SERMON XI - William Elbert Munsey
CHRIST THE WAY (DISCOURSE III.)
” I am the way, the truth, and the life.”— John 14:6.
CHRIST became “the way” from death to life — How?
By first removing all difficulties out of the way.
I. The first difficulty to be removed out of the way was God’s moral law. The notice of several preliminary truths is here necessary. Jesus Christ, man’s deliverer, had two natures. I am not preaching upon the authenticity of the Scriptures, or upon the divinity and humanity of Christ, or upon the union in Jesus of the Divine and human in one hypostasis or person ; therefore I am authorized by the limitations of my text and subject, and from the very nature of the case — as this series of sermons is a lie if the Scriptures be not true, and redemption is impossible if Jesus be not in some sense both God and man — to waive for the time the task of the elaboration of any philosophical evidences which might be adduced as collateral evidence of the several truths, and assume at once the lofty Bible ground that Jesus was a perfect man with a human body, soul, and spirit, and that in Him dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily — that He was man, that He was God.
That this is the teaching of the Bible with relation to the matter — the whole Bible — no one can dispute ; and when- ever the opposition doctrines are to be sustained, the evidences adduced in their favor always rest upon a philosophy whose fundamental principle is that nothing can be true unless it is comprehensible by the human mind — which philosophy, if it is true, there is nothing true. We have the advantage of Bible statement, they, as far as I know, claim no such advantage — and if the Bible is not true both systems are wrong. We lay this down as the principle upon which we proceed, that the work of each nature was the work of the same person.
The second preliminary truth is that Christ was man’s substitute. This is taught by plain statements both in the Old and New Testaments : ” The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” ” Christ suffered for us.” ” His own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” ” Christ suf- fered for sin, the just for the unjust.” ” While we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” “Christ our passover is sacri- ficed for us.” ” Christ hath given himself for us.” ” Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law.” “Ye are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.” Christ came as our substitute, not to redeem us from under the obligation of obedience, for this He could not do, we sustaining the relations out of which the law arises. But He came to suffer the penalty of the law in our place. But can a substitute be admitted ? Yes, by the will of the lawgiver. A state can do this much. The admission of a substitute to suffer the penalty of the law in place of the offender is, if possible, a higher and more convincing illustration of the unbending majesty, uncompromising nature, and inexorable dignity of the law, than if the offender has suffered the penalty. Law is not relaxed thereby. Provided, however, that the substitution is voluntary upon the part of the substitute, and that he himself is not obnoxious to law ; and provided furthermore that he is accepted by the lawgiver and offender. The man who accepts Christ is only redeemed.
Now man necessarily being a subject of God’s moral government, and necessarily under the obligations of moral law, violated that law. The law could not forgive him, or waive its penalty, without destroying itself. God could not forgive from mere prerogative. The law could not be repealed or set aside. Man could not recall his offence, and his obligations to obey the law being infinite the guilt of his disobedience was infinite, and the law demanded in his case infinite death, and being but finite himself could make no satisfaction— and die he must and die he did. And Jesus came as man’s substitute, not to prevent man from dying, for man was already dead ; but to redeem man from death into life, cancelling man’s debt of judicial obligation by an equivalent which afforded legal satisfaction, and purchasing man the privilege of a second birth. Born once and born dead, he may be born again and born alive. ” Ye must be born again,” said Christ.
Man’s tripartite nature, body, soul, and spirit, was in- volved in the transgression, and condemned under the law. Jesus, as man’s substitute, must be a perfect man, having a tripartite nature, body, soul, and spirit ; for every part of man’s nature must have its suffering representative in the nature of Christ, if man be redeemed ; and it must be suffer- ing paying man’s debt passing in a certain sense under death’s dread penalty, yet issuing in victory and life. Jesus’ suffer- ings were therefore in one sense pneumatical, psychical, and corporeal. In the passion of Christ there were, three con- tests or conflicts in which Jesus suffered, and three victories.
(1.) The life of Christ’s spirit was made the medium of one attack by the powers of darkness : — ” When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you that one of you shall betray me.” The victory is recorded when after Judas left the room, “Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” (2.) The life of Christ’s soul was made the medium of the second attack by the powers of darkness in Gethsemane ; — ” My soul is exceeding sorrow- ful, even unto death.” The victory is recorded in the words, ” O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, ex- cept I drink it, thy will be done.” (3.) The life of Christ’s body was made the medium of the third attack by the powers of darkness on the cross. The victory is recorded when the angel ” Said unto the women, Fear not ye : for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here : for h^ is risen, as he said.”
But the sufferings of Jesus which redeemed us from under the penalty of the law, by satisfying the law’s demands, were not abstract bodily sufferings, but sufferings of the soul and spirit. The sufferings of Jesus’ body, though severe, were with relation to the great fact only a circumstance, and with relation to the great fact the smallest of the sufferings of Christ. Man’s soul had sinned, and man’s spirit was dead ; the sin of the soul had to be atoned for, and the spirit brought to life again. There is a difference between atonement and redemption. The sufferings and death of man’s body were only consequential upon the great penalty, and the sufferings and death of Christ’s body could have no higher value with reference to abstract atonement. The mere death of Jesus’ body in the abstract was not the saving fact preeminently in redemption as a scheme, for Christ pronounced the scheme finished before His body died. It is true that Christ’s blood is taught in Scripture to be the procuring cause of man’s redemption, but it is only so because being the life of the body it symbolizes life in such a sense — that Jesus gave His life for our life — life for life.
But it was necessary to redemption that Jesus’ body should die, not only on account of its relations to His suffering mind and spirit which necessitated its death, and the unity of man’s nature in its triplicity which He came to redeem ; but that he might pass from the low fleshly life of man’s present condition in its close connection with this world, to the high, spiritual, and supernatural life of the Holy Ghost in that life’s close connection with God. ” For Christ also hath once suffered for sin, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit.” Christ’s body, that which expresses man’s relations to the earth, died, that His spirit, which expresses man’s relations to God, might move into a higher life, including in itself spirit, soul, and a spiritual body ; insuring a like passage for man, and opening a way from this life into a higher, or more correctly opening a way from death to life. The sufferings of Christ which redeemed us were in the main sufferings of the soul. The soul is that middle part of man’s nature, intermediate between body and spirit, and expresses man’s relations to the great world, ” especially the world of spirits.” It is the seat of man’s ego — his individuality — it is that which he calls himself, and which contains in itself a complete definition of human nature. It is the seat of man’s Spiritual experience, the seat of his affections and passions, and the organ of all emotions of pleasure and sorrow.”
Now in Christ’s soul was His greatest suffering and greatest conflict. In Gethsemane He said, ” My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death ” — sorrow to the greatest degree, a sorrow so great it might kill — a realization of all the anguish of conflict with violent death. The agony of His soul was the realization in His experience of the aggregated and unified power of all the sins of the world. It was not dread of agony, but an agony it self — an agony so great that drops of sweat mixed with blood rolled off His brow. Agony literally means a struggle, a contest for victory. The desperate condition and despairing woe of humanity, with God’s judgment upon the race, fell upon the soul of Christ, and was realized in its inmost depths. The immediate cause of man’s death was his separation from God, and Jesus realized all the horrors of such a death, when He cried ” My God, my God ! why hast thou forsaken me?” His whole nature at that moment appeared to suffer at once, and in His own experience He realized the death of mankind — ■ tasting death for every man. ” It is finished — The law was satisfied”
The law required suffering and death ; Christ was man’s substitute, and He suffered and died. The law required man’s suffering and death ; Christ was a man that He might be able to suffer and die. The law required suffering and death equal to man’s infinite guilt ; Christ was God as well as man, and His infinitely divine nature imparted infinite merit to the sufferings and death of His human nature. Christ was man that He might suffer and die ; He was God that His sufferings and death might be of infinite value ; and both natures were so united in one person that one could have the ad- vantage of the work of the other, and the other have the advantage of the merits of the one. Christ paid the whole debt whereby the sin of Adam is entailed upon any man; hence man is responsible only for his individual sins, and Christ also paid this debt, which payment is only credited to you as a person when you accept Christ by a faith in Him which involves the loss of yourself, so that the law sees not you but Him. Before the law, you and Christ must be One, as He and the Father are one. ” Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word ; that they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art one in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.”
You must be “in Christ.” “In Christ shall all be made alive.” The law must see no one but Christ. He paid it all. He owed the law no debt. And if He passed under death’s dreadful shadow, and His body indeed did die, it was voluntary. ” I lay down may life for the sheep.” ” I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power tc lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” The great act which makes you and Christ one, is faith, the principle of spiritual life. Sufferings and death paid the debt, but if Christ had not passed from under death’s dread- ful shadow, His sufferings and death would have been of no value to us. — “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith also vain.” ” For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son ; much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Properly qualified by nature Christ took our place under law and cancelled our debt of judicial obligation by an equivalent which afforded legal satisfaction — removed the moral law, the first difficulty in redemption, out of the way — and God for the sake of the intrinsic value of His sacrifice, is competent to pardon sin, though infinitely criminal in its guilt.
