf of as many as the Father should give to Him; and, on the other hand, that the Father, as Lawgiver and Judge, should accept the righteousness thus wrought out, as a satisfaction to the demands of His law, and should give to those for whom it was wrought out the benefit of it, as if it were their own. The Son of God, the second Person of the Godhead, thus undertook to fulfil the conditions necessary to place men again on the ground of a perfect righteousness before God, — that is to say, He undertook to bear the punishment due to sin already committed; and He undertook, moreover, to satisfy the demands of the divine law in the way of perfect obedience.
But in order to fulfil these conditions, it behoved Him to be made under the law. As God, He was infinitely removed beyond the reach of suffering; and to become a sufferer, as man was condemned to suffer, it was necessary that He should assume man’s nature, with its sinless infirmities and its sensibility to pain. Nor was it less necessary for Him to assume human nature, in order to yield the perfect obedience which He undertook to yield in the name and on behalf of those for whom He agreed to suffer. His own inherent righteousness as God, the infinite purity, and holiness of His nature as a divine person, could not be available to men, or reckoned to their account as their own. The obedience which was to profit them behoved to be a perfect obedience to the law which they had violated and dishonoured; and to yield this obedience, it was necessary that the Son of God should place himself in circumstances where He was required to fulfil all righteousness, in compliance with the demands of that law.
It was thus needful, in every point of view, that He should become man, that He might satisfy the law, both by suffering what was due to the guilty, and, at the same time, yielding such an obedience as the law would pronounce perfect. And this He accordingly undertook and accomplished; for He was “made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” He bare the sins of His people “in His own body on the tree,” and “suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring them to God.” He was dealt with as if He had been the guiltiest, and in the eye of the law was reckoned such — God having made to meet on Him the iniquities of all His people; while, at the same time, He was “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.” And having done and endured all this in the room and as the substitute of His people, He has thus become “the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth;” or as the apostle, speaking in the name of believers, expresses it, He was made “sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him;” or as it is still more comprehensively expressed in the passage before us, “And this is His name whereby He shall be called, Jehovah our Righteousness.”