Not only are the vicarious sufferings of Christ owned by every true Christian, but. that He suffered also as the righteous One on the earth. The reproaches of those that reproached Jehovah fell on Him. He suffered being tempted, having come in grace, the sinless One, into our position. His holy nature, sinless and untouched by Satan—still as a man, suffered being tempted; His soul entered in the fullest way into the condition of sorrow and distress in which sin had plunged man, and Israel too, especially. In all their affliction, in this sense also, He was afflicted. His heart, fully feeling, entered into the fullest depths of it, so that under the sense of it, He could groan deeply in spirit. Not only so: it is evident that He anticipated the trial and suffering of death to which He was to be subject. By the grace of God He tasted death, and we know that He felt it beforehand, not only from the Psalms and the solemn sufferings of Gethsemane, but from His own words, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.” He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And here note, Christ, because it was His soul entering into it, could go to the full depths of all this unspared, and unsparing Himself. It was sinless grace and perfectness of love, which, having brought Him into this condition, made Him enter into it in all its fullness, and shrink from none of it. It became the divine Majesty, seeing He had placed Himself there to lead Him through the sufferings suited to this position: that is, it was fitting He should suffer. Hence our souls, though unable to estimate it, can understand its perfectness, and in spirit pass adoringly with Jesus into the midst of His sorrow. Nay, it is our privilege to enter into that part of His sorrow—His holy sorrow—which flowed from sinlessness and love, from service in spirit and knowledge of the mind of God in the midst of sin—to have the fellowship of His sufferings. His death itself can and is to be viewed in this light also, looked at as coming from man, and even Satan, however far this may be from being all that is found there, as, indeed, it is.
But the writer takes entirely different ground—ground which bases the sufferings of Christ on an entirely different principle. He speaks of sufferings, not into the depths of which He entered as the Holy One, but of wrath, to which He was obnoxious by reason of the position He was in, from which God interfered to deliver Him, from which He extricated Himself by perfect obedience, so that He never felt the whole of it. It was the curse of a broken law He was under by position, not vicariously, without conflict with wicked men, not by the contradiction of sinners endured in grief by a holy soul, which it is our privilege to endure too for His and righteousness' sake: but what it was no privilege to endure, and no profit neither; for if it was to be endured for the profit of others, how could He extricate Himself from it, and be preserved from suffering it all by the interference of God in comforting Him? It lay upon Him, and not vicariously, as that which it was well for Him to get out of as a curse not vicarious. Is it not sufficient to present this to the soul of a saint, for him to see that it subverts the faith of God's elect? It is not the true Christ of God, the Holy Thing born of Mary, that we have here, but one who participates, not by grace but by birth, in the curse, the fruitless curse which is fallen on man by reason of sin—not one who has taken the place in grace, for He extricates Himself from it, but one who is in it under the curse of the law by dire necessity of position. The substance of the truth of Christ's holy person is set aside, and His taking the curse on Himself is set aside—the two cardinal truths of the gospel of grace; and hence we shall find that all is confusion on these subjects (as it must be where the substance of the truth is lost), and the use of the Psalms as untrue and unfounded as possible. Under pretense of presenting the sufferings of Christ in a new and important point of view, the whole grace of them is lost; and, instead of in grace entering into the depths of the sorrow and suffering, whether of man or of Israel in their position before God—His soul entering into all the full depth of it in full purpose of soul without the least sparing, that, His soul knowing all, our souls might know His love had entered into all, and find its power there—it is a condition He is in necessarily by position as under a curse which He prays against, extricates Himself from, and is saved from enduring the full extent of, God interfering to deliver Him. I have already given the quotations which expressly teach this.
It is in vain to present other truths to make good the writer's orthodoxy. It is a mere blind. They are not the truths in question. On the point which the tracts teach, the truth of God is subverted. It is not a true Christ which is taught there. Nor does Christ enter fully into our sorrow, for He is spared it, and extricates Himself from it.
For thus it was. The Lord ordered that certain persons should be in trial and oppressed, that they might be fit vessels of Christ's Spirit, who alone could enter into all sorrow. The expression of what was true, perhaps, of them as to sin, because suited to Christ as entering in spirit, in grace, into the condition of Israel in the remnant—fully and entirely entering into it, not escaping or extricating Himself from it as naturally under it by position—and thus providing most blessed instruction as to Him for us, and what shall instruct and sustain the remnant of Israel as of His spirit prophetically, when really in the circumstances and state and guilt which He entered into in spirit. And here remark, that if it be not Christ entering into it in spirit, or vicariously, these psalms go a great deal too far; for they do not merely speak of relationship to God, but of actual guilt and sin.
Either Christ is speaking as charging Himself with the iniquities, or His soul is entering into their condition, both of which the writer says it is not, or in some way Christ, must be responsible for iniquities otherwise than vicariously. According to the writer, Christ was not in this condition after His baptism, but often before, referring to this very psalm. And mark, it is not what is earned in the way of punishment which is spoken of here (that may be understood); nor merely of the anger and hot displeasure (the same terms as in the sixth), but He speaks of Himself as involved in what earned it. That He can thus take it on Himself for the remnant, the full consequence of which was the cross, is readily accepted and understood; but that it was a position out of which He extricated Himself, and God interfered to spare and relieve Him, is nonsense indeed, but nonsense which destroys the whole truth as to Christ.
