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charge the debt; yet faith is mightily strengthened and confirmed in the belief of this from Christ's resurrection after his death, that God the Father is satisfied and acknowledges our debts are paid; for as the obedience and sacrifice of Christ is the matter of our justification and salvation; so the act of pronouncing us righteous by Christ's obedience and sufferings, which is the formal act of justification, depends on Christ's resurrection, and which act passed and was pronounced by Jehovah the Father, on Christ our head, and upon us in him, when he was. raised; hence we read of Christ's "being justified in the Spirit," (Tim. iii. 16.) But to proceed with our text, Christ's resurrection was his justification and discharge from our sins, therefore it is that God calls it, says. Doctor Goodwin, his first begetting of Christ, "This day have I begotten thee;" speaking manifestly of his resurrection. And the reason of it is, because all the while before, during his incarnate state, he was covered with sin and the likeness of sinful flesh, but now having flung it off he appeared like

God's Son indeed, and was "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead;" and at his resurrection passed from an estate of guilt and death laid on him, to an estate of justification from guilt, life, and glory. The words, "Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee," do both, in the second Psalm from whence they are taken, and in this text of ours, manifestly refer to our Lord's resurrection, by which God-manifested and fully proved him to be his coequal and coessential Son, who he spoke thus unto upon his coming up from the grave, declaring thereby his everlasting delight and perfect satisfaction in his most perfect and complete obedience and oblation. As Jehovah the Father, by raising up Jesus from the dead, fulfilled his promise to Christ, and sealed hereby and confirmed his promise made unto the fathers; so by it he solemnly testified that Christ's soul travail was everlastingly acceptable to his justice, as also his obedience to the law for elect men, and everlasting righteousness;

and that he having accepted the propitiatory offering of Immanuel, was the God of peace to him and all his seed, whom he viewed and pronounced to be holy, righteous, spotless, and complete in him: to whom he saith, I will be merciful to your unrighteousness, and your sins and your iniquities will I remember no more, (Jer. xxxi. 34.) And here I will give some account of what Christ was raised up unto. He was raised in the same body in which he bore our sins and felt the curse, with all the same parts and members, but his body was changed from being a weak, mortal body, to be immortal, glorious, powerful, and incorruptible. He appeared on his resurrection morn to be the Lord of glory! He He upon his resurrection entered as it were anew on the display of his mediatorial grace, in the new constitution of him to his mediatorial office. He arose from death as the everlasting conqueror of it, to die no more, and with everlasting triumph over it, having at his girdle the keys of death and hell. He is styled the first begotten from the dead," and the first born

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from the dead, the first fruits of them that slept, "the resurrection and the life:" his song when risen as insulting death, having loosed the death bonds of all his saints, may well be said to be this, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death; O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction." His resurrection was his first step to his supreme exaltation, to sit at God's right hand, to appear in the form of God, and shine as the Fellow of the Lord of hosts: he was now invested with all power in heaven and earth; his body was a most glorious body in itself, and a spring of glory unto others. Of the glory of Christ's body, Peter, James, and John, had a glimpse in the transfiguration, (Matt. xvii.) "He was transfigured before them, and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light." Glory was coeval unto his soul from corruption, but the flowing of it unto his body was stopt to qualify him for the work of our redemption, for before he wrought by suffering; and

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if his body had been glorified, his body had been impassable and could not have suffered but at his resurrection this glory broke forth, and as the love of God in his heart was as a boundless ocean of joy; so the Holy Spirit, who was the principle of all the grace in Christ's human nature, was the fountain of glory to it also, and his glory, and his grace are unmeasurable. And because our Lord was thus glorified and thus glorious at his resurrection, hence, as I conceive, it was he appeared to none but saints, at and after he was risen from the dead. Let it be also added, he arose with the same boundless love in his heart to his people, which he manifested towards them in the garden and on the cross: with the same mercy in his bowels, with the same sympathy, pity, and tender feelings in his affections, rejoicing in and delighting to own the relation which subsisted between him and his saying to her who had the honour to be favoured with first conversing with him, when newly risen, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father

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