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COUNCIL OF PUBLICATION.
W. LINDSAY ALEXANDER, D.D., Professor of Theology, Congregational Union, Edinburgh.
JAMES BEGG, D.D., Minister of Newington Free Church, Edinburgh.
THOMAS J. CRAWFORD, D.D., S.T.P., Professor of Divinity, University, Edinburgh.
D. T. K. DRUMMOND, M.A., Minister of St Thomas's Episcopal Church, Edinburgh.
WILLIAM H. GOOLD, D.D., Professor of Biblical Literature and Church History, Reformed Presbyterian Church, Edinburgh.
ANDREW THOMSON, D.D., Minister of Broughton Place United Presby terian Church, Edinburgh.
©eneral (S&tlor. REV. THOMAS SMITH, M.A., EDINBURGH
THE PRACTICAL WORKS
DAYID CLARKSON, B.D.
FELLOW AND TUTOB OF CLAKE HALL, CAMBRIDGE.
VOL. III.
EDINBURGH : JAMES NICHOL.
LONDON: JAMES NISBET AND CO. DUBLIN: G. HERBERT. MONTREAL : B. DAWSON & SON.
M.DCCC.LXV.
EDINBTIRGB:
PRINTED BY JOHN OREIG AND SON OLD PHYSIC GARDENS.
CONTENTS.
SERMONS, &c.
PAGE
THE LOVE OF CHRIST. .... EPH. V. 2. . 3
CHRIST'S SACRIFICE. .... EPH. V. 2. . 47
CHRIST'S DYING FOR SINNERS. . . . ROM. V. 8. . 63
CHRIST TOUCHED WITH THE FEELING OF OUR
INFIRMITIES. .... HEB. IV. 15. . 81
OF COMING BOLDLY UNTO THE THRONE OF GRACE. HEB. IV. 16. . 110
OF CHRIST'S MAKING INTERCESSION. . . HEB. VII. 25. . 143
BELIEVERS' COMMUNION WITH THE FATHER AND
SON. . . . . .1 JOHN I. 3. . 165
PUBLIC WORSHIP TO BE PREFERRED BEFORE
PRIVATE. Ps. LXXXVII. 2. 187
THE PRACTICAL DIVINITY OF THE PAPISTS DISCOVERED TO BE DE STRUCTIVE OF CHRISTIANITY AND MEN'S SOULS. . . 1
CONTENTS OF THE PRECEDING TREATISE. .... 264
GENERAL INDEX (WITH THE ' ALPHABETICAL TABLE ' OF THE ORIGINAL
EDITION INCORPORATED). ..... i
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE TEXTS. . • xii
SERMONS, &0.
VOL. III.
THE LOVE OF CHRIST.
And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for m, an offering and a sacrifice, <&c. — EPH. V. 2.
HERE is the greatest duty of the law, ' Walk in love ;' and the greatest pattern of the gospel, ' as Christ also hath loved us.' It is this latter, as the most alluring and enforcing motive to the former, I shall insist on in this dis course. This love of Christ is what this apostle always admired, since the first day its warmth thawed his cold frozen pharisaical spirit : 1 Tim. i. 14, ' The grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love, which is in Christ Jesus.' And here in the context, after twenty- two years' study, chap. iii. 19, he says, ' it passeth his knowledge' still, passeth all natural knowledge, passeth the knowledge of ordinary Christians that enjoy and use the telescope of faith, passeth apostolical, passeth angelical ; ver. 10, ' might be known by the church.' When saints are perfect in heaven, 2 Thes. i. 10, they admire Christ and his love still, ver 18. He gives a reason of its incomprehensibleness, because it exceeds natural dimensions. Nature knows but three measures for solid quantity, length, breadth, and depth, but here height also ; and since it knows no standard but itself, he compares it with itself ; because he cannot measure itself, he measures by its effects, offerings, and sacrifices. The Teruma, the wave-offering, went in its signifi cant pointing as low as hell and as high as heaven, to relieve us from the lowest dungeon of misery, and to exalt us to the glory of the highest heaven. The Tenupha, the wave-offering to and fro, points at the breadth and length of this love, either in the four points of the mediatorial office, — the undertaking it from eternity ; the performance in time, by his assuming our nature and laying it down a sacrifice for us ; the love whereby he woos and espouseth us to himself in effectual calling ; the love by which he loves them to the end, from eternity to everlasting, — or four corners of the earth, to shew the extensiveness of it. There is no kind of person but what shall be saved, or kind of sin but what shall be forgiven, through the love of him who ' hath given himself for an offering and sacrifice.'
The two most considerable things in that part of the words I propose for the ground of the ensuing discourse are, 1, The ardency of this all-governing affection, as immanent in Christ's breast, ' hath loved us ;' 2, That incom parable method of his expressing it towards us, that never had either, or can admit, precedent or copy, ' and hath given himself for us, an offering and sacrifice."
4 THE LOVE OF CHEIST. [EpH. V. 2.
The first proposition upon which I will discourse shall only take in Christ's love with its object.
As Christ also hath loved us. You can look upon no place of evangelical Scripture where this may not be proved, either directly or by consequence. Take one for all : 1 John iv. 16, ' God is love.' Love is one of his most eminent attributes. Now Christ, Heb. xiii., is called ' the brightness of his Father's glory,' i. e. the bright manifestation of his Father's glorious attri butes. These all meet in Christ, and are there united as the beams in the sun. But amongst them all there is no beam so bright and conspicuous as love. The love of God was always the same in itself, but not always the same to us. It was a long time clouded from the world, and shined but with a weak osbcure ray, till the Sun of righteousness did arise ; but since, the brightness of this love, of this glory, shines in the face of Christ, and we may see it with open face ; we may see with open face this ray of glory, this love of God in Christ, who is the brightness of his Father's glorious love. Christ is also called, ' the express character of his person.' All divine per fections were imprinted upon Christ in an express manner ; but (if there be any inequality) that which made the deepest impression, and appears in the most legible character, is love, Col. i. 15. He is called ' the image of the in visible God.' There was clear discoveries of some divine attributes before Christ, Rom. i. 19, 20 ; but divine love was never made so visible till it was represented to the world in this image.
But how doth it appear that Christ loves us ?
1. By amorous expressions. Christ acts the highest strains of a lover in the Song of Songs. See what amorous compellations he treats his spouse with : ' My love, my dove, my fair one, my undefiled.' Read his love songs, and see how affectionately he sets out the beauty of his beloved, Cant. iv. 1—8, &c., and then concludes, ' Thou art all fair, my love, there is no spot on thee ;' and complains, ver. 9, ' Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes,' &c. ; and chap. vi. 4-6, &c., ' Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me ;' ver. 10, ' Who is she that looketh out as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun ;' so chap. i. to ver. 10. Hear how hewoos : ' Rise up my love, my fair one, and c6me away,' chap. ii. 10 ; and iv. 6, ' My dove, &c., let me see thy face, let me hear thy voice : for sweet is thy voice, and thy 'countenance is comely.' See his love posture, how he embraces : Cant. ii. 6, ' His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth em brace me.' He condescends to set out his love by such expressions as we can best judge of, though it transcends all.
2. By his thoughts. Thoughts and affections are mutual causes one of another. Thoughts give life to affection, and affection begets thoughts. Where is much affection, there will be many thoughts ; and where there is strong affection there will be high thoughts of what we affect. Christ's thoughts of us are many and high. He had thoughts of love to us from eternity, and we were never one moment out of his mind since then. We are graven on the palms of his hand, Isa. xlix. 16 ; nay, we are written in his heart, and there he wears us, as the high priest the names of the ten tribes upon his breast. He has set us as a seal upon his heart, as a signet upon his arm, Cant. viii. 6. We can never be out of his sight, and so never out of his mind. It is as impossible he should cease to think of us, as it is for a mother to forget her sucking child, which is always in her arms, or on her knee, or in her bosom, Isa. xlix. 15. Nay, ' she may forget,' but Christ will not, cannot.
Also he hath high thoughts of us. We are his jewels, Mai. iii. 17 ; pre- . cious to him, not only in life, but death, Ps. cxvi. 15 ; his treasure, his peculiar
EPH. V. 2.J THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 5
treasure, Exod. xix. 5 ; and where his treasure is, there will his heart be also. As the most rich and precious stones, the stones of a crown, Zech. ix. 16, he accounts us his joy, John xvii. 13, his glory, 2 Cor. viii. 23, a crown of glory and a royal diadem, Isa. Ixii. 3 ; yea, an eternal excellency, Isa. Ix. 15. . He has preferred us before the rest of men, though in all worldly respects to be preferred before us. He has chosen us, the foolish, weak, and base, despised things of this world, and rejected the wise, mighty, and noble, 1 Cor. i. 26-28. He has preferred us before the angels fallen ; for when we were both involved in the same misery, those, sometime gay morning stars, are reserved in everlasting chains of darkness ; but he has lifted up our heads and crowned us with glory and dignity ; nay, he has in some respect preferred us before himself, for he loved us and gave himself for us.
3. But this flame, where it is, cannot be confined to the breast and thoughts, but will break forth into action. And so does the love of Christ appear to us, by what he has done for us. He has made us rich, fair, honourable, potent, yea, one with himself. We are by this love enriched. The Lord is our portion, Ps. xvi. 5, and this is incomparably more than if we had heaven and earth; for all the earth is but as a point compared with the vastness of the heavens, and the heavens themselves are but a point compared with God. What a large possession have we, then ! There is no confiscation of it, no banishment from it. Our portion fills heaven and earth, and is infinitely above heaven and below earth, and beyondMboth. Poor men boast and pride themselves of a kingdom, but we have more than all the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof. Christ has given us more than the devil could offer him.
He has made us beautiful ; decked our souls with rays of his own beauty, made us partakers of the divine nature, filled us with the fulness of God, conformed us to himself, who is the brightness of divine glory. And now we are all glorious within ; the King delights in our beauty. There is a brighter lustre on our souls than shone in Moses's face when he had been talking with God, or sparkled in the habit of Christ and his glorious companions when they were transfigured. If the beauty of a sanctified soul could be made visible to the world, the sun would be no longer esteemed a glorious creature, nor the fairest face lovely. Indeed, it was no easy matter to beautify such deformed souls. Christ tells us what it cost him in the text: he loved us and washed us from our sins with his blood. Otherwise his pure eye could never have beheld us with such complacency, his heart could never have been ravished with us.
He has made us honourable. See what titles we bear. We are his ser vants. The angels count this their honour, to be ministering spirits. But it is the lowest of our titles. We are his friends, his favourites, John xv. 15, ' Henceforth I call you not servants,' &c., ' I have called you friends,' yea, intimate friends, such as he entrusts with his secrets. ' All things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.' We are not only friends, but brethren : Heb. ii. 11, ' He is not ashamed to call us brethren ;' sons of the same Father : ' What manner of love is this, that we should be called the sons of God,' 1 John iii. 1 ; nay, not only sons, but ' heirs, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ:' Eom. viii. 17, who is 'appointed heir of all things,' Heb. i. 2. There is no such love amongst men as for an heir to admit another co-heir with him. Nay, we are kings and priests in the text ; conquerors, yea, more than conquerors, Rom. viii.
He has made us potent. No such potentates on earth, as these whom Christ loves: Philip, iv., 'I can do all things through Christ strengthening me.' What ! A creature omnipotent, able to do all things ? Yes, by a bet-
6 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
ter reason than Cato proved the Roman women ruled all the world. Christ can do all things, but these whom he loves can prevail for all that he can do. For he hath promised : John xiv. 12, 13, ' Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do ;' Hosea xii. 8, 4.
These are large expressions of love indeed. But the proper act of love is union ; love is ever accompanied with a strong inclination to unite with its object, which, by some secret and powerful virtue, as it were by the emission of some magnetical rays, attracts the lover with a restless solicitation, and never ceases till they meet and unite, as intimately as their nature will per mit. The grossness of the matter in corporeal parts will not admit of such intimacy and penetration as love affects ; but souls, they can mix, twine about each other, and twist into most strict oneness. We see this effect in Christ's love. His affection moved him to union with us ; and one degree of his union was the assuming our nature, by which Christ and we are one flesh. He may say to us as Adam, ' Thou art bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh ' Nay, we are not only one flesh, but one spirit : 2 Cor. vi. 17, ' He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.' 0 transcendent love ! As if some man, out of love to a worm, should take upon him the form and nature of that irrational, contemptible creature. Hence David (in that a type of Christ) calls himself ' a worm, and no man,' Ps. xxii. Yet Christ's love, in being incarnate, is infinitely more ; as the disproportion betwixt him and us is infinitely greater than between us and worms. This was greater love, greater honour, than ever he would vouchsafe to angels : ' He took not upon him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham.' But the love of Christ would not rest here ; he thinks us yet not near enough, and therefore holds forth a more intimate union in such resemblances as these : John xv. £, ' I am the vine, ye are the branches.' We are united as closely to Christ as the branches to the vine. More than this : Eph. i. 22, 23, ' gave him. to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body.' WTe are united to Christ, as the body to the head. Each of us may look upon ourselves as a part of Christ ; so that whatever glory and happiness shines in our head, reflects upon us ; and whatever dignity and injury is cast upon us, it reaches our head.
But the union which importeth most love, is that betwixt man and wife. Christ expresses his love and our union by this : Isa. liv. 5, ' Thy Maker is thy husband,' ver. 6. He has ' taken thee, a woman forsaken, a wife of youth :' Isa. Ixii. 9, ' As a bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.' No such love amongst mortals as betwixt man and wife ; nor is this love and complacency at any time so vigorous and conspi cuous as in the day of marriage. Yet such a love is Christ's, he is our hus band, and we shall ever be in his account as a wife of youth, as beautiful, as delightful ; and eternity shall be but a continued marriage-day, as full of joy and triumph. Oh happy souls that have interest in his love ; you whom the Lamb has chosen to be his bride ; you who must taste the sweetness of those joys, and must be the object of that complacency and delight; you who must be kissed with the kisses of that mouth, and folded in the arms of such a bridegroom ! Oh how unsavoury may the joys of earth be to you, how contemptible the choicest beauties in the world ! The creature can reach no higher either in desires or conceits ; but the love of Christ goes above both, and expresses itself in a nearer union than this. A conjugal union is very intimate ; yet not so near, as that the terms thereof should denominate one another ; the husband cannot be called the wife, nor the wife the husband. Yet so near is our union with Christ, that it grounds such a denomination ; for we are called Christ: 1 Cor. xii. 12, ' So also is Christ,'
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHEIST. 7
i. e. Christ mystical. We are not only Christ's, his members, his spouse ; but Christ, in the apostle's phrase. Yet further, the wife is not said to be in the husband, yet Christ is said to be in us ; ' that Christ might dwell in your hearts by faith,' Eph. iii. 17, Gal. ii. 19. Here is not only a cohabi tation, but inhabitation. /
Yet further, to add one consideration, which advanceth the intimacy of this union above all those mentioned. The branch may be said to be in the vine, but not reciprocally the vine in the branch ; yet Christ is both in us, and we in him : John xiv. 20, ' At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and you in me, and I in you.' What more intimate mixture is there in the world, than that of light and air ? Yet here is not this reciprocation; though the light be in the air, yet is not the air said to be in the light. What nearer conjunction is there than betwixt the soul and the body ? Yet here, though the soul be in the body, yet is not the body in the soul. Sure, when Christ is said to be in us, and we in him, here is some intimacy in tended more than ordinary union ; some mystery for which we want a name, so far are we from reaching its nature. The apostles themselves here knew it not, as the words imply, propounded in the future, ye shall know. They could not apprehend it, till that extraordinary effusion of the Spirit, to which this place refers ; and then, it is probable, rather apprehend, than compre hend it. And if ever those most comprehensive creatures, the angels, had need to bend themselves downward, and stretch out their necks (as the word used by Peter implies), to pry into a gospel mystery, sure it is the mystery of Christ's love, in mixing himself thus intimately with us.
It is true, indeed, while we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord. There is some distance betwixt us, which, though it dissolves not the union, yet hinders the comfortable effects of it. And Christ is sensible of this ; his love will not long endure it ; he cannot abide that those whom he loves so dearly, should b'e so far from him. He longs for that happy time when we shall meet never again to part. He is gone to prepare the place ; and now that it is ready, hear how he woos us : Cant. ii. 10, ' Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo, the winter is past,' &c. And, as though he wondered at our slowness to meet our happiness, he calls again, ver. 13, ' Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.' And when he sees we stay, and call for him to meet us, how cheerfully does he reply, ' Behold, I come quickly ;' and, in the mean time, with all importunity solicits his Father : John xvii. 24, ' Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me, that they may behold my glory ;' and urges the Father, as he loves him, to do it. That is his argument : ' For thou lovedst me before the foun dation of the world.' And why is he so importunate ? See it, ver. 21, 22, 23, where we have the project of Christ's love four times repeated in three verses, ' That they all may be one ;' ' that they may be one in us ;' ' that they may be one, even as we are one ;' ' that they may be made perfect in one.' You have the union in all three : the pattern and exemplar of the union in ver. 22, ' that they may be one, as we are one ;' and ver. 21, ' that they may be in us, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee.' Not only as the branch is in the vine, or a member in the body, or the light in the air ; these are too low resemblances of so high a mystery ; but ' that they may be in me, as I, Father, am in thee,' &c. I say not that it is the same union with that betwixt the Father and the Son. It is infinitely distant from it ; but, as those expressions import, it has some resemblance. And, lastly, the motive inducing this, ver. 23, ' That the world may know that thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.' See here, and wonder, an union, that resembles the highest, most mysterious, and incomprehensible union, the
8 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
unity of the Father with the Son, proceeding from a love, which is the highest, most stupendous, and inconceivable love, the love of the Father to the Son. Such is the union wherewith Christ has united us to himself, and such is the love which moved him so to unite us. What nearer union than this ? What greater love than this ?
4. The love of Christ appears by what he has given us ; his love-tokens. Whatever we have, for being or well-being, spring from his love. It is love that opens those infinite treasures of goodness, which had else been eter nally locked up from the creatures. And though, in these showers of mercy, some drops fall upon the wicked, and so seem common, yet the fountain of love, from whence they issue, is not common. There is a vast difference betwixt the provision which a man makes for his wife, and for his servants. Every mercy we enjoy is a drop from the ocean of his special love. Let us ascend, by some degrees, to the height of this bounteous love.
He gives us plenty of mercies. This love daily loads us with benefits, Ps. Ixviii. 19, 1 Tim. vi. 17. He gives us nothing but what is good. The wicked have some good things, and some bad ; those which are materially good in themselves, yet are formally evil to them, both in God's intention and in the event. Their table is a snare, the word is the savour of death, and sacraments seals of condemnation ; but Christ's love makes that which is materially evil in itself, yet formally and finally good to us ; for all the ways of God are mercy, Ps. xxv. He curses their blessings, but he blesses our curses ; temptations, afflictions, sin and death, prove all good to us. Even all his ways ; and not only all the ways of God, who loves us in Christ, but all the ways of those who hate us, whether reprobates or devils. For 1 all things shall work for the good of those that love God,' Rom. viii. This is the great privilege of those whom Christ loves ; nothing shall befall them, but what shall prove good for them. They may conclude, in whatever con dition they are, it is the best for them ; and if it had not been so, they had never come into it ; and whenever they shall cease to be so, they shall be removed out of it. It is the sweetest privilege, yet the most difficult to believe at all times, since there is often great opposition both of sense and reason, yet it is most true. And the reason is, the love of Christ making a sweet connection betwixt his glory and our good ; so that whatever advanceth the one must promote the other. Now every thing must tend to his glory, therefore to our good ; these two cannot be separated.
Besides, Christ's love gives us whatever is good. « He gives grace and glory, and no good thing will he withhold,' &c., Ps. Ixxx. We shall want no good thing, Ps. xxxiv. 10. Take a survey of heaven and earth, and all things therein ; and whatever upon sure grounds appears good, ask it con fidently of Christ ; his love will not deny it. If it were good for you that there were no sin, no devil, no affliction, no destruction, the love of Christ would instantly abolish these. Nay, if the possession of all the kingdoms of the world were absolutely good for any saint, the love of Christ would instantly crown him monarch of them. But if you yet doubt of the bounty of Christ's love, see here a further consideration that will satisfy.
