Classic Audiobook Collection - The Gospel of the Incarnation by Benjamin B. Warfield ~ Full Audiobook [religion]

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

The Gospel of the Incarnation by Benjamin B. Warfield audiobook. Genre: religion In The Gospel of the Incarnation, theologian Benjamin B. Warfield invites listeners into the heart of historic Christianity: the confession that God the Son truly became man in Jesus Christ. Writing with the clarity and rigor that made him one of the most influential Reformed voices of his era, Warfield traces why the incarnation is not a decorative doctrine but the organizing center of the Christian message. He explores what it means to say that Christ is fully God and fully man, how Scripture presents this mystery, and why the church has fought to preserve careful language about Christ's person and work. Along the way, Warfield engages common misunderstandings and reductions of Jesus, showing how small shifts in Christology reshape everything from redemption to worship. More than an abstract theological exercise, the book presses the listener to consider the incarnation's moral, pastoral, and devotional weight: how God's nearness in Christ addresses human sin, weakness, and hope. Concise yet profound, this work serves both as a primer in orthodox Christology and as a call to see the incarnation as good news that steadies faith and deepens awe. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:39:24) Chapter 02 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gospel of the Incarnation by B. B. Warfield. The End of the Incarnation John 7 verses 38 and 39, for I am come down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me, and this is the will of him that sent me, that of all that he hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. In the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, our Lord presented himself symbolically to man as the food of the soul, for as Augustine reminds us, though the miracles wrought by our Lord our divine works, intended primarily to raise the mind from visible things to their invisible author,

yet their message is not exhausted by this. They are to be interrogated also as to what they tell us about Christ, and they will be found to have a tongue of their own if we have skill to understand it. Quote, four, he adds, since Christ is himself the word of God, even a deed of the word is a word to us, end quote. one of his miracles is accordingly not to be treated as a mere picture which we must be satisfied to look upon and praise, but rather as a writing which we are not content to praise, though we delight in its beauty, but find no satisfaction until we have read and understood it.

We may possibly consider somewhat fanciful Augustine's detailed decipherment of these signs in which this miracle is written. He discovers in it a complete parable of the salvation of man and of men, but we can scarcely refuse as we read it in the pregnant, record of John to say in a poor line phrase, these things contain an allegory. As such, indeed, John presents it. This is the meaning of his care to tell us, as he introduces his recital that the Passover was at hand. Not a mere chronological note, we may be sure, nor yet merely an explanation of the presence of the multitude, gathered for the pilgrimage

to Jerusalem, but a premonition of what is to come, John's account of the occasion and meaning of the miracle, which itself was the occasion of the great discourse on the bread of life. Christ, the true Passover, chose the Passover time when men's minds were upon the type to present the anti-type to them in symbol and open speech. It was therefore also that he tested his disciples with searching questions designed to bring them to the discovery of whether they yet knew him, and that he taxed the people that signs were wasted upon them, verse 26, and that while they were demanding a sign that they might see and believe, verse 30, the sign had been given them, and though they had seen they did not believe, verse 36. It was therefore above all that Christ followed up the miracle with the wonderful discourse

in which he explains the sign and declares himself openly to be the bread of God that cometh down from heaven and giveth life to the world. This is the tremendous truth which miracle and discourse united to proclaim to the multitudes gathered on the shores of Ganeseret at the Passover season, but which despite the type and sign and teaching each a manifest word from God, they could neither receive nor understand. And this is the blessed truth which our text, taken from the centre of the discourse and constituting indeed its colonel,

presents to our apprehension and belief anew today. May the spirit of truth, who searches all things, even the deep things of God, illuminate our minds and prepare our hearts that we may understand and believe. First, let us begin by observing the testimony born by our Lord and Master here to His heavenly original and descent. I am come down from heaven, he says, and the truth here declared is the foundation of the entire discourse, the whole gist of which is to represent Jesus as the bread out of heaven, the true bread out of heaven, the bread of God that cometh down out of heaven, which the Father hath given for the life of the world.

I need not remind you how this representation pervades John's Gospel from the testimony of the Baptist, chapter 3 verse 31, that he who was to supplant him cometh from above, and is therefore above all. to Jesus' own triumphant declaration at the close of his life that, his work being finished, he is ready to return to the Father who sent him, and to the glory that he had with him before the world was. Chapter 17, verses 5 and 11. Our present asseveration is but a single instance of the constant self-testimony of the Son of Man to his heavenly original and descent. The oldy Unitarianism was prodigal of miracle.

It was not the supernatural about the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and the God-Man that were its scandal. When brought face to face with such passages as these, it was wont, therefore, to explain that Jesus borne miraculously of his virgin mother, but a mere man, was taken up to heaven by the divine power to learn the things of God, whence he again descended to bring divine teaching to men. To the newer Unitarianism, on the other hand, it is precisely the supernatural which is the offence. Its philosophical forms might hospitably receive such mysteries as the Trinity and the Godman. If only they may be permitted to run freely into their moulds, But divine interventions of any kind, and most of all the descent of a personal God from heaven to earth,

to be encased in flesh and to herd for a season among men, it cannot allow. It therefore attacks our passages with a theory of ideal, not real pre-existence, and teaches that Jesus means only that, in the thought and intention of God, his advent into the world had long been provided for, and that in that sense he was with God and came forth from God. How weak, how inconceivable all such expedients are before the majesty of Christ's self-witness, I am come down from heaven, and when we turn over the pages of this gospel, the leading idea of which it has been said inadequately indeed, but so far truly, is the divine glory of Christ in the incarnation, and observe our Lord's constant witness in the discourses recorded in it,

not merely to his descent from the Father, but to his essential equality and oneness with God, to his eternal pre-existence with him and to his prospective return to his primal glory with the Father after his task on earth is accomplished, how our spirits bow in worship before that God only begotten who is in the bosom of the Father, who became flesh and tabernacled among us for a season full of grace and truth, and declared to us by his very existence among us that God, not only whom he came forth from, but whom he is. Second, we should not fail to observe, however, that the incarnation is not spoken of in our text as an end in itself, but rather as a means to an end.

The object of our Lord here is not to present the bare fact of his having come down from heaven to the wonder of men, but to expound the purpose of his coming down from heaven. I am come down from heaven, he declares, in order that I may do the will of him that sent me. You will scarcely need to be reminded that this too is the representation, not of our text only, but of the whole body of relevant deliverances recorded by John from the mouth of the master, and indeed of the entire gospel itself. Everywhere and always it is not the coming down from heaven itself, but the purpose of the coming that receives the emphasis.

And this is why it is inadequate to say that the leading idea of John's gospel is the glory of Christ in the incarnation. Its leading idea is rather the sufficient end of the incarnation, or, in other words, its leading purposes to present what we may call a satisfactory philosophy of the incarnation. And this is precisely the amount of truth that lies behind the assertion so freely made by those who are stumbled by the heights of John's theology that his gospel is not a simple narrative of fact, but an ideological treatise, which in their view is equivalent to saying that it does not give us fact but fancy, and is to be looked upon not as a sober history,

but as a metaphysical essay. But does history cease to be history when it passes beyond the mere tabulation of events, and assays to mausual them according to their relations and under the categories of cause and effect, when it ceases to be a mere chronicle in a word, and becomes what we have learned to call philosophical history, and is it to be made a reproach to a writer of history that he has sought not merely to collect, but also to understand his facts, and to record them in such a way as to bring out their internal nature, as well as their external form. Bishop Alexander, in his delightful little book on the leading ideas of the Gospels, places the matter relatively to John's Gospel in a very clear light.

