1. What kind of necessity this was.
(1.) What kind of necessity this was.
(2.) That it was necessary.
(3.) The use.
1. What kind of necessity this was.
Prop. 1. His death was not absolutely necessary, but conditionally.
(1.) It supposeth, first, the entrance of sin. There was no necessity that sin should enter into the world. There was no necessity on man's part to sin. Though he was created with a possibility of sinning, yet not with a necessity; he was created mutable, but not corruptible:
'God made man upright,' Eccles. 7:29. His faculties, as bestowed upon him, stood right to God. He had an understanding to know what of God was fit for him to know, a will without any wrong bias to embrace him, and affections to love him. God permitted him to fall, the devil allured him to sin, but neither the one nor the other did immediately influence his will to the commission of his crime. There was no necessity on God's part that sin should enter; though his wisdom thought good to permit it, yet there was no absolute necessity that it should step up in the world. He might have fixed man, as well as the holy angels, in an eternal purity; he might have enlightened the mind of man by a particular act of grace at the first proposal of the temptation by the devil, to discern his deceit and stratagem, and so might have prevented man's sin as well as permitted it. Had not sin entered, there had been no occasion for the death of the creature, much less for the death of Christ. The honour of God had not been invaded; there had been no provoked justice to satisfy, nor any violated law to vindicate. Some indeed there are* that think the incarnation of Christ had been necessary without the entrance of sin, because they consider God of so holy a nature that it had been impossible for him to be pleased with any creature, though the work of his own hands, so that neither angels nor men could have stood one moment in his sight without beholding him in the face of a
mediator. Several had anciently imagined† that if man had continued in obedience till the time appointed for his confirmation, then Christ would have been incarnate, and man have become one mystical person with him for his confirmation, as the angels were confirmed by him; but none assert the death of Christ but upon supposition of sin. All sacrifices for sin imply the guilt of sin antecedent to them; but after man had transgressed the rule by his disobedience, and thereby made himself incapable of answering the terms of that righteous law which God had set him, the death of Christ became as necessary as his incarnation, for the righting the injured law and satisfying offended justice, and the conveyance of mercy to the creature, with the honour of God and preservation of his rights. As Christ's rejoicing from eternity, 'in the habitable parts of the earth,' supposeth the creation of the world in the order of God's decree,
Prov. 8:31, so the eternal counsel of God, for the making his Son a sacrifice, supposeth the rise of sin and iniquity in the world. Had not man run cross to the preceptive will of God, he had enjoyed the presence of God without a sacrificed mediator, and would have had an everlasting communion with him in happiness; but after sin entered upon the world, there was need of a propitiation for sin. An infinitely pure God could not have communion with an impure creature. It was not fit a sovereign majesty should make himself savingly known to his creature without a propitiatory.
(2.) It supposeth death to be settled by God as the punishment of sin.
Some question whether it were absolutely necessary that death should have been threatened upon the breach of the law. It is true, as the law depends upon the will of the lawgiver, so doth the punishment. And it is in his liberty, if you consider him as an absolute sovereign, to annex what penalty he pleaseth; yet, as all laws are to spring from righteousness, so all punishments are to be regulated by righteousness and equity, that a punishment deserved by the greatest crime should not be ordered as the recompense of offences of a lighter nature. But in the case of transgressions against God, no penalty less than death, and eternal death, could, according to the rules of justice, have been appointed. It is certain sin doth
naturally oblige to punishment: it is senseless to imagine that a law should be transgressed without some penalty incurred. A law is utterly insignificant without it, and it is inconsistent with the wisdom of a lawgiver to enact a precept without adding a penalty. If, therefore, a punishment be due to sin, it is requisite, according to the rules of justice and wisdom, to proportion the punishment to the greatness of the offence. I say this is the rule that righteousness requires. And it is as natural that a crime should be punished suitably to its demerit as that it should be punished at all. Why doth any fault deserve punishment, but because there is an unreasonableness in it, something against the nature of man, against the nature of a subject, against the authority of the lawgiver, against the order and good of a community? The punishment therefore ought to be as great as the damage to authority by the crime. To order a punishment greater than the crime is tyranny; to order it less than the crime is folly in the government: unrighteousness in both, because there is an inequality between the sin and the penalty. Now, such is the excellency of God's nature, and so inviolable with his creature ought his authority to be, that the least offence against him deserves the highest punishment, because it is against the best and most sovereign being. It seems therefore to us that God had not acted like a righteous governor if he had not denounced death for the sins against him; the offence being the highest, the punishment in the order of justice ought to be the highest. What could be supposed more just and reasonable than for God to deprive man of that life which he had given him, that life which man had received from the goodness of his Creator, and had employed against his authority and glory? As his sin was against the supreme good, so the punishment ought to be the depriving man of his highest good. The vileness of the person offending, and the dignity of the person offended, always communicate an aggravation to the crime. The sin of man, being infinite, did, in the justice of God, merit an infinite punishment. And this is not only written upon the hearts of men by nature, that it is so, but that it is deservedly so, Rom. 1:32, 'that they are worthy of death.'
