Christ's death no dead work.' 265 becomes spiritually alive, he liveth unto a living God, the fountain of his own new life. He has living fellowship with a living God, and his works are service to a living personal being. He no longer serves the great first cause,' or 'virtue,' or 'the moral interests of the universe,' or the nature of things,' or 'the dignity of human nature,' or 'the claims of society,' or 'the interest of being,' or any of those substitutes by which men dead to God, yet not altogether lost to thought, shut out from their view the One Living and True God, and the claims which his holy moral administration has upon them and their love. No; but "the living God." Now there is nothing that tends to quicken this service more than an earnest, intelligent, believing dealing with the blood of Christ's sacrifice. And it may serve to make our views more exact and deep if we carry this thought with us throughout the present investigation. For the blood, or blood-shedding, the sacrifice or death of Christ, is not a "dead work." It is at the greatest conceivable distance from that. It is the greatest conceivable antagonist to death. "He, through the eternal Spirit," and with such a tide of life as the unction and indwelling of the eternal Spirit could not fail to give, “ offered himself without spot to God" (Heb. ix. 14). "In the blood is the life." Except a man drink my blood, he has no life abiding in him" (John vi. 53). "I am the resurrection and the life" (John xi. 25). And no one can have followed the views we lately gave of Christ's death, conquering death, and opening the way for life, and life-giving, without seeing this. "I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly" (John x. 10). No doubt in the Cross you have Christ's death-Christ dying -the separation of the soul and body. But what a tide of life! what an intensity of life! what a living transaction you have! His life is not ebbing away, he is laying it down, he is offering it to God. That is of the essence of the service, the priestly service he is rendering. His life is not ebbing away. The language of the Paraphrase-reminding us by the way of the constant danger to doctrine in those unauthorised hymns-that talks about "light forsaking his closing eyes and life his drooping head," is most inaccurate; as the old theologians used so vigorously to say, " abominably injurious" to the glorious fact. Life did not forsake him he was pouring it out pouring out his soul unto death. He was bearing a burden that would have sunk all the angels of heaven. He needed to be the Resurrection and the Life: and he was, he was eminently, "the Living One" while dying; and dealing with the "Living God" in the most intensely active and living service the universe ever saw. Such living power and amazing glory is there in it, that, because of it, "God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name that is above every name (Phil. ii. 9); and all holy beings proclaim but a simple fact when they proclaim him worthy to "receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing" (Rev. v. 12, 13). We know of none who deny that he was in possession of these things when they were ascribed to him. We know of none in any recognised sphere of controversy so stupid as to imagine that these things were first communicated to him when ascribed. We know of none so thoroughly low in their theology as to suppose that these things never would have been his but for angelic songs which ascribe them. Where, otherwise, could those angelic songs have found their own justification? All those things which they ascribe to Christ in song were his in his dying moments, they were in the "offering up of himself a sacrifice to satisfy Divine justice,"-else were the question pertinent: Where did they find them? They were in his offering up of himself and it is somewhat shameful if his Church should require an argument to prove it. Holy heaven, in its worship of him, never did, nor does, nor will his worshippers simply ascribe. recognise them as belonging to ("power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing") as to have been especially brought to light brought into view, because into exercise-in pouring out his soul unto death as the slain Lamb of Sacrifice for sin. "Worthy is the Lamb to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing." declaring what they see that is the praise of the enlightened. They are promoting his declarative glory,-no more. that they see and celebrate is an action on the cross; and it is seen by faith-by every soul that believeth. contribute any of these things; They read off what they see: him, and so belonging to him They are And all The Life, laid down his life.' 267 Take any one of these ascriptions-say the "blessing," and what of his endurance of the "curse"? How could he have endured the "curse," but for the countervailing "blessing" being present in its curse-extinguishing energy? In every view it would have been too late had it tarried to be conveyed only with the angelic ascription. And generally, summing them all up in that which they constitute, namely the Life, how otherwise was it that death did its utmost on the Cross, and yet was prevented from being victorious? How was death vanquished, if not by Life, that master of the field, destroying death and him that had the power of death? And who should stand and mediate between the living and the dead-the living God and sinful man dead in trespasses and sins? Who, if not the Living One? Oh, what life was that which was in him, and said, "I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him" (Prov. viii. 30)? What life was that which said-" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do;" "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit" (Ps. xxxi. 5)? We speak of Christ's active and passive obedience; it is inaccurate