But, as F. W. Grant has so well said, “We cannot fathom the Christ of God. We can realize how perfectly, divinely, on both sides He suits us, though we may be quite unable to put the two sides together. Dual personality would not suit us; but we want one who is both perfectly human and truly divine—One who can sleep in the storm and rise and still the storm. Such a Savior we have got, how good to know it—if we can see nothing besides His heart of love that unites the two together.” “His heart of love uniting the two together” —a most blessed “conjunction medium” that, assuredly. If in no other way, certainly thus do we perceive them to be most truly united, as who cannot most surely testify who knows the blessed Savior and has experience of His love. That love, which, sweetly as it suits our case, would have been in vain had—He in whom it was manifested been anything less than God, no less truly depended upon Him being really and truly man that to us it might be made known. The power of the one, and the reality of the other were alike necessary, and in that love wherewith He loved us how truly both are present. By all the sweet familiarity of manhood has His approach been characterized, is it in anything less than the power of Godhead that He has drawn nigh?
Can we imagine Him undertaking in love to come upon the scene of man’s sin and degradation, with the purpose of effecting our ransom and redemption from these, and as He stoops to the task, laying aside those very attributes by whose agency alone that could be accomplished? All those immeasurable resources of divine power and wisdom which were eternally His, was it not just then that they were most of all indispensable if He were to be, as He is, “mighty to save”? How could it be in anything like this sense that He who was rich has impoverished Himself that we might be made rich? Would not that be, humanly speaking, to defeat His own object? Beggared Himself of all divine prerogatives to take up a task that nothing but divine power could accomplish; in a path and by a way that nothing but divine wisdom could select and devise! Nay, love is wiser than that.
We may be sure His voluntary impoverishment, great as it was, did not extend to matters such as these. The grace of our Lord Jesus, the riches of His glory, and the poverty to which He descended, were in themselves infinite enough, without imagining the first to imply such a kenoticism between the second and the third as really leaves the Blessed One who came in love to redeem us, shorn of that which alone could effect the purpose of His coming.
Of one thing all whom His love has reached and won may be assured no dispossession or curtailment of the divine in His Person could the Blessed Lord have adopted which curtailed His power to deal effectively with our case; no limitation of humanity would He have entered which limited his ability to employ the fullest resources available on our behalf. And if in no other way can we explain how divine power and wisdom could be His, while still in all respects a true and real man, we can only say we can understand Him possessing and using divine attributes because He was also divine, and because of the divine love in His heart which was no less wonderful. They may tell us that such attributes as omnipotence and omniscience, being quite incompatible with any assumption of real human nature, must have been laid aside. But “must” is a strong word, and “must have been” has often to give way before “may have been,” and there are cases where our rules do not apply. For are we now to say that only what of God was compatible with human nature retained its place, and was manifest in Christ? What then of this His love which Christ came to declare? Was divine love any less incompatible than divine power or divine wisdom? Was it laid aside, or in any way depotentiated or conditioned by, or for, contact with humanity?
It may be the New Testament nowhere says that “God is omnipotence,” or, “God is omniscience”; but assuredly it does say that “God is love.” And if divine love was not laid aside, but revealed in its fullness and strength in the Man Christ Jesus, where can the difficulty be in believing in the presence and activity in the Blessed Savior Himself of its attendant power and perception, the omnipotence and omniscience of Deity? Oh, how poor, how incredibly poor our perception is of the glory of His person! Was He not God, eternally the Son of God, and now upon earth
“God manifest, God seen and heard,
The heaven’s beloved One.”
The image of the invisible God, the effulgence of His glory, the impress of His substance, the everlasting Word that in the beginning was, was with God, and was God, and now for us become the Word made flesh; all this and more He was, and is, and ever shall have the glory of being. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of an only begotten with the Father, full of grace and truth.”
