THE EFFECTS OF THE REDEEMER’S SUFFERINGS AND DEATH
Chapter
Five from the book Meditations on the Sacred Humanity of Our Blessed Redeemer
We might now pass on to the consideration
of that sacred humanity as taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb,
where it lay in all its innate purity, sanctity, and incorruptibility,
perfuming the grave, and consecrating the tomb as the sleeping-place of those
who die in the Lord. Thence we might pass to the resurrection of that
incorruptible body, whereby he was declared to be the Son of God with power; #Ro 1:4; thence to the continuance of the blessed Lord upon earth during
the forty days of his tarrying here below; thence to his ascension on high when
he led captivity captive; thence to his sitting at the right hand of God in our
nature; and thence to his second coming at the great day. All these successive
steps are full of blessedness to believing hearts, when they can meditate upon
them, and through faith, hope, and love in them, rise up into sweet union and
communion with their most gracious and glorious Lord, as their once suffering
but now risen and exalted Head.
But as we are still at the cross of our
suffering Lord, we cannot leave that sacred spot without dwelling for a few
moments on several points most intimately connected with it. Three at this
present moment offer themselves to our mind.
1. The work accomplished by the sufferings, bloodshedding, obedience, and death of the
Lord Jesus Christ, and the benefits and blessings which spring out of it. It was a finished work. Here is all our salvation and here is
all our hope. When were such words ever uttered on this earth as those which
his gracious lips spoke from the cross, "It is finished"? Well may we
cry, in the language of our sweet Christian Psalmist,
Holy
Ghost, repeat the word,
There’s
salvation in it.
Standing, then, at the cross of our
adorable Lord, and hearing these gracious words from the lips of him who cannot
lie, if blessed with living faith, we may see the law thoroughly fulfilled, its
curse fully endured, its penalties wholly removed, sin eternally put away, the
justice of God amply satisfied, all his perfections gloriously harmonised, his
holy will perfectly obeyed, reconciliation completely effected, redemption
graciously accomplished, and the church everlastingly saved. Here we see sin in
its blackest colours, and holiness in its fairest beauties. Here we see the
love of God in its tenderest form, and the anger of God in its deepest
expression. Here we see the sacred humanity of the blessed Redeemer lifted up,
as it were, between heaven and earth, to show to angels and to men the
spectacle of redeeming love, and to declare at one and the same moment, and by
one and the same act of the suffering obedience and bleeding sacrifice of the
Son of God, the eternal and unalterable displeasure of the Almighty against
sin, and the rigid demands of his inflexible justice, and yet the tender
compassion and boundless love of his heart to the election of grace. Here, and
here alone, are obtained pardon and peace; here, and here alone, penitential
grief and godly sorrow flow from heart and eyes; here, and here alone, is sin
subdued and mortified, holiness communicated, death vanquished, Satan put to
flight, and happiness and heaven begun in the soul. 0 what heavenly blessings,
what present grace, as well as what future glory flow through the sacred
humanity of the Son of God! What a holy meeting-place for repenting sinners and
a sin-pardoning God! What a healingplace for guilty, yet repenting and
returning backsliders; what a door of hope in the valley of Achor for the
selfcondemned and self-abhorred; what a safe spot for seeking souls; and what a
blessed resorting-place for the whole family of God in this vale of grief and
sorrow!
2. Another most blessed fruit of the
sacred humanity of our adorable Redeemer is that in that nature he learnt the experimental reality of
temptation and suffering, and
thus became able to sympathise with his tempted and afflicted people. It was
necessary under the law that the high priest "should have compassion on
the ignorant and on them that are out of the way, for that he himself also was
compassed with infirmity." #Heb 5:2. Our
great High Priest was not compassed with infirmity, like the high priest under
the law. and therefore had no need to offer sacrifice for his own sins; #Heb 5:3; but that he might be "a merciful" as well as
"faithful" high priest—faithful to God and merciful to man, "it
behoved him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, for in that he
himself hath suffered being tempted, he might be able to succour them that are
tempted." #Heb 2:17,18. "We have not, therefore, a high
priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who
was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." #Heb 4:15.
Here we see the wisdom and grace of the
Father in preparing, and the love and pity of the Son in assuming a nature like
our own, sin only excepted, that he might have a real experience of every form
of suffering and of temptation. Those only can feel for others in trouble and
sorrow who themselves have walked in the path of tribulation; nor can any one
really sympathise with the tempted but those who have themselves been in the
furnace of temptation. Thus our blessed Lord became a man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief; hid not his face from shame and spitting; endured
poverty, hunger, thirst, and nakedness; was betrayed by one disciple, denied by
another, and forsaken by all; was oppressed and was afflicted, not only as a
part of his meritorious, suffering obedience, but that by a personal experience
in his holy humanity of sorrow and affliction he might sympathise with his
mourning, afflicted people. And as with affliction, so with temptation; the
gracious Redeemer endured every sort of temptation which Satan could present to
his holy soul, for "in all points he was tempted like as we are, yet
without sin," #Heb 4:15, that he might feel for and sympathise with
the tempted.
