03.11. LECTURE 11 - THE OFFICES OF CHRIST

LECTURE XI THE OFFICES OF CHRIST. His Offices of Prophet and of Priest.

I am to open this afternoon the great subject of the Offices of Christ. In the last Lecture we discussed the great mystery of his Person as God and man in two distinct natures and one Person for ever. These three, Christ’s Person, his Office and his Work, are absolutely inseparable. One of them cannot be understood as separated from the other two. He assumed humanity and became God and man in one Person in order that he might assume his office as Mediator between the holy God and sinful man, and his office and work are alike inconceivable except when viewed in connection with the unparalleled constitution and comprehensive range of his Person.

I. The office of Christ as Mediator is obviously one. He occupies the whole of it at the same time. He discharges exhaustively all the parts of it. All its parts have one end, and are mutually interdependent. The English word " office " unfortunately has come to have two meanings. In ordinary usage it stands for a concrete whole, a man occupying a position defined by law, involving many correlated functions, as the office of judge or of governor or of president. But, nevertheless, it continues to be used in its ancient classical meaning of function or duty, the exercise of which is involved in the office. This distinction is well marked by the Latin words munus and officium. The munm expresses the position defined by law, involving a destination and obligation to the accomplishment of a certain work. Officium, on the other hand, expresses the idea of function. Thus, Christ undertook but one munus or office, that of Mediator between God and man, in order to secure the salvation of his elect. But in doing this he necessarily discharges all the οfficia or functions which the work necessarily involves. The munus or office of Mediator involves all the three functions of the prophet, of the priest and of the king. These are not separate offices, as are those of president, chief-justice and senator, but they are the several functions of the one office of Mediator. They are not separate functions capable of successive and isolated performance. They are rather like the several functions of the one living human body —as of the lungs in inhalation, as of the heart in blood-circulation, and as of the brain and spinal column in innervation ; they are functionally distinct, yet interdependent, and together they constitute one life. So the functions of prophet, priest and king mutually imply one another: Christ is always a prophetical Priest and a priestly Prophet, and he is always a royal Priest and a priestly King, and together they accomplish one redemption, to which all are equally essential.

All these functions, moreover, equally involve the possession and exercise by Christ of the attributes of both his divine and his human natures. It was necessary that he should be God in order that he should be the original Prophet of prophets and Teacher of teachers of the secrets of the divine will; that he should as Priest and Sacrifice render an obedience in the stead of men which he did not owe for himself, and render by his vicarious sufferings a satisfaction to the justice of God of expiatory value equal to the sufferings of all men to all eternity; and that as King he should reign in the hearts and over the lives and destinies of all his people. It was no less necessary that he should be man in order that he should take man’s place and obey and suffer in man’s stead, and that he should become " a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people so that he himself, having suffered, being tempted, " is able to succor them that are tempted" (Hebrews 2:17-18).

II. This office or munus, having for its end the complete salvation of sinful men, is designated in the New Testament by two comprehensive titles:

(1) Μεσίτης, Mediator. This is applied in a lower sense to Moses, as a mere messenger or go-between, through whom the law was given to the Church from Sinai (Galatians 3:19-20). But it is applied in the highest sense to Christ, as the efficient Peacemaker, the Daysman, having full power to make the peace between God and man, and to deliver man efficaciously and with infallible certainty from all his dangers (1 Timothy 2:5-6).

