CHAPTER VII.

Natures of Christ concurred and participated in all his Sayings and Doings—-So in Heaven and on Earth—-All his Sayings and Doings were in his Mediatorial Character, requiring Concurrence and Participation of United Natures—-No Exception in Article of Suffering-—Examples of Concurrence and Participation—-Farther Examples, in case of Miracles—-Moanings on Cross in United Natures—-Mediation a Suffering Mediation—-Eternal Son “emptiedcl himself” of his Beatitude as wen as Glory on becoming incarnate.

THE concurrence and participation of the divine and human natures of Christ, according to the measure of their respective capacities, in all his sayings and doings, is a doctrine fairly deducible from the Word of God. The elucidation of this great truth will be the object of the present chapter.

The concurrence and participation of the two natures of Christ in all his sayings and doings subsequent to his resurrection and ascension will not be disputed. The man ascended with the God to heaven; he is seated with the God at the right hand of the Highest; he will come with the God, in the clouds of heaven, to judge the world in righteousness. The stupendous words closing the mediatorial drama, “Come, ye blessed,” and “Depart from me, ye cursed,” will be pro-nounced by those very lips from whence proceeded that never-to-be-forgotten sermon on the mount, so fraught with fearful truths, so abounding in gracious benedictions. It would have seemed a strange anomaly, if there had not existed the like concurrence and participation of the divine and human natures of the incarnate God in all the sayings and doings of his earthly pilgrimage.

No such anomaly is indicated by the Word of God. On the contrary, it it a clear inference from Holy Writ that the two natures of Christ concurred and participated, according to the measure of their respective capacities, in all his sayings and doings, from his birth in the manger until the “cloud received him” out of the sight of his steadfastly-gazing disciples.

The terrestrial sojourn of the second person of the Trinity, clothed in flesh, was wholly mediatorial. It was the discharge of the arduous duties of his mediatorial office that called him down to earth and detained him there. When its terrestrial duties were done he re-ascended to his native heavens. In the structure of the mediatorial office, the constituent elements were divinity and manhood. The concurrence and participation of both these elements were indispensable. Had the Godhead withdrawn its full concurrence and participation, the mediatorial work must have stood still, as did once the sun on Gibeon. The prevalent theory will not deny our general position; but it seeks to carve out an exception in the article of suffering. The exception can find no scriptural passage whereon to rest the sole of its foot. The Bible everywhere speaks of the second person of the Trinity, arrayed in manhood, not only as an incarnate, but also as a suffering Mediator.

We have seen that the name of Christ, in some one of its synonymes, occurs sixteen hundred and twenty-five times in the New Testament. The name is to be found eight hundred and thirty-one times in the four Gospels, and seven hundred and ninety-four between the end of the Gospels and the close of Revelation. In no one of these sixteen hundred and twenty-five instances is there the slightest intimation that, from the general rule requiring the concurrence and participation of the two natures of Christ in all his mediatorial sayings and doings, there was an exception carved out in the article of suffering. The omission could not have occurred sixteen hundred and twenty-five times by accident or inadvertence. It was the Holy Ghost who spoke; and he spoke to settle the landmarks of human faith. This ominous omission spontaneously multiplies itself into sixteen hundred and twenty-five scriptural arguments against the existence of the alleged exception.

The redeeming God and the redeeming man were born into our world together. They spent together the long interval between infancy and manhood. At the maturity of the man, they together began and continued to preach glad tidings to the poor; they went about in concert doing good. It was in fulfilment of the duties of his mediatorial office that “Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness, and every disease among the people.”—-Matthew, 9. 35.

When the wearied Emanuel sat down on Jacob’s”s well, and craved of the wondering woman a draught of its cooling beverage, it was less to refresh the frail mortal than to afford the in-dwelling God an occasion to plant a twig of the tree of life in the moral desert of Samaria. In his solitary and prolonged prayers, the God concurred and participated with the man. To instruct, as well as to save the world, was the purpose of his mediatorial mission. The duty of frequent and retired devotion was one of the primary lessons taught, practically as well as theoretically, by this Schoolmaster from above. In the solitude of night, on the lonely mountain, the God, too, might best resume his sweet communion with the beloved brethren of his everlasting reign. It was the King of Zion, in his united natures, who, in fulfilment of an inspired prediction, rode into Jerusalem, “lowly and meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.”—-Matthew, 21. 5. Zechariah, 9. 9. When Jesus mourned over the devoted, yet still beloved city which had killed the prophets and stoned those who had come to it as messengers of grace, his pathetic wailing betokened less the yearning of his human heart than the travail of his divine spirit.

