A Sermon by Rev Donald MacLean
Psalms 68:18,19. Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captive captivity, Thou hast received gifts for men: yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.
2. The Saviour had to descend, to come into a state of humiliation. That was part of the scheme of redemption, part of the way whereby He was to rob these powers of their capacity to hold sinners in captivity. He was to take captivity itself a captive and rob them of their powers. It was necessary that He would descend – that He would become man and yet remain the Son of God, that He would be born in a low condition and come into a state of humiliation although He was the Lord of glory, the Prince of life, the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His Person, God the eternal Son, the only begotten Son of the Everlasting Father. He took into union with His divine Person a holy humanity. Joseph was told: “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins”.
He shall take captivity captive. He would do this while dwelling in a holy humanity, in the valley of humiliation, in this present evil world. He would also descend in coming to grips with the sentence of death against His people. That sentence held them in captivity, and that sentence had to be robbed of its power to condemn them, and the Saviour came in order to do so. There was only one way in which death could be swallowed up: that the sentence of death would be executed against Himself rather than against His people. He descended to drink the cup of death, to be numbered with the transgressors, to take the guilt of His people’s sins in His own body and His own Person, to bear the guilt of their sins, to be made under the law and to magnify the law and make it honourable. He undertook to rob the sentence of death of its power to condemn His people, by coming under that sentence Himself, by dying in the place of the guilty. This was how the sentence of death was to be led captive and emptied of its power to condemn His people, to condemn those who are to be loaded with the benefits of salvation.
In Psalm 89, we were reading, “Justice and judgement of Thy throne are made the dwelling place”. Judgement is justice that has been executed, when sin has been laid on and exercised against the Person who was standing in the place of the guilty. Now, on the day of atonement, the high priest took the blood and sprinkled it upon the throne. The blood was the sign that justice
1The final part of a sermon preached in Glasgow on 8 May 1983. The first section dealt with the first head, which was: “The captivity which Christ has taken captive”.
had been satisfied, through judgement being executed against the sins of Israel. The sins of that year were atoned for in this symbolic way. Now the antitype of the sacrifice was the descent of the divine Redeemer into the valley of sorrow, where He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. His sufferings were the sentence of death against the sins of His people. Justice was satisfied and the sentence was, as it were, emptied of its power to condemn.
That is why Scripture says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus” – because the sentence has been executed against Christ Jesus, and because He descended to this place on the tree of Calvary, where He endured the sentence when He drank the cup of death and satisfied the justice of God by judgement being executed against Him. By dying in the place of the guilty, He as it were took captive the sentence of death. The sentence of death has been emptied of its power to condemn, because it has condemned the innocent One. It has condemned the spotless Lamb of God standing in the place of the guilty, of the hell-deserving and the undone.
There was a contest with the god of this world, Satan using all his powers against Jesus of Nazareth. The New Testament David grappled with the Goliath who is the devil, who tempted Christ, unleashing all the forces of Satanic power against Him. Satan sought to come between Him and finishing the work that the Father had given Him to do. Satan was overthrown, in the death of the Saviour. Satan’s head was bruised when Christ died for His people. They can no longer be left to be led captive by the devil at his will. Christ has secured for them deliverance from that captivity. As the One who died, He has been given the Holy Spirit without measure, so that He may deliver them from the captivity of the god of this world.
Satan has great power in our day – going about as a roaring lion, as an angel of light, in the various ways in which he exercises his deceit. But we must never forget that he is a captive. He has great liberty to do many things, but only what Christ permits him to do. He is held in the chain of the New Testament David. The stone from the sling of the New Testament David has broken the head of the god of this world; his head has been crushed. He is a captive held by the chain of the divine Saviour, whose heel was bruised, but who also crushed the head of that old serpent, the devil. However great his power may appear to God’s people in this world as they survey the generation in which they live, and even their own spiritual experience, they must never forget that he is a captive.
Christ had also to descend into the grave; it was necessary for Him that His body and soul would become separate from one another. But it was so
that He would lead death and the grave captive, That He would take the sting out of death, that He would rob the grave of its victory. The first step in His ascension was His resurrection from the dead, in which He demonstrated clearly that He fulfilled the words that He spoke, way back in the days of Hosea: “O death, I will be thy plagues: O grave, I will be thy destruction”. That voice, reaching down through the centuries, was now fulfilled at Christ’s resurrection, when the divine Saviour rose from the dead by the power of an endless life. He showed that He was the conqueror over death and the grave, which He will again demonstrate at the resurrection at the end of time.
But we read of those who, through fear of death, were all their lifetimes subject to bondage – that is, subject to captivity. That is because they are not looking to this: that death is captive to the Prince of life. Death is held in the chain of the Redeemer, and death cannot come before the time that Christ has appointed. It is appointed unto men once to die; it is God, not death, who has made that appointment. Death cannot approach them until that time. Medical services do their duty and, by the blessing of God, they very often heal and cure diseases. But death cannot come for God’s people before the time because death is held in the chain of Christ. It cannot come before the work of the child of God in this world has come to an end. And when it does come, it is emptied of its sting.
