Part 65

The Recollection.—It becomes me now to reflect on what I have heard this day. The atonement of Christ is one of the chief glories, and most surprising wonders of my religion: It is the ground of my hope, it is the very life of my soul. Here I have been learning the several transactions of the great God, the Creator and Ruler of the world, with all the children of men from the beginning of their creation. The light of nature informs me in an imperfect manner, and the scripture with much brighter evidence assures me, that I was made under the law, and not born to live at random, according to the wild dictates of appetite and passion. I am informed also, my Creator has guarded the honour of his law with indignation and wrath, with pain of the flesh, and anguish of the mind, and death itself, as the penalties to be inflicted on those that break it. A law divinely wise and righteous, and a sanction of solemn and divine terror!

But, alas! I am one of the sinful guilty race of man. My very nature is corrupt, my powers of action are unholy, and I have broken the law of my God in a thousand instances. My conscience condemns me, my mouth is stopped, I am guilty before God, I lie under the sentence of his condemning law by nature, and am by nature a child of disobedience, and a child of wrath. It is a glorious instance of divine mercy and forbearance, that he has not executed the severities of his law upon me long ago: It is rich mercy and adorable patience that my flesh and spirit have not been filled with all these terrors, that I am not made as wretched as I have been rebellious.

Nor can I expect, that the great and terrible God, who sent his indignation upon angels when they sinned, turned them out of heaven, and chained them in darkness, should forgive all my infinite offences, without some reparation made for the honour of his broken law. He is a great God indeed, his majesty is tremendous, and every thing that belongs to him must have its due honour.

If I labour with all my powers to make him some recompence for my past iniquities by new obedience, I find it is impossible. The best of my righteousnesses are all defective: My holiest services want some forgiveness as well as my wilful sins. Nor can I suffer the punishment due to my iniquities, without being for ever miserable. All the doors of hope are shut against me, nor by the utmost effort and labour of my own powers, can I find a way to escape: If I am left to myself in this state, I must despair and perish. But blessed, for ever blessed be the mercy of my God, that he has sent his own Son to take flesh and blood upon him. He has sent him in the likeness of sinful flesh to become a sacrifice for sin, to sustain the sorrows which I could never sustain, and to provide a laver of his own blood to cleanse us from all sin. Lord, I humbly approach this sacred laver, to wash away the defilements of my soul.

Christ is become a sacrifice to divine justice, in the room and stead of men. And he is also our great High-priest: For he offered himself up to the strokes of justice, and the penal demands of the law of God, and thereby he hath shewn himself to be a priest of reconciliation. How adorable is this contrivance! How amazing is this love! How should sinners be surprized with a sense of this abounding grace! Here I behold the Son of God stooping down from the height of his glory, to become a mortal man, surrounded with flesh and sorrows: I behold the first favourite of heaven, the first beloved Son leaving the bosom of his Father, and the fulness of celestial joys, that he might unite himself to our feeble nature, and taste the anguish and the smart that our rebellious had deserved. I behold him forsaken of his Father, and lying under the weight and terror of some unknown discoveries and impressions of that divine indignation and wrath that was due to sinners; unknown impressions indeed, that struck the Son of God with amazement, and made his soul exceeding sorrowful even to death.

And was all this for my sins, O my Saviour; Didst thou sustain these heavy sufferings from the hand of God, that such a rebel as I might be reconciled? Yes, all this for my sins, if I am found a sincere believer on the Son of God.

Enquire now, O my soul, dost thou believe in Christ? Hast thou seen thy heavy guilt, and thy danger of eternal death? Hast thou been weary and heavy laden with a sense of thy past iniquities? Hast thou been pained at thy heart under the present power of indwelling sin: And hast thou fled for refuge to the hope set before thee in the gospel? Hast thou joyfully received Jesus the Saviour by faith in his blood? by a living and active faith? Hast thou committed thyself to him, to be delivered from the reign of sin, as well as from the condemnation of it? Then mayest thou join with the blessed apostle, and speak in the language of faith, _He loved me, and gave himself for me_? Gal. ii. 20.

