SIDMOUTH HOUSE, MALVERN,
_December_ 3, 1866.
* * * * *
_If any profit shall accrue from this publication_, _it will be given to
the religious institutions at Malvern_.
THE LIVELY STONES.
REV. W. MORLEY PUNSHON.
"Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy
priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by
Jesus Christ."--1 PETER ii. 5.
There is a manifest reference in the fourth verse to the personage
alluded to in Psalm cxviii. 22, 23: "The stone which the builders refused
is become the head stone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing; it is
marvellous in our eyes." And this passage is applied by Christ to
himself in Matthew xxi. 42: "Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in
the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become
the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in
our eyes." The Apostle therefore places the beginning of any connection
with Christianity in coming to Christ, and assures believers that in
their union with Him alone consists the fulness of their dignity and
privilege. And there is no truth that will more readily be acknowledged,
or receive a heartier acquiescence from the heart of a believer. What
could we do without Jesus? In our every necessity He is our "refuge and
strength," in our perils He compasses us about with songs of deliverance,
his life is our perfect example, his death is our perfect atonement.
Well might the Apostle interrupt the course of his argument with the
grateful apostrophe, "Unto you, therefore, which believe, He is
precious;" and exhort them "that ye should show forth the praises of Him
who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." The text
presents us with topics of meditation worthy of our prayerful study, as
it reveals to us--
I.--THE CHARACTER.
II.--THE PRIVILEGE.
III.--THE DUTY OF BELIEVERS.
I. You observe that in the text believers are presented as a spiritual
house and a holy priesthood; two different illustrations, which, if you
translate the word here rendered "house" by the more sacred word
"temple," will be found to have the same religious significance, and a
close connection with each other. Coming to Christ as the
foundation-stone of the building, "disallowed indeed of men, but chosen
of God, and precious," the Church rises into a spiritual temple. From
Christ, the great High Priest, "consecrated after no carnal commandment,"
believers rise into a holy priesthood by a majestic investiture that is
higher than the ordination of Aaron. There are two points in the
character of the ransomed Church which are illustrated in these
words:--_spirituality_ and _holiness_.
Take the first thought, spirituality. They are lively or living stones,
built up into a spiritual house. Any one who thoughtfully observes the
successive ages of the world's history, will not fail to discover that
each generation of men has in some important particulars progressed upon
its predecessor. There has been not only an accumulation of the
treasures of thought and knowledge but an increase of the capacity to
produce them. Hence in every age there has been a higher appreciation of
freedom, a quickened enterprise of enquiry, the stream of legislation has
refined and broadened in its flow, improvement has extended its acreage
of enclosure, and principles proved and gained have become part of the
property of the world. Our nature has had its mental childhood. The
established laws of mind admit only of a gradual communication of
knowledge. It was necessary, therefore, that men should be first stored
with elementary principles, then advanced to axioms and syllables, and
afterwards introduced into the fellowship of the mystery of Divine truth.
Hence any reflective mind, pondering upon the dealings of God with men,
will discover a progressive development of revelation, adjusted with
careful adaptation to the preparedness of different ages of mankind. In
the first ages God spake to men in sensible manifestations, in visions of
the night, by audible voice, in significant symbol. As time advanced the
sensible manifestations became rarer, and were reserved for great and
distinguishing occasions. From the lips of a lawgiver, in the seer's
vision, and in the prophet's burden of reproof or consolation, the Divine
spake, and the people heard and trembled. At length, in the fulness of
time, the appeal to the senses was altogether discarded; the age of
spirituality began, and in the completed revelation men read, as they
shall read for ever, the Divine will in the perfected and royal word.