In all the miracles of Christ, his two natures, according to the measure of their respective capacities, concurred and participated. The man was bidden to the marriage of Cana; the God there accomplished his “beginning of miracles.” It was the man whose hand was laid upon the sick and the suffering; it was the God who imparted to that hand its healing power. It was the corporeal substance of Jesus that walked upon the waves; it was his ethereal essence that upheld it there. It was the hand of the man that broke the “five barley loaves” and the “two small fishes;” it was the potency of the God that multiplied, and multiplied, and multiplied them into superabundant aliment for five thousand famished persons. It was the body of the man that was transfigured on the mountain; it was the mandate of the God that made “his face shine as the sun, and his raiment white as the light,” and that summoned Moses and Elias from heaven, to behold the prospective glory of the incarnate Deity. It was the voice of the man that called Lazarus forth from the grave; it was the fiat of the God which forced even the reluctant grave to yield up its victim.

“Jesus wept.” His tears were not the ebullitions of mere human sympathy. He had foreseen the decease of his friend, and might have averted it by his presence or his mandate. He was just about, by the mere word of his power, to reanimate the dead. The physician weeps not, though the symptoms, may wring tears from surrounding relatives, if he knows that, by a touch of his lancet, he can at once restore health and cheerfulness. The tomb of Lazarus symbolized a world “dead in trespasses and sins.” Over the grave of that world destroyed Jesus stood, and “Jesus, wept.” The word even of Omnipotence could not reanimate moral death. For that malady, the only cure was the blood of God. Jesus wept as a man; more especially as a God did Jesus weep.

page 95If the two natures of Christ thus concurred and participated in the multifarious sayings and doings of his mediatorial life, why should the epoch of suffering have wrought a severance in natures which had become united and indivisible? We have already seen that the God lacked not physical or moral capacity to suffer. We have justly inferred that suffering, actual, not figurative, was the object for which he had left the heavenly reins of universal government to wear the humble weeds of humanity. Why, then, should his divinity have retiredr6ti@e@& into abeyance from the impending conflict. leaving its frail earthly associateLt6@ to trea,@d aljoneo “the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God?”

The uncreated Son did not retire from the impending conflict. He bore his own infinite share of the curse of sin. Golgotha felt, in the trembling of its solid mount, the viewless and nameless throes of the suffering God. Whose voice was it that uttered the, heaven-piercing cry, “My God!, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?” It was the same voice that had commanded the winds and the waves, and they obeyed. It was the same voice which had assumed the awful appellation of the Old Testament, “I AM.” It was the same voice that had; declared, “,I and my Father are one.”

The wailing, voice, was, of course, the voice of96 the sufferer. If it was the united voice of his combined “ natures, then, beyond peradventure, the natures unitedly suffered. Those who affirm that the divine essence did not participate in the moan, encounter the more than Sisyphean task of demonstrating that the in-dwelfling God had retired from the scene of wo, leaving the struggling man alone; that the divine voice which called Lazarus forth from the grave was hushed in profound silence; and that the piteous cries from Calvary were the mere “human” wailings of Mary’s son. The son of mere an the Virgin was not the forsaken of his God. His own God, his kindred God, his sympathizing, indwelling God would never, for a moment, have forsaken him. To him his in-dwelling God was bound by ties indissoluble. But the incarnate Deity was himself writhing under the more than scorpion sting of the sins of a world. The forsaken of God was, alas! the in-dwelling God himself. The forsaken of the Father was the Father’s own, only-begotten, well-beloved, eternal Son. The wailing voice, in anticipation of which the luminary of day had hidden its saddened face, was the same voice which, at the beginning, had spoken that luminary into being. The other dying cry from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” was also of that same divine and forgiving Voice, who, “ walking in the garden in the cool of the day,” had. cheered -the” despairing hearts of the guilty, penite”nt pair wWith the distant, yet radiant vision of ever-cherishe”d, ever-brightening hope.—-Genesis, 3iii. 8, 15. -

The prevalent theory might as well seek to exclude the participation of the divinity from any other department of the mediatorial office as from its suffering department. The Bible declares that Christ went about preaching the “ gospel of the kingdom.” The Bible declares that Christ wrought a succession of stupendous miracles. The Bible declares that Christ suffered for the redemrhption of the world. Each declaration designates the Actor by the name of Christ, or one of its synonymes. Each declaration is couched in the same unequivocal terms, without exception, restriction, or qualification. Each declaration pervades the united natures of the Messiah. The prevalent theory has singled out the pains of the suffering department as the sole subject of its exclusion of divine participation. Why this distinction? @ There is the same scriptural evidence of the participation of the God. in the mniediatorial sufferings as there is of the participation of the God in the preaching of the gospel or the working of the miracles. lf the mediatorial Preacher of the gospel was the God-man in his united natures; if the mediatorial Worker of the miracles was the God-man in his united “natures, so must the mediatorial Sufferer have been the God-man in his united natures. Any distinction is Arbitrary. It has no scriptural authority

