The priests thought that it was altogether incredible that His
devotion should have been genuine, or His claim to be the Son of God
should have any reality, since the Cross, to their vulgar eyes,
disproved them both. Like all coarse-minded people, they estimated
character by condition, but they who do that make no end of
mistakes. They had forgotten their own Prophecies, which might have
told them that 'the Servant of the Lord in whom' His 'heart
delighted,' was a suffering Servant. But whilst they recognised the
facts, here again, as in the other two cases, they misconceived the
relation. We have the means of rectifying the distorted image.
We ought to know, and to be sure, that the Cross of Christ was the
very token that this was God's 'beloved Son in whom He was well
pleased.' If we dare venture on the comparison of parts of that
which is all homogeneous and perfect, we might say that in the
moment of His death Jesus Christ was more than ever the object of
the Father's delight.
Why? It is not my purpose now to enlarge upon all the reasons which
might be suggested. Let me put them together in a sentence or two.
In that Cross Jesus Christ revealed God as God's heart had always
yearned to be revealed, infinite in love, pitifulness, forbearance,
and pardoning mercy. There was the highest manifestation of the
glory of God. 'What?' you say, 'a poor weak Man, hanging on a cross,
and dying in the dark--is _that_ the very shining apex of all
that humanity can know of divinity?' Yes, for it is the pure
manifestation that God is Love. Therefore the whole sunshine of the
Father's presence rested on the dying Saviour. It was the hour when
God most delighted in Him, if I may venture the comparison, for the
other reasons that then He carried filial obedience to its utmost
perfection, that then His trust in God was deepest, even at the hour
when His spirit was darkened by the cloud that the world's sin,
which He was carrying, had spread thunderous between Him and the
sunshine of the Father's face. For in that mysterious voice, which
we can never understand in its depths, there were blended trust and
desolation, each in its highest degree: 'My God! my God! Why hast
Thou forsaken Me?' And the Cross was the complete carrying out of
God's dearest purpose for the world, that He might be 'just, and the
justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.' Therefore, then--I was
going to say as never before--was Christ His Son, in whom He
delighted.
Brethren, let us, led by the errors of these scoffers, grasp the
truths that they pervert. Let us see that weak Man hanging helpless
on the cross, whose 'cannot' is the impotence of omnipotence,
imposed by His own loving will to save a world by the sacrifice of
Himself. Let us crown Him our King, and let our deepest trust and
our gladdest obedience be rendered to Him because He did not come
down from, but 'endured, the cross.' Let us behold with wonder, awe,
and endless love the Father not withholding His only Son, but
'delivering Him up to the death for us all,' and from the empty
grave and the occupied Throne let us learn how the Father by both
proclaims to all the world concerning Him hanging dying on the
cross: '_This_ is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.'