(1) The Messiah was to be hunible in the circumstances of His life, — His birthplace, His lowly outward condition, His having no visible grandeur to attract the world's eye, had all been noted by the pen of inspiration. If He had been born in any other place than Bethlehem, if He had appeared as a rich Prince instead of being the son of a poor family, there would have been reason to say that the words of Scripture were against Him ; for it was prophesied regarding Him, " Thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting."
^[ Christian religion beginneth not at the highest, as other religions do, but at the lowest. It will have us to climb up by Jacob's ladder, whereupon God Himself leaneth, whose feet touch the very earth, hard by the head of Jacob. Run straight to the manger, and embrace this Infant, the Virgin's little babe, in thine arms; and behold Him as He was born, nursed, grew up, was conversant amongst men ; teaching ; dying ; rising again ; ascend- ing up above all the heavens, and having power over all things. This sight and contemplation will keep thee in the right way, that thou mayest follow whither Christ hath gone.1
(2) But the Messiah was to be great in His person. — He was to be of high origin, though He was to take up a lowly position on earth. It was said of Him by one of the prophets, His "goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting." These words intimated that He who was afterwards to appear in human nature for the deliverance of His people had lived from the beginning, from eternity. The prophet Isaiah had also said with reference to Him, " Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is
1 Luther, Commentary on the Qalatians, 102.
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given : and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."
TI The Jews took great offence, we read, because Jesus, being a man, called Himself the Son of God. But did not the Scriptures, which they professed to follow, speak of the Messiah as both God and man ? If He had claimed less He would not have been the Deliverer promised to their fathers. And were the actions of Jesus inconsistent with His high claim ? When He gave sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, and speech to the dumb, and life to the dead by a word, did He not show that He indeed was what the prophet Isaiah had said the Messiah at His coming should be, " The Mighty God " ? »
(3) He was also to accomplish a matchless work. — He was to bruise the head of the serpent ; or, as this first announcement is explained again and again in the prophecies which follow, and particularly in the prophecies of Daniel, He was " to finish trans- gression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness." He was to take away the sins of men which separated them from God, to put an end to the commission of sin, and to bring in the reign of righteousness for ever. He was in consequence called by the prophets in other places " the Lord our righteousness." Jesus de- clared when He was upon the earth that this was to be the great purpose of His mission. " The Son of man," He said, " came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." He came to take away all burdens and all troubles by taking away sin, which is the cause of them all. " Come unto me," He said, " all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And with reference to all that come unto Him, He says, "I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand."
U In St. Paul, Christ is the Deliverer from sins in the past ; He is the Defender against sins in the future. God's love in Christ is emphatically that which delivers the wretched man, beaten in all his endeavours to free himself from the body of this death of sin : it is that which has done through Christ what the law could not do, enabled the righteousness of the law to be ful- filled in His redeemed. Over St. Paul's mind there ever seems to
1 G. S. Smith, Victory Over Sin and Death, 21.
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be resting the shadow of the memory of the past; he remembers how wrong he once went, what a terrible mistake he made. Ami he remembers how, not by any reflection, not by any study of his own, but by the direct influence of Christ Himself, he first learned how fearfully wrong he was. Hence throughout his life there is present to him a sense of his own weakness. Yet while these thoughts sometimes come across him, and make him more eagerly watchful over all that he does, nothing can shake his firm per- suasion that " neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord." To him Christ is emphatically the power which wipes out the past, and which upholds the soul, the power which alone can preserve us blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose strength is made perfect in our weakness, who shall one day "change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself."1