It is another gospel, which is not another; for death under the wrath of God is not here itself vicarious—not the bearing of the sins of His redeemed—but finding His way, by reason of the position He was in Himself, to that point where God could meet Him as having finished the work which death on the cross, due to the position He was Himself in, closed. It is not (as Irvingism) that He partook of sinful nature, so that He was obnoxious to wrath as such; but it is, that He was from His birth, by the position which He took as man, Himself at a distance from God. Not that He bore sins and took wrath on the cross: it was His own position, out of which He had to find His way to that point where God could meet Him, which point was death under wrath, which is what is indeed due to man in the flesh at a distance from God—the place where Christ always was.
But I beg the reader's attention to this point: that the writer, instead of increasing our apprehensions of the entering of Christ into our sorrow, or Israel's sorrow, does exactly the contrary. The truth teaches that His soul entered into the full depth of them, avoiding nothing—that, as captain of our salvation, and as the good shepherd, He led the way in sorrow. The writer teaches that He was obnoxious to wrath in virtue of His position as man and amongst Israel, and was preserved from much of what He would have suffered, as in that position, by prayer, faith, and obedience; so that the sympathies of Christ are largely curtailed. It would be hard to say, why He was not spared all, or why He had to bear some. He was there by reason of others, as in the position they had brought themselves into; but not for others, for He extricated himself out of it as far as possible. Moreover, it was God's appointment to Him of a certain quantity. I am not here returning to the inconsistency of this statement, but skewing that it was a limited suffering, arising from the position He was in relation to God—a position we have seen to be positive wrath, for that was man's—not His soul entering into that of others.
Now, I say that the Psalms, whether taken as to man or Israel, teach us that He entered into the full depths of suffering, which made Him the vessel of sympathizing grace with those who had to pass through them; and that, as seeing and pleading with God in respect of them. They were sinners, could claim no exemption, count on no favor which could deliver and restore. They must have taken the actual sufferings in connection with the guilt which left them in them without favor. But this was not God's thought—He was minded to deliver them; and Christ steps in grace. He takes the guilt of those that should be delivered—that was vicarious suffering as a substitute—and, in the path of perfect obedience, puts Himself in the sorrow through which they had to pass; enters into it so as to draw down the efficacy of God's delivering favor on those who should be in it, and be the pledge, in virtue of all this, of their deliverance out of it as standing thus for them, the sustainer of their hope in it, so that they should not fail. Not that they should not pass through it: it was because they were so to pass through it according to the righteous ways of God in respect of their folly and wickedness and to purify them inwardly from it all, that Christ entered into it to be a spring of life, and sustainer of faith to them in it, when the hand of oppression should be heavy from without, the sense of guilt terrible from within, and hence no hope of favor, but that One, who had assured and could convey this favor, had taken up their cause with God, and passed through it for them. And hence Christ did not escape where they would, because he must suffer the full penalty of the guilt and evil, or He could not deliver them. Thus Christ must pass personally fully through the sorrow, as He did in spirit; and, besides that, have no deliverance, but, on the contrary, make atonement for the guilt.
But it was as being near to God, save as in atonement, that He passed through it all. And though, in entering into it in spirit, He might see all the terrors of death and judgment before Him, and feel it anticipatively, yet He, as perfectly near to God and in favor, could at once turn to Him in perfectness, and hence make available all the grace and favor of God towards Him, as regarded that case, in behalf of those who should come to be in it (this we see continually in the Psalms, and in the Gospels, too), and have all the mind of God for them in that case, which they could use when they found themselves in it, even though in darkness. And how many in darkness, even in these Christian times, have so availed themselves of them! And this, because He was in the perfect favor, and could count on the perfect favor of God, while passing through these depths, and thus, through the atonement, make it available as to all the circumstances for others in its suitable application, for others ruined else in their guilt. It was favor, and sustaining, and blessing, during the whole course of and in the circumstances, not the deliverance of One who was at a distance, as in the position of those who were so, Himself obnoxious to wrath.
And hence we and that, while all the most exquisite sympathies of the Lord's sufferings are precious in Him and for us, inasmuch as in general the saint is always a sufferer among sinners, and the circumstances are analogous, and we have to walk as He walked, and the grace precious in His walk by which He lived is precious for us; yet the prophetic application is, properly speaking, to Israel, not to the church, save in a particular way in some very peculiar passages, where the remnant of Israel is considered after His resurrection, which formed the first nucleus of the church, and where the heavens are vaguely alluded to—where we now know the church will be, when the judgments come on the earth. There is one point which particularly refers to this—The constant claim for vengeance and deliverance by destruction of the psalmist's enemies. This is not the church's cry, because her deliverance is by being taken out of the scene. That is the certain character of the deliverance. But, in the Psalms, it is destruction of enemies. The resurrection is clearly put forward as the confidence of those whom the enemy may slay—a principle ever true, and, in fact, accomplished in Christ. How fully this applies to the remnant of Jews, in the latter day oppressed by the enemy, every one will see. But this by the bye.