And this progress, which appears through all creation as an inseparable
condition of the works of God, present in everything, from the formation
of a crystal to the establishment of an economy, is seen also in the
successive dispensations under which man has been brought into connection
with heaven. You can trace through all dispensations the essential unity
of revealed religion. There have never been but two covenants of God
with man--the covenant of works and the covenant of grace; never but two
religions--the religion of innocence, and the religion of mercy. Through
all economies there run the same invariable elements of truth. The first
promise contains within itself the germ of all subsequent revelation--the
Abrahamic covenant, the separation of Israel, all the rites and all the
prophecies, are but the unfoldings of its precious meaning. Sacrifice
for the guilty, mediation for the far-off and wandering, regeneration for
the impure, salvation through the merit of another; these are the inner
life of the words, "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's
head." The gospel therefore was preached unto Abraham. Moses felt the
potent influence of "the reproach of Christ." David describeth the
blessedness of "the man unto whom God imputeth not iniquity." "Of this
salvation the prophets enquired and searched diligently." Christ was the
one name of the world's constant memory, "to Him gave all the prophets
witness," and from the obscurest to the clearest revelation all testified
in tones which it was difficult to misunderstand. "Neither is there
salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given
among men whereby we must be saved." The patriarchal dispensation had no
elaborate furniture nor gorgeous ritualism. The father was the priest of
the household, and as often as the firstling bled upon the altar it
typified the faith of them all in a better sacrifice to come. Then came
the Jewish dispensation with its array of services and external
splendour, with its expressive symbolism and its magnificent temple; and
then, rising into a higher altitude, the fulness of time came, and
Christianity--the religion not of the sensuous but of the spiritual, not
of the imagination awed by scenes of grandeur nor bewildered by
ceremonies of terror, but of the intellect yielding to evidence, of the
conscience smitten by truth, of the heart taken captive by the
omnipotence of love--appeared for the worship of the world. Our Saviour,
in his conversation with the Samaritan woman, inaugurated, so to speak,
the dispensation of the spiritual, "The hour cometh, and now is,"--there
is the moment of instalment, when the great bell of time might have
pealed at once a requiem for the past and a welcome to the grander
future, "when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and
in truth." Requiring spiritual worship, it was natural that God should
have "built up a spiritual house," wherein he should dwell in statelier
presence than in "houses made with hands." Hence there is now rising
upon earth, its masonry unfinished, but advancing day by day, a spiritual
temple more magnificent than the temple of Solomon, costlier than the
temple of Herod. "Destroy this temple," said the Saviour to his
wondering listeners, "and in three days I will raise it up." "Forty and
six years was this temple in building, and will thou rear it up in three
days?" "But He spake of the temple of His body." "What, know ye not
that _your_ bodies are the members of Christ?" Yes! believers everywhere
are stones in the spiritual house, broken perhaps into conformity, or
chiselled into beauty by successive strokes of trial; and wherever they
are, in the hut or in the ancestral hall, in the climates of the snow or
of the sun, whether society hoot them or honour them, whether they wrap
themselves in delicate apparelling, or, in rugged homespun, toil all day
for bread, they are parts of the true temple which God esteems higher
than cloistered crypt or stately fane, and the top stone of which shall
hereafter be brought on with joy.
The second representation of a believer's character is _holiness_, "a
_holy_ priesthood." In the Jewish dispensation the word was understood
to mean no more than an outward and visible separation unto God; the
priests in the temple and the vessels of their ministry were said to be
ceremonially "holy." But more is implied in the term as it occurs in the
text and kindred passages than a mere ritual and external sanctity. It
consists in the possession of that mind which was also in Christ Jesus,
in the reinstatement in us of that image of God which was lost by the
disobedience of the fall. You will remember numerous scriptures in which
holiness, regarded as the supreme devotion of the heart and service to
God, is brought out as at once a requirement and a characteristic of a
Christian. "What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy
conversation and godliness?" "Be ye holy, for I am holy," "as He which
hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation."
"God hath not called us to uncleanness but unto holiness." "Having these
promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of
the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." And it is
absolutely necessary that this grace should be cultivated if we would
either fulfil the mission of our priesthood or abide in the Divine
presence for ever. Holiness is requisite whether to see the Lord or to
walk before men unto all well-pleasing; and as living witnesses,
transcripts of _His_ holiness, enabled by his grace to maintain purity of
heart and life, God has promised to establish those who put their trust
in Him. Some Christians have been deterred from the search after this
blessing of heaven by the mistakes of those who have endeavoured to
expound it, or by the hypocrisy of those who have assumed its profession
that they might the better sin. It is marvellous how many different
views of it have at times obtained currency in the world. By some it has
been resolved into a sort of refined Hinduism, a state in which the soul
is "unearthed, entranced, beatified" by devout contemplation into a
pietistic rapture; others have deemed that the best way to secure it was
a retirement from the vexing world, a recreant forsaking of the active
duties of life, as if it consisted in immunity from temptation rather
than in victory over it. Others have placed it in surpliced observance
or in monastic vow; an equivocal regard to patterns of things in the
heavens which common men mistake for idolatry. Others again, reversing
the old Pythagorean maxim, and wearing the image of God upon their ring,
have expressed it by unworthy familiarity, a continual adverting to the
gifts of the spirit, and the experience of the soul in the flippancy of
ordinary conversation, as did some of the fanatics of the Commonwealth.
