He should be made under the law which we had broken; that He should fulfil all righteousness; that He should suffer and die; that He should be able to sympathize in all the infirmities of his people, and that He should be united to them in a common nature. He who sanctifies (purifies from sin both as guilt and as pollution) and those who are sanctified are and must be of one nature. Therefore as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, He also took part of the same. (Hebrews ii. 11-14.)

2. The Mediator between God and man must be sinless. Under the law the victim offered on the altar must be without blemish. Christ, who was to offer Himself unto God as a sacrifice for the sins of the world, must be Himself free from sin. The High Priest, therefore, who becomes us, He whom our necessities demand, must be holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. (Hebrews vii. 26.) He was, therefore, "without sin." (Hebrews iv. 15; 1 Peter ii. 22.) A sinful Saviour from sin is an impossibility. He could not have access to God. He could not be a sacrifice for sins; and He could not be the source of holiness and eternal life to his people. This sinlessness of our Lord, however, does not amount to absolute impeccability. It was not a non potest peccare. If He was a true man He must have been capable of sinning. That He did not sin under the greatest provocation; that when He was reviled He blessed; when He suffered He threatened not; that He was dumb, as a sheep before its shearers, is held up to us as an example. Temptation implies the possibility of sin. If from the constitution of his person it was impossible for Christ to sin, then his temptation was unreal and without effect, and He cannot sympathize with his people.

3. It was no less necessary that our Mediator should be a divine person. The blood of no mere creature could take away sin. It was only because our Lord was possessed of an eternal Spirit that the one offering of Himself has forever perfected them that believe. None but a divine person could destroy the power of Satan and deliver those who were led captive by him at his will. None but He who had life in Himself could be the source of life, spiritual and eternal, to his people. None but an almighty person could control all events to the final consummation of the plan of redemption, and could raise the dead; and infinite wisdom and knowledge are requisite in Him who is to be judge of all men, and the head over all to his Church. None but one in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead could be the object as well as the source of the religious life of all the redeemed.

These qualifications for the office of mediator between God and man are all declared in the Scriptures to be essential; they all met in Christ; and they all were demanded by the nature of the work which He came to perform.

As it was necessary that Christ should be both God and man in two distinct natures and one person, in order to effect our redemption, it follows that his mediatorial work, which includes all He did and is still doing for the salvation of men, is the work not of his human to the exclusion of his divine nature, nor of the latter to the exclusion of the former. It is the work of the eáveρwños, of the God-man. Of the acts of Christ, as already remarked, some are purely divine, as creation, preservation, etc.; others purely human, i. e., those which the ordinary powers of man are not only adequate to accomplish, but in which only human faculties were exercised; and, thirdly, those which are mixed, which belong to the whole person. As speaking in man is a joint exercise of the mind and of the body, so the mediatorial work in Christ is the joint work of his divinity and humanity. Each nature acts agreeably to its own laws. When a man speaks, the mind and body concur in the production of the effect, each according to its nature. So when our Lord spake, the wisdom, truth, and authority with which He spake were due to his divinity; the human form of the thoughts and their articulation were what they were in virtue of the functions of his human nature. So with all his redemptive acts. As the mind of man concurs in the endurance of the sufferings of the body according to the nature of mind, so the divinity of Christ concurred with the sufferings of his human nature according to the nature of the divinity.

On this subject the schoolmen. made the following distinctions : “(1.) Est ó ¿vepyŵv, Agens seu Principium quod agit, quod est suppositum seu persona Christi. (2.) Tò èveрyntiкòv seu Principium formale quo agit; illud per quod agens, seu persona Christi operatur, duæ scilicet naturæ, quarum unaquæque citra ullum confusionem operatur. (3.) 'Evépyeta seu operatio quæ pendet a principio quo, et naturam sui principii refert, ut sit divina, si principium quo sit divina natura, humana vero, si sit humanitas. (4.) Evépynua, seu amoréλeσμa, quod pendet a principio quod, estque opus externum quod mediationem vocamus. Ita unum est agens principale, nim. persona Christi, et unum árоréλeoua seu opus mediatorium; sed operatur per duas naturas, ut duo principia, unde fluunt duæ ¿vepycíaɩ seu operationes ad unum illud opus concurrentes.” 1

1 Turrettin, locus xiv. quæst. ii. 3, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. p. 335. He quotes from Damasc. lib. li. 4, orth. fid. c. 18, and refers to Leo's 10th Epistle to Flavian.

All Christ's acts and sufferings in the execution of his mediatorial work were, therefore, the acts and sufferings of a divine person. It was the Lord of glory who was crucified; it was the Son of God who poured out his soul unto death. That this is the doctrine of the Scriptures is plain, (1.) Because they attribute the efficacy and power of his acts, the truth and wisdom of his words, and the value of his sufferings to the fact that they were the acts, words, and sufferings of God manifested in the flesh. They are predicated of one and the same person who from the beginning was with God and was God, who created all things and for whom all things were made and by whom all things consist. (2.) If the mediatorial work of Christ belongs to his human nature exclusively, or, in other words, if He is our mediator only as man, then we have only a human Saviour, and all the glory, power, and sufficiency of the Gospel are departed. (3.) From the nature of the work. The redemption of fallen men is a work for which only a divine person competent. The prophetic office of Christ supposes that He possessed "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;" his sacerdotal office required the dignity of the Son of God to render his work available; and none but a divine person could exercise the dominion with which Christ as mediator is intrusted. Only the Eternal Son could deliver us from the bondage of Satan, and from the death of sin, or raise the dead, or give eternal life, or conquer all his and our enemies. We need a Saviour who was not only holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, but who also "is higher than the heavens."

