The section of our book which now opens before us contains the instructive description of the curtains and coverings of the tabernacle, wherein the spiritual eye discerns the shadows of the various features and phases of Christ's manifested character. "Moreover, thou shalt make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubim of cunning work shalt thou make them." Here we have the different aspects of "the Man Christ Jesus." The "fine twined linen" prefigures the spotless purity of His walk and character; while the "blue, the purple, and the scarlet" present Him to us as "the Lord from _heaven_," who is to _reign_ according to the divine counsels, but whose royalty is to be the result of His _sufferings_. Thus we have a spotless Man, a heavenly Man, a royal Man, a suffering Man. These materials were not confined to the "curtains" of the tabernacle, but were also used in making "the vail" (ver. 31), "the hanging for the door of the tent" (ver. 36), "the hanging for the gate of the court" (chap. xxvii. 16), "the cloths of service and the holy garments of Aaron" (chap. xxxix. 1). In a word, it was Christ everywhere, Christ in all, Christ alone.[12]
[12] The expression, "_white_ and _clean_," gives peculiar force and beauty to the type which the Holy Ghost has presented in the "fine twined linen." Indeed, there could not be a more appropriate emblem of spotless manhood.
The "fine twined linen," as expressive of Christ's spotless manhood, opens a most precious and copious spring of thought to the spiritual mind; it furnishes a theme on which we cannot meditate too profoundly. The truth respecting Christ's humanity must be received with scriptural accuracy, held with spiritual energy, guarded with holy jealousy, and confessed with heavenly power. If we are wrong as to this, we cannot be right as to any thing. It is a grand, vital, fundamental truth; and if it be not received, held, guarded, and confessed as God has revealed it in His holy Word, the entire superstructure must be unsound. Nothing can be more deplorable than the looseness of thought and expression which seems to prevail in reference to this all-important doctrine. Were there more reverence for the Word of God, there would be more accurate acquaintance with it; and, in this way, we should happily avoid all those erroneous and unguarded statements which surely must grieve the Holy Spirit of God, whose province it is to testify of Jesus.
When the angel had announced to Mary the glad tidings of the Saviour's birth, she said to him, "How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?" Her feeble mind was utterly incompetent to enter into, much less to fathom, the stupendous mystery of "God manifest in the flesh." But mark carefully the angelic reply--a reply, not to a sceptic mind, but to a pious, though ignorant, heart.--"The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; wherefore, also, that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." (Luke i. 34, 35.) Mary, doubtless, imagined that this birth was to be according to the principles of ordinary generation; but the angel corrects her mistake, and, in correcting it, enunciates one of the grandest truths of revelation. He declares to her that divine power was about to form A REAL MAN--"the second Man--the Lord from heaven"--One whose nature was divinely pure, utterly incapable of receiving or communicating any taint. This holy One was made "_in the likeness_ of sinful flesh," without sin in the flesh. He partook of real _bona fide_ flesh and blood without a particle or shadow of the evil thereto attaching.
This is a cardinal truth which cannot be too accurately laid hold of or too tenaciously held. The incarnation of the Son, the second Person in the eternal Trinity--His mysterious entrance into pure and spotless flesh, formed, by the power of the Highest, in the virgin's womb, is the foundation of the "great mystery of godliness," of which the topstone is a glorified God-man in heaven, the Head, Representative, and Model of the redeemed Church of God. The essential purity of His manhood perfectly met the claims of God; the reality thereof met the necessities of man. He was a Man, for none else would do to meet man's ruin. But He was such a Man as could satisfy all the claims of the throne of God. He was a spotless, real Man, in whom God could perfectly delight, and on whom man could unreservedly lean.