KenH
Well-Known Member
The Great Things God Has Done for His People
The Lord Jesus Christ, then, the Second Person in the glorious Trinity, in order to accomplish this “great thing” that he was going to do, took up a life to be able to die, took our nature into union with his personal Godhead, and became really man, truly and verily man as well as truly and verily God, that he might be able to wade through all the miseries that sin and the devil had heaped round his elect, and to go after them, and bear their sins in his own body and soul on the tree, that they might be set for ever free.
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Poor child of God! All the hell thy sins have merited was poured into his soul, and all the hell that all the millions of the elect of God ever merited was poured into his holy soul. And had he not been God as well as man, humanity could not have sustained the load and rolled it over. But immortal Godhead supported humanity under the weight of wrath; his holy soul endured it, and he died “the Just for the unjust to bring us to God,” (1 Peter 3:18) and so to accomplish a salvation, rich and free, as extensive as the necessities of his people, as deep as their miseries can possibly be. Has he not done “great things” for us?
And all to give them a chance of being saved,—according to some people. I do not know that I hate any thing more in my soul than to hear that. It makes Jesus Christ so little, that he should do so much, and after all only get us a chance of being saved. Why, if a man is set up in business, you see how often it happens that he fails in it; and if man cannot manage the paltry things of time and sense without being insolvent, what will he do with eternal realities? And if you come a little closer, when God “made man upright” and he had no sinful nature, what did he do with his innocence? Why, he lost it all. And yet poor presumptuous man has the vanity to think you and I could manage the chance of being saved. What an insult it is to the Lord Jesus Christ, to fix the eternal honour of God upon chance, and that chance to be managed by a poor sinful creature who is tumbling into half a dozen holes every hour of his life. No, no. Thanks be to God for immortal realities and certainties. What is said concerning what Christ has done? He has “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself;” he has “finished transgression and made an end of sin;” (Daniel 9:24) he has “redeemed us from all iniquity;” he has “redeemed us from the curse of the law,”—from destruction and from the power of the devil; he has “obtained eternal redemption for us;” (Hebrews 9:12) he has “redeemed us to God.” To the honour of the Eternal Trinity, it is said, not that the redeemed shall have a chance, but that the redeemed shall “come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” (Isaiah 35:10) The Lord Jesus Christ has done this “great” work, and he is gone to heaven, shouting “Victory;” for “God is gone up with a shout; the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.” He rose from the grave as a demonstrative proof that sin was destroyed, law satisfied, God honoured, his people eternally and everlastingly saved. And the immortal honours of God unite in their salvation; and therefore he ever lives at the right hand of the Father to make intercession.
- excerpt from a sermon preached by William Gadsby in London on September 13, 1838
The Lord Jesus Christ, then, the Second Person in the glorious Trinity, in order to accomplish this “great thing” that he was going to do, took up a life to be able to die, took our nature into union with his personal Godhead, and became really man, truly and verily man as well as truly and verily God, that he might be able to wade through all the miseries that sin and the devil had heaped round his elect, and to go after them, and bear their sins in his own body and soul on the tree, that they might be set for ever free.
...
Poor child of God! All the hell thy sins have merited was poured into his soul, and all the hell that all the millions of the elect of God ever merited was poured into his holy soul. And had he not been God as well as man, humanity could not have sustained the load and rolled it over. But immortal Godhead supported humanity under the weight of wrath; his holy soul endured it, and he died “the Just for the unjust to bring us to God,” (1 Peter 3:18) and so to accomplish a salvation, rich and free, as extensive as the necessities of his people, as deep as their miseries can possibly be. Has he not done “great things” for us?
And all to give them a chance of being saved,—according to some people. I do not know that I hate any thing more in my soul than to hear that. It makes Jesus Christ so little, that he should do so much, and after all only get us a chance of being saved. Why, if a man is set up in business, you see how often it happens that he fails in it; and if man cannot manage the paltry things of time and sense without being insolvent, what will he do with eternal realities? And if you come a little closer, when God “made man upright” and he had no sinful nature, what did he do with his innocence? Why, he lost it all. And yet poor presumptuous man has the vanity to think you and I could manage the chance of being saved. What an insult it is to the Lord Jesus Christ, to fix the eternal honour of God upon chance, and that chance to be managed by a poor sinful creature who is tumbling into half a dozen holes every hour of his life. No, no. Thanks be to God for immortal realities and certainties. What is said concerning what Christ has done? He has “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself;” he has “finished transgression and made an end of sin;” (Daniel 9:24) he has “redeemed us from all iniquity;” he has “redeemed us from the curse of the law,”—from destruction and from the power of the devil; he has “obtained eternal redemption for us;” (Hebrews 9:12) he has “redeemed us to God.” To the honour of the Eternal Trinity, it is said, not that the redeemed shall have a chance, but that the redeemed shall “come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” (Isaiah 35:10) The Lord Jesus Christ has done this “great” work, and he is gone to heaven, shouting “Victory;” for “God is gone up with a shout; the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.” He rose from the grave as a demonstrative proof that sin was destroyed, law satisfied, God honoured, his people eternally and everlastingly saved. And the immortal honours of God unite in their salvation; and therefore he ever lives at the right hand of the Father to make intercession.
- excerpt from a sermon preached by William Gadsby in London on September 13, 1838
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