There be three or four things in the Scripture that set out this great mystery. As, 1, Christ is called the character of the Father, y^a^axT'/j^ rrji l-7roGTd(rsu;, Heb. i. 3. They difier in this, that they be not the same in personal subsistence. They be Father and Son, one in essence ; in love to mankind all one ; only in personal subsistence they diflfer, the Father is not the Son.
2. Then he is the Wisdom of the Father.
3. Then he is the Word, shewing the likeness. The word is but the image of the soul. There is the inward word and the outward word ; the inward is nothing but the expression of the soul, and when it is outwardly expressed, it is but the soul conveying itself outwardly. And therefore in the original tongue, we shewed that one word sheweth both reason and speech, because speech should be nothing but the issue of reason. f And therefore Christ is called Xoyog.
It is not enough that the glory of God appeareth in the second person of the Trinity, that he is the character of God, and the image of God, and the Word, but we must see what he is to us, and how he discovers the word to us.
So that he is the image of God in a double sense.
1. As an invisible image of his invisible Father.
» That is, fooUsh.— G, t Cf. note o, Vol. II. pago 135. -Q.
2 CORINTHIANS CHAP. IV, VER. 6. 325
2. To us- ward, he slieweth to us what the Father is ; so that ho is the image of God, in regard of God, and in regard of us.
We see by his discovery the wisdom of God in him, and so he is the hidden word, that is, the expression of the Father. But what is that to us, without expression to us ? So that he is made to us. As a man knows what is hidden in a man's mind, by his words, so by Christ wo know the hidden meaning, and good will of the Father to us, because Christ is the word in a double sense, as an expression of the Father's image, and his discovering to us the words of the Father.
So that the glory of God, especially God the Father, is now to be seen in the face of Jesus Christ, not only as Christ is the second person, God, but as Mediator, God-man. Now Christ is the image of God to us, the wisdom of God to us, and the character of the Father to us.
To come to it more particularly. * In the glory of God to us, shining in the face of Jesus Christ.' Everything in the Father is comfortable to us, shining in Christ. God as discovered in Scripture is not comfortable to us, but as discovered to us in him.
1. As the sweet sovereignty of God over all in Christ. He is made King of kings, Lord of lords. So in the face of Christ we see God Lord over all, for our good, committing all to Jesus Christ : ' All power is given me from my Father,' Mat. xxviii. 18.
2. And all the graces that are in God. You may term them so, for indeed all the sweet excellencies in God are seen in Christ, as the wisdom of God, the justice of God. All the sweet affections of God are seen in Christ. What are those that in a high sense may be attributed to God ? That is, his love and mercy ; God is love, but he is so in Christ, he is ' the Father of mercy,' but it is for Christ's sake that he is so. His sweet love to mankind, see it in Christ.
3. And then the relation he stands in. Take one, his being our Father. How is God our Father in a comfortable sense ? He is a Father to Christ; and what Christ is by nature, we are by adoption. ' I go to my Father and your Father ;' therefore to your Father, because my Father, ' to your God and my God ;' therefore to your God, because my God, John xx. 17.
4. Now, to go on farther, take Christ in all his states and offices, take him in his whole dispensation of salvation, and you shall see something of the glory of the Father in all. The Father, by his Spirit, sanctified him in the womb, gave his only begotten Son to death for us, made him a curse for us. ' To us a Son is given,' Isa. ix. 6. The Father raised him up again. See the Father in his humiliation and exaltation, see him in all the sweet offices he hath taken upon him to accomplish our salvation. The Father hath anointed him by the Spirit to be king, and priest, and prophet. Him hath the Father sealed, setting his stamp on him, to be our Saviour. The Father hath sent him ; he hath his warrant and commission from the Father. The Father hath set him forth to be a propitiation, Rom. iii. 25. So that all the authority he hath in all his offices it is from the Father.
5. But more specially, ive see the love of the Father in Christ crucified and made a curse for ns. For there, as it were, the Father poured out his bowels. For how could the mercy and goodness of God appear, more than to give his own Son, equal with him ? as it is at large set down, Phil, ii. 6, seq. That God should give his Son, the greatest gift that ever could be thought of, that could make ten thousand worlds of nothing, that he should give him to us, and take our nature into unity with his divine nature, that he might suffer in it ; how could the glory of mercy shine more than