Let us examine the Psalms in their connection with Christ Himself, who was, as in Israel, the faithful One in the midst of a rebellious and apostate race, but yet put to the test by this last visit in goodness. But, as regards His path and trials, Christ was sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He called all as such, doubtless; but it was a separative mission. His sheep were to hear His voice. His fan was in His hand—the ax at the root of the trees. The meek were to inherit the land—the poor in spirit to have the kingdom. His preaching righteousness and truth was in the great congregation, but the effect was to gather a little flock, with whom all His associations were, and to whom it was His Father's good pleasure to give the kingdom. This was His position in Israel. From such, and the thoughts of One perfect before God in such a position, the testimony of the spirit of prophecy in the Psalms flowed, and flowed for those who shall be in such a position in the latter day; while, as the revelation of the perfection of Christ, they are the blessed portion of the church in all ages. From all this it flows that some psalms speak of Christ Himself as alone making atonement; others of His sorrows in life as taking up the cause of the godly and being perfectly so Himself; others the prophetic provision of the expression of right feelings by the remnant in the latter day, into whose condition He thus enters in spirit.
We will examine the Psalms a little to bring this out. The first psalm presents the blessedness, natural in God's ways, to the perfect man under the law; distinguishing Him from the wicked. The second presents the title of Christ, in the decree of Jehovah, to the headship over the heathen, as set King in Zion. The third at once turns to the actual position. The righteous man is surrounded with enemies—suffers instead of reigning. The rest show out all the thoughts of God as to this, in sorrow, or in purpose and final glory. “How are they increased,” says the righteous man, “that trouble me! There is no help for him in his God. But thou, O Lord, art a shield;” closing with the great testimony in Israel—ever true— “Salvation belongeth unto the Lord. His blessing is upon his people.” The fourth: They turn His glory into shame. But they would know that Jehovah had set apart the godly man for himself. Many could say there was no good, but for him the light of Jehovah's countenance satisfied him. The Lord only was his refuge. Here we have the position of the righteous remnant fully provided for, and the spirit of Christ entering fully into it; putting real strength into it, for the name of Jehovah is a strong tower. Fifth: He finds himself surrounded by confident wickedness; but God does not take pleasure in it. He knows God's name. There were bloody and deceitful men. He calls on God to destroy them. He will come into His temple. The Lord would bless the righteous. Sixth: In the midst of these workers of iniquity the righteous soul sees death before it. His soul is vexed. He sees the righteous indignation of God upon the people. The Spirit of Christ enters into that which was due to, and ought to be felt by, the righteous remnant in the day of trouble as really due to it. The righteous soul felt it as the chastening hand of God, saw the rod, and who had appointed it, and bowed down as in the presence of death (the simple pass on and are punished); but looked perfectly to the Lord in that condition, saying, “Thou, O Lord, how long?” The Spirit of Christ entering into this, does not ‘preserve' from seeing the rod and feeling the burthen, but quite the contrary, and enables the soul to look constantly to the Lord.
Christ, then, does enter in spirit into this sorrow of the remnant fully: but it is not His relation to God as due to Him as associated with the people. It is because He is near God through it all, that He can hold the soul of the remnant in the place of sustaining grace by faith in the position where they were to receive the chastisement. It is not Himself at a distance, as the place of the sinful man under wrath (save in atonement) in His relation to God; but the link with the remnant in spirit, when in the circumstances where they would feel all pressing upon them, and could not have been near God, being sinners, and guilty as a nation; but that He who had drawn them to seek righteousness maintained them in spirit, brought them into the sustaining value of His place by entering into theirs in grace. The position is the position of the remnant; the link with God in it, Christ. Sometimes it rises up therefore to where He alone could individually stand, and becomes a direct prophecy of Him; and then we find His interest in, and application of, all this to the remnant as a distinct body from Him. In general, to understand the Psalms, we must see the Jewish remnant faithful in trial, and the Spirit of Christ taking up this position to link them with the strength of Jehovah, as well as (in some psalms) bearing sin alone in the way of atonement that He might be able to do so. Sometimes it is the deliverance and glory which this strength will accomplish as the answer.
So (Psa. 7) Christ pleads in the midst of the people in His righteousness, and calls to Jehovah to awake to the judgment which He has commanded, lifting up Himself in anger against the rage of His enemies. Christ, as He was, did not do this, and could not, but the contrary, for higher and more glorious reasons—nor, can the church now. It is His spirit speaking in and for the remnant. Yet the Spirit of Christ knew perfectly his title to this righteous vengeance: but He had a higher work to accomplish. He could have asked His Father, and have had twelve legions of angels; but the Scriptures were to be fulfilled. The disciples were not even to tell that He was the Christ: the Son of man was to suffer, and hold a higher and more glorious place. He had come to save men's lives, not to destroy them; and He prayed for His ignorant enemies.
