HE who carne to save men is no other than God; therefore, He is capable of viewing sin from God’s standpoint, and of understanding what was due to God because of man’s sin. By bracing His Godhead to His manhood, He was capable, in Elis twofold nature, of sustaining pangs which humanity could not have endured apart from Godhead, and of receiving into His infinite mind a sight of sin, and a horror concerning it, such as no finite mind ever could have endured.
You think, perhaps, that you comprehend sin; but you cannot do anything of the kind. It is an evil too monstrous for the human mind fully to know its heights and depths, its lengths and breadths; but Christ, who is God incarnate, fully knew what sin meant. He had plumbed it to the very bottom, and knew how deep it was. He had gazed upon it, and felt: all the horror of its unrighteousness, ingratitude, and turpitude. Its sinfulness struck His sinless mind with all its awful force, and overwhelmed His holy soul with a horror which none but He could bear. He was, in all respects, perfect; and, therefore, had no need to die on His own account. It behooved Him to suffer, not because ‘.He was the Son of God, or the Son of man; but because He was the Redeemer, the Sponsor, the Surety, the Substitute of men.
When I have felt the burden of my sin, I confess ‘that I have at times felt as if it were too great to be ‘taken away by any conceivable power; but, on the ,other hand, when I have seen the excellence of my Master’s person, the perfection of His manhood, the .glory of His Godhead, the wondrous intensity of His anguish, the :solid value of His obedience, I have felt as if’ my sin were too little a thing to need so vast a sacrifice. I have felt like John Hyatt who, when dying, said that he could not only trust Christ with his one soul, but that he could trust Him with a million souls if he had them. Were my sins greater than they are, and God forbid they should be! — were my sense of them ten thousand times more vivid than it is, — and I could wish I had a more clear and humbling consciousness of my own iniquity; yet, even then, I know that my Lord and Master is a greater Savior than I am a sinner.
From the constitution of His person as God and man, I am certain that, if I had heaped up my iniquities till they reached the skies, though, like the giants in the ancient: mythology, I had piled Pelion upon Ossa, mountain of sin upon mountain of rebellion, and had thought to scale the very throne of God in my impious rebellion, yet, even then, the precious blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, could cleanse me from all sin.
Writing to the Hebrews, concerning Christ’s Incarnation, the apostle Paul says, “Once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice ,of Himself.” It was; He, against whom the sin had been committed, it was He, who will be the Judge of the quick and the dead, who “appeared to put away sin ‘by the sacrifice ,of Himself.” Is there not great comfort in this fact? It is the Son of God who has undertaken this more than Herculean labor. He appeared, sinner, to save you; God appeared, “to put away sin.” Lost one, to find you, the great Shepherd has appeared; your case is not hopeless, for He has appeared. Had anybody else than God undertaken the task of putting away sin, it could never have been accomplished; but it can be accomplished now, for HE who appeared is the One with whom nothing is impossible.
Christ did :not come as an amateur Savior, trying an experiment on His own account; He came as the chosen Mediator, ordained of God for this tremendous task. He is no unauthorized individual who, of his own accord alone, stepped into the gap without orders from Heaven. No; but He appeared whom the Father had, from eternity, chosen for the great task, and whom He had commissioned and sent to perform it. His very Name, Christ, tells of His anointing for this service. He could not: sit in Heaven, and accomplish this great work of our salvation. With all reverence to the blessed Son of God, we can truly say that He could not have saved ‘us if He had kept His throne, and not left the courts of glory; so He “appeared ” on earth in human form. He “made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”
