FIFTH SUNDAY IN QUADRAGESIMA. Jesus the Mediator. II. We began, last Sunday, to meditate upon our Lord Jesus Christ as the one Mediator between God and man. We regarded Him as acting in this capacity in the great Atonement that was needed between heaven and earth, the Reconciliation of man with God. He effects this by the sympathy with both which grows out of His relation to both. Because He is God, He can represent God's case to man; because He is man, He can represent man's case to God. We confined ourselves on that occasion to the former division of His work,-His action from God manward. And this we saw to stand essentially in one thing, that He revealed God. In word and in work, in life and in death, He manifested to man the very heart of the Father, full of pardoning love towards His rebellious children, but because of that love unable to bear with their sin. "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself”: and when we see the marred visage of the Man of Sorrows we see the mind of God as it is grieved by our sin, no less than in the "Father, forgive them and " Thy sins be forgiven thee" we hear the same God not imputing to us our trespasses. Such revelation of God moves us on the one hand to repentance and holiness, as on the other to love and peace and joy. These must be our response to it, if with the faith we see it as it is. eye of Let us now reverse the picture. What man sees in Christ, as He faces us, is the revelation of God. Let us consider a little what God saw in Him, as He looked upwards out of manhood; what Christ intended Him to see; in a word, what was the acting of the Mediator from man Godward. : Briefly, we might say this, that as Christ manifests God to man, so He manifests man to God. But, in the former case, He has but to show the Person He reveals as He is in the latter-in manifesting man to God-He has to show him as he should be, as he must needs be. Coming into manhood, He realizes all that it is and all that it has been looking at God out of it, He does so in the true mind of its origin and history. He takes up at once and continually the attitude proper to the creature, and the creature that has sinned. That attitude is expressed in one word-Sacrifice. : If man had never sinned, sacrifice might still have been his true mode of approach to God. Sacrifice without death perhaps, in some innocent offering by fire of the fruits of the earth or libation of wine,but still sacrifice. Some giving to God, some giving up of ourselves, to express our sense of dependence and our obligation to devotion, would be the fittest manner of our worship. The saints in glory express this, when they cast their crowns before the Throne, saying, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power." And the Eternal Son Himself expressed it, when, before coming into the world, ere yet He had assumed the body which had been prepared Him, He said, "Lo! I come, to do Thy will, O God."* This mind He brought into manhood; and there manifested it. In the entire devotion of His whole life He presented before God man as he should be; and He presented him in sacrifice. He was the "whole burnt-offering" of the Law of Moses, consumed on the altar of God's service, and in the fire of His Spirit. He gave Himself an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour and herein did just that which was fitting for man to do, which was obligatory upon him by his creation, which has been made possible for him by his redemption. But there was more than this. The nature which the Son of God assumed was that, not only of a creature, but of a creature that had sinned. Realizing this, death became a necessary part of His doing the will of God, of His fulfilment of His law written in His heart. But the realization led Him farther still. The death in which His obedience culminated† was also felt by Him in all its woeful meaning: He endured it as the wages of sin and the curse of a broken law. It was more than the accessory of His burnt-offering; it was the very essential act of His sin-offering. Here the slain victim was neither consumed in dedication, nor (as in the peace-offering) eaten in communion: it was burned without the camp as a thing accursed. Jesus our Lord exhausted the full meaning of this in the depths of His spirit: He was made sin for us,—He was made a curse for us. God in manhood could not do otherwise; for the same Mind which inflicted the penalty now endured it. Man had only dimly realized his punishment: but God in manhood could not die without feeling therein the terrible burden * See Wednesday before Easter. † Phil. ii. 8. of sin, and being overshadowed as with a horror of great darkness. In dying, He made His soul an offering for sin; and God accepted it at His hand. Thus in burnt-offering and sin-offering alike Christ has one action from man Godward, viz.: to represent him before God as he should and must needs be. Because of his creature standing, man should consecrate himself to his Maker: because he had sinned, he should pour out his life before Him in contrition and confession. He had failed to do either; and so stood at enmity with God. Christ the Mediator did both; and by Him God is satisfied with man, God is reconciled to man. Before one single soul of mankind had trodden the new and living way which He had thus opened for us, the satisfaction was felt, the reconciliation effected. He trod the way and so became it :* He, the great Penitent, presented His sin-offering of Himself, and so became the High Priest who could carry its blood into the Holiest of all, and is now over the House of God, giving boldness to enter therein to all who come unto God by Him.† All future relations between God and man were potentially contained in those which were established when Jesus, dying, rose again and ascended into heaven. The New Covenant was made with Him; and then He became its Mediator for His brethren of mankind. So in Christ as He faces manward, we behold God as He is ; and as He faces Godward, we behold man as he should be. The former moves us to arise and go unto our Father; the latter shews us the way by which we should go. There is no other way to God but that which Christ has first trodden for us, which He Himself * John xiv. 6. † Heb. x. 19-22. + Heb. xii. 24. is. But that way surely leads to the goal. We tread it, in proportion as we are one with Him Who is it. We fail indeed to attain to the entireness of His self-devotion : and we are not even called to His bearing of the burden and curse of sin,—the Lord has not laid on us the iniquity of all. But as we grow into His mind, our burnt-offering becomes more whole, and our sin-offering, though of lesser kind,* more heart-felt and sincere. We gather boldness to enter into the Holiest, as His blood sprinkles our hearts from the evil conscience of guilt, and our bodies are washed with the pure water of His renewing Spirit. The Mediator of the new covenant, the High Priest over the House of God, takes us by the hand, and leads us into the presence of His Father and our Father, of His God and our God. Is it so with you, my reader? Do you know this way to God? Is it a familiar one to you, full of sacred associations and roadside memories? Do not think that you are treading it because you come to church, and join in Divine ordinances, and hear Scriptures and preaching. These are features of the way, but not the way itself. Sacraments pave and line it: holy words are its guideposts: but the Way itself is Christ. Only by personal knowledge of Him as our Saviour and our Life do we livingly draw near to God. And further, that is no coming by Christ which regards Him as the Revealer and Example, but does not see Him in both as the Lamb slain. If we are come unto Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, we are come also unto the "blood of sprinkling": if we would have boldness to enter into the Holiest, it must be "by the * See "Creation and Redemption." 3rd Ed. p. 248. † Tit. iii. 5. |