phraseology. The temptation to use it arises from the fact that he had to be obedient amid extreme suffering. Had there been no suffering, there could have been nothing to be called "passive obedience." But we are apt, through a misuse of the phrase, to conceive of Christ's obedience as if, whereas he had hitherto been going about doing good, that came to an end, and he had to do the best he could with his spiritual invisible energies ebbing away, and his whole attitude on the cross gradually becoming "passive." The very reverse is true. His activity continued with his sufferings, increased with their increase, and in still greater proportion so that it was greatest at the close. It culminated and triumphed in the laying down of himself a sacrifice; else never could it have been a sacrifice to satisfy Divine. justice and reconcile us to God. It was an active, powerful, living service, when he expiated the guilt of our dead works: and the great end of it was that we also might actively, powerfully, livingly "serve the living God," and have consciences in a condition to do so. But that they cannot be, except as the blood of Christ purges them, and that is what we are now inquiring into. Even the pacifying, purifying, strengthening, and gladdening of the conscience is not the ultimate end of the bloodshedding of Christ. Even these are but means to an end still more important. The blood of Christ purges the conscience from dead works to serve the living God. To this end was he appointed and constituted the Christ. To this end did he offer himself a spotless lamb unto God. To this end did the eternal Spirit fill his human soul to the uttermost with all holy affection towards God and man-zeal towards God's glory, and love for man's salvation; rendering him in the hour of his offering up a sacrifice most acceptable to God— acceptable in its essential and fundamental character as a sinexpiating, God-atoning, wrath-appeasing, justice-satisfying sacrifice and, being in this character a living sacrifice, satisfying God, magnifying his law, it satisfies the conscience of the sinner the more fully the more it is enlightened, and purges it from dead works to serve the living God. It "purges the conscience." Yes; but not to be sent adrift as a pardoned criminal may be, to whom a monarch, in a relenting fit, may have extended his pity in an hour when his compassion may have been awakened. For here is the difference: The human mercy may have been granted from relenting in a fit of imbecility, or mental weakness. With God, it is unto the illustrious forth-showing of his glory (“his glory is made great in the salvation wrought by him "). The human mercy may have been flung to the wretch from some doubt about the evidence, the pardoner merely stretching a point. Or it may have been contemptuously flung at his head. But here is expiation. In the one case, the wretch hugs himself in his good fortune, being nearly as much a wretch as ever. Here all is on honour. Specially is it so on God's part. The sovereign Lord God, instead of giving his law a wrench, hath magnified it and made it honourable-ascribing sovereignty unto it, and compelling universal recognition of it. "I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return: Unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely, shall one say, In the Lord have I righteousness and strength" (Isaiah xlv. 23, 24). All is on honour on our part also when we believe. The offending subject of a truly most holy, moral administration, glorified as that of God is by the Cross, cannot (simply cannot) understand, and consequently cannot appropriate, this pardon-can neither assent nor consent-without being on honour. "They shall look on me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn" (Zech. xii. 10). The believer, on his own part, becomes free from guile when God frees him from guilt. Not from punishment or penalty merely, but-what is infinitely more and better-from the liability to punishment: not from punishment only, but from guilt-the desert of punishment. He becomes ashamed, yea, even confounded, and opens his mouth no more, when God is thus righteously pacified towards him. He becomes profoundly peaceful and pure; and his peace is not now marred by his mourning over his iniquity. This is, indeed, essential to his now being honourable with God. ("Since I have loved thee, thou hast been honourable.") And his forgiveness, being the fruit of love, as well as brought into an unexpected and glorious consonance with justice, instead of being the solitary privilege he obtains, after the obtaining of which he might drift away from the loving God, as if God should say, "Now you may go." No God forbid. He is accepted and kissed, and clothed, and feasted; yea, and adopted, and the one grand motto of the complete transaction is, " This my son was dead, and is alive again; was lost and is found,"-found, to be lost again no This is, indeed, the jet, or edge, or joy, of his being "found." Instead of drifting away again, he is "found" so as to make that impossible any more. With all his heart, rather, will he henceforth serve the living God. 'The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead (themselves and their works too): and that he died for all, that, living, they might not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him that died for them, and rose again" (2 Cor. v. 15). more. There are three things that this sacrifice of Christ procures for those interested in it, and which go to render their equipment for "serving the living God" complete :-(1) By the sacrifice of Christ they obtain a RIGHT to serve the living God; (2) They procure a DESIRE to do it; (3) They procure the ABILITY to do it. And these three things are all that can be imagined to be either necessary or helpful. Let the Lord give a man (1) the Right, (2) the Desire, (3) the |