THE SON OF MAN
W. McKillop
Mark 10: 45; Luke 5: 24, 25; John 3: 11–15; 6: 27
It is on my heart to say something about the Son of man. It is a title that the Lord used of Himself. As we are here in this preaching, He would intend that title to give us to understand that He is sympathetic towards us whatever the state of our souls may be. He would also give us to understand that He has done what is necessary in order to help us in our souls, for He said that He came to give His life a ransom for many. It would be of great importance to anyone here who may still be in his sins to understand that the Son of man has authority to forgive your sins. This title, the Son of man, occurs some sixty times in the four gospels; in Ezekiel, who in many ways is a type of Christ, the title appears more than ninety times, so clearly it is intended to draw out our interest in this Person who has come alongside of us and designated Himself as the Son of man. We know there are other titles, such as the Son of God, which refers to Him on God’s side as having come to manifest the Father’s name and effectuate the Father’s counsels; to undo the works of the devil and establish a sphere of eternal life beyond death, indeed, one of the great points in Ephesians 4 as to the exercise of gift is “until we all arrive at ... the knowledge of the Son of God” (Ephesians 4: 13). But I would like to draw your attention to the Son of man and have you understand that the Lord Jesus is to be known in this way in your moral history.
The Son of man came into this world; He says, “the Son of man did not come to be ministered to”. He did not come to be the Object of the solicitous attention of men, nor was He, except for a few women who ministered to Him of their substance. He was largely a Man of sorrows left alone and rejected of men. He also adds, “but to minister”; that is to serve you in whatever way you need that you might be helped in your soul. Whether it be that you need your sins forgiven, He has authority to do that; or whether you need to have a new state by the gift of the Spirit so that you are empowered morally in your life, He has authority to act in that way. All this involved that He had to deliver us from the power of Satan, so He says, “give his life a ransom for many”. We have spoken about the uniqueness of that precious and holy life, what it meant to God and what it meant to Him. Speaking reverently, as Man here the Lord loved His life, the life that He lived Godward among men, the life in which He moved into the most despised strata of society. He brought blessing with Him and brought the power of God to relieve persons from the power of Satan and the power of sin; to fill unsatisfied hearts with living water that springs up into eternal life; especially to deliver man from his ignorance of God and give him to understand that He, the Son of man, had come in on man’s behalf in order that all He brought from God should be operative for the blessing of men. What was true then is still true now. The title Son of man still applies to Him.
He is not now on the earth, as we know, for He has gone into heaven; Stephen says, “I behold the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing”, Acts 7: 56. Stephen looked into heaven and he saw the Son of man there, after He had given His life a ransom for many. I hope everyone here is included in that “many”. You might say, Did He not give His life for all? Well, He gave His life “a ransom for many”. The value of His work is towards all men—“righteousness of God by faith of Jesus Christ towards all”, Romans 3: 22. That was established indubitably in the Lord’s redemptive work. But it is “upon all those who believe”. The “all those who believe” would be the same as “the many” who are spoken of in this passage. I think it is sobering to consider that not everyone will be saved. There is a class of persons in this world that are called ‘the lost’ (2 Corinthians 4: 3, 4); they will never be saved. We should be clear that it is not that they have been predestined to be lost; they were in view for blessing along with all others, but in refusing the overtures of God’s grace they indicate that they are among ‘the lost’. Indeed the apostle says elsewhere, “pray for us ... that we may be delivered from bad and evil men, for faith is not the portion of all”, 2 Thessalonians 3: 1, 2. And so the “many” here are those that the Son of man gave His life to ransom.
As Son of man He will take up His title to the whole creation, which will include men and angels and all else that is under heaven. But He gave His life to ransom persons, who belong to Him creationally, from the power of Satan. I do not know anything that should touch our hearts more deeply, than to understand that He gave His life to ransom us who belong to Him creationally, so that we might also belong to Him redemptively. That is really why the glad tidings are preached, that we might be attracted to this blessed Person who gave His life a ransom “for many”. I hope that every person here is among the “many”. I would say especially to those who are younger, do not assume that because you are growing up in an assembly household that you are automatically saved. I would appeal to the children and the young people not to assume too much about yourself and your eternal welfare. Faith, you know, is not transmissible through your parents. Faith is the gift of God and you must have to do with Him yourself. You must have to do with the Son of man yourself to arrive at the clear and certain knowledge that He has given His life a ransom for you.
