THE SAVIOUR
[p. 122] THE SAVIOUR
There are two things that characterise the Saviour, and unless these two things go together in your mind you have an imperfect idea of the Saviour. One is, that He bore the judgment on man; the other, that He declared the Father. No two points are more remote from one another, but the very distance between them gives you this great idea of the Saviour. The One who went down into the lowest depths (of judgment and distance from God) is the One who communicates to you the highest blessing - all that was in the Father’s heart as He alone could know it. If you do not know how deep Christ went down, you do not know how high He can take you up.
Truth exposes what man is, and it discloses what God is. And who brought out this truth?
The Son of God: “For this cause came I into the world”. This is the blessed One who can span the depths of misery and human ruin, and yet can reach to the infinite goodness and greatness of God. Is there one here who, like Zacchaeus, wants to see the Saviour? One who has a sense in his soul that he is looking for this blessed One?
But have you thought what Christ underwent for you as a Man? Have you fully understood what He bore the judgment of? And can you allow that thing to be an object to you, for which your Saviour was judged? Those tastes, those likings, that nature of yours? Can anything come with more condemnation to you than that you are allowing it and enjoying it? Are you afraid to die? The nearer a sinner approaches to death, the greater his fear; but as a saint approaches death his fear vanishes, because he is finding out that he has a life superior to it; he is able to say, “Thanks [p. 123] be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ”; and so it is morally with us all. Here was Satan’s malice, he knew that God must judge a disobedient creature; so he says, I will bring sin in; I will alienate man from God. He shall come down and judge His own fair creation; He will have to lay His hand on the brightest spot in it - the one made after His own image - and if death supervene without the judgment being arrested, there is a perpetuity of it.
Now the fact of a sacrifice shows that there must be a substitute. The Son of God is come, the One who made everything, by whom all things consist, the One who was always the Expositor of the mind of God, who propounded the law as the expression of His claim, who attached a penalty to every infringement of it; He, in the fulness of time, is the One to come forth to bear the whole judgment of every penalty. He walked through the world as the only perfect One in it, the wonderful Expositor still of the mind and heart of God. He surveys all the ruin of man, all that is unsuited to the righteousness of God, and He says, I will be the Substitute - “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone”. He was the solitary One, perfect, unscathed, spotless, holy, passing through the ruin here, and amid all the soil, the One unblemished Man in every relationship of life - subject to His parents, the delight of God, who had closed His eyes to all that was of man in his distance and moral death - now God’s beloved Son comes in the weakness of man down here, manifesting God as Good in the midst of evil, ever triumphing over it; never allowing the smallest natural claim save in subjection to the will of God. But He did not deserve judgment in any wise. Did that lessen His suffering? No, it aggravated it beyond all comprehension! He who had never known a shadow on His soul even as a Man, who had never deserved the slightest reproach from God or [p. 124] man, who had lived in the sunshine of His favour, He is put into the place of deepest reproach. He takes it, “The reproaches of them that reproach thee have fallen upon me”. The deepest shame, and distance, depths that none could fathom, were all spent upon that blessed One. He trembles as He touches the cup. “Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour”. He puts Himself into the sinner’s place, where He is treated as if He had done all the wrong, where He had the sense of all the sinner’s distance from God. He had surveyed it all, and none knew as He did the righteousness of God. He knew what it would be to be forsaken of God, the only One He had ever had communion with, the only One He belonged to, in whose love and favour He had lived, whom He had trusted from His cradle. What was it to Him to be brought down into the dust of death? If I say to a saint, Suppose darkness come between your soul and God - what a place for you! Yet that is not a sinner’s distance - Christ alone bore that! And mark, the moment the Lord touches the point of giving His life (John 12: 25), He says, “He that loveth his life shall lose it”. He would say, If I am going to give up My life in judgment for you, you cannot live in it, you cannot love your life. And is there a heart in this room who knows Him as the Saviour, who would say, I love this life for which my Saviour was judged? But practically we do not know the extent to which He was delivered over to judgment - the place of distance that He took - and hence we are slow to learn the place of nearness and blessing into which He has introduced us. Having borne all the judgment, He says, “I will declare thy name unto my brethren”. It is for Him now to bring out what God is. As the risen One, He says to Mary, “Go to my brethren”. He is “the beginning of the creation of God”; and He announces that He has “brethren” after a new order, that He will not now abide alone,
but that “corn of wheat” will bring forth much fruit - He will bring many sons to glory.. ..
Is this the One that you are connected with? who has disclosed to you, not a paradise on earth, but heaven itself; who speaks of “my Father, and your Father; .. . my God, and your God” - and this it was the purpose of His heart to accomplish, cost Him what it would. Who could tell out the Father’s heart as He could? The greatest joy His heart had in this world was in preaching to those poor ones in Luke 15, of the Father’s reception of the prodigal! He was the One fit to tell it, He whose heart was straitened till it was accomplished, and this is His chief work - the work He delights in. May your hearts understand what a Saviour He is!