The Sufferings of Christ; reprinted from the “Bible Treasury,” 1858-9 And A Man in Christ; reprinted from the “Girdle of Truth,” 1858. Second edition, with an introduction and notes. London; George Morrish, 24, Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row, B.C.
From this new edition, which we advise the reader to procure, we cite the following weighty remarks (Introduction, pp. 11-23):
I hold as to expiation or atonement fully and simply what every sound Christian does—the blessed Lord’s offering Himself without spot to God and being obedient to death, being made sin for us, and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, His glorifying God in the sacrifice of Himself, and His substitution for us, and His drinking the cup of wrath. I believe, though none can fathom it, that what I hold and have taught and teach makes this atonement clearer. I mean the not confounding the sufferings of Christ short of divine wrath with that one only drinking of the cup, when He was forsaken of God. I see this carefully brought out in Psa. 22. In the midst of cruel sufferings, of which the Lord in Spirit speaks prophetically there, He says, “But be not thou far from me, O Lord,” twice over. Yet, and that is the great fathomless depth of the psalm, He was as to the sorrow of His soul forsaken of God. With that no other suffering, deep and real as it was, can be compared. But the Holy Ghost makes here the distinction in order to bring out that wondrous cup, which stands alone in the midst of all things, the more clearly. And this makes other suffering more true and real to the heart, and the drinking of the cup (that on which the new heavens and the new earth subsist in immutable righteousness before God, and through which we are accepted in the Beloved) has a truth and a reality which nothing else gives it. The mixing up accompanying suffering with this, in their character, weakens and destroys the nature of both. We come to the atonement with the need of our sins; once reconciled to God, we see the whole glory of God made good forever in it. I add, as regards Christ’s relationship with God, I have no view but what I suppose to be the common faith of all Christians, of His being His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased, that, as a living man here below, divine delight rested upon Him. Though never so acceptable in obedience as on the cross, there He was acceptable as, for God’s glory, bearing the forsaking of God. That of course was a special case.
But two objections have been raised here to what I have taught, and to these I turn. One is a certain change which took place in our Lord’s position then, His being given up of God and giving up Himself into the hands of men to accomplish the purposes and glory of God and make propitiation for our sins. On this the New Testament is as clear as possible. We read, “No man laid hands on him, for his hour was not yet come.” From His own lips, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” He tells them that the Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of men. Till His hour was come, hostile as they might be, this could not be. Hence He tells His disciples, “When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? and they said, Nothing. Then said he unto them, But now he that hath a purse, let him take it for I say unto you that this that is written must be accomplished in me: And he was reckoned with the transgressors, for the things concerning me have an end.” And again, “When I was daily with you in the temple, ye stretched forth no hand against me, but this is your hour and the power of darkness.” Now, though for the purpose of bringing about the work of atonement, delivering the Son of man into the hands of men was not atonement. The hour of the priests and scribes was that of the power of darkness. Before that, if the crowd would throw Him down from the brow of the hill, He passed through the midst of them and went His way. No doubt He gave up Himself. This side of the wondrous picture John gives, when he shows the band of men going backward and falling to the ground, and records the unspeakably precious words of the blessed Lord, “If ye seek me, let these go their way.” But up to this, in the accomplishment of the counsels of God, there was a hand that restrained the will or the force of the people. Now the Son of man was to be delivered into the hands of men. It was not the actual moment of atonement, though the path to it; but the hour of evil men and the power of darkness. Was it sympathy? With whom? To deny a change in the position of the Lord and God’s ways with Him as a man on earth, I do not say or think in His relationship with God, is flying in the face of Scripture. It was not atonement, it was not sympathy, but the suffering of the blessed Son of God now going to be delivered into the hands of men, whose hour as instruments of the power of darkness it now was, which it was not before. But there was complicated sorrow. He was meeting indignation and wrath. He was not yet drinking the cup. He was not yet smitten, but He was going on to it, given up to that which was the instrument of it, pressed that it should be done quickly, was in the hour which meant all that and meant all that to His soul. It had its own sorrow, but His soul was troubled—first prayed that He might be saved from the impending hour, but bowed to it as the hour He was come into the world for; then urged that it should be done quickly, then was sorrowful even unto death, because, now, just delivered up into the hands of men, He was meeting indignation and wrath. The very thing that made His sufferings then so deep was that He knew that He was meeting indignation and wrath. The wickedness of man was heartless and without conscience, but it led on step by step to the cross, to the cup which He had to drink. He was now as Son of man delivered, or just about to be delivered, into the hands of men, rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, the leaders of Israel. The shadow of death from the cross was not merely foreseen in the sunshine of divine service and favor, but passing over His soul, though not yet drinking the cup. He tells us so Himself. He was in this not sympathizing with others. He looked for sympathy from others, and prayed His disciples to watch with Him. He was not actually drinking the cup, but He was meeting indignation and wrath, I repeat. This gave to His delivering up to man its force and sorrow of death. He learned obedience by the things which He suffered, and in the days of His flesh made supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death.
