APPENDIX 1
[p. 342] APPENDIX 1
Mr. Newman refers to one subject on which I will touch, as I think it will be generally useful. He objects to mediation as mischievous. Having never had any just conviction of sin, he does not feel the need of it. No one who has for himself felt what sin and grace are can hesitate a moment as to the value of it. Let the reader consult Job 9, and he may see the working of a true yet vexed soul under God’s hand. It is all well talking of awe and reverence, etc., and love, as Mr. N. does: but the denial of the need of a mediator is the denial of a holy judge, and our sense of God’s being so. But it is important to have a clear apprehension of the nature and work of the Mediator.
Mr. N.’s objection to it is this: that all moral profit arises from being brought into the presence of God, and that the notion of a mediator is a hindrance to this. Now this is plausible, because moral profit does arise from being brought into the presence of God; but it is altogether a fallacy. For our sense of the need of a mediator arises from the effect of our being brought into the presence of God; or (what is morally the same thing) so true an estimate of what God is, as makes us feel the impossibility of our standing before Him.
In the passage I have referred to in Job, this is evidently seen, whatever temper he met it in. He could not answer God “one of a thousand.” If he called himself “perfect,” his own mouth would condemn him. If he would “leave off his heaviness and comfort himself,” God would not hold him innocent. If he should “wash himself with snow water, and make his hands never so clean, God would plunge him into the ditch.” And he adds, “Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, who should lay his hand upon us both.” Now I am not commenting here upon the spirit in which Job takes the matter up, for it was a wrong one: I adduce it to shew that the sense of the need of a mediator arises from the conviction of sin, and does not hinder it.
This doctrine is sometimes used in a way calculated to give a false idea of God — not precisely as to the effect of the presence of God upon the conscience, but as hiding divine love. The effect, as I have already said, of that presence is to present God as simply a Judge, and very often, while this thought of God remains unchanged in the mind, Christ is, on the other hand, looked at as One in whose love we can confide. But scripture is not answerable for this. God is a Judge; but Christ is never presented as an Intercessor with a Judge.
[p. 343] The scriptural doctrine of a mediator is quite different from this. It not only leaves the full effect of God as light upon the soul, but brings it down close to the moral eye; and does it in the way of love, that we should be able to walk in that light. Christ is God manifest in the flesh. But while He is the light itself, this manifestation is love.
See how John puts this point: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us) ... . This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth.” Here we have no hindering the full discovery of God to the soul: it is that discovery, “The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.” “The life was the light of men. That was the true light which lighteth [shineth upon] every man.” And, it did tell upon men’s consciences, the presence of that living Word; and, if sin was confessed, attracted in grace; if sought to be hidden, it vexed, irritated, and alarmed; humble and unassuming as was the garb in which grace, for love’s sake towards men, had clothed the light. So it is with the truth. It is indeed grace in testimony; but it reaches the conscience, and judges all men by the revelation of God Himself.
What could have brought light and love (and morally speaking that is God) so near to man as the incarnation? It was in the way of reconciling, not imputing trespasses; but this was to engage man, away from sin (if that had been possible), by coming in grace and goodness towards himself. Mediation is, in this respect, the revelation of God Himself close to us, bearing directly on the conscience and heart of man; and so is the word of the gospel now.
But there is yet more in Christianity, that we might be fully brought into the presence of God.
Christ is not merely God manifested to us down here, He has suffered in our place, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. Looking at God as righteousness, as having “purer eyes than to behold iniquity” (and surely this does not hinder the effect of His presence as regards conscience), the just sense of sin would make us feel that we could not come into His presence, nor appear, defiled as we are, before His holy majesty. There is no just sense of sin, no real effect of His presence on the conscience, till this is felt — no proper jealousy of right and wrong, till we estimate it thus, and bring God and ourselves together in thought, so as to produce it — ourselves, who owe everything to Him. But we could not. He ought not, in justice, to allow such in His presence. But Christ gives Himself for these sins; and, putting them away, appears in the presence of God in the efficacy and in virtue of that work.