Hence, from the accomplishment of the effect of Christ's taking up the cause, and entering thus into the circumstances of the earthly people, in Psa. 8 Jehovah, the God of Israel, has His name excellent in all the earth, as the God of the Jews, in the exaltation of the Son of man. In Psa. 9 we have the judgment executed against the enemies so often complained of, and an enlarged account of it. So in Psa. 10 the wicked thus domineering in the latter day are fully described, and the result for the humble remnant, whose heart God prepared and caused his ear to hear. In the psalms which follow on this, this is fully entered into; that is, the Spirit of Christ draws out the whole scene, becoming the spring and portrayer of all the varied exercises of feeling in that day, in the fullest sympathy with the humble, whose heart God had prepared. And it is exceedingly lovely to see all the weaknesses, sorrows, thoughts, feelings, exercises, spoken of by the Spirit of Christ Himself. All this supposes weakness. ‘I had said almost as they,' says the poor oppressed upright one in that day—that, when all the circumstances by which they shall be occasioned in that day are there, they may have, by the word, the vehicle to their hearts of this sympathy, and the certainty of it in the very thoughts presented by it for and in the circumstances. It is not an excellency out of the reach of their condition; it is the entering of the Spirit of Christ into it. This is partially true of us; but it is not quite the same, because there Christ descends in sympathy into the circumstances, as there with them, whereas for us He is on high, and we having received the Holy Ghost consequent on the knowledge of full redemption, to join Christ in heaven, and so be ever with Him, we have Him as our high priest on high to bring us in spirit there, out of where we are, and having suffered being tempted, maintaining the communion of the weak with the perfectness of the light we belong to, and the fullness of glory and perfection which we see by faith, and in which we walk. The Holy Ghost in us presents those groanings which cannot be uttered, because, being already associated with the joy and glory of that new creation, we groan, being burthened with our connection with the old. Our enemies are spiritual. We do not look for deliverance by the execution of judgment on earthly foes, though we see and can desire the deliverance of earth by it in due time. But here the blessed Jesus provides His sympathies for a people who are not in this position, but in trials from which, for the most part, unless killed, the execution of judgment can alone deliver them; and they wait for the Lord, saying, ‘How long?' and find in the words of Jesus that He has not forgotten them, knows their sorrows, and furnishes them through His Spirit with the expression of them, an expression of them of which God takes notice as being of the Spirit of Christ Himself who has made the atonement for the nation, though it he but the cry of weakness, but divinely suited to their state. They, too, vent their sorrow in what they know outwardly and inwardly, for it cannot be otherwise, for the words of God are sweet and known by His own to be the words their God has given them.
Often, as in Psa. 14 we have the Lord's view of all this. He rises above the circumstances and takes a view of them. How encouraging to the poor tried remnant! yet, putting them in their place as sinners, for they are not by known redemption out of that, though they wait and hope for it. Hence it is, too, that these psalms often suit souls awakened and in that state. Hence, in Psa. 15, we have just a description of the character of those who shall find a place in God's tabernacle. In the sixteenth, we find one of those psalms which shows us (as the apostle quotes their general principle as illustrating the position of Christ), that Christ did not merely depict and express, or sympathize, in a way of provision for, or in divine intelligence, the sorrows of the remnant, but that He came Himself into their place, and suffered, being tempted, and tasted all the sorrow, so as to be able to succor them that were tempted. He was in the place, not of distance, but of dependence. It is saints who want sympathy, however weak, and however their feelings are the expressions of infirmity—not man at a distance and disobedient. He was in the position of dependence, in the place of sorrow, but perfection in the dependence, of a saint. Here Christ looks to be preserved by God, for, as a man, He puts His trust in Him. He said to Jehovah, “He was his Adon, his Lord; to the saints and the excellent one arth, all his delight was in them” —not with man at a distance, as Himself obnoxious to wrath because He was there (though saints may feel their sins when called into the place of trial and repentance and chastening, feel them according to grace), nor with the mass of disobedient Israel, but with the saints and excellent of the earth. This is Christ's place in the psalms, unless alone in the atonement. Still it is in Israel: He will not go after another God: Jehovah was the portion of His inheritance; and He sees in this confidence in Jehovah, the resurrection as His path of life and joy.
“I think I see in these psalms, which are the expression of the thoughts of Christ Himself, in a certain sense a higher tone, more perfectness, in that He is in the absolute completeness and perfectness of feeling which belongs to perfectness in the place in which He is. He may be in the very depths, but He is perfectly and perfect there. He has exactly that feeling which suits a perfect apprehension of the place He is in. He enters perfectly into the tossings to and fro of the hearts of His poor saints who through grace feel rightly, but hardly know how, and do not know how to estimate absolutely (it would be impossible and contradict their place as exercised because of imperfection, and always feeble, never divine), the place they are in relation to God. He enters, I say, perfectly into their feelings; but His feelings are perfect, and hence there is an exact perfect setting of each thing in its place, which leaves no broken or vague impression. We see one who has scanned in the light the whole extent of His position, though that position be the depth of darkness itself, giving God perfectly His place in relation thereto. Hence these psalms become as centers of thought for the whole book (as stakes in the hedge which sustain and keep it all in place, though others form it), as they will be in fact for the remnant, as a pledge of blessing for all in similar circumstances of trial, though Christ were alone in the expiatory part of them—and this they habitually express also.
