SERMON

XIV.

BY REV. EDWARD D. GRIFFIN, D.D.

THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST.*

"For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him."-COL. i. 16.

WHILE worldly minds are confined to a few surrounding objects, unconscious of the great scenes above them, like men in a cavern who have never beheld the glories of nature, the devout Christian delights to raise his eyes, and contemplate the perfections of his Creator. He feels a noble and inextinguishable ardor to ascend in meditation to everlasting things, to lose sight of earth in his sublime excursions, to tread the pavements of heaven, to take a near view of God, and from that exalted summit to look abroad among his Father's works. The point to which his thoughts aspire, the highest that a created mind can reach, is that from whence he may view the amazing purposes which God is carrying into execution, and by this means discover the moral character of their Author, and the tendency of all things. On this eminence stood the great Apostle of the Gentiles, when he pronounced the words of our text. Let us accompany him to that commanding height; and while we view, may the divine spirit clear the film from our mental sight, that we may gaze with amazement, adoration, and love.

Placing ourselves at the beginning of time, and looking back into eternity, we are anxious to know what induced the ever-blessed God to exercise His power in the production of creatures, and what valuable object He proposed to accomplish by all His works. In order to a right solution of these points, we must conceive an eternal propensity in the fountain of love to overflow, and fill with happiness numberless vessels fitted to receive it. We must conceive an eternal propensity in God to manifest the richness and perfection of His nature to creatures; not for the sake of ostentatious display, but to enrich the universe with a knowledge of his glory, and to lay a

*We publish this rare and eloquent discourse by request. It is the only copy we have seen or heard of. Most or all those who heard it are in their graves. It is worthy of a printed resurrection.--ED. N. P

foundation for general confidence and delight in Him. A state of unproductive repose was not a condition becoming Himself. As the sun exists in his proper and most glorious state when shedding his beams to bless the dependent planets, so God is conceived to exist in His proper and most glorious state when He is benevolently exercising His perfections on the created system, and, so to speak, hangs them around Him like an eternal robe of light, to awaken the wonder and joy of creatures. The stupendous object which he contemplated was an immense and beautifully adjusted kingdom of holy and happy creatures, in which He should be acknowledged as the glorious head, and they should take their proper place at His feet; in which He should be felt as the centre of attraction to draw all its parts into union with Himself, and as a sun to shed blessed influence upon the whole; and over which, when its prosperity should be completed, He might "rejoice with joy, and rest in His love." (Zeph. iii. 17.)

This was the glorious end which His goodness eternally proposed: and now we are to view the means which He ordained for its accomplishment. The principal mean adopted was the appointment of His Son to act as His vicegerent in the creation and government of all worlds, to assume a created nature into personal union with Himself, and thus to fill up the infinite chasm between God and His creation, and be the grand connecting bond between finite and infinite natures. As head of His Father's kingdom, to which He was to be closely united by His assumed nature, and as the medium of all intercourse between that kingdom and His Father, he was to form the most perfect union between God and His creatures. "As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one." (John xvii. 21, 23.) Put forward into a public station as His Father's organ and image, to be seen by every eye, he was to bring out the invisible God to view from the hidden recesses of His nature-to bring down the incomprehensible God within the reach of finite apprehensions, and to serve as a mild glass through which creatures might view the splendors of divine perfection, without dazzling and paining their sight.

This is the Christ the anointed agent, of whom our text declares "By Him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him, and for him." This is not said of him simply as God, but as the Christ, who fills a middle place between God and man, and partakes of both natures. The character intended is pointedly marked in the context, every part of which applies only to Christ. The Apostle is treating of the Messiah, and describes him as the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature, the head of the body, the church, the firstborn from the dead, in whom we have redemption through his blood; all of which can be understood of him only as Mediator, and not merely as

second person of the Trinity. Can we then acquit the apostle of the charge of introducing a strange confusion of characters, unless our text be allowed to assert that all things were created by the Messiah, and for the Messiah?

The truth I take to be this: All the works which God designed to produce throughout the universe, he delegated Christ to accomplish. All the displays of God which were ever intended to be made to creatures, Christ was appointed to make. The vast plan which involved the whole creation, and all the measures of divine government, was one plan; the execution of which, in all its parts, was committed to Christ. It is elsewhere said that all things were made for God, that is for the display of his perfections, and for the promotion of that general interest of his kingdom which he benevolently considers his own. In perfect consistency with this, all things are here said to be made for Christ, that is, for the illustration of his mediatorial glory (not indeed as the ultimate and chief end, but rather as the principal mode in which the glory of God was to be displayed) and to subserve the vast plan which he was appointed to execute, in the issue of which God will be all in all. It would seem, then, that it was in the character of Messiah that he created the angels, the sun, moon, and stars, and all other things visible and invisible; and that he created them all for himself as Mediator; in a word, that he created all worlds to subserve his mediatorial plan, the principal scene of which, it is well known, was laid upon this earth. The same apostle in another place declares that God created all things by Jesus Christ-and why? "To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God." Eph. iii. 9, 10.) In one of his addresses to the Christian Church, the apostle expressly asserts: "All things are for your sakes." (2 Cor. iv. 15.) Does it seem incredible that all other worlds should be created to promote the purposes of grace upon this earth? Why is this more incredible than that the Mediator should upon this earth purchase the glory of governing the rest of the universe, and that he should govern the whole with reference to his Church ?-points which are, in the clearest manner, revealed. It is said that he humbled himself and became obedient unto death: wherefore God also hath highly exalted him; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth. He raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all.*

The dominion conferred on Christ as a reward for what he performed on earth, seems not to have been limited to his Church, but to have extended to the universe.

