The Heart of the Gospel 2
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Sin pressed our great Substitute very sorely. He felt the weight of it in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he "sweat as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground." The full pressure of it came upon him when he was nailed to the accursed tree. There in the hours of darkness he bore infinitely more than we can tell. We know that he bore condemnation from the mouth of man, so that it is written, "He was numbered with the transgressors." We know that he bore shame for our sakes. Did not your hearts tremble last Sunday evening when our text was, "Then did they spit in his face?" It was a cruel scorn that exhausted itself upon his blessed person. This, I say, we know. We know that he bore pains innumerable of body and of mind: he thirsted, he cried out in the agony of desertion, he bled, he died. We know that he poured out his soul unto death, and yielded up his spirit.
But there was at the back, and beyond all this, an immeasurable abyss of suffering. The Greek Liturgy fitly speaks of "Your unknown sufferings:" probably to us they are unknowable sufferings. He was
God as well as man, and the Godhead lent an omnipotent power to the manhood, so that there was compressed within his soul, and endured by it, an amount of anguish of which we can form no conception. I will say no more: it is wise to veil what it is impossible to depict. This text both veils and discovers his sorrow, as it says, "He made him to be sin." Look into the words. Perceive their meaning, if you can. The angels desire to look into it.Gaze into this terrible crystal. Let your eyes search deep into this opal, within whose jeweled depth there are flames of fire. The Lord made the perfectly innocent one to be sin for us. That means more of humiliation, darkness, agony, and death than you can conceive. It brought a kind of distraction and well-near a destruction to the tender and gentle spirit of our Lord. I do not say that our substitute endured a hell, that were unwarrantable.
I will not say that he endured either the exact punishment for sin, or an equivalent for it; but I do say that what he endured rendered to the justice of God a vindication of his law more clear and more effectual than would have been rendered to it by the damnation of the sinners for whom he died. The cross is under many aspects a more full revelation of the wrath of God against human sin than even Tophet, and the smoke of torment which goes up forever and ever. Who would know God’s hate of sin must see the Only Begotten bleeding in body and bleeding in soul even unto death. He must, in fact, spell out each word of my text, and read its innermost meaning. There, my brethren, I am ashamed of the poverty of my explanation, and I will therefore only repeat the full and sublime language of the apostle— "God has made him to be sin for us." It is more than "He has put him to grief;" it is more than "God has forsaken him;" it is more than "The chastisement of our peace was upon him;" it is the most suggestive of all descriptions— "God has made him to be sin for us." Oh depth of terror, and yet height of love!
So I pass on to notice in the third place, who did it? The text says, "God has made him to be sin for us;" that is, God himself it was who appointed his dear Son to be made sin for guilty men. The wise ones tell us that this substitution cannot be just. Who made them judges of what is right and just? I ask them whether they believe that Jesus suffered and died at all? If they believe that he did, how do they account for the fact? Do they say that he died as an example? Then I ask, is it just for God to allow a sinless being to die as an example? The fact of our Lord’s death is sure, and it has to be accounted for. Ours is the fullest and truest explanation.
In the appointment of the Lord Jesus Christ to be made sin for us, there was first of all a display of the Divine Sovereignty. God here did what none but he could have done. It would not have been possible for all of us together to have laid sin upon Christ; but it was possible for the great Judge of all, who gives no account of his matters, to determine that so it should be. He is the fountain of rectitude, and the exercise of his divine prerogative is always unquestionable righteousness. That the Lord Jesus, who offered himself as a willing surety and substitute, should be accepted as surety and substitute for guilty man was in the power of the great Supreme. In his Divine Sovereignty he accepted him, and before that sovereignty we bow. If any question it, our only answer is, "No but, O man, who are you that replies against God?"
The death of our Lord also displayed divine justice. It pleased God as the Judge of all, that sin should not be forgiven without the exaction of the punishment which had been so righteously threatened to it, or such other display of justice as might vindicate the law. They say that this is not the God of love. I answer, it is the God of love, pre-eminently so. If you had upon the bench today, a judge whose nature was kindness itself, it would behoove him as a judge to execute justice, and if he did not, he would make his kindness ridiculous; indeed, his kindness to the criminal would be unkindness to society at large. Whatever the judge may be personally, he is officially compelled to do justice. And "shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" You speak of the Fatherhood of God. Enlarge as you please upon that theme even until you make a heresy of it, but still God is the great moral Governor of the universe, and it behooves him to deal with sin in such a way that it is seen to be an evil and a bitter thing. God cannot wink at wickedness. I bless his holy name, and adore him that he is not unjust in order to be merciful, that he does not spare the guilty in order to indulge his gentleness. Every transgression and disobedience has its just punishment. But through the sacrifice of Christ he is able justly to pardon.
I bless his holy name that to vindicate his justice he determined that, while a free pardon should be provided for believers, it should be grounded upon an atonement which satisfied all the requirements of the law.
Admire also in the substitutionary sacrifice the great grace of God. Never forget that he whom God made to be sin for us was his own Son! Yes, I go further, it was in some sense his own self; for the Son is one with the Father. You may not confound the people, but you cannot divide the substance of the blessed Trinity in Unity. You may not so divide the Son of God from the Father as to forget that God was in him reconciling the world unto himself. It is the Father’s other self who on the cross in human form does bleed and die. "Light of light, very God of very God:" it is this Light that was eclipsed, that Godhead which purchased the church with his own blood.
Herein is infinite love! You tell me that God might have pardoned without atonement. I answer, that finite and fallible love might have done so, and thus have wounded itself by killing justice. But the love which both required and provided the atonement is indeed infinite. God himself provided the atonement by freely and fully giving up himself in the person of his Son to suffer in consequence of human sin.
What I want you to notice here is this, if ever your mind should be troubled about the propriety or rightness of a substitutionary sacrifice, you may at once settle the matter by remembering that God himself "has made him to be sin for us who knew no sin." If God did it, it is well done. I am not careful to defend an act of God: let the man who dares accuse his Maker think what he is at. If God himself provided the sacrifice, be sure that he has accepted it. There can be no question ever raised about it, since Jehovah made to meet on him our iniquities. He that made Christ to be sin for us, knew what he did, and it is not for us to begin to say, "Is this right, or is this not right?" The thrice holy God has done this, and it must be right. That which satisfies God may well satisfy us. If God is pleased with the sacrifice of Christ, shall not we be much more than pleased? Shall we not be delighted, entranced, emparadised, to be saved by such a sacrifice as God himself appoints, provides, and accepts? "God has made him to be sin for us."
The last point is, what happens to us in consequence? "That we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Oh this weighty text! No man living can exhaust it. No theologian lived, even in the palmiest days of theology, who could ever get to the bottom of this statement.
Every man that believes in Jesus, is through Christ having taken his sin, made to be righteous before God. We are righteous through faith in Christ Jesus, "justified by faith." More than this, we are made not only to have the character of "righteous," but to become the substance called "righteousness." I cannot explain this, but it is no small matter. It means no inconsiderable thing when we are said to be "made righteousness." What is more, we are not only made righteousness, but we are made "the righteousness of God." Herein is a great mystery. The righteousness whichAdam had in the garden was perfect, but it was the righteousness of man: ours is the righteousness of God. Human righteousness failed; but the believer has a divine righteousness which can never fail. He not only has it, but he is it: he is "made the righteousness of God in Christ." We can now sing, "With my Savior’s vesture on, Holy as the Holy One." How acceptable with God must those be who are made by God himself to be "the righteousness of God in him!" I cannot conceive of anything more complete.
As Christ was made sin, and yet never sinned, so are we made righteousness, though we cannot claim to have been righteous in and of ourselves. Sinners though we be, and forced to confess it with grief, yet the Lord does cover us so completely with the righteousness of Christ, that only his righteousness is seen, and we are made the righteousness of God in him. This is true of all the saints, even of as many as believe on his name.
Oh, the splendor of this doctrine! Can you see it, my friend? Sinner though you be, and in yourself defiled, deformed, and debased, yet if you will accept the great Substitute which God provides for you in the person of his dear Son, your sins are gone from you, and righteousness has come to you. Your sins were laid on Jesus, the scapegoat; they are yours no longer, he has put them away. I may say that his righteousness is imputed unto you; but I go further, and say with the text, "You are made the righteousness of God in him." No doctrine can be more sweet than this to those who feel the weight of sin and the burden of its curse.
II. So now, gathering all up, I have to close with the second part of the text, which is not teaching, but the application of teaching, — A GREAT ARGUMENT. "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God."
Oh, that these lips had language, or that this heart could speak without them! Then would I plead with every unconverted, unbelieving soul within this place, and plead as for my life. Friend, you are at enmity with God, and God is angry with you; but on his part there is every readiness for reconciliation. He has made a way by which you can become his friend— a very costly way to himself, but free to you. He could not give up his justice, and so destroy the honor of his own character. But he did give up his Son, his Only Begotten, and his Well-Beloved. And that Son of his has been made sin for us, though he knew no sin. See how God meets you! See how willing, how anxious he is that there should be reconciliation between himself and guilty men. O sirs, if you are not saved it is not because God will not or cannot save you; it is because you refuse to accept his mercy in Christ. If there is any difference between you and God today it is not from lack of kindness on his part; it is from lack of willingness on yours. The burden of your ruin must lie at your own door: your blood must be on your own skirts.
Now observe what we have to say to you today is this: we are anxious that you should be at peace with God, and therefore we act as ambassadors for Christ. I am not going to lay any stress upon the office of ambassador as honorable or authoritative, for I do not feel that this would have weight with you: but I lay all the stress upon the peace to which we would bring you. God has reconciled me to himself, and I would fain have you reconciled also. I once knew him not, neither did I care for him. I lived well enough without him, and sported with the trifles of a day, so as to forget him. He brought me to seek his face, and seeking his face I found him. He has blotted out my sins and removed my enmity. I know that I am his servant, and that he is my Friend, my Father, my All. And now I cannot help trying in my poor way to be an ambassador for him with you. I do not like that any of you should live at enmity with my Father who made you; and that you should be wantonly provoking him; by preferring evil to good.
Why should you not be at peace with one who so much wants to be at peace with you? Why should you not love the God of love, and delight in him who is so kind to you? What he has done for me he is quite willing to do for you: he is a God ready to pardon. I have preached his gospel now for many years, but I never met with a sinner yet that Christ refused to cleanse when he came to him. I never knew a single case of a man who trusted Jesus, and asked to be forgiven, confessing his sin and forsaking it, who was cast out. I say I never met with one man whom Jesus refused; nor shall I ever do so. I have spoken with harlots whom he has restored to purity, and drunkards whom he has delivered from their evil habit, and with men guilty of foul sins who have become pure and chaste through the grace of our Lord Jesus. They have always told me the same story— "I sought the Lord, and he heard me; he has washed me in his blood, and I am whiter than snow." Why should you not be saved as well as these?
Dear friend, perhaps you have never thought of this matter, and this morning you did not come here with any idea of thinking of it; but why should you not begin? You came just to hear a well-known preacher; I beg you to forget the preacher, and think only of yourself, your God and your Savior. It must be wrong for you to live without a thought of your maker. To forget him is to despise him. It must be wrong for you to refuse the great atonement: you do refuse it if you do not accept it at once. It must be wrong for you to stand out against your God; and you do stand out against him if you will not be reconciled to him. Therefore I humbly play the part of an ambassador for Christ, and I beseech you believe in him and live.
Notice how the text puts it: "We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us." This thought staggers me. As I came along this morning I felt as if I could bury my head in my hands and weep as I thought of God beseeching anybody. He speaks, and it is done; myriads of angels count themselves happy to fly at his command; and yet man has so become God’s enemy that he will not be reconciled to him. God would make him his friend, and spends the blood of his dear Son to cement that friendship; but man will not have it. See! the great God turns to beseeching his obstinate creature! his foolish creature! In this I feel a reverent compassion for God. Must he beseech a rebel to be forgiven? Do you hear it? Angels, do you hear it? He who is the King of kings veils his sovereignty, and stoops to beseeching his creature to be reconciled to him!
I wonder not that some of my brethren start back from such an idea, and cannot believe that it could be so: it seems so derogatory to the glorious God. Yet my text says it, and it must be true— "As though God did beseech you by us." This makes it awesome work to preach, does it not? I ought to beseech you as though God spoke to you through me, looking at you through these eyes, and stretching out his hands through these hands. He says, "All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people." He speaks softly, and tenderly, and with paternal affection through these poor lips of mine, "as though God did beseech you by us."
Furthermore notice that next line, which if possible has even more force in it: "We implore you on Christ's behalf." Since Jesus died in our stead we, his redeemed ones, are to beg others in his stead; and as he poured out his heart for sinners in their stead, we must in another way pour out our hearts for sinners in his stead. "We implore you in Christ’s stead." Now if my Lord were here this morning now would he implore you to come to him? I wish, my Master, I were more fit to stand in your place at this time. Forgive me that I am so incapable. Help me to break my heart, to think that it does not break as it ought to do, for these men and women who are determined to destroy themselves, and, therefore, pass by, my Lord, as though you were but a common felon, hanging on a gibbet! O men, how can you think so little of the death of the Son of God? It is the wonder of time, the admiration of eternity! O souls, why will you refuse eternal life? Why will you die? Why will you despise him by whom alone you can live? There is butone gate of life, that gate is the open side of Christ! Why will you not enter, and live?
"Come unto me," says he; "come unto me." I think I hear him say it: "Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you shall find rest unto your souls." I think I see him on that last day, that great day of the feast, standing and crying, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." I hear him sweetly declare, "Him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out." I am not fit to implore you in Christ’s stead, but I do beg you with all my heart. You that hear my voice from Sunday to Sunday, do come and accept the great sacrifice, and be reconciled to God. You that hear me but this once, I would like you to go away with this ringing in your ears, "Be you reconciled to God." I have nothing pretty to say to you; I have only to declare that God has prepared a satisfaction, and that now he entreats sinners to come to Jesus, that through him they may be reconciled to God.
We do not exhort you to some impossible effort. We do not bid you do some great thing; we do not ask you for money or price; neither do we demand of you years of miserable feeling; but only this — be reconciled. It is not so much reconcile yourselves as "be reconciled." Yield yourselves to him who round you now the bands of a man would cast, drawing you with cords of love because he was given for you. His spirit strives with you, yield to his striving. With Jacob you know there wrestled a man until the breaking of the day; let that man, that God-man, overcome you. Submit yourselves. Yield to the grasp of those hands which were nailed to the cross for you! Will you not yield to your best friend? He that does embrace you now presses you to a heart that was pierced with the spear on your behalf. Oh, yield! Yield man! Do you not feel some softness stealing over you? Steel not your heart against it. He says, with a tone most still and sweet, "Today if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." Believe and live! Leave the arch-enemy who has held you in his grip. Escape for your life, look not behind you, stay not in all the plain, but flee where you see the open door of the great Father’s house. At the gate the bleeding Savior is waiting to receive you, and to say, "I was made sin for you, and you are made the righteousness of God in me." Father, draw them! Father, draw them! Eternal Spirit, draw them, for Jesus Christ your Son’s sake! Amen.
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