There are two collateral points which have been insisted upon: the Lord’s connection with Israel, and His full meeting and resolving the question of good and evil, so that deliverance might be absolute and eternal. I am not sure but that in the tract these two points are intermingled so as to produce possible confusion in the mind. The latter is far deeper and requires more spiritual apprehension than the former, which connects itself (not with what is absolute and essential, eternal and perfect good, and putting away evil fully judged and completely estimated in the ways and work of Christ, but) with God’s government in the earth, of which Israel is the center. God has made Israel that center, as Deut. 32 clearly states, and while He has called the Church to be the witness of sovereign grace which associates her with Christ in heavenly glory, yet He has (from the moment He took Israel to be His people) never changed His counsel nor purpose in that people. Enemies as touching the gospel, they are still beloved for the fathers’ sake; for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. But God has always put men first under responsibility, and when they failed, accomplished, or rather will accomplish, His counsels in grace.
But as regards Israel, the trial was twofold, as indeed in a certain sense with all, their faithfulness to Jehovah, and their reception of Messiah, of Him who comes in the name of Jehovah and who is Jehovah Himself, but Jehovah come in grace. The one was the controversy with idols, brought out in Isa. 40 to 48, where their comforting and Christ Himself withal are promised, but where the question is idolatry, Babylon, and Cyrus, but looking on to final deliverance for the righteous. On that I do not insist farther. The other was the coming of Messiah, of Jehovah Himself in grace as a test. This is treated from chapter 49 to 57 going on to final deliverance of the righteous, but turning on the rejection of Christ, introducing atonement, here especially for the nation, but embracing every believer. This question I need not say was brought to an issue in the history of Christ, the future result for Israel being still matter of hope and prophecy, yea, of Christ’s own prophecy in Matt. 23; 24 Christ died for that nation, or it could not have had the future blessing. Now we must remark that what is promised to Israel is fulfilled only to the remnant. The hopes are the hopes of Israel. It is Israel’s blessing; but if God had not left a very small remnant, they would be like Sodom. This remnant, a third part, will pass through the fire, through the terrible tribulation such as never was, though in a large degree sheltered and hidden of God. Still they will pass through the fire. (Zech. 13:99And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God. (Zechariah 13:9); Mal. 3:2, 3; Isa. 26:20, 2] with what precedes.) Abundant scripture might be quoted to the same purpose. The prophetic part of the New Testament confirms this, in the Apocalypse and in the Lord’s prophecy in Matthew, and it is diligently expounded in Rom. 9-11 to reconcile the certainty of these promises with the no-difference doctrine of the apostle. What part did Christ take in these sorrows in spirit? That their rejecting Him was the immediate cause of their own rejection, is evident. (Isa. 1; Zech. 13; 14, and the Lord’s own prophecy in Matt. 23; Luke 19:42, 44.) That He lied for the nation John tells us, as does Isa. 53. That He wept over Jerusalem, the true Jehovah who would often have gathered her children. (Luke 13:32-34; 19:42.) That it is in Israel God is to be glorified in the earth, Isa. 49 makes perfectly clear. Equally so that His rejection was consequently felt by Christ as having labored in vain and spent His strength for naught and in vain; though the answer brings out necessarily a far fuller glory as the result of the work which He knew to be perfect.
