1 Corinthians 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world to our glory: Light and darkness are here mingled together. It is wisdom, but wisdom in a mystery. We may know from it enough to make us wise unto salvation, but the gospel never proposes to give answers to the catechism of curiosity. Consider — I. THE MYSTERY WHICH LIES IN THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST. It is entirely a mystery to us — 1. How it could comport with the justice of God to lay the punishment of our sins on the head of an innocent Being. He has done it. There is no mystery about that. But we know no more. 2. How justice could be satisfied through such an infliction. We cannot tell. All we know is that Divine justice positively did receive there the very last item of her demands. 3. How Christ could render satisfaction to Divine justice, while, at the same time, He was the Being to whom satisfaction was rendered, and the very Being who rendered it. 4. How it came to pass that, while the Divine nature is utterly unsusceptible of pain and death, nevertheless the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ have all their value and efficacy from the Divine nature of the Victim. We know it is so, but we know nothing further. 5. How there could be, in the "one person" of Christ upon the Cross, such a wonderful union of grandeur and humiliation — of complaining and omnipotence — of immortal Deity and expiring humanity! They are truths, but they are mysteries — Divine mysteries of Divine truth. 6. How that Son on the Cross, in whom the Father was well pleased, could have been abandoned at such a moment, and left to wail, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?". How the love of God should ever have brought Jesus Christ to the Cross. II. THE DEMONSTRATION THAT ALL THIS MYSTERIOUSNESS IS NO GREATER THAN WE OUGHT TO EXPECT ON THE SUBJECT-MATTER BEFORE US. It perfectly accords with all the facts and all the other arrangements of the plan of redemption. In this accordance beams out the wisdom of God. 1. Sin was the great evil which brought our Saviour into the world and took Him to the Cross. And the existence of sin is just as mysterious a matter to us as its expiation. If sin is a mystery, the expiation of it ought to be a mystery also. And so it is. Great is the mystery of godliness, &c. 2. Why did the Son of God select this world as the theatre of His redeeming wonders? Spirits as precious as ours had fallen. Why did God pass angels by when He rescued us? No answer comes, except, "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight." There we must leave it. And if it be a mystery how God came to select this apostate world, it accords with God that that work itself should be a mystery also. 3. There is an entire correspondence between the doctrines of Christ's expiation of sin and satisfaction of justice, and all the other information we have about the Saviour Himself. The incarnation of Jesus ,Christ is just as mysterious to us as His atonement. That Jesus Christ should be able to give strength to the poor cripple's bones, and yet be Himself weary and wayworn — that He should feed thousands of men, and yet be a man of hunger — that He should please the Father, and yet the Father be pleased to bruise Rim, these are things before which faith and love may wonder and adore, but which reason can never explain! 4. There is something truly amazing in the mode of the redemption of sinners. If it were so, that Jesus Christ were coming into this world to ransom sinners, we should naturally have expected that He would come in the chariots of His omnipotence! But He was a poor man, and at the end of His work, instead of receiving any signals of triumph, He was mocked as an impostor and crucified as a malefactor. This is the mode in which God treated His Son! It corresponds with the mysteries of its design. 5. Through this Christ some sinners are brought into favour with God. They are believers. They are adopted into God's family, and He loves them with an unequalled tenderness and strength. But how does He treat them? The very pathway by which they travel to heaven corresponds in wonders with all the rest of their redemption! (L S. Spencer, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: |
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