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CHAPTER
6
THE
MEANS USED BY THE FORE-RECOUNTED AGENTS IN THIS WORK.
OUR next employment, following the order of execution, not intention, will be the discovery or laying down of the means in this work; which are, indeed, no other but the several actions before recounted, but now to be considered under another respect, — as they are a means ordained for the obtaining of a proposed end; of which afterward. Now, because the several actions of Father and Spirit were all exercised towards Christ, and terminated in him, as God and man, he only and his performances are to be considered as the means in this work, the several concurrences of both the other persons before mentioned being presupposed as necessarily antecedent or concomitant.
The means, then, used or ordained by
these agents for the end proposed is that whole economy or
dispensation carried along to the end, from whence our Savior
Jesus Christ is called a Mediator; which may be, and are usually,
as I mentioned before, distinguished into two parts: —
First, his oblation; secondly, his intercession.
By
his oblation we do not design only the particular offering of
himself upon the cross an offering to his Father, as the Lamb of
God without spot or blemish, when he bare our sins or carried
them up with him in his own body on the tree, which was the sum
and complement of his oblation and that wherein it did chiefly
consist; but also his whole humiliation, or state of emptying
himself, whether by yielding voluntary obedience unto the law, as
being made under it, that he might be the end thereof to them
that believe, Romans 10:4, or by his subjection to the curse of
the law, in the antecedent misery and suffering of life, as well
as by submitting to death, the death of the cross: for no action
of his as mediator is to be excluded from a concurrence to make
up the whole means in this work. Neither by his intercession do I
understand only that heavenly appearance of his in the most holy
place for the applying unto us all good things purchased and
procured by his oblation; but also every act of his exaltation
conducing thereunto, from his resurrection to his “sitting
down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, angels, and
principalities, and powers, being made subject unto him.” Of
all which his resurrection, being the basis, as it were, and the
foundation of the rest (“for if he is not risen, then is our
faith in vain,” 1 Corinthians 15:13, 14; and then are we
“yet in our sins,” 1 Corinthians 15:17; “of all
men most miserable,” 1 Corinthians 15:19), is especially to
be considered, as that to which a great part of the effect is
often ascribed; for “he was delivered for our offenses, and
was raised again for our justification,” Romans 4:25; —
where, and in such other places, by his resurrection the whole
following dispensation and the perpetual intercession of Christ
for us in heaven is intended; for
“God
raised up his son Jesus to bless us, in turning every one of us
from our iniquities,” Acts 3:26.
Now,
this whole dispensation, with especial regard to the death and
blood-shedding of Christ, is the means we speak of, agreeably to
what was said before of such in general; for it is not a thing in
itself desirable for its own sake. The death of Christ had
nothing in it (we speak of his sufferings distinguished from his
obedience) that was good, but only as it conduced to a farther
end, even the end proposed for the manifestation of God’s
glorious grace. What good was it, that Herod and Pontius Pilate,
with the Gentiles and people of Israel, should, with such horrid
villainy and cruelty, gather themselves together against
God’s holy child, whom he bad anointed? Acts 4:27: or what
good was it, that the Son of God should be made sin and a curse,
to be bruised, afflicted, and to undergo such wrath as the whole
frame of nature, as it were, trembled to behold? What good, what
beauty and form is in all this, that it should be desired in
itself and for itself? Doubtless none at all. It must, then, be
looked upon as a means conducing to such an end; the glory and
luster thereof must quite take away all the darkness and
confusion that was about the thing itself. And even so it was
intended by the blessed agents in it, by
“whose
determinate counsel and foreknowledge he was delivered and
slain,” Acts 2:23;
there being done unto him
“whatsoever his hand and counsel had determined,” chap.
4:28: which what it was must be afterward declared.
Now,
concerning the whole some things are to be observed: —
That
though the oblation and intercession of Jesus Christ are distinct
acts in themselves and have distinct immediate products and
issues assigned ofttimes unto them (which I should now have laid
down, but that I must take up this in another place), yet they
are not in any respect or regard to be divided or separated, as
that the one should have any respect to any persons or any thing
which the other also doth not in its kind equally respect. But
there is this manifold union between them: —
First,
In that they are both alike intended for the obtaining and
accomplishing the same entire and complete end proposed, —
to wit, the effectual bringing of many sons to glory, for the
praise of God’s grace; of which afterward.
Secondly,
That what persons soever the one respecteth, in the good things
it obtaineth, the same, all, and none else, doth the other
respect, in applying the good things so obtained; for
“he
was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our
justification,” Romans 4:25.
That
is, in brief, the object of the one is of no larger extent than
the object of the other; or, for whom Christ offered himself, for
all those, and only those, doth he intercede, according to his
own word,
“For
their sake I sanctify myself” (to be an oblation),
“that they also might be sanctified through the truth,”
John 17:19.
Thirdly, That the oblation of Christ is,
as it were, the foundation of his intercession, inasmuch as by
the oblation was procured every thing that, by virtue of his
intercession, is bestowed; and that because the sole end why
Christ procured any thing by his death was that it might be
applied to them for whom it was so procured. The sum is, that the
oblation and intercession of Jesus Christ are one entire means
for the producing of the same effect, the very end of the
oblation being that all those things which are bestowed by the
intercession of Christ, and without whose application it should
certainly fail of the end proposed in it, be effected
accordingly; so that it cannot be affirmed that the death or
offering of Christ concerned any one person or thing more, in
respect of procuring any good, than his intercession doth for the
collating of it: for, interceding there for all good purchased,
and prevailing in all his intercessions (for the Father always
hears his Son), it is evident that every one for whom Christ died
must actually have applied unto him all the good things purchased
by his death; which, because it is evidently destructive to the
adverse cause, we must a little stay to confirm it, only telling
you the main proof of it lies in our following proposal of
assigning the proper end intended and effected by the death of
Christ, so that the chief proof must be deferred until then. I
shall now only propose those reasons which may be handled apart,
not merely depending upon that.