And now, in closing our study of this part of the Creed, were it not infinitely better to have observed that reticence on questions as to the Person of Christ which a spirit of true reverence would inculcate, which the example of the Scriptures would itself enjoin, and which all who are spiritually-minded feel when they approach the subject, not to mention that distinct pronouncement of His own concerning
“The higher mysteries of Thy fame
The creature’s grasp transcend,
The Father only Thy blest name
Of Son can comprehend”
— “No man knoweth the Son but the Father.”
From the Person of Christ the Creed passes to a not less important topic—His work. His work of atonement, that is to say, or what was effected by His death on the cross. Most singularly brief, however, is the consideration given to the subject in the exposition we are following. His passion and death, referred to in the clauses, “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried,” are rightly spoken of as facts that are central and vital to all that claims the name of Christianity. How truly this is so is abundantly evidenced from the large place given to it in primitive Christian teaching. In apostolic doctrine, as we have it in the epistles of the New Testament, to go no further, the cross is by far the most prominent feature. It is a fact not unworthy of mention, and certainly not unnoticed by hostile critics either, how completely, after His death, the attention, the emphasis, of scripture came to be placed upon that death as precisely the point of moment. Whether, having regard to the measure of attention it claimed even from the very first, we can speak of anything like a transference of emphasis or not from His life and ministry, certainly the cross, the death of Christ, holds and fills a place in early Christian doctrine almost supreme. It quite surpasses at any rate anything like the proportionate mention we should look for, if it were but an incident, granted even a striking incident, of His historical career. No, it was more than an incident. The unique and transcending place assigned to it in the apostolic scheme points to its having for them, as for soundness in the Christian faith it has still, crucial and unrivaled importance. Rapidly and early, and, we may say, undeviatingly and continuously since, Christian thought under divine guidance has come to be concentrated upon it as the foundation of its system, the fundamental item of its faith, has come to regard and esteem as the distinguishing or distinctive fact in regard to its Founder, not His life, not His miracles, not His teaching, but His death—has come to glory in His cross as the feature which outstands in, the truth which characterizes Christianity.
And there can really be no shifting of the focus of Christianity from this point without surrendering all that upon which it rests, and all that constitutes its power, its dynamic, its meaning as a gospel for sinful men. That such things as the suffering and death of Christ are of vital importance to Christianity as a religion there are few, perhaps even among merely nominal Christians even, but are prepared to admit. For it is universally realized that the cross is an integral part of its system of doctrine. And although varied may be the measures in which the truth of it is realized, as in some sense or other the procuring cause of our redemption, the death of Him who for us men and for our salvation underwent that dread ordeal, that is accepted by all who of His saving grace have had experience. It is felt and confessed by all as that upon which absolutely everything depends. Admit the divine purpose of redemption, or even the need of it for men, for us, and it is at once seen to stand or fall with the truth of a saving work effected by the suffering and death of the Redeemer.
As has been said, the consideration of the death of Christ, as to what it imports, is passed over lightly. Almost summarily dismissed in fact, rival theories of the atonement are mentioned as contending for place, and a safe line is sought to be taken by leaving all such aside, and accepting simply as a large general truth that Christ Jesus died for us. The fact is the great thing, it is said. The implications, the significance, of but lesser account. That is all very well; but it may be questioned if it will be found quite satisfactory, or possible even to draw the line at that. Real sin-burdened souls will look for some more definite evidence of the great sin question, of so much significance to them, having been dealt with therein. It is no academic question with them, and that Christ not only died for us, but that “He died for our sins according to the scriptures” will seem to betoken a relation between His death and the question of their sins that merits some more definite term than an implication. If in earnest indeed, the pardoned sinner cannot but be drawn on to consider how, by what means, in what manner, He has been cleared of His sins, and granted deliverance through the death of “the Lamb of God which beareth away the sin of the world.” When we find also, on the back of what is said as to the acceptance of the fact of Christ’s death, without attachment to any theory of atonement, a quite wanton scoff at the old Calvinistic ideas on the subject, dissatisfaction deepens.
[J. T.]
(Continued from page 160)
(To be continued)