Quote, A Great Life, he reminds us, cannot be rendered by a simple agglomeration of facts. A great life, a life whose words and works influence mankind profoundly, is not sufficiently told by merely relating its facts and dates. What an enigma, for instance, is the life of Napoleon. How many of his biographies are mere masks, concealing those bronze features. We cannot understand any great and complicated life, good or evil, by merely recording the isolated events along which it is moved. It is an organic whole and must be reconstructed as such. This then is the leading idea of St. John's Gospel. Given the facts of Christ's life,

how shall we bind them into unity and read them as a whole? What theory of his person and nature will give us a logical and consistent view? What Christ did and said becomes explicable only by knowing what Christ is. Some who have not lost all reverence for Christianity speak as if St. John's prologue added a difficulty for faith, as if St. Matthew or St. Luke on the incarnation were comparatively easy to receive. Is it so for those who think? Play side by side these statements, on the one side,

when, as his mother Mary was a spouse to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. On the other side, the four oracular propositions. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and the word was made flesh, which is easier to receive. In St. John, the fact of the incarnation is lifted up and flooded with the light of a divine idea. If in the unity of the divine existence there be a trinity of persons, if the second person of that trinity is to assume the reality of flesh,

and the likeness of sinful flesh, we can in some measure see why he needed the tabernacle of a body framed and molded by the eternal spirit to be his fitting habitation. the mystery of a virgin mother is the correlative of the mystery of the word made flesh, end quote. Surely this is most admirably said, to be made quite perfect it needs only the removal of the emphasis from the nature of Christ to the work of Christ. Quote, if the second person of that Trinity is to assume the reality of flesh and the likeness of sinful flesh, end quote, I if, if, Alexander leaves this if hanging in the air, but not so John. To give an adequate account of it, it is just the object and chief end of his gospel. We need to amend the postulation of the problem, therefore, so far as not only to insert,

but to emphasize this element. Given the facts of Christ's life, how shall we bind them together into unity and read them as a whole, what theory of his person and nature and purpose and work will give us a logical and consistent view? This is the problem that John's Gospel answers. And in answering it, it gives us a philosophy of the incarnation, and thus renders not only the incarnation itself, but all that incarnated life, not only credible but natural, and not only natural, may we not even say, but almost inevitable, impossible to be otherwise. And thus John fulfills the end of his writing, these are written that you may

believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. Third, what then is the account of the incarnation which this gospel thus commends to us in its philosophy. We noted once that, in our text, our Lord states it, in the first instance, relatively not to man, but to God. The reason of the incarnation, rendering it credible, natural, inevitable, is traced back into the councils of the Godhead. I am come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me. The purpose of the incarnation is therefore primarily to please God the Father, and to perform His will. We cannot avoid the implication that the incarnated one comes, therefore, in a subordinate capacity.

He came down from heaven not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him. He was sent, he was given a commission, a work to do, how this conception is repeated over and over again in the discourses recorded by John. Even to John the Baptist, he is the sent of God, John 3 verse 34. When Nicodemus approached him as a teacher come from God, he explained that he was not come primarily as a teacher, but as one sent by God, chapter 3 verse 17, to do a work. And this is the burden of the great discourses at the pool of Beth Seder, Chapter 5, verses 23 and 36, at the Feast of Tabernacles, Chapter 7, verses 16, 18, 28, and 29 On the Light of the World, Chapter 8 versus 16, 18, 29, and 43,

as well as of the closing discourses at the last Passover, chapter 16 verse 5, chapter 17 verse 16, chapter 18, 33. In all the like, Jesus is the scent of God, not come of himself, chapter 7 verse 28, chapter 18 verse 43, to seek his own will, but to do the will of him that sent him, chapter 5 verse 30, and only when he had accomplished the work given him to do, chapter 17 verse 4, to return to the father who sent him, chapter 17 verse 16. Now this subordinate relation in which Jesus thus pervasively represents himself to have stood to the father, so as to have been sent by him must be a matter either of nature or of arrangement.

must be either essential or economic. It must find its account and origin, either in the necessity of nature or else in the provisions of a plan. But side by side with this perfectly pervasive proclamation of his subordination to the father, in the whole matter of the incarnation itself, and the purpose or will that lies behind that incarnation, and gives it its justification and its philosophical account, they runs an equally pervasive assertion by Jesus himself and by his historian as well, of his essential equality and oneness with God. He was not only in the beginning with God, he was God. He is the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father.

To have seen Him is to have seen the Father also. He draws and receives from Thomas the worshipping cry, My Lord and my God. He declares to the Jews, I and the Father are one. It seems to be clear, therefore, that the subordination in which the Father is recognized as greater than he, prescribing a will for him to come into the world to perform, is economic, not essential, a matter of arrangement, not. of necessity of nature. By such a representation we are, of course, carried at once back into the

darkness, or what is equally blinding into the blaze of mystery. It may be thought that it is enough to be asked to believe in the mysteries of the godman and of the Trinity, that within the unity of the godhead there exists such a distinction of persons, that of each we may assert in turn that from the beginning he has been with God and has been God. Are we to add this additional mystery of fancying the persons of the godhead, though numerically one in essence and sharers in all the divine attributes, quote, acting, as Dr. Martineau puts it, each on the other as outside beings, and conducting a divine drama among themselves, end quote, imposing tasks on one another, requiring conditions of one another, and earning favors from one another.

No doubt it is past our comprehension, but do we gain or lose by denying its possibility is reality. What does the Trinity mean if it does not mean such a distinction? of persons, that each may say relatively to the other, I and thou and he. What can the incarnation of the second person mean if the persons may not stand over against one another in a measure far transcending our power to comprehend? And let us remember that John presents this conception to us, not as an added difficulty to faith, but as the philosophy, the explanation of the incarnation. It may well happen here, too, that two mysteries support and render credible each the other,

as two beams of wood, neither of which could easily stand alone, when bowed together not only support each other but provide a firm foundation upon which you may safely pile the weight of a slated roof. To adopt Bishop Alexander's mode of statement, quote, if in the unity of the divine existence there be a trinity of persons, and if the second person of that trinity is to assume the reality of flesh and the likeness of sinful flesh, end quote, is it an additional difficulty, or an aid to faith in this supernal mystery to be further told that this colossal humiliation of the son of God was not an objectless display of arbitrary power, nor yet a tentative and unconsidered effort of divine compassion to do somewhat, as yet undetermined in kind or amount for sinful

mankind, but the execution in time of an eternal plan, a plan born of and redolent in its every part with the infinite compassion of God, shaped in all its details from all eternity by brooding love, and now remaining only to be executed by each person involved, taking and completing his appointed part in its tremendous work. The mystery of the covenant is the correlative of the mystery of the incarnation. Without its postulation, the incarnation would present increased difficulties of belief. Without the added words, in order to do the will of him that sent me, the declaration I am come down from heaven would remain a simple marvel and prove a strain on faith.

and now let us not fail to observe that it results from what we have said that John's gospel is the gospel of the covenant. If its leading idea is not merely the glory of the incarnation, but the philosophy of the incarnation, and if that philosophy runs back into an economic arrangement or plan between the persons of the Trinity, by which the second person comes to perform a work committed to him by the father, not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him. This is but another way of saying that the leading idea of John's Gospel is the idea of the covenant. And is it not so?

