"'For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.'
"Now, what is the meaning of this plain term 'Christ'? It means a 'King.' But how can we appreciate the King, unless we learn the nature of the beings over whom He rules? He reigns over the heavens; therefore we investigate the heavens. The whole earth is full of His glory; therefore we study the earth. He is the Lord over the angels; when we reflect on them, we catch a glimpse of Him in His regal state. He is the King of the Jews and the Gentiles. When we meditate on men, we enjoy a glance at Him who was born for this end, that He might have dominion over our race. When we contemplate the material worlds, all the vastness and the grandeur included in them—the sphere of mind, all the refinement and energy involved in it—we are overpowered by the reality, surpassing fable, that He who superintends all the movements of matter and first spake it into being and once framed, as He now governs, the souls of His creatures—He is the King who atoned for us; and the more we know of the stars in their courses, and of the spirit in its mysteries, so much the deeper is our awe in view of the condescending pity which moved their Creator to become one with a lowly creature acquainted with grief for you and me. So much is involved in the word 'Christ.'
"But our text speaks of Jesus Christ. That word 'Jesus!' What is the meaning of it? It means a 'deliverer,' and in the view of some interpreters it means 'God, the deliverer.' Deliverer? From what? We do not understand the power of His great office, unless we learn the nature and the vileness of sin; and we have no conception how mean, how detestable, sin is, unless we know the needlessness of it, the nobleness of the will which degrades itself into it, the excellence of the law which is dishonored by it. All our studies, then, in regard to the nature of the will, the unforced voluntariness of depravity, the extent of it through our race, the depth of it, the purity of the commands aiming to prevent it, the attractions of virtue, the strangeness of their not prevailing over the temptations of vice—they are not mere metaphysics; they are studies concerning the truth and the grace of Immanuel, who is God with us, and whose name is 'Deliverer' because He delivers His people from their sins; sins involving the power and the penalty of free wrong choice; a penalty including the everlasting punishment of the soul; a punishment suggesting the nature and the character of the divine law, and the divine Lawgiver, in their relation to the conscience and all the sensibilities of the mind; and that mind, as undying as its Maker. All these things are comprehended in the word 'Jesus.'
"But our text speaks of Jesus Christ and Him crucified: and this third term, 'crucified,' adds an emphasis to the two preceding terms, and stirs us up to examine our own capabilities—to learn the skill pervading our physical organism, so exquisitely qualified for pain as well as pleasure; the wisdom apparent in our mental structure, so keenly sensitive to all that can annoy as well as gratify; and thus we catch a glimpse of the truth, that He who combines all of our dignity with none of our guilt, and with all of the divine glory, and who thus develops all that is fit to be explained in man, and all that can be explained in God—He it is who chose to hang and linger with aching nerve and bleeding heart upon the cross for you and me. This cross makes out an atonement of the sciences and the arts and brings them also, as well as devout men, at one with God; all of them tributary to the doctrine that we are bought with a price—that we are redeemed, not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of a man, who was God manifest in the flesh. Too large a theme is the atonement? But it breaks down the middle wall of partition that has kept apart the different studies of men; and it brings them together as illustrations of the truth, which in their light becomes as simple as it is great.
"The very objection, then, that the redemptive work is too extensive for our familiar converse, has suggested the second reason why it should be the main thing for us to think upon, and speak upon, and act upon: It systematizes all other themes, and gains from them a unity which becomes the plainer because it is set off by a luminous variety; and for this cause," continues the apostle, "I intend to know nothing with supreme love, except this centralizing doctrine which combines all other truths into a constellation of glories."
There is still a third inquiry which we might present to the author of our text, could we meet him in a personal colloquy:
"Your words all converge toward one point; will they not then become monotonous, and inapposite to the varying wants of various, or even the same, individuals?"
"A monotonous theme!" this is the reply: "What can be more diversified than the character and work of Him who is at one time designated as the omniscient God, and at another time as a Mechanic; at one time as a Judge, and at another time as an Intercessor; now a Lion, and then a Lamb; here a Vine, a Tree, there a Way, a Door; again a Stone, a Rock, still again a Star, a Sun; here without sin, and there He was made sin for us.
"Monotonous is this theme? Then it is sadly wronged, and the mind of man is sadly harmed; for this mind shoots out its tendrils to grasp all the branches of the tree of life, and the tree in its healthy growth has branches to which every sensibility of the human mind may cling. The judgment is addrest by the atonement, concerning the nature of law of distributive justice, the mode of expressing this justice either by punishing the guilty or by inflicting pain as a substitute for punishment, the influence of this substitution on the transgressor, on the surety, on the created universe, on God Himself. There is more of profound and even abstruse philosophy involved in the specific doctrine of the atonement, than in any other branch of knowledge; and there has been or will be more of discussion upon it, than upon all other branches of knowledge; for sacred science is the most fruitful of all sciences in logical deduction, and this specific part of the science is the richest of all its parts.