(Preached at the Contin on 15th August, 1793, at the Ordination of Mr Dallas.)
The great design of the ministry of the Gospel as declared to Paul by the heavenly vision, which so suddenly and graciously arrested him in his career of persecuting zeal, is to turn men from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to the living God. Christ is the light of the world and the only way to the Father; it is therefore by leading men to Christ that the great object of our ministry can alone be fulfilled — that they can be brought to the enjoyment of true light, and restored to the image and favour of God. Thence, in pursuance of the divine commission which the holy apostle had received, it was his devout resolution, as expressed by himself, writing to the Corinthians, to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The doctrine of the Cross to be the power of God and the wisdom of God in winning sinners to Christ and salvation, he knew from happy experience, as well as from our Lord’s declaration in our text, signifying by what death He should die: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” By a display of love so rich and amazing, our blessed Lord was now to lay a foundation for conquering the most stubborn hearts, and was to engage a multitude, which no man can number, of all ranks and all nations, to enlist with joy under the banner of the Cross. Though there be virtue enough in the blood of Christ to expiate the guilt of the whole world, and attractive power in His dying love, sufficient to draw to Him every heart, and though we have a warrant to preach the Gospel to every creature; yet we know of the many thus called that but few are chosen, and that of those to whom the word of this salvation is sent many perish in their sins: “For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matt. 7: 13,14). As Christ was of old to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness, so He is still, alas! despised and rejected by many to their own aggravated condemnation and eternal ruin. The benefits, however, of His death are offered unto all, and by the preaching of the Cross, a glorious church shall be gathered unto Him out of the Gentile as well as the Jewish world, out of every kindred, people, and nation, — of all languages, ages and conditions: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”
I propose in discoursing from these words, in dependence upon divine aid, to show wherein lies the attractive influence of the Cross of Christ, by illustrating those views of His death, from the representation of which, in the preaching of the Gospel and through the accompanying influences of the divine Spirit, the great end of our ministry may be accomplished, and sinners effectually drawn to Christ and salvation. In order to the accomplishment of this important object, and that men may be brought to experience the powerful magnetism of the Cross of Christ, it is necessary to represent to them:
First, The divine glory of Him who was lifted up upon the Cross. Little indeed is the portion which we can comprehend of the infinite glory of our Redeemer, before whom Isaiah in his vision of the upper world, beheld the highest orders of celestials, veiling their faces with their wings, and worshipping Him with the most profound reverence; and of whom, rapt into the vision of future times, he cries out in holy ecstasy, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9: 6). Had it been only a mere man, a creature though of the most exalted rank, who had condescended to suffer and die for us, whatever admiration and praise such friendship might excite, it could afford us no solid consolation, as it could be of no avail to expiate the guilt of sin, or to obtain for us eternal redemption. The redemption of the soul was precious, and it must have ceased for ever, had not a ransom of infinite worth been provided, adequate indeed to the redemption of a multitude which no man can number, and each soul of that multitude, incomparably more valuable in his estimation, who best knew its worth, than the whole world. Adequate to such a redemption was the price by which it hath been purchased: “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20: 28). “Feed the Church of God,” says Paul to the elders of Ephesus, “which he has purchased with his own blood.” That one of such infinite dignity should humble Himself thus, and shed His blood on a cross for the salvation of men, is altogether wonderful and mysterious, and is a doctrine, therefore, which corrupt reason is ever ready to reject as false and absurd. But he that believes that there is a God must believe mysteries, and in the eye of sound reason, nothing can appear more arrogant than for man to pretend to search out the Almighty unto perfection, and obstinately to reject the clear and express revelation which Jehovah hath made to us of His nature or of His ways, because they are incomprehensible to the poor grovelling creature who is a mystery to himself, and can no more account for the union of soul and body — two substances, yet one person — than he can comprehend a subject infinitely removed beyond the narrow ken of the human understanding, — this great mystery of godliness, the manifestation of God in the flesh.
That our glorious Redeemer is God as well as man is a most comfortable truth, of which we have the fullest and clearest evidence from the Word of God. “Without controversy,” says Paul, writing to Timothy in the passage just alluded to (1 Timothy 3: 16), “great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” And in his Epistle to the Philippians, 2: 6, speaking of Christ, he says: “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.” If the heavens declare the glory of the Lord and the firmament showeth his handy work — if the vast creation bears the stamp of an almighty agent; if the Cherubim and Seraphim that shine around the throne of God proclaim that the hand that made them is divine, then this honour is due to Christ: “For by him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: and he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Col. 1: 16-17). Again, He is expressly styled “the Beginning and the End” (Rev. 22: 13); the Beginning, that is the efficient cause from which all things proceed; and the End, that is the final cause to which all things are referred; and nothing higher can be said of God the Father. It is this infinite dignity of Christ that imparts infinite worth to His obedience, and sufferings, and gives virtue and efficacy to His sacrifice, which the sufferings of the whole human race would not have, if they had been doomed to everlasting punishment.