Christ's love will give you whatever you can desire. For what reasonable man can desire that which is not good ? This is included in the former. Now all that is good the promises have already assured to you. But lest this limitation should seem to straiten this large privilege, it is propounded absolutely (though indeed it were no privilege if this condition was not implied). ' Delight thyself in the Lord, and he will give thee thy heart's desire,' Ps. xxxvii. : John xvi. 23, ' Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you' ; and ver. 15, 17, ' Ye shall ask what ye will,
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHEIST. 9
and it shall be done unto you.' The reason is, ver. 9, ' As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.' But if this satisfy not, if you still question what is this what you will, and fear lest you should desire too little, though this be a rare fault, behold the love of Christ will fully satisfy you ; he tells you ' All is yours,' 1 Cor. iii. 21-23. And will you have more ? ' All things are yours : whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or to come ; all are yours.' See here the extent of this all ; the world, and all the world is yours. Yea, but alas ! I shall not live long to enjoy it ; fear not that, for life is yours, you shall live till you be fit to take possession of a greater, a better world. And then death is yours, to convey you from the enjoyment of things present, to the fruition of things to come ; from this present world to the world which is to come. See here, no less than two whole worlds is yours. If, as Alexander, thy vast desires cannot be filled with one world, here are two, both thine ; one present, one to come. Oh the wonderful love of Christ, the wonderful bounty of this love ! It was a royal offer of Ahasuerus to Esther, and a sign of great love : Esther v. 3, ' What is thy request ? it shall be given thee to the half of the kingdom.' Ay, but Christ not only offers, but gives, not half, but whole kingdoms, yea, whole worlds. But you will say, This is but a chimera, an empty notion : for we see there are none enjoy less of the world than those whom you say Christ loves. I answer, the world is not able to judge of true enjoyments. There are none that have a more real, and advantageous, and a less troublesome and dangerous enjoyment of the world than saints./ And I prove it thus. We may be most truly said to enjoy that which we reap the greatest emolument from, and get the greatest benefit by, that can be ima gined ; but there are none that improve the world to such a real advantage as the saints : for the love of Christ has so ordered the world, and everything in it, as it tends to their happiness, Rom. viii. And what greater benefit imaginable than happiness ? On the contrary, we cannot be said truly to enjoy that by which we get no benefit ; but the wicked (those who seem to have engrossed the world to themselves) get no benefit by it : for both it and all things in it tend to make them miserable. There is no more reason to deny the saint's interest in the world, because it seems to be possessed by others, than to deny a merchant has interest in his estate, because it is in the hands of mariners and factors, whenas it is but committed to them, that it may be the better improved for the true owner. And so is the world in the hands of others, for the saints' best advantage, which they receive, as a landlord from his tenants, without trouble or hazard. It is evident then that this present world is ours. And for the world to come, there is no question. So that we need not wonder at Jacob, who, when he was the poorer man in the world's account, conceived himself richer than Esau : Gen. xxxiii. 9, Esau says, ' But I have enough ; ' but Jacob says (as it is in the original) ' I have all.' And so may every one whom Christ loves say, ' I have all ; ' all that I stand in need of, all that is good for me, yea, all that I can desire. This is enough, sure. Who can imagine more ? Ay, but Christ's love has provided more than we can desire. See 1 Cor. ii. 9, compared with Isa. Ixiv. 4, ' As it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, flie things which God hath prepared for those that love him.' What is there in the vast circuit of the world that eye hath not seen ? Yet more is prepared for us than eye hath seen from the beginning. There is no man whose ear has not heard more than his eye ever saw ; yet is there more prepared for us than ear ever heard. But there has more entered into the heart of man, than ever was offered either to his eye or ear ; yet the vast and unlimited thoughts of man
10 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. Y. 2.
could never conceive what great things are prepared for us. Here then is more than the largest desire can reach ; for no man can desire that which his heart could never conceive. That which never entered into the mind of man to be the object of his knowledge, never entered into his heart to be the object of his desires. Christ has given more than heart can think, more tban heart can desire ; nay, more than the angels can conceive, whose apprehensions are widest and highest. There is a word in Isaiah upon which we may ground this : ' For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither has eye seen, 0 God ! besides thee, what he has prepared for him that waiteth for him.' None besides thee, 0 God, whose apprehensions are infinite, can conceive. Not the glorified saints, not the glorious angels, none besides thee. Nothing but infiniteness can comprehend what the incomprehensible love of Christ is. It is true indeed, it is said that God has revealed them to us by his Spirit, ver. 10, and the Spirit given to this end, that we might know the things that are freely given us of God. But this knowledge is not proportionable to the dignity of the object, but to the capacity of us the subjects ; for if the Spirit should raise his style as high as the glorious expressions of Christ's love, he must use such words as Paul heard when he was rapt into paradise, 2 Cor. xii. 14 ; unspeakable words, that cannot be spoken, that cannot be under stood by us in the body. The glorious riches of Christ's love cannot be expressed but in the language of paradise ; cannot be understood but by a transported soul, a spirit rapt into the third heaven. The expressions which the Spirit uses to us in the body are such as may rather signify despair of full apprehending them, than lead us to a comprehensive knowledge of them ; such as these : he tells us of joy, but which is unspeakable, 1 Peter i. 8 ; of peace, but such as passeth all understanding, Philip, iv. 7; .of love, but such as passeth knowledge, Eph. iii. 19 ; of riches, but such as are unsearch able, Eph. iii. 8.
But we are not yet come to the height of Christ's love. These unspeak able, unconceivable, unsearchable favours are but streams or drops of love ; Christ has given us the fountain, the ocean : these are but sparks and beams ; he has given us the sun, the element of love. The love of Christ gives us interest in the glorious Trinity.
The holy and uncreated Spirit is ours. How often does he promise to give the Comforter ? See one for all, John xiv. 16. The Spirit is ours, and his graces and comforts, those dawnings and glimmerings of glory, those irradiations of the divine nature, those joys, and that peace, which cannot be spoken, cannot be understood.
The Father is ours : John xx. 17, ' I ascend to your Father, and my Father; to your God, and my God.' The Father, and all that he is, -all his glorious attributes, are ours, his all-sufficiency, wisdom, power, mercy, justice, truth, and faithfulness, &c. All that he does is ours, for us. His decrees, they are the spring of our happiness, Eph. i. 4, 5. His providence, the acts of it are as so many streams, which carry us with full sail into the ocean of glory, Ps. xxv. All that he has made : heaven, that is our home, our inheritance ; earth, that is our inn, to accommodate us in our pilgrimage, in our journey homewards ; angels, they are our guard, Mat. iv. 6 ; inferior creatures, they are our servants, Gen. i. 28. For Christ has renewed that charter which we then forfeited. Yea, the reprobates, the devils, and hell itself, are made so ours by the love of Christ, as .they shall increase our happiqess, and illustrate the freeness of his love ; their temptations and persecutions, whatever they intend, shall have no worse effect than, as Dan. xi. J35, and xii. 10, to make us white, more lovely in the eye of our bride-
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 11
groom. And how will this endear the love of Christ to us, that he should reject so many fallen angels and men to choose us ! That we shall be those two who must enter into Canaan, when two hundred thousand of our fellow- travellers are shut out and perish in the wilderness ! What thoughts shall we have, when, sitting in the bosom of him whom our souls love, we shall see the greatest part of the world tormented in that flame ! The tortures of that lake will sweeten those rivers of pleasures in which we shall eternally bathe our souls. That dismal place shall be as a beauty-spot to make our glory more glorious.
And now, what is there in heaven and earth that the love of Christ has not made ours ? There is nothing of all left but himself. And, alas, what would all these things profit, if we want him ? Without Christ, earth would be hell, and heaven would not be heaven. He is the hope of earth, and the glory of heaven. See here, then, the height of his love ; he has given us himself, and all with himself. He is our husband ; heaven and earth is our jointure. He deals not with us as some husbands, who, out of more providence than love, instate their wives in part of their wealth, and reserve the rest for they know not what posterity ; no, his love hath withholden nothing from us. No, let him take all, saith he, as Mephibosheth ; all that I have by inheritance, and all that I have by purchase. His person is ours, he has married us ; his offices are ours, he is our king, our priest, our pro phet; his sufferings are ours, his merits, resurrection, ascension, intercession — all, all is ours that Christ hath, or doth, or suffereth. His love would let nothing be detained from us ; not his life, he gave his life a ransom for us, Mat. xx. 28 ; not his blood, he washed us in his blood, as in the text ; no, not his glory : John xvii. 22, ' And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them.' 0 boundless love ! 0 the unsearchable riches of Christ's love! 0 happy souls that have interest in this love, in these riches ! How may we contemn the pride of such as account themselves great and rich in the world ! Your large domains and greatest possessions are but as a point compared with ours, whose poverty you despise. If the map of our worlds were set before you, how would you be ashamed, with the Athenian gallant, to see your imagined vast estates shrink there into nothing ! We have riches that you know not of. We have more than you can desire, though your desires were as wide as hell. We have more than you can imagine, though your thoughts were stretched out to the wideness of angelical appre hension. There is no valuing of our revenues, no measuring of our pos sessions, no bounds of our inheritance ; it is infinite ; God, and heaven, and earth is our portion. The love of Christ hath done this for us, has given these to us.
5. Take an estimate of the love of Christ from his sufferings. Consider how and what he sutlers by us, with us, for us.
(1.) His love makes him patiently suffer many things by us. It puts up many affronts, and indignities, and undervaluings ; many acts of unkindness and disloyalty. See the provoking nature of sin, what a grievance and pres sure it is to Christ : Isa. xliii. 24, ' Thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities ;' Isa. i. 24, ' Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries.' Implying sin is an oppressing burden : Amos ii. 3, ' Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves ;' Ezek. vi. 9, ' I am broken with their whorish heart.' There is nothing so provoking, so injurious to man, as sin is to Christ ; for what higher provocations amongst men than treason, adultery, murder ? Now, every sin against Christ involves in it the heinousness of these crimes. Sin is high treason against Christ, would depose him, and advance itself and
12 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
Satan into his throne ; he says, ' I will not have this man to rule over me,' and ' Who is Jesus Christ, that I should obey him ?' Sin is an act of spiritual whoredom and adultery, a defiling of the marriage bed, a violation of our conjugal vow to Christ, when it carries away the heart from Christ, as in covetousness and sensuality ; hence such expressions, ' How is the faith ful city become an harlot !' Isa. i. 21. That sin has murdered Christ needs no proof ; nay, it strikes not only at his life, but at his being ; would anni hilate him, cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from us, Isa. xxx. 11. ' The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' Oh, then, what manner of love is this, which makes Christ willing to bear with such a thing as sin, and to continue so tenderly affectionate to those who have so frequently com mitted it ! What king ever so loved a subject as to continue his love to him after he be found an enemy to his crown and dignity ? What man could ever be friend to him that seeks his life ? It is great love in a husband to bear with the frowardness, unkindness, and ordinary infirmities of his wife ; but who ever could bear with whoredom ? No love but the love of Christ, that love which has no bounds, no example, no parallel.
But, lest you should think the sins of saints deserve not to be compared with such heinous crimes, consider that the sin of one whom Christ loves is more heinous, more provoking than the sin of any damned reprobate ; for those sins are most grievous that are against clearest light and greatest love. Now, the light which is in reprobates is darkness, Mat. vi. 23, compared with ours ; their knowledge is ignorance ; and therefore all theirs are sins of ignorance in comparison of ours. And for love, they were never the ob jects of it, it was never assured to them ; whenas we are both beloved of Christ, and know it, and yet sin. Sure there are no sins so heinous as these, nor any that Christ so much resents, Hosea iv. 15 ; Deut. xxxii. 19, 'When the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provokings of his sons and of his daughters.' No provokings like the provokings of sons and daughters, nor any love like that which these cannot exasperate. Such is the love of Christ.
(2.) This love makes him willing to suffer with us. ' In all our afflictions he is afflicted.' He remembers his in bonds, as though he were bound with them ; and those that are afflicted, as though he also were afflicted in the body. He knows by experience what it is to be poor, despised, slandered, persecuted ; he bare infirmities, that he might pity us under the burden : Mat. viii. 17, ' Himself took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses,' that he might sympathise with us: Heb. iv. 15, 'We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are.' He is intimately touched with them, even as the head with the pain and torture of a member : 1 Cor. xii. 26, ' And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it,' especially the head, which, being the fountain of sense, must be most sensible. This love occasions such a reciprocation of interests as he accounts what is done for us is done for him, and what is done against us is done against him, Mat. xxv. 40-45. He thinks himself hungry and thirsty, when we want meat and drink ; a stranger, when we are banished ; restrained, when we are in prison; and not well, when we are sick ; as is evident, ver. 35, 86. Those that per secute us persecute him, Acts ix. 5 ; and those that touch us touch the apple of his eye, Zech. ii. 8.
(3.) His love made him willing to suffer for us. And for us he has suffered all miseries that all our sins had deserved, and cruelty could inflict. He who with one word caused the vast fabric of heaven and earth to start out of nothing, who was King of kings and Lord of lords, who had heaven for his
EPH. Y. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 13
throne and earth for his footstool, was, out of love to us, content to take upon him the form of a servant, and to live in such a poor condition as he had not a cradle when born, nor a place to lay his head while he lived, nor a sepulchre to bury him when he died. He who was the King of glory, the splendour of whose glory dazzled the eyes of seraphims, nay, whose glory is above the heavens, was, out of love to us, willing to be ' despised and re jected of men,' Isa. liii. 3 ; to be accounted as ' a worm, and no man, a re proach of men and scorn of the people,' Ps. xxii. 6, 7. He who was adored by the glorious host of heaven, was the object of their eternal praises, yea, and ' counted it no robbery to be equal with God,' was, out of love to us, content to be ' numbered amongst transgressors,' to be reviled and slandered as a wine-bibber, a glutton, a Sabbath-breaker, a blasphemer, a mad-man, and possessed with the devil. He in whose presence was fulness of joy, and from whose smile spring rivers of pleasures, was, for love of us, willing to become ' a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief,' yea, and it seems with nothing else ; we never read that he laughed. He whose beauty was the glory of heaven, the brightness of his Father's glory, the sight whereof tran sports those happy spirits that behold it into an eternal rapture, was, for love to us, by his suffering so disfigured as he seemed to ' have no form nor comeliness in him, nor beauty that any should desire him ;' ' he gave his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair ; he hid not his face from shame and spitting,' Isa. 1. 6. He in whose sight the heavens are not clean, who was of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, was, out of love to us, content to 'bear our sins on his body upon the tree,' to be ' wounded for our transgressions,' and to have all our iniquities laid upon him. This love made God, blessed for ever, willing to be made a curse, the glorious Redeemer of Israel to be sold as a slave, and the Lord of life to die a base, accursed, and cruel death. And, which is above all, he who was his Father's love and delight, who was rejoicing before him from eternity, and in whom alone his soul was well pleased, did, out of love to us, bear the uncon ceivable burden of his Father's wrath, — that wrath which was the desert of all the sins of the elect, which would have sunk the whole world into hell, the weight whereof made his soul heavy unto the death, and was a far greater* torture to him than ever damned soul felt in hell (if we abstract sin and eternity from these torments), the burden whereof pressed from him that stupendous bloody sweat, and made him, in the anguish of his oppressed soul, cry out to heaven, ' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?' and cry out to earth, ' Oh ! have ye no regard, all ye that pass by ? See if there be any sorrow like my sorrow, wherewith the Lord has afflicted me in the day of his fierce wrath.' No, Lord, there was no sorrow like thy sorrow, no love like thy love. Was it not enough (dearest Saviour) that thou didst condescend to pray, and sigh, and weep for us, perishing wretches ? Wilt thou also bleed and die for us ? Was it not enough that thou wast hated, slandered, blasphemed, buffeted ? but thou wilt also be scourged, nailed, wounded, crucified. Was it not enough to feel the cruelty of man ? Wilt thou also undergo the wrath of God ? or if thy love will count nothing a suf ficient expression of itself, but parting with life, and shedding that precious blood, yet, was it not enough to die once, to suffer one death ? Wilt thou die twice, and taste both first, and something of the second death, suffer the pains of death in soul and body ? Oh the transcendent love of Christ ! heaven and earth are astonished at it. What tongue can express it ? what heart can conceive it ? The tongues, the thoughts of men and angels are far below it. Oh the height, and depth, and breadth, and length, of the love of Christ ! All the creation is nonplussed ; our thoughts are swallowed up in this depth,
14 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
and there must lie till glory elevate them, when we shall have no other em ployment but to praise, admire, and adore this love of Christ.
But further, to set out this love of Christ, consider some properties by which the Spirit describes it. It is free, unchangeable, incomprehensible.
1. Christ loves us freely. He loved us when we had neither love nor beauty to attract his affections. The time of his love was when we lay trodden under foot, or polluted in our blood, Ezek. xvi. 6; when we had torn off the veil of light and beauty wherewith our souls were at first in vested, and clothed them in Josadech's habit, Zech. iii. 3, filthy or (as the original is) excrementitious garments ; when we were wallowing in sin, more filthy than the puddle of a sow, and besmeared our souls with that which is more loathsome than the vomit of a dog. When the image of God was with drawn, the life of holiness expired, and our souls were dead, putrifying and stinking as an open sepulchre. And what think you, could Christ love us in this condition ? Will any of us set our affections on a worm, take a toad into his bosom ? But Christ embraceth us in the arms of love, when we had made ourselves worse than the beasts that perish. Oh the freeness of this love !
Nor had we more love than beauty when Christ loved us. We were ene mies to him, and all that were of his alliance. When we hated his person, scorned his love, rejected his offers with disdain, trampled upon his favours, and preferred our base lusts and his deadly enemy Satan before him. When we told him, we saw more reason to entertain the devil's offers than his, and rather be damned than be beholden to his love for heaven. And could Christ love us now ? Yes : Rom. v. 8, ' When we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' No greater enemies to Christ than sinners, no freer love than love of enemies, no higher expression of free love than to die for enemies.
2. It is unchangeable, John xiii. 1. No act of unkindness or disloyalty of ours can nonplus it ; no, not that which admits of no reconciliation amongst men, adultery : Jer. xxxi., ' Thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return unto me, saith the Lord.' See that full place, Rom. viii. 35 to the end, ' I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor prin cipalities, nor powers,' &c., ' shall be able to separate me from the love of Christ.' Death shall not, for that conveys us to a full enjoyment of this love ; nor life, for that is a preparatory to this enjoyment ; nor angels, good or bad ; not bad, for if they separate us, it will be by accusing of us to Christ, shewing him our deformity or disloyalty, to make us seem unworthy of so great love ; -but Christ will hear no such thing : Zech. iii., ' The Lord rebuke thee, Satan ;' nor good angels, for if there be any danger, it is because they are more lovely, more excellent creatures than we, and so might withdraw the heart of Christ from us to them as the more worthy objects, but this could not hinder Christ at first from loving us, and therefore cannot hinder him from continuing to love us ; nor principalities, nor powers, i.e. no princes or potentates, by acts of cruelty or tyranny, expressed verse 35, ' Shall tribu lation, or distress, or persecution, or famine ? ' &c. No ; these are so far from separating us from the love of Christ, as they occasion sweeter expressions of Christ's love. The saints find by experience never more consolation than in tribulation. They are never more enlarged than when distressed, never more affectionately embraced than when persecuted, never sweetlier feasted than in famine, &c. : 'In all these we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us.' Those things which they intend for our ruin, are by the love of Christ made our triumph. We are more than conquerors, and may more than triumph, in this unchangeable love of Christ.
3. It is an incomprehensible love : Eph. iii. 19, ' Love of Christ, which
EPH. V. 2.J THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 15
passeth knowledge.' There was great love betwixt David and Jonathan : 1 Sam. xx. 17, Jonathan ' loved him as his own soul.' It is a tenderer affection which a mother bears to her sucking child, the son of her womb, Isa. xlix. 15. There is yet a stronger love than this, viz. a conjugal love between husband and wife, as is implied in Elkanah's speech to Hannah : 1 Sam. i. 8, 'Am I not better to thee than ten sons?' But the highest strain of love we meet with is that of Moses and Paul to the Israelites, which made one of them contented to be blotted out of the book of life, the other to be accursed from Christ, for them. These are all high degrees of love indeed, but such as were in the breasts of men, and therefore not beyond their knowledge. Yea, but the love of Christ passeth knowledge. He is the pattern and subject of all relations ; and the love of all relations is con centred in his breast, and unspeakably more. His love to us is many degrees higher than the love which flows from all relations would be if united in one soul ; and therefore when he would express it, he goes higher than the world for a resemblance of it, even to infmiteness itself: John xv. 9, ' As the Father hath loved me, even so love I you.' This is such a love as we can neither express nor conceive ; we must supply the defect of both with admiration. And this should have been the,
1. Use. To admire the love of Christ.
2. To admire the happiness of those whom Christ loves.
3. To move us to love Christ with all, for all, above all.
4. To move us to love one another.
Use 1. Admire the love of Christ. Heaven and earth never beheld, angels and men never considered, anything so wonderful, so apt to astonish, as Christ's love to men. It is wonderful in the eyes of glorified creatures ; angels and saints do, and will, admire and adore it to all eternity. And it is wonderful in the eyes of all considering men on earth ; nothing more, no thing so much. Wonderful is Christ's attribute, Isa. ix. 6 ; due to him in all respects, but above all in this, and in all other for this. All will confess it, if they consider the grounds of this admiration, whom, who, and how.
