Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1760
“He shall be great.” Luke 1:32.
Strictly speaking, I suppose these words refer to the human Nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is as to His humanity that Christ was born of Mary. The context runs thus—“Behold, you shall conceive in your womb, and bring forth a son, and shall call His name JESUS. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David. And He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end.” The angel of the Lord thus spoke concerning the Manhood of “that Holy Thing” that should be born of the favored virgin by the overshadowing of the power of the Highest.
As to His Divinity, we must speak concerning Him in another style than this. But, as a Man, He was born of the virgin and it was said to her before His birth, “He shall be great.” The Man, Christ Jesus, stooped very low. In His first estate He was not great; He was very little when He was upon His mother’s breast. In His later estate He was not great, but despised, rejected and crucified! Indeed, He was so poor that He had nowhere to lay His head and He was so cast out by the tongues of men that they called Him a “fellow,” mentioned Him among drunken men and wine-bibbers—and even accused Him of having a devil and being mad! In the esteem of the great ones of the earth, He was an ignorant Galilean of whom they said, “We know not where He is.”
His life binds up more fitly with the lowly annals of the poor than with the aristocracy or whatever stood for that in Caesar’s day. In His own time His enemies could not find a word base enough to express their contempt of Him. He was brought very low in His trial, condemnation and suffering. Who thought Him great when He was covered with bloody sweat, or when He was sold at the price of a slave, or when a guard came out against Him with swords, lanterns and torches, as if He had been a thief? Who thought Him great when they bound Him and led Him to the judgment seat as a malefactor? Or when the cowards smote Him, blindfolded Him and spat in His face? Or when He was scourged, led through the streets bearing His Cross and afterwards hung up between two thieves to die?
Truly He was brought very low and a sword pierced through His mother’s heart as she saw the sufferings of her holy Son. When she knew that He was dead and buried in a borrowed tomb, she must have painfully pondered in her heart the words from Heaven concerning Him and thought within herself, “The angel said He would be great, but who is made so vile as He? He said that He should be called the ‘Son of the Highest,’ but, lo, He is brought into the dust of death and men seal His sepulcher and cast out His name as evil.”
Still, while I think that our text most fitly applies to the manhood of Christ in the first place, I rejoice to think
that—
“He who on earth as Man was known, And bore our sins and pains, Now, seated on the eternal throne,
The God of Glory reigns.”
The very Man who was despised and spat upon, now sits glorious on His Father’s Throne! As Man, He is anointed, “King of kings, and Lord of lords.” As man, He has been lifted up from the lowest depths and set in the greatest heights to reign forever and ever! Peter and the Apostles testified, “This Jesus has God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses, He being by the right hand of God exalted.” Stephen also said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man stand-
ing at the right hand of God.” While we believe that and rejoice in it, we shall be wise never to dissociate the Deity of Christ from His Humanity, for they make up one Person.
I cannot help remarking that in the New Testament you find a disregard of all rigid distinction of the two Natures in the Person of our Lord when the Spirit speaks concerning Him. The two Natures are so thoroughly united in the Person of Christ that the Holy Spirit does not speak of the Lord Jesus with theological exactness, like one who writes a creed, but He speaks as to men of understanding who know and rejoice in the Truth of the one indivisible Person of the Mediator. For instance, we read in Scripture of “the blood of God”—Paul says in Acts 20:28, “Feed the Church of God, which He has purchased with His own blood.”
Now, strictly speaking, there can be no blood of God, and the expression looks like a confusion of the two Natures. But this is intentional that we may clearly see that the two Natures are so joined together that the Holy Spirit does not stop to dissect and set out differences. He says of the united Person of our blessed Lord that which is strictly true either of His Humanity or of His Deity. He is called both, “God, our Savior,” and, “the Man, Christ Jesus.” The combined Natures of the Man, the God, Christ Jesus our Lord, are one Person—and all the acts of either Nature may be ascribed to that one Person. Therefore I, for one, do not hesitate to sing such verses as these—