Chapter 4.

CHAPTER 4.

That our Lord claimed the Divine honour of being the proper Son of God the Father, and laid down his human life in proof of this very truth.

JESUS CHRIST, says St. Paul, “being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but 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 became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,” Philippians 2:6, &c. Hence the carnal Jews, who judged of him merely according to their carnal reason, being offended at him, verified the truth of Isaiah’s prophecy: “He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” But “who shall declare his generation?” The Jews, I say, judging of him according to the flesh, charged him with blasphemy, and “sought to kill him because he said that God was his [idion proper] Father, making himself equal with God;” although, like a true Son, he acknowledged that the Father (in point of paternity) was greater than he, yet he never cleared himself of the supposed blasphemy, but defended himself by proper appeals to his works: “I and the Father are one,” [en esmen,] so intimately one, that “the Son can do nothing of himself, but [like a Divine Son, in the most perfect unity with his Father who precedes him] he does what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever the Father doeth, those also doeth the Son likewise,” whether they be the creation, or the preservation of worlds, the fixing, or the controlling the laws of nature. “For as the Father hath [a Divine and quickening] life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have [a Divine and quickening] life in himself. For as the Father raiseth the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. [Nay, added our Lord, there is one thing which the Father leaves entirely to the Son:] for the Father judgeth no man; but hath committed all judgment to the Son, that all men should honour the Son as they honour the Father,” John 5:18, 26; 10:30. Thus our Lord, far from pleading not guilty to the charge of “making himself equal with God,” proved, by two unanswerable reasons, that Divine honours are due to him as well as to the Father:

(1.) He does the very works of his Father jointly with him: and

(2.) The Father hath, over and above, committed to him the most awful and tremendous of all works—that of judicially killing and saving alive; “for the Father judgeth no man,” in the daily course of providence, as well as in the great day: this Divine work is the Son’s honourable prerogative, that none should scruple to “honour him as they honour the Father?”

Let us see how this Divine Son defended himself against the same charge on another occasion. When he had asserted that “he and his Father were one, the Jews took up stones again to stone him, saying, We stone thee for blasphemy, and because thou, being a man, makest thyself God.” What a fair opportunity had our Lord here to disclaim Divine honours, and to set kindly the Jews to rights, if they had mistaken his meaning! But far from doing this, he tries to convince them of his divinity by a rational argument, and by a farther appeal to his godlike works.

1. By a rational argument: “Is it not (saith he) written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?” John 10:31, &c. The force of this argument may be better understood by a short paraphrase. It is just as if our Lord had said, If the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of David, gives the honorary title of gods to the prophets, judges, and kings of Israel, whom God appointed to be types of me, the Head of the prophets, and the Judge of all the earth, do ye not act very inconsistently with the Scriptures, which cannot be broken, when you suppose that I blaspheme, by saying, “I am the Son of God?” If the bare types and forerunners of me are titular gods in your own account, are you not as unreasonable as you are unjust, to be offended at me for saying, “I am the Son of God?” Whereas I might have roundly said, that I am in union with my Father, “God over all, blessed for ever.” If my shadows are called gods without blasphemy, do ye not break at once through the word of God, and through the bounds of common sense, when ye say, that I, the sum and substance of all types and figures—I, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, who am sent by my Father, with godlike credentials, blaspheme, when I declare that “I am the Son [the proper Son] of God?”

2. After our Lord had advanced this convincing argument, he proceeded to an argument, the strength of which was felt by all those who had eyes and a grain of candour, I mean an appeal to his works. “If I do not the works of my Father, [the works of God,] believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works; so shall ye know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in him, [or to use his former expression,] that I and my Father are one,” John 10:30, 37, 38.

The effect of this last argument shows, that our Lord, far from having made any concession to the Jews, stood to his point, viz. that “he and the Father are one:” that being the proper “Son of God,” he is, in union with his Father, the “one true God;” which he instantly proved by a Divine work: for the Jews, enraged at what appeared to them confirmed blasphemy, “sought again to take him;” but (notwithstanding their impetuous fury) “he escaped out of their hands,” John 10:39. And when at last he suffered himself to be apprehended by them, for the establishment of our faith, and to leave the enemies of his divinity, and the inconsistent admirers of his humanity, without excuse, he sealed with his blood the glorious truth, for which he had been stoned again and again; namely, that he was the very Son of God, to whom the psalmist says, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: therefore God, thy God [and thy Father] hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness,” or hath appointed thee Christ for ever, Psalm 16:6. For when the high priest, standing “up in the midst, asked him, Art thou the Christ? [that very Christ of whom the Prophet Micah saith, ‘Out of Bethlehem shall come forth he that shall be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting?’ Micah 5:2.] Art thou the Son of the Blessed?” that very Son, of whom the Prophet Isaiah says, Unto us “the Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace?” To this double question, which the Jews certainly understood in the high sense of the well-known prophecies by which I illustrate them, as appears from Matthew 2:4, &c—to this awful question Jesus answered, “I AM; and ye shall see the Son of man [whom ye now reject because his form of God is veiled under the form of a servant] sitting on the right hand of Power, and coming [in his form of God] in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, and said, Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death,” Mark 14:61, &c. So true it is, that the open or secret enemies of our Lord’s Deity, who, when we speak of his pre-existence, and of the adoration due to him, as the everlasting Son of the blessed and everlasting Father, cry out, Absurdity! Blasphemy! Idolatry! and, in their indignation, rend the Church as Caiaphas rent his garments, have drunk into the very spirit of the priests and the Pharisees, who led the van of the Jewish mob when it cried, “Away with him!” He is only Joseph and Mary’s son, and of course a proud blasphemer; for “he says that God is his [real and proper] Father, making himself equal with God,” John 5:18.f74