CALL TO WORSHIP

(Tune: “The Church’s One Foundation”)

Give me a sight, O Savior, of Thy great love to me;

God’s love that has provided all He requires of me.

For pardon and for glory – His righteousness I plead.

Thy righteousness, O Savior, that grants me all I need.

O wonder of all wonders that through Thy death for me,

My guilt and my defilement can all abolished be.

Then melt this heart, O Savior, ring forth the Gospel sound;

And let me trust Thee only, my Lord and Savior crown!

O lead me to the fountain filled with His precious blood,

O fill my heart with worship, with His grace my soul flood;

I trust the risen Savior, and on His merits rest,

He is my one foundation, the brightest and the best.

Today’s Speaker: Brother Randy Wages will conduct the 11:00 am service today. Pray for him as he delivers God’s word.

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To consider what Christ as a Surety, engaged to do

First, He engaged to pay the debts of his people, and satisfy for the wrong and injury done by them; this may be illustrated by the instance of the apostle Paul engaging for Onesimus; which is thus expressed, "If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on my account; I Paul, have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it", (Philem. 1:18, 19). Sin is a wrong and injury done to divine justice, and to the holy law of God, broken by it; which Christ undertook to satisfy for; and sins are debts; see (Matthew 6:12) compared with (Luke 11:4) not proper ones, for then they might be committed with impunity, since it is right and commendable to pay debts: but in an improper sense, as debts oblige to payment, so sins to punishment; even to endure the curse of the law, and death eternal, the sanction of it: these debts, or sins, are infinite objectively, as they are contracted and committed against an infinite being, and require punishment of a creature ad infinitum; and therefore not to be paid off, or answered, by a finite creature; but Christ being an infinite Person, as God, was able to pay off those debts, and answer for those sins, and engaged to do it, and has done it.

There is a twofold debt paid by Christ, as the Surety of his people; the one is a debt of obedience to the law of God; this he engaged to do, when he said, "Lo, I come to do thy will"; thy law is within my heart: and accordingly he was made under the law, and yielded perfect obedience to it, by which his people are made righteous; and the other is a debt of punishment, incurred through failure of obedience in them; the curse of the law he has endured, the penalty of it, death; and by paying both these debts, the whole righteousness of the law is fulfilled in his people, considered in him their Head and Surety. Now let it be observed, that these debts are not pecuniary ones, though there is an allusion to such, and the language is borrowed from them; but criminal ones, a wrong and injury done, as supposed in the case of Onesimus; and are of such a nature as deserve and require punishment in body and soul, being transgressions of the righteous law of God; and God is to be considered, not merely as a creditor, but as the Judge of the whole earth, who will do right, and who will by no means clear the guilty, without a satisfaction to his justice; and yet there is a mixture of grace, mercy, and goodness in God, with his justice in this affair, by admitting a Surety to obey, suffer, and die, in the room and stead of his people, which he was not obliged unto; nor does the law give the least hint of an allowance of it; nor do the civil laws of men admit of any such thing, that an innocent person should suffer death in the room of one that is guilty, even though he consents to it, and desires it; because no man has a power over his own life, to dispose of it at pleasure; but God, who can dispense with his own law, if he pleases, has thought fit to explain it, and put a construction on it in favour of his people, where it is not express; and allow of a commutation of persons, that his Son should stand in their legal place and stead, obey, suffer, and die for them, that they might be made the righteousness of God in him. This is owing to his sovereign grace and mercy; nor is at all inconsistent with his justice, since Christ fully consented to all this, who is the Prov.ince of life, and had power over his own life, as man, to lay it down, and take it up again; and since justice is fully satisfied, by the obedience and death of Christ, and the law magnified and made honourable, and more so than it could have been by all the obedience and sufferings of angels and men put together.

By John Gill

What Christ as our Surety engaged to God to do for us?

First, whatsoever Christ as Mediator covenanted with the Father to do, that He considered as the Surety of the said Covenant and engaged to perform.

To vindicate the honor of God in all the Perfections of His nature, particularly to preserve the justice and veracity of God, and the sanction of His holy law.

He engaged as the Surety of the Covenant to restore to man, or to all God’s Elect, that righteousness which man lost, that as we were made sinners by Adam’s disobedience, so by Christ’s obedience we should all be made righteous; that as the sin of the first Adam was imputed to our condemnation, so Christ’s righteousness, as our covenanting Head, might be imputed to all His seed, and all this according to the contrivance of God’s infinite wisdom, and to answer the design, purpose, and proposal of God the Father, in the Council of Peace.

Seeing man was a rebel, and in arms against God, and filled with rage and madness, and having enmity in his mind against God, Being alienated from the life of God, Rom. 8:7; Jesus Christ, as our Surety, engaged to change the hearts of all He undertook for, and bring them to accept of the terms of Peace with God through the blood of His Cross, I say, He engaged to God to bring home all whom the Father gave unto Him. Hence, He says, Them I must bring, and shall hear my voice, John 10:16. He must bring them because of the Covenant He had made with God the Father, and upon the consideration of that obligation, He laid Himself under as their Surety. He must circumcise our hearts to love the Lord our God, for Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us unto God, I Peter 3:18.

From hence it appears that Christ, by virtue of these articles of Peace, as our Surety, engaged to open Blind eyes, and to bring the Prisoners out of the Prison-House, and to set at liberty those who were first bound; or to set at liberty those who were bound, or by the Blood of His Covenant, to send the Prisoners out of the Pit, where there was no water; for this was agreed should be the effects of His undertakings. See Zech. 9:11, Luke 4: 18: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath Anointed me to preach the Gospel to the Poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to Preach deliverance to the Captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty them who were bruised. He engaged to take away the heart of Stone, and to give us a Heart of flesh to give a New heart, for this the Father promised in the Covenant, and what He promised, Christ engaged to do for us. Without almighty power this cannot be done, He works all our works in us and for us. He engaged to subdue Satan, and divest him, that strong Man Armed of all his power.

Benjamin Keach