109SermonsbyJCRyle
Father. If Christ had been at all inferior to God, the work that He worked upon earth for our sakes would have been the act of a servant, performing the commands of his master and doing no more than his duty. Nothing less than God could have made atonement for this guilty world.
2. We must think of Him as perfect man, of like nature with ourselves in everything, sin only excepted. If Christ had not been man He could not have suffered the punishment of our iniquities by dying on the cross; if He had not taken on Him a body and a nature liable to temptation like our own, He could never have fulfilled the law for us and in our stead; and we could not have looked upon Him with a brotherly confidence, as one who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
3. We must think of Him as the great Redeemer and Savior, who by the voluntary sacrifice and death of Himself made atonement for the sins of the whole world, provided a means of reconciliation between His Father and mankind, and brought in an everlasting righteousness which is unto all and upon all those who believe.
4. We must think of Him as a King. He is the great head of a spiritual dominion over the heart of all whom He chooses and calls out of the world; the chief of a spiritual kingdom which confers peculiar blessings and privileges on all who become subjects of it—a kingdom which is unseen, invisible at present—but shall be known and acknowledged by all at Christ's second coming.
5. We must think of Him as the great High Priest, who, like the Jewish high priest of old, has gone alone before us into the Holy of Holies, that is Heaven, to make satisfaction for the sin of His people with blood, even the blood of Himself, who ever stands at the right hand of God to make intercession for them; and can always feel for and pity them, because as man He was tempted like as they are.