Notes: Sect. 5. — The spiritual Marriage with Jesus Christ.
Notes: Sect. 5. — The spiritual Marriage with Jesus Christ.
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His conviction of his lost and undone state was represented before in its proper place. After much disputing whether such a vile and sinful wretch as he had any warrant to come to Christ, he appears in his immediately foregoing speech, to be so far enlightened in the knowledge of Christ, that he is truly persuaded that Christ is willing to entertain him; and to have his heart and will so overcome by divine grace, that he is willing to come to Christ: yet after all, through weakness of judgment, he apprehends himself to lack power to believe; whereas it is by these very means that a soul is persuaded, and enabled too, to believe in Jesus Christ.
Hereupon the author, waving the dispute about his power to believe, wisely asks him if he is resolved to exercise the power he has. For it was evident from the account given of the present condition of his soul, that it had felt “a day of power,” Psalm 110.3, and that he was “drawn by the Father, and therefore he could come to Christ,” John 6.44. For “effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he persuades and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ.” Shorter Catechism. — “Savingly enlightening their minds, renewing and powerfully determining their wills, so as they are hereby made willing and able.” Larg. Cat. quest. 67.
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See the foregoing note. This is the concluding point in this matter. The man being drawn by efficacious grace, though he is not without doubts and fears as to the event, yet he is no longer in doubt whether to embrace the offer or not. And the inward motion of his heart, breaking through the remaining doubts and fears after a long struggle, unto Jesus Christ, in the free promise — being indiscernible in itself, but to God and one’s own soul, it is agreeable enough to one’s way in that case — discovered the expression of a conquered soul: Now am I resolved to go to Christ; now I am determined to believe. This can only present to him who deals with the exercised person, the whole soul going out to Jesus Christ. Hence, the match may justly be declared to be made, as our author does in the words immediately following. Thus Job in his distress, expresses his faith: Job 13.15, ““Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” Compare Acts 11.33, “That with purpose of heart they would cling to the Lord.”
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In possession.
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That is, holding back your hand, you need not stand disputing with yourself how you will get power; but with the power given, stretch forth your withered hand, and Christ will strengthen it, and enable you to take a firm hold. John 12.32, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to me.” — Isa. 40.29, “He gives power to the faint; and to those who have no might, he increases strength.”
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The power mentioned here seems rather to denote right or privilege (as the original word is rendered in the margin of our Bibles) than strength or ability.
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See the preceding note.
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That is, a union with the whole Christ, God-Man; 1Cor. 6.17, “He that is joined to the Lord, is one spirit.” — Eph. 5.38, “For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.”
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Jesus Christ and the believer, being one person in the eye of the law, there is no separating them in law, in point of life and death. John 14.19, “Because I live, you shall live also.” I have adventured this once to add one syllable to the text of the author; and so to read “condemned” for “damned.” The words are of the same signification; only, the latter has an idea of horror affixed to it, which the former has not; and which perhaps it had not either in the days of our forefathers, when godly Tyndale used the expression, as our author informs us. And I take this liberty that a like expression of John Careless, in a letter to William Tyms, seems to me to run rather more smoothly by means of the same addition, though I doubt if the word stood so in the original copy. “Christ,” he says, “is made unto us holiness, righteousness, and justification; he has clothed us in all his merits and taken to himself all our sin — so that, if any should now be condemned for that same sin, it must be Jesus Christ, who has taken them upon himself.” The Sufferer’s Mirror, p. 66. And in the Old Confession of Faith, art. 9, according to the ancient copies, it is said, “The clean, innocent Lamb of God was damned in the presence of an earthly judge, that we should be absolved before the tribunal seat of our God.” But in the copy standing in Knox’s History, reprinted at Edinburgh, anno 1644, it is read “condemned.”
