CHAPTER VI – The Means Used
CHAPTER VI – The Means Used The means used by the fore-recounted agents in this work.
I. Christ's Dispensation as Mediator Our next task, in order of execution rather than intention, will be to discover the means in this work. These are the same several actions recounted before. But they will now be considered in another respect: as means ordained for obtaining a proposed end. Now, because the several actions of the Father and the Spirit were all exercised towards Christ, and terminated in him as God and man, only Christ and his performances are to be considered as the means in this work. The several concurrences of both the other persons are presupposed as necessarily antecedent or concomitant to the means.
The means that are used or ordained by these agents for the proposed end, is that whole economy or dispensation carried along to the end. From this our
Savior Jesus Christ is called a Mediator. This office, as I mentioned before, is usually distinguished into two parts: First, his oblation; Secondly, his intercession.
First, His Oblation By his oblation we do not only mean the particular offering of himself upon the cross as an offering to his Father. As such, he was the Lamb of God without spot or blemish. He bore our sins, or carried them up with him, in his own body on the tree. This was the sum and complement of his oblation, and what it chiefly consisted of. But his oblation was also his whole humiliation, or state of emptying himself. This humiliation was manifested by his yielding voluntary obedience to the law, being made under it, so that he might be the end of the law to those who believe, Rom. 10:4. It is also manifested by his subjection to the curse of the law; in the antecedent misery and suffering of his life, as well as by his submitting to death, even the death of the cross, Phil. 2:8. For no action of his as mediator is to be excluded from what makes up the whole means in this work.
Second, His Intercession
Nor by his intercession do I mean only his heavenly appearance in the most holy place, to apply to us all the good things purchased and procured by his oblation. I also mean every act of his exaltation that is conducive to that end, from his resurrection to his "sitting down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, angels and principalities and powers being made subject to him," 1Pet. 3:22.
In all of this, his resurrection is the basis and the foundation of the rest.
"For if he is not risen, then is our faith in vain," 1Cor. 15:13, 14; and we are
"yet in our sins," verse 17; and "of all men most miserable," verse 19. His resurrection should be especially considered as that to which a great part of the effect is often ascribed. For "he was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification," Rom. 4:25. Thus the whole dispensation and perpetual intercession of Christ for us in heaven follows from his resurrection. For "God raised up his son Jesus to bless us, in turning every one of us from our iniquities," Acts 3:26.
II. Oblation and Intercession as a Single Means Now, this whole dispensation, with a special regard to the death and bloodshedding of Christ, is the means we speak of. This agrees with what was said in general before; for it is not a thing that is desirable in itself, nor for its own sake. The death of Christ had nothing in it that was good (speaking of his suffering, not his obedience), except as it was conducive to a further end, such as manifesting God's glorious grace. What good was it that Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and people of Israel, would join together with such horrid villany and cruelty against God's holy child whom he anointed? Acts 4:27. Or what good was it that the Son of God would be made sin and a curse, to be bruised, afflicted, and undergo such wrath that the whole frame of nature trembled to behold it? What good, what beauty and form is in all this, that it should be desired in itself and for itself? Doubtless, none at all. It must, then, be looked upon as a means conducive to an end; the glory and luster of that must take away all the darkness and confusion in the thing itself. Even so, it was intended by the blessed agents in it, by "whose determinate counsel and foreknowledge he was delivered and slain," Acts 2:23. What was done to him was "whatever
his hand and counsel had determined," Acts 4:28. What it was must be declared later.
Now, concerning the whole, some things are to be observed:
Though the oblation and intercession of Jesus Christ are distinct acts in themselves, and they have distinct immediate products and results assigned to them, they are not in any respect or regard to be divided or separated.
Whatever respect the one would have to any persons or things, the other would equally have in its kind. There is this manifold union between them:
First, they both have the same end They are both intended to obtain and accomplish the same entire and complete end that is proposed. To wit: to effectually bring many sons to glory, for the praise of God's grace.
Secondly, they both have the same object Whatever persons the one respects in the good things it obtains for them, the other respects in applying the good things so obtained to the same persons. For "he was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justiflcation," Rom,. 4:25. In brief, this means that the object of the one has no larger extent than the object of the other. Or to say it another way, those for whom Christ offered himself, for all and only those, does he intercede. This is according to his own word: "For their sake I sanctify myself" (to be an oblation), "that they might also be sanctified through the truth," John 17:19.
Thirdly, His Oblation is the Foundation of His Intercession The oblation of Christ is the foundation of his intercession. By the oblation he procured everything that is bestowed on us by virtue of his intercession.
And that is because the sole reason why Christ procured anything by his death was that it might be applied to those for whom it was procured.
The sum is, that the oblation and intercession of Jesus Christ are one entire means to produce the same effect. The very purpose of his oblation is to have all those things that are procured accordingly bestowed by his intercession. Without their application, his oblation would certainly fail in
its proposed end. So, it cannot be affirmed that the death or offering of Christ procured any good for one more person than his intercession applied it to. Interceding for all the good that was purchased, and prevailing in all his intercessions (for the Father always hears his Son), it is evident that everyone for whom Christ died must actually have all the good things purchased by Christ's death applied to him. Because this is evidently destructive to the adverse cause, we must stay a little on the subject to confirm it. I will now only propose those reasons which may be handled apart from the main proof. A subsequent proposal will assign the proper end intended and effected by the death of Christ. The main proof must be deferred until then.