1. THE FLESHLY MANIFESTATION OF DEITY. There is a sense in which all creatures are the manifestations of Deity. The Creator is visible in all His works: His hand sustains all, and His Spirit pervades all ;— man. "Blowing under foot in clover, But such a manifestation as this does not satisfy the soul of Man is a person, and the object of his worship must be a Person, too; not a thought, an influence, a sentiment, an abstraction. When Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us," he expressed the craving of the universal race; and the answer, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father," is the divine response to that craving. Here then is the Divine Impersonation,-"the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person." Here we see God in His eternity-" before Abraham was I AM;" in His omniscience-"for he knew what was in man;" in His omnific energy-" the Father worketh hitherto, and I work;" in His self-existence-" as the Father hath life in himself, so also hath he given the Son to have life in himself;" in His immutability-"Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and for ever;" in His holiness-"in him is no sin;" in His infinite sovereignty-"God over all, blessed for ever." But beyond all these personal attributes of God, Jesus came to manifest yet more specially the relations of God to man. First: As the infinite Friend of man. His mission was at once the pledge of God's love, and the medium of its realization. Nature might teach the general benevolence of the Creator, but not His love and pity for sinful man. It was this element of sin in man's case that needed a peculiar Theophany. Secondly: Jesus was not only the embodiment of Divine compassion, He was the channel of Divine grace;—the Saviour of man. Bringing, first, pardon of sin-" the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins;" then reconciliation to God atonement-"my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him;" ensuring Divine favor-"if any man serve me, him will my Father honor;" and eternal life-"I will raise him up at the last day." Thirdly We see in the Lord Jesus the reprover of sin in the impenitent, as well as the pardoner of it in the penitent. It is true that in His first advent He was the herald of salvation pre-eminently; and so, when He had proclaimed "the acceptable year of the Lord, he closed the book, and gave it again to the minister, and sat down;" not declaring at that time "the day of vengeance of our God," which shall be the fiery burden of His second advent. Yet was He the preacher of perdition. The doctrine of a Hell was not promulged on Sinai. Had it been, men might have found excuse to treat it as part of a rigorous, legal dispensation now passed away; as a terror somewhat exaggerated by the glare of the lightnings which revealed it. But it was Jesus, moving so mercifully amongst us, feeding the hungry, healing the diseased, raising the dead, declaring His love to us, laying down His life for us, who ever and anon paused in His accents of mercy to speak in fearful menace of "the worm that dieth not, and the fire which shall never be quenched." وو Fourthly: Christ appeared as the lawgiver. "It was said by them of old time, but I say unto you : "—"A new commandment I give unto you." : Fifthly Christ appeared as the future Judge. "For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son." He who uttered the parable of the Prodigal Son, shall one day say, "Depart from me ye cursed." Could we stay to examine them, we should find that these five particulars in the relationship of God to man were just those which the ancient heathen world felt after in vain. They are those most vitally important for man to know, yet most beyond the power of reason to ascertain. But while this outward manifestation of God was taking place through the human person of the Saviour, in the presence of the world generally, there was also a spiritual attes tation going on in the world of mind, appreciable to men only as spiritually revealed. II. JUSTIFIED IN THE SPIRIT. Without restricting the term "Spirit," either on the one hand to the divine nature of Christ, or on the other to the Third Person in the Trinity, we may remark that this "justification" applies to Christ immediately, and to God mediately. With regard to Christ the Spirit attested:—(1) His Divinity, by the circumstances of His conception-"therefore also that holy thing, which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God." (2) His Messiahship, not only directly at His baptism, but indirectly by the prophetic announcement in the Old Testament Scriptures of those characteristics which met in Him alone, and by guiding and supporting His human nature under the pressure of His great work. Thus by the Spirit Jesus was led into the wilderness, to combat and to overcome the Tempter, before whom Adam fell, and as our Goël to avenge that fall; "in the power of the Spirit he returned," and entered on His public ministry; and "through the