by the late Rev James MacLeod of Greenock1
For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. (Matthew 18:11).
CHRIST came to seek and to save that which was lost. The lostness of man is on account of the fall of our first parents. Man is lost therefore in his state before God, lost in his nature, lost in all the faculties of his soul, and lost in all the members of his body. Man is lost in his whole person, and if Christ will not come in His infinite condescension and love to rescue the lost, they will be lost not only in time but also in eternity.
Man thinks that he is not lost as long as he is in time in this world. This is a very erroneous and unscriptural idea. When the sinner is awakened by the Holy Spirit he finds himself there and then to be utterly and absolutely lost. He finds himself lost in his soul and in all his actions. He finds that he cannot think one right thought of himself and that he is under the wrath and curse of God; that he is, as the Catechism says, “…liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself and to the pains of hell for ever.”
Divine power alone can convince a man of his lost state. Divine power can indeed do this glorious work in the soul of man. We have a clear instance of the exercise of this power in raising Lazarus from the dead. The same glorious power that raised Lazarus from the dead can raise man out of his spiritual grave. For a man to think that he can quicken himself out of his lost state is the greatest conceivable hallucination and deception, and one that is so common. Whatever he may read to the contrary, whatever he may hear, whatever he himself may think, no other power can call lost man out of a state of spiritual death but the creative power of the Holy Ghost.
When the sinner is awakened by the Holy Spirit he finds what he never found before — what he did not know before — that he is lost. He may have tried previously to reconcile himself to God against whom he has sinned, but now the holy, divine law of God comes in its glorious, divine light and power to his soul, convicting him, and convincing him that he is under God’s wrath and curse. “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.”
The sinner must realise that he cannot reconcile himself to God. He must realise his utter inability to meet the claims of divine law and justice, and that the wrath of God is upon him. He must experience that his works are utterly futile to reconcile him to God. He must be cut away from the covenant of works. Man will never let go his hold on a broken covenant until the law of God enters his conscience by the power of the Holy Spirit. We read of some that made great pretensions to religion: that their “navel was not cut”, that is, they were not separated from a covenant of works. They never realised that, “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight.” The apostle said, “When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” Was he not dead in trespasses and sins before this? Yes! but he did not know then that he was dead. He is now assured of it, and that there is no place suitable for him but the blackness of darkness forever. A man will not realise that he is lost until God in his infinite love, mercy, and condescension, and in His eternal kindness, comes to him through the Son of man.
Now, Christ here calls Himself the Son of man — one that can mediate between lost man and the infinite, holy God. But we are not to assume for one moment that the Son of man is not the eternal God; the “I am that I am”, coequal with the Father in His person, in His nature, and in all the attributes of His glory. This One, who is both the Son of man and the Son of God, can now through His mediatorial offices and by His Spirit, draw near to the lost sinner. The Holy Spirit opens the eyes of the lost sinner to see who Christ is, and to believe that the Son of man is the Son of God, and that the Son of God is the Son of man who is come to save the lost.
Those who deny the deity and virgin birth of Christ, and His physical resurrection from the dead, have no more way of access to God or escape from a lost eternity than the fallen angels that lost their first estate and are lost forever. Man is absolutely lost: and he will be lost forever if Christ will not come to his rescue. There is no one who is capable, or ever will be capable, to stand as mediator between us, poor, lost, ruined sinners, and the eternal God against whom we have sinned, but the Son of man, who is the eternal Son of God in our own nature. Only He is able, and He is most willing, to stand between us lost sinners and the holy God.
The Son of man came to redeem the lost from the curse of God’s holy law. He took our nature in order that in our nature He would exalt the law of God. It was absolutely necessary that Christ’s righteousness should be commensurate with all the claims of law and justice, and therefore it was necessary, in the infinite wisdom of God, that Christ should be “conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of
her, yet without sin”. Now, this is the Son of man who is before us in the text. He is bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, having “a true body and a reasonable soul” united to His own divine person. Therefore He is a suitable redeemer, a glorious redeemer, a loving redeemer. Through Him, lost sinners can be saved and justified freely by divine grace.
Now, a sinner can never be justified in the sight of God, according to the justice of God, unless divine pardon is given him, and the righteousness of Christ is applied to his soul. Only then is the lost sinner saved by Christ, in Christ, through Christ and for Christ’s sake. Christ is now the Mediator to that sinner. The sinner ceases to seek righteousness in himself. His righteousness now is absolutely in the person and work of the glorious Son of God in our nature, and he is resting upon the “sure foundation” laid in Sion. Christ now becomes the Rock of Ages for him. The saved sinner has a place where he can stand before God; a place in which he finds not only peace with God, but love and mercy, holiness, justice, righteousness and truth from the very bosom of the Eternal.
