And this is a ground of unspeakable consolation unto believers, with supportment in every condition. No unworthiness in them, no misery upon them, shall ever hinder the Lord Christ from owning them, and openly avowing them to be his brethren. He is a brother born for the day of trouble, a Redeemer for the friendless and father- less. Let their miseries be what they will, he will be ashamed of none but of them who are ashamed of him and his ways when perse- cuted and reproached. A little while will clear up great mistakes. All the world shall see at the last day whom Christ will own; and it will be a great surprisal, when men shall hear him call them breth- ren whom they hated, and esteemed as the offscouring of all things. He doth it, indeed, already by his word; but they will not attend thereunto. But at the last day they shall both see and hear, whether they will or no. And herein, I say, lies the great consolation of believers. The world rejects them, it may be their own relations despise them,—they are persecuted, hated, reproached; but the Lord Christ is not ashamed of them. He will not pass by them because they are poor and,in rags,—it may be, reckoned (as he himself was for them) among malefactors. ‘They may see also the wisdom, grace, and love of God in this matter. His great design in the incarna- tion of his Son was to bring him into that condition wherein he might naturally care for them, as their brother; that he might not be ashamed of them, but be sensible of their wants, their state and condition in all things, and so be always ready and meet to relieve them. Let the world now take its course, and the men thereof do their worst; let Satan rage, and the powers of hell be stirred up against them; let them:load them with reproaches and scorn, and cover them all over with the filth and dirt of their false imputations; let them bring them into rags, into dungeons, unto death ;—Christ comes in the midst of all this confusion and says, ‘ Surely these are my brethren, the children of my Father, and he becomes their Saviour. And this is a stable foundation of comfort and support-
424 AN EXPOSITION OF THE [CHAP. II.
ment in every condition. And are we not taught our duty also herein, namely, not to be ashamed of him or his gospel, or of any one that bears his image? The Lord Christ is now himself in that condition that even the worst of men esteem it an honour to own him: but indeed they are no less ashamed of him than they would have been when he was carrying his cross upon his shoulders or hanging upon the tree; for of every thing that he hath in this world they are ashamed. His gospel, his ways, his worship, his Spirit, his saints, they are all of them the objects of their scorn; and in these things it is that the Lord Christ may be truly honoured or be de- spised. For those thoughts which men have of his present glory, abstracting from these things, he is not concerned in them; they are all exercised about an imaginary Christ, that is unconcerned in the word and Spirit of the Lord Jesus. These are the things wherein we are not to-be ashamed of him. See Rom.i.16; 2 Tim. 1 16, iv. 16.
Fourthly, That which remaineth of these verses consisteth in the tes- timonies which the apostle produceth out of the Old Testament in the confirmation of what he had taught and asserted. And two things are to be considered concerning them,—the end for which they are produced, and the especial importance of the words contained in them. The first he mentions is from Ps. xxii. 22, “I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.” The end why the apostle produceth this testimony, is to confirm what he had said immediately before, namely, that with respect unto his being one with the children, Christ owns them for his brethren; for this he doth expressly in this place. And we are to take notice that the apostle in the use of these testimonies doth not observe any order, so that one of them should confirm one part, and another another part of his assertion, in the order wherein he had laid them down. It sufficeth him that his whole intendment, in all the parts of it, is confirmed in and by them all, one having a more especial respect unto one part than another. In this first it is clear that he proves what he had immediately before affirmed, namely, that the Lord Christ owns the children for his brethren, because of their common interest in the same nature. And there needs nothing to evince the pertinency of this testimony but only to show that it is the Messiah which speaketh in that psalm, and whose words these are; which we have done fully already in our Prolegomena.
For the explication of the words themselves, we may consider the twofold act or duty that the Lord Christ takes upon himself in them ;—first, that he will declare the name of God unto his brethren ; and, secondly, that he would celebrate him with praises in the congregation. In the former we must inquire what is meant by