1. Consider whom he loves. How unfit, unworthy, unlovely. It was not, it could not be, in the thoughts of any, whose thoughts are not infinite, to imagine that ever man, of all creatures, should be the object of Christ's love. For,
(1.) How vile and contemptible is man in Christ's account! What is man but dust and ashes, breathing dust and enlivened clay ? Gen. xviii. 27. What more despicable creature than a worm ? The best of men, compared •with Christ, are no more, nay, not so much in his sight, as a worm in ours : Job xxv. 6, ' How much less man that is a worm, and the son of man which is a worm ? ' He is more indeed absolutely, but not so much comparatively. The highest on earth is farther below Christ than a worm is below a man. Man, so considered, is not so much as a worm, he is but as a moth : Job xxvii. 18, ' He builds his house as a moth ;' nay, he is inferior to this small contemptible creature : Job iv. 19, ' Crushed before the moth.' Yet there is something on earth more inconsiderable than a moth ; as small in quan tity, and far inferior, as being inanimate, a drop, an atom. Yet man is not so much, compared with Christ, as one of these: Isa. xl. 15, 'All the nations.' If all the earth, all the inhabitants of the earth, be but as one drop, what is one man ? Imagine a drop, a mote, divided into as many millions of parts as there are people on earth, how small would one of those parts be, even beyond imagination ! It would be as nothing. Nay, but all nations are ' less than nothing,' ver. 17. Oh what, then, is one man ! Oh what, a wonder that Christ should love such a thing, such a nothing, as man!
16 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
Oh that Christ should embrace a worm, and take a- moth into his bosom ! That he should delight in and rejoice over a drop, a mote, and set his heart upon that which is not ! Ps. viii. 4.
(2.) How impotent ! Man can do nothing to engage or deserve love, no thing to please or honour such a lover ; and was so considered when Christ had intentions of love, therefore it is admirable. It is a wonder that any should love a creature whose being is despicable ; but if it be considerable in acting, it takes off from the wonder. But man is despicable, not only as to his being, but actings. As he is nothing comparatively, so he can do nothing ; nothing to glorify Christ, much to dishonour him ; nothing to please Christ, much to provoke him. As an impotent slave has no power to be serviceable to his prince, much to dishonour him by treasonable speeches or practices. An affront from a slave is a greater provocation than from an equal. How can one that is halt, lame, or maimed, walk or work ; one that is dead, act ? Such were men, so represented to Christ, when he entertained thoughts of love ; without active principles, faculties, or qualities. And when Christ has bestowed these, yet cannot he act but as he is acted ; it is not he works for Christ, but Christ that works all his works for him. He cannot act but in Christ's strength, cannot move except he be drawn, cannot walk except Christ lead him, cannot stand except Christ uphold him. Yea, when he is empowered to act, yet are not his actings more valuable than his being. Operari sequitur esse. As he is no more, compared with Christ, than a worm, moth, mote, so his best actions, most glorious per formances, are of no more advantage to Christ than the crawlings of a worm, the acting of a moth, the motion of an atom, the falling of a drop. As these are to us, so we to Christ ; when we have done all, but unprofitable servants. What a wonder that Christ should love those in whose being he can take no pleasure, and by whose acting he can get no glory, no advantage ! Who amongst us would love or marry one who could not stand but while sup ported, nor rise but as lifted up, nor move a finger but as moved? Such a lame, sick, impotent, dead creature was man, when Christ first thought of love, Rom. v. 6.
(3.) How poor ! No such poverty as man's. He is nothing, can do nothing ; nay, and hath nothing. Who poorer than he who has neither food, nor raiment, nor money, nay, and in debt besides ? Man is in a starving condition, a famished soul ; must needs be so, wanting Christ the bread of life. He feeds on nothing but wind and husks, the vanities and brutish pleasures of the world please his senses, his soul languisheth, con sumes, and is at the gate of death. He has not so much as will cover his nakedness ; though he think, with Laodicea, he is rich, and stands in need of nothing, yet he is poor and naked, Eev. iii.
The poor, forlorn condition of man, when Christ intended love, is de scribed Ezek. xvi. 6 ; lay polluted in his blood, and no eye pitied him. A degree below misery, below pity; yet this was ' the time of love.' He has no money, nothing to purchase meat or clothes. Those whom Christ entreats with loving invitation to participation of himself, are such as have no money, Isa. Iv. 1. He not only wants all things, but owes more than ever he had, more than he is worth. He cannot, upon a just account, say his soul is his own ; he has given his soul to Satan, sold himself to work wickedness ; and Satan leads him captive, has taken possession ; the strong man armed keeps the house. He has forfeited not only his soul, but his very being to God ; a greater debt than men can owe one to another. The least sin is such a debt as all the riches in the world cannot discharge ; nothing can cancel the handwriting which is against us but Christ's blood.
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 17
What a wonder, that Christ should love such poverty ! No such love amongst men. If a great prince, such as Cyrus or Alexander, should set his love on one he finds in the highway, poor, famished, and naked, it would be the astonishment of all that should hear of it ; much more this, Christ's state being infinitely greater, and man's spiritual poverty unspeak ably more.
(4.) How deformed ! Poverty alone cannot hinder love, especially if there be beauty ; but who can love deformity ? Man not only wants beauty, but is covered with ugly and loathsome deformity. He was created fair and lovely, his ornament was the beauty of heaven, the image of God ; but, alas! that is razed out, and the deformed image of Satan drawn in its place. His light is turned into darkness ; the fair, and sometimes faithful soul, is become a filthy harlot : and, as Isa. iii. 24, ' Instead of a sweet smell, there is stink ; and instead of well-set hair, baldness ; and burning instead of beauty.'
There is no lovely complexion, no comely proportion left in man's soul, nothing that can please the eye of Christ. The surface of it defiled as with a menstruous rag. It is overspread with a filthy leprosy, and full, as David's bones, of loathsome diseases, that break forth into rotten ulcers and putrefy ing sores, as Isa. i. 6. Nothing is to be seen in the face of the soul but fretting cankers, and spreading gangrenes. Sin has made the soul as un lovely as Lazarus's body, whose sores the dogs licked ; or as Job's, full of sore boils, when he sat in the ashes and- scraped himself. And who can be in love with such a soul ?
The soul is no less deformed in respect of proportion. It is perverted, crooked, and, as that woman, bowed down with a spirit of infirmity, all broken, and out of joint. It is defective in those parts that should make it lovely ; it is lame, and maimed, and blind. The eyes, no less an ornament to the soul than to the body, are put out : ' The God of this world has blinded ' natural men, 2 Cor. iv. 4. Mislocation is a monstrous deformity in the body, when the feet are where the head should be, or the thighs in place of the arms, or breast where the back, &c. There is such a misloca- tion on the soul. That which should be lowest is highest; the appetite and fancy above the mind and will ; that which should obey commands ; that which should rule is enslaved. A woful deformity ! That which should be supreme is subordinate ; and that which should be subject is supreme. What mother would love a child whose parts were so monstrously displaced ? A dislocation in the soul is as odious a deformity in Christ's eye, as that of the body in ours.
But that which makes the soul most unlovely is this, it is dead. When the life of the soul expired, all its beauty expired with it. A dead soul is as unlovely to Christ as a dead body is to us. Abraham loved Sarah dearly while she lived, but when she was dead he could not endure her sight ; he desired a place to bury his dead out of his sight. T,hat which is pleasing and amiable when it is living, is a ghastly and fearful spectacle when it is dead. The soul of every son of Adam is dead, dead in sins and trespasses, dead of a noisome and contagious disease. This removes it at a greater distance from love, has lain long rotting in a grave. How wonderful is Christ's love ! Who but Christ would entertain thoughts of love towards such an ugly, loathsome, deformed, monstrous, dead creature, as man is made by sin ?
(5.) How hated ! Not only hateful, but hated ; hated of all. Who would love him, whom none loves, who has no friends, who can meet with
VOL. III. B
18 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
none in the world but enemies ? A natural man is hated of God ; he hates all workers of iniquity : and the natural man works nothing else, Gen. vi. 5. He is born a child of wrath, it is his inheritance, entailed upon him, the wrath of God. And will Christ love what his Father hates ?
The angels hate him. These are the immediate attendants and subjects of the King of heaven, and have the same friends, the same enemies with their sovereign. The seraphims, well rendered pXo^ToVog,* have their name, not from the order of their love, but of their anger, as appears Isa. vi., the only place where angels have that name. For there the Lord is repre sented as an incensed judge, and they as ministers of his anger, kindled with his indignation. What the saints in heaven do, we ma}7 judge by the saints on earth : Ps. cxxxix. 21, 'Do not I hate them that hate thee ? Am I not grieved ?' &c.
Nay, all the inferior creatures are at enmity with man. And good reason, since by the corruption of man it is brought into woful bondage, groaneth and travaileth in pain under it, Rom. viii. 20-22. The whole creation is at enmity with man. He cannot meet any creature, but harbours a secret hatred, and would be ready to manifest it at God's command. What a wonder, that Christ will love that which all hate !
(6.) What enmity ! Man is not only hateful, and hated, but a hater of Christ, with such a hatred as would exclude all love from the breast of any creature ; a hatred so extensive, that he hates Christ and all that is his, all that is like him ; all his offices, especially that which is most glorious, his royal office ; keeps Christ out of his throne as to himself, and would do it in others. Nay, it reaches to any resemblance of Christ, hates him so much, as his heart rises against the image of Christ. Herein man manifests the height of his hatred against Christ, in that he hates his very image, that which does but resemble him, holiness wherever it is, in his people, in his ordinances, in his ways.
Causeless. It is a wonder if any hatred meet with returns of love, but above all causeless hatred. In this respect David was a type of Christ, in that so many hated him without a cause, Ps. Ixix. 4. There is not in Christ the least occasion of hatred, he is all glory, all beauty, altogether lovely, nothing else. Nor doth he give the least cause : for all his admini strations are gracious or righteous ; and as his goodness is to be feared, so even his justice is to be loved. It is lovely in itself, being a divine, an infinite perfection, and should be so to men. Christ may say to all men, as to the Jews, John x. 31, ' Many good works have I shewed, &c. ; for which of these do ye hate me ?' Though none have cause, yet all hate. That Christ should requite any hatred with love, is a wonder; but to return love for causeless hatred, is an astonishment!
Perfect hatred, without any mixture of love, Rom. viii. 7. His heart is as full of hatred, as a toad of poison, or hell of darkness. He hates Christ more than any man on earth ever loved him ; for love is but imperfect here, and mixed with much unkindness ; but there is no mixture of love, not the least degree of it, not the least desire, inclination, or tendency to it. Oh that Christ should love those with perfect love who hate him with perfect hatred, who have no inclinations to love him.
Mortal and deadly. What more than that which murders what it hates, and delights to do it ? Those that delight in sin, delight to murder Christ, for it was sin that murdered him. Who is there that has not delighted in sin ? Eternal love for deadly hatred !
Implacable. It is not a disposition easily removed, but a habit so firmly •" Qu. <px«| srt/jc,-, referring to Heb. i. 7? — ED.
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 19
rooted in the heart, as it can never be plucked up, till the heart itself be taken out; and therefore when God roots out his hatred, and plants love, he quite takes away the old heart, Ezek. xi. 19.
Oh what enmity is here ! It is a wonder that any creature should so far degenerate as to turn enemy to its Creator and Redeemer. Oh what a wonder that Christ should love such enemies.
Enemies in their minds, who have hard, low, base, dishonourable thoughts of Christ ; think Christ a hard master, a tyrant ; think his yoke an intoler able grievance, an insupportable burden, and therefore plot how they may break his bonds.
In their hearts. Every motion there is rebellious, quite opposite to Christ ; hate that which he most loves, love that which he most hates, delight in that which grieves him, &c.
In their lives. Every action an act of rebellion, and their whole life (till conversion) a continued fight against Christ. This is the cause of the quarrel : ' We will not have this man to rule over us.'
Oh wonder that Christ should love enemies, such enemies, with such love ! Rom. v. 10 ; love them better than his life, who hated him to the death ! love them unchangeably, who hated him implacably ! love them against all provocations and discouragements, who hated him without a cause ! love them with superlative love, who hated him with perfect hatred ! Behold what manner of love ! behold, and wonder ! So God loved the world, so Christ loved man, so as none can express, none can choose but admire.
(7.) What base dispositions, what ill conditions, after Christ's love hath overcome their hatred, and by his infinite power [infused] some degrees of love ; yet they continue so froward, unkind, undervaluing, disobedient, un grateful, jealous, disloyal ; as it must needs be a wonder Christ can love them. How cross, froward, perverse, almost always complaining of and quarrelling with Christ, though he give not the least occasion ; quarrel with him for his words, though he express himself never so -sweetly. Why was not this pro mise made more particular ? Why clogged with such conditions ? It be longs not to me, I can get no comfort from it ; he might as well have spoken nothing as spoke thus. And at his actions ; why is his promise no sooner performed ? Why hears he not my prayers ? Why want I that which others have ? Why thus afflicted ? In vain am I innocent, Ps. Ixxiii. 12, 13.
How unkind. How seldom visit him. With how little delight and affection. How few thoughts of him. How seldom, how coldly entertain him. It was Christ's spouse who would suffer his head to be wet, before she would wet her foot, and would not stir to the door to let him in, though he wooed her with all sweet importunity. Prefer sinful ease and pleasure before communion with Christ. How often, do they stop their ears when he speaks, refuse when he offers, give no answer when he calls, turn their backs when he would embrace !
How do they undervalue him. The highest thoughts of angels do not reach him, the best thoughts of men fall infinitely short of him. What then do those low, hard, disparaging thoughts of Christ, more frequent than those that are better ? How do they slight his tokens, prefer the husks of the world before the jewels and dainties of heaven. Who would love such a one, as knows not how to esteem of love, or any expressions of it ?
How disobedient. Omit many things that he commands, but do nothing at all as he desires ; fail in time, manner, end, &c. Who would endure such a servant as will do nothing as he is commanded ? Who would choose such a friend as will do nothing as he is desired ? Who would love such a wife as will do nothing as her husband would have her ? Yet such a eer-
20 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
vant, a friend, a spouse, has Christ of man ; yet he loves more, unspeakably more, than men ; here is the wonder.
How ungrateful. Though Christ give all that is good for them, more than they make use of, more than they desire or can conceive, yet they think they have not enough, they murmur, complain : What, but a drop of comfort, but a dram of grace ? And which is more provoking, for worldly things, they often will not so much as acknowledge they have received what Christ has given in possession ; judge that counterfeit which has the stamp of an heaven and the picture of Christ on it. What more ingratitude than this ! What more odious than ingratitude ! Who can love an unthankful person !
How jealous. Not only an unkind but cruel affection. Suspect Christ does not love, when his love is writ with characters of his own blood, when he has bestowed himself and all on them ; suspect he will not be constant, notwithstanding all pledges, promises, asseverations, oaths ; thinks, upon no ground, that Christ affects others more, because of common favours ; misin terprets his expression, thinks that is sent in hatred which is given in love ; think he uses them as enemies, when he chastens them as children ; when he withdraws for trial, they conclude he has forsaken, forgotten, with Zion, Isa. xlix. 14, forgot to be gracious, Ps. Ixxvii. 9.
How disloyal. Many inclinations to spiritual whoredom, after they are espoused to Christ. Too much eye the world, lust after disavowed vanities ; too high thoughts of, and eager affections to, those things that are Christ's rivals. If to look upon a woman to lust after her, be enough to make one guilty of adultery in a carnal sense, then to look upon sin and the world, with delight, desire, &c., will bring the guilt of adultery in a spiritual sense. And then how much cause has Christ to complain, that those whom he loves, and has espoused, do play the harlot with many lovers ! How often do these forsake the guide of their youth, and embrace the bosom of strangers. How much are whoredoms multiplied, Ezek. xvi. 25. And those that pass for the spouse of Christ are, ver. 32, as a wife that committeth adultery, and taketh strangers instead of her husband. 0 wonder ! will Christ's love be carried to one who runs a whoring from him !
How disingenuous. To venture more freely upon what is sinful or doubt ful, because the Lord is so ready to pardon. To grow remiss, negligent, indifferent as to endeavours after growth in grace, through mortification, en tire self-denial, strict, watchful, holy, fruitful, exemplary walking, because they think themselves sure of heaven. How disingenuous to grow worse by mercy, turn grace into wantonness, presumptuous security.
(8.) How pre-engaged to his deadly enemies, sin and Satan. Who will love one for a wife, who is contracted to another, given her heart and self into his possession, and has long continued -so ? Such is a man's state, married to sin, in league with Satan, and brings forth fruit, not unto God, but unto them. Fruit unto death, this is the issue of that woful marriage, described, Rom. vii. from 1 to the 5 ; these have his first love, Christ has but the leavings ; they the first fruits, Christ many times but the gleanings; they have the strength of the body and vigour of the .soul, Christ but a decrepit body and languishing affections ; they have the spirits of the soul and its acting, Christ but the dregs. And will it not astonish any that Christ should be content with these ? Is it not a wonder that Christ can love and marry a soul, who has prostituted itself a long time to that ugly fiend Satan, and that which is more ugly, sin ?
(9.) How miserable. Nothing on earth more, or so much. Who would woo misery, or match himself with wretchedness ? As there is a strange
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 21
propensity in every one to happiness, so a strong antipathy and averseness to misery; the very approach of misery begets dread and horror, passions at a great distance from love. You may take an estimate of man's misery from the former particular, not only deprived of beauty, strength, riches, favour, &c., but also of liberty ; enslaved to sin and Satan, in bonds and fetters, laden with sins, the chain of darkness, bound in affliction, and in that which is worse than iron ; and the poor soul is bowed down under the weight of it, though insensible.
Nay, he is under the sentence of condemnation. The Judge of heaven and earth has passed sentence : ' He that believes not is condemned already,' John iii. 8; not only worthy, or in danger to "be condemned, or will be condemned hereafter.
Nay, the execution is begun, the sentence is part executed : ' The wrath of God abides on him;' wrath, wrath of God, abiding wrath. He that is under wrath is half in hell. This makes hell and wrath, here and there, differ but in degrees. Oh what misery ! Involuntary misery attracts pity, and there is some love in pity ; but wilful misery can expect no pity, and none more wilful than these. He involved himself in it, and is unwilling to be delivered ; he had rather have his sin with misery, than happiness as the gospel offers it. Let these meet in your thoughts, consider how despicable, &c. ; any one of them render Christ's love wonderful,, altogether an astonish ment.
2. Ground of admiration, is, who, the lover. That Christ should ! It would be a wonder if an angel, if any creature, could love such a thing as fallen man, so despicable, decrepit, hateful. Oh ! but that Christ should love him, is an astonishment ; from six considerations.
(1.) How excellent is Christ ! The highest excellency in heaven, and the chiefest excellency on earth, meet in his person. He is ' fairer than the children of men,' Ps. xlv. 2 ; nay, fairer than the sons of God. So the angels are called, Job i. 6. That beauty that shines in the angelical nature is not so much as a glow-worm to the sun, when it comes in comparison with Christ. The lustre of it shines so bright, as it dazzles their eyes, and they cover their faces ; and all the heavenly company lie prostrate at his feet, adoring, admiring that beauty which they cannot behold.
It is his beauty that makes heaven a glorious place. The sight of it, though it cannot be seen as it is, makes all those both happy and glorious that behold it. This is the blissful vision, which makes the angels blessed. This is it which makes the saints glorious, transforming them from glory to glory.
Imagine that all the beautiful accomplishments, and lovely excellencies, that ever the world saw or heard of, were united in one person ; imagine that innumerable more than ever eye saw, or ear heard, or heart can con ceive, were added to and mixed with the former ; imagine that every of these excellencies were screwed up to the nil ultra of infiniteness ; imagine these, and infinitely more than can be imagined, to meet and shine in one person : and this is Christ. All the rays of beauty which are dispersed in heaven and earth are united in him, as in the sun. Every spark of beauty in Christ is an excellency, such as heaven and earth cannot match. And every excellency in him is infinite. See how many wonders ! And can such excellency deign to love such baseness ? The bright morning star unite itself to a dunghill ? Will such beauty love such deformity ? One so fair, us so ugly ? Will so great a king, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, marry such a slave ? The most high God the basest and most wretched creature ? Will happiness and glory match itself with misery and
22 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
vileness, and infiniteness stoop to that which is nothing ? "Will he, whose purity cannot behold sin, cast an eye of love upon sinners ; and he, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, set his heart upon a worm, a mote ? Would you not wonder to see a peerless beauty espouse a deformed hag?