Eternal Spirit he offered himself without spot to God," a sacrifice for the world's sin. (3) The Spirit not only thus attested that there should be a Messiah, that Jesus as the Son of God undertook that Messiahship, and that as the Son of Man He carried out the duties of His mission; but, better than all, the same Spirit has avouched the sufficiency, the perfection, and the acceptance of the whole atonitive work by His special advent on the day of Pentecost, as the Sent of Christ (“I will send him unto you"); and by His continual presence in the hearts of the faithful to take of the things of Christ and shew them unto us. The outward seal of this spiritual justification is found in our Lord's resurrection from the dead, ("quickened by the Spirit, ") wherein He was "declared to be the son of God with power." Just as the resurrection of the believer's body will be the outward and material token of that justification before God, which in this life is inward and spiritual. Now, by this spiritual attestation of Christ's mission and atonement, God as God, apart from the Mediator, is also mediately justified. The Gospel is not only remedial, bringing salvation to men; it is Theodicean, justificatory of God. (1) It vindicates Him as a Creator. The Demiurgic wisdom had to acquit itself before the intelligent universe of a seeming failure in man. As far as we know, and certainly as far as regards the mundane system, man was a novelty in creation. In him were first united the animal and the spiritual. Already had Jehovah created celestial intelligences to reflect His glory and sing His praise. Already, through the vast pre-adamic ages, had the teeming earth and waters displayed the marvels of His plastic hand. It but remained that the two worlds should be joined by the connecting link of a being allied to both, and so the cycle of creation be complete. To human nature was committed this high destiny; but alas! at the first contact with evil, unassisted human nature broke down. It became necessary therefore, for the perfect vindication of the Divine wisdom, to show that sin was no necessary defect in humanity, no evil inseparable to matter, and that the task assigned to Adam was not impracticable. This was done when "God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." (2) The mystery of godliness vindicates God as the punisher of sin. So far as the knowledge of the Supreme, and His law, had become erroneous, distorted, and corrupt, so far the obligation of the creature was weakened, the bond which linked him to his Creator was loosened, and the distinction of right and wrong so broken down and obliterated, that the heinousness of sin was lost sight of, and the plea of ignorance could always be urged in its extenuation. The Incarnation put an end to this. No man, who has looked on the Christ of the Gospels, can plead ignorance as an excuse for sin. "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also." (3) The work of Messiah vindicates God's holiness as the pardoner of sin. The forgiveness of sin, which the Gospel preaches, is not that act of simple good nature, that easy stroke of leniency, of which some dream. It is a forgiveness which exhibits the retribution of guilt more terribly than a lost universe would have done. Declaring thereby "his righteousness; that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." (4) To all who accept Christ in His fulness He is the pledge of the Divine love to man— —(Titus iii. 4), and as such vindicates the Divine character in respect of those calamitous and untoward influences in the world, which otherwise, in the terrible havoc they make among the souls and bodies of men, might appal us with misgivings of God's love and wisdom. These evils now occupy much of the attention of that mass of semi-christianised mind, which lies outside the Church; and they will not cease to trouble and bewilder men, who have caught from Christianity the sentiment of philanthropy, without submitting themselves to the obedience of faith. Yet it is an a fortiori argument that "he who spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all," stands pledged, so to speak, by all the perfections of his Godhead, to carry out the blessings of so costly a salvation to their widest and fullest realization. Moreover we know that Jesus was the Divine Philanthropist, who "went about doing good;" who gazed face to face on fallen humanity, probing its guilt, and gauging its misery, as we never can; and yet that His hope for the race never waned, His love for it never chilled, while His faith in the Absolute never faltered. After three and thirty years spent amid sin and sorrow, when about to die for that sin, and drink that sorrow to the dregs, Jesus could look up with tearless eye, and say, "Father, I thank thee." * And thus is God "justified in the Spirit" (though carnal sense sees it not) when permitting evil. * See this thought finely brought out in the concluding pages of the "Restoration of Belief." (To be continued.) |