b Luke xvi. 15.
Hence arose a necessity for our blessed Lord to come into the world —
[Doubtless, the first ground of his advent was to make reconciliation for the sins of men, and to work out a righteous- ness for them by his own obedience unto death. But sub- ordinate to this was the purpose specified in our text : " For judgment came I into this world." To understand this ex- pression aright, we must call to mind the office of a Judge. He inquires into the particular facts which are brought before him, and determines the characters of men according to those facts. Now, what an earthly judge does in reference to overt acts, that the Lord Jesus Christ does in reference to secret dis- positions. He brings with him a revelation calculated to elicit the dispositions of the heart, and to shew what men really are in the sight of God. Hence, at the time when his parents brought him to the temple, to do for him after the custom of the law, it was said concerning him, " This child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign that shall be spoken against, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed c."]
But I will proceed to mark more distinctly,
II. The suitableness of his appearance to produce that discovery —
The whole of his appearance, from the first to the latest hour of his existence upon earth, was calculated to offend the pride of man —
[See him at his birth. Behold him born in the family of a poor carpenter; and laid in a manger, because there was no better accommodation for his mother, under circumstances which, it might have been supposed, would have called forth sympathy and liberality from ten thousand bosoms. Is this the Son of God ? Impossible : it can never be, that Almighty God should suffer him to come into the world under circum- stances of such unparalleled degradation.
See him, too, in Ms life. Behold him still so poor, as not to have a place where to lay his head : a few poor fishermen for his followers; and an object of scorn and derision to all the higher parts of the community. Were I to give a just description of him, I could not do it in more appropriate terms than in those of prophecy itself: " He shall be as a root out of a dry ground : he hath no form nor comeliness : and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows
c Luke ii. 34, 35.
1661.] DISCRIMINATING EFFECTS OF THE GOSPEL. i9,r)
and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him : he was despised, and we esteemed him notd." Yet this is the person who offers himself to me as the Saviour of the world!
See him, finally, in his death. This completes the scene. He is sentenced to death, both by the men of his own nation and by the Roman governor; and, by universal consent, is executed as a malefactor; a murderer being preferred before him, as a fitter object of mercy than he. And is He to save me, when he did not save himself? Is He to deliver me from the wrath of God, who himself fell under the wrath of man ? I wonder not that such an idea was a ground of offence ; for throughout the whole there was an apparent inconsistency with all his own professions, and an absolute contrariety to all the expectations that were formed concerning him. Is this the person that came from God, and " made himself equal with God," and through whom alone any child of man can come to God, or find acceptance with him ? Unenlightened reason discards at once such pretensions as these, and rejects them utterly as irrational and absurd. And this is exactly what the prophet has foretold : " He, the Lord Jesus, shall be for a sanctuary ; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem : and many among them shall stumble and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken e."]