But this is not all. The blessed Redeemer
had not only to sympathise with the sorrows and temptations, but experimentally
to learn the graces of his believing people. He had therefore to learn
obedience in the same way that they learn it, for "he learnt obedience by
the things which he suffered;" #Heb 5:8; was
taught in the school of affliction the inward experience of submission to God’s
will, meekness under injury and oppression, and lowliness of heart as a
heavenly grace. Therefore he could say, "Learn of me, for I am meek and
lowly in heart." #Mt
11:29. Let us not think that
the blessed Lord had no inward experience in his holy soul of spiritual graces,
or that his divine nature supplied to his human the grace of the Holy Ghost. On
the contrary, the Holy Spirit that was given him without measure, #Joh 3:34, who not only anointed him as Prophet, Priest, and King,
but dwelt in him in all his fulness, bestowed upon him every spiritual grace,
as faith, trust, hope, love, prayer and supplication, patience, long-suffering,
zeal for the glory of God, and with all spiritual wisdom and understanding, all
counsel and might, all heavenly knowledge and the fear of the Lord. #Isa 11:1,2. All these gifts and graces dwelt in his sacred humanity {1} and were drawn into exercise by the Holy Ghost, so that the
blessed Lord believed, hoped, and loved; prayed, sighed, and groaned; trusted
in God and lived a life of faith in him, just in the same manner and by the
same Spirit and power, though in an infinitely higher degree, and wholly
unmixed with sin, as his believing people do now. So that just in the same way
as his sacred body was fed and nourished by the same food as ours, so was his
holy soul sustained by the same communications of grace and strength as
maintain in life the souls of his people now.
Thus he learnt experimentally not only
their trials and temptations, their griefs and sorrows, both natural and
spiritual, but their joys and deliverances, their manifestations, their waiting,
hope, their trusting confidence, their patient expectation, their obedient
submission, and in a word, the whole compass of their experience. {2} If any think it is derogatory to the Deity of our blessed Lord,
to believe that he had a spiritual experience of the same graces that his
people have, for being God, they might argue he could not need them, let them
explain why his body needed human food, or why his soul had an experience of
sorrow and temptation. Could not his divine nature, as in the wilderness, have
supported the human without food? And is it not equally derogatory to say that
the blessed Lord had an experience of affliction and temptation, as of joy and
deliverance? As our great Exemplar, as our suffering Head, the blessed Lord was
delivered as well as tempted, rejoiced in spirit as well as sighed and wept,
was made glad with the light of his Father’s countenance as well as felt the
hidings of his face {3}
3. The third point connected with the
sacred humanity of Jesus as obedient unto death, is the example he has left to his believing people that they should walk in his steps. It will little profit us to have the
clearest views of the Lord’s suffering humanity if it produce no impression on
our hearts and lives. At the foot of the cross there stood those who mocked the
sufferings and shame of the blessed Redeemer; there were those who looked on
with callous indifference; and there were those who mourned and wept, believed
and loved. So now there are those who mock the eternal Sonship and suffering
humanity of the blessed Jesus; and there are those who look upon his suffering
Majesty without faith and without feeling, without any sorrow for sin or any
thirst after holiness. And there is a small remnant who look and believe, and
as led into the fellowship of his sufferings, mourn and weep. These see and
feel that there is a knowing him and the fellowship of his sufferings, being
made conformable to his death; #Php
3:10; a bearing about in the
body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made
manifest in our body; #2Co
4:10; a being crucified with
Christ; #Ga 2:20; a determination to know nothing save
Jesus Christ and him crucified; #1Co 2:2; and a
glorying in his cross as the only effectual means whereby the world is
crucified unto us and we unto the world; #Ga 6:14. We
need not wonder that in our day there is such a form of godliness and such a
denial of the power. It must ever be so when men are ignorant—willingly
ignorant of the suffering humanity of the blessed Lord, and know so little of
the mystery of the cross.
One word more. All union and communion
with God is only through the humanity of Jesus. God-man unites God and man. In
union with God by his Deity, in union with man by his humanity, the Lord Jesus
is the Daysman who lays his hand upon them both. #Job 9:33.
This made holy John say, "For the life was manifested, and we have seen
it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the
Father and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard declare we
unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is
with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." #1Jo 1:2,3. Happy are those who can say with him, "Truly our
fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ;" but this
those only can experimentally say who having been blessed with a manifestation
of his Person and work can add: "He that believeth on the Son of God hath
the witness in himself: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because
he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son." #1John 5:10.
{1} If space admitted, we could easily show
from those Psalms in which, beyond all controversy, Christ speaks that all the
graces which we have here enumerated dwelt in him and were expressed by him.
Let our spiritual readers examine #Ps 18; #Ps 22; #Ps 40; Ps 69, all of which the most indubitable external and internal evidence
assigns to Christ, with an eye to this particular point, and trace it for
themselves.
{2} Thus in reading David’s deliverances and
blessings, though we know that they were really David’s, and truly felt and
acknowledged by him as such, yet we may often say, “A greater than David was
here.” Thus compare #Ps
18:16-19 with #Ps 18:43,44.
{3} Our blessed Lord had no experience of regeneration or of repentance: for the one is the quickening of the soul out of death, and the other implies the existence of sin. These two things are to be carefully distinguished from his experience of faith, trust. &c.
Please direct your comments to Mike
Krall.