To come to the words. First, Christ saith, God was his God, and our God, because his God. In what sense is God Christ's God ? As mediator, as man, both in regard of his person and in regard of his oflice, God is Christ's God every way. See Ps. xxii. 9, which is a psalm of Christ, David being but a type of him in it : * Thou art my God from my mother's womb ; ' and so God is Christ's God in his particular person, from his mother's womb.
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(1.) For, first, God was Christ's God u-lien hi/ his IIoli/ Spirit he sanctified him in his mother's uvnib, and brouf/ht him out into the ivorld. Let the foolish disputes of friars, and dreams, and dotages of duusical times go. * But thou art my God from my mother's womb.'
And (2.) He is Christ's God, because he saved him from, the massacre of the infants. Our Saviour Christ makes that prayer in Psalm xxii., Mark XV. 34, on the cross, ' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? '
(3.) God icas Christ's God in protecting of him in his yoiutg time, and afterward in going along with him still to his death ; and in death, ' My God, my God' still. He would own God to be his God still; when God had deserted him to his sense and feeling, yet 'My God' still. So God was Christ's God, as Christ was man. Take Christ as mediator, God is the God of Christ ; for God the Father hath by his authority put on Christ whatsoever he hath. The Father hath sent him into the world ; the Father ' sealed ' him ; the Father sent him out as a propitiation for our sins ; the Father hath declared him and ' anointed ' him ; and all these terms of authority, whereby the Father hath shewed himself to be Christ's God, even in his office of mediatorship. So in regard of the care of his person from his mother's womb, and for ever ; and in regard of his office as mediator he might well say, ' I go to my God.' In regard of the intimate familiarity and acquaintance maintained even on the cross, he might say, * My God.'
But the comfort of it lieth in the second clause, that as God is the God of Christ, so he is our God, because he is the God of Christ.
What is it to be a God to any ? In a word, to be a. God is to be all- sufficient to any ; to be sole sufficient, and to be self-sufficient.
To be a God is to be all-sufficient for every creatux'e ; to be all-sufficient when nothing else can be sufficient. And to be self-sufficient, to be suffi- cient of himself, and therefore to reduce all back again to himself. Now, God is a God of himself, for himself, and by himself. God is all-sufficient, self-sufficient, sole-sufficient ; and whatsoever the creature hath, it hath it from him. There is, in a word, in God a sufficiency for all good and hap- piness, and an efficiency to apply that sufficiency for the good of the crea- ture. And in particular to be a God to any, is to do for a creature that no creature in the world can do but God. To make it of nothing, to free it from misery that it is beset withal, when no other can free it, to recover it again. God is Jehovah, that hath a being of himself, giveth being to the creatures, that can make the creature of nothing, and beinw something, can make it nothing.
Now, if God be a God to any, he is not only to give being to us, in a certain rank of creatures, as we are advanced above other creatures, as to have a being, or a life of growing, or a Hfe of sense, or to advance us to a life of creatures endowed with reason, whereby we are common in that fashion with angels, and understand God himself. Alas ! this were a poor privilege if it went no further than to set us in that rank of creatures, though a great favour. But considering us in a lapsed estate, it is a poor favour to leave us here. And therefore God is said to be our God now in a state of grace, when he advanceth us to an higher being and life than all this, a life of grace here and of glory hereafter ; when out of his sovereignty and power he reduceth all to help forward his main end, the salvation of his in particular. So God is a God in pecuHar of some that he taketh out of base mankind. There is a world taken out of the world, as Austin useth to speak {i). And thus he is a God not to bestow a life of grace and super-
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natural being here, but a glorious condition hereafter in heaven ; and to make all things serviceable to that, that we may say, ' All is ours, because we are Christ's, and Christ is God's,' 1 Cor. iii. 22, 23. So that whatso- ever befalleth a Christian, is serviceable and conducible to the main and last end. And that is for God to be God indeed, to make us his in Christ Jesus, to give us a new creation and a new state, better than the first.