Thus this Psa. 16 So Psa. 22 Forsaken of God, no uncertainty, no hope He may not be. He is (O wondrous thought and blessed one that it should. have been so!) yet equally perfect in His estimate of God: ‘Thou continuest holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.' All the powers of evil were then against Him, and at the same time forsaken of His God, for whom to be near Him He cried in the hour of His distress: but perfect in owning the perfection of God in it notwithstanding all. Weakness, hostility, and abandonment did not give an imperfect thought of all that God was. He was heard. So in my judgment, Psa. 23, where He walks the path of the blessing and trial of faith, and presents the confidence of it (putting forth His sheep, He goes before them), and shows it to them whatever He had to suffer in it, assured to them what Jehovah was—Be whom He was proved Himself to be, Psa. 24 But one word as to Psa. 20; 21, in their connection with Psa. 22 In the two preceding psalms, the Spirit presents Messiah the object of the contemplation of the saint in spirit prophetically, for we must remember they are prophecies. Psa. 19 gives the testimony of creation and the law, such as they really are. But in Psa. 20 Messiah is seen in the day of trouble. Strange sight! but one that the saint must enter into and he knows now that the Lord saves His anointed, and none is to be trusted but Jehovah. Here it is the day of trouble, and the saints can enter into it—Jewish saints and expressed in Jewish circumstances. It closes with their Hosanna. In Psa. 21 they contemplate the answer, seeing Messiah not only delivered but exalted; glory and great majesty set upon Him. What they had looked for, as interested in His desires, Psa. 20:44Grant thee according to thine own heart, and fulfil all thy counsel. (Psalm 20:4), they see answered, Psa. 21:22Thou hast given him his heart's desire, and hast not withholden the request of his lips. Selah. (Psalm 21:2); and much more, too, as the answer opens out upon their view in the blessing and exaltation of the Messiah, with whom they had identified themselves in heart in the day of his trouble prophetically; but all this in Jewish association, and hence they see His power in judgment. “Thine hand shall find out all thine enemies.” But in Psa. 22 it was not sufferings in a day of trouble which could be contemplated and entered into by others, and the psalm is, and must be, in the mouth of Jesus Himself. He alone could enter, and in entering understand, that depth. And hence, being of expiatory power as hearing the forsaking of God, which was not the portion of His believing people, He, as now heard in resurrection, can declare Jehovah's name on a new ground to His brethren; and assembling the remnant round Himself, sing in the midst of the congregation, the gathered remnant of Israel redeemed into fuller blessings, and which became the nucleus of the church—the church, in fact, itself in its commencement. But thereon He calls on all Israel also, in virtue of this His being heard. And His praise is in the great congregation—all Israel, when fully gathered hereafter; and then all the ends of the world, “For the kingdom is the Lord's.” This gives a very peculiar force to this psalm. In its own proper depth, beyond all our feelings, and the foundation of all our hopes.
In the sixty-ninth Psalm, we have another of the character I have just now mentioned, which will afford us much instruction, and where the Lord fully expresses the well known and well defined position He is in before God, and really in His ways, as well as His sorrows. The waters had come into His soul. He cried to God—his throat was dry while waiting for Him—His eyes failed—there was no standing in the depth he was in—His enemies were there, and mighty. But even here, in speaking of foolishness and sin, which we know to have been of others, not His own, He speaks as fully in the presence of God, all being in the light. “Thou knowest my foolishness, my sins are not hid from thee.” His whole case is before God, He knowing it. It is not merely the sorrows and effects of sin down here. Hence, as I have said, He pleads for other godly ones (what touching grace in such a case), that He, having to suffer the full depths of rejection, having taken all on Him, may not be an occasion of stumbling to the godly, the remnant who waited upon God. How likely in hearts prompt to say, on His apparent rejection, because man had rejected Him, and His own word ill believed, “We thought that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel:” as in the latter day, in Psa. 73 when the godly man felt, “therefore his people return thither, and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them;” and they were ready to say,” Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.” “Let not them that wait on thee be ashamed for my sake: let not them that seek thee be confounded for my sake, O God of Israel, because for thy sake I have borne reproach;” and the Lord shows the real ground on which, on man's part, trouble had come upon Him—His grace is sorrow toward them. But still in all the trouble also He is fully and consciously before God. “Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonor,” though as a man reproach had broken His heart, and He cried for deliverance. Here also we find judgment claimed from the God of Israel against the enemies; and in verse 26, Christ brings together Himself and the remnant. In the end, seeing all the result, “their heart should live that seek God; for God will save Zion.”
Again, in another Psalm (51), we have, though inspired for them by the Spirit of Christ, the confession of the remnant, the bloodguiltiness being indeed of all from Abel to Zacharias, but surely above all of Christ Himself. Then the confession of the remnant in Israel by the Spirit of Christ clearly applies to them, and not to Christ, save so far as Christ has taken it all on Himself indeed in grace. “In sin did my mother conceive me” cannot in any sense be applied to Christ; for it was not only the absence of personal sin, but an entirely different manner of introduction into manhood, which distinguished the position of Christ. It was a Holy Thing which was born, so born as to be called the Son of God, so that there was a necessary and special relation between Him and God His Father, even as a man born into the world, whatever He took on Himself, or into whatever He perfectly entered.
In Psa. 40 where we have Christ personally again, we find Him pleading His entire and unfaltering faithfulness—but having come to do God's will, and that through the offering of His body once for all (for we have the apostle's application of it here), His iniquities take such hold upon Him, that He is not able to look up, they are more in number than the hairs of His head. It is not His being sorry for them, or remission, as deliverance, or relief, but the weight of them on Him. Again, He asks judgment on the enemy, and that the remnant may rejoice.