There was no peculiar exigency in the preaching of the gospel or the working of the miracles, specially requiring the actual presence of the Deity. Peter and Pauli preached the gospel and wrought miracles without an in-dwelling God. His dele gated authority sufficed, while he himself remained

“high and lifted up” on his celestial throne. But there was a special and peculiar reason requiring the actual presence and participation of the God in the agonies of the suffering department. His actual participation alone gave to those agonies their redeeming value. He could communicate, without his actual presence, the right to preach the gospel and the power to work miracles. The infinite burden of suffering for the redemption of man was incommunicable. It was to be borne by the God, not by his substitute. The God was himself to suffer, not merely the man substituted for the God. The man was to bear the finite share, the God the infinite share of the expiatory agonies.

The union between the second person of the Trinity and his terrestrial adjunct was intimate beyond conception. They were one and indivisible. The duration of the union was to be eternal. They now share together the glory of heaven. The inference seems inevitable that they must have shared together the sufferings of earth. We believe that severance in suffering would have been as incompatible with the laws of their union as severance in glory.

Disjoining the two inseparable natures of Christ in the paramount article of his expiatory suffering, is the deep-rooted error of the prevalent theory. The Bible affirms that Jesus Christ suffered—that Jesus Christ died—for the salvation of man. The theory conducts—unwittingly no doubt—to the conclusion that Jesus Christ died not-suffered not. The suffering, dying Jesus Christ of the Bible was compounded of the finite man, and the infinite Jehovah; both natures indispensable to the constitution of his personality. Had the infinite nature been dissevered from participation with the finite in the article of suffering, the personality of the scriptural sufferer must have been lost; the suffering, dying victim for mortal sins would have been, not “the Christ of God,” but the human son of the Virgin; and the sole suffering and death of Mary's human son would have left wholly unsatisfied the abounding and unqualified scriptural declarations that Jesus Christ was the sufferer—that Jesus Christ died.

The mediation between God and man was a suffering mediation. Its element was suffering. In suffering it began; in suffering was it “finished.” In all that pertained to this suffering mediation, both natures of the incarnate Deity concurred and participated, according to the measure of their respective capacities. The man did all that humanity could do; the God did all that infinite love could prompt. Neither of the two natures was at any time inert; neither in a state of abeyance.

In the first mediatorial movement, the God was the sole Actor. He became incarnate ; he cast off “the form of God;” he “emptied himself” of his celestial glory; he took upon him the “form of a servant;” he became the lowly son of a lowly Virgin; he was born in a manger, and wrapped in its straw. That the manger actually contained, and that its straw actually covered Him who formed the worlds was no fiction. The miraculous star and the worship of the Oriental wise men demonstrated a present Deity. The star was not an ignis fatuus to lure men into idolatry. The everlasting mandate, “ worship God,” was not forgotten in heaven. Sufferance was the object for which the second person of the Sacred Three thus “humbled himself.” In the conclave of the Godhead it had been deemed most fitting that he should suffer clothed in the flesh of fallen man. The humiliation was real; the transformation not metaphorical; the suffering was actual.

In the manger of Bethlehem the son of Mary began to enact his humble part. The incarnate God, in early iniiifancy, was carried into Egypt. It,, was a hurried, wintry journey, marked with all the privations of penury. Back again was he hurried to the land of Israel, not to find his native home there; for, “ being warned of God in a dream,” his parents turned aside, to dwell obscure and destitute in the city of Nazareth. In all these privations, He who, from everlasting, had occupied the right-hand throne of glory, concurred and participated. Into his distressed estate he carried not the beatitude of his celestial home. He had “46 emptied himself” " of that, as well as of “ the form of God.” The second who bears “record in heaven” was, in very truth, on the earth, “wounded for our transgressions,” and “bruised for our iniquities.” ",The allegation of the prevalent theory, that the second person of the Trinity, in becoming incarnate, “emptied himself” of his glory alone, retaining in full perfection all his infinite beatitude, has no other foundation than the imagination of its advocates. Transcendent, indeed, is the glory of God. Moses could not have seen it, in all its effulgence, and lived.—-Exodus, 33xxxiii. 18, 20. Of the glory of the Highest we would speak with humility and fear; yet we trust that, without irreverence, we may be permitted to suppose that it pertains rather to the expression of his ineffable excellence than to that intrinsic excellence itself. lt is the external manifestation of inherent, viewless, and infinite perfection. The glory of God is the robe of majesty in which he arrays himself “,as with a garment.” His beatitude dwells within, while his glory unceasingly surrounds him, as the halo sometimes circles the luminary of day. The supposition that the God, about to become incarnate, cast aside his glory alone, retaining and carrying with him to earth his infinite beatitude, is opposed to the letter and the spirit of the declarations of the Holy Ghost.

