ULTITUDES of men have died, but only one Christ. All others died by sin, but he alone for sin. How wondrous is the nature of this death! How deep its significance! How vast its results! How far beyond the human faculties to invent a scheme of redemption of whose grandeur, even when revealed, man is unable adequately to conceive!

      "Christ died for our sins according to the [167] Scriptures." "He laid down his life for us." "He bare our sins in his own body on the tree." What transcendent facts are these! How full of meaning! How full of mystery! How full of the hope of deliverance! Is sin, indeed, put away? Is there pardon for the guilty and life for the dead? Has a substitute been found for the condemned to endure the penalty in his stead? Have the guilty been, indeed, thereby set free from the consequences of transgression? If so, then why these fears, these pains, these sorrows of earth, these wars and fightings, these crimes and desolations? Why these funereal rites, these mourning urns, these monuments of death? Have the divine purposes been frustrated? Has Jesus shed his blood and given himself for the life of the world in vain? Ah! no; but man, untaught of God, ever conceives amiss of spiritual things, and occupies himself with the visible and the temporal rather than with the unseen and the eternal. Unconscious of his true condition, he comprehends not the deliverance which the Gospel brings, and, since it proffers not exemption from bodily suffering [168] or from natural death, he regards it with indifference or rejects it with disdain.

      How incorrect a conception, alas, it would be of the work of Christ, were we to suppose that he came merely to prevent the enforcement of the penalties of sin by enduring these for us! How narrow a view of the efficacy of the Sin-Offering upon Calvary, to imagine it merely a species of commercial substitution, an equivalent exchange, or the ground of mere juridical acquittal! Truly, the death of Christ of itself prevented the infliction of no penalty, compromised none of the eternal principles of justice, frustrated the fulfillment of no divine decrees. The world of the ungodly has still remained alienated from God by wicked works and "dead in trespasses and in sins." Over all of Adam's race death has still reigned, alike over infant and adult, saint and sinner. Far nobler, higher, better purposes were involved in the death of Jesus than the mere removal of the penalties of man's transgression. He came "to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." He came "to destroy the works of the devil," to introduce a [169] mighty era in the affairs of the spiritual and temporal universe, before which he was set forth as a propitiation to declare God's righteousness, that he might be just and yet the justifier of him that believes. This wondrous death affects not only the consequences of sin, but sin itself. It relates not merely to Adam's fallen race, but reaches in its vast results to the unseen world, to the throne of the Eternal, to the moral and physical destinies of the universe. Through it, is to be destroyed that mighty spiritual foe who has the power of death, and who, with all his rebel hosts, shall be consigned to everlasting fire. Through it, even the heavens and the earth shall be remodeled, and nature itself readjusted to new conditions of glory and of beauty.

      Meanwhile, is it not true that Jesus "hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light? "Has not the Gospel been preached to the dead? Have not they that were dead heard the voice of the Son of God and lived? Most assuredly has it been the work of Christ to deliver souls from death in this, its highest and truest sense--a death in trespasses [170] and sins--a state of separation of the soul from the favor and fellowship of God. This separation he endured on our account--a separation which probably took place from the moment in which he was "delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God," and the near approach of which wrung from him the bloody sweat in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the plaintive appeal: "O my Father! if it be possible, let this cup pass from me;" as well as that pathetic exclamation upon the cross: "My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" This was that veritable and awful death of which alone the patient sufferer complained, and of which all other deaths may be considered but as symbolic or consequential--a death which had rested upon the whole human race since Adam by transgression fell, who, in the very day in which he sinned, was severed from the Divine communion which he had enjoyed in Eden. Hence, the sacrifice of Christ could neither anticipate nor prevent the execution of this dread penalty which was already enforced. Deliverance from its power alone was possible, and this [171] alone to those made conscious of their condition and willing to be freed. Thus, though the Gospel be preached to the dead, it is only those who HEAR that shall live. For "faith cometh by hearing," and "God gave his only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life." The impartation of life here could not follow as a necessary consequence of Christ's assumption of humanity and his sacrifice for sin. A death that rests upon moral and spiritual causes can be replaced only by a life which equally springs from a moral and spiritual source; and where will may choose and responsibility exist, there only may such a death be suffered or such a life be given. It is the individual, who through faith has become dead to sin, that is made alive to God through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. On the other hand, it is he that "believeth not the Son" who "shall not see life," and upon whom the wrath of God shall continue to abide. How terrible that hopeless death which broods over the souls of the ungodly, and culminates in "an everlasting destruction from the [172] presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power!"

