(Continued)
Nor was this merely sympathetic feeling. Because though government and atonement for sin are two distinct things, yet that government and the wrath borne in atonement would coalesce necessarily if atonement were not already made, for what can finally the government of God, as to a sinner and his sins, be? But till Christ had wrought the atonement, this separation between wrath and government remained, as to the work that wrought it unaccomplished. What makes the sorrow only discipline for the remnant, when they are not yet brought into the sense of divine favor, was before Him, there really (though this be not all the truth on this point as we shall see) as wrath and the hand of God in wrath. What they dread vaguely, as not yet set free, He underwent in the highest and fullest sense. They are renewed in heart, trust in Jehovah, yet cry out of the depths, and see God's hand upon them. Christ, always perfect in heart, trusts in his Father, yet cries out of the depths, and, see it is a cup which His Father has given Him to drink. I speak now specially in respect of Israel. If the nation are to be spared and restored, His strength must be brought down in His journey, and His days shortened and that of God. They are not yet delivered from the sense of wrath, though hoping in God, Christ was looking forward to the wrath He was really going to undergo. To Him government became wrath, for He was going to make an atonement to go through what was needed for the deliverance of the nation, and He was looking forward to this, though not then accomplishing it. Hence, when Peter smites one of the crowd come to take Him, He says, “The cup which my Father has given me to drink, shall I not drink it?” He said this in peace, because He had gone through the whole agony with God in perfectness, and from man He took nothing, though not insensible to his hatred in it. When Israel thinks of it as coming from God, peace not being attained, they mix up enemies and wrath so to speak all together. God's hot displeasure is in the human trials themselves. This was not so with Christ: He takes up the thought of wrath wholly with God. The smiting is entirely God's, and in His case is not separate from that in which atonement is wrought; and taking death as He did, and ought to have done; from the hand of God, He could say, “They persecute Him whom thou hast smitten.” Indeed, having given Himself up to the work of the cross, before He was actually crucified, He goes as a sheep before His shearers. He looks at Himself as the smitten One: for His faith the cup is already given Him—He had only now to say, “That thou doest, do quickly.” Jesus having bowed to this, men availed themselves of it to trample on Him As long as His hour was not come, He passed through the midst of them and went His way. Now His hour was come, and though not actually drinking the cup, He had taken the position of drinking it, taken it into His hand, so to speak, does not expect God to interfere—has been to God about it, and knows it is to be,—hence does not answer those who interrogate Him, nor reply. They could have no power at all against Him, unless given them from above: but now the hour for Him to suffer was come. It is not the time for the divine porter to hold the fold open and free in spite of all; but for the good and divine Shepherd to lay down His life for the sheep. Jehovah was just going to smite the Shepherd, and He had given Himself up to it. Did men not profit, yea Satan, by this non-interference of God, as He stood with that cup just taken into His hand, though in perfect peace and power, so that when He said it was He, they went backward and fell to the ground?