We read in Oriental story of Eastern monarchs doffing their regal attire, and traversing their domains in peasant weeds, to become the unknown spectators of the variegated and bustling drama of social life, retaining, during their metamorphosis, all their royal felicity, and bringing it back with them untouched to their thrones. Such was not the holy transformation of the Son of God. To mark its reality and completeness, the Holy Ghost selected the most potent expressions found in human speech; expressions too strong for the fastidiousness of modern translators; expressions unsatisfied by the doffing of the mere external robes of majesty ; expressions pervading the inner being, and reaching that vital region of sensation and life where beatitude dwells. The God about to become incarnate could not have been said to have “ emptied himself,” in the full meaning of the mighty terms, if the infinitude of his celestial blessedness accompanied him through his earthly pilgrimage; making the straw of the manger as downy a pillow as the bosom of his Father; the revilings, and scoffings, and hissingys of the crucifying mob as little annoying as the hallelujahs of heaven; the garden and the cross as redolent of bliss as his celestial throne.

The emptying himself of his infinite beatitude was peculiarly appropriate to the God, about to become an incarnate sufferer. Suffering was the object of his terrestrial mission. The suffering of its Creator was the price to be paid for the redemption of a lost world. To qualify him for his suffering office, it was needful that the self-devoted Mediator should divest himself of his primitive blessedness. “ The Captain of our salvation” could not carry the beatific peace of heaven along with him into his terrible campaign on earth. It was not with gleeful heart, any more than in triumphal robes, that “ the wine press of the wrath and fierceness of Alimnighlityv God” was to be trodden.

The, redeeming God was present, and partaking in all the wanderings and hardships of the redeeming man. He was baptized by the reluctant and trembling John. On him rested the descending dove. For him the voice from heaven proclaimed once, and again, and yet again, “ This is my beloved Son.” The elements recognized and obeyed the present Deity. Devils believed and trembled. He forgave sins. He proclaimed hbimrhself “ Lord even of the Sabbath day.” He toiled with his own hbands. The Architect of the universe became a laborious carpenter in the workshop of Joseph. Of his divinity as well as his manhood was uttered the pathetic exclamation, “ The son of man hath not where to lay his head.” The Creator of the world found in it no spot of repose until the kind grave received him. He was steeped “ in poverty to the very lips.” To pay the tribute money which the law exacted, he was obliged to work a miracle.

The manner in which human reason—-at least the reason of the learnmed—-has met and received the declarations of Scripture, that the eternal Son suffered for our redemption, is a curiosity in theological literature. It has rejected the glorious mass of this celestial truth, and clung only to a fragment. It has gratuitously limited the unlimited declarations of heaven, that the eternal Son suffered for our sins, by the earth-born amendment, “except in his divine nature.” The exception nearly absorbs the totality of the blessed truth. The remnaniit left bears a less proportion to the majestic whole than the scarcely perceptible promontory bears to the mighty continent of which it forms so inconsiderable a part.

To this exception of its own creation, human reason has clung with a tenacity which the lapse of centuries has not been able to sever. On what basis does the exception rest? Not on the basis of the Bible; for the declarations of Scripture are unqualified and without exception; they are as munificent and illimitable as the love of the self-devoted God. The exception is the progeny, not of the Bible, but of that long-continued and widespread hypothesis, “ God is impassible.” If this hypothesis should be exploded from Christian theology, the exception which it has engendered would sink, with its parent into nothl-iing. That the hypothesis itself was but the offspring of human reasoning, we have already shown.

We profoundly reverence science. It has transmuted into plain and palpable truth, that which, without it, might have seemed poetic rhapsody. ,,”WWhat a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in formrm and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God!” Nor does science ever appear so majestic as when wearing its sacred tiara. Yet has science pride. Even sacred science is not always as humble as was its “meek and lowly” " Master.

“In pride, in reasoning pride”72 its “error lies.”

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Else, why has it scaled the heavens and tried to bind the Omnipotent in its own puny chains. Else, why has it denied to the eternal Son, the ineffable personification of infinite love, his high prerogative of self-sacrifice to redeemrn a ruined world, and perhaps, save a universe threatened by an inundation of triumphant sin?