The Great Arbitration Case

Next Part The Great Arbitration Case 2

"Neither is there any arbitrator between us, that might lay his hand upon us both." Job 9:33

The patriarch Job, when reasoning with the Lord concerning his great affliction, felt himself to be at a disadvantage and declined the controversy, saying, "He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment." Yet feeling that his friends were cruelly mis-stating his case, he still desired to spread it before the Lord, but wished for a mediator, a middleman, to act as umpire and decide the case. In his mournful plight he sighed for an arbitrator who, while dealing justly for God, would at the same time deal kindly with poor flesh and blood, being able to lay his hand upon both. But, dear friends, what Job desired to have, the Lord has provided for us in the person of his own dear Son, Jesus Christ.

We cannot say with Job that there is no arbitrator who can lay his hand upon both, because there is now "one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus." In him let us rejoice, if indeed we have an interest in him; and if we have not yet received him, may almighty grace bring us even now to accept him as our advocate and friend.

There is an old quarrel between the thrice holy God and his sinful subjects, the sons of Adam. Man has sinned; he has broken God's law in every part of it, and has wantonly cast off from him the allegiance which was due to his Maker and his King. There is a suit against man, which was formally instituted at Sinai and must be pleaded in the Court of King's Bench, before the Judge of quick and dead. God is the great plaintiff against his sinful creatures who are the defendants. If that suit be carried into court, it must go against the sinner. There is no hope whatever that at the last tremendous day any sinner will be able to stand in judgment if he shall leave the matter of his debts and obligations towards his God unsettled until that dreadful hour. Sinner, it would be well for you to "agree with your adversary quickly, whiles you are on the way," for if you be once delivered up to the great Judge of all the earth, there is not the slightest hope that your suit can be decided otherwise than to your eternal ruin.

"Weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth," will be the doom judged to you forever, if your case as before the living God shall ever come to be tried at the fiery throne of absolute justice. But the infinite grace of God proposes an arbitration, and I trust there are many here who are not anxious to have their suit carried into court, but are willing that the appointed arbitrator should stand between them and God, and lay his hand upon both, and propose and carry out a plan of reconciliation. There is hope for you, you bankrupt sinner, that you may yet be at peace with God. There is a way by which your debts may yet be paid; that way is a blessed arbitration in which Jesus Christ shall stand as the arbitrator.

Let me begin by describing the essentials of an arbitrator, or mediator; then let me take you into the arbitrator's court and show you his proceedings; and then for a little time, if there be space enough, let us dwell upon the happy success of our great Arbitrator.

I. First of all, let me DESCRIBE WHAT ARE THE REQUIREMENTS OF AN UMPIRE, AN ARBITRATOR, OR A MEDIATOR. The first essential is, that both parties should be agreed to accept him.

Let me come to you, you sinner, against whom God has laid his suit, and put the matter to you– God has accepted Christ Jesus to be his umpire in his dispute. He appointed him to the office, and chose him for it before he laid the foundations of the world. He is God's fellow, equal with the Most High, and can put his hand upon the Eternal Father without fear, because he is dearly beloved of that Father's heart. He is "very God of very God," and is in no respect inferior to "God over all, blessed for ever." But he is also a man like yourself, sinner. He once suffered, hungered, thirsted, and knew the meaning of poverty and pain. No, he went further, he was tempted as you have been, and further still, he suffered the pangs of death, as you poor mortal man will one day have to do. Now, what do you think? God has accepted him; can you agree with God in this matter, and agree to take Christ to be your arbitrator too? Does foolish enmity possess you, or does grace reign and lead you to accept Emmanuel, God with us, as umpire in this great dispute? Let me say to you that you will never find another so near akin to you, so tender, so sympathetic, with such affections of compassion towards you. Love streamed from his eyes in life, and poured from his wounds in death. He is " the express image" of Jehovah's person, and you know that Jehovah's name is "Love." "God is love," and Christ is love. Sinner, has divine grace brought you to your senses? Will you accept Christ now? Are you willing that he should take this case into his hands and arbitrate between you and God? for if God accepts him, and you accept him too, then he has one of the first qualifications for being a arbitrator.