(2.) How glorious. In Christ is not only all beauty, that which is the perfection of beauty, excellency ; but that which is the highest degree of excellency, glory. What glory, see Heb. i. 3, ' the brightness of his glory.' Here is glory, and brightness of glory, and brightness of his Father's glory, •/. e. of infinite glory. So that Christ is infinitely glorious. And to that which is infinite nothing can be added. Whatever man can do, he cannot add to the glory of Christ. And since he can get no glory by him, why does he love him ? Man's goodness upon this account is no advantage to Christ, as Eliphaz expresses it, Job xxii. 2.
It is true, relative glory may be increased or diminished, that is, when essential glory is manifested or acknowledged. But this is eztrinsecal to Christ ; he had been infinitely glorious if no creature had ever seen or acknowledged his glory. Besides, if desire of this might be an engagement of Christ's love, yet it is a wonder that man, of all creatures, should be be loved out of this respect ; for there never was any one man upon earth but did more dishonour Christ, than all the creatures on earth besides, from the beginning of the world to the dissolution of it. One man does more dishonour to Christ than the whole creation.
If Christ have any honour by man, yet he has mr.ch more dishonour ; therefore it is a wonder Christ should love man, for it will be hard to con ceive how respect to his glory engages him to it. While man is unregenerate, his whole life is a continual impeachment of his glory. And after he is regenerate, in the services which tend most to Christ's glory, he seems to be more dishonoured than glorified. For there is no one act, but has many sins mixed with it. And do not many sins more impair his glory than one good act illustrates it ?
What wonders are here ! Will infinite glory love that which is the shame of the whole creation ? Will Christ, whose glory is himself, love that which most impairs his glory? Will he pass by them who dishonour him, and set his heart upon those who do nothing else ? Who. would not wonder to see a king in his glory embrace a toad, and cherish it in his bosom ; or run into the embraces of a slave, a traitor to his crown and dignity? But when the King, the Lord of glory, for love to such a one, becomes ' the reproach of men, and shame of the people,' Ps. xxii. 6 ; that glory should be content to be covered with shame, and divine excellency to be clothed with ignominy and reproach ; what a wonder is this !
(3.) How happy. Christ was perfectly, infinitely happy, before the creation, and had been so to eternity if no man had ever been created. Men love, that they may be more happy, that they may have more delight, or contentment, or abundance, or assistance. Christ stood in need of none of these ; men and angels could not contribute more of these to Christ than he enjoyed. His happiness was in the enjoyment of the eternal Father and divine Spirit. To this nothing can be added, from it nothing detracted. For it is himself, and so infinite, et infinite non dalur rnajus. Man is of no use to Christ, as to his happiness. If there had been a million of worlds of men, Christ had been never the happier. If no man had been created, or all men had perished, Christ had not been, could not be, one jot less happy. Man cannot add so much to Christ as a spark to the sun, or a drop to the ocean, or a point to the vast frame of heaven and earth.
EPH. V. 2.J THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 23
Christ is not only Kavraax.^, bat ciuraexriz ; not only all-sufficient, but self-sufficient. The creature's sufficiency is from him, his is from himself. The Lord declares how little need he has of man, Ps. 1. 9-12. ' The eyes of all wait upon him, and he satisfies the desires of every living thing,' Ps. cxlv. 15, 16. But he is infinitely satisfied in looking upon himself; for in himself dwells all fulness satisfactory to him, and more than sufficient to all his. He stands in no more need of man than the heavens stand in need of a gnat to move them, or the earth of a grasshopper to support it, or the sea of a mote to confine it to its bounds. Fulness emptied ! Blessedness cursed ! What a wonder ! Infinite happiness unite itself to extreme misery ! Why does Christ mind that which is useless to him ? But, oh why should he love him ? Christ is all-sufficient, and perfectly happy with out man ; why should he shew himself unsatisfied till man be happy ? Christ was infinitely, fully satisfied, in the enjoyment of his Father ; why would he do, suffer so much, to bring wretched vain man into that blissful enjoyment ? Christ had lost nothing if man had perished. Why should he expose his person to so many hazards to save him ? Christ had suffered nothing, if man had suffered to eternity; why would he suffer so much to free him from suffering ?
(4.) How knowing. Christ is omniscient. He knows all things that may discourage him from love, and nothing is to be known in man but may discourage, and all things that are hateful meet in man. If one that hath nothing lovely can conceal or hide what is hateful, can make fair shows when there are foul deformities, it is less wonder if any be surprised with love of such an one. But when there is nothing lovely in man, and all things that are hateful, and Christ knows this distinctly, exactly, better than man him self, this makes his love a wonder. But so it is, not the least part of man's unloveliness was, or could be, concealed from Christ, Heb. iv. 13, Jer. xxiii. 23, 21-. All the former particulars, and more than we can number, were from eternity presented to Christ at once ; not one after another, as to us, but he saw them at one view, and he saw them, sees them always actually. His knowledge is not, as ours, habitual, but actual. His eye is always fixed on them, they are never forgotten, never laid aside, but always present, continually presented to his thoughts; for in him cognoscere et cogitare idem mnt.
This consideration adds as much wonder to Christ's love as any. Does he know man's frame, and considers he is but dust ; and will he count such a base thing his jewel, his peculiar treasure ? Does he weigh man, and find him lighter than vanity ; and will no other expression satisfy his love, but ' weight of glory' ? He foresaw man would fall, -and shatter the beauti ful frame of his soul into pieces, and so make himself lame, blind, maimed, impotent, decrepit, unable to do anything pleasing; and would he do and suffer so much for him, who could do nothing for him, so much against him ?
He knew he was poor, beggarly, naked. Oh why did he not disdain to look upon so forlorn a wretch ? Or if he would shew some pity, would nothing serve to cover that nakedness but his own robe ; to relieve that poverty but unsearchable riches, his own fulness ? His pure eye saw nothing lovely in man, had a distinct view of ail his deformities, his loath some complexion, and monstrous dispositions. He saw that in him alone of all the earth that his soul hated, and would he love him more than all the earth ? He saw he had made himself worse, more deformed than the beasts that perish, and would he so love him as to equal him with angels ? He saw man had forsaken God, and was cast off by him and all his, and would his soul cleave to him ? He knew man alone, of all his creatures on
24 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
earth, did hate him, and would he pass by them who loved him, to love man who only hated him ? Would Christ suffer his friends to perish, and save his mortal enemy ?
Christ not onty knows that man's disposition is froward, unkind, rebel lious, disingenuous, ungrateful, and disloyal, but he saw from eternity every froward look, every unkind gesture, every rebellious motion, every disin genuous act, every ungrateful return, every disloyal inclination. He knows, and knew, the hearts and reins, 2 Chron. vi. 30, Ps. vii. 10 ; every heart and every motion of it was as visible to him from eternity as our faces to us when we look most stedfastly one upon another, and infinitely more. He who takes notice of every hair of our heads did take more notice of that which more concerns him, the disposition and inclination of our hearts ; if those are numbered, surely these are. He tells not only tears, but wander ings ; they are in his book, Ps. Ivi. 8. Would he be kind to those who he knew would be froward? so indulgent to one so rebellious? multiply favours upon such ungrateful wretches, so disingenuous ? would he engage himself to one who he knew would play the harlot ? He knew how long he would resist before, and how treacherous after. Why would he pity wilful misery, and be at such expenses to make him happy, who he knew had rather be miser able ? Why would he love that which he knew was more in love with sin, and accept of that which Satan had so long possessed, and espouse Satan's strumpet ?
(5.) How free and independent. There was no necessity, no motive, no engagement upon Christ to love any creature. He enjoyed more liberty than is to be found in the creatures. It was in his choice whether any creatures should have a being, much more whether any should be the objects of his love. There was no necessity he should create anything, none sure that he should love any. The Lord was infinitely satisfied in the enjoyment of himself, and none but himself could be an object meet, proportionable to his love, worthy of it. Why then did he think of making, much more of loving, anything else ? Or if he would not confine his love to his own breast, yet in the expressions of it to those other creatures before man, or any men before those that are chosen, as at his liberty. He amongst us, who may love whom he pleases, and enjoy whom he loves, will choose the best, or else it is a wonder.
Here is the wonder of Christ's love, that it does fix upon the worst of crea tures, man, yea, and upon the worst of men in some respects.
Christ has not loved those that are most lovely, nor those who can make the best returns, otherwise he had chosen the fallen angels rather than fallen man. The angelical nature is more excellent, and comes nearer to the divine nature, being spiritual. They had more power to answer his love, as being more intelligent and more active, yet when Christ had his choice, see what a wonderful determination his will made : Fallen angels I will hate, but fallen man I will love. He leaves them where they fell, to lie in chains of eternal darkness ; but he lifts up man's head, and crowns it with glory and dignity.
Nay, since Christ is so free as he might love whom he pleases, it is a wonder he did not respect the inferior creatures rather than man. For why? They never offended, never dishonoured him, but constantly declare his glory and execute his will. But man is the only offender, the only guilty creature on earth ; none else dishonour and offend Christ. Yet when Christ had his choice, see his resolution, and wonder. I will give him eternal life who has dishonoured me ; I will suffer them to perish who never offended me !
But if man must be the object of Christ's love, it is yet a wonder he did
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 25
not love other men rather than those whom he has chosen. Christ has not chosen men of choicest parts, and sweetest dispositions, or greatest ability ; not those that might have been more able and more willing to answer his love and do him service. It is a wonderful distinction his love made ; the apostle tells us, 1 Cor. i. 26-28, not the wise, but the foolish ; not the mighty, but the weak ; not the noble, but the base, despised, nothings, things which are not. We may see it and wonder. Earth will wonder at it while there are men on earth, and heaven while there are saints and angels in heaven.
(6.) How powerful. ' All power is given to him in heaven and earth,' Mat. xxviii. 18, that as Mediator; but as God, he is coequal with his Father, and so omnipotent. He could have created more lovely, more excellent creatures than any [that] are in being. He did not act as natural agents, ad extremum virium ; but with as much ease as he made the world could have formed creatures innumerable degrees more excellent than the most excellent piece of his creation, the angels. There is a vast, an unconceivable distance betwixt the angelical nature and infiniteness, therefore there is room enough for variety of creatures inconceivably more lovely than angels, and such as might have, been incomparably more serviceable.
Now since man is so extremely deformed and unserviceable, and therefore so unfit, so unworthy to be beloved, it is a wonder that Christ would take notice of man, and not rather think of forming some creatures more meet to be objects of his love. Since man had made himself equal, if not inferior, to the beasts that perish, Christ might have suffered him to perish with them without further regard of him, and chosen a more noble, a more lovely object to please himself withal. It is more a wonder than if a curious florist, hav ing choice of the rarest flowers on earth, should please himself with such weeds as grow in every field ; or than if an exact lapidary, being acquainted with the richest mines in the world, and having power to possess himself of what precious stones he list, should content himself with pebbles, and such stones as are to be found in every street ; or if one, having that imaginary philosopher's stone, and power to turn every metal into gold, should be satisfied with lead or iron. What a wonder would this be ! Much more wonderful is Christ's love, which chooses those who are unspeakably more inferior to the creatures he could have formed than lead is to gold, or a stinking weed to the sweetest and fairest flower. How should we wonder, in the words of the Psalmist, Ps. viii., ' Lord, what is man ? ' Thou might- est have made creatures unspeakably higher than both, yet thou wouldst not prefer these before man ; suffer these to sleep in their abhorred state of nonentity, and give man a being, and so as to be the object of his love.
(7.) How absolute. The sovereignty of Christ makes his love a wonder. Christ might, without any prejudice to his glory, have annihilated all men if they had continued innocent, and might have justified the act upon the bare account of his sovereignty. Shall not I do with mine own as I list ? Mat. xx. 15, 'Is it not lawful?' But after sin, he might have executed the sentence of death upon all mankind in that very moment they received life ; and, as he threatens Ephraim, Hosea ix. 11, might have made the glory of man to fly away as a bird, from the birth, the womb, and the conception. He might have crushed these cockatrices in the egg, and never let them grow up into fiery flying serpents. And this he might have done with advantage to his glory, and thereby much prevented that dishonour which he suffers by their lives. It is the Lord's mercy that every man in his infancy is not consumed. What a wonder of mercy is it that he is loved ! What a won der, when Christ might with so much glory to his justice, power, wisdom,
26 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
sovereignty, have destroved man, he should rather choose to love him. When there was, as it were, a contest betwixt mercy and justice, love and hatred, and when there was so much more reason for hatred, so little or none from man for love, yet Christ should interpose his sovereignty rather than man should perish, and, when there was no other reason, love him be cause he would love him, Deut. vii. 7, 8, Exod. xxxiii. 19. And as if the Lord should say, There is no reason in men why I should love any one of them ; I see many weighty reasons why I should hate him ; my hatred will be justified before all the world, and my justice much glorified thereby: yet for all this, though there be much reason from my own glory, and all the reason in the world from man utterly to hate him and all his posterity, yet I will not hate him, nay, I will love him.
3. How Christ loves man. This is a ground of much admiration. Its transcendency makes it transcendently wonderful. It is a wonder man has a being, that more excellent creatures did not supply ; it is a wonder he is not cut off from the birth, hated ; it is a wonder, if Christ should but carry himself indifferently as to the inferior creatures, if Christ did but vouch safe the least degree of love imaginable to him, in the highest degree hate ful. But that he should be so far from destroying, as to glorify him ; so far from hating him, as he should love him superlatively, transcendently ; not only love him positively, but comparatively !
(1.) Christ loves men more than the best of men love one another. There is more love in Christ than is to be found in the sons of men. There is no human breast can contain so much love as moves in the heart of Christ. The dearest, the most affectionate relation on earth, affords not so much love as is in Christ. Nay, there is as much love in him as in' all relations united ; nay, there is more love in him than in all relations together. Single out that relation, which of all on earth does most engage, and does usually afford, the most love, and this will fall far short of the love of Christ. Amongst all the examples of love which all generations have afforded, choose that which is most eminent, and rises higher than all the rest, as not to be paralleled; yet even this will fall far below (he love of Christ. We may take Christ's testimony in this case, though it be his own: John xv. 13, 'Greater love hath no man, than that a man lay down his life for his friend.' But Christ's love was greater than the greatest love of men, he laid down his life for enemies. To die for such, and such a death, makes his death a nonsuch. His love is as far above man's as his thoughts. Love is pro portionable to thoughts. But how high are his thoughts above men's? Isa. Iv. 89, ' As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.' And those high thoughts were thoughts of love, thoughts of mercy and pardon, ver. 7.
His love comprises, and eminently contains, the love of all relations. The sparks of love, which are found dispersed in several relations, are laid together in Christ's breast, and there break out into a flame, such a flame as many waters cannot quench, Cant. viii. 6, 7. The love of all relations meet in him, and therefore he is held forth under all relations, that the defect which is in one may be supplied by another, and so his love represented to us as perfect and entire : Mat. xii. 50, 1 will love, as if endeared to me by all relations. He calls us his ' friends,' John xv. 15 ;' brethren,' Heb. ii. 11, 17, John xx. 17; he is a ' father,' Isa. viii. 18 ; 'I, and the children,' &e., Heb. ii. 13; a 'mother,' Isa. xl. 11, Mat. xxiii. 37, 'As a hen gathereth her chickens,' &c. ; 'a husband ; ' and to shew the strength and vigour of his love, ' a bridegroom.' In Christ there is the faithful love of a friend, the careful* love of a brother, the provident love of a father, the indulgent, com-
Era. V. 2.J THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 27
passionate love of a mother, the intimate love of a husband. Christ's love is so abundant, as it runs forth in every relation, and supplies and answers the office of all. He answers the engagements of all, better than the best of men can answer any. He has the love of a friend ; this made him willing to become our surety, counsellor, intercessor. His love is a brotherly love ; this makes him willing to advise, comfort, sympathise ; a paternal love, so he provides, instructs, corrects ; a mother's love, so he does nourish and embrace, with complacency, with passion ; a conjugal love, so he vouchsafes his presence, his estate, his person, his honours, his secrets, and his guard. Christ's love is propounded as an example. His does perfectly supply all, is not defective in any, as men are. A man may be a loving friend, but an unkind father ; an indulgent father, but an unfaithful husband, as David ; an affectionate husband, but an unkind brother, as Solomon. But Christ's love is large enough to reach all. No such friend, father, &c., as he.
Christ's love is more than the love of all relations. His love amounts to more than all these summed up together. No such friend as Christ, who would die to make men his friends. No such brother as Christ, who makes all his brethren co-heirs. No such father as Christ, who, to bring his children to life, would die himself. No such husband as Christ, who will love his spouse though she play the harlot. Christ's love is stronger than the united love of all relations. His soul, his heart is more capacious. All the love of the creatures will scarce fill a corner of his heart ; it is widened by glory and hypostatical union. His love is stronger, because he has stronger engage ments to love ; not from us, but from his Father : the strength of a law, a law of God, a law written in his heart, Ps. xl. 8. It binds us as much, but is not so much obeyed, because we are not so apprehensive of the strength of the obligation as Christ. He is as much more loving, as he is more appre hensive than we. He is as loving as he is obedient, and his love exceeds ours as much as his obedience. As be fulfilled all righteousness in the highest degree, so he performs all acts of love without the least defect.
His love is perfect. It is not a passionate love, but a perfect love, that deserves the name of strong. He is free from all imperfection, that might abate the heat, and eclipse the light of this pure flame. His love is without folly, hypocrisy, selfishness, alteration, diminution, inordinacy, defect, excess. There is a double exercise of love in Christ, but one in the creatures ; so it exceeds not only the love of men, but angels. He loves as God, he loves as man. Christ has two natures, and so two wills, both seats of love. The divine will, that is infinite ; and so his love is unspeakable, passing know ledge ; this fountain of love has no banks, no bottom. The human will, that is shallower indeed ; but the streams of love that issue from it are so strong, so pure, as the love of the creatures is but as a drop, a polluted drop, com pared with it ; for the human nature is glorified, so it is perfect, and all its acts, and this of love. This holy fire flames as high, and burns as pure, as any created, flame in heaven. What is earth to it ? But besides, it is assumed into union with the Godhead, and so this love transcends both the love of angels and glorified saints. The love of Christ is both the love of an infinite God, and the love of a most perfect glorious, man. No wonder if, having such springs, it fill the channel of every relation ; but most wonderful that all these streams should run towards man. Oh that Christ should love an enemy with a greater love than any friend ! should be more indulgent to a rebel than any father to his son ! should be more affectionate to sin and Satan's offspring than any mother to her sucking child !
(2.) Christ loves man more than man loves himself. The love of Christ is more than self-love in man ; therefore it is wonderful. The philosopher tells
28 THE LOVE OF CHEIST. [EPH. V. 2.
us that self-love is the ground of all love. The reason why man loves others is because he loves himself, therefore it is the greatest love ; for quod efficit tale est magis tale. If man loves others because he loves himself, the love of himself must transcend his love to others. This love exceeds all others ; but Christ's love exceeds it, therefore wonderful.
Besides, self-love is propounded by Christ as a pattern, an example, to which our love to others must be conformed, Mat. xxii. 39. That which is chosen for example is eminent. No love like self-love amongst men. How wonderful then is Christ's love, which is stronger than this, and exceeds it in many respects !
A natural man loves his body, not his soul, and so not himself ; for animus cujusque, is est quisque ; Christ loves both. Nor does he love his body in reference to eternity, but time only ; the love of Christ has a sweet eternal influence on both. He desires no more than sensual happiness, or rational at most ; Christ desires he should be spiritually, eternally happy. He satisfies himself with outward enjoyments ; Christ gives himself to enjoy. He seeks but corn, wine, oil ; Christ would vouchsafe the light of his counte nance. He loves death ; Christ purchases life. Man cannot truly love himself till he have a spiritual principle of love ; this he cannot have but from Christ ; wretched man cannot love himself till Christ enable. Now he that makes man love himself, does love man more than he loves himself.
After a man is spiritualised, yet in some respects Christ loves him better. His love of himself is imperfect ; Christ's is without defect. Man desires some good things, some bad ; Christ purchases and bestows nothing but what is good. Man would be content with some ; Christ gives all. Nay, what man can be found who would do so much, part with so much, suffer so much, for his own salvation, as Christ hath ? It would be a wonder if Christ, considering the premises, should be willing to love man as much as man loves him. Oh what wonder that Christ should love him as much as he loves himself ! Who would expect or desire any more than that he should love him as much as he loves himself? That there should be more love is un reasonable to expect, and wonderful where it is found. It is so in men, much more in Christ.
