Q. “H.” here is an expression often met with, “The cup of wrath,” and Christ drinking it. The thought may be scriptural, but I cannot find it in the Word, etc.
A. The expression is not cited as a text, but it is the expression of a truth in Scripture. This is a common and every-day thing. Christ made propitiation, and bore the wrath. We say He made atonement for sin, and rightly so; the word signifies that wrath was there, and should be appeased. The same word is used by Jacob, when he says, “I will appease him by a present” (Gen. 32). Christ did all this just because wrath was there against sin and sinners. He met fully the character of God without changing it, and thus opened a righteous channel for His love to flow. It is not said in terms that He bore wrath, lest you should think He was personally under wrath Himself; but as a propitiation He met it, thank God, as we can say. Wrath against sin and sinners is constantly mentioned in Scripture. “Because there is wrath, beware lest he take thee away with his stroke: then a great ransom cannot deliver thee” (Job 36:18). “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men,” etc. (Rom. 1:18). “And were by nature the children of wrath, even as others” (Eph. 2:2). There are many other passages, as a concordance will show. I have not one by me at present.
This wrath must be met, and Jesus met it. But before He went to the cross, where He did so, He revealed the Father, which is always God’s name in grace as revealed by the Son. When you think of God as such, you think of a holy being; when of the Father sending the Son, you think of grace! At the cross He met all that the nature of God required, and brought more glory to Him than if there had been no sin, and this, too, as a Man (see John 13:31,32). There (the cross) you see a Man meeting God in righteousness and judgment against sin, as in life He was showing what God was for man in grace. There you see truth, holiness, righteousness against sin, love to the sinner, majesty, all uniting, yet for the moment the evil seemed to triumph over the good. Thus the cross was the perfect solution of the question of good and evil according to the nature of God Himself; evil completing itself and good having its perfect triumph; God glorified, and His justice which refused admittance to the sinner, hanging up a vail between him and God, is disarmed, and now only finds her happy task — the vail being rent by the stroke which met her claim — in clothing the sinner in the best robe, whose entrance to God’s presence hitherto she denied.
Jesus was the declarer of the Father when here; and all the fullness of the godhead was pleased to dwell in Him bodily (see Col. 1:19; 2:9). I do not believe there will be any other revelation of God — nor could there be. When God has been revealed there can be no more to reveal. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” We shall see more plainly when flesh and sense are gone, but the object will be the same Jesus — forever. Two verses of a well-known hymn, on Revelation 5., convey to my mind the thought better than most human words can do —
All the Father’s counsels claiming
Equal honors to the Son
All the Son’s effulgence beaming
Makes the Father’s glory known.
By the Spirit all pervading,
Hosts unnumbered round the Lamb:
Crowned with light and joy unfading,
Hail Him as the great I AM.
“The presence of his glory” would refer more to the unveiled glory of God, which we never yet have seen, nor could we with mortal eye. So Gabriel spoke of standing in the presence, or before God; Jesus, too, of the angels beholding the face of His Father; which means that they are mystically represented before Him who thinks in grace of such. To seek to learn some other thought from the passage would be, I fear, but to introduce one.
Words of Truth 6:198-200.