I refer to this man in Luke 5, who is mentioned in the other gospels, because it brings up the very first thing that the Lord would do for you as Son of man. Having given His life a ransom for many, He has a moral right to come to you in the glad tidings and say, Your sins are forgiven. The question is whether you are interested in that great matter or are you going to be content to drift along assuming because your parents are believers that somehow you are going to be saved. I would urge you to have to do with this blessed Man who is so sympathetic about your needs. He says to this person, “Man, thy sins are forgiven thee” (Luke 5: 20). Now the Lord was saying this anticipatively because He was going to give His life a ransom for many including this man. Now that the great work of redemption is accomplished He can come to you and say, The work is completed, it is presented to you to be believed. “So faith then is by report, but the report by God’s word”, Romans 10: 17. The word of God leads to a report, which is what this preaching is. It is a certain report that the Spirit of God has brought down, generation after generation, about this blessed Person and His redemptive work, and it is coming to you at this time to be believed. So He said, “Man, thy sins are forgiven thee”. The man was paralysed, so I suppose, if we thought about things humanly, we would say that what he needed was to have his paralysis healed first. What the Lord would say to you as Son of man is, I am sympathetic with your present moral condition of paralysis. I know that you are unable to function Godward; I know that you are unable to move in power in your life, so things have power over you that I intend to deliver you from.
But before you can acquire the power, you need this moral issue of your sins to be settled. So He says, “Man, thy sins are forgiven thee”. Then in view of the questioning that arises, He says, “which is easier, to say, Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say, Rise up and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sins, he said to the paralysed man, I say to thee, Arise, and take up thy little couch and go to thine house”.
The Son of man is very sympathetic with your present state of incapacity morally. You might think you are an important person; you might think that your affairs are very important but the Son of man would say sympathetically, You need to get a clear view of things now that your sins have been forgiven. So He said, “I say to thee, Arise, and take up thy little couch”.
You may say, It could not have been very little because it took four to bring him in, but the Son of man would give you to see things from His point of view. What you need is not to be just lying inertly, letting others carry you, but you need to find power by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is really what the power is, but clearly you cannot receive that gift until you have been cleared of your sins. It was the faith of the others, as the passage shows, that brought the person into the Lord’s presence. It was their faith that brought him there; indeed the Lord is looking at the faith of others about you at this time. It may be others in your family are moving in faith in regard of what might transpire in your history in this meeting; the Lord is looking at their faith. He is not only looking at your incapacity, He is not only considering your sins that need forgiving, but He is thinking about the concerned faith of other persons here, person who know and love you and have made sure that at least once again you are in the presence of the Son of man so that you should become able to function Godward and be righteously in control of your life.
So He said to him, “Arise, and take up thy little couch and go to thine house”. That is, the Lord is sending him back into the environment of faith and love where persons are who were concerned about him. That is where the Lord would have you to be a testimony first. It is a much more important matter that in the household where you have been growing up, and where you may have been noted more for your self-will than anything else, you should go back there after this preaching as somebody who is now subject to the Lord, subject to your parents, subject to your local brethren and very, very thankful that the Son of man has come alongside you in His sympathy and in the exercise of His power to deliver you. So the man did this, “having taken up that whereon he was laid, he departed to his house, glorifying God”. Have you ever really been convicted that you have not been glorifying God? Your mouth has not been opened in His praise? Your life has not indicated that you value His mercy? All that is to change; the Son of man has power to change these things so that you are not what you were before. It will be a great triumph if you go back glorifying God and can say that today you have had to do with the Son of man, and now you are moving in obedience and righteousness and you are having part by the Holy Spirit in the service of God.
Now this was no light matter that the Son of man could say these things to persons and do these things. In John 3, He says to Nicodemus, “no one has gone up into heaven, save he who came down out of heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven”. This is to impress you with the glory of a divine Person who has come down in order to meet certain matters in your history and to meet certain conditions in the race. He says, “he who came down out of heaven”. Have you ever thought about the Lord coming down out of heaven to give his life a ransom for many? He could not do it in heaven; it had to be done here on earth because this is where Satan’s power was exercised and where men in their ignorance of God were going on in darkness and self-will. So He came down out of heaven. No one else ever did that. But think of Him saying to you as He said to Nicodemus, “he who came down out of heaven”. And then He would say to you, No one has gone up into heaven, save the Son of man who came down out of heaven. The Lord would impress on you that He came down but He went up.