§ 3. The Threefold Office of Christ.

is

It has long been customary with theologians to exhibit the mediatorial work of Christ under the heads of his prophetic, sacerdotal, and kingly offices. To this division and classification it has been objected by some that these offices are not distinct, as it was the duty of the priests as well as of the prophets to teach; by others, that the sacerdotal office of Christ was identical with the prophetic, that his redemption was effected by teaching. This method, however, has not only the sanction of established usage and obvious convenience, but it is of substantive importance, and has a firm Scriptural basis. (1.) In the Old Testament the several offices were distinct. The prophet, as such, was not a priest; and the king was neither priest nor prophet. Two of these offices were at times united in the same person under the theocracy, as Moses was both priest and prophet, and David prophet and king. Nevertheless the offices were distinct. (2.) The Messiah, during the

theocracy and in the use of language as then understood, was predicted as prophet, priest, and king. Moses, speaking of Christ, said, "The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me." It was abundantly taught that the coming deliverer was to discharge all the duties of a prophet as a revealer of the will of God. He was to be the great teacher of righteousness; a light to lighten the Gentiles as well as the glory of his people Israel. No less clearly and frequently was it declared that He should be a priest. "Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedec." He was to be a priest upon his throne. (Zechariah vi. 13.) He was to bear the sins of the people, and make intercession for transgressors. His royal office is rendered so prominent in the Messianic prophecies that the Jews looked for Him only as a king. He was to reign over all nations. Of his kingdom there was to be no end. He was to be the Lord of lords and the King of kings. (3.) In the New Testament the Redeemer, in assuming the office of the promised Messiah, presented Him to the people as their prophet, priest, and king; and those who received Him at all received Him in all these offices. He applied to Himself all the prophecies relating to the Messiah. He referred to Moses as predicting the Messiah as a prophet; to David, as setting Him forth as a priest, and to Daniel's prophecies of the kingdom which He came to establish. The Apostles received Him as the teacher sent from God to reveal the plan of salvation and to unfold the future destiny of the Church. In the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." In that Epistle the priesthood of Christ is elaborately set forth, and its superiority in every respect to the priesthood of the old economy strenuously insisted upon. In like manner the New Testament is full of instruction concerning the grounds, the nature, the extent, and the duration of his kingdom. He is constantly designated as Lord, as our absolute proprietor and sovereign. Nothing, therefore, can be plainer than that as the Old Testament prophets predicted that the Messiah should be a prophet, priest, and king, so the New Testament writers represent the Lord Jesus as sustaining all these offices. (4.) That this is not a merely figurative representation is plain from the fact that Christ exercised all the functions of a prophet, of a priest, and of a king. He was not simply so called, but the work which He actually performed included in perfection all that

the ancient prophets, priests, and kings performed in a lower sphere and as an adumbration of Christ's more perfect work. (5.) We as fallen men, ignorant, guilty, polluted, and helpless, need a Saviour who is a prophet to instruct us; a priest to atone and to make intercession for us; and a king to rule over and protect us. And the salvation which we receive at his hands includes all that a prophet, priest, and king in the highest sense of those terms can do. We are enlightened in the knowledge of the truth; we are reconciled unto God by the sacrificial death of his Son; and we are delivered from the power of Satan and introduced into the kingdom of God; all of which supposes that our Redeemer is to us at once prophet, priest, and king. This is not, therefore, simply a convenient classification of the contents of his mission and work, but it enters into its very nature, and must be retained in our theology if we would take the truth as it is revealed in the Word of God.

Under the old economy the functions of these several offices were not only confided to different persons, no one under the theocracy being at once prophet, priest, and king; but when two of these offices were united in one person they were still separate. The same man might sometimes act as prophet and sometimes as priest or king; but in Christ these offices were more intimately united. He instructed while acting as a priest, and his dominion extending over the soul gave freedom from blindness and error as well as from the power of sin and the dominion of the devil. The gospel is his sceptre. He rules the world by truth and love. "Tria ista officia," says Turrettin, "ita in Christo conjunguntur, ut non solum eorum operationes distinctas exerat, sed eadem actio a tribus simul prodeat, quod rei admirabilitatem non parum auget. Sic Crux Christi, quæ est Altare sacerdotis, in quo se in victimam Deo obtulit, est etiam schola prophetæ, in qua nos docet mysterium salutis, unde Evangelium vocatur verbum crucis, et Trophæum regis, in qua scil. triumphavit de principatibus et potestatibus. Col. ii. 15. Evangelium est lex prophetæ, Is. ii. 2, 3, Sceptrum regis, Ps. cx. 2, Gladius sacerdotis, quo penetrat ad intimas cordis divisiones, Heb. iv. 12, et Altare, cui imponi debet sacrificium fidei nostræ. Ita Spiritus, qui ut Spiritus, sapientiæ est effectus prophetiæ, ut Spiritus consolationis est fructus sacerdotii, ut Spiritus roboris et gloriæ est regis donum."1

1 Locus XIV. quæst. v. 13, edit. Edinburgh, 1847, vol. ii. pp. 347, 348.