Search and look, and you will find not only that this covenant idea recurs again and again throughout the gospel, with a frequency and an emphasis which throw it well into the foreground, but that the book as a whole is moulded in its form and contents upon it. The burden of its first chapters is Christ's testimony that he has come because sent by the Father, the burden of the last chapters is his approaching return to the father who sent him. The accomplished work lies between, and therefore it is that when Nicodemus came to him at the opening of his ministry and asked for teaching, Jesus pointed him rather to his work, and declared the doctrine of regeneration itself an earthly thing compared with the heavenly

mysteries he had to tell. Those mysteries of his descent from heaven, chapter 3 verse 13, sent by the Father, chapter 3 verse 17 to save the world chapter 3 verse 16 and therefore it is that in the midst of his ministry he opens this great discourse from which our text is taken by declaring that the son of man has been sealed appointed and set apart by the father for the work of giving eternal life to men and when his disciples stumbled at the height of the great truth involved that he had come down from heaven to give his flesh as the food of the soul he sorrowfully added what then if you should see the son of man ascending where he was before. And therefore it is that at the end of his life

he compares his finished work with the joy a woman has after travail when at length the child is born, chapter 16 verse 21, and declares that having accomplished the work which the father gave him to do, chapter 17 verse 21, the covenant condition is fulfilled and the covenant at reward is at hand, and he is about to return to his primal glory. John's gospel, we ought not to miss it, is the gospel of the covenant. Fourth, how our hearts should burn within us as we approach the last and most central question of all, and ask what is our Lord's account of the nature and terms of this mysterious but most blessed covenant, to fulfil the conditions of which he came down from heaven. We observe at once, and with what emotions of gladness we ought to observe it, that it

concerns the salvation of men, and equally at once we observe with still swelling emotion that it is complete and perfect in its provisions, that it provides for an entire and finished, for a sure and unfailing salvation. And we observe that this involves, as of course it must involve, the consequence that it is definite and precise in its terms, that it contemplates a definite and particularly designated body of men. And this is the will of him that sent me, that of all that he hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. the will of the Father which Christ came down from heaven to do, concerned then not all men but some men, all that he hath given me.

And his will, with reference to these, which he sent the son to perform, was not the making of some indefinite provision looking towards their rescue from sin and shame, but the definite, actual, complete, and final saving of them, that I should lose nothing of it, but should raise it up at the last day. Let our hearts stand still while we read these great provisions. It is the testimony of the covenant at Son Him's. as to the terms of the covenant which he came to fulfil that it had a definite and well-defined subject, a restricted subject, if you will, a limited subject, not all mankind, but a given body of men,

a given body of men who in the text are brought into explicit contrast with those who, though they saw, yet believed not, because they could not come to him, except the father drew them, and he draweth none but those whom he hath given the son, and for the saving whom the son came down from heaven, a precisely determined body therefore, quote, particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished, end quote.

But it is as well, and it could not be so at all, unless it were as well, the testimony of the covenanted son himself to the terms of the covenant which he came to fulfill, that it had a definite and fully determined end, not merely the rendering the salvation of men possible, nor merely the removing of the legal obstacles in the way of the salvation of men,

nor merely the breaking down of whatever difficulties may stand in the path of the free outflow of God's love to men, much less merely the introduction into the world of a better example of life than had hitherto been before men, or of a new divine force making for righteousness, or the impressing of men with a deeper sense of the love of God for them, or of his hatred of sin, but the actual, complete and sure salvation of all that the father had given the son. This is the will of him that sent me, that all that he hath given me, I should lose nothing of, of it, but should raise it up at the last day. In a word we have presented to us here, in these pregnant words, not only in outline, but in all its essential details, what has come to be known among us as the covenant of redemption.

Men may no doubt find fault with this doctrine. They may say, as they have said, that thus our Lord, the saviour of the world, is made not the saviour of men, but only of a small, select company of men. It does not appear with what justification the number of those purchased by his precious blood is represented as small, when John represents them as an immense multitude whom no man can number. But when the alternative is, as the logical alternative assuredly is, limitation of the saving work of Christ either in its subjects or in its substance, who on either biblical grounds or on grounds of Christian hope and love can hesitate one moment

in his decision. If the work of Christ is not complete, if it did not purchase for us a sure salvation, the charter of our redemption is gone. It has sometimes been thoughtlessly said, that this doctrine of the covenant of redemption is an invention of the reformed theology. A distinguished professor at Andover, Dr. Park, was accustomed to tell his pupils that the covenant was made in Holland in the middle of the 17th century, and a distinguished Baptist teacher, Dr. E. G. Robinson, has lately assured the religious public that the covenant theology has been finally entombed in the grave of Charles Hodge.

But not only had the doctrine of the covenants already come to its rights and been made the architectonic principle of theology long before Cogius published his sum of the doctrine of the covenants, 1648, for to him was Dr. Parker looting, and indeed been so used before his supposed discovery of it, in so representative a symbol as the Westminster confession, but from the beginning of that new discovery of the way of salvation which we call the Reformation, it had been a prominent feature in the teaching of reformed theologians in every land. And we may well believe that it is destined to remain the central stronghold of faith to the end of time, among all who, in simplicity of heart, draw the matter of their teaching out of this record

of our saviour's words. For what element of the doctrine is lacking here? I am come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me. That is the assertion of an economic arrangement as the precondition of the incarnation and of the pre-stipulation of the incarnated work. And this is the will of him that sent me, that of all that he hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. There is the revelation of the contents of the pre-incarnation arrangement and the provision through the incarnation for the certain salvation of a chosen body of lost men. All that the father giveth me shall come unto me. No man can come unto me except the father which sent me draw him. There is the twin definition

of the subjects of the salvation, or if we desire further witness, then this one passage, it is spread fully on the pages of this gospel. Let us attend only to those calm and final words which, as his work was accomplishing, our blessed redemer addressed, not to us men, but to his father, in a divinely assured assertion of his righteous claims upon the fruit of his work. Father, the hour is come. Glorify thy son, that the son may glorify thee, even as thou gavest him authority over all flesh, that to all that thou hast given him he should give to them eternal life. I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do, and now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with thee glory which I had with thee

before the world was. I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou didst give me out of the world, thine they were, and thou didst give them to me. I pray for them, I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me. All his work is in fulfilment of an arrangement with the Father, and the whole of it, down to this high-pristly prayer itself, making intercession for his own, concerns primarily and in its chief import, not the world, but those whom the father gave him out of the world, and secures beyond failure their complete salvation. This is the whole doctrine of the

