CHAPTER XX.

Incarnation no Proof that God the Son had not Capacity to suffer without it—-Probable Reasons of Incarnation—-It presented Example of perfect Man—-Brought Proofs of Gospel home to Senses of Men—-Rendered Triumph over Satan complete— Affords abiding Memorial of God’s”s Justice and Love—-Incarnate God, in both his Nature,.3, obeyed the Law.

LET it not be objected, because the redeeming God took on him the “body” that was prepared for him, and became flesh and blood with “the children” "he came to save, that therefore the assumption of manhood was needful to enable Omnipotence to suffer.—-Heb. 2ii. 14; 10x. 5. Whence does the prevalent hypothesis derive this objection ? Not from the Holy Ghost. In the Volume of Inspired Truth not a sentence is to be found intimating that destiny has surrounded the sphere of suffering with a barrier which the Almighty cannot overleap, even if he wills to pass it. It is the presumptuous objection of reasoning pride. The investiture of manhood was selected because it was deemed by infinite wisdom the most appropriate habiliment for the Saviour of our sinking race. It was selected as the suffering costume most becoming the redeeming God. Even our finite faculties can perceive many reasons why he should suffer in the fallen nature he came to save. We would venture, with profound reverence, to suggest some of the considerations which may possibly have commended the garb of flesh to the self-devoted Deity.

First. Had he suffered in the nature obf angels, or in his own incorporeal essence, he might, indeed, have rendered an equivalent for the debts of the redeemed to the celestial treasury ; but the satisfaction of their debts was not the sole object of his mediatorial mission. He came to rescue them, not only from the penalty, but also from the power of sin. He came, not only to save them from hell, but to prepare them for heaven. He came to breathe into them a. portion of his own holiness; to lure them upward by his own glorious example; to make them, by his precepts and pattern, “meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” ”—7-Colossians, 1i. 12. To render his example efficacious, it must needs have been imitable. The children of humanity could not have imitated the unshro6uded God. They cCould not even have seen him and live6d.—-Exodus, 33xxxiii. 20.- To make his example imitable by man, he must of necessity have assumed the form of a man; wherefore, “ the Word was made flesh.”—-John, 1i. 14. “ Wherefore in all things it became him to be made like unto his bretbren.”—@Hebrews, 2ii. 17.

Secondly. The incarnation was necessary to secrure, on earth, credence for the Gospel. Man is, by nature, a skeptical animal. The unbelieving Thomas was a sample of the fallen race. Had the proofs of the miracle of redeeming love been less palpable and cogent, it could not have obtained the belief of those for whose salvation it was intended. If the angel, instead of announcing to the shepherds of Bethlehem the physical birth of a Saviour in the cityf of David, had proclaimed that the second person of the Trinity had redeemed our apostate race by suffering for them in his original essence, in the celestial court, “ high and lifted up” above mortal ken, the messenger from heaven would have obtained few converts on earth.

To make incredulous man a believer in the stupendous scheme of redemption, sensible demonstrations were indispensable. Proofs must be accumulated on proofs. The prophetic harp must detail in advance the anticipated biography of the comrning Messiah. The Messiah must be born, and live, and die, in exact fulfilment of ancient predicti” Ion. Miracles must be wrought. The wondrous star; the descending dove; the audible voice from the clouds; the transfiguration on the mount; the multiplication of the five barley loaves and two small fishes into abounding aliment for a famished host; the obeying elements; the submissive devils; the healing of the sick; the raising of the dead; his crucifixion, with its darkened sun, and rent rocks, and trembling earth; his resurrection; his visibleI I I ascension, were all required to convince an unbelieving world that the Son of God suffered and died for its redemption. This mighty mass of proof would not have been accumulated had less sufficed. Heaven is never prodigal of display.