(2) The second and more comprehensive title applied in Scripture to this great undertaking of Christ is παράκλητος, Paraclete. The word paraclete is the Greek equivalent for the Latin advocatm, advocate. The words advocate and παρά-κλητος, mean one called in to help. The Roman " client’ the poor and dependent man, called in his " patron " to help him in all his needs. The patron thought for, advised, directed, supported, defended, supplied the necessities of, restored, comforted his client in all his complications. The client, however weak, with a powerful patron was socially and politically secure for ever. We are lost, we have nothing, and we need everything. "We are guilty, righteously condemned, held under sentence. We are ignorant, blind, weak, helpless. Christ undertakes for us just as we are, and he docs everything for us as our Advocate or Paraclete, called in to help us and deliver us. If any man sin, he has a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2:1). But even Christ cannot do the whole work alone. So when the Saviour, having finished his earthly work, was ready to depart, he said to his disciples, " I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another παράκλητος, (Paraclete, Advocate, unhappily translated Comforter), that he may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth " (John 14:16; John 14:26; John 15:26; John 16:7). In this munus or office of saving men the incarnate God-man and the Holy Ghost work together, the function of one being as essential as that of the other, and mutually depending upon that of the other. The God-man is our Patron, who undertakes for us in the functions of teaching, redeeming and ruling. The Holy Ghost is our other or co-ordinate Paraclete or Advocate, who unites us to Christ by dwelling in us, communicating his life to us, and executing in us all the beneficial and sacrificially merited stages and elements of Christ’s salvation. The two are together our perfect Paraclete. The one is our objective, external, transcendent Paraclete, sitting in, and reigning from, the heavens; the other is our subjective, internal, immanent Paraclete, dwelling in us and inspiring in us a divine life and hope. The essential parts of our salvation are regeneration, justification, sanctification, resurrection, glorification. These obviously involve, upon the part of the two divine Persons who together have undertaken the munus of our salvation, the distinct offices or functions of making reconciliation by atonement, of intercession and introduction to the Father, of teaching, of reigning over and disciplining the individual and the community of which he forms a part, and finally of quickening to life and communicating to the regenerate sinner his part in the benefits of Christ’s work, and preserving and perfecting him therein. These are distributed under the heads of the threefold functions of Christ as Prophet, as Priest and as King, and of the functions of the Holy Ghost, the immanent Paraclete ever dwelling in the hearts of his people.

III. The Function or Office of Christ as Prophet.—A prophet is one who speaks for another. In religious concerns a prophet is one who speaks to men for God. Hence he must be for this purpose a seer, one who sees, and therefore knows, and hence is qualified to speak in God’s name. The absolutely necessary qualifications for the office are competent information, adequate powers of expression and unquestionable authority.

Every human prophet necessarily presupposes an infinite, eternal, divine Prophet from whom his knowledge is received, just as every stream presupposes a fountain from which it flows. As there must be a first mover in all movement and a first cause in all efficient causation, so there must be a first Teacher of all teachers and a supreme Lord of all lords.

Father, Son and Holy Ghost are equal in knowledge as well as in power and glory—equal, i. e., both in the sense of originality and of universal comprehension. All things involved in the divine Being; all things spontaneously emergent in the divine imagination; all things embraced in the divine purpose; all things that have been or shall be actually existent in the past, present or future,—are all in their inmost essences, as well as in their phenomena, present within the universal sweep of the intuitional consciousness of God for ever. But it is the function of the second Person in the constitutional economy of the Trinity to communicate objectively any portion of this divine knowledge to his intelligent creatures. He is the eternal Word of God. He, as to his divine nature, is the express image of the Godhead, otherwise invisible, and he is the radiant glory of the divine essence. No man hath seen God at any time save the Son and he to whom the Son reveals him. He that hath seen Christ, the incarnate Word, hath seen the Father. He is at once the Word in God, for eternally the Word was with God, and he is the Word from God, exhibiting the glories of God in the whole range of creations, providences and objective revelations. All the lights of nature, the broken fragments of tradition, the secrets of the ethnic temples, the wisdom of the schools, the crescent moons of philosophy, science and the arts, the broader daylight of modern civilization,—all these, and far more than these, the brightest constellations of supernatural revelation, the rising sun of the inspired Scriptures from the first dawn growing brighter and brighter to the perfect day, and the unparalleled radiance of the celestial throne within the circle of which the archangels stand,—all these are but the reflections of His inexhaustible light whose function it is to make manifest the otherwise hidden light of God. But as in all vision there must meet at once the complementary gifts of light and eyes—light the instrument and medium, eyes the organs—so in this communication of the light of God to his creatures the complementary functions of Christ radiating the light and of the Holy Ghost opening the intellectual and spiritual eyes must meet together. And especially in the case of fallen men, where this spiritual vision has been lost, the subjective eye-opening work of the Spirit is the more necessary. And these two have been working together in this prophetical function of the work of human redemption from the first. Abraham saw the day of Christ, and all the prophets spoke of him. The priesthoods of Aaron and of Melchizedek, the temple service in all its parts, were shadows of which his Person and work were the substance. The Spirit of Christ testified within all these holy prophets, and inspired their words and generated their religious experience, which in their immortal psalms have become normal to the Christians of all times. After his incarnation Christ’s human nature became the most effective organ through which his teaching function was wrought out. His all-perfect human life, standing alone, the conspicuous anomaly of all history, is the transcendent lesson he has taught us—a lesson, alike as to the nature and prerogatives of God, and as to the possibilities and responsibilities of man, which after the lapse of nearly two millenniums remains the acknowledged lesson of all the ages, acknowledged as well by foe as friend. In the appointed testimony of the twelve apostles, in the inspired text of the New Testament, in the special dispensation of grace which has led his Church forth through all the changes of two thousand years, in his general providence comprehending the evolution of all nations, in the ceaseless, everywhere active operations of the Holy Ghost in our hearts, in the new light breaking in upon each wondering soul at death, and in the revelation of unutterable things in the third heavens of which Paul had a transient glimpse which it is not lawful for a man on earth to utter,—Christ has been fulfilling the teaching function of his great work as Redeemer. And throughout all the eternal ages he will never cease. In the New Jerusalem, the city of gold and crystal, wherein the unending career of God’s perfected sons shall be continuously run, he will still continue the inexhaustible Source of all their knowing. For for ever and for ever " the Lamb is the light thereof."

