Particular reasons why God adopts the method of reconciliation by the gospel 1/2

  Reason First.  God lays this method of reconciling sinners to himself by Christ, that he might give the deepest testimony of his perfect hatred to sin in that very act wherein he expresseth the highest love and mercy to sinners.  No act of mercy and love like that of pardoning sin.  To receive a reconciled sinner into heaven is not so great an advance as to take a rebel into a state of favour and reconciliation.  The terms here are infinitely wider.  There is reason to expect the one, none to look for the other.  It is pure mercy to pardon, but truth, being pardoned, to save, Micah 7:19, 20.  Well, when God puts forth this very act, he will have the creature see his hatred to sin written upon the face of that love he shows to the sin­ner.  And truly this was but needful, if we consider how hard it is for our corrupt hearts to conceive of God’s mercy without some dishonourable reflection upon his holiness.  ‘I kept silence,’ saith God, Ps. 50:21.  And what inference doth the wicked draw from thence?  ‘Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself,’ that is, ‘thou thoughtest I liked sin as well as thyself.’  Now, if so plain and easy a text as God’s forbearing mercy be wrested, and a false gloss, so repugnant, not only to the end of God therein, but to the holy nature of God, imposed, how much more subject is forgiving mercy—that is so far superlative to that, and infinitely more luscious to the sinner’s palate—to be abused?  Some men gaze so long on this pleasing object that they are not willing to look off, and see any other attribute of God. 

Now, in this way of reconciling himself to sinners by Christ, he hath given such an argument to convince sinners that he is an implacable hater of sin, as hath not its fellow. It is true, every threat in the Bible tells us that sin finds no favour in God's heart; the guilty consciences of men, that hunt them home, and follow them into their own bosoms, continually yelling and crying dam­nation in their ears; the remarkable judgments which now and then take hold of sinners in this world; and much more the furnace which is heating for them in another world, show abundantly how hot and burning God's heart within him is in wrath against sin.  But, when we see him run upon his Son, and lay the en­venomed knife of his wrath to his throat, yea, thrust it into his very heart, and there let it stick—for all the supplications and prayers which in his bitter agonies he offered up to his Father, ‘with strong crying and tears’—without the least sparing of him, till he had forced his life, in a throng of sad groans and sighs, out of his body, and therewith paid justice the full debt, which he had, as man’s surety, undertaken to dis­charge—this, this I say, doth give us a greater advantage to conceive of God’s hatred to sin, than if we could stand in a place to see what entertainment the damned find in hell, and at once behold all the tor­ments they endure.  

Alas! their backs are not broad enough to bear the whole weight of God’s wrath at once—it being infinite and they finite, which, if they could, we would not find them lying in that prison for nonpayment.  But behold one here who had the whole curse of sin at once upon his back.  Indeed, their sufferings are infinite extensivè—extensively, because everlasting; but his were infinite intensivè —intensively.  He paid in one sum what they shall be ever paying, and yet never come to the last farthing of.  ‘The chastisement of our peace was upon him,’ Isa. 53:5.  ‘the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all,’ ver. 6.  Or [as it is in the margin], ‘he hath made the iniquity of us all to meet in him.’  The whole curse met in him, as all streams do in the sea—a vir­tual collection of all the threatenings denounced against sin, and all laid on him.  And now, take but one step more, and consider in how near relation Christ stood to God, as also the infinite and unspeakable love with which this relation was filled, and mutually endeared on each hand, and this at the very same time when he ascended the stage for this bloody tragedy to be acted on him in; and, I think, that you are at the highest stair the word of God can lead you to ascend by, into the meditation of this subject.

           Should you see a father that has but one only son, and can have no more, make him his mittimus to prison; come into court himself, and sit judge upon his life; and with his own lips pass sentence of death upon him, and order that it be executed with the most exquisite torments that may be, yea, go to the place himself, and with his own eyes, and those not full of water, as mourning for his death, but full of fire and fury—yea, a countenance in every way so set as might tell all that see it, the man took pleasure in his child’s death;—should you see this, you would say, Surely he bitterly hates his son, or the sin his son hath committed.  This you see in God the Father towards his Son. It was he, more than men or devils, that procured his death.  Christ took notice of this, that the warrant for his death had his Father's hand and seal to it.  ‘Shall I not drink of the cup my Father gives me?’  Yea, he stands by and rejoiceth in it.  His blood was the wine that made glad the heart of God—‘It pleased the Lord to bruise him,’ Isa. 53:10.  When God corrects a saint he doth it, in a manner, unwillingly; but when Christ suffers, it pleaseth him; and not this from want of love in his heart to Christ, nor that any disobedience in Christ had hardened his Father’s against him —for he never displeased him—but from that hatred he had to sin, and from zeal to exalt his mercy towards sinners, by satisfying his justice on his Son.