IN considering these five verses I know we are proposing to tread on very familiar ground. Yet I am on very safe ground in bringing before you the finished and the yet-to-be-finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The aspect of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ that we now propose to consider, is the finished work. When on the cross, with His dying breath our blessed Lord Jesus cried. “It is finished,” that meant that the great work of sin-bearing was finished; finished to God’s eternal glory and to His entire satisfaction; finished in such a way that every sinner who rests upon that work is as sure of being in heaven as if he were there now. Whilst, however, there is the work that the Lord Jesus has finished, there is the work that He is carrying on at the present time, and there is the work to which He is going to put His hand and which He will bring to fruition in a future day—of these we will speak another time if He permit. But let us be absolutely clear with regard to this that everything that is being done today and everything that will be done, is based upon the finished work of Calvary so that you and I can never get away from the cross. All that it means to God, all that it means to Christ, you and I will never know. The story of the cross is the story that moves the heart of God, and it may well move your heart and mine as we contemplate it.
Well now, we are going to speak of the work that the Lord Jesus has finished. The very words of the latter half of the 26th verse show how great, and marvelous, and far-reaching a work that is. You will observe that when the Spirit of God brings before us the work of Christ in this way there is another thing that He brings before us, and that is the greatness of the Person who has accomplished the work. It is perfectly obvious that if so great a work had to be accomplished only a great Person could accomplish it. There was no angel in heaven that could do it, there was no man upon earth that could do it. So in the first chapter of this epistle we have Him presented to us as the Brightness of God’s glory, as the One who upholds all things by the word of His power, and yet He became Man, that by the finishing of that great work the way might be cleared so that God could come out to us in perfect grace, and you and I could go in to God in absolute righteousness, and have a standing before the throne of God, and find our home, our joy, our delight in the presence of God. In whatever way we look at it, it is indeed a great work.
Now let us observe the words, “by the sacrifice of Himself.” Often we do not realize the fathomless depths of meaning that are in them. Think of how this little planet has become utterly defiled by the foul intruder, sin! Instead of sweeping this planet off altogether, or sweeping all the sinners off the planet, the Lord Jesus came, and not by the word of His power, not by the display of His greatness, not by the showing forth of His Majesty, but by “the sacrifice of Himself,” He put away sin. Oh, may God burn the words into our souls! It meant His stooping from the throne eternal divesting Himself of His insignia of glory as the eternal Son of the eternal God, coming down into this world, knowing and seeing the awful havoc wrought by sin. It meant His being made that hateful thing called sin so that sin might be put away, that His heart’s desire might be gratified, that you and I might be brought into the wonderful blessing that had been planned for us before the foundation of the world, that He might present to God a sinless world, a deathless world, a world where everything should be according to His heart, where everything should set forth His glory. In order that this might be accomplished, He sacrificed Himself.
Observe one thing more that we have in this chapter. It was His own voluntary act. We are told in the 14th verse that He “through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God.” The next chapter tells that He said, “Lo I come... to do Thy will, O God.” What led Him to offer Himself? His unflinching devotedness lo the will of God, His consuming desire for the glory of God, His determination that the creation should be cleared of everything that was contrary to God, and that an altogether new world should be brought in where everything should be according to His mind.
Now I want to consider very briefly what God has secured as the result of Christ’s death, what Christ Himself has secured, and what we have secured. I think I will reverse the order and begin with the lesser first.
The first thing we wanted to know when the Spirit of God wrought conviction in our hearts was how to get rid of our sins, and how to be sure of escaping hell and spending eternity in Heaven. We realized that we were sinners under the judgment of God; and when we got rid of the burden of our sins we were uncommonly happy, and we probably thought that was the beginning and the end of everything. As we got on a little bit in the school of God, and as we studied the precious Word of God, we realized that there was a great deal more for us than that. Now just let us see what we have got.
In the first place we have got rid of our sins (verse 28). The word “many” is an indication that the result of Christ’s work was not by any means confined to the Jews; those to whom the epistle was addressed were converted Jews and they might have thought it was for Jews and no others. All who are resting upon this finished work are entitled to say that “He bare our sins in His own body on the tree,” and this gives peace with God.
But then He has secured a great deal more for us than that. We have been introduced into a wealth of blessing that it is impossible to describe. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” This means that God has prepared blessing that is altogether beyond the ken of man, things that we shall never be able to enjoy to the full until we are in the likeness and in the company of Christ in the glory of God, and then it is going to take us all eternity to explore His greatness and to enjoy their richness and fullness. Meanwhile God reveals these things to us by His Spirit, and He seeks to lead us into the ever-increasing enjoyment of them now.
I wonder, my dear friends, to what extent you and I are in the practical daily enjoyment of these things now. Do we realize that we are children of God? We talk about being brought into the place of closest intimacy to our Lord Jesus Christ, do we realize that? If we realized that we are children of God, that we are saints of God, that we are called with a heavenly calling, that we are connected with the One who is the Lord of Heaven and earth, that we may soon hear the voice of our blessed, adorable Lord and Saviour, do you not think that it all would have a revolutionizing effect on our lives?