This leads us at once to the truth that the Lord was deeply sensible of the effect of His rejection as regards the nation. The law had been broken, but idolatry given up, and Jehovah was come into the midst of His people with deliverance and blessing in His heart and in His hand—come surely to give Himself for them as an atonement, but first presenting Himself to them the true heir and vessel of promise, the minister and crown of all blessing, the minister of the circumcision for the truth of God. But He was the outcast of the people and labored as regards that in vain, nor (though the remnant got far better things, as Christ’s own glory was largely enhanced by it) could the remnant then have the blessings and glory promised in and with the Messiah: they were to take up their cross and follow Him. Jehovah, anticipating the great final deliverance, sent that Elias in spirit who was to come before Him and the great and notable day of the Lord. They did to him whatever they listed, and the Son of man was to suffer. The New Testament, as the Old, brings, as to Israel, Christ’s presence and the last days together: “Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come.” (Matt. 10) And “Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord,” quoting Psa. 118, as He did for the rejected stone. At the same time the body of the nation was now apostate, crying, “We have no king but Caesar,” rejecting formally their Messiah, and, in Him, Jehovah come in grace to speak a word in season to him that was weary. Was the Lord indifferent to all this? Was He, because He was going to accomplish a greater work in atonement, indifferent to the setting aside of God’s beloved people, to the present merging all the promises, as regards them, in judgment and long rejection, wrath coming upon them to the uttermost; to the entire setting aside of the promises looked at as resting on the reception of Messiah come in the flesh, His own laboring for naught and in vain, and being cut off as Messiah and having nothing, and the people apostatizing and joining the Gentiles against the Lord and His anointed, so that wrath and judgment came upon them—was He indifferent, I say, to all this? or did He feel it? Sympathy with His disciples we can understand. But was all this no source of suffering to the Lord? He could not sympathize with apostasy. He was in no such case, but faithful to the very end, perfect in it with God; but was it nothing to Himself, no sorrow, that God’s people were thus cut off, cut off Himself instrumentally by that very apostasy, so that the then hope of Israel closed with Him, for that Isa. 1 positively declares? He could not separate His own cutting off from theirs as the consequence of it. This Dan. 9:26, as well as Isaiah, plainly testifies.
Let us see how His Spirit works in His servants. The Lamentations of Jeremiah are the deep and wondrous expression of this; not only that what had been so beautiful under God’s eye, how Nazarites whiter than milk had been set aside, but God had cast down His altar, profaned His sanctuary. So Isaiah would have Jehovah rend the heavens and come down. (See Isa. 63; 64) So Daniel in the beautiful pleading of chapter 9. Has Christianity removed and destroyed this feeling? There was one who had great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart for his kinsmen according to the flesh, Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises, of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, God over all blessed for evermore. That was the way Paul would know Christ no more; he knew Him in the glorious and heavenly results of atonement, but his heart groaned over Israel as God’s people to whom the promises and Christ in the flesh belonged. He could wish himself accursed from Christ for them, as Moses had wished to be blotted out of Jehovah’s book for their sakes, Israel according to the flesh, but God’s people according to the flesh, and to whom according to the flesh Christ belonged. Israel was responsible for receiving Him. He came to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Did Christ’s Spirit produce these feelings in His witnesses before and after His coming and rejection, and He Himself remain indifferent, careless, as to His people whom He had foreknown? It was not so. Indignation and wrath were coming upon them, and He felt it. It had well nigh been executed in Paul’s time, and by Christ’s Spirit he felt it, though his heart had known Christ in glory and would only now so know Him. This is the language of scripture: “And his soul was grieved,” we read in Judg. 10, “for the misery of Israel.” In all their afflictions he was afflicted,” I read in Isa. 63.