The feeble, hesitating, reluctant faith of man required to be confirmed by appeals to all his senses. The word of the God could not have overcome the stubbornness of incredulity. To gain from his creatures their reluctant belief, the Creator was obliged to become incarnate. Had he not become incarnate, and re-enforced, too, his appeals by a succession of stupendous miracles, he could not have made proselytes, even of his twelve disciples. Their faith, indeed, required for its aliment, not only that they should see with their eyes, but also that they should handle with their hands, of the Word of life.—-1 I John, 1i. 1I. As it was, one of them betrayed him, and another denied him, and all of them fled from him in his darkened hour. Even as it now is, infidelity boldly stalks the earth, polluting with its foul breath the pure air of heaven. Even as it now is, the regenerated, the sanctified, the redeemed children of humanity are, in this life, but half believers.

Thirdly. The incarnation of the redeeming God rendered more complete and manifest his triumph over the arch enemy. Even frail reason may perceive the fitness of the provision, that he who bruised the serpent’s”s head should have first assumed the seed of the woman ; that his victory over the powers of darkness should have been achieved in the very world, and in the very nature which they had seduced from allegiance. This consideration, doubtless, helps to swell the exultation of heaven. This is, no doubt, the scorpion sting in the core of the hearts of the baffled princedoms reserved in chains -of darkness in the prison-house of despair.

Fourthly. The incarnation has afforded an imperishable memorial of the greatest event which the flight of never-beginning ages has beheld. In the lapse oof the eternity to come, Gethsemane and Calvary might, without this memorial, have faded in the recollection of created intelligences. Frail is the memory of even redeemed man. Less than infinite is the memory of the cherubim and the seraphim. But an everlasting monument of the struggles and the triumph of redeeming love has been fixed by the incarnation in the most conspicuous station of the universe. The redeeming God carried with him to heaven the body in which he had suffered on earth, and placed it at the right hand of the Highest. There that pierced body forever remains, its scars betokening less the lacerations of the visible irons than the unseen wounds inflicted on the uncreated Spirit of his divine Son by the viewless sword of the Lord of Hosts. With this ever-livingcr memorial, occupying the central point of the " universal empire, it is impossible that the recollection of the garden and the cross, with all their thrilling associations, should ever be dimmed by the course of ceaseless ages.

Should the harp of the weakest saint allowed to enter the New Jerusalem falter for a moment, he has but to cast his eye on the right-hand seat of the celestial throne, and those speaking scars must at once renovate his love and his zeal. Should ambition a second time insinuate itself into the angelic ranks, its aspiration must be checked and extinguished by a single glance at the right-hand seat of the celestial throne. That pierced body is an abiding memento of the awful truth that, sooner than leave sin unpunished, the eternial Father spared not his own eternal Son. It is a demonstration of the inflexibility of God’s”s wrath against transgressions, infinitely more impressive than the smoke which ascends for ever and ever from the pit of despair. Those warning scars symbolizing the expiatory anguish of the suffering Deity,, are an everlasting beacon to guard the angelic hosts against the incipient movements of forbidden desire.

Fifthly. The, redeeming God was to obey the law. It was the dishonour done to the law which

“Brought death into the world, and all our wo.”

Our great Deliverer was to restore its tarnished honour, not only by paying its penalty, but also by perfect obedience to its precepts. To make the obedience perfect, and availing, and palpable to created intelligences, incarnation was required. It was needful, not merely that the Word should be made flesh, but likewise that he should dwell among us. The obedience of the incarnate God was not in his human capacity alone. Both his natures concurred in the obedience. The God, as well as the man, obeyed the law. This is the inevitable conclusion from the language of Scripture.

The man was a glorious and beautiful specimen of what our race would have been had they retained their affinity to heaven. Even the chilled eye of atheism must be sometimes inclined to melt as it gazes on such a lovely personification of moral excellence. That a creature so pure, warned by the example of the first Adam, sustained by the consciousness of indwelling divinity, animated by “the joy set before him,” should have yielded perfect obedience to a law, the counterpart of himself” in holiness, was an event not likely to excite “special wonder.” But the Bible speaks of the obedience of the incarnate God as a very extraordinary event. The Bible must, therefore, have referred to the obedience of the second person of the Trinity. That was “the acme of wonder. For him to become obedient on earth, who had from everlasting been accustomed to sSupreme command in heaven, was indeed a phenomenon of gracious condescension well calculated to create astonishment in this world and in the world above.