2. The second difficulty was Gods infinite Justice. Christ being incarnate God, and voluntarily suffering the penalty of the law, thereby sustaining the authority of the law and the authority of God’s moral government, recognizing God’s right as a lawgiver and governor, and accomplishing His whole work within the compass of the normal and unalterable relations of both parties, this attribute of God’s nature was satisfied, and the second difficulty was removed out of the way.
3. The third difficulty was God’s infinite holiness. The immaculate and holy Immanuel having suffered the penalty of the law, exhibited God’s hatred to sin, and opening a fountain to wash away all moral pollution, met the demands of the Divine holiness. Indeed, he made accessible to man the very Holy of Holies, by opening a way whose name itself was-” Holiness.” “And a highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called, The way of holiness ; the unclean shall not pass over it ; but it shall be for those ; the way- faring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon ; it shall not be found there ; but the redeemed shall walk there ” (Is. xxxv. 8). You see at once, the third difficulty was re- moved out of the way.
4. The fourth difficulty was God’s infinite majesty. The human and Divine being united in one person in Christ, and Christ being man’s representative, humanity was so elevated that the dignity of the Divine nature was not compromised in extending redemption to the sinner. Also, in virtue of the incarnation of God in Christ Jesus, the blood symbolizing the life of Jesus being the price paid for man’s redemption, elevated man in proportion to its own value, and repaired the insulted dignity of God’s nature by a reparation equal in merits to the character of the dignity itself. It is clear that through Christ the fourth difficulty was removed out of the way.
5. The fifth difficulty was the existence, stability, and au- thority of God’s government. The sufferings and death of Christ, though expiatory with reference to God are a punish- ment with reference to man, and Christ having suffered an equivalent for this punishment in place of the sinner, and adequately compensating God’s government by an equivalent for man’s offence, rendering the exercise of pardon consistent with the government, fully maintained the existence, stability, and authority of God’s government; thus removing the fifth difficulty out of the way.
6. The sixth difficulty was found in the loyalty and purity of other intelligences. Christ being the Son of God, His death was a greater manifestation of the righteousness of God, the integrity of God’s government, the certainty that sin could not be committed with impunity, and God’s hatred to sin, than if man had been punished himself, therefore nothing would more likely deter the universe from committing 3 like offence. And man’s recovery of his place in the great social confraternity of spiritual beings, made in redemption to depend upon the absolute condition of personal purity, he could not therefore injure the character of others by contact with them. Therefore, the sixth difficulty, as militating against man’s redemption was removed out of the way.
7. The seventh difficulty was found in the unity of the system of God. The system of God is a unity in all its parts — physical, spiritual, and moral. Sin by a figure of speech is a foreign substance in this unity, and it and the sinner must be cast out. Christ came as an embodiment of the recuperative power of the system, and by converting man, converting him from a foreign body to a homogeneous one — filling him with love. Thus Christ is eliminating sin — the foreign element in the system — and gradually healing the injuries done by sin to the system. Therefore, the seventh difficulty, found in the unity of the system of God, was removed out of the way of man’s redemption.
8. The eighth difficulty was diabolical power. Christ satisfied the law under which as a part of the penalty man was held in captivity under Satan, and was in man’s stead bruised in a penal sense by diabolical power, afterwards bruising the head of that power, subjugating it, and chaining it to the wrheels of the chariot of redemption ; and diabolical power, the eighth difficulty was removed out of the way.
Having removed all the difficulties out of the way, Christ laid the groundwork for man’s redemption from death into life.
(1) Armed with his Divine credentials, Christ descended among men, as God manifest in the flesh, and by His life, works, and sufferings, death, and resurrection, exhibited in the very presence of humanity His ability and willingness to save sinners. Thus according to the laws of the human mind, governing the mind with relation to the mind’s beliefs, and in which mind faith in God, the principle of spiritual life, must be lodged, made the mind’s exercise of such faith possible, laying down the exercise of such faith as the first, unalterable, and philosophic condition of man’s personal salvation. So plainly did Christ lay down grounds for the possibility of the exercise of faith in God, the principle of spiritual life, that unbelief, the principle of sin, ever after- wards was voluntary upon the part of the sinner.