Even in this life this precious office of Christ in behalf of his people surpasses all estimate. It is to be feared that while taking refuge under our Lord’s mediation as Priest, Christians now-a-days make far too little of his function in them as Prophet. The condition of our experiencing the full measure of this benefit is, that we should implicitly submit our whole intellects to him as our Teacher, that we follow him without question in our thinking as much as in our acting; that the entire encyclopaedia of human knowledge be brought under the regimen of his teaching; and that his doctrine in every department of thought be central and regulative to all other truth. On this condition, and on this condition only, he will grant us that unction from the Holy One whereby we shall know all things (1 John 2:20). Spiritual-mindedness is the crowning grace of a Christian character, and is the unquestionable evidence of the presence of eternal life. A new and celestial light is let in broadly over the whole horizon of our thought. The entire rational world is transfigured. Even in the case of some of the intellectually least highly endowed of Christ’s people the telescope of faith reveals the deepest and most ravishing secrets of his kingdom. Just as in the material astronomy the telescope of highest power takes into its field the narrowest segment of the sky, so in the disclosures our divine Prophet makes to his redeemed on earth often the in-tensest insight into the glowing centre of the heavenly world is vouchsafed to those whom the world regards pitifully as the unlearned and foolish, and whom even the Church recognizes as only babes in Christ.

IV. The Office of Christ as Priest.—The unity of the human race and the universal sense of sin are proved by the fact that in all ages and nations all historical religions provide a priesthood to stand between God and his worshiper. A priest is a man divinely chosen, qualified and authorized to appear before God and to act in behalf of men. A prophet, we have seen, comes down from God manward. A priest goes up from man Godward. Bishop Butler (Analogy, pt. ii. ch. 5) and Michaelis declare that the universal prevalence of priests and peculiar sacrifices demonstrates the existence of a sensus communis essential to human nature as it now is, establishing the facts of human guilt, of divine justice, and of the absolute need of mediation and expiation. The entire state of the case stands pictured to us in the Jewish ritual with the utmost vividness as in a vast historical object-lesson. God created man in his own likeness; a weak creature, but with the potency of the highest powers, with the possibilities of the grandest destinies, and consequently the responsibility of maintaining a record and of achieving a character in conformity to the law of absolute moral perfection, armed with the alternative sanctions of the blessing of God which is life, or the curse of God which is death.

