"Christ being come, an High Priest of good things
to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands,
that is to say, not of this building." Heb. ix. 11.
BEFORE the Passover the Jews numbered fourteen days, and then the Feast
came. It was to be the fourteenth day of the month, at even; and to mark
the beginning of that period more distinctly, it was made the beginning
of months, that is, the first month of the year. We then, if our Easter
answers to the Passover, as substance answers to shadow, may well account
that from this day, which is fourteen days before Easter, a more sacred
season begins. And so our Church seems to have determined it, since from
this day, the character of the Services changes. Henceforth they have more
immediate reference to Him, whose death and resurrection we are soon to
commemorate. The first weeks in Lent are spent in repentance, though with
the thought of Him withal, who alone can give grace and power to our penitential
exercises; the last, without precluding repentance, are more especially
consecrated to the thought of those sufferings, whereby grace and power
were purchased for us.
The history of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; of Dinah, Jacob's
daughter; and of Joseph in Potiphar's house; the account of our Lord's
temptation; and the parable of the man out of whom the evil spirit went
and returned sevenfold, which have been read on Sundays at this season,
may fitly be called penitential subjects; and of the same character have
been the Epistles. On the other hand, today's Epistle, from which the text
is taken, speaks of Christ's Incarnation and Atonement; while the Gospel
tells us of His Divinity, He being that same God who, as the first Morning
Lesson relates, called Himself in the bush "I am that I am." And so again,
next Sunday's Epistle is also upon our Lord's Divinity and voluntary humiliation,
and one of the Lessons and the Gospel contain the sacred narrative of His
passion and death. The other second Lesson is also on the subject of His
humiliation, from St. Paul. And further: all four first Lessons of today
and next Sunday relate to the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt,
which is the type of our redemption.
Let us then today, in accordance with the apparent disposition of our
Services, remind ourselves of one or two of the great truths which the
Epistle contains;—of course we cannot do so with any great exactness or
completeness;—but still, sufficiently to serve, through God's mercy, as
a sort of preparation for the solemn days which lie before us in the course
of the next fortnight. It will be a fitting preparation, please God, for
Good Friday, to bear in mind who our Lord is, and what He has done for
us. And, at present, let us confine ourselves to this one subject, who
our Lord is,—God and man in one Person. On this most sacred and awful subject,
I shall speak as simply and plainly as I can; merely stating what has to
be stated, after the pattern of the Creeds, and leaving those who hear
me, as the Creeds leave them, to receive it into their hearts fruitfully,
and to improve it, under God's grace, for themselves.
Let us, I say, consider who Christ is, as the Epistle for the day sets
forth in the words of the text.
1. First, Christ is God: from eternity He was the Living and True God.
This is not mentioned expressly in the Epistle for this day, though it
is significantly implied there in various ways; but it is all but expressly
stated, and that by Himself, in the Gospel. He says there, "Before Abraham
was, I am:" [John viii. 58.] by which words He declares that He did not
begin to exist from the Virgin's womb, but had been in existence before.
And by using the words I am, He seems to allude, as I have already said,
to the Name of God, which was revealed to Moses in the burning bush, when
he was commanded to say to the children of Israel, "I am hath sent me unto
you." [Exod. iii. 14.] Again: St. Paul says of Christ, that He was "in
the form of God," and "thought it not robbery to be equal with God," yet
"made Himself of no reputation." In like manner St. John says; "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
And St. Thomas addressed Him as his Lord and his God; and St. Paul declares
that He is "God over all, blessed for ever;" and the prophet Isaiah, that
He is the mighty God, the Everlasting Father;" and St. Paul again, that
He is "our great God and Saviour;" and St. Jude, that He is "our only Sovereign
God and Lord." [Phil. ii. 6, 7. John i. 1; xx. 28. Rom. ix. 5. Isa. ix.
6. Tit. ii. 13. Jude 4.] It is not necessary, surely, to enlarge on this
point, which is constantly brought before us in Scripture and in our Services.
"Day by day we magnify Him, and we worship His Name ever world without
end;" which would be idolatry were He not the Very and Eternal God, our
Maker and Lord. We know, indeed, that the Father is God also, and so is
the Holy Ghost; but still Christ is God and Lord, most fully, completely,
and entirely, in all attributes as perfect and as adorable, as if nothing
had been told us of Father or of Holy Ghost; as much to be adored, as,
before He came in the flesh, the Father was adored by the Jews, and is
now to be adored by us "in spirit and in truth." For He tells us expressly
Himself, "He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father;" and "all men" are
to "honour the Son, even as they honour the Father;" and "He that honoureth
not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him." [John xiv.
9; v. 23.]
2. And here we are brought to the second point of doctrine which it
is necessary to insist upon, that while our Lord is God He is also the
Son of God, or rather, that He is God because He is the Son of God. We
are apt, at first hearing, to say that He is God though He is the Son of
God, marvelling at the mystery. But what to man is a mystery, to God is
a cause. He is God, not though, but because He is the Son of God. "That
which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit," and That which is begotten of God is God. I do not say that we
could presume thus to reason for ourselves, but Scripture draws the conclusion
for us. Christ tells us Himself, "as the Father hath life in Himself, so
hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself." And St. Paul says, that
He is "the brightness of God's glory, and the express Image of His Person."
[John v. 26. Heb. i. 3.] And thus, though we could not presume to reason
of ourselves that He that is begotten of God is God, as if it became us
to reason at all about such ineffable things, yet, by the light of Scripture,
we may. And after all, if the truth must be said, it is surely not so marvellous
and mysterious that the Son of God should be God, as that there should
be a Son of God at all. It is as little level to natural reason that God
should have a Son, as that, if there be a Son, He must be God because He
is the Son. Both are mysteries; and if we admit with Scripture that there
be an Only-begotten Son, it is even less to admit, what Scripture also
teaches, that that Only-begotten Son is God because He is Only-begotten.
And this is what makes the doctrine of our Lord's Eternal Sonship of such
supreme importance, viz. that He is God because He is begotten of God;
and they who give up the latter truth, are in the way to give up, or will
be found already to have given up, the former. The great safe-guard to
the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity is the doctrine of His Sonship; we
realize that He is God only when we acknowledge Him to be by nature and
from eternity Son.
Nay, our Lord's Sonship is not only the guarantee to us of His Godhead,
but also the condition of His incarnation. As the Son was God, so on the
other hand was the Son suitably made man; it belonged to Him to have the
Father's perfections, it became Him to assume a servant's form. We must
beware of supposing that the Persons of the Ever-blessed and All-holy Trinity
differ from each other only in this, that the Father is not the Son, and
the Son is not the Father. They differ in this besides, that the Father
is the Father, and the Son is the Son. While They are one in substance,
Each has distinct characteristics which the Other has not. Surely those
sacred Names have a meaning in them, and must not lightly be passed over.
And they will be found, if we reverently study them, to supply a very merciful
use towards our understanding Scripture; for we shall see a fitness, I
say, now that that sacred truth is revealed, in the Son of God taking flesh,
and we shall thereby understand better what He says of Himself in the Gospels.
The Son of God became the Son a second time, though not a second Son, by
becoming man. He was a Son both before His incarnation, and, by a second
mystery, after it. From eternity He had been the Only-begotten in the bosom
of the Father; and when He came on earth, this essential relation to the
Father remained unaltered; still, He was a Son, when in the form of a servant,—still
performing the will of the Father, as His Father's Word and Wisdom, manifesting
His Father's glory and accomplishing His Father's purposes.
