26. Mysteries in Christ
26
Mysteries in Christ1
And he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
—Revelation 19:12
Oh what a nameless king is this! What? Is Christ unbaptized that He lacks a name? Is there no man who knows His name? “What is his name, and what is his son’s name, if thou canst tell?” (Prov. 30:4). “He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation?’ (Isa. 53:8). Here is a strange thing! The angel says, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus.” Nay, but His name is Himself and His nature, and so He is an infinite God. None knows infinite Christ but Himself. Aye, surely Christ is an unknown person; though each one has Christ Jesus in his mouth, yet he does not know what he is saying.
There are three mysteries in Christ we cannot perfectly know or understand in this life:
1. The infinite wisdom, mercy, goodness, love, and grace in Christ, which the angels delight to look into and wonder. Come near Christ, and you will never see the bottom of Him. You have seen mercy, great mercy; there is yet more behind. One has seen much of Him, another more; the angels that are sharp in sight have yet seen more; nay, but there is infinite more behind. You will as soon take the sea in the hollow of your hand and bind the wind in your cloak as you will take Him up. You must even stand still here and wonder and cry out, “Oh great Jesus, who will or can fathom Thee out?”
2. Oh what a depth is in the work of Christ’s incarnation! God and dust married together! How [can it be that] blood remains in a personal union with God! How [can it be that] the finite Manhood subsists in His infinite personality! And how [can it be that] the Godhead in the second person, and not in the first or third, assumed our nature, and yet there is but one Godhead in all the three! How [can it be that] the Godhead stood under the Manhood that was stricken, and the Godhead as a back-friend2 held Him up, and yet the Godhead suffered not! How [can it be that] Jesus-man died and Jesus-God lived and remained in death God and man!
3. The third mystery is this: what a name Jesus has gotten by His rising from the dead, and how the Manhood is advanced. Christ kens3 all these full well; He can read His own name. You will speak of learning to measure the earth, number the stars, and learning their motion—that is deep knowledge; but God help you to come hither and see this unknown name, Jesus, and find it out if you can. I know you cannot.
Where will you set Christ? Where will you get a seat, a throne, a chair to Him? He cannot be set too high; nay, if there were ten thousand times ten thousand heavens, and each above another, and Christ were set in the highest of them all, yet He would be too low.
Oh, let us long for glory, that place where we will read His name clearly and will see Christ face to face. Oh, strange that we do not long to be in heaven, to see this comely glorious one (if I may so speak), a darling indeed, and to play God’s bairns4 in heaven! We will then come and look into the ark; for the curtain will be drawn by, and we will see our fill of Christ there.
1. Communion Sermons, 17–18.
2. back-friend: a friend to help
3. kens: knows
4. bairns: children