Others have represented it as a perpetual austerity, an investiture of
our family circles with all the hues of the sepulchre, and a flinging
upon the face of society the frown of a rebuking fretfulness, which would
make the good of an archangel evil spoken of in this censorious world.
But the scriptural holiness which believers long for, and which the
Church is to spread through the land, is not a necessary adjunct of any
or all of these. It is not the acting of a part in a drama, but the
forth-putting of a character in life, the exhibition in harmonious action
of the humble love and filial fear with which men "work out their
salvation." "A holy priesthood." It is remarkable of this spiritual
priesthood that it descends in no particular succession, nor limits its
privileges to any exclusive genealogy. The holiness which is at once its
distinctiveness and its hallowing comprehends and can sanctify all
relations of life. Let the minister have it, and the love of Christ, his
supremest affection, will prompt his loathing of sin and his pity for
sinners; will fire his zeal and make his words burn, and will often urge
him to cast himself upon the mercy-seat that his labours may not be in
vain. Let the merchant, or the manufacturer, or the man of business have
it, and it need neither bate his diligence nor hold him back from riches;
but it will smite down his avarice and restrain his greed of gold; it
will make him abhor the fraud that is gainful, and eschew the speculation
that is hazardous, and shrink from the falsehood that is customary, and
check the competition that is selfish; and it will utterly destroy the
deceptive hand-bill, and the cooked accounts, and the fictitious capital,
as well the enormous dishonesties as the little lies of trade. Let this
holiness actuate the parent, and in his strong and gentle rule he will
mould the hearts of his children heavenward, and train them in the
admonition of the Lord, until, a commanded household, comely in their
filial love, they shall reverence their Father who is in heaven. Let the
child be impressed with holiness, and he will have higher motives to
obedience than he can gather from the constraint of duty or from the
promptings of affection. Let the master be holy, and while he upholds
authority he will dispense blessing. Let the servant be holy, and
service will be rendered with cheerfulness, "not with eye-service as
men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God." Let the man be
holy, and vigorous health and lofty intellect and swaying eloquence and
quenchless zeal will all be offered to God. Let the woman be holy, and
patient prayer will linger round the cross, and ardent hope will haunt
the envied sepulchre, and pitying tenderness will wail on the way to
Calvary, and the deep heart-love will forget all selfish solicitudes in
the absorbing question, "Where have they laid my Lord?" Let the world be
holy! and the millennium has come, and wrong ceases for ever, and the
tabernacle of God is with men, and earth's music rivals heaven's.
Brethren, let us seek this blessing for ourselves. There, at the foot of
the Throne, let us plead the promise, "I will sprinkle clean water upon
you, and you shall be clean." Imagination, intellect, memory,
conscience, will;--sanctify them all. "Then will we teach transgressors
thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto Thee." It is done, surely
it is done. The hands are upon us now. We kneel for the diviner
baptism, for the effectual and blessed ordination. Listen, the word has
spoken, "Ye are an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."
II.--Certain blessings are presented to us in the text as the heritage of
this spiritual and consecrated Church. _Increase_ and _acceptance_. The
spiritual house is to be built up firm and consolidated on the true
foundation. The services of the holy priesthood are to be "acceptable to
God through Jesus." Take the first thought. "Ye are built up a
spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." The fact of God's constant
supervision over his Church and care for its stability and extension is
one that is impressed with earnest repetition upon the pages of his word.
"Thine eyes shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that
shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be
removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken, but there the
glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams."