Let me meditate again the sorrows and agonies of my dear, my adored Redeemer. Infinite agonies and sorrows, beyond all the powers of language. Is my heart made of stone, that it can hear such an history and not melt within me, have I no tender part within me to bleed at the rehearsal of such anguish, and such love? Blessed Jesus smite the rock of my heart, and let it pour out new streams of repentance and affectionate gratitude. I was dead, and the Son of God gave himself up to death, in order to raise me to life again. I was a traitor and an enemy, and he hath sustained the arrows of the Almighty to reconcile me to his Father, and turn away his infinite indignation. My great High-priest has offered up himself a bloody sacrifice for me, that my guilt might be forgiven, and cancelled for ever.

Think, O my soul, study, contrive, speak, what wilt thou render to the Lord for such astonishing condescension, and such unexampled grace. How wilt thou show thy inestimable value of his atonement? What does he require of thee, but to keep those garments clean, which he has washed in so rich a fountain as his own blood? And shall I ever wilfully indulge the practice of sin again, and return to my old defilements? Shall I ever consent to break the law of my God? Have I not seen the dreadful nature and dismal effects of it, in the agonies and death of my dearest Lord? What shall I do that I may never sin more? Lord, I cannot preserve myself from the fatal infection, while I dwell in a world where sin reigns all around me, in a world that lies in wickedness; and while I am so nearly allied to flesh and blood, where folly, vice, and sin run through every vein to my heart. Jesus, I commit myself afresh to thy care, thou wilt save the soul that thou hast purchased at so dear a rate; thou wilt accept and save a returning penitent. Here I devote my life, my self, my flesh and spirit, and all my powers to thy obedience, and the purposes of thy glory for ever and ever: My soul looks up to thee with an eye of humble confidence, and my faith and hope rest on thy everlasting love. _Amen._

HYMN FOR SERMON XXXIV. _The Atonement of Christ._

How is our nature spoil’d by sin! Yet nature ne’er hath found The way to make the conscience clean, Or heal the painful wound.

In vain we seek for peace with God By methods of our own; Jesus there’s nothing but thy blood Can bring us near thy throne.

The threat’nings of the broken law Impress our souls with dread: If God his sword of vengeance draw, It strikes our spirits dead.

But thy illustrious sacrifice Hath answered these demands; And peace and pardon from the skies Come down by Jesus’ hands.

Here all the ancient types agree, The altar and the lamb: And prophets in their visions see Salvation through his name.

’Tis by thy death we live, O Lord: ’Tis on thy cross we rest: For ever be thy love ador’d, Thy name for ever blest.

Footnote 34:

Every circumstance that aggravates any crime, must aggravate it in a degree proportionable to that circumstance; otherwise we could never determine what is the degree of this aggravation, nor adjust the punishment in proportion to it. On this account, if the crime he committed against God, an infinite being, the guilt must be infinitely aggravated.

Footnote 35:

I grant, 1. That their continual persistence and obstinacy in sinful practices, may naturally render them continually miserable; and 2. This continued obstinacy may also, in a legal sense, merit continual new punishment. And perhaps, on these two reasons, the actual eternity of hell may be justly supported. But unless we suppose every wilful rebellion against the infinite Majesty of God, to have also a sort of infinite evil in it, I do not see that everlasting chains, and eternal fire, are a proper deserved punishment, legally due to their first rebellion, that is, to one act of sin.

SERMON XXXV. _The Atonement of Christ._ ROM. iii. 25.—Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation——

Having explained the manner in which Christ is a propitiation for sin; I come in the second place to propose some reasons to evince the truth of this doctrine, namely, That God hath ordained his Son Jesus to be our propitiation or sacrifice of atonement. And here I shall proceed by degrees, from some apparent probabilities, to more evident and convincing proofs.

I. The first reason I shall give for it is this, that an atonement for sin, and an effectual method to answer the demands of an offended God, is the first great blessing which guilty mankind stood in need of: but the powers of nature could never procure it, nor could the light of reason ever shew them how to obtain it: Now it is the design of the gospel of Christ to supply the wants and deficiencies of guilty nature, that is both impotent and blind; it is to introduce an effectual reconciliation between God and sinners; it is to point out an atonement to them, answerable to their guilt, which they wanted, and to discover a solid foundation for peace. This is done in the death of Christ.

A few easy reflections of natural conscience, will acquaint all the thinking part of men that they are sinners, that they have offended the great and glorious God who made them: And those that have read the histories of mankind, and have surveyed distant nations and past ages, have found this to be almost the universal enquiry of men, “What shall we do to pacify the anger of that God, against whom we have sinned?” The heathen world had an awful notion of the vengeance of heaven. Hence arose endless forms of superstition: How many long and costly ceremonies, what painful and bloody rites of worship have been invented and practised by men, to make some compensation for their crimes? All the craft and contrivance of their priests, could never have prevailed with the bulk of mankind, to take such yokes of bondage upon them, if there had not been something in natural conscience, which wanted an atonement and peace to be made with heaven, from a sense of their own guilt.