      But there is a death which Jesus died for man, of a different nature and followed by different results, so far as it relates to humanity in general, viz.: the separation of the body from the soul. This death was one of the consequences of man's separation from the Divine presence in Eden, when he was cut off from the tree of life, and his bodily frame was left to exhaust its unrenewed energies through lapse of years, and to return finally to the dust from which it had been taken. It is, then, to the frailty and perishableness of the body alone that this death is due. The soul itself knows no decay, and neither needs nor desires to be unclothed. It is not the soul which abandons the body, but it is the tottering frame which, with enfeebled vitality and worn-out tissues, sinks into ruin and forsakes the soul. In the order justly indicated by the sacred penman, it is this mortal tabernacle which, by a necessity that is inevitable, is resolved into its elements, while the freed spirit returns, unchanged, to God who gave it. This death, too, [173] Jesus could have experienced when his human life and human nature should have fulfilled the common destiny of humanity. But it was not permitted to be so. "His life was taken from the earth." In the full vigor of manhood, and with all the years of maturity unspent, and all the latent energies of man's corporeal being yet unwasted, he gave this life for us, and by cruel hands was crucified and slain. He endured this separation of soul and body by violence, as the Divine Victim, "the Lamb of God" who should "take away the sin of the world." It is this wondrous sacrifice which here, with appropriate material elements, we now commemorate. This bread is his body broken for us. This wine is his blood shed for us. As material beings we may learn, through material images alone, the deeper spiritual lessons of the world unseen, and these emblems, in imperfectly shadowing forth the crucifixion of Jesus, show forth a death, which, however terrible, was itself but expressive or adumbrative of that more awful separation of the soul from God, and those inexpressible and mysterious sufferings which he endured on our [174] account. Nevertheless, as this bread and wine represent to us the body and blood of Christ, and in our hearts we should here behold him openly set forth crucified before us, so does the crucifixion of Jesus embody in itself to the world, the entire sacrifice, the entire visible manifestation of the Divine Sin-Offering. It is in this, then, that to us every thing is included; and, however justly the mind may frame distinctions or partially penetrate into the unspeakable mysteries of the death of Jesus, it is Christ and him crucified that alone should occupy our hearts and consecrate our lives. It was in his own body on the tree that he bore our sins. It was through the stripes inflicted upon him that we have been healed. It was upon the cross that he was made "a curse for us," and suffered in all their forms, however mysterious and manifold, the penalties of our transgressions.

      Christ having, by thus "offering himself once for all," opened up a new and living way of access to God, it is the individual who accepts the Divine mercy, and, abandoning sin, returns to God, that is released from that penalty of [175] spiritual death which rests upon the world. He was previously alive to sin and dead to God; but is now dead to sin and "alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord," and can experience no more that death from which he has been freed. In this sense it is that "he that believeth can never die," that "he shall not taste death," that "he shall not see death." The Divine favor and fellowship shall be no more withdrawn, for the life of the believer is hid with Christ in God, and there can be no more separation for those who have "put on Christ," who walk in him, who live by faith in the Son of God, and are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise--the earnest of an eternal inheritance. But the Christian, like others, must still experience the separation of the body from the soul. From this the death of Christ has not released him, for this penalty is demanded in accordance with the inflexible decree of God, and the unchanging purpose of him who has higher things in store for man than that he should dwell forever in the flesh. Hence, "it is appointed to all men once to die;" but, oh, wondrous revelation! [176] since Jesus truly partook of our nature, uniting it with the divine; since he endured this bodily death also on our account, and, having power to lay down thus his life and power to take it again, has accordingly renewed again the connection of body and soul, resuming that crucified form in which he suffered, so is it equally the divine appointment that all who thus in Adam die shall be made alive in Christ, and that this separation of body and soul shall also be terminated by a reunion.

      There is this difference, however, that, as the death of the body is not moral or spiritual, but natural and in harmony with the inflexible laws of the material system, not depending on choice or human will or purpose, but necessarily affecting the entire race without exception, so the reunion effected in the resurrection of Jesus necessarily relates to all, and results in the resurrection of all, not depending on human choice or will or any moral reason, but taking place in virtue of the same inflexible divine purposes and arrangements, which for sin had consigned all men to the grave. As the first fruits give token [177] that all succeeding plants of similar nature shall, in like manner, attain to fruitage and produce the ripe corn in the ear, so the resurrection of Christ as "the first fruits of them that slept," gives evidence that the resurrection of the body is the final ordination of God, and that as Jesus is the "plague of death," so will he be also the "destruction of the grave." Hence, while in addressing the Jews in reference to that death to God which rested upon men, he said: "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live," he presently added, in relation to the death of the body: "Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in the which they that are in their graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth--they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation."

      How perfect, then, in power, how complete in fullness is the work of Christ! How far-reaching the consequences of his death, and how glorious the salvation he accomplishes by his life! How precious the assurances of his mercy, faithfulness, [178] and truth! How blessed the hope of his return! How fully has he now taken away the sting of death, and how sweetly he "gives to his beloved sleep," during those peaceful hours which usher in for them the bright morning of an eternal day. [179]

[CITS 167-179]