There are the Being in all its distinctive peculiarities, the attributes, and lastly the traits of character of the Supreme, which never were revealed or fully uncovered till the cross of Jesus our Lord. And then they came out fully, and presented, as I judge, the balance of the power and wisdom, and other attributes, together with the love, and light, and mercy, and compassion, and holiness of the Godhead, the clue to all the divine ways and thoughts when the new name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost shined forth, though not understood by any save God Himself. And this we contrast with the world-the selfish flesh of man and Satan. The cross was the stupendous work which formed the root of eternal redemption and salvation; the basis, too, of putting right all that had been wrong in or about any creature that had chosen to try to be independent of God.
But to turn to the cross itself. The Son of God was there as God's Anointed Man; in the region of death, scene of the temporary triumph of Satan over the first Adam, the earth was sin full: Satan, its prince, was there; he that was the executioner of the sentence of death for sin-sin into which, with subtlety and malice against God, he had beguiled Eve and led Adam; he was there, with murderous intent against men, and with power too, for he had the power of death.
The hour, solemn hour was come, in which the Christ of God was there too. For the hour was come, when He was to stand between God and Satan; and to stand there upon the question of judgment, and righteousness, and holiness, as to sin against God. Blessed be God who had such an One to put forward. One that was Jehovah's fellow, God manifest in flesh, over whom the devil had no power, nor the evil world; for He was holy, harmless, undefiled, apart from sin. The truth was Himself, and light as well as love was in Him.
And the light did shine out, and with it the truth stood confessed, as to every one and everything, and love was vindicated too. There was a cup full of wrath in its contents, God's unchangeable mind against sin in the creature. In Eden total darkness as to God and man had been the first and immediate effect of hearkening to the serpent, and defiantly setting God's word aside. Moral death had set in. Death of the body would follow; and what would be in the end? With the serpent cast down into the place prepared for him, they that followed him would be there also. Repressed and excluded from the presence of Him, whom having rejected, they then hated, ever learning the internal bitterness of sin, and never coming as creatures to the end of the lesson of what rebellion against the Infinite Creator means. What in the very constitution of things is never-ending, everlasting, could not be expressed in time in a finite creature: the thing is infinite; for God is infinite. " Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched," is a wise and true word; yet no human language could carry even that which the Christian mind can see in the positive side of it.
That cup the Lord claimed for Himself. It was the cup which the Father had given Him; should He not drink it? Shrink as a perfect man from being forsaken? " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?" He must and did in Gethsemane, and John 12:2727Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. (John 12:27), &c., shows He did. But taking it at His Father's hands, drink it He would; obedient unto death, the death of the cross, as the One that said, " Lo! I come, to do thy will, 0 God." And He took it, and drank it, and died that thereby He might thereafter stand confessed as the One that was the last Adam, life-giving Spirit.
But 'twas the hour of darkness then. No creature mind could answer the questions then, Where was God who had again and again publicly owned Him as "my beloved Son?" Why is He, the Christ, thus left? Where is the Spirit of God? Has the world, and the prince of the world, power over Him? Is man's wicked flesh thus to triumph? The darkness was felt darkness; the sun withdrew its light. To the understanding of a John a Mary, &c., what did it mean? They knew, through faith, God; and they knew the Christ. Their trust and hope were outside of themselves; their rest was in God alone. All around totally inexplicable to reason and to sense.
Himself, He knew all about it, though nevertheless He entered into and felt it all perfectly. His God's name and honor had been outraged by man, in and from Eden downwards. It was no light burden to bear the penalty thereof, and He had to allow man then and there to express his thoughts about His God upon and against Himself. He had the consciousness of the contrast between flesh in men, and His own flesh (as spotless, the only One that could be a sin-offering). He felt He had, too, the patient waiting for the devil to outwit himself, and go beyond the limits of any power which was of God; and I know not what else was in the mixture which He, as the
One dependent upon and obedient to God, had to drink. In the midst of it all, He it was, and He alone, who gave to God His place, and fully owned God in it all. The light of " there is God " shined out in perfect light amid the darkness, though the time was not come for God's being love in it all to be declared. He knew the love, and His love attributed in His own mind all about redemption, and salvation to God. He was the servant of God in it, suffered then as He had done before all what was apportioned to Him. And how does the power and value of His obedience unto death, the death of the cross, make Him to be the touchstone of " what is truth " then and there, when with enlightened eyes and hearts we, since Pentecost, look back upon it! Below the superficial surface of the current of the world, there was an under current of the counsel (Acts 2:2323Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: (Acts 2:23)) of God. Below the surface of One crucified through weakness, there was the Lamb of God bearing sins. And above it all, there was glory to God in the highest, peace toward man.
Nothing, I believe, is known by us aright, until its connection with the cross of Christ in God's mind is known. His cross may well make us count and act towards the whole system of the world, as towards a crucified, put-to-open-shame, thing, by its having crucified Him. Its character was revealed thereby, and the love that He bore and bears to us may well make us act as having ourselves been crucified together with Him on it (Rom. 6.), according to the mind and COUNSEL OF GOD.
The word of God, as it originated creation, so does it regulate His creatures.
In Eden, the blessing given to man was to remain his, unless or until he set aside God's word. From the ruin of the fall there is no escape but by receiving and becoming subject to the Word of God, in the declaration about the seed of the woman to bruise the serpent's head. The word of God (John 1) lies at the bottom of every fragment of the word written in its very core. Well may God, then, give to it the place He does in the affection He bears to the Son of His love. And well too may all blessing to us hinge in very grace upon our receiving that Word. This, it seems to me, is to be noticed, too, at. to the Spirit. He puts forward the Word, and now the word about the Christ before Him; thus recognizing, as does the Father, the Word, that word of God presented in person, and each detail of it given expression to by the Son; to speak of whom is the province of the Spirit.
The powerlessness of the Word apart from the Spirit, save to test man, is admitted.
Have you received the word as the word of God, and about the Christ? (Make sure you fail not in this.) In what part of it? The Spirit is behind and with it? Be assured of that, and He will make it to be quickening and vivifying.
In a certain sense, the reception and presence of the Spirit with a believer is a matter of faith, proved by the word he holds, and by the holding of that word. And vet the established believer who knows the doctrine of _Rom. 8, knows that it is the Word that found him, rather than he that found it; the Word that has laid hold of and holds him, rather than he that holds it.
The difficulty in some minds, as it has often appeared in reading meetings, and at les conferences, so called, (though they be but reading meetings upon a larger scale than usual, and giving little more place to the teacher), is as to the order in which the Spirit, and the Word through which He works, stand forward in the Scriptures.
It seems to me that God's order in counsel and plan and work for Himself, and His order for man in learning and knowing and doing, &c., are often in contrast, and necessarily so.