(2) The touching and fascinating sweetness of the char- acter and life of the God-man, connected with the benevolence of his acts, and the fact that his incarnation, humiliation, sufferings, and death were an expression of God’s love for sinners, made love for God the essence of spiritual life possible upon the part of man. And so well did Christ do His work in this respect, that enmity to so loving a God, the essence of sin. ever afterwards was voluntary upon the part of the sinner. If God’s love for man had not been manifested before man’s face in an incarnation, the sinner could never have loved God.
(3) Christ, by laying the groundwork for faith and love, laid the groundwork for obedience to God the development of spiritual life, as well as exemplifying the possibility of obedience, under certain conditions, upon the part of man. Christ in his life, sufferings, and death, having laid the ground- work of man’s resurrection from death to life, making faith in God the principle of spiritual life, love to God the es- sence of spiritual life, and obedience to God the development of spiritual life, possible upon the part of man, passed from death into life Himself, leaving open the doors of death’s dungeons behind Him that the race might follow ; and living again Himself, the work His death left in the ab- stract, became a concrete dispensation of power to every man who believed. Faith is the hand of the sinner which lays hold upon a rising Saviour, and if its grasp breaks not when the Saviour lives the sinner lives too. And as Jesus was dead, or passed under death’s dark shadow, and is alive again, and though once dead is now alive forevermore, hold- ing the keys of hell and death in His hands, so the man who trusteth Jesus, and continueth trusting Him will never die. Then is not Jesus the life? Eternal life? When Jesus died redemption’s saving power was potential — life for sinners was possible ; when Jesus rose into a new and higher life, death’s conqueror, redemption’s saving power became dynamic — life for sinners became an actuality. He paid our debt in death, but saves us by his life — ” I am the life.”
As some men are saved and some are lost, however, to treat of man’s redemption individually would so complicate my theme, that this sermon would almost be unending. I therefore treat Him as a race including only God’s elect, or those who choose life, as the grand scheme prospectively sweeps onward. As a race, like an orb, man passed from God beyond the boundaries of normal being into the im- measurable and starless realms of night, to wander in tin- orbed, erratic, and lawless anarchy, dashing against demoni- acal orbs tenanting the darkness, then rebounding hasting away in reflexive motion through the pathless abysm, to be jarred, battered, misshaped, and fractured with the appul- sions of other collisions. Sin had severed the bond of con- nection between man and God, upon’ which man’s spiritual life depended. Sin had severed the attractive power of love, the centripetal force which bound man to God, and his lawless motion was now the effect of man’s individuality, the uncountervailed centrifugal force.
Christ, the gift of the Father’s love, actuated by love Him- self, and acting within the philosophic compass of love, the recuperative power of God’s moral system, laid aside His crown, divested himself of His glory, and upon wings of mercy flew from the throne of heaven into the darkness, overtaking the wandering orb, and fastened again the cord of love — so means the word religion — re-ligo. He tied again the cord of love and summoning into dynamic manifestation the potential energies of universal being to assist in the mighty work, is gradually bringing man rolling in reclaimed beauty back to his native orbit, readjusting the harmony of his relations to God, to the system of God, to the laws of the system, the harmony of his own social and domestic relations, and the harmony of his own constitution and powers.
Christ accomplished man’s redemption without changing a normal principle or law of universal being. He became, therefore, in the highest sense, “The Truth.” Truth is the duplication of facts. It is the philosophic condition of facts, hence in the concrete, it is, whatever is. It is the philosophic condition of facts abstracted. And as God’s uni- versal system of facts is a unity, so truth is the simplest and grandest of all unities. Christ said of himself, ” I am …. the truth.” He did not make such an announcement with reference to his own abstract existence and personality. In this sense it was no more true of him than it is of us. He announced himself as ” the truth ” with reference to the fact as the way from death to life he conformed in nature and work, and every other way, to every fact involved directly or indirectly, wherever found, in the origination, constitution, execution, establishment, and perfection of the scheme of man’s redemption.