But, in the next place, both parties must be fully agreed to leave the case entirely in the arbitrator's hands. If the arbitrator does not possess the power of settling the case, then pleading before him is only making an opportunity for wrangling, without any chance of coming to a peaceful settlement. Now God has committed "all power" into the hands of his Son. Jesus Christ is the plenipotentiary of God, and has been invested with full ambassadorial powers. He comes commissioned by his Father, and he can say in all that he does towards sinners, that his Father's heart is with him. If the case be settled by him, the Father is agreed. Now, sinner, does grace move your heart to do the same? Will you agree to put your case into the hands of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Son of Man? Will you abide by his decision? Will you have it settled according to his judgment, and shall the verdict which he gives stand absolute and fast with you? If so, then Christ has another essential of an arbitrator; but if not, remember, though he may make peace for others, he will never make peace for you; for this know, that until the grace of God has made you willing to trust the case in Jesus' hands, there can be no peace for you, and you are wilfully remaining God's enemy by refusing to accept his dear Son.

Further, let us say, that to make a good arbitrator or umpire, it is essential that he be able person. If the case were between a king and a beggar, it would not seem exactly right that another king should be the arbitrator, nor another beggar. But if there could be found a person who combined the two, who was both prince and beggar, then such a man could be selected by both. Our Lord Jesus Christ precisely meets the case. There is a very great disparity between the plaintiff and the defendant, for how great is the gulf which exists between the eternal God and poor fallen man! How is this to be bridged? Why by none except by one who is God and who at the same time can become man. Now the only being who can do this is Jesus Christ.

He can put his hand on you, stooping down to all your infirmity and your sorrow, and he can put his other hand upon the Eternal Majesty, and claim to be co-equal with God and co-eternal with the Father. Do you

not see, then, his fitness? Surely it were the path of wisdom, sinner, to accept him at once as the arbitrator in your case. See how well heunderstands it! I should not do to be an arbitrator in legal cases, because, though I should be anxious to do justice, yet I should know nothing of the law of the case, But Christ knows your case, and the law concerning it, because he has lived among men, and has passed through and suffered the penalties of justice. There cannot surely be a better skilled or more judicious arbitrator than our blessed Redeemer!

Yet there is one more essential of an umpire, and that is, that he should be a person desirous to bring the case to a happy settlement. If you appoint a quarrelsome arbitrator, he may delight to "set dogs by the ears;" but if you elect one who is anxious for the good of both, and wishes to make both friends, then he is just the very man, though, to be sure, he would be a man of a thousand, very precious when found, but very hard to discover. Oh that all law-suits could be decided by such men, In the great case which is pending between God and the sinner, the Lord Jesus Christ has a sincere care both for his Father's glory and for the sinner's welfare, and that there should be peace between the two contending parties. It is the life and aim of Jesus Christ to make peace. He delights not in the death of sinners, and he knows no joy greater than that of receiving prodigals to his bosom, and of bringing lost sheep back again to the fold. You cannot tell how high the Savior's bosom swells with an intense desire to make to himself a great name as a peace-maker! Never had warrior such ambition to make war and to win victories, as Christ has to end war, and to win it by the bloodless triumphs of peace. From the heights of heaven he came leaping like a young deer down to the plains of earth. From earth he leapedinto the depths of the grave; then up again at a bound he sprang to earth, and up again to heaven; and still he rests not, but presses on in his mighty work to ingather sinners, and to reconcile them unto God; making himself a propitiation for their sins.

You see then, sinner, how the case is. God has evidently chosen the most fitting arbitrator. That arbitrator is willing to undertake the case, and you may well repose all confidence in him. But if you shall live and die

without accepting him as your arbitrator, then the case will go against you, you will have none to blame but yourself. When the everlasting damages shall be assessed against you in your soul and body forever, you shall have to curse only your own folly for having been the cause of your ruin.

May I ask you to speak candidly? Has the Holy Spirit so turned the natural bent and current of your will, that you have chosen him because he has first chosen you? Do you feel that Christ this day is standing before God for you? He is God's anointed. Is he your elected? God's choice falls upon him, does your choice agree with God's? Remember, where there is no will towards Christ, Christ as yet exercises no saving power. Christ saves no sinner who lives and dies unwilling. He makes unwilling sinners willing before he speaks a word of comfort to them. It is the mark of our election as his people, that we are made willing in the day of God's power. Lay your hope where God has laid your help, namely, on Christ, mighty to save. You cannot have an arbitrator except both sides are agreed.

Do you say ay, ay, with all my soul I choose him? Then let us proceed.

II. And now I will TAKE YOU INTO THE COURT WHERE THE TRIAL IS GOING ON, AND SHOW YOU THE LEGAL PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE GREAT ARBITRATOR. "The man, Christ Jesus," who is "God over all, blessed for ever," opens his court by laying down the principles upon which he intends to deliver judgment, and those principles I will now try to explain and expound.

They are two-fold-first, strict justice; and secondly, fervent love.

The arbitrator has determined that let the case go as it may there shall be strict justice done, justice to the very extreme, whether it be for, or against the defendant. He intends to take the law in its sternest and severest aspect, and to judge according to its strictest letter. He will not be guilty of partiality on either side. If the law says that the sinner shall die, the arbitrator declares that he will judge that the sinner shall die. And if, on the other hand, the defendant can plead and prove that he is innocent, he intends to judge to him the award of innocence, namely ETERNAL LIFE.

If the sinner can prove that he has fairly won it, he shall have his due.

Either way, whether it be in favor of the plaintiff or of the defendant, the condition of judgment is to be strict justice.

But the arbitrator also says that he will judge according to the second rule, that of fervent love. He loves his Father, and therefore he will decide on nothing that may taint his honor or disgrace his crown. He so loves God, the Eternal One, that he will allow heaven and earth to pass away sooner than there shall be one blot upon the character of the Most High. On the other hand, he so loves the poor defendant, man, that he will be willing to do anything rather than inflict penalty upon him unless justice shall absolutely require it. He loves man with so large a love that nothing will delight him more than to decide in his favor, and he will be but too glad if he can be the means happily establishing peace between the two. How these principles are to meet, will be seen by and by. At present he lays them down very positively.

"He that rules among men must be just." An arbitrator must be just; or else he is not fit to hold the scales in any lawsuit. Or the other hand, he must be tender; for his name, as God, is love; and his nature as man is gentleness and mercy. Both parties should distinctly consent to these principles. How can they do otherwise? Do they not commend themselves to all of you? Let justice and love unite if they can.

Having thus laid down the principles of judgment, the arbitrator next calls upon the plaintiff to state his case. Let us listen while the great Creator speaks– may God give me grace now reverently to state it in his name, as one poor sinner stating God's case against us all– "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knows his owner, and the donkey his master's crib: but Israel does not know, my people does

not consider. Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward." The Eternal God charges us, and let me confess at once most justly and most truly charges us, with having broken all his commandments- some of them in act, some of them in word, all of them in heart, and thought, andimagination. He charges upon us, that against light and knowledge we have chosen the evil and forsaken the good; that knowing what we were doing we have turned aside from his most righteous law and have gone astray like lost sheep, following the imaginations and devices of our own hearts. The great Plaintiff claims that inasmuch as we are his creatures we ought to have obeyed him, that inasmuch as we owe our very lives to his daily care we ought to have rendered him service instead of disobedience, and to have been his loyal subjects instead of turning traitors to his throne. All this, calmly and dispassionately, according to the great Book of the law, is laid to our charge before the Arbitrator. No exaggeration of sin is brought against us.

It is simply declared of us that the whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint; that there is none that does good, no, not one; that we have all gone out of the way, and altogether become unprofitable. This is God's case– He says, "I made this man; curiously was he wrought in the lowest parts of the earth; and all his members bear traces of my singular handiwork. I made him for my honor, and he has not honored me. I created him for my service, and he has not served me. Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years I have kept the breath in his nostrils; the bread he has eaten has been the daily portion of my bounty; his garments are the livery of my charity; and all this while he has neither thought of me, his Creator and Preserver, nor done anything in my service! He has served his family, his wife and children, but his Maker he has despised. He has served his country, his neighbors, the borough in which he dwells– but I who made him, I have had nothing from him. He has been an unprofitable servant unto me." I think I may put the plaintiff's case into your hands. Which of you would keep a horse, and that horse should yield you no obedience? What excuse is it that though I might not use him he would carry another?

No, the case is worse than this! Not only has man done nothing, but worse than nothing. Which of you would keep a dog, which, instead of fawning upon you, would bark at you, fly at you, and tear you in his rage? Some of us have done this to God– we have perhaps cursed him to his face; we have broken his sabbaths, laughed at his gospel, and persecuted his saints. You would have said of such a dog, let it die! Why should I harbor in my house a dog that treats me thus?

Yet, hear, O heavens; and give ear, O earth; God has borne with your evil ways, and he still cries "Refrain!" He puts the uplifted thunder back into the arsenal of his dread artillery. I wish I could state the case as I ought. My lips are but clay; and these words should be like fire in the sinner's soul. When I meditated upon this subject alone, I felt much sympathy with God, that he should have been so ill treated; and whereas some men speak of the flames of hell as too great a punishment for sin, it seems ten thousand marvels that we should not have been thrust down there long ago.

The plaintiff's's case having thus been stated the defendant is called upon by the Arbitrator for his case– and I think I hear him as he begins. First of all the trembling defendant sinner pleads– "I confess to the indictment, but I say, I could not help it. I have sinned, it is true, but my nature was such that I could not well do otherwise. I must lay all the blame of it to my own heart; my heart was deceitful and my nature was evil." The Arbitrator at once rules that this is no excuse whatever, but an aggravation of the guilt, for inasmuch as it is conceded that the man's heart itself is enmity against God, this in an admission of yet greater malice and blacker rebellion.

It was only alleged against the offender in the first place that he had outwardly offended; but he acknowledges that he does it inwardly, and confesses that his very heart is traitorous against God, and is fully set upon working the King's damage and dishonor. It is determined, therefore, by the Arbitrator that this excuse will not stand, and he gives a case in point– a thief is brought up for stealing, and he pleads that his heart was thievish, that he felt a constant inclination to steal, and that therefore he could not help running off with any goods within his reach. The judge very properly answers, "Then I shall give you twice as much penalty as any other man who only fell into the fault by surprise, for according to your own confession, you are a thief through and through; what you have said is not an excuse, but an aggravation of your guilt!"

Then the defendant pleads in the next place that albeit he acknowledges the facts alleged against him, yet he is no worse than other offenders, and that there are many in the world who have sinned more grievously than he has done. He says he has been envious, and angry, and worldly, and covetous, and has forgotten God– but then he never was an adulterer, or a thief, or a drunkard, or a blasphemer, and he pleads that his lesser crimes may well be winked at. But the great Arbitrator at once turns to the Statute Book, and says that as he is about to give his decision by law that plea is not at all tenable, for the law book has it- "Cursed is every man that continues not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them." The offense of one sinner does not excuse the offense of another; and the arbitrator declares that he cannot mix up other cases with the case now in hand; that the present offender has on his own confession broken the law, and that as the law book stands that is the only question to be decided, for "the soul that sins it shall die," and if the defendant has no better plea to offer, judgment must go against him.

The sinner urges further, that though he has offended, and offended very greatly and grievously, yet he has done a great many good things. It is true he did not love God, but he always went to chapel. It is true he did not pray, but still he belonged to a singing choir. It is quite correct that he did not love his neighbor as himself, but he always liked to relieve the poor. But the Arbitrator, looking the sinner full in the face, tells him that this plea also is bad, for the alleged commission of some acts of loyalty will not make compensation for avowed acts of treason. "Those things," says he, "you ought to have done, but not to have left the others undone;" and he tells the sinner, with all kindness and gentleness, that straining at a gnat does not exonerate him for having swallowed a camel; and that having tithed mint, and dill, and cummin, is no justification for having devoured a widow's house.

To have forgotten God is in itself a great enormity; to have lived without serving him is a crime of omission so great, that whatever the sinner may have done on the contrary stands for nothing at all, since he has even then in that case done only what he ought to have done. You see at once the justice of this decision. If any of you were to say to your grocer, or tailor, when they send in their bills, "Well, now, you ought not to ask for payment of that account, because I did pay you another bill–you ought not to ask me to pay for that suit of clothes, because I did pay you for another suit." I think the answer would be, "But in paying for what you had before, you only did what you ought to do; but I still have a demand upon you for this bill." So all the good deeds you have ever done are only debts discharged which were most fully due, (supposing them to be good deeds, which is very questionable) and they leave the great debt still untouched.

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