In Psa. 102 we have again one which applies personally to Christ, rises up to the height that is of His person, though never separated from the interests of His people. He had been lifted up, as One chosen out of the people, as Messiah, and cast down to the lowest place. His days were like a shadow, but, as ever, the full recognition, as standing in the light, of the glory of Jehovah in relation to Him: “Thou, O Lord, shalt endure forever.” Let Him suffer and be cut off as He might, Jehovah and His glory, His remembrance (and that was to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God revealed to Moses) should endure. He should arise and have mercy on Zion, and the Spirit of Christ goes on to the time of the remnant in the latter day. The set time was come, for the servants of God (for such these were, see Isa. 65 and 46) took pleasure in her stones. Also when the Lord built up Zion, He would appear, and His glory among the heathen be established, for He would look down and hear the cry of the poor remnant appointed to death. But what should Christ do? His strength had been weakened in the way, His days had been shortened, yet had He cried to God, “He asked life” of Him. But what a glorious answer to bring out the full person of Christ, in contrast (yet in full recognition and connection in unity of person) with His suffering, dying humanity, and with the sparing of those appointed to death, on whom the Lord shall look down on that day. “Of old” —is the glorious answer— “thou hast laid the foundation of the earth; the heavens are the work of thy hands;” they would perish, but He was the same, His years should have no end; the sufferer was Jehovah, the Creator Himself. And then the remnant of Israel are brought in millennial blessing. “The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee.” He, all glorious as He was, could not do without them: nor could they fail who had waited on such as He, though suffering as listening to His word in the midst of the enemies of His name, and appointed to death.
In Psa. 25 we have Christ entering as the head of the godly remnant into the sorrows and consequences of the sin of Israel which that remnant cannot repudiate, but, on the contrary, are known by the confession of, as we see in Daniel. The wicked say, as in Malachi, Wherein have we offended? It is a weariness to serve. The remnant confess. And note here, Daniel is reserved, and makes his confession amongst the Gentiles, now recognized as beasts after the restoration: showing that, for the full and best intelligence of the mind of God, there was no restoration yet really of the people. Loved infallibly of God as His people, they were still in condition Lo-Ammi, not God's people. Hence the post-captivity prophets never call them so, though prophesying that they will be in a future day. Daniel, taking fully their position in prophetic sympathy by the Spirit of Christ, can address God according to His mind, and confessing their sin, consider Jerusalem as the holy mountain, and all in the full light of God's unchangeable thoughts of love (see Dan. 9); and their condition as driven out, is the curse he speaks of in which they were. But he speaks also in the certainty of divine love, and of the people as God's people, called by His name.
In the twenty-fifth Psalm, then, Christ speaks as the head of the remnant, so to speak. “O my God, I trust in thee; let me not be ashamed; let not mine enemies triumph over me;” for in the presence of ungodly enemies we ever find Him, never associated with them. And, therefore, suffering, He prays that He may not be shut up with them. “Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed; let them be ashamed that transgress without cause. Lead me. Remember thy tender mercies. Remember not the sins of my youth [here Israel is personified—Christ entering into their case; for sins of his youth are clearly not His relation to God], but according to thy mercy remember me.” He enters into the spirit of that word (God's real and only possible way of dealing with Israel) “that he might have mercy upon all.” Christ had come for the truth of God to confirm the promises, but He had been refused of Israel, and now Israel must come in under mercy. This the remnant understand. The meek are those the Lord will accept and guide. The Lord's ways are owned; and so conscious are they of no excuse on Israel's part for their sin, that their forgiveness is based on the name of the Lord, the only sure ground, as it is necessarily perfect in its power. The man that fears the Lord will be taught in this way; and, finally, Israel will be redeemed (so is the desire) out of all his troubles. I have noticed this psalm, because it shows the spirit in which (in association in grace with the remnant, with those that wait on Jehovah,) Christ takes up in spirit, as in the condition of the people, looked at not as bearing the sin Himself, but in the feelings of the remnant about the sin of Israel (right though sorrowful feelings), in which, I say, He takes up the sins and the cause of this remnant: for if He did not take up the question of their sins, He could not take up their cause, nor His Spirit be the inspirer and expresser by the word of right feelings in them. For, have they these feelings, they must feel, own, recognize, and even groan under the sins which have brought them to that low estate, as is true of every saint, whose sorrow under the consciousness of sin is the fruit of the working of the Spirit of Christ, not his relation to God, as at man's distance from Him. I will now turn, therefore, to some other psalms, referred to as expressing the greatest positive anguish in respect of these sins.
In Psa. 38 Israel is evidently viewed in the anguish of the bitter consequences of sin; but then, mark, of sin, confessed as the true source of the anguish, unrighteous as was the oppressing enemy. Seeing it as the hand of the Lord, and bowing under it, and hoping in the Lord who would hear, and saying (as Job at the close, when the testimony of Elihu and Jehovah had reached his spirit, and made the suffering spiritually available), he would declare his iniquity, and be sorry for his sin. In a word, he no longer keeps silence, and guile is not now in his heart, so that we recognize the working of the Spirit of Christ in the remnant; and, consequently, here expressed according to the perfect workings of that Spirit. All my desire is before thee. The condition is the condition of Israel under the heavy hand of God's chastening—the sentiments are the sentiments of the elect remnant (and so in spirit morally true of any soul in such a case), in faith confessing the sin, and sure that God will hear—a certainty expressed for them by the Spirit of Christ, who fully enters into their case, and produces the sentiments, as having made the atonement which enables Him thus to lead them to God, though as yet they know not its value and are crying out of the depths.