Man’s intellectual, moral, and physical natures, with all their respective peculiarities, redundancies, and effects, in- cluding every fact in his condition ; considered with refer- ence to the relations he sustained to every being, thing, and principle in the universe; with reference to the claims of every extrinsic thing ; with reference to all his obligations, aims, and ends — constituted a system of facts. And Christ without altering one of them as a prior condition to the commencement of his work, constructed a way from death to life, conforming in the construction to every especial one of the facts, as truth must always conform to the fact of which it is the duplicate, every one of the facts included in the construction as a fundamental and archetypical exigency to be adapted in the construction, and provided for in the construction. Christ being “the way” to life, and as such ” the truth,” is necessarily the only way. There can be but one exact representation of anything. The number of rep- resentations may be multiplied, but if they are the truth they are exact and correct as to the fact, hence one and the same. Not so ‘with error, never correct, it may be wrong in many ways, and every way essentially different, and be error still. In fact, such is characteristic of all error. There is but one true religion in the world, yet there are a thousand heresies. Christ as “the way” being ” the truth,” is therefore the only way. “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Christ is “the way” — Glorious doctrine! Christ is “the truth ” — exemplified, demonstrated, adorned, omnipotent, ir- resistible, unconquerable, unalterable, incarnated truth. But grander, grandest of all, He is the Life.
He is ” the life.” What was the chief glory of Paradise ? What did man lose, and by losing it lost his all ? What was threatened with destruction in case he sinned ? What did he desire most ? Life ! Life ! He ran weeping through the earth crying Life ! Life ! But there was no life. Jes.is came upon the scene, and announced ” I am the life.” The first convert shouted ” Eureka.” Jesus came as the truthful way, for us, to life. It follows that we must have that life, that generic fact, the truth we lost. Life is the essential and. vital form of all intelligent existence. It is the total of all rewards and its destruction the sum of all punishments. If Jesus is not the life, he is not the way, nor truth. If he is not the life, he is nothing. When we lost life, we lost all ; and if we do not gain it back, we gain nothing. Life was the whole of Paradise — the thing which was guarded. If the way lead to paradise, it must lead to life ; if the guards are removed at all, it must be from around the tree of life. The way is opened, the guards removed, and its fruit is ripening for the race. When a man is converted he has regained his Paradise. But Jesus stopt not in the world’s Eden, but made an eternal breach in the walls on the other side, and laying his cross for a foundation sill, threw up a splendid way to heaven ; and from heaven’s throne says : “Come up higher.” — ” Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”
Saint John describes the future abode of the righteous under the figure of a magnificent city. This city was made of gold, was fifteen hundred miles in circumference, three hundred and seventy-five miles high, had twelve gates, each made of a single pearl, and was surrounded with a wall of polished jasper two hundred and sixteen feet high. This city rested on twelve foundations of precious stones, disposed in layers one above the other, each foundation composed of a single gem. The city was paved with solid gold, and located in a new earth. In this city the most splendid of all Bible symbols, was the throne of God and of the Lamb, from which, says John, proceeded the river of life. Probably, beneath the glorious throne were caverns walled and arched with diamonds from whose glittering pendants percolating nectar dropped, from which the fountains of living waters burst in a thousand limpid springs, and uniting, like a stream of liquid crystal embanked in emerald, flowed through the city, and sweeping beyond the walls rolled all round the sealess and renovated world.
In this city, symbolizing the heavenly state made accessible to man by Christ ” the way,” was also the tree of life, not a single tree, but they grew along all the streets and threw their cooling shades upon every pavement along which the citizens of heaven’s metropolis, affranchised, and redeemed, ever passed, and repassed in beautiful promenade ; and lined also both banks of the river of life, their giant trunks upreared above palatial hills, and towers gleaming in silvery sheen, and spires glittering with diamond frost, and domes resplendent and spangled with gems. These trees were roofed with fadeless verdure, and their branches, off- shooting and- wide-spreading, were laden with immortal fruit, monthly ripening, free to pluck, and taste, and eat, and pluck, and taste, and eat forever, no sword guarding or cherubim forbidding. There it is life, and life forever — eternal life. Life is glorious, though it be but for a moment— but who can measure, fathom, or weigh the period of its duration ? Take your rule — Drop your plummet — Lift your scales — It is eternal life Go to eternity’s chronometer and mark the flight of cycles infinite, and count the vibrations of its pendulum ever going and coming ; count the strokes upon its sounding bell, dying away in music amid the flowery hills of heaven, each repeating to its last murmur, ” Forever ! Forever ! ” Chronicler of circling cycles, repeat the period of your record — “forever ! ” ” forever ! ” — Eternity ! Eternity ! Life is heaven, and eternity the period of its enjoyment. Eternal Life. Eternal life is heaven epitomized, and Jesus is the way to it. Let us go I O, let us go !