The difference between Christ and the remnant in the latter days, even as to anticipated sorrow, is this: He goes, when the hour is come, directly and perfectly to His Father about it. It is then that the dreadfulness of this smiting of God, of the cup He had to drink is all gone through in the agony of it with His Father, in prayer. He is to drink it. Man's will in it and Satan's will in it have disappeared—it is God's will. He enters into no temptation; power and liberty are there: His enemies go backward and fall to the ground. He then offers Himself freely, saying, “Let these go their way;” so that not one sheep is touched, but they are scattered from the Shepherd, whose portion now is smiting. Then Christ let men do what they please with Him; and what did they please? Oh! what a tale it tells of what man is, left to himself. That is for Christ personally, even the anticipations of God's wrath, and man's persecuting are wholly apart. He has gone, as to trial in spirit, through all wholly with God, and then freely offers Himself to man's ways to accomplish His Father's will. Not so Israel, they have not peace with God. They see, because renewed in heart, the smiting of God's hand, but it is all mixed up with the enemy without, the transgressor and oppressor within, the sense and the legal sense of the sin for which they are smitten, and the sense and dread of His wrath. Yet they have hope towards God by grace, through divine teaching as to Jehovah's mercy, though peace-making atonement be not fully known as yet. Hence they can cry and do, as to themselves, “they persecute him whom thou hast smitten, and speak to the grief of those whom thou hast wounded.” God in the last days is smiting them, but, in virtue of the atonement for their good, “till the pit be digged for the ungodly.” “Blessed (it is then said) is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest out of the law.” Hence, we find in the Psalms, pleas of integrity; and from Psa. 25 confession of sin, of the people's past sins and of their own confident trust in Jehovah, yet almost despair under a legal sense of sin; the claim to be viewed apart from sinners and a sinful nation, yet the profoundest interest in the hopes and history of Israel. The atonement being made, they have the sympathies of Christ, who, though personally in another way, has entered into their sorrows. Something analogous to their state may be seen in the condition of a soul under the law. But this part of Christ's history is not that in which He learned sympathy for us, and sets us an example, save in the fact of bearing evil patiently. For this reason: we have full knowledge of atonement—we sit in heavenly places, in Him, with the full favor that rests on sons.
Now the enjoyment of that full favor as Son was His condition through His life, before His hour was come. The divine favor rested on Him and on His walk; and persecutions and trials were such as we in principle may expect to find. We cannot, if on really Christian ground, be in presence of the wrath of God as that the dread of which is not yet passed away, nor be crying out of the depths, because Christ has taken us out of them. Now the remnant of Israel, on the contrary, cannot be in the place of Christ's living delight in Jehovah and comfort in His favor, come what would, because they are not yet assured of this favor as a present relationship, though hoping in mercy. But on the other hand, no depths of distress that they can go through can reach that which Christ did in Gethsemane, though not yet actually drinking the cup. All the circumstances they are in, answer to His at the close as to the state of the people and heathen oppressors. But Christ being in perfect divine favor, and perfect in His ways and thoughts could separate the anticipation of divine wrath and the malice of men, as He did, and present Himself to that malice for the accomplishing the purpose of God; but He could, as having passed through the experience of a cup given Him to drink, in which the Shepherd was smitten, and the use man made of His being in this position, fully enter into the sorrows of those who had brought it on themselves, as He, save by giving Himself, of course, never did. Hence He can sympathize with them and supply to them the thoughts and feelings which suit their state, although they be not the same as that which He felt when passing through His sorrow. When entering on the path of sorrow after the last supper, which led to the atonement, He, though accomplishing a work in which He must be alone wholly and altogether, yet in the path which led to it and even in the fact of death as rejected of man and with wicked hands crucified and slain, could in His sorrows enter in to the sorrows of Israel under the government of God in the last days, when their blood too will be shed like water on every side of Jerusalem. It could not be said to them as to us, “Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,” because they are not in our place of union with Him and liberty, but He could enter into the sorrows they will be under, and though what He then felt towards His enemies is not what they will, for He was not only perfect, but entered as in the divine favor, though through agony, into the divine mind, yet He will enter into their sorrows and supply by His Spirit (as He has done in the Psalms) the feelings suited, to them as having passed through, as to suffering and sorrow, all they can do. If He had not, who should help them?
