April 16

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. - Philemon 1:25

TO what else than this principle alone can our salvation. be ascribed? The Saviour’s interposition on our behalf is neither the result of imposition, compulsion, desert, nor importunity. It cannot be ascribed to imposition. Some persons undertake enterprizes unconscious of their consequences. How often they have exclaimed, “If I had foreseen the results, I would have had nothing to do with it!” But this was not the case with the Lord Jesus. He was neither inveigled into it, nor did he engage in it from ignorance. He saw the end from the beginning. It was laid before him. He saw it all when he said, “Lo! I come to do thy will, O God.”

We know what this will implied-it was his becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Yet he came forward and showed no reluctance in the execution; and as his passion drew near, he said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” Voluntariness was also necessary to his obedience. Deity has no impression from external causes. He therefore must act and did act freely. His passion was the exercise and the expression of his absolute independence: “No man taketh my life from me; I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” Therefore, in his death, “he cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost,” which showed that he died not of exhaustion or weakness. He was not only the Sacrifice, but the Priest that offered it. Nor could it be the effect of desert. We were criminals in our misery; and this is a circumstance on which the Apostle enlarges so frequently and so much: “When we were without strength, Christ died for the ungodly;” “God commendeth his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Nor was it the result of importunity. It was as much without our desire as it was without our desert; for it was long before we had a being. To humble Job God said to him, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” and Christ may say to Christians, “Where were you when I came forward and said, Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom?”

No; the more we examine this subject the more we shall find it impossible to ascribe our being, enriched with all the blessings of salvation, of grace, and of glory, to any other cause than to his grace.

“With pitying eyes the Prince of Peace

Beheld our helpless grief;

He saw, and O amazing grace,

He came to our relief.”