Section 5: Reflections

1. Reflection. It is a dangerous thing to mistake the great design of Christ's ministry here on earth. Let us learn from this discourse, that our Savior often preached to sinners the Gospel of Grace and Forgiveness, of repentance and faith in himself; yet that his chief business here, was not to preach the Gospel constantly, nor to preach it in its full light, perfection and glory; but rather to prepare the way for it when he had laid the foundation in his own death and resurrection, and when his kingdom should be set up in the world in his Apostles, and by his Spirit, and built upon this foundation. He prepared the way for his Spirit, and his Apostles, even as John the Baptist prepared the way for him.

The great business of Christ in this life on earth, was to appear with the characters of the Messiah on him; to answer the types and prophecies that went before concerning him; to pass through the stages of life without sin as our example; to yield a perfect obedience to the law, and fulfill all those precepts in perfection which we could never fulfill; to preach the law in the spirituality and perfection of its demands, and begin to open the Gospel; to resign and submit himself to death, as a sacrifice for sin, accursed by the law, and devoted to the punishing justice of God: And hereby he laid a foundation for clearer preaching the Gospel of forgiveness of sins through his blood, which doctrine he just mentions to his disciples at the last supper.

As for his own public preaching, it chiefly consisted in clear and full explications of the law of God in its spirituality, which had been shamefully obscured and curtailed by the Jewish doctors; in bringing the invisible worlds of heaven and hell into a nearer and brighter view; in vindicating his own conduct against the accusations of men; in maintaining his own character, as one sent of God; in reproving the Jews for their corrupt traditions, for their hypocrisy, for their self-righteousness, for their uncharitableness to the Gentiles, and thus calling the world to conviction of sin and repentance, and preparing the way by his parables for the reception of the Gentiles into the church. When he preached the Gospel of his atonement for sin and faith in his blood, it was rather in secret to his disciples; or if in public, it was generally in dark sayings and parables, and mystical expressions, such as, The Son of Man being lifted up and drawing all men to him, giving his flesh for meat to the people, and his blood for drink, et cetera. The plainest intimations, which (I think) Christ ever gave of the salvation of sinners by his own death as a sacrifice, to people who were not his disciples, was in those metaphorical words two or three times repeated in the tenth chapter of John, I am the good Shepherd, who gives his life for the sheep. But when his death and resurrection had laid a fairer foundation for the Gospel, then he taught it his disciples much more plainly after his resurrection, both by his conversation and by his Spirit, and sent them to publish it to the whole world more gloriously than ever he himself taught it to the Jews. See this explained more at large in Doctor Watts's second sermon on the Atonement of Christ.

Now, I say, a mistake in the design of Christ's public preaching, may lead many people into some unhappy misapprehensions about several things, and particularly about the way of salvation by the Gospel. For,

1. When we hear Christ preach the law so much, and speak of entering into life by keeping the commandments, if we imagine all this to be the clear Gospel, we shall seek to be saved as it were by the works of the law, which the Apostle so severely reproves the Galatians for, and the Jews or Jewish Christians, who dwelt among the Romans. Romans 9:31, 32. Galatians 3:1, et cetera, and 4:21, and 5:4. And if our opinions and conduct be the same, we shall expose ourselves to the same sacred reproof of the Apostle, and be greatly bewildered in the way to heaven.

2. Such a mistake in the design of Christ's preaching the law, as though he taught it as the way for the salvation of sinners, will incline us to expound the law in so gross and defective a sense, as the Pharisees did of old, that so expounded, sinners may be able to keep it, and obey the commands of it sufficient to gain salvation thereby. It will tempt us to retrench and diminish the perfection of its demands of universal holiness in thought, word and deed; because otherwise we cannot yield a perfect obedience. Whereas it is much more glorious to God, the Governor of the world, to suppose his holy law still maintains its own perfect purity, and its original demands of constant universal obedience; and it is more glorious to God our Savior, to suppose that he has provided an effectual way for the salvation of sinful creatures, who trust in divine mercy, and who love the law of God, though their best obedience to it be very defective.

3. Such a mistake will lead ministers to neglect the mention of the death and sufferings of Christ as a sacrifice for sin, and as the foundation of our pardon and our hope; it will lead them to omit these important points in their descriptions of the Gospel, and in their accounts of faith in Christ; because Christ never spoke so publicly and plainly to the people, of making atonement for sin by his death, et cetera. And upon this account we shall be in danger of leaving this doctrine out of our directions of sinners when they seek the way to salvation, which is now made plainer and more necessary since the death and resurrection of Christ are accomplished, since the Apostles have particularly explained this doctrine, and the New Testament is complete.