Man, abusing all the conditions of a favorable probation, sinned, and fell under the inexorable condemnation of the immutable law which sways the moral universe in all cycles and in all realms. The judgment of this law was immediately and consistently executed upon the entire existent human race, inwardly in the conscience of man and outwardly in the providence of God. Ashamed, conscious of his defilement and nakedness, afraid, conscious of his guilt and alienation from God, man was driven out of the garden to wrestle with the wild forces of nature for a living, under the frown of God. Death and pain seized him, and the farther he wandered through the continents and down the ages, the farther he went from God, the more corrupt his nature and hopeless his condition. All along this line the Spirit of God strove with men, and under his inspiration men chose their best and wisest and sent them up to God as priests, with gifts and the blood of atoning sacrifices in their hands, if by any means per-adventure God’s justice could be satisfied and his just wrath appeased.

All this ritual of mediation and of expiation was gathered together into one divinely-ordered system in the Mosaic tabernacle and ceremonial institution made in all things according to the pattern God showed to Moses in the mount (Hebrews 8:5). All members of the human family, as such, were judicially excluded from the divine favor and presence. But as God graciously purposed to redeem men and restore them to life in union with himself on certain conditions, he forthwith graciously selected the Israelites out of all the nations of the earth, and made them, in behalf of all nations, a priestly nation to represent all nations before God, and ultimately to be the organ of the reconciliation and restoration of all. Out of the nation of priests he chose the tribe of Levi to be a priestly tribe, to represent the whole nation before God and to act as the organ of its communion with God. Out of the tribe of Levi he chose the family of Aaron to be in the strictest sense the priestly order in successive generations, and of this family of priests the head by the law of primogeniture was the one high priest, in whom the whole body of priests, and through them the whole tribe and nation, and through them all the families of man on earth, are ceremonially summed up—who is the one absolute priest, the one adequate type of Christ, able to perform in his own person every part of the typical service.

