Use. It is a point we should often think of, and seriously consider of ;
2 CORINTHIANS CHAP. I, VER. 20. 887
for it doth wondrously stablish our hearts. Doth God love me, and doth he do good to me abstracted from Christ, myself alone ? No ; for then, alas ! I should fly from his presence ; but he looks upon me, and considers me as I am in his Son. Therefore in John xvii. 24, in that blessed prayer of Christ, saith he, ' That thou mayest love them with the same love where- with thou lovest me.' God loves us with the same love that he loves his Son with. ' That the love wherewith thou lovest me, may be in them.' He loves him first, and then he loves us with that love that he loves him. Here is the reason that God looks on us with a forbearing eye, notwith- standing all the matter of anger and wrath in us. He looks on us in his Son, as members of his Son. His love to us is founded on his love to his Son.
Hereupon back again is our boldness to God the Father, that we go to him in his beloved Son, and present his Son to him. Lord, look on thy Son that thou hast given for us, in whom we are members. We are not as in ourselves, but in thy beloved. For as all things descend from God to us, so our souls should ascend to him. All descends from God to us, in his Son. Why ! all our comfortable considerations of God must be in his Son Christ. Thereupon we have boldness to God through him, not in ourselves but in and through Christ. Let us bring ' Benjamin,' Gen. xlii. 36, seq., with us, bring Christ, and then we shall be welcome. If we come in the garments of our Elder Brother, then we shall get the blessing.
But of ourselves God cannot endure to look on us ; therefore this is a heathenish conceit in our prayers, to presume to go to God otherwise than he hath clothed himself with the comfortable relation of a Father in Christ. If we consider him as a just God, as a God of vengeance, as a holy God, the more it makes to our terror, if we be not besotted. But go to him as he is now in his Son Christ, and go boldly. The heathens otherwise con- ceived wavering and doubtingly of a God ; alas ! conceiving him out of Chi'ist, he was nothing but a ' consuming fire ' to them, Heb. xii. 29.
How dai'es that man that knows himself, and that knows God, how dares he think of God ? He thinks basely of God, that can think of him, and not think of him as he is to him in Christ. Darest thou think of God who is a ' consuming fire,' and not think of him as he is pleased and pacified in thy nature in Christ, that hath taken thy nature to be a foundation of com- fort, to be a ' second Adam,' a public person for all that are in him, and members of him ? To see God fully appeased in him who is God-man, thou mayest think of him with comfort then. Never think of the promises of grace or comfort, or anything without Christ.
Therefore St Paul saith, ' Now to Abraham and his seed was the promise made ; he saith not to seeds, as to many, but to thy seed,' Gal. iii. 16 ; as speaking of one, even Christ. All the promises of good to us are made to Christ, and conveyed from Christ to us ; the promises, and likewise the things promised. ' He hath promised to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son,' 1 John v. 11 ; and so grace, and whatsoever, it is in:him. The promises and the things promised they are conveyed from God to Christ, and so to us. They are a deed of gift. We have them from and by Christ. Why are the angels attendants upon us ? The angels attend upon Jacob's ladder, that is, Christ. It is he that knits heaven and earth together ; so the angels, because they attend upon Christ first, they become our attend- ants. Whatsoever we are, whatsoever privileges we have, it is in Christ first. It belongs to us no further than we by faith are made one with Christ. Thus we see whatsoever we have from God, it is by promises. And these
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promises are not abstracted from love, for they are the fruits of love ; and this love is seated in Christ, who hath satistied God's justice. We have promises, and promises in Christ.
()bs. 8. In the third place, thr (ipastle snilli that all the jtrotnises of God in him are yea. They are constant and sure in him ; they shall be perfonned.
All promises are either Christ himself, or by Christ, or from Christ, or for Christ. All promises that ever were made to God's people, they were either of Christ hiniseU", when he was promised, or such as were promised for Christ. Th(> promise of Christ himself is the first f^rand promise, that he should be made man, the promise in his own person. But whatsoever promise was made by the prophets and apostles, they were made by bis Spirit, they were made for him, for his sake, and in him, and they were made to those that are in him too. For as God's love is founded in him to those that are in him mystically as the Son of his love, so the promises are made and f;ivcn over to him of all good. He takes all the promises of good from God for us, and then they are made to us as we are in him.