4. This mistake will tempt us to set Christ and his Apostles at variance about the way of salvation. Christ says, If you will enter into life, keep the commandments; and the Apostles say, The law is the ministration of death, but believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved; and we are justified by faith without the works of the law, et cetera. And thus we shall make the Holy Scripture contradict itself: Or if we endeavor to accommodate and reconcile these seeming oppositions, upon a supposition that Christ in the language of my text preached the Gospel, it can never be done, with fairness and justness of thought, without straining the words of Scripture from their natural sense; and it will ever bring a darkness upon the distinction between the law and Gospel, and leave the way of salvation by the Gospel under much confusion.

5. This will tempt and incline us to expound the clear Gospel, which we find in the writings and preaching of Saint Paul, Saint Peter, and Saint John, after the death and resurrection of Christ, by one of the legal expressions of our Savior, when in his own lifetime he preached the law for the conviction of sinners: We shall interpret the words and language of the Gospel into the sense of the law of works: We shall almost explain away the covenant of grace, and make a covenant of works of it: And thus, perhaps, expose ourselves to the danger of Saint Paul's censure and anathema, by preaching another Gospel, or perverting the Gospel of Christ, Galatians 1:8.

6. This mistake will lead us to slight and despise the writings of the Apostles, as though they never did nor could preach the Gospel so clearly as Christ himself; whereas they were really designed and sent forth after the death and resurrection and ascension of Christ, to preach the full Gospel to the nations in clearer and stronger language than Jesus himself ever did to the multitude; they were instructed and commissioned to publish the way to salvation by Christ, in a brighter and more explicit manner and expression, than his Divine Wisdom thought proper to do before he had actually died and rose again, by which transactions he laid the foundation for preaching the Gospel more clearly and perfectly.

A mistake about the personal ministry of Christ, in such passages as this in my text, will make us look upon the glorious and evangelical paragraphs in the sermons and the epistles of Peter, Paul and John, as mere affectionate and fervent pieces of discourse, according to the warm temper and lively fancies of those honest and zealous men, who in the heat of their spirits spoke many things mystically and unintelligibly. This hath been the professed opinion of some who are called Christians concerning the great Apostle; and upon this account they think none of his writings are to be read without great caution: But if you will seek the way of salvation aright (say they) you must go to the mount, and hear our Savior's sermon there, in the 5, 6 and 7 chapters of the Gospel of Saint Matthew, while they neglect the more evangelical speeches even of Christ himself. This has been the language of some men, the leaders of the consciences of the ignorant multitude, who are by nature inclined enough to a covenant of works, and need not be taught and persuaded to build all their hopes of heaven upon the works of the law, which Christ never designed in that noble and admirable sermon of his on the mountain.

But now if we suppose Christ frequently preaching the law, on purpose to show the Jews the grossest defects and imperfection of their obedience, and their need of a Savior, and giving such hints of the Gospel as were suited to that dispensation of his life and personal ministry; and if we suppose the Apostles more fully preaching this Gospel (which our Savior just opened and begun in his lifetime) and publishing it in all its glory of righteousness and grace, after the death and resurrection of Christ, because it was not proper to be thus clearly preached before, then we may well reconcile the different language of Saint Paul and of Christ, when one says, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, and the other, If you will enter into life keep the ten commandments. It is certain that the law is not against the promises, Galatians 3:21, but the law is our schoolmaster, and leader of us as children to Christ; so the Greek word Paidagogos means, Galatians 3:24. Conviction of sin by Christ's preaching of the law, leads men, as in a lower school, as yet, to proceed farther, and to seek for and embrace the grace of Christ in the Gospel, as it is preached more fully and clearly by his Apostles under the teachings of his Spirit.

This scheme and view of things being well adjusted in the mind, will help us to understand many of those legal expressions in the New Testament, which might seem to lead us to the covenant of works again, or which seem to mingle the law and Gospel for salvation, if we will but remember that the Holy Ghost in the New Testament sometimes discovers the Law in its severity and perfection of demands for the conviction of sin, as well as for the discovery of our duty, and sometimes reveals the Gospel in the riches of its grace, for the faith and salvation of awakened sinners.