covenant of redemption. The reformed theology has grasped it and teaches it, but it has not added one single thought to it. And now let us bask a little before we close in the comforting assurances of this blessed teaching. One, how the love of God is maxed, magnified to us by this teaching. It is not from a yesterday only that he has busied himself with our salvation. In the depths of eternity, our foreseen miseries were a cause of care to him. In that mysterious intercourse between father and son, which is as eternal as the essence of Godhead itself, we, our state, our sin, our helplessness, and the dreadfulness of our condition and end, were a subject of consideration and solitude. What a God this is that is unveiled before us

here. A god of holiness, a god so holy that, even in the abyss of eternity past, he could not rest indifferent to the sin, which was only after the lapse of innumerable ages, to dawn in this corner of the as-yet-unexistent universe. A god of justice, a god so just that already his indignation burned against the as-yet-uncommitted sin of such petty creatures of his will as man. But a god of love, a love so incomparably vast as already in the profundity of the unlimited it passed to brood over unimaginable plans of mercy towards those few guilty wretches among the numberless multitudes of his contemplated creatures. When the psalmist raised his eyes to the heavens above, the work of the fingers of the Almighty and consider the moon and stars which he had ordained,

he was lost in a natural wonder that so great a creator should concern himself with so puny a creature. What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou shouldst visit him. But how much greater a marvel is before us now? It is not man as man, a weak and puny creature that we have to consider, but man as sinner. This weak and puny creature become vile and filthy, offensive and hateful to a holy and just God. It is not in contrast even with the grandeur of the worlds circling about worlds, which crowned the depths of the heavens and dwarf the consequence of this speck of earth on the skirts of the universe which is our home that we are to consider him,

but in contrast with the majesty of the increat triune maker of all that is. It is not simply that God has taken notice of this sinful puny creature, that we have to consider, but that the all-holy and all-blessed God has felt care and solicitude for his fate and looked not at his own things in comparison with his. What indeed is sinful man that God should love him, and before the foundations of the world,

should prepare to save him by so inconceivable a plan as to give his only begotten son as a ransom. for his life. My brethren, this is not to the glory of man, but to the glory of God. It is not the expression of our dignity and worth, but raises our wondering hearts to the contemplation of the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God that passeth knowledge. Two, and how our appreciation of the perfection of the work of our Saviour is enhanced by this teaching, as it was upon no sudden caprice that he came into the world, but in execution of a long-cherished and thoroughly laid plan, so it was no partial work.

which he performed by the whole work of salvation. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And this he has accomplished even to the uttermost, when he cried upon the cross as his agony went out in the darkness of death, a death for us. In those words of deepest import and of mighty power, it is finished. When in his great sacerdotal prayer, he prolifically declared that he had accomplished the work which the father had given him to do, and was now ready to lay aside his humiliation and re-enter his glory. The precise thing which he published as finished and accomplished was salvation. All has been done by him.

His saving work neither needs nor admits of supplementary addition by any needy child of man, even to the extent of an iota. When we look to him we are raising grateful eyes not to one who invites us to save ourselves, nor merely to one who has broken out a path in which walking we may attain to salvation, nor yet merely to one who offers us a salvation wrought out by him on a condition but to one who has saved us, who is at once the beginning and the middle and the end of our salvation, the author and the finisher of our faith. What can we possibly need that we do not find provided in him? Do we hopelessly groan under the curse of the broken law hanging menacingly over us?

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us, Galatians 3 verse 13. Do we know that only he that worketh righteousness is acceptable to God and despair of attaining life on so unachievable a condition? Christ Jesus hath of God been made unto us righteousness, 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30. Do we loathe ourselves in the pollution of our sins, and know that God is greater than we, and that we must be an offence in his holy sight?

The blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin, 1 John 1 verse 7. But do we not need faith that we may be made one with him and so secure these benefits. Faith too is the gift of God, and that we believe on him is granted by God in behalf of Christ, Philippians 1 verse 29. Nothing has been forgotten, nothing neglected, nothing left unprovided. In the person of Jesus Christ, the great God, in his perfect wisdom and unfailing power, has taken our place before the outraged justice of God and under his perfect law, and has wrought out a complete salvation. 3. What an indefectible certitude of salvation is given by this great teaching.

If Christ Jesus came to save and has saved, how can salvation fail? If the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord, Romans 6 verse 23, how can this eternal life thus freely given go out in time and fail to accord with its very designation as eternal? If Christ has undertaken, not merely to open a way of salvation to us but to save us, if he came into the world for the precise purpose of performing this will of God, that, of all that he hath given him, he should lose nothing but should raise it up at the last day, what possibility lies open of the failure of this great design, framed in eternity by triune godhead, and executed in time by none other than the strong son of God. Therefore our gracious Lord assures us, all that the Father giveth me

shall come unto me, and him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out. And therefore his servant, condescending to the weakness of our fears, argues with us, God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners Christ died for us, much more then being justified by his blood, shall we be saved from wrath by him? Oh, the certitude in that much more, if God before us, he argues again, who can be against us? He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ. Oh, weak and trembling soul, can you not find, not courage merely about certitude in this? What matters your weakness? Your salvation rests not in it, but on God's strength.

He loves you, he determined to save you, he sent his son to save you, he has come to do it, he has done it, you are saved, it cannot fail unless God's set purpose can fail, unless Christ's power to save can fail, unless his promises of love can fail. for what a clear ground of assurance of salvation is furnished by this great teaching does some wayward spirit say all this is true only of the elect those whom the father gave to christ and i alas how may i know that i am of the elect our self-tormenting soul why expend strength in prying into god's secrets instead of taking him at his word it is true indeed that it is only those whom he has given to christ that christ has saved and the comfort as the salvation is for them alone. But it is not true that God requires of you election for

salvation, or offers you predestination as the way of life. He offers you not predestination but Christ, and he requires of you not election but faith. Do you make election itself a ground of doubt and despair? This, says an old Puritan, is indeed to gather poison out of the sweetest herbs. Quote God, says he, layeth it as a duty upon everyone to repent and believe, to come to him and he shall have rest to his soul. If then thou believest, thou repentest. This may be a sure testimony unto thee of thy everlasting glory, end quote. So then, quote, it's no wonder he continues that Paul doth often run out in large expressions

concerning God's love, his predestination from all eternity. Note how he identifies the two, when he hath occasion to praise God for the calling and conversion of any in time, for this is to trace the stream till we find its wellhead, end quote. quote, "'Madman is what John Calvin calls those "'who seek their salvation in the whirlpool of predestination, "'not keeping the way of salvation which is exhibited to them. "'To every man, he explains, "'his faith is the sufficient proof of the eternal election of God,

"'and it would be a shocking sacrilege to carry the inquiry behind it, "'for an aggravated insult is offered to the Holy Spirit "'if we refuse to assent to his simple testimony,' end quote. "'Election does indeed lie at the root of our salvation, but faith is the proof of election. Are we saved? The question is resolved in this. Do we believe in Jesus Christ?

