1. To suffer death was the immediate end of the interposition of
convenient to shew the truth of his death. These were necessary by virtue of God's decree, manifested in the prediction of the prophets, to be done unto him. But his incarnation and passion to death were immediately necessary to our recovery and the atonement of sin. We could not have been redeemed unless he had satisfied justice; justice could not be satisfied but by suffering; suffering could not have been undergone unless he had been incarnate. A body he must have prepared for suffering; nor could he have suffered for us unless he had been incarnate in our nature.
2. Thing. To demonstrate this necessity. Having declared what kind of necessity this is, we may now demonstrate this necessity.
1. To suffer death was the immediate end of the interposition of Christ. The principal end of his undertaking was to right the honour of God, and glorify his attributes in the recovery of the creature; but the immediate end was to suffer, because this was the only way to bring about that end which was principally aimed at in Christ's interposition, and God's determination concerning him. Death being denounced as the punishment of sin, Christ interposeth himself for our security, with a promise to bear that punishment in our stead for the procuring our exemption from it; therefore, what punishment was of right to be inflicted on man for the breach of the law, was, by a gracious act of God, the governor of the world and guardian of his laws, transferred upon Christ, as putting himself in our stead. His first interposition was for the same end with his death, but his death was evidently for our sins. It was for them 'he gave himself,' Gal. 1:4; they were our sins which 'he bare in his own body on the tree,' 1 Peter
2:24; 'for our iniquities he was wounded, and for our transgressions he was bruised,' Isa. 53:5; our health was procured by his stripes, and therefore intended by him in his first engagement. He offered his person in our stead, which was able to bear our sin, and afford us a righteousness which was able to justify our persons; he offered himself to endure the curse of the law in his own body, and fulfil the righteousness of the law in his own person; he would be united with us in our nature, that he might make the sins of our nature his own
in suffering for them, and give to us what was his, by taking to himself what was ours; he took our stripes that we might receive his medicine. This, therefore, being the end of his first undertaking, was necessary to be performed; for Christ is not yea and nay, 2 Cor. 1:19, one time of one mind, and another time of another, but firm and uniform in all his proceedings, without any contradiction between his promise and performance.
That this was the end of his first interposition is evident, (1.) By the terms of the covenant of redemption incumbent on his part. What God demanded was complied with on the part of Christ.
The demand of God was the offering of the soul, because upon that condition depends the promise of his exaltation and seeing his seed:
Isa. 53:10, 'When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed;' or as others, 'When his soul is put an offering for sin.' The word אשם is properly a sin-offering, and his soul is the matter of this offering, as well as the spring and principle of the offering himself to God. It was upon this condition only he was to see his seed; he had had no seed, i.e. none had been saved by him according to this covenant, unless his soul had made itself an offering for sin. This death of Christ was the main article to be performed by him; this was the eye of Christ fixed upon in the offering himself in the first transaction to do the will of God: Ps.
40:6–8, 'Burnt-offering and sin-offering hast thou not required. Lo, I come; I delight to do thy will,' Heb. 10:7, 8. The will of God for a satisfaction by sacrifice. The will of God was the demand of something above all legal sacrifices; for he had no pleasure in those which were offered by the law, wherein Christ complies with God; and it was something which was not to fall short of, but surmount those legal offerings. The denial of any pleasure or content in them implies a demand of a higher pleasure and content than all or any of them could afford. To this Christ gives his full consent, and offers himself, according to the will of God, to be a sacrifice, and puts himself in the place of those sin-offerings wherein God had no pleasure; as if he should have said, A sin-offering, Lord, thou wilt
have, and one proportionable to the greatness of the offence; since none else can be suitable to an infinite majesty, I will be the sinoffering, and answer thy will in this; and therefore the apostle infers,
Heb. 10:10, that the offering the body of Christ for our sanctification, our restoration, was the particular will of God in this affair, which will Christ particularly promises in that eternal transaction to perform: Gal. 1:4, 'Who hath given himself for our Sins, according to the will of God.' And, indeed, God could not have been said to enter into his rest at the foundation of the world without this transaction, as he is said to do, Heb. 4; for foreseeing that an universal stain and disorder would overspread the world by sin, that the glory which would naturally issue to him from the creatures would meet with an obstacle from it, and no way be left for the glorifying of any other attributes after sin but his power and justice in the due and righteous punishment of the creature, he could not take any pleasure in the works of his hands, had not the second person stood up as a sacrifice of atonement to purify the bespotted world, rectify the disorder, and render a content to the justice of God, that all the other attributes of God in the creation might have their due glory perpetuated and elevated. It was in this one person, and that by his blood, that God found the best way and method to gather together those things which sin had scattered, Eph. 1:7, 10. And the first promise in paradise after the fall, of the bruising the serpent's head, in having the seed of the woman's heel bruised by the serpent, intending thereby his death (as is cleared up by considering the revelations of God afterwards), shews that this was fixed in him, since it is most likely it was the second person appeared to Adam and made that promise. This was the first promise to man, founded upon this covenant of redemption.