(3.) Christ loves man more than he loves the angels, in divers respects. It is evident in that distinction his love has made betwixt both fallen by sin. Not one of the fallen angels have, or ever shall taste of his love ; but innumerable companies of men are restored to his favour. Those, sometimes bright morning stars, Job xviii. 7, are thrown into eternal night and utter darkness ; and poor pieces of earth, men, are fixed in their sphere of glory. Herein that saying of Christ, by his distinguishing love, is verified, ' The first shall be last, and the last first." The angels, the first-born of Christ's love, are disinherited ; and man, the least of creatures capable of happiness, put in possession. The angels, first in excellency and glory, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power, as Jacob of Reuben, Gen. xlix. 3, now banished from their father's presence, and must never see his face more. Yet men, inferior in all things but rebellion, are reconciled and made his favourites. These nobles of his court are reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, Jude ver. 6 ; and men, his poorest peasants, though equally guilty, are restored into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
It is evident also in the hypostatical union. He preferred men before angels, in that he chose rather to unite the human nature to himself per sonally than the angelical : Heb. ii. 16, ' He took not on him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham.' It is wonderful he seemed to love man so much as to neglect his honour, that which we account honour. If the
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 29
Lord had a mind to disguise himself in the shape of a creature, why did he not rather clothe himself with the robes of angelical perfection than the rags of humanity ? Their nature would have been a pavilion of glory, ours but tabernacles of clay. What reason has poor man to say, with the centurion, ' Lord, I am unworthy thou shouldst come under my roof ' ? Whv would he bear the image of the earthly, rather than the image of the heavenly ? Why did he not appear rather in the glory of a star than the baseness of red clay ? Oh that he should have such respect to the lowliness of wretched man, to respect him so, as if he seemed not thereby to disrespect himself, yet to neglect the angels !
Oh, there was wonderful love which caused such a strange condescension. He never stooped so low for their sakes, though he might have done it at an easier rate. Their nature does more resemble him ; their excellency is more akin to divinity, though many degrees removed. Why did he not appear in the shape of spirit, rather than in the likeness of sinful flesh ? They are called gods, Ps. Ixxxvi. 8. And the Chaldee reads it, ' Among the high angels,' 1 Sam. xxviii. 13, Ps. Ixxxii. 6. But man, poor man, is a worm. We would say a king forgot himself if he should but speak with his hat off to a servant. Oh what did the King of glory when he became flesh, a worm ! Elizabeth said with wonder, when Mary came but to visit her, Luke i. 48, ' Whence is this to me ! ' How may man with wonder cry out, Whence is this, that the Lord himself should come unto me ; should come, not to see me, but to be 6ne with me ! Where union is affected, there is love ; and where the nearest union, the greatest love. No union so near as this in heaven and earth, but that whereby God is one with himself. Nothing is more one with Christ than man but Christ himself. No union so intimate as the hypostatical, but only the essential, 'ivuffig uxgd. Angels were never so nearly united, and therefore never so much beloved. The reason of this union is a demonstration of this truth. Why did Christ take our nature ? The apostle tells us, Heb. ii. 17, ' He was made like his brethren, that he might be merciful.' More like, that he might be more loving ; that he might be more tenderly affectionate, more feelingly com passionate. Likeness is the mother of love ; and where there is more like ness, there is more love. Christ is now more like to men than angels, therefore in this respect he loves man more, Heb. iv. 15. He is not one that cannot be touched,' &c., /&% duva/j.evog Gufj^va&rtsat. He became a man, that he might love as man ; and had experience of man's necessities, that the expressions of his love might be conformable thereto. But how can he sympathise with angels ? Unlikeness in qualities and dispositions makes love keep a distance, much more a total unlikeness in nature. However Christ be affected to angels, as he is God, he is more affectionate to us, as he is man ; he is more piXuvdouvoc, than <piXa.yysXog. It is a wonder he should love man more in any respect; who is in all respects more unlovely.
(4.) Christ loves man more than heaven and earth, more than the kingdom of heaven, more tnan all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of both, more than the whole world.
For earth, it is evident : Mat. iv. 8-10, ' The devil taketh him up into a mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them ; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then Jesus saith unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan.' As if Satan had said, If thou wilt put thyself into an incapacity of redeeming man, and so lay aside thoughts of loving him, all this will I give thee. But Christ rejects the motion with indignation, ' Get thee behind me,' &c. So I love man, as all the kingdoms of the world are not so valuable in
30 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
my account as man's salvation ; so I love man, as I will not for all the vrorld that he should miscarry ; his soul is more dear to me than all the kingdoms of the earth. What will it profit me to gain the whole world if man lose his soul ? Heaven and earth shall pass away, rather than one jot of my love shall fade, one soul whom I love should perish.
He loved man more than heaven. It is true, no motion or alteration can he properly attributed to the second person. But since the Scripture ascribes that to the person of Christ which was proper to one nature, we may warrant- ably use such expressions of Christ as Mediator. Christ forgot his kindred and Father's house, and came to sojourn amongst strangers, amongst enemies. He came from the height of glory to the lowest step of shame and misery, where, instead of the joys of heaven, the sorrows of hell encompassed him, Ps. cxvi. 3. He exchanged a life of infinite blessedness with a cursed death ; and, instead of the praises and adoration of angels, he was enter tained with the reproaches and contradiction of sinners. Now, what is heaven but life, glory, joy, happiness ? What is hell, but death, shame, sorrow, misery ? Christ exchanged heaven for hell, that he might purchase man. His love made him willing to part with heaven, rather than man should be excluded from it ; to enter the gates of hell (sufferings equivalent), rather than man should be tormented in it. He feared not hell ; he loved not heaven, so much as he loved man. Oh what wonderful love, that would prefer a poor parcel of dust before the glory of the whole world, the happi ness and glory of heaven and earth ! As man, he lived out of heaven all the time that he had lived on earth ; whereas he had right and title to heaven as soon as he was born into the world.
(5.) Christ loves man as himself, in some respect more. Christ loves man more than himself, as man. I do not say Christ as God, or absolutely ; but as man, and in some respects. With these cautions, it is a truth, that Christ loves his people as himself.
[1.] He is obliged to it by virtue of that law which himself proclaims : Mat. xxii., ' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' For this law binds Christ as well as men ; for he was ' made under the law,' Gal. iv. 4. He acknowledges it his duty to fulfil all righteousness, Mat. iii. 15. And for this end he came, to fulfil the law, Mat. v. 19. Christ is bound by the law to love his neighbour ; but his people are his neighbours, ' a people near unto him,' Ps. cxlviii. 14. No such vicinity or nearness on earth. They live not only near him, but with him, in him, John xiii. 4, 5 ; and he near, in, with them. They are not only neighbours, but inmates ; not only vicini, butpi-o- pinqui, cognati ; allied to him, one with him ; so intimately as he and his make but one Christ mystical, 1 Cor. xii. 12. They are his neighbours, and he is bound to love such as himself ; and none ever answered the law's ob ligation so punctually, so perfectly, as he. He that was so observant of the ceremonial law, as appears in his circumcision, but as a beggarly rudiment, would much more obey the royal law, as this is called, James ii. 8. If he would not transgress that law which enjoined sacrifices, He would not neglect that law of love which is ' better than all whole burnt-offerings,' Mark xii. 33. He that submitted to positive institutions, as baptism, would not disobey moral commands, as this is. He that was so punctual in observing every tittle of the law, would not neglect that which is instar omnium, the whole law ; so this is called, Gal. v. 14. Nay, this doth virtually contain both law and prophets, Mat. xxii. 40. If Christ should not thus love, &c., he would violate the whole law, and run cross to all the prophets, which are to the law as comments on the text. This cannot be imagined without blasphemy. Christ should sin if he should not love his people. He should
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 31
disobey the law which obliges him, and neglect that which he condescended, by becoming man, to make his duty, if he did not love, &c.
[2.] He advances them to the like state with himself, so far as man is capable. He bestows upon them all things that himself hath, so far as they are communicable. The same natures. He consists of divine and human, and so does man in some sense. That Christ might be like them, he took human nature ; that they might be like him, he communicates the divine nature, 2 Peter i. 4. Not that it is altogether the same, but that it most resembles it. There is in them ^IIOTTIS, though not SEO'T-JJJ, some divinity, not a deity ; 9e/a pvov?, not $sov pvatg, not substance, but quality. The offices. He is king, priest, and prophet ; so are they, in the text, ' kings and priests.' Prophets, ' all taught of God.' The same privileges. Union, as he is one with the Father, so they with him, with both, John xvii. 21 ; a kind of viPi^^riffig, a reciprocal union. Birthright, Christ is ' first-born,' Col. i. 15, 18. They constitute ' the church of the first-born,' Heb. xii. 23. Heirship, Christ is ' heir of all things,' Heb. i. 2. They are ' co-heirs,' Rom, viii. 17. Heirs of the world, as Abraham, Rom. iv. 13. The same enjoyments. The Lord gave Christ all things, John iii, 35 ; and Christ has given them all, 1 Cor. iii. 21, 2 Cor. iv. 15, His own joy, John xv.. 11, the best of all; not only joy, peace, &c., but his own: John xvii. 8, 'My joy fulfilled in them.' His own peace : John xiv. 24, ' My peace' ; ' the peace of God,' Philip, iv. His own righteousness, Jer. xxiii. He is made so to us, 1 Cor. i., the righteousness of God, Philip, iii, 9. His own grace : John i. 18, ' The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.' He would have it with them. The fulness of God. His own glory, John xvii. 22 ; his own throne, Rev. iii. 21. Where there is such a community, love makes all common. Where no distinction in expressions, we may conclude some equality in affections. When Christ does for all them as for himself, we may say, he loves them as himself. The difference as to accidental happiness arises not from want of love in Christ, but for want of capacity in man ; there is love enough in him to vouchsafe more, if we were capable.
[3.J Christ takes what is done to his people as done to himself. He punishes what any do against them, as though they acted against himself ; and rewards what is done for them, as though it were done for him. Nor has he only this account of actions, but of what is less, words, and thoughts, and intimations ; he resents all as his own concernments, nay, he takes notice of all omissions of what is due to them, and interprets all neglects of them, as neglects of himself. The people of Christ are parts of Christ, as iixor est pars mariti, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. The head and members make but one body ; so also Christ. The intimacy of this union causes a reciprocation of interests. ' In all their afflictions he is afflicted,' as the head suffers when the body is tormented. Christ accounts the least injury done to them as done to himself: ' He that toucheth you, toucheth me.' You cannot touch them but Christ feels.
He is as sensible of words. There is a verbal persecution, such as that of Esau's. Christ counts himself wounded, when the tongues of the wicked are sharp swords to his people, Ps. Ivii. 4. Christ is persecuted in all their persecutions : ' Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ?' and this is one kind ; nay, affections, though concealed. If any hate a saint in his heart, though he never manifest it, Christ looks on such an one as a hater of himself, 1 John iv. 20 ; so of anger, rage, Isa. xxxvii. 29, Intimations ; putting out the finger, Isa. Iviii. 9 ; lifting up the eyes in derision or contempt, the Lord counts himself derided and contemned thereby, Isa. xxxvii. 23 ; nay, Christ puts this interpretation upon thoughts, though they seem not consider-
82 THE LOVE OP CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
able. He that has low thoughts of Christ's people, in his account has low thoughts of him, Luke x. 16, 1 Thes. iv. 8. He owns and rewards what is done for them, as done for himself; he accounts himself clothed, when their nakedness is covered ; feasted, when their hunger is satisfied ; relieved, when their necessities are supplied ; entertained, when they are harboured, Mat. x. 40, xxv. 39, 40. He rewards the least kindness to them as royally as the greatest that is done to himself, Mat. x. 42.
Nay, he has this account, not only of kind actions, but even of every kind look, Mat. xxv. 36. When they but lend an ear and hear them, in his account they hear him, Luke x. 16.
[4.] Christ does for them what he would have done for himself, and nothing else. He loves another as himself, who is thus despised. Take an instance of it, Luke xx., where, ver. 27, having laid down the rule of loving others as ourselves, he explains it in a parable, ver. 30, in which we are directed both to the object and measure, who, and how. He that does de mean himself to others, as the Samaritan to that traveller, loves him as himself. But Christ comes up to, nay, goes far beyond this instance. This traveller is a figure of every man by nature, fallen among thieves, the powers of darkness, and his own lusts ; stripped of the image of God, knowledge, righteousness, and holiness ; wounded by sin, so as there is nothing in his soul but wounds ; half dead, his soul dead, deprived of spiritual life, Eph. ii. ; forsaken of all the world, who could neither relieve nor pity him.
The Samaritan is a figure of Christ. He sees and pities fallen man ; has compassion on him, shews it in curing and accommodating him. Went to him, yea, he came from heaven to shew his love ; bound up his wounds, yea, he was willing to be wounded, Isa. liii. ; pours wine and oil, yea, he poured out his blood to wash and cleanse our wounds, applied that for cure ; sets him on his own beast ; yea, he charges the angels with him, his own ministering spirits ; defrays the expenses ; he lays down all that law and justice could demand ; defrays all at his own charge, though it cost him his life and soul. If the Samaritan, by doing so little, be said to love the dis tressed man, how did Christ love, who did much more ?
[5.] Christ honours man with those relations which engage to as much. A man must love his wife as himself, Eph. v. 33, as his own body, ver. 28. A man should sin if he do otherwise. Christ will be far from failing ; this love in its highest degree is exemplary in him : ver. 25, ' As Christ loved the church.' Why, how did he love it ? He tells, ver. 28, from whence it follows, that when husbands love their wives as themselves, they love as Christ loves. Besides, man loves his members, his flesh, his bones, as him self, but Christ accounts us so, vers. 29, 30.
(6.) Christ, in some respects, loves man better than himself. These are many.
[1.] Christ would suffer, rather than man should suffer ; rather undergo all that man had deserved, than man undergo any. We may imagine Christ's love expressing itself thus : Is poor man in so forlorn a condition, as none in heaven and earth will pity him ? I will take to me the bowels of a man ; I have seen his misery, and will sympathise with him. Is man reduced to this woful strait, as either he must suffer, or he that is God, for him ? I will fit myself with a body for his sake ; I will give my back to the smiters, &c., rather than man shall bear the burden of infinite wrath, rather than the weight of it shall sink him into eternal torments ; let it fall upon me, I will bear it, though it make my soul heavy unto death. Rather than man shall drink the cup of the Lord's indignation, oh let it be put to
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 33
my head ! I will drink it, even the dregs of it, though the bitterness of death be in it. Rather than man shall be cast into that place of torments, to spend eternity in weeping and gnashing of teeth, I will be content to be come a man of sorrows, yea, let the sorrows of death encompass my soul. Is the sentence of eternal death passed upon man ? Can none else procure pardon or reprieve ? Is he, and must he indeed be condemned ? -Why, righteous is the Lord, but let that dreadful sentence be executed upon me, let me die for him, so as poor man may escape. Will nothing else purge man from that woful pollution which makes him odious to my Father ? I will open a fountain in my heart, I will wash him in my blood. Must all the curses of law and gospel fall upon wretched man ? Alas ! what will be come of him ? The least of them will sink the whole creation. Let them rather fall upon my soul and body ; I will become a curse for man, I will bear it, though it be the curse both of first and second' death. Is the ven geance of eternal fire man's portion ? Oh, how can he dwell with everlasting burnings ! rather let the flame be turned upon me, though it scorch both body, and torture my soul. Will nothing satisfy the avenger of blood, nothing satisfy justice but blood ? Every part of me shall bleed for you ; lo, here is my head, my heart, my whole body ; let me be scourged, nailed, pierced ; yea, let my heart send out its last drop of dearest blood, if man may escape.
[2.] He prayed more for men than himself. Prayer is the pulse of love, by it we may know its strength or weakness. Fervent and frequent prayers are symptoms of strong and ardent affections. Those that pray much, Jove much ; and them most, for whom they most pray. Christ hereby makes it known that he loves his own, not the world ; because he prays for them, not for that, John xvii. 9. And as it is a positive sign, so also comparatively. As by this we know whom Christ loves, whom not ; so whom he loves more, whom less. By all his prayers recorded in Scripture, it appears he prayed more for man than himself. Nor was this because Christ had less need to pray for himself. For who had so much need, so great extremities, so many infirmities, temptations, dangers, necessities, afflictions ? Who has more need to pray, than he who has most of these ? Yet, behold the love of Christ I When all these were rushing in upon him, when God and man, men and devils, death and hell, were at once falling upon soul and body, when he had most need to pray for himself, then he prays most for men. See John xvii., the prayer made immediately before his sufferings ; twenty parts of that chapter are taken up with petitions for men, but one verse or two for himself. He desires many things for them, but one for himself. He importunes his Father for union, joy, holiness, perseverance, glory for them ; he desires nothing but glory for himself, vers. 1-5. Nor does he desire this for himself alone, but for their sakes ; he begs glory of the Father that he may give it them, ver. 22. Oh that Christ should be so mindful of them as he seems to forget himself ! That his thoughts should be more taken up with them, than with his own grievous sufferings,, that he knew were then approaching, and his apprehension of them most quick and piercing !
[3.] He expressed more joy for their welfare, than himself as man. Love is proportionable to joy; for as desire is love in its motion, so joy is love in its triumph. Joy is as it were the smile, the blossom of love ; it is a sign love is well rooted in the heart, when joy breaks forth in outward ex pressions. We love that best in which we take most pleasure, most rejoice. Desire is love in pursuit, so joy is love in possession. Desire is a sign of
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84 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
some love, but joy of more. Now Christ seems to rejoice more for men, than himselT as man. He never took pleasure in anything below, so much as in advancing man's happiness ; and never manifested more grief and indignation than when any would hinder or dissuade. What was that wherein he took as much delight as nature does in meat and drink ? It was the conversion of souls, John iv. 34. But with what indignation does he rebuke Peter, dissuading him from grievous sufferings, sufferings upon which man's happiness depended : ' Spare thyself,' Mat. xvi. 22, 23 ; 'Be it far from thee.'
It is true, indeed, we seldom find Christ rejoicing in the whole history of his life. He was ' a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief,' and scarce with anything else, a stranger to joys. But when we meet him rejoicing, the oc casion is usually, if not always, some advantage to men. We read he rejoiced, John xi. 15, %«/fw dl u,uuv, it was for man's sake. He says not, he was glad because he should get glory by the miracle, because he should get the honour and repute of one that could work miracles ; but ha Kia- 7svcriri, more that it would make them happy, than bring him honour and reputation. See Luke x. 21, we find Christ in an ecstasy, almost tran sported with joy, rijaXkta.sa.ro ru vvsu/Actri, his spirit leaped within him, and as though he had been rapt into heaven, adds praises, his joy breaks forth into thanks. But what is the occasion of both ? Not that the devils were subject through his name, not that Satan fell, &c., but that it pleased the Father to make known the mysteries of salvation to despised men. Christ seemed to make man, of all earthly things, his chief joy on earth ; this was it which revived him, joyed his heart in the midst of his sorrows and sufferings, that man should be thereby made happy.
[4.] He gave himself for men. This is held forth as an expression of a transcendent love, Gal. ii. 20, Eph. v. 2, 25. In giving himself for man, he seems to love man more than himself ; so we judge in transactions with men. A wise man in purchasing, accounts the things he buys as good, or better than the price ; he values, he loves that which he purchaseth more than what he parts with. Christ seemed to make more account of man than himself, when he gave himself for man, when he made himself the price to purchase man. And his affliction is answerable to his apprehension ; whom he esteems more, he loves more. ' We are bought with a price,' 1 Cor. vi. 20. Himself is the Xurgov, Mat. xx. 28, 1 Tim. ii. 6 ; the price of redemption, Lev. xxv. 51. The Lord, as a sign of his love to Jacob's seed, promiseth, Isa. xliii. 3, 4, 'I will give men for thee, and people for thy life,' &c. ; therefore, he valued, he loved Israel more than Egypt, Ethiopia. He that sold all to buy the pearl, valued it more than all that he had, Mat. xiii. 46.
Oh how did Christ value man, when he gave himself for him, when he de livered himself into the hands of sinners, enemies, murderers, justice, reveng ing justice ! It had been much if Christ had but given his word, and engaged his person for performance ; if he had become a pledge, a surety, hostage ; more, if he had given himself to be prisoner, captive for man. But oh ! that he should give himself to the death, to die, after he had exposed every mem ber to torture, hands and feet, head, side, heart, face, his whole body ! that he should give his body to death, separated from his soul ! nay, not only his body, but give his soul too, Mat. x. 45 ; an offering, Ps. liii. 10, a burnt-offering, scorched with wrath, his soul to worse torments than death ; his whole man.