"Then shall thou see and flow together, and thine heart shall fear and be
enlarged, because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee,
the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee." "Then shall the
mountain of the Lord's house be established in the top of the mountains,
and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto
it." "As I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them
all as with an ornament, and bind them on thee as a bride doeth." From
these passages, and many others breathing the same spirit, we may
legitimately infer that it is the purpose of God that the kingdom of
Messiah shall be universal; that the Church shall increase in steady and
cumulative progression, and realize in herself all the "glorious things"
which by the holy prophets were "spoken of the city of God." And in this
matter God has not left himself without a witness. The present existence
of the Church, after it has encountered and outlived all varieties of
opposition, is in itself a proof which even its enemies, if they were not
stupid and indocile learners, might ere this have discovered, that the
eternal God is its refuge, and that the Highest will establish it for
ever. From its institution it has had in the heart of every man a
natural and inveterate enemy. The world has uniformly opposed it, and it
has been unable to repel that opposition with weapons out of the world's
armoury; for it is forbidden to rely upon the strength of armies or upon
the forces of external power. Fanatics have entered into unholy
combination. Herod and Pilate have truced up a hollow friendship that
they might work against it together. Statesmen have elaborated their
policy, and empires have concentrated their strength; the banners of
battle have made hideous laughter with the wind; the blood of many
sainted confessors has been shed like water, and the vultures of the crag
have scented the unburied witnesses and have been ready to swoop down
upon the slain. And yet the Church is living, thriving, multiplying;
while the names of its tyrants are forgotten, and their kingdoms, like
snow-flakes on the wave, have left no trace behind. No inborn strength
will account for this mystery. No advance of intelligence nor
philosophic enlightenment will explain this phenomenon. The acute
observer, if faith have cleared his eye or opened an inner one, will go
back for the explanation to an old and unforgotten promise, and will
exclaim when he sees the Church struggling, but triumphant, like the
fire-girdled bush at Horeb, "God is in the midst of her, she shall not be
moved; God shall help her, and that right early." And not only in the
preservation from her enemies but in her unfailing progress among men in
every age, has God shown that his purpose is to build up the spiritual
house. The rapid spread of the truth in primitive times was a marvel and
a mystery to those who saw not the arm which upheld it and the power
which bade it multiply and grow. The whole history of gospel extension
is indeed a succession of wonders. It began with a Pentecost, local, but
prophetic of a universal one, when "its sound shall have gone out into
all the earth and its words to the end of the world." In the times of
the Apostles, and of their immediate successors, it overleaped the
boundaries of nation after nation, acquired lodgment and proselytes in
the proudest cities, subjugated the barbaric magnificence of Asia Minor,
had its students in the schools of Greece, and its servitors in the
imperial household at Rome. In its triumphant course it attacked
idolatry in its strongholds, and that idolatry, though fortified by habit
and prejudice, and sanctioned by classic learning, and entwined with the
beautiful in architecture and song, and venerable for its wondrous age,
and imperial in the dominion which it had exercised over a vassal world,
fell speedily, utterly, and for ever. And in each succeeding age,
obscured sometimes by the clouds of persecution, and sometimes by the
mists of error, its progress has been gradual and sure. If it has not
dissipated it has relieved the darkness. It has stamped itself upon the
institutions of mankind, and they reflect its image. It has insinuated
its leavening spirit where its outward expressions are not, and there is
a vast amount of Christian and humanizing sentiment abroad, a sort of
atmosphere breathed unconsciously by every man, whose air-waves break
upon society with unfelt but influencing pressure, but its source is in
the gospel of Christ. The building rises still! In distant parts of the
great world-quarry stones of diverse hardness, and of diverse hue, but
all susceptible of being wrought upon by the heavenly masonry, are every
day being shaped for the temple. Strikes among the workmen, or frost in
the air, may suspend operations for awhile, but the building rises!
Often are the stones prepared in silence, as in the ancient temple-pile,
with no sound of the chisel or the hammer. The Sanballats and Tobiahs of
discouragement and shame may deride the work and embarrass the labourers;
but one by one the living stones, polished after the similitude of a
palace, are incorporated into it. Yes! the building rises, and it shall
rise for ever. God has promised increase to the Church, and her enemies
cannot gainsay it. From the more effectual blessing on churches already
formed, from the reversal of the attainder, and the bringing into his
patrimonial portion of the disinherited Jew, from the proclamation in all
lands of the message of mercy, they shall throng into the city of our
solemnities until "the waste and the desolate places, and the land of her
destruction shall even now be too many, by reason of the inhabitants, and
they that swallowed thee up shall be far away." What Christian heart,
looking for this promised blessing, rejoices not with exceeding joy? At
the foundation of the second temple, amid the flare of trumpets and the
clang of cymbals, while the young men rent the air with gladness, there
were choking memories in many a Levite heart that chastened the solemn
joy and were relieved only by passionate tears; but at the upbuilding of
the "spiritual house" the young and the old may feel an equal gladness,
or if some memories steal over the spirit of primitive days, and of the
joys of a forfeited Eden, they may be stilled by the memory of the
grander and abiding truth, that--
"In Christ the tribes of Adam boast,
More blessings than their father lost."
