4. Let us value this Redeemer, and redemption by his death. Since
honour of God requires also the content of his justice. The fallen angels, therefore, have no mercy granted to them, because none ever satisfied the justice of God for them. Let us not, therefore, coin new ways of procuring pardon, and false modes of appeasing the justice of God. What can we find besides this, able to contend against everlasting burnings? What refuge can there be besides this to shelter us from the fierceness of divine wrath? Can our tears and prayers be more prevalent than the cries and tears of Christ, who could not, by all the strength of them, divert death from himself, without our eternal loss? No way but faith in his blood. God in the gospel sends us to Christ, and Christ by the gospel brings us to God.
4. Let us value this Redeemer, and redemption by his death. Since God was resolved to see his Son plunged into an estate of disgraceful emptiness, clothed with the form of a servant, and exposed to the sufferings of a painful cross, rather than leave sin unpunished, we should never think of it without thankful returns, both to the judge and the sacrifice. What was he afflicted for, but to procure our peace? bruised for, but to heal our wounds? brought before an earthly judge to be condemned, but that we might be brought before a heavenly judge to be absolved? fell under the pains of death, but to knock off from us the shackles of hell? and became accursed in death, but that we might be blessed with eternal life? Without this our misery had been irreparable, our distance from God perpetual. What commerce could we have had with God, while we were separated from him by crimes on our part, and justice on his? The wall must be broken down, death must be suffered, that justice might be silenced, and the goodness of God be again communicative to us. This was the wonder of divine love, to be pleased with the sufferings of his only Son, that he might be pleased with us upon the account of those sufferings.
Our redemption in such a way, as by the death and blood of Christ, was not a bare grace. It had been so, had it been only redemption; but being a redemption by the blood of God, it deserves from the apostle no less a title than riches of grace, Eph. 1:7. And it deserves and expects no less from us than such high acknowledgments. This we may learn from Ought not Christ to die?
A DISCOURSE OF THE NECESSITY OF
CHRIST'S EXALTATION
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?—LUKE 24:26.
WE have already spoken to the first part of this scripture, and from thence declared the necessity of Christ's death; the next is his exaltation. His sufferings were necessary for the expiation of our sin, and his exaltation necessary for the application of the merits of his death. Some add the particle so, and so to enter into his glory; but that is not in the Greek, though it may be implied, for the entrance of Christ into his glory was to be by the way of suffering.
Observe by the way, the great grace of God, that makes often the diffidence of his people an occasion of a further clearing up of the choicest truths to them. Never did those disciples hear so excellent an exposition of the Scriptures concerning the Messiah from the mouth of their Master, as when their distrust of him had prevailed so far. Glory he was to enter into. By this glory is not meant only his resurrection; that was not his glory, but the beginning of his exaltation, a causa sine qua non; it freed him from mortality, and invested him with immortality, but was not the term, but a necessary means of his glory (as the fetching Joseph from prison was a necessary antecedent to his elevation on a throne; he could not be a governor while he was a prisoner). By his resurrection, he was prepared for it; by his ascension, he was possessed of it; his resurrection was an entrance into his glory, but not the consummation of his felicity. His glory. It is called his as distinguished from the glory belonging to any other; thus he distinguisheth a glory peculiarly his own from the glory of his Father, and the glory of the holy angels, when he mentions his coming to judgment in all those glories: Luke 9:26, 'When he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy angels;'* in the
mediatory glory, in the glory of the Father, the glory of his Godhead, as he is equal with God; in the glory of the whole creation, the angels being the top of it; or in the glory of all the administrations of God, the glory of God as Creator, creation being attributed to the Father; the glory of the holy angels, by whose disposition the law was given, in the glory of the legal administration; in his own glory, the glory of the gospel administration, as judging men according to those several degrees of light they were under, the light of nature, that of the law, and the more glorious of the gospel, his glory.
(1.) As having a peculiar right to it.
[1.] In regard of his designation to it by his Father. He calls it a glory given by God, John 17:24. His glory, as promised him by the Father, and covenanted for by himself. He was to be the first-born, higher than the kings of the earth, Ps. 89:29. His glory, as by gift he was to have 'dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust. For he shall redeem the soul of the needy from deceit and violence. His name shall endure for ever: men shall be blessed in him; and the whole earth was to be filled with his glory,' Ps. 72:8, 9, 14, 17, 19.
[2.] In regard of his purchase of it, all this was his glory. It is generally said that Christ had a title to glory, by virtue of the union of the divine nature to the human. It is true, had Christ been only incarnate for no other end but to take our flesh, glory had of right belonged to him from the beginning, by virtue of that union; but in regard of that economy of God for redemption by blood, and the covenant passed between them consisting of such articles, it was not his incarnation, but his passion invested him with a right to claim it; he was to fulfil his charge before he was to have the fruition of his reward. His glory was promised to him, not as assuming our flesh, but as suffering in our flesh, and making his soul an offering for sin, and being incarnate for this end. Glory belonged not to him till his death had been actually suffered, and declared valid in the sight of