The "I Come" Which Has Been
By L. F. Starr
"Then said He, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God." Heb. 10:9.
"Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O My God." Ps. 40:7, 8. WE are invited to an important sursum corda ("lift up your hearts") in Scripture. Let us look up from beside the sacred cradle, to the heavens of heavens, and ponder well the antecedent to Bethlehem, the self-consecration of the eternal Son to His incarnate life and work. The Scripture, with both its hands, the prophetic and the apostolic, lifts for us here the veil, and discloses for us the mind that was in Christ Jesus, when, in eternity, He the Son, the beloved and only-begotten of the Father, before the foundation of the world, willed to come down and become flesh. It utters to us the true thought with which He, being God, elected to be also man. It lets us hear His resolve to come, and to do the Father's will by keeping His commandments, setting us an example that we should by faith follow His steps and be saved. As we listen to His voice speaking through inspiration, He speaks to us of surrender and service. Let us, with the Scripture in our memory, recall in shortest summary some of the truths told us through this utterance, "Lo, I come to do Thy will." Why does He come, as to the urgent element of His purpose? What is the aim set in the foreground of the eternal thought, indicated in the Psalms and developed in the epistles? Is it immediately to redeem the race by incarnation? Is it to be "sacrifice and offering"? Is it to do the last work foreshadowed in type and ceremonies? Is it that He, the Incarnate Being, might put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself? Such was the first, ruling purpose of the self-consecration of the Son. The Self-consecrator had in view, above all things, His death, His sacrifice, His expiation, His propitiation. He came to "reveal God to the world as a God of love, full of mercy, tenderness, and compassion." "The thick darkness with which Satan had endeavored to enshroud the throne of Deity was swept away by the world's Redeemer, and the Father was again manifest to men as the light of life." When Philip made the request, "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us," the Saviour answered him: "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?" Christ declares Himself to be the Representative, the Revealer, of the Father. Possessing the qualities of nobility in character, and tender pity, in His love and goodness He stood before men as the divine perfection of God, "being the brightness of His [the Father's] glory, and the express image of His person." In the Psalms and Hebrews the Philippians, all, in this manner, gravitate upon the crucifixion. "A body hast Thou prepared Me." He took share, with His brethren, in flesh and blood, that by means of death He might destroy him that has power over death, that is, the devil. Heb. 2:14. Being the brightness of His Father's glory, by Himself He purged our sins. He "became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." The Scriptures are eloquent of the pain and yet joy of the untold humiliation of our Lord. They tell us of His willingness to be made like us, with a likeness that would be no mere trope or figure, but a reality to its depths. They reveal His divinely felt consent in the full light of God's eternal love, who "so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son" to die in our stead. He willed as God, that He might will as man, to experience by growth and development what it is to weep, and to feel the pains and sorrows of humanity, and to say, "Thy will be done," not only in heaven, as the Son eternal, but as the Son of Man, under the olives of Gethsemane. He willed to cry, when the last darkness gathered round the cross, to Him whose will He was wholly content to do, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" The perfect example of His filial love shines forth with undimmed luster upon His followers to-day. The splendor of God, once poured upon the field of the shepherds, shines forever upon His redeemed. The great warrior angels, the choiring heavenly army who waited the signal to declare the news of His birth to the world, were near the cross at His death, watching with amazement His despairing agony, and triumphed at His victory over death. Well for us that He planted His banner upon the eternal heights! Was not there joy among the heavenly angels? Thank God, the roots of our Christian joy are watered with the sorrows and sacrifices of our Redeemer. They cost Him dear. They involved His infinite humiliation. Let us bless Him with the love of penitents; let us follow Him with the love of witnessing disciples. "Lo, I come," said the Saviour, in view of His cradle, His cross and death of shame. He saw them from the heavenly heights. "Lo, I come to do Thy will." And we are His, by purchase; and through Him and faith in His name, we do and will ever triumph in His name. Let us, the members of His family, draw from Him the power to say, I delight "to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work."