Christ indeed says, This is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he hath given me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. Here is election the root of the saving work of Christ. But have you failed to note or to remember that he immediately adds, for this is the will of my father,

that everyone that beholdeth the son and believeth on him should have eternal life, and that I should raise him up at the last day. Here is the work of Christ received in faith the ground of salvation, and here is faith, laying whole of Christ the evidence of salvation, and therefore it is not only said, all that the Father giveth me shall come unto me, but it is immediately added, and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. These words are gracious enough in their broadest sense to send a thrill of joy through the heart,

but there lies hid within them a further delicate grace which is lost in the English translation. The word for come is so varied in the two clauses as to lay the stress in the first instance, quote, upon the successful issue of the coming, the arrival, end quote, and in the second, quote, on the process of the coming and the welcome, end quote. All that the father giveth me shall come unto me, shall certainly and unfailingly reach me, and him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out, him that is in the process of coming, yea, even though he is but just begun with weak and faltering steps, even such and one as this who is but beginning to come. I will in no wise cast out. What a blessed assurance

when faith is made thus not the ground of salvation, not the condition of salvation, but its evidence. It is here that the sweet herb of election begins to pour forth its refreshing cordial. Men may tell us indeed, believe and you shall be saved, while still making faith the ground or the condition of salvation, and then with what dreadful solicitude will we pluck up our faith over and over again by the roots to examine it with anxious fear. Is it the right faith? Is it a strong enough faith? Do I believe aright? Do I believe enough? Shall I abide in my belief until the end?

Dreadful uncertainty, inexpressible misery of ineradicable doubt. It is only when we have learnt from such words of our master as those before us today that we dare say to our souls, not only believe and ye shall be saved, but those other words of deeper meaning and fuller comfort, caught from the master's own blessed lips, believe and ye are saved, Verily, verily, I say unto you, says our master in words which sum up previous teachings, John 3, 18 and 36. He that heareth my words and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not

into judgment, but hath passed, out of death, into life. Blessed John, who so caught his master's words and recorded them for us, when faith is thus made not the ground or the condition but the evidence of salvation, our eternal bliss is no longer suspended in any sense on aught that we are or do, but hangs solely on the work of Christ doing his father's will. Faith, even faith, as the ground or condition of salvation, may be also the ground of despair. But faith as the proof of salvation is the charter of assured, though humble hope. It takes hold of the strong son of God, immortal love, and of the indefectible purpose of almighty grace, which cannot fail or know any shadow of turning.

This we owe to that doctrine of the Eternal Covenant which our Blessed Savior reveals to us in the words on which we have meditated today Because of its blessed provisions we can cry joy to our souls Though they tremble with natural fear And can scarce believe that Christ will save such faithless souls as they Though they have faith but as a grain of mustard seed They are saved already For this is the will of him who sent our Redeemer

That of all that he gave him He should lose nothing but should raise it up at the last day for this is the will of the Father that everyone that beholdeth the Son and believeth on him should have eternal life, and he should raise him up at the last day. End of Sermon 1. Sermon 2 of the Gospel of the Incarnation by B.B. Warfield. This Librevon's recording is in the public domain. The example of the incarnation.

Philippians 2 verses 5 to 8. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and 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 humbled himself and became obedient under death, even the death of the cross. Christ our example after Christ our Redeemer, no words can more deeply stir the Christian heart than these.

Every Christian joyfully recognises the example of Christ, as in the admirable words of a great Scotch commentator, a body, quote, of living legislation, as law embodied and pictured in a perfect humanity, end quote. In him in a word, we find the moral ideal historically realized, and we bow before it as sublime and yearn after it with all the assembled desires of our renewed souls. How lovingly we follow in thought every footstep of the Son of Man, on the rim of hills that shut in the emerald cup of Nazareth on the blue marge of Ganesaret over the mountains of Judea and longed to walk in spirit by his side. He came to save every age, says Ironous, and therefore he came as an infant, a child, a boy, a youth, and a man. And there is no age that cannot find its example in him.

We see him, the properest child that ever was given to a mother's arms, through all the years of childhood at Nazareth, subjecting himself to his parents. We see him a youth, laboring day by day, contentedly at his father's bench in his lower sphere too, with no other thought than to be about his father's business. We see him in his holy manhood going, as his custom was, Sabbath by Sabbath, to the synagogue. God as he was, not too good to worship with his weaker brethren. And then the horizon broadens. We see him at the banks of Jordan, because it became him to fulfill every righteousness, meekly receiving the baptism of repentance for us. We see him in the wilderness, calmly rejecting the subtlest trials of the evil one, refusing to supply his needs by a misuse of his divine power,

repelling the confusion of tempting God with trusting God, declining to seek his father's ends by any other than his father's means. We see him among the thousands of Galilee, anointed of God with the Holy Ghost and power, going about doing good, with no pride of birth, though he was a king, with no pride of intellect, though omniscience dwelt within him, with no pride of power, though all power in heaven and earth was in his hands, or of station, though the fullness of the godhead dwelt in him bodily, or of superior goodness or holiness, but in loneliness of mind, esteeming everyone better than himself, healing the sick, casting out devils, feeding the hungry, and everywhere breaking to men the bread of life. We see him everywhere offering to men his

life for the salvation of their souls, and when at last the forces of evil gathered thick around him, walking alike without display and dismay the path of suffering appointed for him, and giving his life at Calvary, that through his death the world might live. Which of you convinceeth me of sin is too low a question, who can find in all his life a single lack, a single failure to set us a perfect example? In what difficulty of life, in what trial, in what danger or uncertainty, when we turn our eyes to him do we fail to find just the example that we need? and if perchance we are by the grace of God, enabled to walk with him but a step in the way,

how our hearts burn within us, with longing to be always with him, to be strengthened by the almighty power of God in the inner man, to make every footprint which he has left in the world a stepping stone to climb upward over his divine path. Do we not rightly say that next to our longing to be in Christ is our corresponding longing to be like Christ, that only second in our hearts to his great act of obedience under death, by which he became our saviour, stands his holy life in our world of sin, by which he becomes our example. Of course our text is not singular in calling upon us to make Christ our example.

Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ Jesus, is rather the whole burden of the ethical side of Paul's teaching, and in this too he was but the imitator of his Lord who pleads with us to learn of him because he is meek and lowly in heart. The peculiarity of our present passage is that it takes us back of Christ's earthly life and bids us imitate him in the great act of his incarnation itself. Not, of course, as if the implication were that we were equal with Christ and needed to stoop to such service as he performed. Quote, why art thou proud, O man? Augustine asks pointedly, God for thee became low, thou wouldst perhaps be ashamed to imitate a lowly man, then, at least imitate the lowly God. The son of God came in the character of man and was made low.

