DIVINE CERTAINTY IN THE GLAD TIDINGS
D. Robertson
I am impressed by the emphatic way in which Peter speaks in this verse we have read. You will notice how he uses the word indeed, “for Christ indeed has once suffered for sins”. God does not intend that the glad tidings should be presented in a vague way but with a note of certainty. He certainly desires that men should know of His disposition in grace toward them and of all that He has undertaken that they should be brought into the knowledge of divine blessing. We read, “our Saviour God, who desires that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth”, 1 Timothy 2: 4. How hard men’s thoughts of God are, God is not like that, God is a Saviour God, He has proved it by giving His own Son. Paul says, “He who, yea, has not spared his own Son, but delivered him up for us all”, Romans 8: 32.
I have been affected by what we sung in the first hymn here today as to the work of the Lord Jesus, and what He endured. I would like to remind you of Who the Saviour is, as Paul says, He is “over all, God blessed for ever”, Romans 9: 5. In becoming Man, His Person never changed, He remained God. The prophet says, “Let all flesh be silent before Jehovah; for he is risen up out of his holy habitation”, Zechariah 2: 13. Think of that divine movement, that God Himself stooping down, assumed a condition of manhood. He remained God and yet He became Man, and He became Man in order that He might die. Before He died He lived here a life of perfection. His was not a body of humiliation like ours. He came into a body in which He could be humiliated, and He was humiliated by men; He was scorned, He was spurned, the grace that He brought from God for man was set aside; He says, “they have both seen and hated both me and my Father”, John 15: 24. Nevertheless He was a perfect Man. He was that “holy thing”. He was like you and me, a real Man, but sin apart. You may say, Well the scripture says He was tempted. But all Christ’s temptations were outward, there were no inward temptations. You and I have inward temptations, but there was nothing in Christ that could be tempted. His temptations were outward. They were placed before Him but they found no point of affinity in that blessed and perfect Man. He says, “the ruler of the world comes, and in me he has nothing” (John 14: 30), that is the perfection of Christ. Every day of that perfect life established one glorious thing, that there was a Man who had the right to live. Every other man’s life was forfeited, yours and mine are forfeited because we have sinned, we are sinners, we were born in sin and shapes in iniquity.
That is the body of humiliation. We have to accept it, it is what we are as born after Adam’s race, but Christ in coming into humanity brought in His own features. He derived nothing morally from Mary. These are astounding matters. Mary was like you and me, she was a sinner, and she speaks of her Saviour, saying, “my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour”, Luke 1: 47. That is what she was, yet used of God for a very glorious purpose, blessed among women, but nevertheless part of a sinful race. But Christ derived nothing from her morally.
The Lord was His own Root in manhood. He was that “holy thing”. He was intrinsically pure and holy throughout; and, as I say, every step, every day of that perfect life established that He alone had the right to live. Does it not affect your heart that once He had established His right to live, He laid that life down in death, “Christ indeed has once suffered for sins”.
So we come to the time, as the word says, that He offered Himself by the eternal Spirit without spot to God (Hebrews 9: 14), that is not the sin-offering, that is the burnt-offering. It was what Christ did, His own act. We also speak of the oblation or the meat-offering, that brings out the glory and substantiality of what was offered; the holy perfection of the offering was seen in the oblation, the holy, perfect, spotless, sinless Man. The burnt-offering is the excellency of the act in which He offered Himself, the motives that governed Him, the holy purity with which He offered Himself by the eternal Spirit spotless to God. He did that and, as doing it, the Lord Jesus put Himself in God’s hand to be used as God saw fit. One uses these words very hesitantly, but He placed Himself there in God’s hands, as we have said, offered Himself without spot to God. The whole question of sin had to be met, and it was then that God made Him sin, He judged sin there unsparingly. It was necessary that God should do it, it was morally right that God should do it, as the scripture says, “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in him”, 2 Corinthians 5: 21. These are tremendous things.
