woman and made under the law for our redemption; that He became man in order that He might die, and by death destroy the power of Satan. No speculation inconsistent with these prevailing representations of the Word of God can be admitted as true by those to whom that word is the rule of faith. Christ was born in a Low Condition. Not only the assumption of human nature, but also all the circumstances by which it was attended enter into the Scriptural view of the humiliation of our Lord. Had He when He came into the world so manifested his glory, and so exercised his power, as to have coerced all nations to acknowledge Him as their Lord and God, and all kings to bow at his feet and bring Him their tributes, enthroning Him as the rightful and absolute sovereign of the whole earth, it had still been an act of unspeakable condescension for God to become man. But to be a servant; to be born in a stable and cradled in a manger; to be so poor as not to have a place where to lay his head; to appear without form or comeliness, so as to be despised and rejected of men, makes the condescension of our Lord to pass all comprehension. There is, indeed, a wonderful sublimity in this. It shows the utter worthlessness of earthly pomp and splendour in the sight of God. The manifestation of God in the form of a servant, has far more power not only over the imagination but also over the heart, than his appearing in the form of an earthly king clothed in purple and crowned with gold. We bow at the feet of the poor despised Galilean with profounder reverence and love than we could experience had He appeared as Solomon in all his glory. § 2. He was made under the Law. The humiliation of Christ included also his being made under the law. The law to which Christ subjected Himself was, (1.) The law given to Adam as a covenant of works; that is, as prescribing perfect obedience as the condition of life. (2.) The Mosaic law which bound the chosen people. (3.) The moral law as a rule of duty. Christ was subject to the law in all these aspects, in that He assumed the obligation to fulfil all righteousness, i. e., to do everything which the law in all its forms demanded. This subjection to the law was voluntary and vicarious. It was voluntary, not only as his incarnation was a voluntary act, and therefore all its consequences were assumed of his own free will; but also because even after He assumed our nature He was free from obligation to the law in every sense of the word, until He voluntarily subjected Himself to its demands. The law is made for men, i. e., for human persons. But Christ was not a human person. He remained after the incarnation, as He had been from eternity, a divine person. All his relations to the law, therefore, except as voluntarily assumed, were those which God himself sustains to it. God being the source of all law cannot be subject to it, except by an act of humiliation. Even in human governments an autocrat is above the laws. They derive their authority from Him. He can abrogate or change them at pleasure. He is subject so far as men are concerned to nothing but his own will. And so God, as the source of all law to his creatures, is Himself subject to none. He acts in consistency with his own nature, and it is inconceivable that He should act otherwise. He cannot be subject to any imposed rule of action, or to anything out of Himself. Whatever is true of God, is true of God manifested in the flesh. That Christ, therefore, should assume the obligation to fulfil the conditions of the covenant made with Adam, to observe all the injunctions of the Mosaic law, and submit to the moral law with its promises and penalty was an act of voluntary humiliation. This subjection to the law was not only voluntary, but vicarious. He was in our stead, as our representative, and for our benefit. He was made under the law that He might redeem those who were under the law. (Gal. iv. 4, 5.) It was in his character of Redeemer that He submitted to this subjection. There was no necessity for it on his part. As He was Lord of the Sabbath, so He was Lord of the law in all its extent and in all its forms. Obedience to it was not imposed ab extra as a condition of his personal happiness and enjoyment of the divine favour. These were secured by his Godhead. It was therefore solely for us that He was made under the law. As by Adam's disobedience we were constituted sinners, He obeyed that we might be constituted righteous. (Rom. v. 19.) The whole course of Christ on earth was one of voluntary obedience. He came to do the will of his Father. In the Old Testament his common prophetic designation was servant. He was called the servant of the Lord," my servant." He says of Himself, "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." Son, yet learned he obedience." (John vi. 38.) "Though he were a (Heb. v. 8.) "Being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." (Phil. ii. 8.) All this was for us. His subjection to the law and to the will of the Father was voluntary and vicarious for us men and for our salvation. § 3. His Sufferings and Death. The sufferings of Christ, and especially his ignominious death. on the cross, are an important element in his humiliation. These sufferings continued from the beginning to the end of his earthly life. They arose partly from the natural infirmities and sensibilities of the nature which He assumed, partly from the condition of poverty in which He lived, partly from constant contact with sinners, which was a continued grief to his holy soul and caused Him to exclaim, "How long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you; "partly from the insults, neglects, and opposition to which He was subjected; partly from the cruel buffetings and scorning to which He submitted, and especially from the agonies of the crucifixion, the most painful as well as the most ignominious mode of inflicting the penalty of death; partly from the anguish caused by the foresight of the dreadful doom that awaited the whole Jewish nation; and especially no doubt from the mysterious sorrow arising from the load of his people's sins and the hiding of his Father's face, which forced from his brow the sweat of blood in the garden, and from his lips the cry of anguish which He uttered on the cross. These are wonders not only of love, but of self-abnegation and of