They are the remnant that, in the midst of trial, “follow the thing that good is.” Now that was Christ's place. He sorrowed in the sorrow of Israel, and suffered the suffering of Israel; but His soul was with God about it, though the effect of His righteous path was to bring trial and forsaking upon Him, and the Lord left Him there till all was complete, but, however groaning deeply in spirit, knowing that the Father heard Him always. As in His previous life, one doubtless of deep thoughts about Israel unknown to man, He knew well, though subject to the path of ordinary duty as of God till God called Him, that He must be about His Father's business, thus shelving, not merely an unchangeable and eternal relationship as Son in the bosom of the Father, but, a known relationship down here (and that in service), according to that which He was as a man born of God, who was His God from His mother's belly, who made Him hope when He was on His mother's breasts; and as such He grew in wisdom and stature, in favor with God and man. Nor can it be doubted that He entered into the sufferings and sense of Israel's guilt in a more peculiar way, when sealed and anointed with the Holy Ghost, and with power for official service, though I doubt not His heart felt it all along. But He waited in private upon God. Look at the sense of the presence and working of His enemies, and the pressure of the ungodly, the contradiction of sinners, which are invariably spoken of in these psalms. And when was that the case? Was it the blameless carpenter who had grown in favor with God and man, whatever His inward thoughts (and I doubt not at all they were deep and full of the glory of God, the glory of God in Israel, of God dishonored in Israel, and deep and earnest love to His people, and His glory in them)? Or was it the anointed servant of Jehovah declaring His righteousness in the great congregation, and following His ways so as to confound the hypocrites, and asserting His glory in the temple itself, when the zeal of His house ate Him up, that found that the reproaches of those that reproached God fell on Him, that felt the desolation of a people sold for their iniquities to the Gentiles, and the enmity of a cruel nation, and whose lovers and friends stood aloof? But in all these psalms this pressure and sense of enemies are found.
In such a psalm as the thirty-eighth then, Christ enters into the sorrow of the godly remnant where He had been, but in the confession, and inspiring the confession, of their sin, taking guile out of their heart, and as One who could do it, as He who had come into all its bitterness and had borne all its weight as known in the light of God.
So in the sixth, it is not the iniquities, but the grief and prostration of spirit, and that in the presence of these same enemies, which brings the weeping souls of the remnant to the gates of death; but this, according to the perfectness of the Spirit of Christ (in man in effect and previously to reading such a word, often mixed with unbelief and the sorrows likely to produce disheartening and turning to the world)—here encouraged by the comforting testimony for their hearts in that day. “The Lord hath heard,” but it is here because of “all mine enemies,” but the hand of God looked to in it: not chastening on man at a distance, but a cry acceptable, and heard because the Spirit of Christ is in it, and heard in the judgment of their enemies, which note.
In the eighty-eighth psalm, we get deeper into this scene of trial; and as we know that Christ was heard in that He feared, that His soul dreaded death and the cup that his Father gave him to drink, though perfect in obedience, so He expresses this all here. His perfectness before God was seen: that no sin, no evil, no distance had clouded His sense of how terrible separation from God and His wrath was in that which His soul here expresses. He looks at it as under it. He had seen and apprehended it, we learn here, from His youth up. But it was His nearness to God, and sense of what He was, made Him feel what the sorrow and horror was of the contrary. He was the Lord God of His salvation; His loving-kindness as to man (hence not declared in the grave as to man in the flesh) well known; that is, the relation of God with His people, the godly ones before him according to His faithful love to Israel; but, on the other hand, the full depth of judgment, sorrow, and wrath, entirely entered into, often anticipated, and now measured and known; for He could measure and know it, and He alone, for He has passed under it.
“Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves. Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; I am shut up, I cannot come forth. Thy fierce wrath goeth over me, thy terrors have cut me off.” This is no escape or extrication from a state of distance from God. He is afflicted with all God's waves: He is in the lowest pit. His soul is cast off. God's fierce wrath went over Him. His terrors cut him off. That Christ anticipated this we know. That He anticipated it in all its extent during the time of His service in the intelligent power of the Spirit (doubtless His righteous soul entered into it before) we know. But with what result? To escape it partially, or extricate Himself from it? No. Or was it merely after His service was closed that He entered into another position? No. Jesus knowing all things that should come upon Him, steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. That the hour of the power of Satan's darkness, and the hour of the dreadful wrath of God, were different from all before, from the holy anticipation of it, and from that service during which Satan departed from Him for a season, having first tried to seduce, and now, having been unable to succeed, oppressing Him with terror, sorrow, and death—all this is quite true. But the thing weighed by the Spirit of Christ in this psalm is the terror, and the wrath, and the waves in their full extent. Till it was accomplished, He had a baptism to be baptized with, and He was straitened till it was accomplished. That Christ's feelings varied, though the foundation of them all was the same, is undoubted. He could speak of our partaking of His joy, and of the fellowship of His sufferings. He had meat to eat in accomplishing His Father's work, and a cup to drink so bitter, that it, and it alone, He prayed might pass. But it did not, and He had to drink it, but at His Father's hand. He might be in the joy of communion with Him who heard Him always, in the service of love to men, or grieved, infinitely grieved, with the unbelief and contradiction of sinners; in glory, speaking of His decease with the saints in glory, or suffering it under the wrath of God. He could be led in the Spirit to be tempted, and return in the power of the Spirit to cast out devils, having bound the strong man; and Satan return as the prince of this world, to whom Jesus would not be subject, nor own: and He was perfect in each position—I mean perfect in His feelings relative to that position. So He might enter prophetically into the sorrows of others, and by His prophetic spirit so record His own that the word became His word when He was in them. But in all this His perfectness never changed in His own relation to God, nor His nearness to Him as man, as Son of God down here born of the virgin. The time of atonement had another character, and this we know He anticipated in spirit. And here I would remark, that, instead of escaping wrath to which He was relatively obnoxious, whether by position or appointment, we do find Him, when that one cup had to be drunk, seeking that it should pass, though perfectly submissive; but it could not. For nothing else was like that. For before, the reproaches of them that reproached God fell on Him, and, though He suffered in every way, in the midst of it all, He looked constantly to God. Every groan in spirit, as in the case of Lazarus, was heard, and reproaches because of unbelief turned in the same hour into thanking God in spirit, who hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them to babes.