The prophet Micah introduces this general language of an awakened conscience, _Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, or bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings?—Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?_ Micah vi. 6, 7. Alas! All these are vain and fruitless proposals: But the gospel makes the enquiring conscience easy, when it proposes the blood of the Son of God, appointed by the Father as a satisfactory offering for the sins of men: This is what the guilty world wanted, but could never find out. This the gospel hath revealed and set in an open light.

And indeed, if the great God who is offended, did ever send down a Peace-maker to reconcile heaven and earth, it is very reasonable to suppose that he should answer the universal cry of nature distressed with guilt; and that he should furnish sinful creatures with such an atonement for sin, and such a solid foundation for their acceptance with himself, as might fully satisfy their reason and their awakened consciences. And this is no where to be found in so evident and complete a manner, as in the death of Christ.

II. The very first discoveries of grace, which were made to man after his fall, implied in them something of an atonement for sin, and pointed to the propitiation which Christ has now made; Gen. iii. 15, &c. The first appearance of grace was the promise given that the _seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent_, that is, he should abolish the guilt, mischief, and misery that sin and the tempter had introduced: But in order to do this, the woman’s seed must have his heel bruised, must sustain some personal sufferings.

Immediately after this, sacrifices of beasts were instituted[36] as a type and prefiguration of some future glorious sacrifice and atonement that should be made to God for the sins of men. Now it is the very notion of an expiatory sacrifice, as I have shewn before, that some creature is provided to stand in the room of the original transgressor and to bear his guilt and suffer punishment in his stead, that thereby the transgressor having his guilt taken away, may be delivered and saved. And when Adam was ordered to put a beast to death which had not sinned, in order to worship or honour God by it, and when he found that he himself who had sinned, was not put to death, it was not hard for him to understand that the beast was put to death in his room and stead: And it is not unlikely that God told him so.

Let us consider further, that it is exceeding probable, when the _Lord God made coats of skins for Adam and his wife_; Gen. iii. 21. these were the skins of the beasts that had been put to death in sacrifice: And thus God made it appear to them, that their nakedness was covered, and the shame of their guilt removed, by a blessing derived from the beasts that were slain. The skins of the sacrifices being put upon their bodies, might abate something of their former fear, and encourage them to appear before God, who were terrified a little before, at the thoughts of their guilt and nakedness. Their deserved death was transferred to the sacrificed animal; and the skin of the animal sacrificed, was transferred to them as a covering for their guilt and shame. These are no obscure intimations of benefit and safety to be derived to sinners, from some atonement to be made for sin.

If we will hearken to St. Paul, he explains the first promise, when he says, Heb. ii. 14. that _Christ took flesh and blood upon him, that he might, by his own death destroy the devil, who had the power of death_, or had introduced it into the world. Here the Saviour’s heel was bruised, and the head of the serpent broken; nor can it be well supposed, how the death of Christ should destroy the works of the devil, but by making an atonement for the sins of men; for which sins divine justice had put them under his power or tyranny.

I will not presume to say, that Adam himself could read so much gospel as this in those first words of promise; or that he knew in so explicit and distinct a manner, the designs and ends of a sacrifice, when God taught him the practice: Yet it is very probable, that the great God condescended to give a much farther explication both of the first words of comfort concerning the seed of the woman, and of his own appointment of sacrifices, and of the reason of them, than Moses has written, or than we who live at this distance of time can ever certainly know.

III. Suppose what I have yet offered, be too obscure a foundation for this doctrine, yet let us consider that the following train of ceremonies, which were appointed by God in the Jewish church, when he separated a peculiar people to himself, are plain significations of such an atonement for sin as our Lord Jesus has made, and they confirm the meaning of the first institution of sacrifices.

I will grant indeed, that many of the ceremonies of the Jewish church, had also some other intendments, _viz._ To distinguish the nation of Israel from the Gentile world, and to keep them in subjection to God, who was their political head or king, as well as their God, to preserve them as a nation in his favour, and restore them when they had offended him as their governor and king: But a few considerations will give us sufficient evidence, that these are mere subordinate designs of God in the Jewish law, and especially in his institution of the ceremonies of atonement and priesthood.