What purpose the Mediator intended to answer by other worlds and their inhabitants, in prosecuting the plan of redemption, we do not fully comprehend. The angels, it is well known, are subject to him as ministering spirits to his church, and look with prying curiosity and astonishment into the inysteries of redemption. (Heb. i. 14; 1 Pet. i. 12.) But what use he makes of other worlds we are not told in his word, farther than that they are put under his dominion; and we also know that they serve to instruct his Church while they influence, adorn, and enlighten the earth on which it resides. And whatever inhabitants they contain, we must believe that they do now, or will in some future period, bend to look into the transcendent wonders of redemption, and will take lessons of deep instruction and interest from the astonishing scenes which are unfolded on the earth.†

But passing by other worlds, the one which we inhabit was certainly inade for the Mediator. This is the favored world where he was to assume the nature that was intended to form the connecting link between God and creatures? where he was to found a church to be "a spectacle to angels and to men," (1 Cor. iv. 9;) where he was to display the most august and awful wonder of his death. Here he was to find a miserable race, without help and without hope, immersed in vice and ignorance, groaning under the curse of a holy law, and sinking into everlasting woe. Such an occasion was to be presented for the exercise of his unequalled compassion, for an exhibition of the infinite tenderness of his heart; the history of which is inscribed on the tablet of the earth in tears and blood-the history of which has been a million of times repeated by deeply affected angels, and will be rehearsed in the songs of the redeemed to eternity. To this earth and to Calvary, methinks I see every eye directed from the most distant world which God has made. All seem to point to this, and

say: "Behold, for once, what infinite love could do!"

The several texts and arguments already adduced prove emphatically

Having by his death fulfilled the part which in the covenant of redemption he had engaged to perform, he appeared to his disciples, and said unto them: "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." He was at that time more fully invested with the dominion of the universe, which by anticipation, he had as Mediator enjoyed before his incarnation. I mean not to suggest, the idea of pre-existence of his human soul; he sustained the office of Mediator, and in this character governed the world before he possessed any other than the divine nature. This universal dominion, which is temporary, is that which, at the conclusion of the final judgment, he will resign to the Father; while he will still retain dominion in Zion, and according to ancient promises will hold the throne of his Father David for ever.

If the sentiment that other worlds were created for the Mediator should not appear sufficiently supported, I am willing it should be undersood as expressed rather hypothetically than positively. The author has no title either to the honor or dishonor of originating the idea, which has been held by divines of reputation, and possesses at least the negative merit of not contradicting any of the doctrines of our Church.

that this earth and all its furniture were created for the Mediator. And further to confirm this idea, let me ask, what valuable purpose, except by means of the Mediator, could a world be expected to answer, which it was foreseen, would so quickly be ruined by sin? What valuable end, in any other way, has it in fact answered? We judge of the design of a thing by the use to which it is put. To what valuable use then has the earth been put, but to bring glory to God and good to creatures, through the mediation of Christ? If it was designed for the happiness of men, none have tasted happiness in it since the fall, or found it a passage to heaven, but by the Mediator? That Priest only has procured its blessings; that Prophet only has instructed its ignorance; that King only has dispensed its comforts. If it was created for the glory of God, this glory shines only in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor. iv. 6.) "No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." (John i. 18.) Him only have men beheld; only his works and providence do men contemplate. Not one purpose desirable to benevolence, or illustrative of the wisdom or goodness of its Author, is answered by the earth, but in consequence of the mediation of Christ. And of all the displays of divine glory, the richest appear in his incarnation and atonement, in the pardon and government which he administers in the Church. As the earth has in fact answered no desirable purpose, but through the agency of the Mediator such a fact must have been foreseen in the day of its creation, and it must have been made only for the sake of the good to be accomplished by Christ. It was erected for a theatre on which He might make an exhibition of the divine perfections in redeeming His Church, and punishing His enemies and this being its design, the work of erecting it was, of course, assigned to Him for whose use it was intended. He formed every continent and ocean, every lake and island, every mountain and valley, to serve a race who He foresaw would fall, and whom He was determined to redeem. He created every beast that ranges the desert, every fowl that flutters under the arch of heaven, every fish that dwells in the caves of ocean, "every drop, and every dust," to subserve His great design of grace. The whole plan of this world, including creation and providence, including every event from its beginning to the final judgment, was involved in the plan of redemption. The plan is one, though comprehending a vast variety of parts. Among this variety, some parts are designed to fit the earth, by innumerable secret and nameless influences, for the accommodation of a race to be redeemed— others to unfold the wretched character and condition of men, to illustrate their need of a Saviour, and the richness of redeeming grace. Others are intended to prepare the way for carrying into effect the purposes of mercy, and to facilitate, in many ways, their accomplishment.

Does the question arise, How is it possible that every minute substance and event should be serviceable to the kingdom of Christ?