Therefore, even from this we see how God loves us, that not only he hath an inward love in his breast, and doth good to us, but he manifests it by word. He would have us, as I said, live by faith, and stablish ourselves in hope.
Faith and hope are two graces altogether from promises. If there were no promise there could be no faith nor hope. What is hope ? Nothing but the expectation of the things that the word saith. And what is faith, but a building on the word of God ? Faith looks on the word that God wdll give such a thing, and hope looks upon the thing that the word promiseth : as the distinction is good, faith looks to the word of the thing, and hope looks to the thing in the word : faith looks to the word promising ; hope looks to the performance of the thing promised. Faith ' is the evidence of things not seen,' Heb. xi. 1, because it sets the things that are absent as if they were present ; hope is for the accomplishment of that. If there were no promise to hope, what needed hope ? and where were a foundation for faith ? Now God being walling to exercise faith and hope, feeds them both, and satisfies both, that we may be heavenly-wise in trusting and believing, and not foolish as men in the world. Therefore God hath given us promises, and sealed them with an oath, as we shall see afterward.
Now all promises coming from love, what love can there be in God to us since the fall, but it must be grounded on a better foundation than ourselves^? If God love us, it must be in one that is first beloved : here- upon
Obs. 2. Comes the ground of the jyromises to be Jesus Christ, God-man. For all intercourse between God and us, it must be in him that is able to satisfy God. God will so in the covenant of grace entertain covenant and
2 CORINTHIANS CHAP. I, VER. 20. 385
league with us, as that he will have his justice have full content,* he will be satisfied ; and therefore he that will be the fnundation of intercourse be- tween God and us, he must be God-man, perfectly able to satisfy divine justice ; he must be a friend of God's and a friend to us. Hereupon the promises must come from God's love in Jesus Christ ; and he must first receive all good for us, and we must have it at the second hand from him. Hereupon it is said here, that ' all the promises of God in him arc yea and amen.'
1. It is a rule, the first in any kind is the cause of all the rest. Now Christ is the first beloved thiiu/ ; therefore in Col. i. 3, he is called ' the Son of God's love.' Christ being the onl}'^ begotten Son of God, he looks on him fii-st, before he looks on anything else ; and whatsoever is lovely he looks on it as it is in him in whom his love is first, because he being his only begotten Son, he is the first object of all the respect that God hath. Therefore, whatsoever is beloved, it is as it hath a consistence in Christ. Therefore Christ he must first be loved, and then we in him ; consider him as the Son of God.
2. Consider him as man. He is the first beloved, being a holy man above all other men ; for the nature of man hath a subsistence in the second person in Christ. Therefore, Christ as man is beloved before all others, having a subsistence in his Godhead which is first beloved. He is the prime and most excellent creature as man. God looks first upon Christ as his only begotten Son, and upon Christ as man secondarily : upon the church in the third place as united to Christ ; and all other creatures in re- ference to the church. And, therefore, there was never anything in the world, nor shall be, that ever was or shall be loved, but in the fii'st-beloved Christ Jesus.
3. Again, Christ is first, because Christ is the mediator between God and man hj ojfiee. Consider what relation he hath between God and man, and we may easily see that God first respects him, and us for him. For Christ being God and inan, and Mediator, therefore, between God and man, he is loved of both. He is a fiiend to both, to bring both together. He is first regarded as Mediator, and then we for whose cause he is Mediator.
4. Then again, consider Christ, not as he is between God and us, but as he is to t(s, so he is fii'st beloved. To God, he is his first begotten ; to God and us a mediator. To us a head, to us a husband, to us a brother ; a head from whence there is all influence of life and motion ; a husband from whence we have all riches. He is all in all to us in the relations he stands in to us. Therefore he is first in all things, as the apostle saith, ' In all things he must have the pre-eminence,' Col. i. 18 ; and it is fit it should be so.