But atonement is not the whole aspect of the death of Christ as suffering. And, indeed, in the. Psalms, which are not a directly doctrinal part of Scripture, and occupy themselves with Messiah and Israel, it is scarcely viewed in this light, though the facts in which it was accomplished are fully prophesied of. All the present hopes of Israel, (as indeed of man,) and the accomplishment of all the promises, were connected with Messiah. He was, If Israel had received Him the crown of all their blessings. But all this must be given up; He must be delivered up, even into the hands of the Gentiles, and be put to death. Did the Lord not feel this as to His beloved people. This is what was expressed in his weeping over Jerusalem: there indeed in sympathy. He was the Jehovah who would have gathered them; but, if He was, still He took it all as the obedient an from the hand of Jehovah. This is seen explicitly in the 50th of Isaiah, where this subject is treated. The Lord God had given him the tongue of the learned. Even what He suffered from man He took from the hand of God when thus given up to suffer, yet, even here, with no breach in His entire confidence in God, or thought that His portion was uncertain, as has been blasphemously stated. “He is near that justifieth me” are His words when He was under the suffering. So in the 22nd Psalm He owns Jehovah's hand in His sufferings, “Thou hast brought me into the dust of death.” So in 102nd, “Thou hast lifted me up” —that is, as man into the place of Messiah and glory— “and cast me down.” “Thou hast weakened my strength in my journey, and hast shortened my days. I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days.” But these passages show another truth of the deepest interest. Christ felt it, not only as to the ruin of beloved Israel; He felt it as to Himself, and He received it at the hand of Jehovah. The setting aside of every present joy and hope, of the present accomplishment of all promises, typified in the giving up of Isaac by Abraham; all ending, not in figurative, but in real death. All this Christ's soul passed through. His obedience was tried in it. His devotedness to His Father, His submission in giving up all, entirely up, in death. Was it nothing when every promise and blessing was his natural portion, to find death instead and the loss of all? Surely He shall have all in a more blessed and glorious way, founded securely on that death and resurrection, the sure mercies of David. Still, then He had to give it all up. It was His piety to look to the hand of God in all this, and He did so. No doubt, when the Shepherd was smitten, atonement was made for sin; but that smiting was a great and solemn fact, besides the atonement which was accomplished in it. God's Shepherd was smitten instead of feeding His beloved flock. Further, death itself was fully felt as such by the Lord. He, with strong crying and tears, made His supplication to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard in that He feared. It was no light thing to Him to have death instead of life for His portion as a man. He who knew what life was as a true possession of God. But all this has nothing to do with Christ's being subject to it as born into the world. It is exactly and diametrically opposed to that doctrine. Christ's life was the witness of a holy life in divine delight, through every temptation to which we can be subject; a life in which, as regards His Messiahship, He exercised the fullest power, and disposed of all hearts, so that His disciples in going forth needed nothing. Now He says, “But now I say unto you, Let him that has a sword take one; for this that is written concerning me must yet be accomplished, He was reckoned with the transgressors. For the things concerning me have an end.” His path was changed from the active exercise of power, in love to the patient suffering the will of God. Not that He had lost the power, as Malchus' healing showed; but that He was arrived where other things written concerning Him were to be accomplished. His HOUR WAS COME. As a man with death before Him, and as the Messiah of Israel, with the loss of all that belonged to Him, His being cut off and having nothing, He came into a place of sorrow destined to Him, but not previously the path in which He served God. This He felt as at God's hand. It was His piety and perfectness to do so. He was heard in that He feared. Yet, till forsaken of God, the work of atonement, the wrath that worked it out in the forsaking of His soul, was not yet in accomplishment. He was till then in communion with His Father; pleaded with Him, was heard in His plea. Yet the smiting of God was the present thing before His soul; for though the outward instruments were men, and the power of darkness at work, He would not stop at secondary causes, nor take the cup from any but His Father's hand. He does not say God's hand. His Father's giving, and the bright joy of obeying, was, though going through conflict, the portion of His soul. In atonement itself, this could not be. But the difference even here is evident. He never asked any other cup to pass. Men had often shown their malice, and sought to kill Him who had wrought many good works amongst them. And surely His heart grieved over this; but He was not given up to them of God, so that His soul looked to His hand in it. Now He did. It was from divine counsels: the word had gone forth. “Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts.” Though the wounds in His hands had been made in the house of His friends. And the Lord felt it all, as well as, when it came, the all-absorbing cup of the forsaking of His God.
THE WRITER OF THE ARTICLES ON THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST.
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