The law obeyed by the incarnate God had three branches: the ceremonial code of the Jews; the code promulged at Sinai; and the mediatorial code., formed by the covenant of redemption, between the Father and the Son, in early eternity. The incarnate God obeyed to the letter the Jewish ceremonial code. He was circumcised on the eighth day. Jerusalem and all Judea went out to be baptized of John. In conformity with this prevalent usage of his nation, the incarnate God was baptized by his conscious and hesitating servant. The visible dove ”and the audible voice demonstrated that he who caused Jordan to flow was, in very truth, the recipient of its. baptismal waters.

290 MEDIATORIAL CODE.

The incarnate God obeyed the law promulged at Sinai. “ Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.”—-Matthew, 5v. 17. “,For as by one man’s”s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one many shall be made righteous.”—-Romans, 5v. 19.

But the principal code to be obeyed by the incarnate God was the mediatorial code. This was emphatically the code of the Godhead. Two . of the Sacred Three ordained it, ages before the birth of the infant Jesus. The second- of the Sacred Three was to be its self-devoted, its obedient subject. The man was, no doubt, to obey it, according to the measure of his very limited capacity. But in the article of merit the obedience of the man bore no greater proportion to the obedience of the God than the finite bears to the infinite. The principal ingredient in the mediatorial code, was its demand for expiatory suffering. It may be styled in the suffering code. Of this suffering co@12-1-i@hde God the Son was one of thile legislators ; of this suffering code God the Son, clothed in flesh, was to be the victim. Here was a spectacle of blended justice, love, and disinterestedness upon which, to eternity, the universe may gaze without satiety!

It was, indeed, a code of terrible exaction. Its penalty, if concentrated within a space shorter than eternity, could not have been endured by the united energies of created intelligences. We believe that nothing but an uncreated and almighty God could have borne it. The obedience of God the Son to this penal code is “ demonstration strong,” not only of his capacity to suffer, but of I his actual suffering. To this code he “ who, be” ing in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God,” “ became obedient unto death.” —-Philippians, 2ii. 8. “ Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey himhirn."—-Hebrews, 5v. 8, 9. The “,Son” indicated by the writer to the Hebrews was not the human son of the Virgin, but God’s”s “ own SoniY” clothed in flesh; for he alone was “ the author of eternal salvation.” It was God’s”s “ own Son,” then, who, veiled in humanity, learned “ obedience” and was “66 made perfect” “ by the things which be suffered.” The obedient and suffering Son of this passage was the Son, as the same writer to the Hebrews declared, by whom the infinite Father made the worlds, and who was “ the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person.”—-Hebrews, 1. 2, ,3.

The suffering of the uncreated Son did not render superfluous the suffering of the adjunct man. In the early age of the Christian church—-that prolific foundry of airy theories—-the opinion at one time prevailed, to some extent, that the manhood of Christ suffered in appearance only. This heresy was, however, of short duration. It is not, indeed, conceivable that an incarnate Deity should suffer in his divinity without imparting suffering to the clay tenement in which he is enshrined.

292 SUFIFIERING OF THE MAN.

But, without discussing the doctrine of possibilities when applied to the Omni potent, it is enough for us to say that the blessed incarnation of the Bible would have failed in some of its apparent objects had the adjunct man remained in a condition of untouched felicity. No imitable example would have been left to the suffering faithful as a pattern of meekness and patience. The sufferings of the redeeming Deity were unseen; they pertained to his unsearchable divinity; we can but imagine them dimly even when contemplated through the telescope of faith; humanity, lost in wonder and adoration, cannot aspire to imitate them. Had the redeeming agonies been limited to the shrouded Jehovah, there would have been no visible representation to shadow them forth on earth and perpetuate their remembrance in heaven. No bloody sweat, no speaking scars would have symbolized the viewless pangs of the redeeming God. How could the man have participated with the kindred Deity in his exaltation, unless he had participated with him in his sufferings. The man, as well as the enshrined Divinity, “ for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”—-Hebrews, 12xii. 2.

OBJECTIONS TO THEORY. 293