The justice of God in inflicting death for sin is as well known as his power and Godhead, and the justice of it is universally owned in the
consciences of men when they are awakened. Adam, when he sinned, did not think the offence of so great a weight, but his roused conscience presented him with those natural notions of the justice of God, and sunk him under the sense of it, till God had revived him by a promise.
(3.) It supposeth that, after man's transgression, and thereby the demerit of death, God would recover and redeem man. There was no necessity incumbent upon God to restore man after his defection from him and rebellion against him. As God was not obliged to prevent man's fall, so he was not obliged to recover man fallen. When he did permit him to offend, he might have let him sink under the weight of his own crimes, and left him buried in the ruins of his fall.
He might for ever have reserved him in those chains he had merited, and have let him feed upon the fruit of his own doings, without one thought of his delivery, or employing one finger of that power for his restoration, whereby he had brought him into being; for the restoration of man was no more necessary in itself than the first creation of him was. As God might have left him in his nothing without producing him into being, so he might have left him in his contracted misery without restoring him to happiness. Nor was it any ways more necessary than the reducing the fallen angels to their primitive obedience and felicity. The blessedness and happiness of God had no more been infringed by the eternal destruction of man, than it was by the everlasting ruin of devils. Upon the supposition that God would save sinners after his justice was so fully engaged to punish them, no way in the understanding of man can be thought of, but the sufferings of the creature, or some one for him, to preserve the justice of God from being injured. Though the thoughts of some differ in other things, yet not in this. All say it was not simply necessary that man should be freed from his fallen state. But since
God would not hurl all men into the damnation they had deserved, and treat them as he did the devils in the rigours of his justice, this way of the death of his Son was the most convenient way;* and indeed necessary, not necessary by an antecedent necessity (for there is no such necessity in God respecting created things), but a
consequent necessity upon a decree of his will, which being settled, something else must necessarily follow as a means for the execution of that decree; as supposing God would create man to be Lord of the creature, and return him the glory of his works, it were then consequently necessary that he should create him with rational faculties, and fit for those ends for which he created him; but the creation of man in such a frame is not of absolute necessity, but depends upon the antecedent decree of his will, of creating such a creature as should render him the tribute of his works. So it is not necessary that God should free man from the spot of sin, and the misery contracted thereby, and reduce him from damnation to felicity; but since he determined the redemption of him after the violation of the law, which he had confirmed by the penalty of death,
God could not without wrong to his justice and truth freely pardon man, because he is immutably righteous and true, and cannot lie; and since he is so righteous a judge that he can no more absolve the guilty than he can condemn the innocent, Exod. 34:7, his justice was an invincible obstacle to the pardon of sin, though men had implored his mercy with the greatest ardency and affection, unless this justice had been satisfied with a satisfaction suitable to it, i.e. infinite as the divine justice is infinite; and since neither man nor any other creature, being all of a finite nature, were able to give a full content to the justice of God, a necessity is then introduced of some infinite person to put himself in the place of the fallen creatures, clothe himself with their nature, and suffer in it the penalty they had merited, that they might be exempted from that which, by the transgression of the law, they had incurred.