We sang in our opening hymn this morning as to the forsaking of Christ. How it affected the heart to think of that cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Never was that word “why” used with such power and feeling before, “why hast thou forsaken me?” There was no reason in Him. Where was the reason? The reason was in you and me. Those three hours of darkness on the cross were the hours of the forsaking of Christ. The rest of the work involved that He died, His blood was shed, He was buried, and He was raised again, but those three hours were the time when He was forsaken, and the efficacy of what was accomplished then is carried forward in its value and attached to all His work. So you can see one great work, the matter there settled for God, the judgment of sin passed by God on the head of a sinless One who said, “why hast thou forsaken me?” How solemn the matter is, how real it is to those who love Christ, that your Saviour and mine should be there in those three hours abandoned by God. Another has said so feelingly that that question is answered in the heart of every truly repentant sinner. Has it been answered in your heart? Thank God through grace I have answered it; I can say truthfully, with great joy and simplicity, He was abandoned on my account, that I might never be abandoned. Peter says, who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Peter 2: 24. O what a work that was! So it says, “for Christ indeed has once suffered for sins”. I love that word, “indeed”, it is a verity. What we are speaking of is no fable, it is nothing imaginary, it is real. Christ has indeed suffered for sins, “the just for the unjust”. If you look at the footnote you will see that “just” is singular, “unjust” is plural. “Just” refers to Christ, the only Just One, and yet He took the place of the unjust. In wonderful grace, in wonderful love for you and me, He took that place before God that the question of sin and sins might be judged in all its totality. Then it says, “has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust”, that is plural, that involves the whole race. It is the work that has been done on behalf of all men. However, it is only as you put your faith in Him that you come into the gain of that work. How many refuse to come into the gain of it; therefore they will never get the blessing that God intends them to have.
There was not only the judgment of sins to be borne but also the penalty of death. In becoming a sinner man became subject to death as a penalty, and that required that Christ should go into death vicariously. What a solemn matter it was that the Lord Jesus Christ should go into death to bear the penalty of death. Mr. Darby wrote, ‘And for Him death was death. Man’s utter weakness, Satan’s extreme power, and God’s just vengeance’, (Collected Writings Vol.7, page 169). Christ met it all in going into death. Think of the Son of God going into death. There had never been a Person like that in death before, a Person upon whom death had no claim. The Lord Jesus went into death as One upon whom death had no claim and He broke its power. What a Saviour He is, what a glorious Person He is, what a work He has accomplished! He met the whole sin question, He broke the power of death, He shed His precious blood because without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. He was buried; the man who sinned and all that belonged to him were put out of God’s sight in the burial of Christ. What a glorious work it is, what a complete work! Who could have accomplished it but Jesus. One who was not personally chargeable with the offence? No sin could be charged to Jesus and He was completely immune from the power of death; yet He went into it and met the whole question to God’s glory and to God’s satisfaction.
I was affected by our brother’s reference this morning to not fearing. Believers in Christ have nothing to fear before God. The whole matter that stood out against us as to our guilt and as to our state has been righteously met. We are not only forgiven but we are justified. People say sometimes in the preaching that to be justified means that you are made as if you had never sinned. It is far more than that, it means that you have been given a position in Christ in righteousness before God. That is justification. But the glorious fact of the matter is that Christ has gone into the distance. He has taken the place that was yours and mine in order that we might be given His place. What a Saviour He is! So it says, “that he might bring us to God”. That is a completed work. Not only that our burden, our guilt, our sinful state has been met and disposed of, but the basis has been laid that He might bring us to God, and bring us into the presence of God complacently. That is reconciliation, that we are there complacently without fear. You remember when they went up the mountain in Exodus 24, it says that they ate and drank in the presence of the God of Israel, and that He laid not His hand on them.
That is a scene of reconciliation. The believer can go into the presence of God and He does not lay His hand upon him. It is His love, it is His heart, the distance has been removed; Christ has gone into the distance and removed it. He has removed the distance in order that we might be brought into the presence of God in nearness and without fear. It says, “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4: 18), that must be the love of God in Jesus. The love of your dearest one on this earth is not perfect love; it might be great love and it might be a love that is most precious and most charming to you, but when we speak of perfect love it must be the love of God expressed in Jesus. Therefore “perfect love casts out fear”, so that we are in the presence of God righteously with not one thing to fear. We can speak boldly about it, not boldly in a fleshly sense, but boldly in the sense that divine grace has brought us into it and we have nothing to fear in the presence of God.
