Think for a moment what the praise of Christ was in such an hour, what His feelings must have been, when emerging from the darkness from the dust of death, from the abandonment of God! He alone could rightly estimate the immensity of it all, who having suffered once for sins now rests in the hard-won victory. Then it was that He bore our sins; then He who knew no sin was made sin. Risen from the dead, He is bearing sins no more; He is praising, and not alone, but "in the midst of the congregation."
Oh, what praises were Christ's, delivered now at length and from so great a death! But are they not our praises too? And is it not in "our midst" that He sings them? What a character does not this communion imprint on the church's worship! The praise of Christ, after sin was judged as it never can be again and He who was crucified in weakness lives by the power of God, gives the just and only full idea of what becomes God's assembly.
Truly His is in the highest sense a new song. Alone He has thus suffered; not alone does He praise, but in the full chorus of the consciously redeemed. How wondrous that it is not here merely "in" the congregation but "in the midst" of it that He thus sings! [39]