Christ’s Person (Charles H. Spurgeon, 1834-1892)

2 Corinthians 4:4

“In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” 

The glory of the gospel lies very much in the glory of our Lord’s person. He Who is the Savior of men is God—“over all, God blessed for ever” (Rom 9:5). Is it not written, “When he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him” (Heb 1:6)? With the angels of God, we worship Jesus Christ as God.

Our Redeemer is also man—man like ourselves with this exception: in Him there is no taint of natural depravity, and no act of sin has ever stained His character. Behold the glory of Him Who is God and man mysteriously united in one person!3 He is unique: He is the brightness of the Father’s glory and the brother born for adversity (Heb 1:3; Pro 17:17). This is the gospel—that the Son of God Himself gloriously undertook the salvation of men and therefore was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory (Joh 1:14). If we had here a vast hospital full of sick folk, it would be the best of news for those languishing4 therein, if I could tell them that a great physician had devoted himself to their healing; and the more I could extol5 the physician who had come to visit them, the more would there be of good news for them. If I could say to them, “The physician who is coming to succor6 you is possessed of infallible wisdom and unerring skill, and in him are united loving tenderness and infinite power,” how they would smile upon their beds! Why, the very news would half restore them!

Should it not be much more so with desponding and despairing souls when they hear that He Who has come to save is none other than the glorious Christ of God? The mysteriously majestic person of Christ is the mainstay of the gospel. He Who is able to save is no angel and no mere man; but He is “Emmanuel…God with us” (Mat 1:23). Infinite are His resources, boundless is His grace. O ye guilty ones, who lie upon beds of remorse, ready to die of grief, here is a Savior such as you need. When you think of what you are and despair, think also of what He is, and take heart. If I made you doubt the deity of the Savior, I should cut away the foundation of your only hope; but while you see Him to be God, you remember that nothing is too hard for Him. If I caused you to doubt His proper manhood, I should also rob you of comfort, since you would not recognize in Him the tender sympathy that grows out of kinship. Beloved, the Lord Jesus stands before you, commissioned by the eternal God, with the Spirit of the Lord resting upon Him without measure (Joh 3:34); and thus, being in nature and person the first and the best, His message of salvation is to you most full and sure, and His glory is gospel to you.

The glory of Christ lies not only in His person, but in His love. Remember this and see the gospel that lies in it. From all eternity, the Son of God has loved His people: even from of old his “delights were with the sons of men” (Pro 8:31). Long before He came on earth, He so loved the men whom His Father gave Him that He determined to be one with them and for their redemption to pay the dreadful price of life for life. He saw the whole company of His chosen in the glass of His foreknowledge and loved them with an everlasting love. Oh, the love that glowed in the heart of our Redeemer “in the beginning” (Joh 1:1)! That same love will never know an end. Herein to us is His glory. He loved us so that heaven could not hold Him; He loved us so that He descended to redeem us; and having come among us amid our sin and shame, He loves us still. “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end” (Joh 13:1). Love, thou hast reached thine utmost glory in the heart of the divine Savior! And the glory of this love, which is without beginning, boundary, change, or close, is the very life-blood of the gospel. The love of Jesus is the glad tidings of great joy! Our great physician loves the sick and delights to heal them. He comes into the wards among the palsied7 and the plague-stricken with an intense longing to bless them. Jesus is the sinner’s friend…A gracious gospel lies in the glory of the love of Christ!

This being so, beloved, we next see the glory of His incarnation.8 To us, it was the glory of Christ that He was born at Bethlehem and dwelt at Nazareth. It looks like dishonor that He should be the carpenter’s son; but throughout all ages this shall be the glory of the Mediator,9 that He deigned10 to be partaker of our flesh and blood. There is glory in His poverty and shame; glory in His having nowhere to lay His head; glory in His weariness and hunger. Surpassing glory springs from Gethsemane and the bloody sweat, from Calvary and the death of the cross. All heaven could not yield Him such renown as that that comes from the spitting and the scourging, the nailing and the piercing. A glory of grace and tenderness surrounds the incarnate God; and this, to those convinced of sin, is the gospel. When we see God in human flesh, we expect reconciliation. When we see that He took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses, we hope for pardon and healing. Born of a virgin, our Lord has come among us and has lived on earth a life of service and of suffering: there must be hope for us. He came not into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved (Joh 3:17). See, I pray you, the glory of His life of doing good, of working miracles of mercy, of tender care for the fallen, and ask yourselves whether there is not in His life among men good news for all sad hearts. Did God Himself cover His glory with a veil of our inferior clay? Then He means well to men. Humanity, thus honored by union with the Godhead, is not utterly abhorred. In the Word made flesh, we see the glory of God; and noting how love predominates, how condescending pity reigns, we see in this a gospel of grace for all believing men.