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This gift would indeed be a very unsuitable return, for all the benefits received from Christ by virtue of the spiritual marriage, if he did not deal with us in the way of free grace; like a physician who desires nothing of a poor man full of sores, but that he will employ him in their cure. But this gift, such as it is, as it is all we have of our own to give, so one needs have no doubt that it will be very acceptable, Psalm 4.22, “Cast your burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain you;” not only your burden of duty, suffering, and success, but of sin too, with which you are heavy laden. Mat. 11.28. We are allowed, not only to give him our burden, but to cast it upon him. He knows very well that all these evils mentioned, and many more, are in the heart of the best: yet he says, Prov. 23.26, “My son, give me your heart;” notwithstanding the wretched stuff he knows to be in it. In the language of the Holy Ghost, these things, black as they are, are a gift by divine appointment to be given. Lev. 16.21: speaking of the scape-goat, an eminent type of Christ, he says, “And Aaron shall confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, and all their sins: and he shall give them upon the head of the goat.” Thus the original expresses what we read, “putting them,” etc. [View again p. 69, and note.]
Now, the end for which the sinner is to give these to Christ is twofold: (1.) For removing their guilt. (2.) For mortifying them. And though this is not an easy way of mortification, since the way of believing is not easy, but more difficult than all the Popish austerities — these austerities being more agreeable to nature — yet indeed it is the short way to mortification, because it is the only way. Without this, the practice of all other directions will be as so many ciphers — without a figure standing at their head — signifying nothing for true Christian mortification. Acts 15.9, “Purifying their hearts by faith.” — Rom. 6.6, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him.” Rom. 8.13, “If through the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live.” — Gal. 5.24, “And those who are Christ’s, have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts; namely, nailing them to the cross of Christ by faith.
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Thus, namely by giving our sins to him, not by believers, but by his Father, as the text says, “He [not we] made him to be sin for us.” Nevertheless, the Lord’s laying our iniquities upon Christ is good warrant for every believer to give his sins in particular upon him; the latter being a cordial falling in with, a practical approbation, and taking the benefit of the former.
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Namely, by doing perfectly what it demanded to be done, by virtue of its commanding power, and suffering completely what it demanded to be borne, by virtue of its condemning power.
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A bond is a certificate of debt (charges). Sinful man must appear before the Tribunal of God to pay for his sins. But Christ, having paid the price himself, cancelled that debt. The hand-written list of charges was “nailed to the cross.”
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Although believers in the first moment of their union with Christ by faith, are delivered from the law, as it is the Covenant of Works; and therefore their after-sins, neither are nor can be formally transgressions of that covenant — yet they are interpretatively so, giving a plain proof of what they would have done against that covenant had they been under it still. And because they could never have been freed from it if the glorious Mediator had not wrought their deliverance by fulfilling it in their place and stead. All their sins whatever, from their birth to their death, after as well as before their union with Christ, were charged upon him as transgressions against that covenant, and those are pardoned them in their justification: even as he who redeems a slave must pay in proportion to the service which it is supposed he would have done his master during life; and the slave is loosed from all obligation to these several pieces of service to that master upon the ransom paid in compensation for all and every one of them. And thus our author says that a believer in his justification is acquitted from all his transgressions against the Covenant of Works, not only past and present, but to come. So that he leaves no ground to question that Christ satisfied for all the sins of believers whatever, whether in their state of regeneracy or unregeneracy. Nor does he make the least insinuation that the sins of believers, after their union with Christ, are not properly transgressions of that law which was (indeed, and to unbelievers still is) in the Covenant of Works. But on the contrary, he expressly teaches that it is the very same law of the Ten Commandments which is the Law of Christ, and which the believer transgresses, that was and is in the Covenant of Works. The revenging wrath of God and eternal death are not threatened against the sins of believers after their union with Christ. And that is for this one reason: that wrath and that death (the eternity of which did not arise from the nature of the thing, but from the infirmity of the sufferer, and therefore could have no place in the Son of God) were not only threatened before, but also executed upon their surety Jesus Christ, to whom they are united. Therefore it is manifest that there was great need for Christ being made a curse for these sins of believers, as well as for those sins preceding their union with him.