That same Jehovah came as man. Did His humanity dry up His concern for Israel and His lost sheep? The same Jehovah then could weep over the beloved and chosen city, and say, “Oh that thou hadst known even thou, in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes.” He was not merely Jehovah, but as Messiah He took Messiah’s place in Israel, not in its apostasy surely, but with the godly remnant who, as to earthly promises, could then as well as Messiah Himself take nothing. The Shepherd was smitten and the sheep scattered. He was the Head and bringer in of the promises. His cutting off was the setting aside, as then presented, all the hopes and promises of Israel; and as Messiah He was to be cut off, and, as the consequence of that, judgment, indignation, and wrath, were, to come upon Israel. Indignation is, I may say, the technical word used for the time of trouble in the last days. And Paul says wrath was come upon them. I believe Christ entered into this, felt it all in connection with His own cutting off. No doubt He went infinitely farther. He made atonement for them, but He felt fully the rejection of the people, bore it on His heart, told them not to weep for Him but for themselves, for judgment was coming on them. He was the green tree, and this came upon Him. What would be done in the dry, dead, and lifeless Israel?
But this leads me to cutting off and smiting. Not only is the judgment of Israel connected with the cutting off and smiting of Christ, as we have seen, but the condition of the remnant in Israel in the last days, and of the just as the remnant of Israel from Messiah’s days, is deduced from this. It is so in Dan. 9. The weeks are not yet run out for the ceasing of Jerusalem’s desolations and wars.
The last terrible half week is to come, of which the Lord tells us in Matt. 24, referring to Dan. 12 And why all this? Messiah was to be cut off and have nothing. It is not glory gained by atonement which is spoken of here, but Messiah’s cutting off so that He had nothing of the glory and kingdom of Israel; but Israel on the contrary came under judgment and a desolator. Zechariah teaches us the same thing. The blessed One who had been man’s possession (servant) from His youth had been wounded in the house of His friends. His own were guilty of it. But there is more than this in His death; the sword is to awake against Jehovah’s Shepherd— “the man that is my fellow,” says Jehovah of hosts. “Smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered.” His sheep, as connected with Him in Israel, were scattered, and then the prophet goes on to the portion of Israel and the remnant in the last days; two thirds will be cut off and the remnant go through the fire. We have already seen that in Matt. 10; 23, the Lord connects the same periods, and in the latter case with His rejection. They stumbled on the stone and were broken; when it fell on them, it would grind them to powder. If I find the details and feelings more entered into in the psalms, I find the teaching and history in the gospels of what brought it all about. Now I fully recognize that the smiting was on the cross, that is distinctly stated in the papers I am republishing. But I affirm that Christ entered into all these sorrows and sufferings on His way to the cross, and that in a special manner as looking to be cut off, when His hour was come and He was to be no longer absolutely safe from the machinations of the people become His enemies, but delivered by them to men.
Further: the charges and accusations made have led me to search Scripture on the subject, and I do not find that smiting is ever used for atonement (though atonement also was wrought when He was smitten), but for the cutting off of Messiah in connection with the Jews. Forsaking of His God is that which in Scripture expresses that work which stands wholly alone. Some passage may have escaped me, but I have searched. It does not trouble me that it should be so taken, because it is certain that when He was smitten, atonement was wrought. But I prefer Scripture to the sayings of men, and until they produce some scripture which disproves it, I shall believe that the act of cutting off of Messiah is spoken of in smiting, and not the work of atonement to which nothing can be compared. The smiting or cutting off of Messiah is used in connection with another subject in Scripture, though He was there wounded for the people’s transgressions, and with His stripes they will be healed. But the cutting off and smiting is referred to the setting aside of previous hopes in the flesh, not to securing future ones in promise, though that work, blessed be God, was done then. It is not that there was wrath inflicted on Christ for any state or relationship He was in besides atonement. I believe Christ never was in the state or relation which brought it, but that He entered into all the sufferings of Israel in spirit, passed through them in His own soul, felt what would be done in the dry tree, though He was the green one.