[5.] He parted with his dearest concernment, as man, for man's sake. Does not he love that party more than himself, who will part with what is dearest to him for his sake ? Christ, as man, did thus. What is dearer to
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 85
men, what so dear to Christ, as his honour? He made nothing of this when he ' made himself of no reputation,' when he was content to be ' numbered amongst transgressors.' It must needs be more grievous to Christ to lie under the suspicion of the least guilt than man of the greatest ; yet did he lie under such suspicions all his life, and in the conclusion was content to be accounted worse than a thief, to have Barabbas preferred before him. Man was more dear to Christ than his honour ; but is nothing dearer ? Job determines this : Job ii. 4, nothing so sweet, so dear as his life ; we will part with all, rather than this. But man was dearer to Christ than his life. He loved not his life so much as man. Ay, but is there nothing dearer, better than life ? Yes ; David tells of one thing better : Ps. Ixiii. 3, ' Thy loving- kindness is better than life.' This is it I pitch on as the dearest, the sweetest thing that Christ as man, or any creature ever enjoyed. Those that have tasted the ravishing pleasures that spring from this, will part with life, body, soul, all, rather than it. We have instances of some who have been willing to suifer, to part with all ; but none that ever would forego this. The world has had worthies who were content to wander in deserts and moun tains, in dens and caves of the earth ; to be separated from the comforts of all enjoyments and relations, Heb. xi. 38, rather than part with this ; willing to wander in sheep skins, goat skins, to be destitute, afflicted, tormented, as ver. 37, of all, by all, in all. Such as have undergone trials of cruel mockings and sconrgings, yea, of bonds and imprisonment, ver. 36, not counted their lives dear, willing to be stoned, sawn asunder, slain with the sword, tortured lo death in flames, and would not accept of deliverance ; counted nothing too dear to part with, too cruel to undergo. But if you should come to any of these and ask, You are willing indeed to part with all that man can take from you, and suffer all that the cruelty and malice of men can inflict on you ; oh, but will you part with this sense of God's love ? will you undergo the weight of his wrath ? you would have them answer, Oh, no ; let me rather be annihilated ; let me rather die ten thousand deaths ; let me rather endure all the torments that men, that devils can invent.
Oh, but though this was dearer and sweeter to Christ than ever it was to any saint or angel, yet, for man's sake, he parted with it. The light of God's countenance was even totally eclipsed, when he cried out, ' My God, my God !' And what mountains of wrath did oppress his spirit, when he complained so sadly, ' My soul is heavy unto the death !'
[6.] He advanced man's interest (with submission) more than his own. What more advantage to man than himself ? He so disposed of his life and death as whatever he did and suffered was more advantageous to man than himself. You will say,
Obj. Did not Christ get much glory by the work of redemption ? Was not this the most glorious administration that ever the world was witness of?
Ans, Yes. Yet the glory the Son of God got hereby was an inconsider able advantage to him, compared with the benefits thereby purchased for man. The Son of God had lost nothing, if he had wanted this ; this did not add any degree of glory to that which he enjoyed from eternity. He was infinitely glorious before the foundation of the world, and nothing can be added to that which is infinite. If he had never assumed man's nature, he had been as glorious as he is now ; that glory which accrued to him by this great undertaking is nothing but the manifestation of his infinite glory to men, or the acknowledgment of it by men. Now, what is this or that to the Son of God ? what does it add to him ? He gets no more real glory de novo by it than the sun gets new light by shining, or honey gets more sweet-
36 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EpH. V. 2.
ness by being commended for its sweetness. The sun would be as full of light if no eye saw it, and honey as sweet in itself if no palate tasted it. He might have been without this glory, and yet have been, nevertheless, glorious through want of it. What advantage, then, is it to him, since he might have wanted it without any disadvantage? Oh, but man got real advantages by Christ's undertaking ; he was thereby freed from sin, wrath, misery ; he thereby recovered the favour of God, the divine image, perfect happiness, and eternal glory. See here, then, how Christ advanced man's interest more than his own, and hereby judge of his love. He got but one advantage ; man gets many. That one was but small, and almost inconsiderable ; these were great, and of highest concernment. He might have been as well without this ; man had better never been than wanted these. He had not been the least jot less happy or glorious without it ; man had been eternally wretched and miserable without these. He got nothing that he had any absolute necessity to desire ; man got all that he can desire. Oh how evident is it that Christ manifested in this more love to man than himself ! And who can consider this without wonder and astonishment ?
(7.) As the Father loves him, so does he love man. We can go no higher, nor durst have used such an expression, but that Christ himself uses it, John xv. 9. Christ would have this made known to the world, chap. xvii. 23-26. He loves men, as the Father loves him ; I say not with the same love, but such a love. As is not a note of equality or identity, but of similitude and resemblance. A love like to that, in respect of duration, perfection, ex pression.
[1.] Permanency. The Father's love to the Son is everlasting, eternal, unchangeable, like himself, without variableness or shadow of change. So is Christ's to men ; he loves them to the end, he loves without end ; his love is everlasting, and so is the bond of it, the covenant. It is like the covenant of day and night, Jer. xxxiii. 20. Night and day shall cease before this ; nay, night shall become day, and day night, before his love become hatred. It is like the covenant with Noah, Isa. liv. 8-10. As nothing can separate Christ from his Father's love, so nothing can separate man from Christ's, Rom. viii. 25, &c.
[2.] Perfection. It is amor ardentissimns, as Piscator calls it ; Dilectio absolutissima, as Aretius, without flaw, defect, alteration, diminution ; free from these imperfections and gross mixtures which deaden and darken the flames of love in creatures. God's love to Christ is incomprehensible, and Christ's to man passes knowledge, Eph. iii. 19.
[3.] Expressions. Christ vouchsafes to express his love to man, as the Father expresses his love to him. To love is (3ovXfadai r ayaOa. The Father wills as much good to Christ, as man, aa he is capable of; and Christ wills as much to men as they are capable of. As the Father is one with Christ, so Christ has made man one with himself. Christ desires the like union to evidence the like love, John xvii. 21-23. Christ is his Father's Son, and believers are Christ's sons, Isa. viii. 18; he is the Father's delight, Isa. xlii. 1, they are Christ's, Ps. xvi. 3 ; he is the Father's glory, Heb. i., and they are Christ's, 2 Cor. viii. 23 ; God is Christ's head, 1 Cor. xi. 8, Christ is their head, ibid. • he always hears Christ, John xi. 42, and Christ them, John xv. ; all power ig given to Christ, Mat. xxviii. 18, and by Christ to them, Philip, iv. 13, John xiv. 12 ; he has committed all judgment to Christ, John v. 22, Christ makes them his assessors, 1 Cor. vi. 2, 3 ; not only Israel, Luke xxii., but the world ; not only men, but angels ; Christ is the Father's joy, and they are Christ's : ' That my joy may remain in you,' »'. e. that I may rejoice in you ; he has exalted Christ to be a prince, and
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 87
they are princes : Ps. xlv. 16, ' Instead of thy fathers, shall be thy chil dren ;' Christ is anointed, ver. 7, so they : Ps. cv. 14, ' Touch not mine anointed.'
Quest. 1. Whether Christ's love be universal, extended to all men ; or par ticular, restrained to some ?
Ans. No. The Scripture holds forth a restrained, a distinguishing love. The contrary opinion is against the stream of Scripture, and makes Christ's love less endearing, less free, less engaging. The text evinces this ; he loves only those who are washed in his blood ; all are not washed ; those who are made kings and priests, all are not such.
Besides, Christ only loves his own, John xiii. 1, those that are given him by his Father. All are not his ; he knows his, and is known of them, John x. 14, 27; but some he professes he knows not, Luke xiii. 27. It is the church that he loves, Eph. v. 25 ; but all belong not to the church, the most are not in the church, the greatest part in it are not of it. He gives his life for those he loves, Eph. v. 2 ; but he lays not down his life for all. This act of love is restrained to those whom he calls his sheep, John x. 11. All are not sheep, for who are those that will be found at Christ's left hand ? Christ's flock is a little flock ; he intercedes for all whom he loves, John xvi. 26, 27, and xvii. 20. He prays not for all ; there is a world that he prays not for, John xvii. 9 ; he expresses it when he loves, gives love-tokens ; manifests himself, John xiv. 21-23, not to all, ver. 22, draws near them, abides with them, gives consolation, good hope, peace, 2 Thes. ii. 16, victory, Rom. viii. 37. The Lord hates some, Ps. v. 5, Hos. ix. 15, Mai. i. 3. There is a common love, which bestows common favours, outward and spiritual ; and a special love.
Quest. 2. Who are those whom Christ loves ?
Ans. Those that are washed and made kings and priests.
Washed. If so, then you are
(1.) Clean from guilt; sin pardoned ; are washed in the fountain, Ezek. xxxvi. 25 ; not the outside only, Luke xi. 89 ; you are free from pollution, John xiii. 8, 9 ; your filthy garments taken away ; your hearts are no more a nest for unclean birds ; cleansed in mind and heart ; no unclean thoughts, projects, affections ; not so many, so frequent, so well entertained.
(2.) Fearful of being again defiled : ' I have washed my feet, how can I defile them ? ' Cant. v. 3. Look upon sin as the greatest, most loathsome, contagious, dangerous pollution; fearful of it as of a leprosy, a filthy dun geon, a poisonous ulcer, a miry pit, an infectious disease, a putrefying sore. ' How can I do this great evil, and sin against' Christ his blood? defile that which Christ has taken such pains, and been at such cost, to wash.
(3.) High, endeared thoughts of Christ's love : thankfulness both for the benefit and the price it cost ; to be made clean, beautiful, lovely, glorious, the benefit ; his own blood the price. It cost not Christ only some words ; yet, why should Christ speak for us ? he stands in no need of us ; nor prayers only, though an inducement ; nor tears, why should he concern himself to weep ? but blood, his own blood, 1 Pet. i. 18, 19. Oh who would not love thee ? 0 king of saints ! God of love ! what thankfulness can answer such love as this ? what expressions can manifest such thankfulness as is due for such a favour, of such value, procured at such a rate ? The resentment of this is the occasion of the text, the doxology which concludes it. How un worthy shall I shew myself, if I return not love, for such a love as would cleanse me when I was all loathsome, and do it, when nothing else would do it, with his own blood ?
Kings. In respect of, 1 , state ; 2, power ; 3, spirit. Free, not slaves to
38 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
sin, not obey it in the lusts thereof; it has not dominion, it rules not, they resist its motions ; Satan does not work them, Eph. ii. Plentiful, glorious, conquerors, victorious kings ; they conquer the world, sin, Satan. The world is cast down in their minds, out of their heart, cast off in the life.
(2.) Disposition ; raised, generous ; not low designs, below them, confined to this world, above the serpent's curse. Public, not for private, interest ; prefer the designs, the glory of Christ, before private ; mind the things of Christ, and not their own.
Priests. They do the act, execute the office of priests, which is, 1 Pet. ii. 5, to offer spiritual sacrifice; sacrifice threefold: (1.) acts of charity to the body, Heb. xiii. 16 ; we think it best to receive good, but to do good is the best sacrifice ; (2.) to the soul; acts of piety, prayer, praise, Heb. xiii. 15 ; much in prayer, and spiritual ; not offer the sacrifice of fools, the calves of the lips only, but the mind and heart ; (3.) the whole man an holocaust, Rom. xii. 1 ; he looks not upon himself as his own, he is bought with a price ; and why ? to glorify God ; and how ? by offering and devoting the body and spirit.
Quest. 3. Whether Christ's love be personal? whether it respect some sort of men, viz., believers, infinitely and in general, or descends to, and fixes upon, this and that believer in particular, as John, Peter ?
Am. It is personal, whether we consider it in the streams or in the spring ; in time or from eternity. By love in the stream, I mean the expressions of his love, those peculiar favours which in time he bestows on those whom he chose from eternity. Love, so taken, must needs be personal ; for though the designment of favours (amongst short-sighted men) may be indefinite, yet the actual collation must be personal, both with God and men ; for this is an action, et actio est supponti, which is true both in respect of agent and subject ; it must be an individual both that acts and receives the act.
Love in the spring. The eternal act of Christ, together with the Father, choosing some to be the objects of his love, the same really with the decree of election, is personal. This is most controverted. I prove it.
(1.) We have one clear instance proving this love to be personal; there fore we may conclude it universally, because the decree is uniform, not partly indefinitely, partly personal. The instance is brought by Paul, Rom. ix. 13, out of Mai. i. 2, ' Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated ; ' so Jer. i. 5.
(2.) If Christ loves, i. e. chooses men by name, then his love, his decree, is personal ; for there can be no more personal designment than that which is by name. But he chooses men by name ; for the Scripture describes elec tion by writing the names of the elect in a book ; by a metaphor, taken from those who list soldiers, chosen out for military service, by writing their names in a muster-roll. Luke x. 20, the disciples' names were written in heaven, chosen by name, and enrolled, listed, registered, from eternity ; Paul testi fies the same of his fellow-labourers : Philip, iv. 3, their names writ in the book of life ; and John, Rev. xiii. 8, says the names of all that worship not the beast were written in the Lamb's book of life from the foundation of the world, and Rev. xxi. 27.
(3.) If Christ choose not particular men, he knows not particularly who are, or shall be, his ; because the knowledge of futures, in our apprehension, follows the decree, and depends on it, and is conformable to it ; if no decree, no knowledge. But Christ knows his by name, personally, distinctly, 2 Tim. ii. 19 ; he ' calleth his sheep by name,' John x. 3 ; ver. 14, 27. They say, he knows who are believers ; ay, but he cannot know who will continue so, if, as they say, perseverance depend upon their will, left free from all necessity both of Christ's decree and influence ; for this granted, the perseverance of
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 39
a saint in heaven will be uncertain, and so not certainly known to Christ himself ; for to apprehend a thing certain which is uncertain is an error.
(4.) Certain men are ordained to condemnation, Jude 4, ergo certain men to salvation ; but indefinite is uncertain.
Quest. 4. How can Christ be said to love those to whom he denies so many temporal blessings, and visits with such variety of grievous afflictions ? Am. 1. These outward dispensations were never a sign of love or hatred; much less under the gospel, which promises fewer outward mercies, and bids expect more afflictions. The names of legal and Old Testament spirits have been of late abused, misapplied ; but if they belong to any, it is to those who expect more outward blessings and fewer afflictions, and judge men by these. Solomon's rule is true here : Eccles. ix. 1, 2, 'No man knows either love or hatred, by all that is before him. All things come alike to all.' &c. Ye cannot conclude that Christ hates you because he afflicts ; nor that he loves because you are blessed in temporals. The least drachm of grace is a surer sign of Christ's love than all the kingdoms, all the glory, all the pleasures of the earth, if in one man's enjoyment ; and victory over the least lust, than freedom from all outward pressures ; otherwise, we might say, Dives was loved, Lazarus hated, and Festus in more favour with Christ, than Paul ; nay, Christ himself might conclude he was hated of God, since none more afflicted, or less encouraged, with temporals.
Am. 2. Wants and afflictions are so far from being arguments of Christ's hatred, as they are many times evidences of his love. For afflictions it is evident, Heb. xii. 6-8, Christ thereby conforms us to himself, and makes us partakers of his image, holiness, ver. 10, 11. And for wants I thus prove. The people of Christ want nothing but that which is not good, for he has promised to withhold no good thing. ! Why does a father envy his child that which is not good for him, but because he loves him ? From wants outward you should conclude the employment* of what you want is not good, rather than the want of what you would enjoy is from hatred. It is no defect of love in Christ, but defect of goodness in what you want, that makes you want it.
Quest. 5. Whether is love properly attributed to Christ, or metaphorically ? Ans. Both : metaphorically as he is God, properly as he is man. (1.) Love, as it is an human affection, cannot be properly ascribed to Christ, as he is God, because it includes imperfection. That rule is true, Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuit prius in sensu, our understandings ap prehend nothing but what is first some way offered to our senses. Now, God being an entity at the furthest distance from sense, it follows that our apprehensions of God, taking their rise from things sensible, are not only inadequate, falling infinitely short of comprehensiveness, but improper and analogical, and no otherwise true but by analogy. Now, the Scripture, speak ing lingua humand, and condescending to our capacities, describes the spiritual essence of God by things sensible, and so uses many metaphors taken from things we are best acquainted with. Sometimes an zQtoirola,^ 1 Kings xxii. 19, Ps. Ixviii. 83 ; an av^w5roTa^/a,$ when it ascribes hands, eyes, feet ; an dv^coTo^a^/a, when it attributes passions to him, as joy, anger, sorrow, jealousy, hatred, love. So that when we hear any of these ascribed to God, we must not conceive them to be in him as in us, but must rectify our apprehensions according to the old rules, per viam negationis, separating all imperfections from them, etper viam eminentice, attributing to him whatsoever is purely excellent without any mixture of imperfection. So love * Qu. ' enjoyment ' '? — ED. f Qu. ' Movoua. ' ? — ED. J Qu. ' av^u^oua^iia. ' ? — ED.
40 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
in God is not a passion, a perturbation, accompanied with any corporeal motion of blood and spirits, but a pure, perfect, eternal act, whereby he wills good to us.
(2.) Love may be properly ascribed to Christ as he is man ; for so he has soul and body, will and affections, blood and spirits, as well as we. Only we must give him a large allowance of pre-eminence ; the human nature and the grosser part of it, the body, being not only made glorious and spiritual, as the bodies of the saints shall be, but also assumed into union with God head, and so elevated to perfections many degrees above the glorified saints. So that love is properly in Christ's human nature as in ours, both in respect of its rise and operations, beings and workings. It differs from our love in respect of the manner of its existence and operations, quoad modum, without,
Inordinacy. Being guided not only by the dictates of right reason, but infinite wisdom without reluctancy.
Perturbation. It is no grievance, no pressure to him, as sometimes to us, but a sweet, quiet, regular motion of his perfect human will.
Detriment. Though it move blood and spirits, yet it inflames not that, nor wastes or impairs this. Its motions are innocent, serene, pacate, and spiritual, in that sense as his body is spiritual, and not as in infirm men.
Quest, 6. Whether Christ's love be infinite ?
Ans. Christ's love maybe considered four ways : (1.) in its prime act, (2.) in its termination, (3.) its manifestation, (4.) its duration.
(1.) The prime act of divine love, velle bonum, Christ's good will, willing ness to do good. It is an act of the divine will, an immanent act, and so in God. Quicquid est in Deo, est Dens. God is infinite, therefore love is in finite. In this sense God is love, and love is the same really with God, and therefore infinite.
(2.) As it is terminated to its object. We considered it before simply and precisely in itself without its object, but here as it is determined to it ; not simply as good will, but as good will to this or that creature. In respect of this termination, it is not infinite, for that which is infinite is essential and necessary to God ; but this is not necessary, but an act of liberty ; for it was in God's choice whether he would make any creature, and consequently whether he would love any creature. Whatever is contingent is not God, nor infinite. Indeed, Christ's love was necessarily terminated upon his Father, and so his love to the Father is infinite in both respects, act and termin ation ; but to us in the former respect only.
(8.) In the manifestation, in respect of the expressions of it. The ex pressions of Christ's love are not infinite, for they are transient acts, and so not in God ; and whatsoever is not in God is not absolutely infinite. Besides, they are actually received by us, therefore not infinite ; for that which is finite (as we are) is not capable of what is infinite.
Obj. But this is one expression, to give himself ; and ho is infinite, there fore expression is so.
Ans. This giving of himself is the cause, not of identity, but of interest only. The creature is not the terminus or object of that act of giving himself, but God's paternal authority as founded on the law of nature ; the creature only enjoys the effects of offering or sacrifice. He is infinite in excellency and value, but our enjoyment of him is not infinite. All the acts of enjoy ment are finite ; he gives no more actually than we enjoy ; we enjoy no more than we are capable of.
Christ's love is infinite, yet he loves not infinitely. There may be infinitus amor, and yet it does not infinite amare ; even as he hath infinitampotentiam, and yet doth not infinite agere ; has infinite power, and yet does not act in finitely. If he should act infinitely, he should act ad ultimum sui posse, as
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 41
natural agents do. Every act is from infinite power, but the actings of that power are limited by his will as to the existence of things ; and in his actings towards things existing, he limits or accommodates himself to the nature and capacity of 'those things, so that the actings and effects are not infinite, though the principle be. Semblably he loves infinitely, but does not express that love infinitely ; the objects are not capable of infinite expressions. The re ciprocal expressions of love betwixt the Father and Son are infinite, but not betwixt Christ and the creatures. That must be infinite to which love makes infinite expressions.
(4.) In duration it is infinite. It is eternal, without beginning, without end, and so has no limits as to continuance, Eph. i. 4, Mat. xxv. Isa. liv. 8, Jer. xxxi. 3, ' everlasting light,' Isa. Ix. 19, 20, ' everlasting joy,' Isa. li. 11, ' everlasting salvation,' Isa. xlv. 17, ' everlasting covenant,' Jer. xxxii. 40 ; so that in two respects Christ's love is infinite, viz. as to act and duration ; in two respects not infinite, as to termination and manifestation.