[p. 344] I go into the presence of God with His full character maintained in holiness and love. He is more glorified as to both of these in what has been done by Jesus about sin, than if there had been no sin at all; and it is Jesus’ glory in every way to have done it. I now appear, in virtue of (yea, being) this divine righteousness, in God’s own presence, through infinite love and righteousness, which I thus know, and never should have known else; for it is not mere human righteousness. God is known as He is in glory, which Christ alone could meet in face, so to speak; and I am there with the full light of it upon me, without fear, because in virtue of the redemption in which that glory has been morally displayed and satisfied, and that as to and about sin itself now put away for me, and I appearing as made the righteousness of God in Him. My being there is that righteousness; it is the righteous answer to, and fruit of, the travail of Christ’s soul; and what that was, He alone can tell who knows what wrath is to Him who dwelt in the unity of love — what sin is to Him who was in the unity of the divine holiness. I am in the presence of God in a righteousness adequate for His glory — and it is according to that glory that I judge sin now — a righteousness, as wrought out in Christ, competent to take righteously its seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high; for, God being glorified in it, God’s glory was its just reward: and this in the fullest sense connected with the person of Him who accomplished it.
Now I find my place in God’s presence in virtue of this. I sit down in heavenly places. Not where the personal accomplishment places Him who accomplished it, as a just reward; but, morally, as fully in the presence of God. Yet, in fact, I am a poor, feeble, erring creature; rising above sin in a heavenly way in mind, through the Spirit, but, alas! by virtue even of that which I see, seeing the wretched inadequacy of all my steps down here. There is always feebleness, often failures. Here mediation comes in again — not to obtain righteousness, but to maintain a feeble, failing creature in the enjoyment of the place where our being made righteousness in Him places us. It is the reconciling the state in which I actually am with the position in which that has set me. It is the only thing which can maintain a poor, feeble creature experimentally up to the height of that divine presence. To pretend to be there in the condition in which we actually are, would be mere madness, and prove we had never known it. We should even, as men, rather fall at His feet as dead. Yet if not, we must lose the full power of that presence to judge evil and good by, to know love by, to estimate the glorious counsels of God by. But Christ appears in the presence of God for us. His blood is on the mercy-seat. He is there in virtue of this blood-shedding, which places me there. I can abide there in peace to learn it all.
[p. 345] Am I to ignore, then, my feebleness and failing? No, I judge what I am by what I see of this glory, which is mine; and my feebleness and failure become the occasion of the exercise of grace, which does not lower God to the level of my failures, but which meets in the way of mercy the wants they prove to be in me, and lift me up out of them. We have a High Priest touched with the feeling of our infirmities, who was in all points tempted like as we are, without sin; so that we come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Hence, in this also, mediation maintains for us the full display of God to ourselves, and alone can do so, and in the way of faith and grace, so as to be morally elevating while judging all inconsistent with itself. If Mr. N. thinks he could stand in the presence of God’s majesty as he is and what he is, and compare himself with it, he knows neither himself nor God. Divine righteousness sets me there according to God; constant mediation obtains all the grace I need in the actual state I am in, and maintains me (without hiding my actual worthlessness from myself) in the full enjoyment of divine favour as known there, — restores me if need be, — maintains a just, practically holy, intercourse with that glory. Who has not this has none. Hence it is said, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (that never alters) “and he is the propitiation for our sins.”
The first part of Christ’s mediation is the revelation of Christ to man here, so that he might be directly in His presence. The second part is when righteousness has given man a place in God’s presence in glory, and made him know it, and placed him in it through redemption, maintaining the intercourse of a feeble, failing creature with God in love, in the place where righteousness has set him; that is, in the presence of God fully revealed, as Christ the righteous Son is there — keeping us, on the one hand, in the sense of that glory unobscured, and, on the other, the true and sweet sense of a weakness which is the occasion of constant and unfailing mercy, which is working in it to bring us up to the actual enjoyment of such glory as that righteousness is entitled to. Such are God’s wondrous, perfect, and gracious ways with us, which alone reconcile divine perfection and human weakness, and find in the latter, and even in its sin, the occasion of the display of the former in its highest glory, His ways in Jesus Emmanuel, to whom — Lamb of God, who takes away sin — belongs all glory for ever and ever, the joy and crown of those who trust in Him, the everlasting delight of God the Father.
[p. 346] May he whom I now answer know how sovereign is God’s goodness — how great the grace in Christ — by finding all his attacks and blasphemies against it forgiven through the very grace which he has attacked and despised!