Jesus Christ, the Savior

Jesus Christ, the Savior JESUS CHRIST, THE SAVIOR
Hugh A. Clark

It is the custom of Abilene Christian College to ask the preacher of the College church to deliver the opening address of the Annual Lectureship. I am grateful for the honor and for the privilege which is thus fortuitously mine of speaking to you this morning. This Lectureship has come to be an event pleasantly anticipated both by those of us who live here, and by all the brotherhood throughout the nation, many of whom find it possible now and then to be present and to enjoy the rich fellowship and Christian association which the occasion always affords. Those who do find it possible to be here in person invariably declare that they have received much inspiration and edification and even many of those who do not find it possible to come for the Lectures, ultimately share these benefits with us by reading the Lectures which are published every year. A very valuable contribution has been made in this way to the literature of the church for more than a quarter of a century. The College is glad to join with the School in extending a very hearty welcome to our visitors who are already here for this opening service of the Lectureship, and by anticipation to extend the same cordial welcome to all those who will be here later in the week. Our homes and our hearts are open to you, and your happiness is in a very real and actual sense our happiness too.

I have the pleasure to address you this morning in behalf of him whose acquaintance, upon the peril of your soul, you cannot afford not to make. I speak to you of Jesus Christ, the Savior.

There are many texts. The angel said to the much perplexed Joseph, in a dream in the long ago, ‘‘Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:20-21.) The Apostle Peter, speaking to the multitude in Solomon’s Porch, concluded by saying, “He is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which was made the head of the corner. And in none other is there salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we must be saved” (Acts 4:11-12.)

We should keep ever before us the name, Jesus, and should integrate the whole of life’s program around him. Especially should we remember that all our religious life takes its meaning, worth, and efficiency from him. He precedes everything else, is designed of God to prepare the way for everything else, and indeed, he is everything else to us. Paul, the apostle, says, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption: that according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:30-31.)

We do not intend to center these thoughts exclusively around the name of Jesus, and thus to abstract anything from the person of Jesus. The Bible knows nothing of a system of incantations based upon the use of certain set phrases or words of supposedly mystical import, which recited by rote or signified by formulary gesture upon occasion gain the attention of Deity and insure success. The name, Jesus, takes its worth and bearing in the system of human redemption because of the divine being who wore it, and the nature and efficacy of the work done by him. The name, Jesus, is a common name; many others had worn it before the Christ. The Hebrew form of the name is Joshua, and there were several of the ancients who wore this illustrious name. There was, for instance, the son of Nun, minister and successor of Moses, who led the children of Israel over Jordan and conquered most of the land and gave inheritance in it to the tribes of Israel. He died at the age of one hundred and ten years, and was buried in Timnath- serah in Mount Ephraim 1427 B.C. Then there was a Bethshemite in the days of Eli, 1140 B. C. Into his field came the Ark of the Covenant drawn on a new •cart by two kine when the Philistines sent it home after it had been captured in battle (1 Samuel 6:14). I might mention also, the governor of Jerusalem in the days of Josiah, B. C. 640. The history of this man may be read in 2 Kings 23:3. There was next, the son of Josedech and high priest at the building of the second temple, B. C. 520. The Levites also, in the days of Nehemiah, confess to God; “According to thy manifold mercies thou gavest them saviors who saved them out of the hand of their adversaries” (Nehemiah 9:27). This is enough to show that the name is a common name; but not the reason for its imposition upon the Christ, or Messiah. Our text says, “And thou shalt call his name Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins.” Here then, is a “Name which is above every name,” it is Jesus. It is a name not only given by the order of God, but it is explained by the same order. Jesus means Savior; and so God says, “Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins”. It is as if God had said, “Others have been called saviors, but they only saved the bodies of men from temporal, but this child shall be called a savior for a nobler adversity and a higher reason—he shall rescue the souls of men from sin—he is an eternal deliverer.” This explanation by the angel not only distinguishes Jesus from every other who had worn the name, but it opposes the misunderstanding and prejudice of the Jewish nation to which he belonged. The Jews had expected a Savior whom their scriptures called Messiah; but they had cast him in a role of a sort of a national hero and conqueror who should break the civil yoke and free them from the tyranny of Rome, to whom at this time they were tributary. Yes, in due season, their Messiah and Savior would come and marching at the head of their armies in military dignity and regal splendor would vanquish their civil enemies and lead them to universal empire, or at least restore them to their ancient standing and glory among the nations. But how mistaken they were; their Savior came, as they had been led to believe he would, but not to restore them to a temporal, civil glory in an earthly Canaan, but to open up the way and lead them to a better, even a heavenly coun-try. He came not to deliver from civil bondage, then or ever, (John 18:36) but to deliver men from spiritual slavery to sin; he came not to deliver from Caesar, but from Satan. The name, Jesus, is a personal name as distinguished from Christ, or Messiah, which was an official name, and means anointed. The two names are often used together in the New Testament in order that, as Lightfoot remarks, “Not only might Christ be pointed out as the Savior, but also that Jesus might be pointed out as the true Christ or Messiah, against the prejudice of the Jews”.

Let us look more extensively at the statement that Jesus came to save from sin. He came then, not primarily as a social reformer, but as a personal Savior; he came not especially to civilize and culture, but to save the lost from sin; he came not to suggest improvements in agriculture and industry, he came to free men from the bondage and guilt of sin; he left the civil affairs of the world as he found them: he advanced no measures for political and governmental reform; he came not as a statesman, but as a Savior, and his grand mission was to save man from his greatest enemy, sin.