According to this symbolism, God, although he is omnipresent and everywhere active in his natural relation, yet as Moral Governor and Source of spiritual life is withdrawn from the world and sits apart. But to give visible objective expression to his willingness to have men brought back to his favor and fellowship, he directed Moses to erect a tabernacle, afterward rendered permanent in the magnificent temple of Solomon—a place of meeting and communing between God and man (Exodus 25:22). This sanctuary was essentially a large parallelogram embracing three successive courts. The inner one of all, called the Most Holy Place, was entirely enclosed, shut in darkness, a perfect cube. Here God sat alone enthroned over the ark of the covenant, the foundation of his throne, containing the moral law expressed in the ten commandments, which were at once the foundation of his own government and his official indictment of all men as condemned sinners, and enthroned between the cherubim, or symbols of redeemed humanity as it will be in the end, when the true heavenly temple is consummated. This most holy seat of God holding aloof, yet willing to meet men on conditions consistent with his perfections, was separated from the next court by a close curtain, which none but the high priest, and he only once a year, could lift. Exterior to this was the Holy Place, which contained the table of shewbread, the golden candlestick and the altar of incense, all symbolizing the Christian life redeemed, sanctified and offered as an acceptable sacrifice to God. Exterior to this was the outer court, sacred to the Jews or to the priestly nation, from which the uncircumcised Gentiles were excluded. A believing Israelite, conscious of sin, proposing to return to God and seek eternal life in him, had his way of return distinctly marked out. He must come first to the altar of burnt-offering and make expiation, and then to the laver of regeneration and seek spiritual cleansing, and then approach through the Holy Place to the veil which divided it from the immediate presence of God. On every occasion of sin he was directed to obtain a lamb perfect in age, sex and condition; take it to the priest before the altar; lay his hands upon its head, siguifying the transference to it of his guilt or obligation to endure the penalty; give it to the priest, who then executed upon it, in the stead of the sinner who presented it as his substitute, the capital penalty of death. Then the blood of the victim was sprinkled upon the sinner and upon the horns of the altar, in token of the expiation of sin upon the one hand and the propitiation of God upon the other. The promised effect of this service was, as is constantly asserted (Leviticus 4:20; Leviticus 5:10; Leviticus 5:13; Leviticus 5:16; Leviticus 5:18, etc.), that " his sin shall be forgiven him." On the great day of atonement, once every year, this priestly work was done, so as to exhibit the principle most perfectly. The high priest was the one whose office included and superseded that of all other priests. He represented the whole redeemed Church, the entire body of the elect, bearing the titles of all the tribes engraved upon his shoulders and upon his breast. He took two goats ceremonially perfect—two, yet constituting one sacrifice, to symbolize the entire function alike after and before death. On the head of the one goat he laid his hands and confessed all the sins of the whole people. The other goat he executed and sacrificed on the altar of burnt-offering. The first goat was then sent forth into the trackless wilderness bearing into absolute and final oblivion the sins of the people, now expiated by the vicarious death of the other goat. With the blood of the second goat and with a censer kindled with coals from off the altar of incense the high priest now passed through the otherwise inviolable curtain into the presence of God enthroned over the mercy-seat between the cherubim. This blood was now spread over the golden lid covering the ark of the covenant, shutting out the vision of God looking down upon the tables of the law, witnessing against the sins of men. David hence sings of the blessedness of him " whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered "—i. e. covered out of the sight of justice by sacrificial blood. The high priest represented the people. What he did, they did in him. And he, and they through him, could at best pass that veil but once a year, and then only with the fresh blood of the goat judicially slain in their stead. This was because God is just, and without the shedding of blood there is absolutely no remission. The restrictions which limited it to the one day in a year and to the freshly-repeated sacrifice originated in the incompetency of the blood of bulls and goats really to expiate the guilt of sin. The sacrifices of bulls and goats were like token-money (as our paper promises to pay), accepted at their face value until the day of settlement. But the sacrifice of Christ was the gold which absolutely extinguishes all debt by its intrinsic value. When, therefore, Christ by the one sacrifice of his divine-human Person had put away sin (Hebrews 9:26; Hebrews 10:10-12), the veil which shut off the Most Holy Place, the dwelling-place of God in the temple, " was rent from the top to the bottom "—that is, utterly and for ever removed (Matthew 27:51), so that not high priests only, but every trusting Christian fleeing from sin and the wrath which follows it, has boldness to enter, not once a year, but in every instant of need, " into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh" (Hebrews 10:20). The entire religious life of the Jewish Church and of every individual believer centred in the priests, and preeminently in the high priest. He was the head of the nation and of the Church. He was the ever-living organ of their living union and fellowship with God. Cut off from the high priest, they were without God in the world, and without access or opportunity for any possible communication of prayer or sacrifice. But when in fellowship with the high priest they not only had peace with God, but they were at once translated into the sphere of divine life and relations; their prayers and sacrifices were accepted, and the presence of the Holy Ghost made their whole sphere alive with spiritual fruit-fulness and blessedness.

V. In all essential points this Mosaic ritual system was truly and designedly representative and expository of the mediatorial office, and especially of the priestly function, of Christ. The two correspond as shadow and substance, as token-money (paper promises to pay) and real money ; as type—u e. prophetic symbol—and antitype. 1st. Christ was a real priest:

(1) He possessed all the qualifications really, intrinsically and in the highest degree. He was absolutely righteous and holy; he had an absolute right of intimate access to God and the right of bringing near to God; he possessed in his own person on its human side the most intrinsically valuable and acceptable of all offerings; he was divinely appointed to this end (Hebrews 2:16; Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 5:5-6; Hebrews 7:26; Hebrews 9:11-24 ; John 16:28; John 11:42).

(2) He performed all the parts of the priest’s official work: (a) He mediated, in the general sense of the word (John 14:6; 1 Timothy 2:5); (6) he offered a propitiatory sacrifice (*Ephesians 5:2; Hebrews 9:26; Hebrews 10:12; 1 John 2:2); (c) he appeared in the true Most Holy Place, of which the inner court of the tabernacle was only the figure, and presented his sacrificed body for v&, and ever liveth to make intercession for us (Hebrews 9:24; Hebrews 7:25; Romans 8:34; 1 John 2:1).