How great the need of men and women who really believe what they profess! We profess that we are connected with One risen from the dead, whose cross separates us from this world, but is it not often the case that we are found very much in the world; engrossed with the things of, the world, and following the practices of the world? What a mighty difference there should be. Our hearts should be where Christ lives in the home of God. Then we will find our joy, our delight, in the presence of God and in the company of Christ, and we will reflect the warmth, the light, and the delight of heaven wherever we go.
In the next place consider what Christ has got as the result of His death. The great crowning desire of His heart is to be gratified. Before the earth’s foundations were laid He saw those who were to be His Bride, and upon that Bride His affections were set. But He could only have her “by the sacrifice of Himself.” Sin had come in, and threatened to rob Christ of that upon which His heart was set. But so fair was that Bride in His eye, and so unspeakable and so immeasurable was His love for her that He came into the world, went to the cross, and He sacrificed Himself.
When the Spirit of God wants to impress us with the greatness of the love of Christ, He uses over and over again two words, “gave Himself.” The apostle Paul, as he thought of the love of Christ for him personally, said, “The Son of God... loved me and gave Himself for me.” Then as he took in the whole range of grace he said, “Christ also loved us and has given Himself for us.” As he thought of the Bride, the object of Christ’s love, he said, “Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it.” We want that love to fill and flood and thrill our hearts, and if that be so we will not be able to contain ourselves. There will be the welling over of our hearts in praise and in worship to the Father; there will be the laying of ourselves, and of our all at the feet of the One who loved us and who gave Himself for us; and the warmth of that love will radiate to others as we go about, though perhaps quite unconsciously to ourselves.
The Lord Jesus has secured for Himself that Bride, and today the great work of the Holy Spirit of God in this world is in connection with her. The gospel is preached in order that men and women, hearing and answering to the call, may be taken out of the world to form part of the Bride of Christ. You dear Sunday-School teachers when you go to your classes a little later, just you look upon those boys and girls and say to yourself, “If Jack gets saved this afternoon, or if Mary gets saved, they are going to form part of the Bride of Christ.” You gospel preachers when you go to preach tonight, say to yourselves, “When those unsaved souls in my audience get saved they will go to form part of the Bride of Christ.” Then when souls are saved, you will share the joy of God that His purpose is being fulfilled; you will share the joy of Christ that the moment is drawing appreciably nearer when His Bride will be completed and when He will be able to present her to Himself in all His own loveliness, in all her spotless beauty, because His beauty will be her beauty. Keeping that great end in view, we shall be encouraged to go forward in His service.
The last thing we think of, but by no means the least, is what God has secured by the death of Christ. The Lord Jesus appeared “in the end of the world,” or “in the consummation of the age,” to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. This age-long problem of SIN has been settled once and forever by the offering of the Lord Jesus Christ. But it happened in the consummation of the ages.
This gives us a wonderful insight into God’s gracious ways of working. He tried man in all sorts of ways, without law, under law, by sending the prophets, last of all by sending His own Son, and He allowed man no less than four thousand years in order to demonstrate to him the fact that sin was so absolutely rooted in his being, that it was an utter impossibility for him to get rid of it. There was more than that, man was such a poor, helpless, miserable, sin-sodden creature that not only could he do nothing to better himself, but he did not want anybody else to do it for him. Now the Lord Jesus has taken up and settled, once and forever, this age-long, insoluble problem of sin. He did it because the intrusion of sin into this world was a challenge to the throne of God. He would clear God’s creation of every trace of sin. That could not be done in any other way than “by the sacrifice of Himself,’’ though He could bring worlds into existence by the power of His word. To the cross at Calvary He went, and there by the sacrifice of Himself He met every claim of God’s throne. He glorified God and brought fullest satisfaction and joy to His heart. He laid the ground on which God is going to introduce a world where “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more pain,” for there shall be no more sin; a world from which―
“All taint of sin shall be removed,
All evil done away:
And we shall dwell with God’s Beloved,
Through God’s eternal day.”
How much does this side of things occupy our thoughts and engage our hearts? When the Lord Jesus calls us together around Himself in order that we may remember Him, and announce His death until He come, God desires that we should enter into His thoughts and get to His side, and if that be so we shall know what it is to be sharers of His joy. If I do not get beyond the fact that by His death my sins have been forgiven, I shall not have much power for worship though I may be there with a very thankful heart. But suppose we get away from ourselves, and even from the benefits that we have received and the blessing that has accrued to us, and enter in some measure into the wealth of glory that has been brought to God, His triumph over all the power of the enemy, the joy, the satisfaction and the delight that fill His heart; what will the result be? There will be thanksgiving and praise, and there will also be real Spirit-begotten worship rising from our hearts to the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us linger by that cross, and contemplating the great work that has been accomplished there, let us rejoice in the One who has accomplished it, through Him offering the sacrifice of praise to God the Father.
W. Bramwell, Dick.