Let us think now of sin as an enemy, and take the following views of its evil. What enemy has man ever had that was comparable to sin? All metaphor falls short and imagery fails, when one would picture the devastation and ruin of this country. But we must try, even though we know the effort must result in a mere adumbration. Let us suppose a physical enemy from abroad, raging with malice and armed with power, who should overrun our country, pillage our cities and sack our towns, burn and destroy our homes and schools, take away our liberties, enslave and imprison our people. Then let us suppose a deliverer to arise and drive the enemy from our shores forever, restore the captives, and give us back our liberties and our property. His name would be upon the tongue of the nation and all would run to do him honor. Children would talk of him in the streets, and his name would be a household word in every family. But, this enemy would be a friend compared to sin, and such a savior would not deserve to be mentioned even in contrast, much less in comparison, with “Jesus Christ, the Savior” from sin. The only reason men do not generally acknowledge the honor of Christ and apply at once to him for deliverance, is because they have no adequate conception of the evil of sin and do not properly value the virtues which it destroys. One must know the malignity and insidiousness of the disease before he can or will properly appreciate either the physician or the remedy. So much depends upon this one point; if sin be the greatest evil and man’s worst enemy, then he who saves us from it becomes at once our kindest benefactor and our greatest friend. Let us then make several observations with regard to the evil of sin.

First, let us think of sin in its opposition to God. lit is logical to reckon that the greatest evil which is opposed to the greatest good; and this is the chief characteristic of sin. God is the very embodiment of all that is good, right, and just, and sin being the very opposite of all that is good, right, or just, is in opposition to God: is highhanded rebellion against God. This is the very essence of the evil of sin. Let us not think that the evil of sin is to be esti-mated by its baseness and grossness, its sordidness and commonness alone; sin is base and gross, sordid and common, but the chief evil of sin is its opposition and rebellion against Jehovah God, the Unquestionable Sovereign of the universe and man. Sin with undisguised arrogance, would depose God from this sovereignty, abuse his divine mercy and beneficence, profane his holiness, and insult and deny his omniscience, his justice and his power. The sinner therefore, is an outcast from God, a rebel against him and his government.

We may, in the second place, estimate the evil of sin by the names which are given to it in the Scriptures. Names are descriptive titles; this being true, how evil is sin! I can think of no term that suggests reproach or raises aversion that is not somewhere in the Scriptures used to describe sin. Sin is disobedience: it is rebellion: it is the work of the devil: it is ignorance: it is folly: it is darkness: it is blindness: it is deafness: it is sickness: it is slavery: it is death! And hence, when the Apostle Paul would speak of it to the Romans, he condemned it in every period of time; he said, “What fruit then had ye at that time in the things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death” (Romans 6:21). For the past, there was unfruitfulness: for the present, there was disgrace: and for the future, there was destruction.

Let us now turn to the effects of sin, and what a picture of evil is presented here! Look first, to the soul of man. It was sin which defiled it and rendered it unfit for immediate association with God, banished it from his presence, and filled it with confusion and regret.

If we turn to the body of man, there too, the evil ef-fects of sin are manifest. God did not create man to die, but, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned” (Romans 5:12.) The universal law of mortality that fills our once immortal and perfect bodies with all those disorders, derangements and defects which eventually bring every man to the grave, is the direct effect of sin.

There is yet one more way to measure the evil of sin; it is by considering the means devised of God to save man, the crowning piece of his creation and the object of his affection, from the utter ruin and eternal destruction of sin. There was only one being in all the universe through whom this could be accomplished ; Jesus, The Savior, the Son of God. Through him, and him alone, could this enemy fall, and man the victim of his foul clutch be released, and purged from all his pollution and guilt.

But, let us consider now, the way in which even The Son of God, the Lord of life and glory, could “Save his people from their sins.” And at this point especially, of all the system of the divine economy, we must “walk by faith, and not by sight.” To save man, Christ must suffer: by the shedding of his blood we are redeemed, and by his death we live. The case is this: God’s command was broken, man stood guilty before his Maker, and the curse, or penalty of the divine law was due. In the mind of God, the same sanctions and holy wisdom which caused him to make the law in the first place, would also cause him to uphold the law and exact the penalty. But God loved man, and desired to save him from the penalty of the law which was eternal destruction.

How could God, without impugning his own truth and integrity and infringing upon his own justice, extend to man, the object of his affection, his mercy, clemency and favor, in such a way as to obviate the penalty of the law end save man for time and for eternity? This is the great question of human redemption; and the only answer we can have to it, in the very nature of the case, is the solution which God devised through Jesus, the Savior, and which he has revealed upon the pages of the New Testament. On the one hand there was law, sin, guilt,' penalty, and death; on the other there was love, mercy, clemency, justification, and life. Between these antipodal al-ternatives God, out of his love for man, interposed the death of his Son, in which his oivine wisdom saw all that was necessary to relieve him, as the moral governor of the universe, from the necessity of executing the penalty of the law upon man, the offender, and which would make it possible for him, in harmony with every virtue of his perfection, to turn to man and extend to him his mercy, clemency, forgiveness and justification in this world, and in the world to come, eternal life. The simplest expression of this marvelous stroke of divine jurisprudence is to be found in the language of the apostle Paul to the Romans, when he said, “But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redcmpt-on that is In Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:21-26.) And now, as w’e conclude our reflections for this morning, let us observe that it is from this propitia tory work that our Lord derives his highest title. His name is the memorial of this achievement. lie will henceforth be known through all the ages as the conqueror of sin, and the Savior of man. And whatever oiher names may be given to him in time or in eternity, it is under the character of a Savior that he is adored by all the saints of earth and by all the angels of heaven. “Worthy ns the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing.” “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be the glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen”.