When the day of judgment comes there is nothing to fear because we are like the Judge. We are like Him, we are like the Judge, we are brought into affinity with Him, we belong to Him, we are of the same order. If you are a believer you are of the same order as that blessed Man, you are brought before God as being of the same order as Christ, so that, “such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones”, 1 Corinthians 15: 48. That is the impression I had this morning. There was Christ’s cross in all its grandeur, as one has said, Standing in all its dignity in the history of eternity. There is Christ’s cross and what has been accomplished there, but along with that there is the glory of God’s world. Not only what was unsuitable has been removed, but the righteous basis has been established for another world. God’s world, and God is going to populate it with persons like Christ. We have sung of it today. Were not our hearts thrilled?
‘Like Jesus in that place
Of light and love supreme’. (Hymn 64)
We shall be there like Him, we shall be there suitable to the place. Again, we sometimes sing—
‘There no stranger-God shall meet thee—
Stranger thou in courts above!’ (Hymn 76)
We are fitted for those courts, fitted for them because we are like Christ.
These are the simple thoughts that I had, but our entrance into them all goes back to what I read, “for Christ indeed has once suffered for sins”. May we never forget it, may we grow in the appreciation of our Lord and Saviour. May we love Him more, may He fill our hearts. I trust He fills every heart. You boys and girls, does He fill your heart? Have you ever confessed Him? Is He your Saviour? One said of such a Person—
‘Jesus, I will trust Thee, trust Thee with my soul—
Guilty, lost and helpless. Thou canst make me whole’.
Any child could say that. As we heard earlier today in the preaching, that very fine verse in Romans 10, verse 9, “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead, thou shalt be saved”. It is not ‘Thou shalt perhaps be saved’, it is a verity, it is a certainty, “thou shalt be saved”. Oh that more might confess the name of Jesus today. We long to hear it. That is something that used to be urged upon us in the preachings by those good old preachers when we were children, they urged us to confess the name of Jesus. You do not want to be a secret disciple, you do not want to hide it. If you know Jesus as your Saviour, tell somebody about it; confess Him as your Lord, and you will find a fresh joy and power in doing so. It is a very fine thing to confess Jesus as Lord. There is salvation in it. You find that in going through the world, there is practical power and salvation in confessing Jesus as Lord.
May our hearts be more full of Him, full of Christ. He is filling heaven, and in eternity will fill millions of hearts. I tell you more than that, He is filling the heart of God. Why should He not fill your heart? That blessed Man has ascended up above all the heavens that He might fill all things. May it be your experience that He is filling your heart. May it be that that glorious Man is filling all our hearts, and that there might be a fresh return, we may say a return in vigour, a return in life, a return in affection because of all we owe to Him. The Holy Spirit would help us in that.
I would raise the question with each one of us as to whether we have the Holy Spirit. It is part of the gospel. Paul said, “Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye had believed?” Acts 19: 2.
Have you received the Holy Spirit since you have believed? It is God’s gift, it is a divine prerogative. You cannot make it automatic, it is a divine prerogative. God gives the Holy Spirit. When He does it is His matter. He may act sovereignly in giving the Spirit as He did in the house of Cornelius in Acts 10. I suppose it is God’s intention to give the Holy Spirit to the believer as soon as He can. But have you received the Holy Spirit since you have believed?
The reception of the Holy Spirit is on the basis of obedience and on the basis of asking. You ask for the Holy Spirit, and you are obedient and God is pleased to give you the Holy Spirit.
It is not something that just happens as a consequential matter, it is God’s gift. It is God’s prerogative to give the Holy Spirit. What matters these are that God has given His Son to be our Saviour and He gives His Holy Spirit to indwell our hearts so that we can love and serve our Saviour, and love God too and serve God all the days of our life here. May God bless the word.
Preaching at Barnet
3 April 1994