(3) He was also the sacrificial victim. His characteristic designation is " the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." The Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all: he was made a sin-offering for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). 2d. The Mosaic ritual was designed to be expository of his method of saving men. He does essentially and exhaustively that which the ritual services only symbolized.

These things " are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ" (Colossians 2:17; Hebrews 8:5). The whole New Testament, and especially the Epistle to the Hebrews, is a continuous commentary upon the truth of this assertion. The same is conspicuously proved by the fact that the veil of the temple (the key to the entire ritual order) was " rent in twain from top to bottom " the moment Christ’s real sacrifice was offered. The instant the debt was discharged by the real payment the token-money was cancelled. The instant the real expiation was "finished" the whole symbolical system provisionally representing it became necessarily functum officio. Soon afterward, consequently, the temple was razed to the ground and the ritual rendered for ever impossible.

VI. On the other hand, the perfect priesthood of Christ and his one intrinsically efficacious sacrifice infinitely and in manifold ways transcend all created and finite types. Thus Paul, having shown abundantly that the priesthood of Aaron is typical of that of Christ, proceeds to show that he was too large and perpetual a priest to be one of a series included under the Aaronic order—that, on the contrary, he was an "everlasting priest" after the order of Melchizedek, who was without predecessors or successors. The Aaronic priests came in succession, a series of many individuals. Christ abides a Priest for ever. The entire mediatorial and priestly work was, under the Mosaic system, distributed among many priests and Levites, each of whom did only his appointed part, while it was not the separate parts, but the coherent organic whole, which sufficed to effect the end designed. On the other hand, Christ discharges the entire priestly work alone, and he does it for all believers and during all time completely. " It is finished." Each of that series was morally impure, only ceremonially pure. Christ was absolutely pure and righteous. Each of that series was under the obligations of law, and owed obedience and expiation on his own account. Christ was God himself, above and personally independent of all legal responsibilities, able therefore to render a perfectly free vicarious service and penal suffering in the stead of others. The victim offered under the ceremonial institute had no intrinsic value. Christ is of infinite intrinsic value. The victim suffered without choice or conscious comprehension of the part it was taking in the drama of God’s spiritual kingdom. In the case of Christ the real moral value of his expiating work as Priest, its power to make amends, to repair the offence of sin to the justice and law of Jehovah, did not reside in his mere sufferings, abstractly considered, either in their quantity or their quality, but in their connection with the moral attitude and exercises of the Person suffering. He in the sinner’s place and suffering the penalty due the sinner, he in the mortal agonies of his soul, justified God’s justice. He consented to the law which condemned him vicariously. His cross was not, like the final lake of fire, a scene of mere capital execution, a Golgotha. On the contrary, it is a greater and more glorious Mount Sinai on which the absolutely perfect moral law is affirmed and made venerable. It is the great white throne on which the Moral Governor of the universe sits regnant, revealed in immaculate whiteness ; it is the point wherein alone, in all the realms of space and all the successions of time, the inmost heart of the great Jehovah has been opened as through a wide window to the sight of his creatures; it is the focus in which all the divine perfections are blended in their most intense radiance. Here "mercy and truth are met together, righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Psalms 85:10). And here the holy angels, the elder sons of God, experienced in all mysteries of the innermost " third heavens," gather in intense expectancy, and with faces veiled to shield them from the insufferable light "desire to look into" (1 Peter 1:12) this uncovered heart of God.

Besides, in the type the sinner was one party, the offended God another party, the mediating priest a third party, and the unwilling victim substituted in the place of the sinner is yet again a fourth party. From this the utter misconception has been inferred that Christ is a Friend of sinners, while God the Father is a stern, inimical Judge determined to crush them according to the forms of law—that Christ gives himself to suffer so as to excite the compassion of the angry Father and dispose him to open a way of escape to the objects of his wrath. AH love and mercy are attributed to Christ, while all inexorable justice and wrath are attributed to the Father. The Father is conceived of as relenting only in consequence of the effective satisfaction offered by the Son. But the truth is that the love and tenderness of the Father is the cause, not the effect, of the sacrificial death of his Son. " God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

