6. The Soul Trouble of the Redeemer
6
The Soul Trouble of the Redeemer1
Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name.
—John 12:27–28
In the complaint, we have the Lord’s troubled soul. This holy soul thus troubled was like the earth before the Fall—before it was cursed—out of which grew roses without thorns or thistles. Christ’s anger and His sorrow were flowers that smelled of heaven, and not of sin. All His affections2 of fear, sorrow, sadness, hope, joy, love, and desire were like a fountain of liquid and melted silver, of which the banks, the head spring, are all as clear from dross as pure crystal. Such a fountain can cast out no clay, no mud, no dirt. When His affections did rise and swell into His actions, every drop of the fountain was sinless, perfumed and adorned with grace, just as the more you stir or trouble a well of rose water or some precious liquor, the more sweet a smell it casts out, or when a summer soft wind blows on a field of sweet roses, it diffuses precious and delicious smells through the air.
There are mud and dregs in the bottom and banks of our affections, so that when our anger, sorrow, sadness, and fear do arise in their actions, our fountain casts out sin. We cannot love without lust; or fear, but we despair; nor rejoice, but we are wanton and vain and gaudy; nor believe, but we presume. We reft3 up, we breathe out sin, we cast out a smell of hell when the wind blows on our field of weeds and thistles. Our soul is just a plot of wild corn, the imaginations of our heart being only evil from our youth. Oh that Christ would plant some of His flowers in our soul and bless the soil that they might grow kindly there, being warmed and nourished with His grace! If grace is within, it comes out under the pressures of sadness. A saint is a saint in affliction, as a hypocrite is a hypocrite; every man is himself and casts a smell like himself when he is in the furnace. Troubled Christ prays. Tempted Job believes (Job 19:25). The scourged apostles rejoice (Acts 5:41). Drowned Jonah looks to the holy temple (Jonah 2:4).
Christ’s affections were rational; reason started up before fear. Reason and affection did not outrun one another. Grace did so accompany nature that He could not have any more fear than the object required. Neither were His affections above banks. He saw the blackest and darkest hour that ever any saw. If all the sufferings of the damned, for eternity, were before them in one sight or came on them at once, it would annihilate all who are now, or shall be, in hell. Christ now saw, or foresaw, as great sufferings as these, and yet (1) believed, (2) prayed, (3) hoped, (4) was encouraged under it, (5) suffered them to the bottom with all patience, (6) rejoiced in hope (Ps. 16:9).
Our affections rise and swell before reason. (1) They are often imaginary and are on horseback and in arms at the stirring of a straw. (2) They lack that clearness and serenity of grace that Christ had, through habitual grace following nature from the womb. (3) We can raise our affections but cannot allay them, as some can make war and cannot create peace.
Christ had now and always the grace of peace, as peace is opposed to culpable raging of conscience. First, He never could lack faith, which is a serenity, quietness, and silence of the soul and assurance of the love of God. Second, He could have no doubting or sinful disturbance of mind because He could have no conscience of guilt that could cloud over the love and most tender favor of His Father to Him. Christ never needed pardon; He never needed the grace of forgiveness, or grace to be spared. God did not spare Him. God could exact no less blood of Him than He shed, but He received an acquittal of justification, never a pardon of grace. He lacked the peace that is opposed to pain and the sense of wrath and punishment for the guilt of our sins, but He was now under penal disturbance and disquietness of soul.
1. Christ Dying, 3–4.
2. affections: emotions
3. reft: A variant spelling of rift, meaning “to emit from the mouth, as by belching.”