The sense of unbelief, even in His disciples, which disabled them from using the power of His name against the demon that tormented the world, which made Him feel, on descending from the momentary vision or rather realization of glory, that that generation was not long to be supported, nor He to be with them, yet turns without an interval into the exercise of love and display of power against the enemy, while He was with His poor unhappy people—with unhappy man. But now, when this cup, not reproaches for God, not contradiction from sinners, but wrath from God because man was at a distance, was proved to be so, proved incapable of being won back by anything such as He was, was to be drunk—now, He prays it may pass that from this hour He may be saved. But no, it could not be. We well know why: our hearts know it well. That cup could not pass. Not that one. It was drunk for us; and He drinks it in love to His Father, in obedience, and in accomplishment of His blessed and precious love to us. And our souls adore Him, and Him who gave Him for us—Him who came to do the will which sanctifies and perfects us by one offering. Associated with us in wrath, from which He extricates Himself, and escapes, in part, by prayer, faith, and obedience I Does not the soul revolt from such a thought, and leave it with disgust to the friends or dupes of Satan to entertain or adopt it? But let us turn rather to the Lord.
I will add also a few words on Jeremiah, which is also used to puzzle the minds of the saints, recalling the fact, that the question is not, if Christ in spirit entered into the sorrows of Israel: I believe that, as being always near to God, He could. The doctrine taught is, that He was under wrath in a way we never can be, and did not suffer all its consequences, but saved Himself from it.
Jeremiah then, in spirit, by the Spirit of Christ, entered in his measure into the sorrows of Israel: not as subject to the wrath (though as a man he was, of course) but as having the mind of Christ's love, and His word about them.
“I have set thee,” says God, “for a tower and a fortress among my people, that thou mayest know and try their way.” (Jer. 6:2727I have set thee for a tower and a fortress among my people, that thou mayest know and try their way. (Jeremiah 6:27).) God had sanctified him for this (chap. 1:5), and the nation would fight against him. (Ver. 19.) This is not sufferings as associated with them, but as separated from them, though divinely interested in them, that is, as a prophet. (Chapter 15:15.) We have his trials under it, and what was the ground it went upon? Just so far as he was there in the Spirit of Christ. “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart... I sat alone because of thy hand: for thou hast filled me with indignation.” Now, here he is filled with it. How? Is it by being naturally exposed and obnoxious to it, and extricating himself out of it? No, but as sanctified to it by God, and called by His name, it is as partaking of the word of God that he suffered, and suffered as far as that was the case, as Christ did. And this was the identification with Israel which made him suffer—according to the grace of God, and in spiritual understanding according to His mind; his heart and spirit being associated with them, according to God's love to them, and feeling their sorrow and their sins; the grace of God identifying itself in the prophet with the people as loved of Him—suffering in their sorrows, and calling for judgment on them who willfully opposed the testimony, despised the sorrower, and helped on the evil. But this was the opposite of suffering the inflictions of God's wrath from Him as due to the people. Jer. 10:24, 2524O Lord, correct me, but with judgment; not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing. 25Pour out thy fury upon the heathen that know thee not, and upon the families that call not on thy name: for they have eaten up Jacob, and devoured him, and consumed him, and have made his habitation desolate. (Jeremiah 10:24‑25), show plainly the impossibility of such an idea of wrath, so due and escaped from: “O Lord, correct me, but with judgment, not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing.” Now, no such desire could be expressed as to inflictions of God's wrath, to which a man was naturally obnoxious. It looks for correction, but not in anger. No one could look for, nor acquiesce in this way in, the infliction of the curse of the law. And as to the Lamentations: that Jeremiah and the Lord Jesus entered into the sorrow of the actual wrath and evil that had fallen on Israel, who doubts? But this was not exposure to it from which the prophet preserved himself. His heart entered into it all, as sorrowing over what was loved of God but guilty, and with which he identified himself, being in such a case. Here also the enmity of ungodly Jews is not lost sight of. (Lam. 3:1414I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day. (Lamentations 3:14).) Besides, here also mercy is what is referred to and expected, not wrath due and avoided in a measure, but suffering felt from wrath executed, and looking to mercy out of it, because of God's goodness and His love to the people. He had seen affliction. (See ver. 22, 31, 32, 48, 52, to the end.)