Quest. 7. What must we do to render us capable of Christ's love ? What will make us lovely in his eye ?
Ans. 1. You must be like him. Likeness is the greatest attractive of love, ofjtoiorrig rqg p/X/'as prime, that which brings forth and nourisheth love. Christ likes none but those that are like him. The more likeness, the more love. This was the first act of eternal love : Rom. viii. 29. 'Predestinated to be conformable to the image of his Son.' And this is the first expression of love in time, makes us like him. And both are in order to all the expressions of love that must continue to eternity. Till you have his likeness, you are not capable of his love. There may be amor benevolent^, good will, before, but not amor amicitice or complacentice. He will not use you as friends, nor can his soul take pleasure in you till you be like him.
But what will make you like him ? How shall we resemble him ? Holi ness, this is Christ's resemblance, likeness, his image : Col. iii. 10, ' Re newed after the image,' &c. What this renewing is you find, Eph. iv. 23, 24. Holiness is the image of Christ. The apostle mentions two images, one whereof every man bears, 1 Cor. xv. 49, earthly and heavenly ; that of the first, this of the second Adam. Christ is the image of the invisible God, and holiness is the image of Christ. He that is holy is a living image of Christ. Christ sees himself in a holy soul, and cannot but love it ; he is Xeiarou sixuv sfj.^v/og, a lively portraiture of Christ.
It is true nothing finite is properly like to Christ, as he is God ; for like ness is founded in proportion, and there is no proportion where the distance is infinite. But of all things in heaven and earth, nothing more resembles divinity and God himself than holiness ; therefore it is called 'the divine nature,' 2 Peter i. 4. But consider Christ as he is man, and that holiness which is the glory and ornament of his soul is the same in specie, in nature, with that which is in his people, differs only in degree. No created being is so like Christ as he that is holy ; he sees nothing in man or angels so beautiful, so lovely.
If then you would have Christ to love you, you must be like him ; if like him, you must be holy. Holy thoughts, this is the way to have the same mind in you, Philip, ii. 5 ; holy affections, so your heart will resemble' Christ ; holy speeches and actions, so holy as he was in all conversation, 1 Peter i. 15. Set Christ before you as a pattern, strive to imitate him, express his virtues, 1 Peter ii. 9 ; set the life of Christ before you as a copy, and draw your lives after it ; eye it in every act, and strive to bring them to conformity ; meekness, Mat. xi. 29, no passionateness ; patience, 1 Peter ii. 20, 21, Isa. liii. 7, returning not evil, reviling, hatred ; self-denial, Philip. ii. 3, &c. Be his disciples, learn it by his doctrine and example. Hurni lity,
42 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
Mat. xi. 29, Zecla. ix. 9, in the lowest condition, or worst accommodation ; activeness, Acts x. 38, John iv. 34, delightfully, constantly ; love, Eph. i. 1, 2 ; spiritualness, or making spiritual use of common things : these graces are the sparks of holiness, let them shine. Those that hate, contemn, jeer holiness, under what name or pretence soever, shall never taste Christ's love ; nay, those that are without it, though they never arrive at such a height of wickedness as to contemn it, shall never see God, Heb. xii. 14. They shall be so far from partaking of the intimate expressions of his love, as they shall not be admitted into his presence, not so much as to see him. Be sensible of the want, bewail the neglect ; love it, thirst after it, endeavour by all means to perfect it, 2 Cor. vii. 1 ; hear, John xv., meditate, pray, and prefer it, as Solomon did wisdom, 2 Chron. i. 10, 11.
Ans. 2. Avoid all that Christ hates. If you love, approve, entertain that which is hateful to Christ, how can he love you ? What is that which Christ hates ? The psalmist, Ps. xlv. 7, tells us, making it one of Christ's attributes, to hate wickedness. The lusts of your hearts, and sins of your lives, is that alone which is hateful to Christ. Sin is the only object of Christ's hatred ; he hates nothing but sin, or nothing but for sin. He loves many things, but this is that one thing which he hates. The world had never known any thing but love in Christ, had it not been for sin. If the devil himself were without sin, Christ would love him ; but if the most glorious angel in heaven sin, Christ will hate him. Christ has much reason to hate sin, for it murdered him, exposed him to the dreadful wrath of his Father, and is the only, the greatest, the most odious deformity, that his pure eye sees in the world. It is more hateful than a toad to us, more loathsome than the vomit of a dog, more noisome than the stench of an open sepulchre. Therefore while you let sin lodge in your hearts, while you stain your lives with it, Christ will not, cannot love you. So long as you harbour malice, pride, averseness to God, contemn the gospel, neglect ordinances, profane Sabbaths, covetousness, contention, intemperance, uncleanness, deceit, never expect any love from Christ, nothing but dreadful expressions of hatred. No love from Christ, till at enmity with sin, till you fight against, endeavour to mortify it, have continual war with it. As Christ hates iniquity, so the workers of iniquity, Ps. v. 5. You must not love them, so as to be intimate with them, delight in the company of evil doers, openly profane, scorners of godliness, obstructers of the power of it, 2 Cor. vi. 14-18. If you love so near relations to wicked men, Christ will have no relation to you. If you would have communion with Christ in sweet acts of love, you must have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, nor those that act them.
Ans. 3. Comply with his will, obey his commands. This is a powerful inducement amongst men, compliance, observance, officiousness ; and Christ engages both his and his Father's love upon this account, John xiv. 21, 23. That you may comply with his will, you must be careful to know it. He is as odious to Christ who will not know what he should do, as he who will not do what he knows. It is as provoking disobedience to refuse to know Christ's will, as to refuse to do it ; equally threatened, 2 Thes. i. 8, 9. Wilful ignorance is so far from excusing, as it aggravates sin ; brings a double guilt, guilt of disobedience, and guilt of the most provoking igno rance. Ignorance is wilful, when the means of knowledge are offered, but neglected.
Ignorance excuses none who have the means and the use of reason. How little ignorance is there amongst us, that is not wilful and inexcusable; do not know, because they will not use the means ?
EPH. V. 2.J THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 43
Nor will use of means suffice ; it must be with all diligence, Prov. ii. 8. Careless use is little better than neglect. There is contempt in this, when Christ speaks to you, to hear as though you heard not ; when Christ writes to you, to read as though you read not, this is to affront Christ ; and will he love those that affront him to his face ?
But suppose you know Christ's will by the use of means ; yet if you clese not with what you know, you are as far from Christ's love. He that knows, and does not, shall be beaten, Luke xii. 47; he must expect no other ex pressions of love. Christ loves the truth so well, as he will not love those that imprison it. You may see how Christ resents disobedience against knowledge in Saul, 1 Sam. xv. 23 ; it is as witchcraft or idolatry. Where there is this disobedience, there is a covenant with hell and death, a league with Satan ; there is an idolising ourselves, preferring our will to God's, idolatry. To disobey the gospel, is to be disobedient to the heavenly call, it is to neglect salvation. Oh what madness is it to prefer a lust before your own salvation ! To prefer a lust before the love of Christ, before Christ himself ! What a heinous provocation, to love sin more than Christ, to prefer sin, the vilest and [most] abominable thing in the world, before God blessed for ever ! How can Christ love such, who love that more than him which murdered him, and will damn them ? Yet this you do in disobedi ence. The least jot of Christ's will is of more value than heaven and earth, and you prefer that which is the worst thing in hell before it.
The way to win Christ's love, is to use all means to know his will, that you may obey it ; and to obey it as soon as you know it, immediately, im partially, cheerfully. He loves a cheerful doer, as a cheerful giver. That which comes by constraint is servile, unacceptable. Expect not the love of sons, while you act as slaves, and serve him not but from fear or force, un less it be that of love. Immediately, consult not flesh and blood, with carnal interests, with base lusts, with outward disadvantage or respects ; then your obedience will be partial, not do what Christ commands, but what these advise. ' As good not obey at all, as not obey in all ; you must not leave a hoof; you must be more respecters of duties than of persons. It is universal obedience that engages Christ's love. Obey in all, especially the principal commands of Christ and the gospel, faith and repentance.
Ans. 4. Converse much with Christ. Be much in his company. Labour to be, as David, continually with him : avooGrtyo^ia <nok7.a.g rag <pi\iag di&uat. Estrangement, neglect of converse, dissolves friendship, occasions a consumption of love amongst men, and so it will be with Christ. There is both an assimilating and an attractive virtue in communion. It will make you like Christ, and so make you capable of loving expressions ; and it will engage, attract, kindle Christ's love, and so make you actually partakers of it. Delight then to walk with him, to meet him, to view his beauty, to hear his voice, to taste his sweetness. And since Christ delights to see the face and hear the voice of his spouse, Cant. ii. 14, therefore you must take all occasions to present yourselves before him, in the most lovely and de lightful posture, that the King may take pleasure in your beauty, that your eye be fixed on him, he may be ravished with your eye.
But where shall we meet with Christ ? Where may we converse with him ? Even in his ordinances ; where these are, there is Christ's presence- chamber ; prayer, hearing, reading, meditating. When you attend on the word preached, you see him, and hear his voice. Here are those sweet interviews and colloquies, wherein Christ vouchsafes to manifest his love familiarly. He has writ his mind, yea, his heart, in the Scriptures, and there you may read the sweetest strains of love that ever the world knew ;
44 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
and when you read those heavenly lines, you should look upon them as a letter of love sent from Christ. In meditation, there you may have a full gaze at Christ, and if your minds be fixed, you may see every lineament of him who is altogether lovely, whose beauty ravishes the angels, makes them seraphims, flames of love.
When you are using these ordinances, you are in Christ's banqneting- house ; he spreads over you the banner of his love ; there he feasts his people, stays them with flagons ; there he admits them to familiar em braces, kisses them with the kisses of his mouth, and vouchsafes such mani festations of his love as are better than wine, sit down under his shadow with great delight. Ordinances are the mirrors wherein Christ makes him self visible ; herein, as in a glass, we may see the glory of Christ, and no other way, till in heaven, where we may see him face to face. These are as Zaccheus's tree: when we get our hearts raised, our souls climb up, and with advantage see Jesus ; and there he will spy you, come feast with you, and bring salvation to your house.
Delight in ordinances, and manifest it by being frequent in them. Be much in prayer ; be not satisfied in ordinances, without his presence, except you may see and enjoy him. Depart not out of his presence, till he smile, till he speak kindly, speak to your heart, till he testify his presence by im pressions, light, heat, enlargement; expressions, the still voice speaking peace, accepting. That you may enjoy his presence, that he may delight to meet you, you must put your souls into that dress that is most lovely ; come with inflamed affections, with acted graces, so you will appear in the beauty of holiness. This is the beauty wherein Christ delights. Nothing so lovely as a soul of a gracious, a spiritual complexion waiting on him ; to him will he look.
Ans. 5. Take heed of unkindnesses. There is so much affinity betwixt love and kindness, as they are often joined in Scripture. Love, amongst men, will not endure unkind returns ; how much less Christ, who hath infinite reason to expect the best requitals ?
(1.) You are unkind when you undervalue Christ. Contempt is the great est unkindness. You contemn Christ when you set him at nought. He is then s^ouSsvTidus, set at nought, when you prefer that before him which is worse than nought, sin. When you set little by him, that is properly 6X/- yws/a, when you have a higher esteem of that which is little worth, outward enjoyments, relations, interests ; when these have more of your thoughts, more of your affections, than Christ. He is contemned when anything is more loved, desired, delighted in, feared, than Christ ; when any object is more lovely, any happiness more desirable, any enjoyment more delightful, any suffering more fearful, than Christ's absence or displeasure.
(2.) When you refuse his offers. He has writ, not a letter, but a large volume of love ; will you cast it behind your back ? He sends ambassadors to woo, to beseech you to be reconciled to his Father, and accept of him for your husband ; you will not give audience, much less obedience ; despise both messengers and message. He sends his Spirit to solicit you, makes many motions of love to your hearts (how often have you had experience of it ?) you quench the Spirit, reject his motions. He comes and knocks at your hearts, and stands till his head be filled with dew, and his locks with the drops of the night, Cant. v. 2. You will not open, send him away with out admission, while sin is welcome, has quiet possession, and kind enter tainment. He stretches out his hands all the day long, and stands with open arms, entreating you to come and be embraced ; but you refuse, delay, and weary him out with unkind denials or excuses. He sends his servants
EPH. V. 2.] THE LOVE OF CHRIST. 45
to invite you to the marriage-feast of the Lamb, tells you all things are pro vided for your delight and happiness, all is ready, and stays for your coming ; but you are so busily employed in the world, you cannot, you will not come ; and force him to that sad complaint, ' Ye will not come to me.' Oh how often are you guilty of this !
Ans. 6. Get and keep up love to him. Love is attractive of love. Christ condemns those as worse than publicans that return not love for love, Mat. v. He will be far from that which he condemns us for. He that could think thoughts of love to those that had no affection for him, will not fail to love those who love him, Prov. viii. 17. Those who shew they love him by seek ing him diligently, as we are wont to seek that which our heart is on, shall find him ready to express his love to them. His nature, so gracious, so affectionate, so compassionate, might assure us of this, without his word ; but to give us all assurance of it, he has engaged himself by promise again and again, John xiv. 21. He will manifest himself to him in all the riches of his love, ver. 23. Both Father and Son will shew that they love such an one, by visiting him with loving-kindness, coming to him for that purpose, and staying with him, as we would do with those whom we most love. He promises here such expressions of love on earth, as he vouchsafes in heaven, though not in the same degree. For how does he express his love to the saints in heaven, but by abiding with them, and manifesting himself to them ? The love of Christ should be both the pattern and the motive of our love to him. We should labour to love him as he loved us, and be constrained to love him because he so loved us. Endeavour to love him in all that is his. That is the way to have his love reach us in all our concerns.
In his person ; for the infinite excellencies and loveliness of Christ. To love him only for the advantages we have by him, is such a love as we our selves care not for from others-. We value not his love, who only affects us for his own sake, for what he may get by us. That is a selfish love, and comes short of the love of true friendship. He is not a friend indeed who loves you not for yourself, but only for what he expects from you. Christ chal lenges the Jews for something like this, Luke vi. 26. They followed him, not because they had seen the miracles, whereby he had discovered the ex cellency of his person ; they loved him not, but for the loaves. If Christ had not loved us, but for what he expected from us, what advantage he might have by us, he had never loved us at all.
In his offices. Though we must not love him only for the happiness we expect from him, yet we must love him for that too, and shall be most inex cusable if we do not. The spring of those blessings he enriches us with, is his offices, and the execution of them.
Love him as he is a priest for ever. A priest who made himself a sacri fice for you, to expiate your guilt, satisfy justice, and deliver you from wrath ; who washed you, &c., in his own blood, and is still presenting it ; he ever lives to make intercession.
Love him as he is a prophet. To discover himself, to make known his will, to shew the way to life, as ready to guide you by his counsel.
Love him as a king. One who will rescue you from your spiritual ene mies, subdue your iniquities, conquer your hearts for himself, bring you under his government, so as in all to make you more than conquerors.
Love him in all ways : those wherein he proceeds towards you, and those wherein you should walk with him ; the former, whether they be pleasing or afflictive. When his ways are apparently mercy, the goodness, the sweet ness of them should command love from you, Cant. i. 3, Ps. i. 16. When
46 THE LOVE OF CHRIST. [EPH. V. 2.
they are afflictive, they are mercy too, though sense will not always let you discern it. There is love in them, when they make you smart, such love as made the apostles triumph: Rom. viii., 'In all these things we are more than conquerors.' Why more than conquerors ? Because the love of Christ was in them. Yea, when there is some anger in them, there is love also, Rev. iii. 19. We are slow to believe this, and that may be the reason it is so oft repeated in the Old and New Testament, Prov. iii. 11, Heb. xii. 5. As he shewed his love by being afflicted for us, so also by afflicting us. And that love he shews should engage us to love him, even in the furnace of affliction, there should our love to Christ flame out, even when the waves and the billows go over us. The opposition should fortify love, many waters should not quench it.
And love him too in the ways wherein we should walk with him, — the ways of holiness, self-denial, mortification. These are not grateful to the flesh ; but they are the ways of Christ, the ways of him that loved us. And, therefore, he made them our ways, and leads us into them, because he loves us ; and, therefore, in despite of our corruptions, they should be lovely to us. They should be ' ways of pleasantness,' because they are ' paths of peace,' Prov. iii. 17. His commandments are the paths of life, none of them should be grievous. It is the yoke of Christ, his burden which seems heaviest : he lays it on us, because he loves us ; and shall not that consi deration make it light and easy ? When he came into the world for us, if he had declined that which was grievous to flesh and blood, that which was difficult, and expensive, and hazardous, and meddled with nothing for our sakes but what was cheap, and easy, and safe, and pleasing, oh what had become of us, our redemption had never been effected ! Oh, but his love to us made him count nothing too costly, too difficult, too grievous ! Let us likewise shew our love to Christ, in counting no part of his ways, no part of our duty, too hard, or too expensive, or too hazardous, or too grievous. How can we say that we love him, if we be so disaffected to any part of the good, and perfect, and acceptable will of Christ, who loved us ? Let us resolve to subdue our own wills, to cross our carnal inclinations, to quit our worldly interest, to oppose our own humours ; to follow him in painful, and costly, and reproached, and hazardous services ; to abate him nothing of what he expects, to spare ourselves in nothing that he requires of us. Then shall we shew that we love him indeed, and find that he loves us ; other wise we are in danger to be found no better than pretenders to Christ and his love, and such as he will not know, nor own.
Love him in his people. In them all who have anything of his image and likeness, however sullied with weaknesses and infirmities, or blotted with distasteful carriages, or soured with the crabbedness of an unhappy temper, or varying from you in some particulars of practice or opinion, 1 John iv. 10, 11, 20, 21 ; say not, they are cross, and froward, and peevish, and selfish, and every way unworthy, and every way disobedient ; how can I love such ? Oh, but might not Christ have said this of you, and much worse ? If he had refused to love you on this account, what had your condition been ? And if he would not be hindered from loving you, when there was unspeak ably more in you to forbid his love, shall some little things (little in com parison of what Christ might have objected against you), how great soever you think them, hinder you from loving Christ in his members ? Say not, I cannot think them his members, they are so unlike him ; for if you look well into your own hearts and ways, may not you see much to make you think yourselves not like him ? May not Christ see therein much more to make him judge you very unlike ? Take heed you venture not to dismember
EPII. V. 2.] CHRIST'S SACRIFICE. 47
Christ, out of any little pretences or prejudices. He will take it better at your hands to love those as his, who are not, than not to love any who are his indeed, though they seem not so to you. You love not Christ, if you love not his people ; and if you love not him, you cannot expect love from him.
He gave himself for us. The next thing considerable in the text is the expression of Christ's love ; he gave himself for us, &c. To open this, and offer it to you distinctly and clearly, take notice of the several words and parts of the expression.
1. He gave. Gifts are expressions of love. We judge of love by the quality or value of the gift. He that loves heartily gives freely, and he that loves much gives much, if he have much to give. We conclude with reason that he who gives us things of great value, and gives freely, loves us answer- ably, has a great love for us. Now what did Christ give ?
2. He gave himself, nothing less than himself ; and that is more, incom parably more, than if he had given all the angels in heaven, all the treasures on earth for us ; more than if he had given all the works of his hands. It is more than heaven and earth together ; as much more than the whole world as the whole world is more than the drop of a bucket, and the small dust of the balance ; for the disproportion is greater betwixt the Son of God and the whole world, than betwixt the whole world and the drop of a bucket. The small dust of the balance is^as nothing to the universe, and the universe is as nothing compared with the Son of God. And it is himself that he gave ; not so little a thing as the whole creation, but, that which is infinitely more and greater, himself. That word comprises more than ten thousand worlds amount to.
It is exceeding much that the apostle says is given us ; and it will appear, if we view the several parcels of the gift, in the account we have thereof, 1 Cor. iii. 22. Not only Paul, &c. ; not only life and death, but the world ; not only the world, but that which is to come, things present and things to come. No less than two worlds ! Could the heart of man desire more ? Oh but he has given more, infinitely more ! When he gave himself, he gave more than ten thousand worlds. All is yours. Ay, but that all, and the great contents thereof, are nothing compared with himself, and he gave no less than himself.
3. How did he give himself ? He did not give himself as we are wont to give, nor did he give himself as he gives other things. But as the gift was extraordinary and transcendently great, so was his way of giving it. As the greatness of the gift, so the manner of giving it, expresses a great, a trans cendent love. He gave himself, not in the common way of giving ; but, as the text shews, his giving was an offering of himself. ' He gave himself an offering for us.' But then,
4. How did he give himself as an offering for us ? What kind of offering did he make himself? There are several sorts of offerings mentioned in Scripture. We meet with offerings that were not sacrificed, and also with offerings that were sacrificed.