Christ in his single Person unites the three parties of the offended God, the mediating priest and the substituted victim. It is not one divine Person offering satisfaction to another divine Person. But the divine nature in Christ, which is numerically one with that of the Father, is the very nature that both demands and furnishes the satisfaction. The merciful God out of his infinite compassion assumes to himself, and inflicts upon himself in his own personal humanity, the penalty in the stead of the sinner. "Ipse deus, ipse sacerdos, ipse hostia, pro se, de se, sibi satisfecit" (John Wessel, 1419-89). Himself at once truly God and truly Priest and truly sacrificial Victim, he made satisfaction for the sins of men to himself, by himself, by means of his own agonies. The Father, Son and Holy Ghost equally love the sinner, while they equally demand punishment for the sin. The Father gives his well-beloved Son; the Son voluntarily and suijure puts himself in the sinner’s place to receive the judicial blow; and it is by the eternal Spirit (sympathizing and co-operating) that he offered himself without spot to God (Hebrews 9:14). The whole Godhead in all the adorable Persons is revealed in this transcendent act of human redemption. They exhibit a common holiness tolerating no sin, and a common love sparing no sacrifice to deliver the beloved object from destruction. But to us this is especially revealed in the divine-human Person of Christ As he can the most fully sympathize with us because he is a man and has suffered, so we can most fully sympathize with him. In him we see the signs of sacrifice we understand—the bloody sweat, the crown of thorns, the pierced hands and feet and side. But he and the Father are one. The Person we see and love, the tears and blood we understand, are those of a man. But the man is God, and the blended righteousness and love which his death reveals are the righteousness and the love of God.

VII. This Priesthood of Christ is Absolutely Perfect.— 1st. He has been the medium of communication between God and man from the beginning through all stages of human history. His kingdom was prepared from the foundation of the world (Matthew 25:34). He has been Priest ever since the foundation of the world (Hebrews 9:25-26). He is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). The gospel which Paul preached and we believe is the mystery (secret) which from the beginning of the world had been hid in God, who created all things in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:9). Through him have all the scattered rays of true religion in all ages and to all people been revealed. In him all true believers of all dispensations have been accepted, and found the standing-place and life. Through his atonement not only all adult believers, but all dying in infancy, all idiots and all who have been saved by any extraordinary means known only to God, are reconciled to God and stand absolved from guilt.

2d. He is, in the complete and permanent and saving sense, the Priest only of his own people, his sheep, those from the beginning given him by the Father, those who believe on him through the effectual calling of his Spirit Nevertheless, it is true that in a very important sense he has always been the Priest of the whole historic human race. He is the second Adam. He took upon himself human nature, the seed of Abraham. He was made under the law and fulfilled the obligations, perceptive and punitive, which rest upon all men alike. He arrested in behalf of the whole race as a body the immediate execution of the legal penalty. The whole course of human history, of all peoples and nations, of all religions and civilizations, has been evolved under the shield of his cross, under a dispensation of arrested judgment or forbearance, secured through his mediation. He by his expiation removed utterly out of the way of all men alike the objective hindrances in the justice of God and in the judgment of the law which rendered their salvation absolutely impossible. In this general sense Christ, as the man whom God has appointed Priest, is the common bond of the whole human race, and his meritorious service the common basis of all human history.

3d. But while he, in his priestly work, has made the salvation of all men possible on the condition of their accepting it, he has made the salvation of those whom the Father has given him certain by purchasing for them that faith which is the condition of their personal participation in his work. He rendered his obedience and suffering in the stead of those whom he represented under a covenant with his Father. The Father from the beginning " gave to him " his sheep. These, by the very act of Christ’s atonement, are secured to him. When it pleased the Lord to make his soul an offering for sin, it was also provided that he should see his seed —that he should see of the travail of his soul and should be satisfied (Isaiah 53:10-11). Our Confession of Faith declares (chap. viii. § 5): " The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he through the eternal Spirit once offered up unto God, hath " not only " fully satisfied the justice of the Father," but also " purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven for all those whom the Father hath given unto him." Not merely forgiveness of sins, but all that we shall ever experience: regeneration, justification, the adoption of sons, fatherly discipline, perseverance, increase of grace, deliverance in death, the resurrection of our bodies and all the unimaginable beatitudes of heaven,—all these, kingdom and priesthood and glory, are parts of " the purchased possession" secured for us through the priesthood of Christ.