When Thomas Goodwin was dying, he said, “Is this death, this smiling friend?” This was so because the Prince of Life had taken the sting out of death, and death is the chariot that is to take the soul out of the body, to go to everlasting glory. “Is this death,” he said, “the death that so many feared, the death which brought so many in bondage through fear of death?” Christ shall show this particularly at the resurrection, when the bodies of God’s people shall arise out of the grave. They are there, but they are still united to Christ there. They are held in the grave, and Christ will demonstrate that the grave has been brought into captivity, by raising the bodies on the morning of the resurrection, and by glorifying these bodies, when their souls meet their bodies.
I have often mentioned an exclamation, which I think is beautiful, made by Christmas Evans, the Welsh divine: “O with what joy and wonder shall the saints of God, the souls of the saints of God, contemplate the frail barques of their bodies, in which they so often thought they would perish in this world, coming in on the tide of the resurrection, into the harbour and haven of everlasting glory”. And this because He has led captivity captive.
3. Christ has ascended and loads His people with benefits of salvation. The first step in Christ’s ascension was His resurrection. He stayed with His disciples for 40 days before He went to Mount Olivet. Then He ascended
from this earth to the right hand of the Majesty on high, which means His holy humanity was glorified. We cannot say much about that because Paul himself, under the Spirit of inspiration, could not say much about it. He said, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that . . . we shall be like Him”. That is, the humanity of the Saviour was glorified in His ascension; we do not mean that He was deified. The humanity of the Saviour is a glorified humanity, but a humanity still.
Lutherans speak about the body and blood of Christ being present in, with and under the bread and wine, in a way other than to faith – calling it consubstantiation. This error is not transubstantiation, the actual conversion of the bread and the wine into the body and blood of Christ when the priest pronounces the words of institution. That is a blasphemy and superstition. In order to hold consubstantiation, the Lutherans proceeded to another error: to attribute omnipresence to the humanity of Christ, because, if the body and blood of the Saviour was to be in, with and under the bread and the wine in the way that they were speaking of, the body and blood could not be in heaven, but on earth. And omnipresence is a divine attribute, not a human one. Christ is with His people by the Holy Spirit, but His body and His soul are present at the right hand of the Majesty on high and not on earth, because He ascended to glory.
The everlasting gates were opened, And what a day it was for Abraham – who saw His day and was glad – for Isaac and Jacob, and what a day it was for Moses, who had prayed, “Show me Thy glory”, and what a day it was for Elijah! What a day it was for Isaiah, who saw His glory when he spoke of Him by the spirit of prophecy! Yet the Saviour did not come in their time. But they saw Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God in His glorified humanity, coming into heaven. The angels of glory rejoiced in it. We are told: “The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels”. No doubt, when Christ ascended to heaven, they accompanied Him, as also when He will descend to judge the world in righteousness.
Jesus ascended through the multitude of angels and came to where His Church was at God’s right hand. How Abraham rejoiced to see Christ’s day by faith, when he saw it in God’s promise! And what a rejoicing there was in the soul of Abraham (taking him as an example) when, for the first time, he saw the Son of God in human nature! We lose a great deal by not grasping, to the extent we can grasp that great fact, that when they saw the Saviour coming into heaven, it was the first view the Old Testament saints of God – Enoch and all the others from Abel downwards – got of the Son of God in our nature, now glorified.
We have no doubt that, whatever joy unspeakable the Old Testament saints
who were in heaven had during these thousands of years, their joy was increased when Christ in our nature came in through the everlasting doors into heaven, into the presence of the spirits of just men made perfect, who were gathered there. We have no doubt whatever but that it added to Abraham’s joy in heaven to see the Son of God in our nature coming in through the everlasting doors, to take His place at the invitation of His everlasting Father, “Sit Thou at My right hand”. We cannot say, What a day! This is because it refers to eternity, but we can say, What an experience the ascension of the Saviour was and His being at God’s right hand! There He is in possession of the Holy Spirit to bring the benefits of salvation to sinners, and to demonstrate to His people that He has broken the captivity under which they were.
We see here that there are gifts for the rebellious. All those who are taught by the Holy Spirit confess that they were rebels, under the dominion of sin. They confess that they were under the kingdom of Satan and were rebellious against the invitations of the everlasting gospel. They were making excuses for many a long day when hearing these invitations; they needed to be made willing, which is bound up with the ascension of Christ: “A willing people in Thy day of power shall come to Thee”. The rebellious are made willing by the gracious power of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God – convincing them first of all of their rebellion, that they are captive to sin. How the sinner under conviction of sin strives against sin, and how he imagines on many an occasion that he is making some progress, and then he falls back into the miry clay once more. So they all learn: “Iniquities prevail against me”. They all acknowledge that they were in the kingdom of Satan and that, if they were made willing, it is because it was in a day of Christ’s power – the power of the Holy Spirit coming to their souls to make them willing.