Then the wondrous fact is that while He was down here, He was still in heaven, for He says, “the Son of man who is in heaven”. Would you not like to know a Person like this, who could come down out of heaven and yet still be in heaven? it would refer, of course, to the Lord’s own associations of life with the Father. While coming down here to deal with conditions in the race as they existed — darkness and death, sorrow and self-will—at the same time He was the Son of man who is in heaven.
He goes on to say, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, thus must the Son of man be lifted up”. He has been lifted up; He was lifted up between heaven and earth on that cross, just as Moses put the serpent of brass on a pole. Think of Him, the Son of man who came down out of heaven, and there He is on a cross between heaven and earth, lifted up in order to bring home to us God’s judgment of the very root of sin in the universe. Sin, as scripture shows, came into the universe through Satan, but it came into the world through man, it came into the world through Adam, “by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death”, Romans 5: 12. The only way that that state could be met was by the Son of man being lifted up, “that every one who believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal”.
The Son of man is proposing to give you a kind of life about which maybe you know nothing even now. Maybe you have heard the term in the meeting, life eternal, but you have had no capacity to take in what it conveys, because you have never understood that in order to get that blessing you must believe on the Son of man who was lifted up. He must become the object of faith. It is not only that your sins are to be forgiven, but that your faith is to be firmly attached to that blessed Person, the Son of man. He who was lifted up between heaven and earth, in order that we might be delivered from the power of Satan and the power of death, and that as believing on Him we might have life eternal. Well, that is really the end in view in the glad tidings
with regard to what takes place on the earth. We know there are other matters that the Lord connects with the heavenly realm—we spoke about some of them in the reading, brethren of Christ, the bride of Christ, and the sons of God—but the great issue for us as here on the earth is that we should come into the gain of eternal life. Paul writing about the gospel in Romans tells us, “the end eternal life” (Romans 6: 22). The moral terminus with regard to your spiritual history on the earth is that you should come into an area where eternal life is enjoyed.
In John 6 the Son of man provides food that will sustain you in the joy of eternal life. Jesus said, “Work not for the food which perishes, but for the food which abides unto life eternal”.
There is such food, food that abides unto life eternal; the Son of man, He says, shall give it to you. Then He adds, “for him has the Father sealed, even God”. Let that come into your soul in this meeting, that God has distinguished this one Man in the entire universe. He has committed Himself irrevocably to Him, “him has the Father sealed, even God”. The public evidence was there when the Lord came out of the waters of the Jordan, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him. He was sealed for service, but then as having gone on high He received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit so that the sealing runs through, “him has the Father sealed, even God”. God has committed Himself eternally to Christ, and He would have you understand that this blessed Person, the Son of man is going to fill the universe for God. He is going to fill it with persons whose hearts are attached to Him because He has given His life a ransom for them. He has forgiven their sins, He has dealt with their moral incapacity by giving the gift of the Holy Spirit, He has opened up the sphere of eternal life, and He is providing food that will sustain them in the realm of eternal life.
I would like to leave the impression with all of us that the Son of man is moving sympathetically not only towards sinners but also toward persons whose sins He
has forgiven, whose moral weakness He has relieved and replaced with the power of the Holy Spirit. He is sympathetically saying to you, Now there is food that will keep you outside this scene of death and dearth, and will maintain you in spiritual plenty, spiritual light and joy and power. The time is coming, as He says in another place, when the Son of man will appear with power and great glory. That time is coming and the “many” for whom He gave His life a ransom will appear with Him. The apostle Paul says, “When the Christ is manifested who is our life, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory”, Colossians 3: 4. Christianity is no mean, limited matter. You need to let the glory and magnificence of it appeal to you at this time and draw you to the Son of man. Let Him minister to you, for He said, “he came not to be ministered to, but to minister”. Not only to give His life a “ransom for many” but to minister. A feature of that blessed heavenly administration is the food which abides unto life eternal.
May the Spirit of God help us to have a fresh view of the glory of the Son of man and His attractiveness. May our hearts be freshly touched by His sympathy with us and His readiness to come alongside of us whatever the condition of our souls. We belong to Him anyway; even those that do not accept His claim redemptively will one day find that He will assert His claim creationally over them because all judgment has been committed into the hand of the Son. We are not, thank God, in that time. We are in the time when this blessed divine Person, who has been lifted up between heaven and earth, is coming alongside of you in His grace and power to bring you into what is available for you—eternal life. May God bless the word.
Preaching at Adelaide
23 April 2000