He, since he was God, became man, do thou, O man, recognize that thou art man, thy entire humility is to know thyself, end quote. The very force of the appeal lies in a word in the infinite exultation of Christ above us, and the mention of the incarnation is the apostles' reminder to us of the ineffable mystery, which was by nature his, to whom he would raise our admiring eyes. Paul prized at our hearts here with the great lever of the deity of our exemplar. He calls upon us to do nothing less than to be imitators of God. Quote,

What encouragement is greater than this? Christ Christ Christ Christosostom, with his instinctive perception of the motive springs of the human heart. Nothing arouses a great soul to the performance of good works, so much as learning that in this it is likened to God. End quote. And here too Paul is but the follower of his Lord. Be ye merciful, as your father which is in heaven is merciful,

are words which fell from his divine lips, altogether similar in the implication to Paul's words in the text. Let it be this mind that is in you, which also was in Christ Jesus. It is the spirit which animated our Lord in the act of his incarnation, which his apostles would see us imitate. He would have us in all our acts to be like Christ, as he showed himself to be in the innermost core of his being when he became poor, he that was rich,

that we by his poverty might be made rich. We perceive then that the exhortation of the apostle gathers forth, for itself from the deity of Christ, and from the nature of the transaction by which he, being God, was brought into this sphere of dependent earthly life in which we live by nature. It is altogether natural, then, that he sharpens his appeal by reminding his readers somewhat fully who Christ was and what he did for our salvation, in order that, having the facts more vividly before their minds, they may more acutely feel the spirit by which he was animated. Thus, in a perfectly natural way, Paul is led not to inform his reading.

but to remind them in a few quick and lively phrases which do not interrupt the main lines of discourse but rather etch them in with a deeper colour of what we may call the whole doctrine of the person of christ with such a masterly hand or let us rather say with such an eager spirit and such a loving clearness and firmness of touch has he done this that these few purely incidental words constitute one of the most complete statements of an essential doctrine to be found within the whole compass of the scriptures though compressed with the limits of three short verses, it ranks in fullness of exposition, with the already marvellously concise outline of the same doctrine given in the opening verses of the gospel of John. Whenever the subtleties of heresy confuse our minds, as we face the problems which have been raised about the person of our Lord, it is pre-eminently to these verses that we flee, to have our apprehension purified, and our thinking corrected. The sharp phrases cut their way through every error, or, as we may better say, they are like a flight of swift arrows, each wing

to the joints of the harness. The golden-mouthed preacher of the ancient church impressed with this fullness of teaching and inspired himself to one of his loftiest flights by the verve of the Apostle's crisp language pictures the passage itself as an arena and the truth, as it runs burning through the clauses as the victorious chariot dashing against

and overthrowing its contestants one after the other until at last amid the clamour of applause which rises from every side to heaven, it springs alone towards the goal, with causes winged with joy, sweeping like a single flash over the ground. One by one he points out the heresies concerning the person of Christ, which had sprung up in the ancient church, as clause by clause the text smites and destroys them,

and is not content until he shows how the knees of all half-truths and whole falsehoods are like concerning this great matter are made by these searching words to bow before our Saviour's perfect deity, his complete humanity and the unity of his person. The magic of the passage has lost none of its virtue, the millennium and a half, which has fled by since John electrified Constantinople with his golden words. This sword of the spirit is as keen today as it was then, and happy as the man who knows its temper and has the arm to wield it. But we must not lose ourselves in a purely theological interest

with such a passage before us. Rather, let us keep our eyes for this hour on Paul's main purpose, and seek to feel the force of the example of Christ, as he here advances it, for the government of our lives. But to do this, as he points it with so full a reference to the person of Christ, following him we must begin by striving to realize who and what our Lord was, who sets us this example. First, let us observe, then, first, that the actor, to whose example Paul would direct our eyes, is declared by him to have been no other than God himself, who was before in the form of God, are his words, and they are words than which no others could be chosen, which could more explicitly, or with more directness, assert the deity of the person who is here designated by

the name of Christ Jesus. After the wear and tear of two thousand years on the phrases, it would not be surprising if we should fail to feel this as strongly as we ought. Let us remember that the phraseology which Paul here employs was the popular usage of his day, though first given general vogue by the Aristotelian philosophy, and that it was accordingly the most natural language for strongly asserting the deity of Christ which could suggest itself to him. As you know, this mode of speech resolved everything into its matter and its form, into the bare material out of which it is made, and that body of characterizing qualities which constituted what it is. Form in a word is equivalent to our phrase specific character. If we may illustrate great things by small, we may say in this manner of speech that the matter of a sword, for instance, is steel, while its form is that whole body of characterising qualities which distinguish a sword from all other pieces of steel, and which therefore may make. this particular piece of steel distinctively a sword. In this case, these are, of course, largely

matters of shape and contour, but now the steel itself, which constitutes the matter of the sword, has also its matter and its form, its matter being metal, and its form being the whole body of qualities that distinguish steel from other metals, and make this metal steel. Going back still a step, metal itself has its matter and form, its matter being material substance, and its form that body of qualities which distinguish metallic from other kinds of substance. And last of all, matter itself has its matter, namely substance, and its form, namely the qualities which distinguish material from spiritual substance, and make this substance what we call matter.

The same mode of speech is, of course, equally applicable to the spiritual sphere. The matter of the human spirit is bare spiritual substance, while its form is that body of qualities which constitute this spirit, a human spirit, and in the absence of which, or by the change of which this spirit would cease to be human and become some other kind of spirit. The matter of an angel again is bare spiritual substance, while the form is the body of qualities which make this spirit specifically an angel. So too with God, the matter of God is bare spiritual substance, and the form is that body of qualities which distinguish him from all other spiritual beings, which constitute him God, and without which he would not be God. What Paul asserts

then, when he says that Christ Jesus existed in the form of God, is that he had all those characterizing qualities which make God God, the presence of which constitutes God, and in the absence of which God does not exist. He who is in the form of God is God. Nor is it without significance that, out of the possible modes of expression open to him, Paul was led to choose just this mode of asserting the deity of our Lord.

His mind in this passage was not on the bare divine essence, it was upon the divine qualities and prerogatives of Christ. It is not the abstract conception that Christ is God, that moves us to our deepest admiration for his sublime act of self-sacrifice, but rather our concrete realization that he was all that God is and had all that God has, that God's omnipotence was his, his infinite exultation, his unapproachable blessedness. Therefore Paul is instinctively led to choose an expression which tells us not the bare fact that Christ was God, but that he was in the form of God,

that he had in full possession all those characterizing qualities, which, taken together, make God that all holy, perfect, all blessed being, which we call God. Thus the apostle prepares his readers for the great example by quickening their apprehension, not only of who, but of what Christ was. Second, let us note then, secondly, that the apostle outlines for us very fully the action which this divine being performed. He took the form of a servant by coming into the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself by becoming subject even unto death, and that the death of the cross. There is no metamorphosis of substance asserted here. The form of God is not, not

said to have been transmuted into the form of a servant, but he who was in the form of God is declared to have taken also to himself the form of a servant. Nor is there, on the other hand, any deceptive show of an unreal humiliation brought before us here. He took not the appearance, mere state and circumstances, or mere work and performance, but veritably the form of a servant, all those essential qualities and attributes which belong to and constitute a being a servant. The assumption involved the taking of an actually servile nature, as well as of a subordinate station and a servant's work, and therefore it is at once further explained in both its mode and its effects.