4th. And the perfection of Christ’s priesthood is this, that he is a Priest for ever. We rest not upon an historic fact long passed, upon a priestly office transacted in our behalf two thousand years ago. But we rest upon a living Priest, an absolutely immortal Priest, whose entire priestly work, past, present and future, is all one. We rest on a Priest who is not only living, but who is the omnipresent, immanent Source of eternal life to all who accept his mediation. He is ever appearing in the presence of God for us. He is ever making intercession for us. He sits enthroned at the right hand of all power, making all things work together for good to them who love him. He is at the same time, through his Spirit, omnipresent as our Priest in all hearts and throughout all lives—in our hearts and in our lives, in our closets and in our homes, in our markets and in our temples, making intercession for us and making intercession with-iu us (Romans 8:26-27). And he is our only Priest. The Christian ministry is not a priesthood. This is a fundamental doctrine. The titles by which this ministry is called in the New Testament, and all the inspired definitions of the office to be discharged by these ministers, fall under the two categories of teaching and ruling. Absolutely nothing else is provided for; absolutely nothing else is even hinted at; absolutely no place is left for a New Testament priesthood. Christ occupies the office, and discharges all the functions of it exhaustively. Before Christ came there was a place for a symbolical priesthood as types or prophetical settings-forth of his priesthood. But there is no place for the token-money when the gold has been paid. There is no place for the type when the antitype has come, no place for the shadow when the sun shines at noon. It is error to suppose that Christ’s work can be rendered more complete, is supplemented, by an earthly priesthood. It is error to suppose that we need many or any other earthly mediators to go between us and Christ, who is our Brother, our own flesh and blood, within us and around us all the time.

Dear friends, take my advice in this. In maintaining our evangelical position against Romanists, Ritualists and exclusive Churchmen, do not waste your force by laying emphasis upon any subordinate question as to church government, liturgies or parity of the clergy.

Stand up only for essentials. Strike right at the heart of error. The three central dangerous errors of Romanism and Ritualism are these:

(1) The perpetuity of the apostolate;

(2) the priestly character and offices of Christian ministers;

(3) the sacramental principle, or the depending upon the sacraments as the essential, initial and ordinary channels of grace.

These are three radical heresies which exclude the truth, derogate from the honor of Christ and betray souls by inducing them to build upon false foundations. But if these three pestiferous roots of error are excluded, there can be no difference of radical importance between bodies of Christians who hold to the historic faith of " the holy catholic Church."

5th. Being a Priest for ever, he will be the organ of our communion with God, and his merits the foundation of our standing during all eternity as well as upon earth. In the New Jerusalem the " Lamb shall be the light thereof." As a " Lamb that has been slain " he stands in " the midst of the throne." And of all the redeemed it is said that " the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters" (Revelation 7:17).

6th. And, finally, we are rendered complete in him, "for in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and in him ye are made full, who is the Head of all principality and power" (New Version, Colossians 2:9-10). Having identified himself with us, he identifies us with himself. We are endowed with both the qualifications and prerogatives which distinguish himself in relation to God. We receive an unction from the Holy One, and know all things. We receive as the priests of God the right to draw near to the inmost heart of God and to offer acceptable service and worship. We are delivered from all bondage, alike from the evil within us and from the evil without us, and we are set in the position of those who reign over all the subordinate powers alike of the material and of the spiritual worlds. He crowed us with his own crown, and made us to sit with himself on his own throne, for we are, through the whole range of our being and during the entire sweep of our existence, joint-heirs together with Christ. This truth is as sure as it is wonderful. Yet it utterly pass-eth understanding. Thought gives place to emotion and rises into adoring rapture: " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." " For thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth."