Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1191
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, September 6th, 1874, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
‘Christ died for the ungodly.’’Romans 5:6.
In this verse the human race is described as a sick man, whose disease is so far advanced that he is altogether without strength: no power remains in his system to throw off his mortal malady, nor does he desire to do so; he could not save himself from his disease if he would, and would not if he could. I have no doubt that the apostle had in his eye the description of the helpless infant given by the prophet Ezekiel; it was an infant’an infant newly born’an infant deserted by its mother before the necessary offices of tenderness had been performed; left unwashed, unclothed, unfed, a prey to certain death under the most painful circumstances, forlorn, abandoned, hopeless. Our race is like the nation of Israel, its whole head is sick, and its whole heart faint. Such, unconverted men, are you! Only there is this darker shade in your picture, that your condition is not only your calamity, but your fault. In other diseases men are grieved at their sickness, but this is the worst feature in your case, that you love the evil which is destroying you. In addition to the pity which your case demands, no little blame must be measured out to you: you are without will for that which is good, your ‘cannot’ means ‘will not,’ your inability is not physical but moral, not that of the blind who cannot see for want of eyes, but of the willingly ignorant who refuse to look.
While man is in this condition Jesus interposes for his salvation. ‘When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly’; ‘while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,’ according to ‘his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses and sins.’ The pith of my sermon will be an endeavour to declare that the reason of Christ’s dying for us did not lie in our excellence; but where sin abounded grace did much more abound, for the persons for whom Jesus died were viewed by him as the reverse of good, and he came into the world to save those who are guilty before God, or, in the words of our text, ‘Christ died for the ungodly.’
Now to our business. We shall dwell first upon the fact‘’Christ died for the ungodly’; then we shall consider the fair inferences therefrom; and, thirdly, proceed to think and speak of the proclamation of this simple but wondrous truth.
First, here is THE FACT’’Christ died for the ungodly.’ Never did the human ear listen to a more astounding and yet cheering truth. Angels desire to look into it, and if men were wise they would ponder it night and day. Jesus, the Son of God, himself God over all, the infinitely glorious One, Creator of heaven and earth, out of love to me stooped to become a man and die. Christ, the thrice holy God, the pure-hearted man, in whom there was no sin and could be none, espoused the cause of the wicked. Jesus, whose doctrine makes deadly war on sin, whose Spirit is the destroyer of evil, whose whole self abhors iniquity, whose second advent will prove his indignation against transgression, yet undertook the cause of the impious, and even unto death pursued their salvation. The Christ of God, though he had no part or lot in the fall and the sin which has arisen out of it, has died to redeem us from its penalty, and, like the psalmist, he can cry, ‘Then I restored that which I took not away.’ Let all holy beings judge whether this is not the miracle of miracles!
Christ, the name given to our Lord, is an expressive word; it means ‘Anointed One,’ and indicates that he was sent upon a divine errand, commissioned by supreme authority. The Lord Jehovah said of old, ‘I have laid help upon one that is mighty, I have exalted one chosen out of the people’; and again, ‘I have given him as a covenant to the people, a leader and commander to the people.’ Jesus was both set apart to this work, and qualified for it by the anointing of the Holy Ghost. He is no unauthorised saviour, no amateur deliverer, but an ambassador clothed with unbounded power from the great King, a Redeemer with full credentials from the Father. It is this ordained and appointed Saviour who has ‘died for the ungodly.’ Remember this, ye ungodly! Consider well who it was that came to lay down his life for such as you are.
The text says Christ died. He did a great deal besides dying, but the crowning act of his career of love for the ungodly, and that which rendered all the rest available to them, was his death for them. He actually gave up the ghost, not in fiction, but in fact. He laid down his life for us, breathing out his soul, even as other men do when they expire. That it might be indisputably clear that he was really dead, his heart was pierced with the soldier’s spear, and forthwith came there out blood and water. The Roman governor would not have allowed the body to be removed from the cross had he not been duly certified that Jesus was indeed dead. His relatives and friends who wrapped him in linen and laid him in Joseph’s tomb, were sorrowfully sure that all that lay before them was a corpse. The Christ really died, and in saying that, we mean that he suffered all the pangs incident to death; only he endured much more and worse, for his was a death of peculiar pain and shame, and was not only attended by the forsaking of man, but by the departure of his God. That cry, ‘My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me?’ was the innermost blackness of the thick darkness of death.