First Consideration.—The Jewish ceremonies are often represented as types or figures of gospel-blessings by the apostle Paul; 2 Cor. iii. Gal. vi. Col. ii. Heb. vii, viii, ix, x. The levitical ceremonial rites were but the letter, of which the gospel of Christ is the spirit or meaning: Those were but as a veil to cover the good things of the gospel; they were but weak and poor rudiments or elements of learning, to lead us into the knowledge of gospel-blessings. “The law was our school-master to bring us to Christ. They were but a shadow of things to come, whose substance or body is Christ; They served but to the example and shadow of heavenly things: that is, the things of the gospel: They were a figure for the time present; a shadow of those good things to come, which the Holy Ghost signified by them.” The great end of these Jewish ceremonial appointments in the sense of this inspired writer, was, that they should stand but as types and figures of things under the gospel; as emblems of the various offices of the Messiah that was to come, and eminently of his priesthood and propitiation. Now the substance is superior to the shadow.

Second Consideration.—This is more evident still, if we consider that many of the defilements which were to be removed by these sacrifices and purifications, were of an external and corporeal nature, which, considered in themselves, were generally innocent as to moral guilt, and did not want such sort of bloody purgations[37]. Thence we may reasonably infer, that these external defilements of the body, did typify and represent the moral and sinful pollutions of the soul: and consequently, that the external and corporeal forms of atonement and purgation were chiefly designed as types and figures of the blood of Christ, which was a real propitiation for the sins of the soul.

Third Consideration.—The most exact and happy resemblance and conformity, between the method of atonement by the priesthood and sacrifice of Christ, and the appointed rites of the levitical priesthood and atonement, very naturally leads us to suppose, that one was designed to figure out and foretel the other; especially since the scripture gives us such frequent hints of it. The great God, to whom all his own works are known from the beginning of the world, had the sacrifice and priesthood of his Son Jesus ever in his eye, when he ordained the Jewish forms of atonement. He kept in view Jesus the high-priest, who was hereafter to enter into heaven in the virtue of his own blood, when he appointed Aaron to go into the holy place, the figure of the true, with the blood of the yearly expiation. He kept in view the merit of Christ’s death, which was to be applied to our souls and consciences by faith, when he appointed the people to be sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifices: And therefore the blood of Christ is called the blood of sprinkling; Heb. xii. 24. And when he ordained the morning and evening lamb for a continual burnt-offering, he pointed, though afar off, to the Messiah, the Lamb of God, that must take away the sins of men.

These resemblances might be shewn in a multitude of other instances: but I cannot omit this one, _viz._ As the killing of the beast was designed to hold forth the violent and bloody death of Christ, the great sacrifice; so the burning of the flesh and entrails on the altar by that divine fire, which was always kept alive there, and which was kindled at first from heaven, seems plainly intended to foretel those sacred divine impressions of the indignation of God due to sinners, which were to be made upon the holy soul of Christ himself, _when it pleased the Father to bruise him, and put him to grief_: For the indignation of God is often represented by fire.

We must not imagine therefore, that these levitical ordinances were first in the design of God, as proper statutes for the Jewish nation, and then that the Son of God came into the world, and passed through such special scenes of life, death, and resurrection, merely in order to copy out these Jewish ordinances: But we must conceive the Son of God, first designed as our great Atonement and High-priest on earth, and in heaven: And in the view and foresight hereof all those levitical ordinances were given to the Jews as figures and emblems, to give early notice before-hand, of the blessings of the great Messiah. Surely the atonement of the Messiah, which was to be a real relief for the guilt of all nations, was of much more importance, and held a higher rank in the ideas and designs of God, than the mere ceremonies given to a single nation.

If it should be objected still, that those Jewish rites have been plainly proved by some learned men to be political services done to God as their King and Governor, for he dwelt in Jerusalem as their king, and kept his court among them in the tabernacle and the temple. I answer:

1. This may very well be granted as an inferior and subordinate design of God: For the consideration of God, as the civil or political ruler of the Jewish nation, is much inferior to the consideration of him as the Creator, and the Lord of the souls and consciences, not only of the nation of Israel, but of all mankind, who were to derive benefit from the sacrifice of Christ. The supreme intent and meaning of any constitution, does by no means destroy those which are subordinate. It may be allowed also: