Saturday, March 16, 2013
THE NECESSITY OF CHRIST’S DEATH
By Stephen Charnock
Ought not Christ to have suffered these
things, and to enter into his glory?—Luke 24:26.
1. Let us here see the evil of sin.
Nothing more fit to shew the baseness of sin, and the greatness of
the misery by it, than the satisfaction due for it; as the greatness
of a distemper is seen by the force of the medicine, and the value of
the commodity by the greatness of the price it cost. The sufferings
of Christ express the evil of sin, far above the severest judgments
upon any creature, both in regard of the greatness of the person, and
the bitterness of the suffering. The dying groans of Christ shew the
horrible nature of sin in the eye of God; as he was greater than the
world, so his sufferings declare sin to be the greatest evil in the
world. How evil is that sin that must make God bleed to cure it! To
see the Son of God haled to death for sin, is the greatest piece of
justice that ever God executed. The earth trembled under the weight
of God’s wrath when he punished Christ, and the heavens were dark
as though they were shut to him, and he cries and groans, and no
relief appears; nothing but sin was the procuring meritorious cause
of this. The Son of God was slain by the sin of the lapsed creature;
had there been any other way to expiate so great an evil, had it
stood with the honour of God, who is inclined to pardon, to remit sin
without a compensation by death, we cannot think he would have
consented that his Son should undergo so great a
suffering. Not all the powers in heaven and earth could bring us into
favour again, without the death of some great sacrifice to preserve
the honour of God’s veracity and justice; not the gracious
interposition of Christ, without becoming mortal, and drinking in the
vials of wrath, could allay divine justice; not his intercessions,
without enduring the strokes due to us, could remove the misery of
the fallen creature. All the holiness of Christ’s life, his
innocence and good works, did not redeem us without death. It was by
this he made an atonement for our sins, satisfied the revenging
justice of his Father, and recovered us from a spiritual and
inevitable death. How great were our crimes, that could not be wiped
off by the works of a pure creature, or the holiness of Christ’s
life, but required the effusion of the blood of the Son of God for
the discharge of them! Christ in his dying was dealt with by God as a
sinner, as one standing in our stead, otherwise he could not have
been subject to death. For he had no sin of his own, and “death is
the wages of sin,” Rom. 6:23. It had not consisted with the
goodness and righteousness of God as Creator, to afflict any creature
without a cause, nor with his infinite love to his Son to bruise him
for nothing. Some moral evil must therefore be the cause; for no physical evil is
inflicted without some moral evil preceding. Death, being a
punishment, supposeth a fault. Christ, having no crime of his own,
must then be a sufferer for ours: “Our sins were laid upon him,”
Isa. 53:6, or transferred upon him. We see then how hateful sin is to
God, and therefore it should be abominable to us. We should view sin
in the sufferings of the Redeemer, and then think it amiable if we
can. Shall we then nourish sin in our hearts? This is to make much of
the nails that pierced his hands, and the thorns that pricked his
head, and make his dying groans the matter of our pleasure. It is to
pull down a Christ that hath suffered, to suffer again; a Christ that
is raised, and ascended, sitting at the right hand of God, again to
the earth; to lift him upon another cross, and overwhelm him in a
second grave. Our hearts should break at the consideration of the
necessity of his death. We should open the heart of our sins by
repentance, as the heart of Christ was opened by the spear. This does
an Ought not Christ to die? teach us.
2. Let us not set up our rest in
anything in ourselves, not in anything below a dying Christ; not in
repentance or reformation. Repentance is a condition of pardon, not a
satisfaction of justice; it sometimes moves the divine goodness to
turn away judgment, but it is no compensation to divine justice.
There is not that good in repentance as there is wrong in the sin
repented of, and satisfaction must have something of equality, both
to the injury and the person injured; the satisfaction that is enough
for a private person wronged is not enough for a justly offended
prince; for the greatness of the wrong mounts by the dignity of the
person. None can be greater than God, and therefore no offense can be
so full of evil as offenses against God; and shall a few tears be
sufficient in any one’s thoughts to wipe them off? The wrong done
to God by sin is of a higher degree than to be compensated by all the
good works of creatures, though of the highest elevation. Is the
repentance of any soul so perfect as to be able to answer the
punishment the justice of God requires in the law? And what if the
grace of God help us in our repentance? It cannot be concluded from
thence that our pardon is formally procured by repentance, but that
we are disposed by it to receive and value a pardon. It is not
congruous to the wisdom and righteousness of God to
bestow pardons upon obstinate rebels. Repentance is nowhere said to
expiate sin; a “broken heart is called a sacrifice,” Ps. 51:17,
but not a propitiatory one. David’s sin was expiated before he
penned that psalm, 2 Sam. 12:13. Though a man could weep as many
tears as there are drops of water contained in the ocean, send up as
many volleys of prayers as there have been groans issuing from any
creature since the foundation of the world; though he could bleed as
many drops from his heart as have been poured out from the veins of
sacrificed beasts, both in Judea and all other parts of the world;
though he were able, and did actually bestow in charity all the
metals in the mines of Peru: yet could not this absolve him from the
least guilt, nor cleanse him from the least filth, nor procure the
pardon of the least crime by any intrinsic value in the acts
themselves; the very acts, as well as the persons, might fall under
the censure of consuming justice. The death of Christ only procures
us life. The blood of Christ only doth quench that just fire sin had
kindled in the breast of God against us. To aim at any other way
for the appeasing of God, than the death of Christ, is to make the
cross of Christ of no effect. This we are to learn from an Ought not
Christ to die?
3. Therefore, let us be sensible of the
necessity of an interest in the Redeemer’s death. Let us not think
to drink the waters of salvation out of our own cisterns, but out of
Christ’s wounds. Not to draw life out of our own dead duties, but
Christ’s dying groans. We have guilt, can we expiate it ourselves?
We are under justice. Can we appease it by any thing we can do? There
is an enmity between God and us. Can we offer him anything worthy to
gain his friendship? Our natures are corrupted, can we heal them? Our
services are polluted, can we cleanse them? There is as great a
necessity for us to apply the death of Christ for all those, as there
was for him to undergo it. The leper was not cleansed and cured by
the shedding the blood of the sacrifice for him, but the sprinkling
the blood of the sacrifice upon him, Lev. xiv. 7. As the death of
Christ was foretold as the meritorious cause, so the sprinkling of
his blood was foretold as the formal cause of our happiness, Isa.
52:15. By his own blood he entered into heaven and glory, and by
nothing but his blood can we have the boldness to expect it, or the
confidence to attain it, Heb. x. 19. The whole doctrine of the gospel
is Christ crucified, 1 Cor. 1:23, and the whole confidence of a
Christian should be Christ crucified. God would not have mercy
exercised with a neglect of justice by man, though to a miserable
client: Lev. 19:15, “Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor
in judgment.” Shall God, who is infinitely just, neglect the rule
himself? No man is an object of mercy till he presents a satisfaction to
justice. As there is a perfection in God, which we call mercy, which
exacts faith and repentance of his creature before he will bestow a
pardon, so there is another perfection of vindictive justice that
requires a satisfaction. If the creature thinks its own misery a
motive to the displaying the perfection of mercy, it must consider
that the honour of God requires also the content of his justice. The
fallen angels, therefore, have no mercy granted to them, because none
ever satisfied the justice of God for them. Let us not, therefore,
coin new ways of procuring pardon, and false modes of appeasing the
justice of God. What can we find besides this, able to contend
against everlasting burnings? What refuge can there be besides this
to shelter us from the fierceness of divine wrath? Can our tears and
prayers be more prevalent than the cries and tears of Christ, who
could not, by all the strength of them, divert death from himself,
without our eternal loss? No way but faith in his blood. God in the
gospel sends us to Christ, and Christ by the gospel brings us to God.
4. Let us value this Redeemer, and
redemption by his death. Since God was resolved to see his Son
plunged into an estate of disgraceful emptiness, clothed with the
form of a servant, and exposed to the sufferings of a painful cross,
rather than leave sin unpunished, we should never think of it without
thankful returns, both to the judge and the sacrifice. What was he
afflicted for, but to procure our peace? bruised for, but to heal our
wounds? brought before an earthly judge to be condemned, but that we
might be brought before a heavenly judge to be absolved? fell under
the pains of death, but to knock off from us the shackles of hell?
and became accursed in death, but that we might be blessed with
eternal life? Without this our misery had been irreparable, our
distance from God perpetual. What commerce could we have had with
God, while we were separated from him by crimes on our part, and
justice on his? The wall must be broken down, death must be suffered,
that justice might be silenced, and the goodness of God be again
communicative to us. This was the wonder of divine love, to be pleased with the sufferings of his only
Son, that he might be pleased with us upon the account of those sufferings. Our redemption in such a
way, as by the death and blood of Christ, was not a bare grace. It
had been so, had it been only redemption; but being a redemption by
the blood of God, it deserves from the apostle no less a title than
riches of grace, Eph. 1:7. And it deserves and expects no less from
us than such high acknowledgments. This we may learn from Ought not
Christ to die?
Taken From: Christ our Passover
[Additional Emphasis Added to the Blood]
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