For instance, take the following passages of Scripture: "I do nothing
of Myself;" "He that sent Me is with Me;" "the Father hath not left Me
alone;" "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work;" "Whatsoever I speak,
even as the Father said unto Me, so I speak;" "I am in the Father, and
the Father in Me." [John viii. 28, 29; v. 17; xii. 50; xiv. 10.] Now, it
is true, these passages may be understood of our Lord's human nature; but,
surely, if we confine them to this interpretation, we run the risk of viewing
Christ as two separate beings, not as one Person; or, again, of gradually
forgetting or explaining away the doctrine of His Divinity altogether.
If we speak as if our Lord had a human personality, then, if He has another
personality as God, He is not one Person; and if He has not, He is not
God. Such passages, then, as the foregoing, would seem to speak neither
of Christ's human nature simply, nor of His divine, but of both together;
that is, of Him who being the Son of God is also man. He who spoke was
one really existing Person, and He, that one Living and Almighty Son, both
God and man, was the brightness of God's glory and His Power, and wrought
what His Father willed, and was in the Father and the Father in Him, not
only in heaven but on earth. In heaven He was this, and did this, as God;
and on earth He was this, and did this, in that manhood which He assumed,
but whether in heaven, or on earth, still as the Son. It was therefore
true of Him altogether, when He spoke, that He was not alone, nor spoke
or wrought of Himself, but where He was, there was the Father, and whoso
had seen Him had seen the Father, whether we think of Him as God or as
man.
Again, we read in Scripture of His being sent by the Father, addressing
the Father, interceding to Him for His disciples, and declaring to them
that His Father is greater than He; in what sense says and does He all
this? Some will be apt to say that He speaks only in His human nature;
words which are perplexing to the mind that tries really to contemplate
Him as Scripture describes Him, as if He were speaking only under a representation,
and not in His Person. No; it is truer to say that He, that One All-gracious
Son of God, who had been with the Father from the beginning, equal in all
divine perfections and one in substance, but subordinate as being the Son,—as
He had ever been His Word, and Wisdom, and Counsel, and Will, and Power
in Heaven,—so after His incarnation, and upon the earth, still spoke and
acted after, yet with, the Father as before, though in a new nature, which
He had put on, and in humiliation.
This, then, is the second point of doctrine which I had to mention,
that our Lord was not only God, but the Son of God. We know more than that
God took on Him our flesh; though all is mysterious, we have a point of
knowledge further and more distinct, viz. that it was neither the Father
nor the Holy Ghost, but the Son of the Father, God the Son, God from God,
and Light from Light, who came down upon earth, and who thus, though graciously
taking on Him a new nature, remained in Person as He had been from everlasting,
the Son of the Father, and spoke and acted towards the Father as a Son.
3. Now, thirdly, let us proceed to consider His mercy in taking on Him
our nature, and what that act of mercy implies. The text speaks of "a greater
and more perfect tabernacle," that is, greater than any thing earthly.
This means His pure and sinless flesh, which was miraculously formed of
the substance of the Blessed Virgin, and therefore called "not of this
building," or more literally, "not of this creation," for it was a new
creation by which He was formed, even by the descent of the Holy Ghost.
This was the new and perfect tabernacle into which He entered; entered,
but not to be confined, not to be circumscribed by it. The Most High dwelleth
not in temples made with hands; though His own hands "made it and fashioned
it," still He did not cease to be what He was, because He became man, but
was still the Infinite God, manifested in, not altered by the flesh. He
took upon Him our nature, as an instrument of His purposes, not as an agent
in the work. What is one thing cannot become another; His manhood remained
human, and His Godhead remained divine. God became man, yet was still God,
having His manhood as an adjunct, perfect in its kind, but dependent upon
His Godhead. So much so, that unless Scripture had expressly called Him
man, we might well have scrupled to do so. Left to ourselves, we might
have felt it more reverential to have spoken of Him, as incarnate indeed,
come in human flesh, human and the like, but not simply as man. But St.