Offerings that were not sacrifices. Such were the persons and things which were devoted or dedicated unto God for the service of the tabernacle and of the temple. Thus the vessels and utensils given up and set apart for the service and ministration under the law are called offerings, Num. vii. 10, and those offerings are specified, ver. 18, &c. Silver chargers, bowls, and spoons ; and not only things, but persons are called offerings when set apart ; for thus the legal ministry, Num. x. 10, 11, 13. The other sort of offerings were
48 CHBIST'S SACRIFICE. [Epn. V. 2.
sacrifices, such as were offered so as to be consumed and destroyed, and to be deprived of life, if they were things that had life. So that there is a great difference betwixt these offerings : the former were offered so as to be preserved, the latter were offered so as to be killed or consumed. For that is the true notion of a sacrifice ; it is an offering daily consumed. And such an offering was Christ, such an offering as was a sacrifice, as the text shews. He gave himself to be sacrificed for us. ' He was led as a lamb to the slaughter.' He was slain, and his blaod shed and poured out. It had been much for the Son of God to give himself for us as an offering in any sense, though not one drop of his precious blood had been shed, though he had not suffered in the least. Oh what manner of love was it, that he would offer himself as a sacrifice for us ; that he would be slain, and so far destroyed for us as the sacrifices who lost their lives in the offerings ! But,
5. What kind of sacrifice was it? There were several sorts of sacrifices under the law. They are commonly .reduced to two heads.
(1.) Some were eucharistical, sacrifices of thanksgiving, offered as thank ful acknowledgments of deliverances, or other mercies obtained.
(2.) Others were propitiatory, sacrifices for expiation, to make atonement, to expiate guiltr and procure pardon and reconciliation. Now Christ offered himself a sacrifice, not of thanksgiving ; none have entertained, or can give any reason, for such a conceit. But he gave himself for us a sacrifice for expiation, to expiate the guilt of our sin, to procure pardon, and make our peace with God. And this appears by the phrase which the apostle here uses to explain and illustrate it ; it was offered to God for a sweet-smelling savour, which is an expression by which propitiatory sacrifices are wont to be described in Scripture. In the first place, where we meet with it, it is applied to Noah's sacrifice, Gen. viii. 21. This was a sacrifice for propi tiation ; for upon the offering it the Lord declares himself appeased, and that though the imaginations of man's heart be evil, yet he will not again curse the earth ; which words express that God was atoned with the sacrifice which Noah offered. The word signifes a ' savour of rest ; ' for though the Lord was moved with anger against the world, so as to bring a deluge upon it, yet now he would rest from his anger, his wrath did cease. And this is the proper effect of a propitiatory sacrifice, when it prevails and is accepted. And elsewhere also these sacrifices for expiation are set forth by this expres sion, Lev. i. 9, 15, 17. That the sacrifices or burnt- offerings prescribed in this chapter were piacular is plain, ver. 4. To make atonement was the proper end and design of sacrifices for expiation.
The Socinians, [who] will not upon any terms allow the death of Christ to be such a sacrifice, and so strive to illude* every text which we allege to prove it, do use this evasion here. They say the phrase is used of free-will offerings ; these are the sacrifices which are commonly said to be a sweet savour. But there is no reason in this, for sacrifices for expiation were free will offerings, as much as those for thanksgiving ; and those sacrifices par ticularly which I have instanced and proved to be piacular, viz., that of Noah ; for it was not offered at a time determined by God, for anything appears, and that is it which makes the difference between free-will offerings and the solemn stated sacrifices. And for those, Lev. L, the text is express, ver. 8.
Or if they should allege that this phrase is applied to peace-offerings, yet this would not serve their turn ; for peace-offerings for the congregation had something of expiation in them, Lev. xxxv. 16. And this appears, not only because what is required in propitiatory sacrifices is found in peace-offerings,
* Qu. 'elude?'— ED.
EPH. V. 2.] CHRIST'S SACRIFICE. 49
viz., the slaying of the beast, the sprinkling of the blood, and the consuming some part of it upon the altar, Lev. ix. 18, 19, but also because what is proper and ascribed to sacrifices designed for expiation is ascribed to peace- offerings, Ezek. xlv. 15, 17, where peace-offerings, amongst the rest, were to make reconciliation for the people ; and this is the proper and special end of sacrifices for expiation. To turn away the Lord's anger, and appease his wrath, was the main design of propitiatory sacrifices. And David, when the Lord's anger was kindled and consuming the people, he offers peace-offerings, 2 Sam. xxiv. 21. And this was the issue of it, the plague was stayed, God's anger was appeased, ver. 25. So that, whatever the Socinianists object against the text, who, by denying the death of Christ to be a propi tiatory sacrifice, would raze the foundations of all our hopes and comforts in the gospel, we have made it clear and firm, that the sacrifice which the text says Christ offered for his people in offering himself, was a sacrifice for ex piation.
Obs. Christ offered himself a sacrifice of expiation for his people.
To give you distinctly the evidence which the Scripture affords for this great and fundamental truth, take it in these severals.
1. He offered himself, Heb. vii. 27 ; 'He offered up himself,' Heb. ix. 14 and 28.
2. He offered himself a sacrifice, 1 Cor. v. 7, Heb. ix. 26. Those things which were necessary and requisite to a real and proper sacrifice concurred in this sacrifice of Christ.
(1.) The person offering was to be a priest; it was the peculiar office of the priest under the law, Heb. v. 1. So Christ, that he might offer this sacrifice, was called to that office, and made an high priest, ver. 5, 6, 10.
(2.) The things offered were to be of God's appointment, otherwise it had been, not a true and acceptable sacrifice, but will-worship ; and no more a sacrifice in God's account than the cutting off a dog's neck, or offering swine's blood, as appears by the laws given by God to Moses concerning free will offerings, Lev. i. In the free-will offerings, though the precise time for offering them was not determined, yet things to be offered were appointed. So that what* Christ offered was appointed and prepared by God, Heb. x. 5. He prepared him a body, that he might offer that for a sacrifice; and that he offered, ver. 10. It was a living body that he prepared for him, a body animated, enlivened with a soul, which soul was separated from his body in the offering ; and therefore he is said to make his soul an offering, Isa. liii. And soul and body constituting his human nature, and making up himself, he is said to offer himself, Heb. ix. 26, 14.
(3.) That which was offered for a sacrifice was to be destroyed. This is essential to a sacrifice ; it is oblatio rite consnmpta, an offering duly con sumed. Those things that had life, that they might be offered as sacrifices, they were killed, and their blood poured out ; and the other parts of them, besides the blood, were burned, either wholly or in part.
Thus was Christ sacrificed ; his dying and bleeding on the cross answered the killing and bloodshed of the Levitical sacrifices, and his sufferings (ex pressed by the pains of hell) were correspondent to the burnings of the sac rifices, Heb. xiii. 12, 13 ; his sufferings without the gate are held forth here, as answering the burning of the sacrifices without the camp.
(4.) The person to whom they were offered was God, and him only.
Sacrificing was a divine honour appropriated to God. To offer sacrifice to
any else was gross idolatry, Heb. v. 1. What were those things, ra
* Qu. ' So what'?— ED.
VOL. III. D
50 CHEIST'S SACRIFICE. [EpH. V. 2.
rev ©EOV ? Oblations and sacrifices. And this sacrifice Christ offered unto God, Heb. ii. 17. He performed the office of a merciful and faithful high priest, in offering to God what belonged to him. What were those things ? Why, such as made reconciliation, i.e. in offering to God a propitiatory sacrifice.
The Socinians will have Christ to offer this sacrifice, not to God, but to us, that they may deny it to be a real and proper sacrifice. But here they offer plain violence to Scripture ; the text is express, he offered to God, not to us, Heb. ix. 14.
By these particulars we see, that what was necessary to constitute a real and proper sacrifice is found in this sacrifice of Christ.
8. He offered himself a sacrifice of expiation. And this is it I intend to insist on. That his death was such a sacrifice may be made evident in general by this one consideration, that the propitiatory sacrifices under the law were figures and shadows, whereby this great sacrifice of Christ was typified ; for if the figures and shadows had something of expiation in them, that which was the substance of them, and was typified by them, must have it also, else there would not be so much in the substance as in the shadow, and the thing typified would not answer that which prefigures it, nor would the things which the Lord appointed to resemble one another bear a resemblance.
Now, that those sacrifices under the law did prefigure and shadow out this great sacrifice of expiation in Christ's death, appears, because the apostle de clares them to be figures and shadows, Heb. ix. 9 and x. 1. Those expia tory sacrifices had some resemblance of this, as the shadow has of the body, though obscure and imperfect ; they were but shadows, the substance and perfection of expiation was in the sacrifice of Christ, Col. ii. 17.
And if we come to particulars, and view the several sorts of them under
. the law, we may find, that whatever sacrifices were then offered to mate
expiation, they all prefigured and signified this of Christ. And we have
ground to conclude so, from other places of Scripture, applying them to this
great sacrifice. Vid. Sermon or Homily 58.
And let not this discourse seem tedious to you, or not worth your best attention here, or your serious consideration in private, for there is scarce any subject I can insist on either more profitable or more necessary ; for without understanding this point I am upon, that Christ is a sacrifice of ex piation, you cannot fully understand either the law or the gospel. We shall but understand the law as the blind Jews do, who, in all the laws about sacrifices, see nothing of Christ ; and we shall but understand the gospel as the Socinians do, who quite deface and utterly subvert it.
I have given you some evidence in what is already said, that Christ in his death gave himself for his people, not only a proper and real sacrifice, but also a sacrifice for expiation.
I proceed now to some particulars, which will both explain and confirm this weighty point, and withal clear up divers main truths of the gospel, of very great consequence for our comfort and establishment ; which, for some seeming difficulty and obscurity in them, are mistaken by some and rejected by others, though the gospel itself signify little to us without them.
If this point, Christ's being a propitiatory sacrifice for us, were well un derstood, there would remain little or no difficulty concerning our sin being imputed to Christ, or satisfaction made by him for us, or the imputation of that satisfaction to us, or his performing it in our stead.
All these, and others of this nature, would be clear, so as to be entertained and believed without doubt or difficulty, if this was but clear, that Cluist gave himself a sacrifice for expiation.
EPH. V. 2.) CHRIST'S SACRIFICE. 51
And this I shall endeavour to make plain to you, by shewing in some par ticulars that whatever is essential to a propitiatory sacrifice, and is required in such a sacrifice under the law, is to be found in the sacrifice of Christ.
But let me first premise this one thing : by the judicial law (which was to the Jews their civil or statute law, hy which they were governed as a com monwealth or body politic) corporal death was the penalty of all disobedience to God, Deut. xxvii. 26. The curse is death, death corporal in the civil or, political sense of it ; death eternal in the spiritual sense, as the apostle applies it, Gal. iii. 10. Now, the Lord, who was the King and Lawgiver of Israel, relaxed the laws as to many offences; and instead of the corporal death of the person offending, accepted of the death of a sacrifice.
Let this be minded and remembered all along ; for much of what follows will be mistaken, or not well understood without it. And so I go on to the particulars mentioned, which will shew that the sacrifice of Christ was fully correspondent to the propitiatory sacrifices under the law, in all points that are essential or necessary to such a sacrifice.
1. The sin of the offender, whether a particular person or the people, was laid upon the sacrifice, imputed to, or charged on it. The sin of the offerer was in a manner transferred to the sacrifice, so as it became responsible for it, and was made liable to answer or suffer for it, as if itself had contracted the guilt. As when the debt is charged on the surety, or he takes it on himself, he is as much obliged to pay it, to be answerable for it, as if himself had contracted it. The sacrifice was looked on as under guilt, and treated as a guilty thing ; not as having sinned, but as if it had sinned.
Hence the word used for such a sacrifice does signify sin itself. And the sacrifices are said to bear the iniquities of the people, Lev. xvi. 22, and x. 17, because the people's sins were laid on them. For this we have further evidence, by their laying hands on the head of the sacrifice, Lev. i. 4, iv. 4. And it is observed, that in all the propitiatory sacrifices for the whole con gregation this rite was used, and in no sacrifices for them, but those. And because all the people could not lay on their hands, some other representing them did it for them ; sometimes the elders, Lev. iv. 15, 2 Chron. xxix. 22-24, sometimes the high priest, Lev. xvi. 21. When they laid their hands on the sacrifices, they confessed their sins over them. This the text calls a putting their sins upon the head of the sacrifice. Hereby was signi fied, as the Hebrew doctors observe, that the iniquities of the people were laid upon the head of the sacrifice, and the guilt transferred from themselves unto the victim that was sacrificed for them. Hereupon the scape-goat, and all those sacrifices, whose blood was carried unto the holy place, and whose bodies were burnt without the camp, because the sins of the people were laid on them, they were looked on as if they were polluted and defiling things, and accounted execrable and polluted ; insomuch, as those who did but touch them, contracted such pollution, that they were not to be admitted into the congregation till they were purified, Lev. xvi. 26, xxviii. 24. The Hebrew doctors say* this was the reason, because the scape-goat and those other sacrifices were charged with so much guilt, such a multitude of sins being laid on them.
And as sin was charged upon the legal sacrifices and imputed to them, so was our sins charged upon Christ, the great sacrifice, and imputed to him, 2 Cor. v. 21. The righteousness of God here is the righteousness of him who is God, the righteousness of Christ, that righteousness which he performed in being obedient unto death. What is said of Christ's right-
« Vid. Outram, 271.
52 CHRIST'S SACRIFICE. [Epn. V. 2.
eousness in reference to us, that is said of our sin in reference to Christ ; we are made righteousness, he is made sin. But how was his righteousness made ours, how was our sin made his ? Why, by imputation only. We were far from being righteous in ourselves, but his righteousness is imputed to us. He was far from being a sinner, but our sin was imputed to him. But what is it to be imputed ? If we will speak exactly of this, we must speak differently of them, according to the different nature and quality of the things imputed, which are good or evil. That which is evil, is said to be imputed to us, when it is charged on us. Good is said to be imputed to us, when it is accepted for us. When evil is said to be charged on any, so as he is to suffer for it, though he committed it not, we say it is imputed to him. And when good is accepted for another, so as he has the advantages of it, though he performed it not, but another for him, and in his stead, then it is said to be imputed to him.
Thus the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, when it is accepted for ns, so as we are entitled to the advantages of it, though we performed it not, but Christ in our stead. And thus our sin was imputed to Christ, when it was charged on him, so as he was to suffer for it in our stead, though we only committed it. And thus was sin imputed to sacrifices under the law, in that sin was charged on them, so as they were to suffer for it, though they were not the transgressors.
So a debt is imputed to a surety, when he takes the debt upon himself, and is thereby obliged to pay, though he never contracted it.
And this not only clears the nature of the act, but also the justice and equity of it. It may seem unjust, that one who is innocent should be charged with the sins of another. But there is indeed no unrighteousness herein. It was the righteous act and appointment of God, that the sins of the people should be laid on the sacrifice ; and it was his act and appoint ment, that our sins should be laid on Christ the great sacrifice. And there is no unrighteousness with God in this act, more than in the other ; to say nothing that the practice of the world justified it in all their particular sacri fices. Nay, there is more to be pleaded for charging sin on Christ, than in that of the other legal sacrifices ; for volenti non fit wjuria, there is no injury where there is consent. But sin was laid upon the other sacrifices, when they were not capable of consenting to it. But Christ gave his consent to have our sins laid on him. The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all, but he was willing they should be laid on him ; and it was in reference hereto that he said, Heb. x. 7. He himself bare our sins, he took upon him the burden of our guilt freely. It was his own voluntary act, so there was no more unrighteousness in it, than in charging the debt upon the surety, •who freely and out of choice takes a debt upon him and thereby engages him self to discharge it. Never did any surety so freely charge himself with a debt, as Christ charged himself with our sins.
It may be objected, that, if our sins were charged on Christ and laid upon him, then he was under guilt ; and the most innocent Son of God, who was holy, harmless, and separate from sinners, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his lips, must be counted a guilty person ; nay, the most guilty of all others, as having upon him the sins of all his people.
I answer, there are two sorts of guilt ; a culpable and a penal guilt. He is under culpable guilt, who himself committed the offence. He is under penal guilt, who is obliged to suffer for the offence, though he committed it not : for this guilt is no more than an obligation to punishment. Now Christ, as our sacrifice, was only under this penal guilt. The offences that he was charged with were committed by us, not by him ; only by undertaking
EPH. V. 2.J CHRIST'S SACRIFICE. 53
to be a sacrifice for us, lie came under an obligation to suffer for us, as if he had sinned, though we only were the transgressors.
And thus it was in those legal sacrifices, which were shadows of Christ. We need go no further to clear it. In them it appears that these two sorts of guilt may be separated ; so that he who is not culpably guilty, may be penally guilty, and may justly suffer, though he did not personally sin : for those peculiar* sacrifices, the sins of the people being laid on them, were under penal guilt, and did justly suffer as if they had sinned ; and yet they were not culpably guilty, for they neither had sinned, nor were capable of sinning.
And in respect of this penal guilt, it may be granted that it was under more guilt than any, as the sacrifice for the whole congregation was under more guilt, being charged with more sin than any sacrifice offered for a par ticular person.
The text insisted on is a sufficient proof of this point. Christ was ' made sin for us.' Those who hereby understand a sacrifice for sin, say the same thing in consequence that I have said, for if Christ was made a sacrifice for sin, that must be granted of him which necessarily belongs to every sacrifice for sin ; that the sin of those for whom it was offered was laid on it, or, which is all one, imputed to it.
This is also signified by those scriptures, where Christ is said to bear our sins, Isa. liii. 6, 11, 12, Heb. ix. 28, 1 Peter ii. 24. For the bearing of our punishment is hereby commonly understood.
Yet his being charged with our sin must necessarily be included ; for'our punishment could not have been justly inflicted, nor would his sufferings have been penal, but that our sin was charged on him, or imputed to him. For punishment is never duly inflicted, but where sin is some way charged.
2. The penalty due to the transgressor under the law was inflicted on the sacrifice offered for him. The sinner deserved temporal death and destruction ; and the sacrifice was slain or destroyed. So it was with the sacrifices for the hish priest and the whole congregation. A bullock is ap pointed to be brought as a sin-offering for the high priest, and that was to be killed, Lev. xvi. 11 ; a goat was the sin-offering for the people, and that is ordered to be killed, ver. 15 ; and the scape-goat, sent into the wilderness, was so sent in order to its destruction one way or other.
So it was likewise with sin-offerings for private persons. If it was a lamb or a kid, they were killed, as other beasts offered for sacrifice, Lev. v. 6 ; if they were turtle-doves or young pigeons, their heads were to be wrung off from their necks, ver. 8 ; and when not able to bring doves and pigeons, they were to offer fine flour, and this was to be consumed, a hand ful of it was to be burnt, vers. 11, 12.
The sinner deserved to be killed or destroyed, that was the penalty due to him by the law ; and so the sacrifice that was offered, and thereby suffered for him, was killed or destroyed. The transgressor's sin being transferred to the sacrifice, and laid on it by the institution of God, signified by the imposition of hands on the head of the sacrifice : hereupon being supposed to be under guilt, and guilt being an obligation to punishment, the sacrifice was obliged to suffer, and did suffer, the penalty which the offender deserved.
This is further cleared by the words which they used when they brought a sacrifice : Let this be TPBD, my expiation ; the meaning of which, as they generally agree, is this, What evil I have deserved, let it fall upon the head of my sacrifice.
Thus it was with propitiatory sacrifices, or sin-offerings under the law. * Qu. ' piacular ' ? — ED.
54 CHRIST'S SACRIFICE. [Epn. V. 2.
And thus it was with Christ the great sacrifice, shadowed out hy them ; and thereby it is manifest that he was such a sacrifice. The punishment which was due to otor sins was inflicted on Christ; he suffered what our sins deserved, 1 Peter ii. 24. As the sacrifice bare the sin of him for whom it was offered, and thereupon bare the penalty due to him, so Christ bare the sins of his people, and thereupon bare the punishment due to their sins. This expression includes both ; both his taking our sins upon him, which sins were the meritorious cause of punishment, and his bearing the punish ment, which was the effect of our sins, that which they deserved. The sacrifices, by having the sins of the people laid on them, became liable to undergo the penalty, and did actually undergo it. So Christ, by taking our sins on him, became liable to the punishment, and did actually suffer it. We have them joined together, Isa. liii. 12. As the life of the sacrifices was poured out unto death in the pouring out of their blood, so was Christ's life poured out in the shedding of his blood.
And why was his life poured out, and death inflicted on him ? Because he was reckoned amongst transgressors, our transgressions being laid on him by the will and counsel of God. He was