Now to be made willing is bound up with a new desire and a new nature. That is a new creation. So those people who preach that Christ died for all, and therefore everybody has sufficient grace to believe in Christ, having the will to do so – they just do not know what they are talking about. But God’s people learn this, and that is why I was making the point about the will acting according to the prevailing disposition and desire. It cannot be otherwise. The old nature will never believe in Christ; no, though the sinner is shaken over the flames of hell. It requires the power of the Holy Ghost, and a new disposition is wrought in the soul, so that the sinner comes to desire Christ, salvation, pardon, and to be washed. It finds Christ to be the One in whom there is pardon and deliverance.
The rich man, when he was in hell, became a great evangelist. He wanted Abraham to be sent back to preach to his brothers who were still alive. But Abraham said, “They have Moses and the prophets . . . neither will they
be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” Although someone you knew was raised from the dead and came to this pulpit and began to preach, it might make a great impression for a time, but it would not convert you. Nothing will convert you but the power of the Holy Ghost through the Word of God. This is one of the benefits that are spoken of here: the rebellious being made willing in a day of Christ’s power. They have to be brought to embrace Christ by faith in the everlasting gospel – brought to say that this is all my salvation and all my desire. When the Holy Spirit takes of the things of Christ and reveals them to the soul, how willing the sinner is to embrace Christ and to say in the depths of his soul, This is all my salvation and all my desire! He never did anything so willingly in his life.
Then they are loaded with benefits. Their sins, which are many, are forgiven them. And by virtue of the new birth, they are not only brought to believe in Christ, but they have a new principle placed in them, a new nature. And that new nature sets them free to an extent from the dominion and power of sin. “Sin shall have no more dominion over you” – that is in the sense that it had dominion before – because now, due to the new nature that is in the soul, there is opposition to sin. There is grace in the soul in opposition to sin. There is now in the will what was not there in a state of nature: that disposition to hate sin, to flee from sin. Although it will not be perfect in this life, that disposition is there, and this is one of the benefits of grace being in the soul. It will not be perfect until God’s people are made perfect in holiness, and that will take place at death. Although it may seem weak at times, and many a fear God’s people have that it is too weak altogether, yet the lame will take the prey. Grace will have the final victory, and Christ will have the final victory in that soul.
Christ loads them daily with His benefits. And among these gifts are the ministers of the gospel. True ministers, called by God, are given to His Church in the world – those who preach the gospel of the grace of God: the benefits, the gifts, which Christ, the ascended Lord, gives His Church in the world. In connection with these gifts, He gives all the ordinances: the preaching and reading of the Word of God, among others, and the singing of God’s praises, the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Church discipline. These are benefits with which He loads His people in this world. There is the benefit of communion with Himself in these ordinances, in public and in private. By the Holy Spirit, Christ loads His people with these benefits.
Blessed is the man whose God is the God of Jacob, who have Him as their Saviour, as the shield of their deliverance and the sword of their excellency. They are blessed to have Christ, the ascended Lord, their Friend, their Beloved, as their intercessor at God’s right hand. They are blessed because
Christ has said even to the weakest among them, “Where I am, there ye [shall] be also”. He ascended as the head of His body, the Church, to the right hand of the Majesty on high. He said to His people: “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am [where the ascended Lord is], there [shall ye] be also”. That is His promise, and it shall be fulfilled.
It is one of the reasons why we do not believe the view – although it is widespread even among commentators who are sound in other things – that this world is to be purified and is to be the ultimate dwelling place of Christ and His people. There are many reasons why we believe that the Scriptures teach that the world is to pass away and go back to the nothingness from whence it came. But one of the principal reasons is this, that when Christ was standing on this earth, He said, “I go to prepare a place for you”, and that was heaven. That is the place He was going to prepare – not a purified earth, but heaven – the place where the Saviour now is in His glorified humanity: that is the heaven of God’s people. When He was standing on this earth, He said that he was going. We are going to leave this earth. It is not to be made a dwelling place for Christ and His people; He went there when He ascended on high. When He carried captivity captive, He went there and He said, “Where I am there ye [shall] be also”. That is the heaven God’s people are looking forward to, and they have every reason to believe that “none perish that Him trust”.
If they are loaded with benefits in this world, these benefits are only foretastes of that eternal glory which is to be theirs, world without end. Therefore each one of us to whom the gospel of the grace of God has come should have the desire to be found in Christ, to be found among those of whom it is said: “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature”. Yes, and “there is . . . now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus”, but everlasting life and everlasting blessings, world without end.