Paul speaks in plain terms of our one Mediator as "the man Christ Jesus,"
not to speak of our Lord's own words on the subject. Still, we must ever
remember, that though He was in nature perfect man, He was not man in exactly
the same sense in which any one of us is a man. Though man, He was not,
strictly speaking, in the English sense of the word, a man; He was not
such as one of us, and one out of a number. He was man because He had our
human nature wholly and perfectly, but His Person is not human like ours,
but divine. He who was from eternity, continued one and the same, but with
an addition. His incarnation was a "taking of the manhood into God." As
He had no earthly father, so has He no human personality. We may not speak
of Him as we speak of any individual man, acting from and governed by a
human intelligence within Him, but He was God, acting not only as God,
but now through the flesh also, when He would. He was not a man made God,
but God made man.
(1.) Thus, when He prayed to His Father, it was not the prayer of a
man supplicating God, but of the Eternal Son of God who had ever shared
the glory of the Father, addressing Him, as before, but under far other
circumstances, and in a new way, not according to those most intimate and
ineffable relations which belonged to Him who was in the bosom of the Father,
but in the economy of redemption, and in a lower world, viz. through the
feelings and thoughts of human nature. When He wept at the grave of Lazarus,
or sighed at the Jews' hardness of heart, or looked round about in anger,
or had compassion on the multitudes, He manifested the tender mercy, the
compassion, the long-suffering, the fearful wrath of Almighty God, yet
not in Himself, as from eternity, but as if indirectly through the outlets
of that manhood with which He had clothed Himself.
(2.) When "He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and
He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay," [John ix. 6.] He
exerted the virtue of His Divine Essence through the properties and circumstances
of the flesh. When He breathed on His disciples and said, "'Receive ye
the Holy Ghost;" [John xx. 22.] He vouchsafed to give His Holy Spirit through
the breath of His human nature. When virtue went out of Him, so that whoso
touched Him was made whole, here too, in like manner, He shows us that
He was not an individual man, like any of us, but God acting through human
nature as His assumed instrument.
(3.) When He poured out His precious blood upon the Cross, it was not
a man's blood, though it belonged to His manhood, but blood full of power
and virtue, instinct with life and grace, as issuing most mysteriously
from Him who was the Creator of the world. And the case is the same in
every successive communication of Himself to individual Christians. As
He became the Atoning Sacrifice by means of His human nature, so is He
our High Priest in heaven by means of the same. He is now in heaven, entered
into the Holy place, interceding for us, and dispensing blessings to us.
He gives us abundantly of His Spirit; but still He gives It not at once
from His Divine nature, though from eternity the Holy Ghost proceeds from
the Son as well as from the Father, but by means of that incorruptible
flesh which He has taken on Him. For Christ is come a High Priest through
the perfect tabernacle which He assumed, a tabernacle not of this creation,
or in the ordinary course of nature, but framed miraculously of the substance
of the Virgin by the Holy Ghost; and therefore the streams of life flow
to us from Him, as God indeed, but still as God incarnate. "That which
quickeneth us is the Spirit of the Second Adam, and His flesh is that wherewith
He quickeneth."
(4.) 1 shall mention a fourth and last point in this great mystery.
I have said that our High Priest and Saviour, the Son of God, when He took
our nature upon Him, acted through it, without ceasing to be what He was
before, making it but the instrument of His gracious purposes. But it must
not be supposed, because it was an instrument, or because in the text it
is called a tabernacle, that therefore it was not intimately one with Him,
or that it was merely like what is commonly meant by a tabernacle, which
a man dwells in, and may come in and out of; or like an instrument, which
a man takes up and lays down. Far from it; though His Divine Nature was
sovereign and supreme when He became incarnate, yet the manhood which He
assumed was not kept at a distance from Him (if I may so speak) as a mere
instrument, or put on as a mere garment, or entered as a mere tabernacle,
but it was really taken into the closest and most ineffable union with
Him. He received it into His Divine Essence (if we may dare so to speak)
almost as a new attribute of His Person; of course I speak by way of analogy,
but I mean as simply and indissolubly. Let us consider what is meant by
God's justice, or mercy, or wisdom, and we shall perhaps have some glimpse
of the meaning of the inspired writers, when they speak of the Son's incarnation.
