Now if you ask me, who are the happy men in the world ? Truly those that are most active in good, and suticr most for good, for they are the flesh of Christ. What did the flesh and nature of Christ ? He did all the good he could, and sufiered all the evil that the pride and malice of man's nature could possibly lay upon him. He therefore that doth most good, and suffers most ill, he cometh nearest to Christ, and carrieth about with him the ' marks of the Lord Jesus.'
> To pass on in the words.
To what end is all this ? ' That the life of Jesus may be manifested in our bodies.' 'What is the life of Jesus ? You all know what life is. I will speak of it as a Divine especially.
(1.) You know that the life of Jesus is either the life secret in himself ; and therefore he is called ' our life.' ' I am the way, the truth, and the life,' John xiv. 6, when • Christ our life shall appear,' Col. iii. 4. Christ ifi life, as having life in himself as God. Or,
(2.) Else the life of Jesus as mediator, and as God and man ; and so it is here meant. Life is first founded in the Godhead. He is the living God, and therefore wise and powerful, and all because he is living. But life as it is in God doth not comfort us a whit, but rather is a matter of terror, because we have no communion with God, considered absolutely, without a mediator. And therefore we must consider of life as derived to a middle person, a mediator, God-man. So that life is derived to us by Christ our
* That is, impassible = incapable of suffering. — G.
t That is, ^ misery- enduring nature, or passible nature, as above. — G.
2 CORINTHIANS CHAP. lY, \Ti;R. 10. 409
brother, wlio hath taken our nature. Our Christ is derivccl to us in our nature. God alone doth not comfort us ; mere man alone doth no good, John vi. 32, scq. The argument is profoundly followed by our Saviour. The flesh profiteth nothing. The human nature without the divine pro- fiteth nothing. It is the Spirit that quickens. Look to the death of Christ. Consider Christ dying as man, he doth us no good at all if he had not been God. As God he could not have died, but the person of God dying in our nature makes his flesh bread indeed, and his blood drink indeed ; that is, the soul may feed upon the satisfaction, the sacrifice of God-man, as full satisfaction to God's divine justice. So that the Spirit and the flesh, the divine and human nature, is the ground of all life.
ri.J First, of the life of sentence, whereby we are freely acquitted from sin ; for there is life of sentence when a malefactor waiteth for death, and hath a life of sentence given him. So Christ is the fountain and author of this life of sentence, for that God in our nature died to satisfy God, and therefore we be acquitted. The guilt of our soul is taken away, and a life of sentence is conve3'ed to us.
[2.] The life of Jesus is as the life of an head. "We have not only life through Christ, but life in Christ ; and not only life through Christ as mediator, but life in Christ as an head, conveying the same Spirit that is in himself to every member. So that if you will have the fountain of life, here it is. God is the first living, he is life itself. God conveyeth life to the mediator, God-man. He restores life to us, the life of sentence, and hath hkewise conveyed the life of sanctification to us. Sometimes ye read both of God and Christ mediator. ' The Father liveth, and I live ; and because I live, you shall live also,' John xiv. 19. But to come nearer to ourselves.
(3.) The life that cometh from Jesus, cometh first upon his oivn 2)erson, tJien hi/ the second oi us. Christ exercised this life first upon himself in raising himself from the grave. Christ as God raised himself as man from the grave, and so he is called the Lord of life ; he hath the key of hell and of the grave ; Lord of life, Lord of death, because being dead he as Lord of life raised himself again.
Now after he had exercised this power in giving his body life again, so by the same power by which he raised his own dead bodj^ by the same he raiseth every Christian's. So that every Christian is raised and quickened by the life of Jesus ; that is, by the power by which Jesus quickened him- self being dead in the grave ; and that is St Paul's meaning, Phil. iii. 10, ' That we might find the power of his death, and the virtue of his resurrec- tion.' There is virtue in Christ's resui'rection. What is that ? It is nothing but the quickening power whereby the body of Christ was raised out of the grave ; and Paul desires to feel the power and virtue of that resurrection from the life of Jesus.