He took the form of a servant by coming into the likeness of men. He did not become merely a man, but by taking the form of a servant, he came into a state in which he appeared as man. His humanity was real and complete, but it was not all. He remained God in assuming humanity, and therefore only appeared as man. not became only man. And by taking the form of a servant and thus being found in fashion as a man, he became subject to obedience, and obedience pressed so far in its humiliation that it extended even unto death, and that the shameful death of the cross. Words cannot adequately paint the depth

of this humiliation, but this it was the taking of the form of a servant with its resultant necessity of obedience to such a bitter end. This it was that he who was by nature in the form of God, in the full possession and use of all the divine attributes and qualities, powers and prerogatives was willing to do for us. Third, let us observe then, thirdly, that the apostle clearly announces to us the spirit in which our Lord performed this great act. Although he was in the form of God, he yet did not consider his being on an equality with God a precious prize to be eagerly retained, but made no account of himself, taking

the form of a servant. It was then in a spirit of pure unselfishness and self-sacrifice. that looked not to its own things but on the things of others, that under the force of love esteemed others more than himself. It was in this mind, or in the Apostle's own words, it was as not considering his essential equality with God as a precious possession, but making no account of himself. It was in this mind that Christ Jesus, who was before in the form of God, took the form of a servant. This was the state of mind that led him to so marvellous an act. No compulsion from his father, no desires for himself, no hope of gain or fear of loss, but simple, unselfish,

self-sacrificing love. Now, it is not to be overlooked that some of the clauses, the meaning of which we have sought to fathom, are differently explained among expositors. Nevertheless, although I have sought to adduce them so as to bring out the Apostle's exact meaning, and although I believe that this appeal acquires an additional point and a stronger leverage when they are thus understood. It remains true that the main drift of the passage is unaffected by any of the special interpretations which reasonable expositors have put upon the several clauses. These divergent expositions do seriously affect our doctrine of the person of Christ. In particular, all the forms of the popular modern doctrine of conosis, or exinannition, which teaches that the divine

logos in becoming man emptied himself and thus that the very God, in a more or less literal sense, contracted himself to the limits of humanity, find their chief, almost their sole biblical basis in what appears to me a gratuitously erroneous interpretation of one of these clauses. That one which the authorised version renders he made himself of no reputation, and which I have ventured to render he made no account of himself, that is, in comparison with the needs of others, but which the theologians in question followed, unfortunately as I think by the revised version, rendered with an excessive literality, he emptied himself, thereby resurrecting the literal physical sense of the word in an unnatural context. We have many reasons to give

why this is an illegitimate rendering, chief among which are that the word is commonly employed in its figurative sense, and that the intrusion of the literal sense here is forbidden by the context. But it is unnecessary to pause to argue the point. Whatever the conclusion might be, the main drift of the passage remains the same. No interpretation of this phrase can destroy the outstanding fact that the passage at large places before our wandering eyes, the two terminate of the form of God and the form of a servant, involving obedience even unto a shameful death, and, quote, measures the extent of our Lord's self-denying grace by the distance between equality with God and a public execution on a gibbet, end quote. In any case, the emphasis of the passage is

thrown upon the spirit of self-sacrificness as the impelling cause of Christ's humiliation, which the apostle adduces here in order that the sight of it may impel us also to take no account of ourselves, but to estimate lightly all that we are or have in comparison with the claims of others on our love and devotion. The one subject of the whole passage is Christ's marvellous self-sacrifice. Its one exhortation is, let it be this mind that is also in you. As we read through the passage, we may, by contact with the full mind and heart of the apostle, learn much more than this, but let us not fail to grasp this. his chief message to us here, that Christ Jesus, though he was God, yet cared less for his

equality with God, cared less for himself and his own things than he did for us, and therefore gave himself for us. Firmly grasping this then as the essential content and special message of the passage, there are some inferences that flow from it, which we cannot afford not to remind ourselves of. One, and first of these is a very great and marvellous one, that we have a God who is capable of self-sacrifice for us. It was, although he was in the form of God, that Christ Jesus did not consider his being on an equality with God so precious a possession that he could not lay it aside, but rather made no account of himself. It was our God who so loved us that he gave himself for us. Now herein is a wonderful thing. Men tell us that God is by the very

necessity of his nature, incapable of passion, incapable of being moved by inducements from without, that he dwells in holy calm and unchangeable blessedness, untouched by human sufferings or human sorrows forever, haunting the lucid interspace of world and world where never creeps a cloud nor moves a wind, nor ever falls the least white star of snow, nor ever lowest roll of thundermoans, nor a sound of human sorrow mounts to mar his sacred everlasting calm. Let us bless our God that it is not true. God can feel God does love. We have scriptural warrant for believing, as it has been well phrased, that moral heroism has a place within the sphere of the divine nature. We have scriptural warrant for believing that, like the old

hero of Zurich, God has reached out loving arms and gathered into his own bosom, that forest of darts which otherwise had pierced ours. But is not this gross anthropomorphism? We are careless of names. It is the truth of God. And we decline to yield up the God of the Bible and the God of our hearts to any philosophical abstraction. We have, and we must have, an ethical God, a God whom we can love and in whom we can trust. We may feel awe in the presence of the absolute, as we feel awe in the presence of the storm, or of the earthquake. We may feel our dependence in its presence, as we feel our helplessness before the tornado or the flood. But we cannot love it, we cannot trust it, and our hearts, which are just as trustworthy a guide as our

dialectics, cry out for a God whom we may love and trust. We decline once for all to subject our whole conception of God to the category of the absolute, which, as has been truly said, quote, like Pharaoh's lean kind, devours all other attributes, end quote, neither is this an unphilosophical procedure, as has been recently set forth renewedly by Andrew Seth, quote, we should be unfaithful to the fundamental principle of the theory of knowledge if we did not interpret by means of the highest category within our reach. We should be false to ourselves if we denied in God what we recognize as the source of dignity and worth in ourselves, end quote.

In order to escape an anthropomorphic God, we must not throw ourselves at the feet of a zoomorphic or an amorphic one. Nevertheless, let us rejoice that our God has not left us by searching to find him out. Let us rejoice that he has plainly revealed himself to us in his word as a God who loves us, and who, because he loves us, has sacrificed himself for us. Let us remember that the fundamental conception of the Christian idea of God is that God is love, and the fundamental dogma of the Christian religion is that God so loved us that He gave himself for us. Accordingly, the primary presupposition of our present passage is that our God was capable of

and did actually perform this amazing act of unselfish self-sacrifice for the good of man. to the second inference that we should draw from our passage consists simply in following the apostle in his application of this divine example to our human life a life of self-sacrificness is the most divinely beautiful life that man can lead he whom as our master we have engaged to obey whom as our example we are pledged to imitate is presented to us here as the great model of self-sacrificness let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus is the Apostles pleading. We need to note carefully, however, that it is not self-depreciation, but self-adnegation that is thus commended to us. If we would follow Christ, we must, every one of us,

not in pride but in humility, yet not in lowness, but in lowliness, not degrade ourselves, but forget ourselves, and seek every man, not his own things, but those of others. Who does not see that in this organism which we call human society, such a mode of life is the condition of all real help and health. There is no doubt another ideal of life far more grateful to our fallen human nature, an ideal based on arrogance, assumption, self-assertion, working through strife and issuing in conquest, conquest of a place for ourselves, a position, the admiration of man, power over men. We see it's working on every side of us, in the competition of business life, in the struggle for wealth on the one side, forcing a struggle for

bare bread on the other, in social life, in the fierce battle of men and women for leading parts in the farce of social display, even in the church itself and among the churches, where, too unhappily, arrogant pretension and unchristian self-assertion do not fail to find their temporal reward. But it is clear that this is not Christ's ideal, nor is it to this that he has set us his perfect example. He made no account of himself, though he was in the form of God. He had looked not upon his equality with God as a possession to be prized when he could, by forgetting self, rescue those whom he was not ashamed amid all his glory to call his brethren. Are there any whom you and I are ashamed to call our brethren?