This transcendent glory of Christ imparts infinitely attractive virtue to his Cross. He who humbled Himself for our sakes was higher than the heavens; He who emptied Himself had the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in Him bodily; He who endured the Cross, despising the shame, was that great and glorious Being whom highest angels worship and adore. His humiliation, His poverty, His shame and sufferings, have, therefore, not only infinite merit in them to expiate the evil of sin and satisfy divine justice, but likewise an infinite virtue to bring nigh those who were far off, and to draw unto Him the remotest wanderers, — sinners from the utmost ends of the earth, yea, from the very confines of hell. “Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else; besides me there is no Saviour.” Isaiah 45: 21, 22. This is Christ’s call to us in His word. The great business then of ministers of the gospel is to publish and urge this gracious call, and to direct perishing sinners to Him as the great God, and the Saviour lifted up upon the Cross, to take away sin by the sacrifice to Himself. “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. 8: 9. The knowledge of this grace, which can never be fully comprehended, which angels contemplate with wonder, and which the redeemed of the Lord shall celebrate in eternal hallelujahs of praise: the knowledge and admiration of this grace must be proportionate to the views which the soul has got of His glory who humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. It is by the display of Christ’s glory that the grace manifested in His humiliation and sufferings is illustrated, and its attractive influence comes to be experienced. In preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ, when accompanied by the influences of the divine Spirit, whose peculiar office it is to testify of Christ, and to glorify Him, a powerful and irresistible attraction is felt flowing from the grace and condescendence which brought the only Begotten of the Father to become an outcast of men, and the Lord of life and glory to expire on a cross for the salvation of sinners and enemies.
Christ is “the desire of all nations”; it was said of Him in prophecy that the Gentiles should come to His light, and kings to the brightness of His rising; and when He is set forth in the preaching of the gospel as the brightness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of His person, voluntarily substituting Himself in our room, submitting to the curse which we had incurred, and pouring out His soul unto death on the accursed tree for wretched sinful men, such ineffable glory united with such astonishing grace, viewed in the light of the spirit of wisdom and revelation, overcomes man’s natural alienation of heart from God, converts enemies of the Cross into faithful followers of the Lamb — renders a crucified Saviour altogether lovely, altogether desirable in the eyes of His people — worthy that kings should fall down before Him, and that all nations of the earth should serve Him. “I will now turn aside,” said Moses, “to see this great sight, the bush burning and not consumed.” It is by the representation of the glory and of the goodwill of Him who dwelt in the bush, that thoughtless perishing sinners will be induced to turn aside from the downward paths of sin and folly, to contemplate this astonishing sight, the Son of God in our nature lifted up upon a Cross, till by the view their hearts are melted, won, and drawn, till they are brought to enlist under the banner of the Cross, and to say with Paul, “God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world” (Gal. 6: 14).
Secondly. That sinners may be effectually drawn to Christ, it is necessary to represent to them the evil and the danger of sin as manifested in the Cross of Christ. It was part of God’s commission to the prophet (Ezekiel 3: 17-18), “Son of Man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel, therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die, and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way to save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand.” That the sinner’s life may be saved, or the watchman acquitted of his blood, sin must be laid faithfully before him in its native deformity and malignity, in its fatal consequences and dreadful desert; as that accursed thing which God’s soul hates, and against which he has denounced indignation and wrath, tribulation and eternal anguish. Though much of the pernicious nature of sin may be learned from the woes without number under which the creation groans, yet none of its dismal consequences alone, nor all of them united, set its evil and danger in so awful a light as the Cross of Christ. The dying groans of the Son of God declare this more loudly than the wailings of the damned. How atrocious must that guilt be which nothing but the costly sacrifice of the Lamb of God could expiate. How deep the stain which nothing but the blood of God could efface. When Christ is held forth in the preaching of the gospel as lifted up upon a Cross, and when sin is viewed as the procuring cause of all his sufferings and sorrows; of the bloody agony and ignominious death of the Prince of Life, the Lord of Glory, how must the conscience-stricken sinner shrink with horror and tremble for his own fate!
Seeing thus in the glass of Christ’s sufferings, and by the light of the divine Spirit, what a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God, and reflecting with himself, “If these things were done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry,” he is brought to listen with eager attention to the offers of salvation through Christ, and to fly as if he heard the footsteps of the avenger of blood behind him, to lay hold of the hope set before him in the gospel. As there is no sanctuary for the sinner, no place of security from the wrath that is to come but the Cross of Christ, so there is no other point of view from which sin appears so exceedingly sinful, so much the object of God’s detestation, and so contrary to his divine nature. The soul therefore to whom sin has been discovered in this light must be deeply convinced of their fatal error who hope for salvation whilst they indulge themselves in the practice of sin, and must feel drawn to Christ no less powerfully to obtain redemption from sin than to obtain deliverance from wrath. As the children of Israel, when stung by the fiery serpents in the wilderness, looked for healing to the brazen serpent elevated by the divine appointment on a pole, so it is by the faithful representation of the evil and danger of sin as manifested in the sufferings of the Son of God, that the sinner is led to look with eagerness to Christ lifted up upon the cross for the healing of the nations, and to apply to Him for remedy from the malignant poison of the old serpent by which his nature has been tainted, with no less ardour than he repairs to Him as his hiding place from the wind, and his covert from the tempest of the divine wrath, or as the high tower to which the righteous flee and are safe.
(To be Continued)