He should be made under the law which we had broken ; that He should fulfil all righteousness ; that He should suffer and die ; that He should be able to sympathize in all the infirmities of his people, and that He should be united to them in a common nature. He wlio sanctifies (purifies from sin both as guilt and as pollution) and those who are sanctified are and must be of one nature. Therefore as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also took part of the same. (Hebrews ii. 11—14.)
2. The Mediator between God and man must be sinless. Under the law the victim offered on the altar must be without blemish. Christ, who was to offer Himself unto God as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, must be Himself free from sin. The High Priest, therefore, who becomes us. He whom our necessities de- mand, must be holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. (Hebrews vii. 26.) He was, therefore, " without sin." (Hebrews iv. 15 ; 1 Peter ii. 22.) A sinful Saviour from sin is an impos- sibility. He could not have access to God. He could not be a sacrifice for sins ; and He could not be the source of holiness and eternal life to his people. This sinlessness of our Lord, how- ever, does not amount to absolute impeccability. It was not a non potest peccare. If He was a true man He must hare been ca- pable of sinning. That He did not sin under the greatest provo- cation ; that when He was reviled He blessed ; when He suf- fered He threatened not ; that He was dumb, as a sheep before its shearers, is held up to us as an example. Temptation implies the possibility of sin. If from the constitution of his person it was impossible for Christ to sin, then his temptation was unreal and without effect, and He cannot sympathize with his people.
3. It was no less necessary that our Mediator should be a divine person. The blood of no mere creature could take away sin. It was only because our Lord was possessed of an eternal Spirit that the one offering of Himself has forever perfected them that believe. None but a divine person could destroy the power of Satan and de- liver those who were led captive by him at his will. None but He who had life in Himself could be the source of life, spiritual and eternal, to his people. None but an almighty person could control all events to the final consummation of the plan of redemption, and could raise the dead; and infinite wisdom and knowledge are requi- site in Him who is to be judge of all men, and the head over all to his Church. None but one in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead could be the object as well as the source of the religious lift; of all the redeemed.
458 PART III. Ch. IV. —mediatorial WORK OF CHRIST.
These qualifications for the office of mediator between God and man are all declared in the Scriptures to be essential ; they all met in Christ ; and they all were demanded by the nature of the work which He came to perform.
As it was necessary that Christ should be both God and man in two distinct natures and one person, in order to effect our redemp- tion, it follows that his mediatorial work, which includes all He did and is still doing for the salvation of men, is the work not of his human to the exclusion of his divine nature, nor of the latter to the exclusion of the former. It is the work of the ©edvOpioiros, of the God-man. Of the acts of Christ, as already remarked, some are purely divine, as creation, preservation, etc. ; others purely human, i. e., those which the ordinaiy powers of man are not only adequate to accomplish, but in which only human faculties were exercised ; and, thirdly, those which are mixed, which belong to the whole person. As speaking in man is a joint exercise of the mind and of the body, so the mediatorial work in Christ is the joint work of his divinity and humanity. Each nature acts agreeably to its own laws. When a man speaks, the mind and body concur in the production of the effect, each according to its nature. So when our Lord spake, the wisdom, truth, and authority with which He spake were due to his divinity ; the human form of the thoughts and their articulation were what they were in virtue of the func- tions of his human nature. So with all his redemptive acts. As the mind of man concurs in the endurance of the sufferings of the body according to the nature of mind, so the divinity of Christ concurred with the sufferings of his human nature according to the nature of the divinity.
On this subject the schoolmen made the following distinctions : " (1.) Est o ivepytov, Agens sen Principium quod agit, quod est sup- positum seu persona Christi. (2.) To ivepyrpriKov sen Principium formale quo agit ; illud per quod agens, seu persona Christi opera- tur, duae scilicet naturae, quarum unaquaeque citra ullum confusi- onem operatur. (3.) 'Evc/D-ycta seu operatio quae pendet a principio quo, et naturam sui principii refert, ut sit divina, si principium quo sit divina natura, humana v6ro, si sit humanitas. (4.) 'Evipyrjfia, seu aTTorekea-fia, quod pendet a principio quod, estque opus exter- num quod mediationem vocamus Ita unum est agens prin-
cipale, nim. persona Christi, et unum airoriXeaixa seu opus mediato- rium ; sed operatur per duas naturas, ut duo principia, unde fluunt duae evepyeiai seu operationes ad unum illud opus concurrentes." ^
1 Turrettin, locus xiv. quaest. ii. 3, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. p. 335. He quotet from Damasc. lib. Ii. 4, orth. fid. c. 18, and refers to Leo's 10th Epistle to Flavian.