Oh, that the divine ideal of life as service could take possession of our souls. Or that we could remember at all times and in all relations that the Son of Man came into the world to minister, and by his ministry has glorified all ministering forever. Or that we could once for all grasp the meaning of the great fact that self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice express the divine ideals of life. 3. And thus we are led to a third inference, which comes to us from the text, that it is difficult to set a limit to the self-sacrifice

which the example of Christ calls upon us to be ready to undergo for the good of our brethren. It is comparatively easy to recognize that the ideal of the Christian life is self-sacrificing unselfishness, and to allow that it is required of those who seek to enter into it, to subordinate self, and to seek first the kingdom of God. But it is so easy to acknowledge even to ourselves that this is to be read, not generally, merely, but in detail, and is to be applied not only to some eminent saints, but to all who would be Christ's servants,

that it is required of us, and that what is required of us is not some self-denial, but all self-sacrifice. Yet is it not to this that the example of Christ would lead us? Not, of course, to self-degradation, not to self-effacement exactly, but to complete self-abnegation, entire and ungrudging self-sacrifice? Is it to be unto death itself? Christ died. Are we to endure wrongs? What wrongs did he not meekly bear?

Are we to surrender our clear and recognised rights? Did Christ stand upon his unquestioned right of retaining his equality with God? Are we to endure unnatural evils, permit ourselves to be driven into inappropriate situations, unresistingly sustain injurious and unjust imputations and attacks? What more unnatural than that the God of the universe should become a servant in the world, ministering not to his father only, but also to his creatures.

Our lord and master washing our very feet. What more abhorrent than that God should die! There is no length to which Christ's self-sacrifice did not lead him. These words are dull and inexpressive. We cannot enter into thoughts so high. He who was in the form of God took such thought for us that he made no account of himself. Into the immeasurable calm of the divine blessedness

he permitted this thought to enter. I will die for men. And so mighty was his love, so colossal the divine purpose to save, that he thought nothing of his divine majesty, nothing of his unsullied blessedness, nothing of his equality with God, but absorbed in us, our needs, our misery, our helplessness, he made no account of himself.

If this is to be our example, what limit can we set to our self-sacrifice? Let us remember that we are no longer our own but Christ's, bought with the price of his precious blood, and are henceforth to live not for our self-sacrifice, ourselves but for him, for him in his creatures, serving him and serving them. Let all thought of our dignity, our possessions, our rights, perish out of sight, when Christ's service calls to us. Let the mind be in us that was also in him, when he took no account of himself,

but God as he was, took the form of a servant and humbled himself. He who was lord, to lowly obedience even unto death, and that the death of the cross. In such a mind as this, where is the end of unselfishness. For, let us not, however, do the apostle the injustice of fancying that this is a morbid life to which he summons us, the self-sacrifice to which he exhorts us, unlimited as it is, going all lengths and starting back blanched at nothing, is nevertheless not an unnatural life. After all, it issues not in the destruction of self, but only in the destruction of selfishness. It leads us not to a Buddha-like unselfing, but to a Christ-like self-development. It would not make us into

deedless dreamers lazing outer life, of self-suppression, not of selfless love, but would light the flames of a love within us by which we would literally ache for souls. The example of Christ and the exhortation of Paul found themselves upon a sense of the unspeakable value of souls. Our Lord took no account of himself, only because the value of the souls of men pressed upon his heart. And following him we are not to consider our own things, but those of others, just because everything earthly that concerns us is as nothing compared with their eternal welfare. Our self-abnegation is thus not for our own sake, but for the sake of others.

And thus it is not to mere self-denial that Christ calls us, but specifically to self-sacrifice, not to unselfing ourselves, but to unselfishing ourselves. Self-denial, for its own sake, is, in its very nature ascetic, monkish. It concentrates our whole attention on self, self-knowledge, self-control, and can therefore eventuate in nothing other than the very apotheosis of selfishness. At best it succeeds only in subjecting the outer self to the inner self, or the lower self to the higher self, but only the more surely falls into the slough of self-seeking, that it partially conceals the selfishness of its goal by refining its ideal of self,

and excluding its grosser and more outward elements. Self-denial then drives to the cloister, narrows and contracts the soul, Murders within us, innocent desires, dries up all the springs of sympathy and nurses and corrals our self-importance until we grow so great in our own self-esteem as to be careless of the trials and sufferings, the joys and aspirations, the strivings and failures and successes of our fellow men. Self-denial thus understood will make us cold, hard, unsympathetic, proud, arrogant, self-esteeming, fanatical, overbearing, cruel. It may make monks and stoics, it cannot make Christians.

It is not to this that Christ's example calls us. He did not cultivate self, even his divine self. He took no account of self. He was not led by his divine impulse out of the world, driven back into the recesses of his own soul, to brood morbidly over his own needs, until to gain his own seemed worth all sacrifice to him. He was led by his love for others into the world,

to forget himself in the needs of others, to sacrifice self once for all upon the altar of sympathy. self-sacrifice brought Christ into the world, and self-sacrifice will lead us his followers, not away from, but into the midst of men. Wherever men suffer, there will we be to comfort. Wherever men strive, there we will be to help. Wherever men fail, there will we be to uplift. Wherever men succeed, there will we be to rejoice.

Self-sacrifice means not indifference to our times and our fellows, it means absorption in them. It means forgetfulness of self in others. It means entering into every man's hopes and fears, longings and despairs. It means many-sidedness of spirit, multiform activity, multiplicity of sympathies. It means richness of development. It means not that we should live one life, but a thousand lives, binding ourselves to a thousand souls by the filaments of so loving a sympathy that their lives become ours. It means that all the experiences of men shall smite our souls and shall beat and batter these stubborn hearts of ours into fitness for their heavenly home. It is, after all, then, the path to the highest possible development, by which alone we can be made truly men.

Not that we shall undertake it with this end in view. This were to dry up its springs at their source. We cannot be self-consciously self-forgetful, selfishly unselfish. Only when we humbly walk this path, seeking truly in it, not our own things but those of others, we shall find the promise true that he who loses his life shall find it. only when like Christ and in loving obedience to his call and example we take no account of ourselves but freely give ourselves to others we shall find each in his measure the saying true of himself also wherefore also God hath highly exalted him the path of self-sacrifice is the path to glory

end of sumon two end of the gospel of the incarnation by b b warfield