Also, like the Ethiopian eunuch, he goes on his way rejoicing. He is rejoicing in this fact revealed to him by the Holy Spirit: that God is forever glorified in his salvation. This is what he could not understand before; he could not see how God could be glorified in pardoning him his sin. He could not see that it would be even right on the part of God to do it. But when the Son of man was revealed to him, he saw that He endured the wrath and curse and death that were due to him. He sees that he cannot be too thankful for what Christ did for him, and therefore Christ is made very precious to him. “Unto you therefore which believe he is precious”. He is so precious to believers that it is utterly impossible for them to describe adequately the wonders that they see in the holy, glorious, divine person of whom Paul said, “Who loved me, and gave himself for me.” They are now debtors to free and sovereign grace; to the grace of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Furthermore, Christ is now their life and their all. Apart from Christ they have no life, they have no hope, they have no light, they have nothing. They now draw their life from Christ. Like the branch drawing its natural life from the parent tree, so the believer now draws his life from Christ as the only source of his life. Apart from Christ there is no life at all; none whatever.
What now about the doctrine that is so common in this generation, and among arminians, modernists and others: that those who are united to the Son of man are not under the law because they are under grace? That’s a false doctrine! The law of God, from the First Commandment to the last, is the perfect rule of life to the believer in his walk in the world. He respects the
Fourth Commandment, “Remember the sabbath day to keep it holy,” as he does the Seventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” He cannot tolerate idolatry in any form. “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” His objective now in life is to seek the glory of God by obedience to His will. His objective is also to have communion and fellowship with God in Christ. He knows that he cannot glorify Christ without the enabling of the Holy Ghost. He is now indebted as never before to the Holy Ghost, in order that he may magnify Christ in his soul and in his life. Christ is so dear to him that he has a terrible fear that he might at any moment, any where and under any circumstances, do something that might grieve the Spirit of the Lord from him. Therefore his prayer is, “Hold up my goings.”
Also, the sinner saved by grace is realising now his need of the blood of the Son of man. Through the blood of the Son of man he was reconciled to God. The peace of God entered into his soul through the precious blood of Jesus. By the blood his conscience was purged from dead works to serve the living God. Can he now do without the blood of Christ? No! He must have the blood of Christ. The preaching that is destitute of the blood of Christ is no preaching to him. The ordinances of the New Testament, apart from the blood of Christ, are no ordinances to him. The water in baptism represents to him the blood of Christ which cleanses from sin. In the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, the bread and wine are to him seals and symbols of the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus. This is what makes these ordinances of the New Testament so precious to him, so dear to him, so near to his heart: that they signify to him the blood of the Son of man.
The longer the child of God is left in the world, the more precious the gospel and the other ordinances are to him. Suppose the apostles or martyrs were yet in the world – they would have no other gospel but this gospel. The gospel they had is the gospel we have. And let us be thankful to God for this glorious gospel which reveals the Son of man who saves the lost, to the glory of God; the gospel that can save man from the ruin, the curse, the death and the hell that he has brought upon himself.
Can the saved sinner now go and worship in a place of idolatry with its pictures, its images, its burnings and its holy water? No he cannot! He is done with idolatry forever. “What have I to do any more with idols?” “What have I to do with Romanism and modernism?” He is now walking, not in the sparks of his own kindling or in the sparks of human learning, but in the light of God’s Word. To him, the impress of heaven and of God’s Spirit is on the whole Bible. It is not a dead book but a living book, because Christ is the
living Saviour revealed in it. He sees Christ in the Book of Genesis, in the five Books of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms, and right on to the book of Revelation. There he meets with Christ.
Sinners saved by the Son of man do not believe in what men call the linear reign of Christ in the world: that Christ is to come in person to reign in this world for a thousand years. The believer gives no place to such utter nonsense because there is no warrant for it in the Word of God. He is assured that the Son of man is to come again on the great day of judgement “with His mighty angels” and “in the glory of His Father”, to take vengeance on them who remained disobedient to the gospel of His free and sovereign grace. They are sure that He is coming on the great day of judgement.
Now, this is the time God is giving to us, so marvellously, so mercifully, that we may prepare for eternity by faith in the Son of man, who came to save the lost. By the grace of God, we are to be prepared to leave this tabernacle of clay behind until the Son of man will come again on the great day of judgement. And we believe that when He will come on that great day, the bodies of believers will be resurrected as glorious bodies, as surely as their souls were resurrected from spiritual death in time, and that they will enter, body and soul gloriously reunited, into eternal glory.