humiliation, which angels endeavour to comprehend, but which no human mind can understand or estiThere was never sorrow like unto his sorrow. mate. § 4. He endured the Wrath of God. Our standards specify "the wrath of God," as a distinct particular of the burden of sorrow which Christ, for our sakes, humbled Himself to bear. The word wrath is the familiar Scriptural term to express any manifestation of the displeasure of God against sin. Christ, although in Himself perfectly holy, bore our sins. He was "made sin" (2 Cor. v. 21); or, treated as a sinner. He was "numbered with the transgressors " (Is. liii. 12), not only in the judgment of men, but in the dealing of God with his soul when He stood in the place of sinners. Such Psalms as the sixteenth, fortieth, and especially the twenty-second, which treat of the sufferings of the Messiah, represent Him as passing through all the experiences consequent on the punishment of sin, save those which have their source in the sinfulness of the sufferer. We therefore find that even such language as that in Psalm xl. 12, "Innumerable evils have compassed me about: mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up: they are more than the hairs of mine head; therefore my heart faileth me," may not inappropriately be taken as the language of his holy soul. In that case "mine iniquities" (y), as parallel with "evils" (iv), must mean "my sufferings for sin," i. e., the punishment I am called to bear. The words uttered by our Lord upon the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" show that He was suffering under the hiding of his Father's face. What that experience was it is impossible for us to understand. Yet as in other cases He suffered anxiety, fear, a sinking of the heart, and other natural states of mind incident to the circumstances in which He was placed; so also He suffered all that a holy being could suffer that was enduring the divinely appointed penalty for sin, which penalty He sustained for his people. Into the relation between his divine and human nature as revealed in these experiences, it is in vain for us to inquire. As that relation was consistent with his human nature's being ignorant, with its progressive development, with all its natural affections, with its feeling apprehension in the presence of danger, and dread in the prospect of death, so it was consistent with the feeling of depression and anguish under the obscuration of the favour of God. As the sufferings of Christ were not merely the pains of martyrdom, but were judicially inflicted in satisfaction of justice, they produced the effect due to their specific character. This of course does not imply that our Lord suffered as the finally impenitent suffer. Their sufferings are determined by their subjective state. The loss of the divine favour produces in them hatred, venting itself in blasphemies (Rev. xvi. 10, 11), but in Christ it produced the most earnest longing after the light of God's countenance, and entire submission, in the midst of the depressing and overwhelming darkness. § 5. His Death and Burial. Christ humbled Himself even unto death, and continued under the power of death for a time. The reality of Christ's death has never been disputed among Christians. Some modern rationalists, unwilling to admit a miraculous resurrection, endeavoured to show that death was not in his case actually consummated, but that He was deposited in an unconscious state in the tomb. In answer to the arguments of rationalists, certain Christian writers have taken the trouble to demonstrate, from the facts stated in the account of the crucifixion, that it was not a swoon, but actual death which occurred. We are raised above such question by believing the inspiration of the New Testament. In the apostolic writings the death of Christ is so often asserted and assumed that the fact cannot be doubted by any who admit the infallible authority of those writings. Under the clause, "He continued under the power of death for a time," is intended to be expressed all that is meant by ancient creeds which asserted "He descended into hell." Such at least is the view presented in our standards in accordance with the teachings of the majority of the Reformed theologians. That the sufferings of Christ ceased the moment He expired on the cross, is plain from John xix. 30, where it is recorded, "When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished (Teréλeoraɩ) : and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." This is universally admitted. As, however, such passages as Psalms xviii. 5, and cxvi. 3, "The sorrows of death" (Hebrew Sheol in Psalm xviii. 5), were understood to mean extreme suffering, many of the Reformed understood the descensus ad inferos to refer to the extreme agony of our Lord in the garden and upon the cross, under the hiding of his Father's face. But, in the first place, the literal meaning of those passages is, "The bands (not the sorrows) of Sheol, or (as it is in Psalms cxvi. 3), of death." The allusion in both cases is the familiar one to a net. The idea is that the Psalmist felt himself so entangled that death appeared inevitable. This is something very different from what is meant by "descending into Hell or Sheol." And in the second place, the position which the clause in question holds in the creed forbids this interpretation. It follows the clause referring to the death and burial of Christ. It is the natural exegesis of the words immediately preceding it. "He was crucified, dead, and buried, he descended into Sheol," i. e., he passed into the invisible state. But it would be utterly incongruous to say, "He was dead, buried, and suffered extreme agony," when it is admitted that his sufferings ended upon the cross. In the larger Westminster Catechism,1 it is said, "Christ's humiliation after his death consisted in his being buried, and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day, which hath been otherwise expressed in these words, He descended into hell." That this is the correct view of Christ's descensus ad inferos may be argued, 1. From the original and proper meaning of the Greek word aons, and the corresponding English word hell. Both mean the unseen world. The one signifies what is unseen, the other what is covered and thus hidden from view. Both are used as the render 1 Answer to Question 50. |