But what I have said leads me to another difficulty which has been raised—that governmental wrath would, but for atonement, be necessary condemnation. I hold so fully. Israel was the scene of God’s righteous government, and indignation and wrath were coming on them in that way. That is the positive testimony of scripture, these words being used, as they are both together, in the Lamentations of Jeremiah: indignation, as I have said, technically in Isaiah and Daniel for the great time of trial in Israel, and wrath by the Apostle Paul, and more than one equivalent to them in the Lamentations. But if Christ had not wrought atonement, there could not have been indignation and wrath as chastening and teaching for good. It must have been condemnation. It could not be said, By this shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, referring to the last days; nor could Jerusalem be told that she had received at the hand of the Lord double of all her sins; nor by the Lord that she should not come out till she had paid the very last farthing, if atonement had not been made. God could exercise judgment as government because of the atonement. He could show Himself righteous in forbearance as to the Old Testament sins by the blood-shedding of Jesus. He was long-suffering in that government, abundant in goodness and mercy and truth, yet would by no means clear the guilty. But the cross laid the foundation for that. It laid the foundation for heavenly glory, but it laid the foundation for that too. Christ, therefore, while He saw and felt, entered into, all the sorrow and indignation on Israel in the fullest way; went on farther that it might not be condemnation, and made atonement. Indignation and wrath in His case was not merely governmental, but the full dealing of God with sin—which is atonement. I find both plainly revealed to me in Scripture, for I have shown that Christ in spirit did enter into the sorrows of Israel connected with His own cutting off. Smiting (הכנ in Hebrew, πατασσω in Greek,) is used for the cutting off of the Shepherd of Israel; but, when smitten, He was forsaken of God, and made atonement for sin; was bruised for Israel’s and our iniquities.
I have now to turn to another objection, which was presented to me in my correspondence—Christ’s resolving the whole question of good and evil. It is the one sole and whole foundation of blessing. The same gross mistake was made as to it as to all the rest. He must have known, it was alleged, evil in His heart to have gone through it. It is difficult to deal with such entire darkness of apprehension. Why, God knows good and evil perfectly. Has He (the Lord pardon even the question!) any evil in His heart? But there was more as to Christ. He had to learn it by going through every temptation by it—its bitterness in its pressure on His own soul. He had none of it. He was the Prince of life; did He not know what death was? He was love in its expression: did He not know what hatred was? And just because, and in the manner in which, He was love, was the horribleness of hatred known to Him, even in detail. The love in which He sought the poor of the flock made Him feel what was the spirit which sought to hinder their coming in. When He denounced the scribes and lawyers, did He not feel the evil they were guilty of? The truth is a holy soul alone knows what evil really is, only He went through it all as trial. Was not His horror of corruption and hypocrisy measured by His holiness and truth? Was not His perfect absolute confidence tried and pained by the distrust and unbelief He met with, even in His disciples? Was not His delight in His Father’s love (I cannot say the measure, for it could not be measured, but) the gauge of His sense of wrath? Was not the horribleness of Satan’s asking Him to worship him known in the fullness of His own devotedness to His God? Was He not tested and tried by everything save sin within, that could try a soul; and, had it been possible, turn Him away from God? Was not sin known to Him by the assailment of temptation and the holiness of His own soul? Did He not learn obedience by its costing everything that was possible from man and Satan and God? He knew evil to reject it absolutely; to feel it absolutely by the tested perfection of good, which alone could perfectly feel what evil was; and die and give up self rather than fail in devotedness to His Father’s will and holy obedience; and then be made sin for us, so as to put it away by the sacrifice of Himself. He died for sin, “but in that he died, he died unto sin once; in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.” He has no more to do with sin, save to judge the sinner hereafter. The whole of God’s glory, as compromised by sin in the universe, was made good, glorified, exalted, in the fullest trial—everything that could try holiness and love. Hence the time will come when in heaven and earth righteousness will be established forever, sin unknown, and God be perfectly glorified.