(2.) The command that Christ received to die, manifests his interposition for this end. He was made under the law, and his death is called 'obedience,' Philip. 2:8.* Obedience implies a command as the rule of it. Obedience to the moral law engaged him not to die for us; it had bound him over to death, had he been a transgressor of it; but considered in itself, it obliged him not, being innocent, to suffer death for those that were delinquents. Obedience, therefore, in
regard of his death, must answer to a particular command of God, flowing from some other act of his will than what was formally expressed in the moral law. Such a command he received from his
Father, to lay down his life, John 10:18; which supposeth the free proffer of himself to a state of humiliation for such an end as dying.
Had it not been obedience to a command, God had not been bound to accept his offering. Though in itself, and its own nature, upon the trial of God it would have been found sufficient, yet it had been a just exception, 'Who hath required this at your hands?' If he had not offered himself to this purpose, he had not been God's voluntary servant; and if he had not received a law in order to the performance of what he offered, he had not been God's 'righteous servant,' as he is called, Isa. 53:11, there being no rule whereby to measure his righteousness in this act. The concurrence of both these made his death necessary and acceptable. Though, as I said before, this command of dying for us was not formally any command of the moral law, yet after once he had received this order, and obliged himself to the performance of it, the moral law obliged him to the highest manner of performing this, i.e. with the highest love to God and his neighbour, whose nature he had taken, and thereby became our kinsman. Since God was dishonoured and man damaged by sin, his love to the glory of God and the salvation of man were to be with the greatest intenseness; and this the moral law enjoins in all acts we undertake for God.
(3.) If he had not interposed himself for this end, he could not have suffered. Since God passed such a judgment on him, and laid upon him the iniquities of us all, there must be some precedent act of Christ for this end; for it was not just with God to force any to bear the punishment of another's sin. The justice of God, in his dealings with man, is regulated by his own law; he inflicts nothing but what his law hath enjoined. To punish without law, and a transgression of it, is injustice. No law of God ever threatened punishment to one in every respect innocent. Christ, by a free act of his own, put himself into the state of a reputed nocent, and by his interposition for us, as a surety, was counted by God as one person with us; as a surety and a
debtor are, in a legal and juridical account, as one person, and what the debtor is liable to in regard of that debt for which the surety is bound, whether it be a pecuniary or a criminal debt, the surety being considered as one person with him, is to undergo. Christ's substituting himself in our stead was to this end, that the sins of those that God had given him might be imputed to him; for he proffered himself to make his soul an offering for sin. It could be no sin of his own; sin he did not, sin he could not. It must be another's sin, transferred jupon him in a juridical manner; transferred, I say, upon him, not by any transfusion of our sins into Christ by way of inherency, but by imputation, without which he could not be a sufferer. For what reason, what justice had there been to expose one to suffering, that was wholly innocent, and had no sin, neither by inherency nor imputation? How could any be liable to punishment, that could not in any manner be regarded as guilty? To be under judgment, supposeth a man's own crime, or the crimes of others.