The glory of Christ is further seen in His atoning sacrifice. But you stop me and say, “That was His humiliation and His shame.” Yes, it is true; and therefore, it is His glory. Is not the Christ to every loving heart most of all glorious in the death of the cross? What garment doth so well become our Beloved as the vesture11 dipped in His own blood (Rev 19:13)? He is altogether lovely, let Him be arrayed as He may; but when our believing hearts behold Him covered with the bloody sweat, we gaze upon Him with adoring amazement and rapturous12 love. His flowing crimson bedecks13 Him with a robe more glorious than the imperial purple. We fall at His feet with sevenfold reverence when we behold the marks of His passion. Is He not most of all illustrious as our dying substitute? Beloved, here lies the marrow of the gospel: Jesus Christ suffered in our stead. He “his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (1Pe 2:24). That glory of His cross, which we again aver14 to be greater glory than any other, is gospel to us. On His cross, He bore the whole weight of divine justice in our place; the iron rod of Jehovah, which must have broken us in pieces like potters’ vessels, fell on Him. He “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phi 2:8); and in that act, He slew death and overcame him that had the power of death, that is, the devil…But the glory of His sacrificial death, by which He blotted out our sin and magnified the Law, is the gospel of our salvation.

We will now travel a little further to His resurrection,15 wherein His glory is more palpable16 to us. He could not be held by the bonds of death (Act 2:24). He was dead: His holy body could die, but it could not see corruption; so, having slept a little while within the chamber of the tomb, He arose and came forth to light and liberty—the living Christ glorified by His resurrection. Who shall tell the glory of the risen Lord?...

Rising, He sealed our justification.17 Rising, He rifled the sepulcher and released the captives of death. He was “declared to be the Son of God with power…by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:4). Let us rejoice that He is not dead, but “ever liveth to make intercession for [us]” (Heb 7:25). This is the gospel to us; for because He lives we shall live also (Joh 14:19)! “He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb 7:25). Oh, the glory of our risen Lord! Consider it deeply, meditate upon it earnestly; and, as you do so, hear the clear sound of glad tidings of great joy! For our greatest consolation, we do not look to this precept or to that promise, so much as to Jesus Himself, Who has by His rising from the dead given us the surest pledge and guarantee of our deliverance from the prison of guilt, the dungeon of despair, and the sepulcher of death.

Once more, lift your eyes a little higher and note the glory of our Lord’s enthronement18 and of His second coming. He sits at the right hand of God. He that once was hung up upon the tree of shame now sitteth on the throne of universal dominion. Instead of the nail, behold the scepter of all worlds in His most blessed hand. All things are put under His feet. Jesus, “who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death,” is now “crowned with glory and honour” (Heb 2:9), and this is the gospel to us. For thus it is plain that He has conquered all our enemies and has all power in heaven and in earth on our behalf. His acceptance with God is the acceptance of all whom He loves; and He loves all who trust Him. His sitting in glory is a pledge that the whole of the redeemed by blood shall sit there in due time.

His second coming, for which we daily look, is our divinest hope. [Perhaps,] before we fall asleep, the Lord “shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God” (1Th 4:16); and “then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Mat 13:43). Then will our weary days be ended: the strife of tongues, the struggle against sin, the stratagems19 of error—all will be finished, and truth and holiness shall reign supreme. O my brethren, if I could but break loose from the impediments of mouth and tongue and speak my heart without these [clumsy] organs, then would I make you rejoice in the glory of my divine Master upon His throne today and in His glorious appearing at the appointed hour. If we could see Him as John did in Patmos, we might swoon at His feet; but it would be with the rapture of hope and not with the chill of despair.

Mark this: the less you make of Christ, the less gospel you have to trust in. If you get rid of Christ from your creed, you have at the same time destroyed all its good news. The more gospel we would preach, the more of Christ we must proclaim. If you lift up Christ, you lift up the gospel. If you dream of preaching the gospel without exalting Christ in it, you will give the people husks instead of true bread. In proportion as the Lord Jesus is set up on a glorious high throne, He becomes salvation to the sons of men. A little Christ means a little gospel; but the true gospel is the gospel of the glory of Christ.

From a sermon delivered on Lord’s Day morning, March 31, 1889, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

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Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892): Influential English Baptist preacher; born at Kelvedon, Essex, England, UK.

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