(4.) It supposeth Christ's voluntary engagement and undertaking of this affair first. There could be no necessity upon God to redeem, nor any necessity upon Christ to be the Redeemer; but after his consent, which was wholly free, his promise engaged him to performance. He was free from all bonds till he entered into bond; he was at liberty whether he would be our surety; no compulsion could be used to him: John 10:18, he had 'power to lay down his life.' It implies a liberty either of laying down his life or not; a liberty of choice
whether he would die for man or no. He had power if he pleased to avoid the cross, but he undertook it, 'despising the shame,' Heb. 12:2.
And after having once undertaken this charge, it was necessary for him to suffer. As it is in the liberty of a man's choice whether he will engage himself in bonds for an insolvent debtor, yet when he is entered into suretyship, both his own honesty and the equity of the law necessitates him to stand to his engagements, and pay the money he is bound for, if the debtor be still insolvent;† so after Christ hath promised payment for bankrupt man, he could not retract both in regard of his truth, and in regard of the tenderness which first moved him to it. He could not violate his promise, nor deny his contract; both the order of his Father and his own righteousness did not permit him to cast off this resolution. Though it was naturally voluntary, yet it was morally necessary; and therefore often when he speaks of his sufferings to his disciples, he puts a must to them: Mat.
16:21, John 3:14 'must suffer many things,' 'must be lifted up.' And his prayer from a natural inclination of the human nature, that this cup might pass from him, if it were possible, not being granted, shews it to be morally impossible, after it was determined, that we could be saved any other way. God's not answering his own Son, manifests an impossibility to divert his death without our eternal loss. Had not that promise been past, if Christ had been incarnate, he might have lived in the world with glory and honour; he might have come, not as a surety, but as a lawgiver and judge; but after that promise made by him to his Father, and that the Father had by the covenant of redemption 'laid upon him the iniquities of us all,' and Christ on his part had covenanted to 'take upon him the form of a servant,' Philip. 2:7, and to be 'made under the law,' Gal. 4:4, he did owe to God an obedience as our surety according to the law of redemption, as well as an obedience to the moral law as a creature, by virtue of his incarnation. Had he been incarnate without such a promise of suffering, he had not been bound to suffer unless he had sinned; for, having no spot, neither original nor actual, he had stood firm upon the basis of the first covenant. But the obligation to the obedience of suffering was incumbent upon him by virtue of the compact between the Father and himself. Had he been incarnate
without that precedent compact, he had owed an obedience to God in his humanity as a creature; but as he was incarnate for such an end, and was, pursuant to the law of redemption, made under the moral law, he owed an obedience to both those laws, an obedience as a creature, an obedience as mediator, as a son owes obedience to a father by virtue of his relation of a son; but if this son be bound apprentice to his father, he owes another obedience to him as a servant by virtue of the covenant between them; the duty of obedience as a servant is superadded to that of a son; so the necessity of obedience as a surety was added to the necessity of obedience as a creature in regard of Christ's humanity, so that this necessity is only consequent, and supposeth at first the voluntary engagement of Christ. For indeed his sufferings could not be of infinite merit for us except they had been voluntarily undertaken by him.* If his sufferings took their worth and value from his person, they must likewise have their freedom and election from his person.
Whatsoever punishment, reproach, and trouble the fury of wicked men brought upon him, was not suffered by an absolute necessity, but conditional, after the engagement of his will.
Prop. 2. All things preceding his death, and all circumstances in his death, did not fall under a necessity of the same kind. Upon the former supposition, his death was necessary, and could not be avoided. Death was threatened by God as a sovereign; it was merited by man as a malefactor, and was necessary to be inflicted by God as a judge and governor. And by virtue of this threatening, and his engagement in suretyship, it was necessary that he should suffer, not as an innocent person, but under the imputation of a sinner; a reputed sinner, though he were perfectly innocent in his own nature:
2 Cor. 5:21, he was 'made sin for us.' Yet Christ, in his humiliation, did undergo some things which were not immediately necessary to our redemption. We might have been redeemed by him without his being hungry and weary. But this was mediately necessary to our redemption, in manifesting the truth and reality of his human nature. We might have been redeemed without the piercing of his side, and the letting out the water in the pericardium. But this was