Since God, therefore, 'made him to be sin for us,' 2 Cor. 5:21, and could not in justice make him so without his own consent; his consent, then, in the first offer of his mediation, was to be made sin for us, i.e. to bear our sins. He offered himself for the same end for which God accepted him, and for which God used him. Pursuant to this offer of himself, he was made under the law, and put into such a state and condition, by his investing himself with the human nature, as that the law might make its demands of him, and receive the penalties which were due by it for the offence.
Add to this, the giving of some to Christ to save, John 17:18, 6:39, which presupposeth the obligation of Christ to death; for after sin, the law being to be vindicated, and justice glorified, God's committing some to him to save, presupposeth his engagement to satisfy the law and justice on their behalf.* It was for this end also he came to the hour of his death, John 12:27; and his prayer to his
Father, to 'save him from this hour,' had been groundless, if he had not passed his word to his Father to enter upon that hour. What need he have prayed to his Father to save him, who might have saved
himself, if there had been no antecedent obligation to undertake this task?
He thus interposing himself for this end, it was necessary he should die. For, [1.] Else none could have been saved from the foundation of the world. Some were saved before his actual death upon the cross. God was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; but 'God is the God of the living, not of the dead,' Mat. 22:32. They therefore lived in his sight before the actual oblation of Christ upon the cross; but they could no more have been saved without the credit of this death of Christ in our nature, than the fallen angels could have been saved. The reason they are not saved, is rendered by the apostle, Heb. 2:16, because Christ took not their nature; his taking our nature therefore, and dying in it, is the cause of any man's salvation that lived after his coming; his promise of taking our nature, and dying in it, is the cause of the salvation of any that lived before. The apostle's reasoning would not else stand good; had Christ assumed the angels' nature, they would have been saved; had not Christ then assumed our nature, we could not have been saved; and had he not promised to assume our nature, none could have been saved. He could not have been called the Captain of the salvation of all the sons that are brought to glory, whereof many were before his coming, Heb. 2:10. They must have been saved upon the account of that future death, or else there must be some other name besides that of Christ whereby they were saved; but that there is not, Acts 4:12. Faith had not always been the way of salvation. Christ had begun to be a mediator and redeemer at the time of his death, and not before; and so had not been in that relation 'the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.' Had he not died, he could not have been set out with any good ground before his coming as an object of faith. The promises of him had wanted their due foundation, the predictions of him had been groundlesss; and, consequently, the faith and hope of the ancient believers had been in vain. It is certain, all that were saved, were saved upon the account of his death; for the merit of his death might have an influence before it
was suffered, it being a moral, not a natural, cause of salvation; as many times a prisoner is delivered upon the promise of a ransom before the actual payment of it.
[2.] Since some were saved before upon the account of his future death, had he not died, God had been highly dishonoured. Had not Christ performed his promise of suffering, and thereby satisfying the justice of God, God, having saved many before his incarnation upon the credit of this promise, had received a manifest wrong. It would have argued a weakness in him to lay such stress upon that which would not be full and secure, which would never have been accomplished. God had not been omniscient, but had been deceived in his foreknowledge, had his expectations been frustrated. For what was the reason God saved any before, but upon the credit of this ransom, which was promised to be paid in time, and his foreknowledge, that when the term came, the surety would not be wanting to discharge himself of his promise? Had not, then, Christ really suffered, and accomplished what he had promised, God had suffered in his honour, and all things could not have been said to be present to him; he would have been deceived. As if a prisoner be delivered upon the promise of a ransom, and the ransom be not paid according to agreement, the person that hath delivered the prisoner suffers in point of wisdom in trusting a person that hath not been as good as his word, and is defeated of that which is in justice due to him. Again, since God had admitted some to happiness before the actual suffering of Christ, had not Christ performed what he had actually undertaken, God must have renounced either his justice or his mercy; his justice, had he let sinners go unpunished, and then he had denied in part his own name, which is 'by no means to clear the guilty,' Exodus 34:7; or else he must have punished sin in the persons of those whom he had already brought to happiness; and had he done so, how had the honour of his mercy suffered, in turning them out of that felicity wherein he had always* placed them! Some, therefore, make the remission of the sins past before the coming of Christ not to be properly a full pardon, but a passing by, the full remission not being to be given till the actual payment was made;