Brethren, have you this joy? Does it pleasure you that the building
rises? Do your hearts thrill with gladness as you hear of accessions to
the Church and the conversion of sinners to God? Do you love the gates
of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob? Have a care if you feel
not this sympathy, for ye are none of his. If it is within you a living,
earnest emotion, give it play. "Let the children of Zion be joyful in
their King."
_The second privilege is the acceptance of her service and sacrifice
through Jesus Christ_.--To us, who are mean and unworthy, it is no small
privilege to be assured of welcome when we come to God. To us, who are
guilty and erring, it is no small privilege that we can come by Jesus
Christ. The hope of acceptance is necessary to sustain the heart of the
worshipper, which without it would soon sink into despair. The apostle,
you perceive, places the ground of the acceptance of our services upon
our union with Jesus Christ.
"Vain in themselves their duties were,
Their services could never please,
Till join'd with thine, and made to share
The merits of thy righteousness."
He is careful to impress upon us that in our holiest moments no less than
when we are wayward and criminal, our trust for personal safety, and our
only chance of blessing are from our exalted Daysman, who can lay his
hand upon us both. Our praise would be unmeaning minstrelsy, our prayers
a litany unheard and obsolete, all our devotional service a bootless
trouble, but that "yonder the Intercessor stands and pours his
all-prevailing prayer." It is "through Him we _both_," the Jews who
crucified Him and the Gentiles, who by their persevering neglect of Him
crucify Him afresh, "have access by one spirit unto the Father." The
words of promise touching the acceptance of the worship of the Church are
explicit and numerous. "They shall come up with acceptance on mine
altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory." "That I should be the
minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God,
that the offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being
sanctified by the Holy Ghost." "In the place where my name is recorded,
there will I accept." "In every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh
righteousness, is accepted with Him." Oh, comforting thought, when I am
convinced of my own sinfulness, and restless and disquieted wander about
in distress, and lie down in sorrow, there is One who hears the stammered
entreaty, and smiles a pardon to my agonized cry, "God be merciful to me
a sinner." When in my daily life I encounter a terrible temptation, a
temptation so strong that it tries my strength to the uttermost, and
gives my heart a struggle and a bitterness which no stranger may know,
there is One who marks my resistance and counts my enduring faith for
righteousness, and whispers me that by and bye, he that overcometh shall
wear the conqueror's crown. When in some moment of unguardedness I
grieve the good Spirit, and become unwatchful, and in remorseful
penitence I could almost weep my life away, the offering of my contrition
is accepted, and there is One who heals my backsliding and soothes my
fretting sorrow. My prayers offered in secret, pleading for purity and
blessing, my praises, when the full heart, attuned, gives its note of
blessing to swell the choral harmony, wherewith all God's works praise
Him, the active hand, the ready tongue, the foot swift and willing in his
cause, the service of labour, the service of suffering,--all these, if I
offer them rightly and reliantly, are acceptable unto God by Jesus
Christ. There is no room for distrust or for misgiving. I need not fear
that, after all my efforts, I shall be met with an averted glance, or
with a cold denial. The promise standeth sure, "To that man will I
look." Oh, if there had been a pause after this announcement, how would
the eager solicitudes of men have gathered round it, and waited for the
coming of the words. Where wilt thou direct thy look of favour? To him
who is noble, or wealthy, or intelligent? To him who with scrupulous
rigidness fasts twice in the week, and gives tithes of all that he
possesses? To him whose quick sensibility revels in all expressions of
the beautiful, or whose graceful impulse moves him in all works of
charity? No, to none of these, but, "To him that is poor, and of a
contrite spirit; and that trembleth at my word."
III.--If there be this assurance of acceptance, how solemn and resistless
is the call to duty, "To offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God
by Jesus Christ." Sacrifice, properly speaking, is the infliction of
death upon a living creature for the purposes of religious worship, but
_this_ sacrifice and offering, happily, God requires not at our hands.