If we said that the Son of God is just or merciful, we should mean that
these are attributes which attach to all He is or was. Whatever He says,
whatever He designs, whatever He works, He is just and loving when He thus
says, designs, or works. There never was a moment, there never was an act
or providence, in which God wrought, without His being just and loving,
even though both attributes may not be exercised at once in the same act.
In somewhat the same way the Son of God is man; all that is necessary to
constitute a perfect manhood is attached to His eternal Person absolutely
and entirely, belonging to Him as really and fully as His justice, truth,
or power; so that it would be as unmeaning to speak of dividing one of
His attributes from Him as to separate from Him His manhood.
This throws light upon the Catholic tenet, that the Godhead and Manhood
were "joined together in One Person, never to be divided;" words which
also serve too often to bring home to us how faintly we master the true
doctrine: for we are sometimes tempted to ask, where is it said in Scripture
that the manhood shall never be divided from the Godhead? which is as in
congruous a question as if we were to ask whether God's justice, mercy,
or holiness can be divided from Him; or whether Scripture ever declares
that this or that attribute may not disappear: for as these have no real
existence except as in God, neither has our Lord's manhood except as in
His Divine nature; it never subsisted except as belonging to His divinity;
it has no subsistence in itself.
Thus all that He did and said on earth was but the immediate deed and
word of God the Son acting by means of His human tabernacle. He surrounded
Himself with it; He lodged it within Him; and thenceforth the Eternal Word,
the Son of God, the Second Person in the Blessed Trinity, had two natures,
the one His own as really as the other, Divine and human; and He acted
through both of them, sometimes through both at once, sometimes through
One and not through the other, as Almighty God acts sometimes by the attribute
of justice, sometimes by that of love, sometimes through both together.
He was as entirely man as if He had ceased to be God, as fully God as if
He had never become man, as fully both at once as He was in being at all.
The Athanasian Creed expresses all this as follows: "The right faith
is, that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God
is God and Man; God of the substance of his Father, begotten before the
worlds; and Man of the substance of His Mother, born in the world. Perfect
God; and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting:
who, although He be God and Man, yet is not two but one Christ; one, not
by conversion of the Godhead into flesh," as if He could cease to he God,
"but by taking of the Manhood into God," taking it into His Divine Person
as His own: "one altogether, not by confusion of substance," not by the
Divine Nature and the human becoming some one new nature, as if He ceased
to be God, and did not become a man, "but by unity of Person." This is
what His unity consists in,—not unity of nature, but in this, that He who
came on earth, was the very Same who had been from everlasting.
In conclusion, let me observe, that we ought not to speak, we ought
not to hear, such high truths, without great reverence and awe, and preparation
of mind. And this is a reason, perhaps, why this is a proper season for
dwelling on them; when we have been engaged, not in mirth and festivity,
but in chastening and sobering ourselves. The Psalmist says, "Lord, I am
not high minded; I have no proud looks. I do not exercise myself in great
matters which are too high for me. But I refrain my soul and keep it low,
like as a child that is weaned from his mother." When we are engaged in
weaning ourselves from this world, when we are denying ourselves even lawful
things, when we have a subdued tone of thought and feeling, then is an
allowable time surely to speak of the high mysteries of the faith. And
then, too, are they especially a comfort to us; but those who neglect fasting,
make light of orthodoxy too. But to those who through God's grace are otherwise
minded, the Creed of the Church brings relief; when, amid the gloom of
their own hearts, Christ rises like the Sun of righteousness, giving them
peace for disquiet, "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called
trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He may be glorified."
Copyright © 2000 by Bob Elder. All rights reserved.
Used with permission. See the Newman website:
http://www.newmanreader.org/index.html
