24. The Offices of Christ. - Part I

 

I. Jesus Christ is our Redeemer; that is He has paid the price of our ransom, He has bought us out of slavery to sin and Satan, and has restored us to liberty, honour, and the enjoyment of our supernatural inheritance. These advantages mankind had lost through the sin of Adam and each one’s personal sins. They had lost the dignity of the supernatural life with the true freedom that belongs to it. They were incapable of executing the commands that God had given, and so were not fully under His dominion. They had chosen a lower state at the suggestion of Satan, and had placed themselves on the side of evil against the supreme good. Their natural forces had been corrupted and weakened; they had laid themselves open to temptations, and had less vigour to resist them. They were demoralized by their subjection, and were incapable of throwing off the yoke and asserting themselves against a triumphant enemy. They knew nothing of a nobler state, and did not even desire it. And all this was the prelude to eternal slavery and the overwhelming miseries of hell. Such was the thoroughly wretched and hopeless condition of all men. From this we have been “bought with a great price” (1 Cor. vi. 29), viz., the Incarnation and Death of Jesus Christ. None other could have delivered us: hence He is our sole Redeemer. Be careful that you do not “neglect so great salvation” (Heb. ii. 3); like many who love their chains, who will not submit to the conditions which the higher state requires, and who trample on the blood of their Redemption.

II. Jesus is also “the one Mediator of God and men” (1 Tim. ii. 5). Sin had intervened between God and men to separate them eternally. “Your iniquities have divided between you and God” (Isa. lix. 2). Satan was by this means a mediator of evil; and also because in his qualities he is between God and men, like Him in immortality and spiritual being, like us in sin and misery. Nothing less than an infinite mediation was required to intervene between God and man and unite them again, breaking down the wall of separation between them. Jesus Christ is the one and only possible Mediator: 1, by nature, because He shares at once in the divine and human nature, and so unites together in His person two things infinitely distant; 2, by office, because He alone has the power, through His atonement, of bridging over the infinite gulf opened by sin, and reconciling man to God. You must imitate Christ the Mediator, in these qualities. You must unite the divine and the human in your life; and you must mediate in your lowly way, trying to diffuse light and goodness in the world, and to bring sinners to the knowledge and love of God, and so to reconciliation with Him.

III. Jesus Christ is our Head. “He hath made Him head over all the church, which is His body” (Eph. i. 23). By His Redemption and Mediation, Christ has become our Spiritual Head, and the elect are the body, subordinate to Him. He is the highest and most honourable portion of that body, the brain which directs it, the centre to which all things converge, the source whence all motion and activity proceed. Christ founded the Church of the elect, gave it life, organization, doctrine and laws. He gives it the continual nourishment of grace in the seven sacraments. He abides with it all days, even to the end of the world, preserving it from the death of error and of extinction, purifying and reviving it constantly, securing its infallibility and indefectibility, and finally transforming it from the militant and suffering state into its final and permanent state of triumph. All this He did “that He might sanctify it . . . that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, nor any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. v. 26, 27). You are full of sins and imperfections now, and you will be until the end; but if you contend against them, suffer for them, and repent of them, you will still retain membership with the “glorious Church” and its Head.