No filleted firstling need now be led to the altar, the flocks of Kedar
and the rams of Nebaioth may browse quietly in their pastures, for the
Great Sacrifice has been offered, and it _abides_--"_one sacrifice for
sins for ever_," needing no repetition, one for ever! unexhausted in its
virtue, and unfailing in the blessing it confers. But in a secondary
sense the recognized and fulfilled duties of the Church are fitly called
sacrifices, for they cannot be properly discharged without the alienation
from ourselves of something that was our own, and its presentation,
whether time, ease, property or influence, to God. Brethren, to this
duty you are called to-day. The name you bear has bound you. The holy
priesthood must offer up spiritual sacrifices. Suffered to become
Christians, permitted, a race adulterous and dishonoured as you were, to
be united to Christ and partakers of his precious grace, the spell of
these high privileges enforces every obligation, and hallows every claim.
_Ye_ are not your own. First offer yourselves upon the altar, renew your
covenant in this the house of our solemnities, on this the instalment of
our great Christian festival. It will be easy to devote the accessories,
when the principal bestowment has been rendered. I claim from you this
sacrifice for God. _Yourselves_, not a half-hearted homage, not a
divided service, not a stray emotion, not a solitary faculty;
_yourselves_, _you all_, and _all of you_; your bodies, with their
appliances for service; your souls, with their ardour of affection;
intellect, with its grasp and power; life, with its activity and
earnestness; endowment, with its manifold gifts; influence, with its
persuasive beseechings. I claim them all. "I beseech you therefore, by
the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." This
consecration made, all else will follow in the train; litanies of earnest
supplication will rise from the full heart; the "prayer will be offered
as incense; the lifting up of the hands as the evening _sacrifice_."
Glad in its memory of the past, and hopeful in its trust for the future,
the hosanna of gratitude will rise; "the _sacrifice_ of praise
continually; the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name." The
property received gratefully from heaven will be offered freely and
bountifully for Christ; and some outcast housed in a safe and friendly
shelter, some emancipated slave or converted Figian, some Indian breaking
from his vassaldom of caste and Shaster, and longing to sit at Jesus'
feet and hear his word, will say rejoicingly of your liberality, "Having
received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of
a sweet smell, a _sacrifice_ acceptable, well-pleasing to God."
CHRIST'S WORK OF DESTRUCTION AND DELIVERANCE.
REV. JOHN H. JAMES.
"That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death,
that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were
all their lifetime subject to bondage."--HEBREWS ii. 14, 15.
There is a special and ordained connection between the incarnation and
the death of our blessed Lord. Other men die in due course after they
are born; he was born just that he might die. He came "not to be
ministered unto, but to minister, and to give" his "life a ransom for
many." It is therefore evident that the theology which magnifies the
incarnation at the expense of the atonement is fundamentally, fatally
defective. The brotherhood of Christ with every son of Adam is a blessed
truth, but it is by no means the whole truth, nor can it be practically
available and influential apart from the offering of his body upon the
cross as a sacrifice for sin. This is very clearly and strongly put in
the text. The incarnation of the Son of God is proved from the Old
Testament, and shown to have had reference to his redeeming death. Many
purposes were answered by his becoming partaker of flesh and blood. His
influence as a teacher, the power of his spotless example, his
identification with the needs and sorrows of humanity, and the deep
sympathy resulting therefrom,--these and similar ends were contemplated
and fulfilled. But the grand purpose was disclosed and accomplished on
the cross, where God made his soul an offering for sin. "Forasmuch then
as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also himself
likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him
that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who
through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."
The death of Jesus, then, and the end to be accomplished by it,
constitute the central, vital, culminating truth of Christianity. The
apostle puts the death of Christ in a striking point of view,--as a work
done, rather than a calamity suffered. And it was a double work,--a work
of destruction on the one hand, and of deliverance on the other,--of
destruction in order to deliverance. That is the conception of his
mission embodied in the first promise. The bruising of the serpent's
head by the bruised heel of the Saviour, in order to repair the ruin
wrought by the tempter, suggests very significantly the truth which is so
explicitly announced here. And a similar combination runs through the
ancient providential history. The destruction of the old world in order
to the salvation of the righteous, and the fulfilment of the promise of
redemption; and the destruction of the first-born of Egypt in order to
the deliverance of Israel, are instances in point. But the death of
Christ upon the cross in order to the emancipation of the slaves of Satan
is the most glorious and perfect illustration. Let me ask your attention
to the work of Christ's death,