The Excellences of Christ

It is time for Tuesdays with Edwards!

In August, 1736, Edwards preached a sermon called The Excellency of Christ in which he explores a series of pairs of characteristics of Jesus that you would not expect to find in any one person.

• Highness and condescension.
• Justice and grace.
• Reverence to God and equality with God.
• Worthy of the greatest good, yet suffered the greatest evil.
• Obedience to God, and dominion over Creation.
• Sovereign, yet fully resigned to the Father’s will.
• Self-sufficient as God, yet full reliance on His Father.

These apex in His being both fully divine and fully human. The fact that these diverse excellencies all meet so completely and perfectly in Jesus show that He is Excellent and worthy of our love, praise, and trust.

In the selection below Edwards outlines two benefits for “choosing Christ for your friend and portion.”

You can read the sermon in its entirety online at www.edwards.yale.edu. This selection is taken from Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, ed. M.X. Lesser, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 19 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001) pages 590-594.

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By your choosing Christ for your friend and portion, you will obtain these two infinite benefits.

First. Christ will give himself to you, with all those various excellencies that meet in him, to your full and everlasting enjoyment. He will ever after treat you as his dear friend; and you shall ere long be where he is, and shall behold his glory, and dwell with him, in most free and intimate communion and enjoyment.

When the saints get to heaven, they shall not merely see Christ, and have to do with him as subjects and servants with a glorious and gracious lord and sovereign, but Christ will entertain them as friends and brethren. This we may learn from the manner of Christ’s conversing with his disciples here on earth: though he was their sovereign lord, and did not refuse, but required their supreme respect and adoration, yet he did not treat them as earthly sovereigns are wont to do their subjects; he did not keep them at an awful distance; but all along conversed with them with the most friendly familiarity, as a father amongst a company of children, yea, as with brethren. So he did with the twelve, and so he did with Mary, Martha and Lazarus. He told his disciples, that he did not call them servants, but friends, and we read of one of them that leaned on his bosom. And doubtless he will not treat his disciples with less freedom and endearment in heaven: he won’t keep them at a greater distance for his being in a state of exaltation; but he will rather take them into a state of exaltation with him. This will be the improvement Christ will make of his own glory, to make his beloved friends partakers with him, to glorify them in his glory, as he says to his Father, John 17:22–23, “And the glory which thou hast given me, have I given them, that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them,” etc. We are to consider, that though Christ is greatly exalted, yet he is exalted not as a private person, for himself only, but as his people’s head; he is exalted in their name, and upon their account, as the first fruits, and as representing the whole harvest. He is not exalted that he may be at a greater distance from them, but that they may be exalted with him. The exaltation and honor of the head is not to make a greater distance between the head and the members; but the members have the same relation and union with the head they had before, and are honored with the head; and instead of the distance being greater, the union shall be nearer, and more perfect. When believers get to heaven, Christ will conform them to himself; as he is set down in his Father’s throne, so they shall sit down with him on his throne, and shall in their measure be made like him.

When Christ was going to heaven, he comforted his disciples with that, that after a while, he would come again, and take them to himself, that they might be with him again. And we are not to suppose that when the disciples got to heaven, they found him keeping a greater distance, than he used to do. No, doubtless, he embraced them as friends, and welcomed them to his, and their, Father’s house, and to his, and their, glory. They that had been his friends in this world, that had been together with him here, and had together partook of sorrows and troubles, are now welcomed by him to rest, and to partake of glory with him. He took them and led them into his chambers, and showed them all his glory; as he prayed, John 17:24, “Father, I will, that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me, that they may behold the glory which thou hast given me.” And he led them to his living fountains of waters made them partake of his delights; as he prays, John 17:13, “That my joy may be fulfilled in themselves.” And set them down with him at his table in his kingdom, and made them partake with him of his dainties, according to his promise (Luke 22:30). And led them into his banqueting house, and made them to drink new wine with him in the kingdom of his heavenly Father; as he foretold them, when he instituted the Lord’s Supper (Matthew 26:29).

Yea, the saints’ conversation with Christ in heaven, shall not only be as intimate, and their access to him as free, as of the disciples on earth; but in many respects, much more so: for in heaven, that vital union shall be perfect, which is exceeding imperfect here. While the saints are in this world, there are great remains of sin and darkness, to separate or disunite them from Christ; which shall then all be removed. This is not a time for that full acquaintance, and those glorious manifestations of love, which Christ designs for his people hereafter; which seems to be signified by Christ’s speech to Mary Magdalene, when ready to embrace him, when she met him after his resurrection; John 20:17, “Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.”

When the saints shall see Christ’s glory and exaltation in heaven, it will indeed possess their hearts with the greater admiration and adoring respect, but will not awe them into any separation, but will serve only to heighten their surprise and joy, when they find Christ condescending to admit them to such intimate access, and so freely and fully communicating himself to them.

So that if we choose Christ for our friend and portion, we shall hereafter be so received to him, that there shall be nothing to hinder the fullest enjoyment of him, to the satisfying the utmost cravings of our souls. We may take our full swing at gratifying our spiritual appetite after these holy pleasures. Christ will then say, as in Canticles 5:1, “Eat, O friends. Drink, yea drink abundantly, O beloved.” And this shall be our entertainment to all eternity! There shall never be any end of this happiness, or anything to interrupt our enjoyment of it, or in the least to molest us in it!

Second. By your being united to Christ, you will have a more glorious union with and enjoyment of, God the Father, than otherwise could be. For hereby the saints’ relation to God becomes much nearer; they are the children of God in an higher manner, than otherwise could be. For being members of God’s own natural Son, they are in a sort partakers of his relation to the Father: they are not only sons of God by regeneration, but by a kind of communion in the sonship of the eternal Son. This seems to be intended, Galatians 4:4–6, “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that are under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” The church is the daughter of God, not only as he hath begotten her by his word and spirit, but as she is the spouse of his eternal Son.

So we being members of the Son, are partakers in our measure, of the Father’s love to the Son, and complacence in him. John 17:23, “I in them, and thou in me.…Thou hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.” And John 17:26, “That the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them.” And John 16:27, “The Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.” So we shall, according to our capacities, be partakers of the Son’s enjoyment of God, and have his joy fulfilled in ourselves (John 17:13). And by this means, we shall come to an immensely higher, more intimate, and full enjoyment of God, than otherwise could have been. For there is doubtless an infinite intimacy between the Father and the Son; which is expressed by his being in the bosom of the Father. And saints being in him, shall, in their measure and manner, partake with him in it, and of the blessedness of it.

And thus is the affair of our redemption ordered, that thereby we are brought to an immensely more exalted kind of union with God, and enjoyment of him, both the Father and the Son, than otherwise could have been. For Christ being united to the human nature, we have advantage for a more free and full enjoyment of him, than we could have had if he had remained only in the divine nature. So again, we being united to a divine person, as his members, can have a more intimate union and intercourse with God the Father, who is only in the divine nature, than otherwise could be. Christ who is a divine person, by taking on him our nature, descends from the infinite distance and height above us, and is brought nigh to us; whereby we have advantage for the full enjoyment of him. And, on the other hand, we, by being in Christ a divine person, do as it were ascend up to God, through the infinite distance, and have hereby advantage for the full enjoyment of him also.

This was the design of Christ, to bring it to pass, that he, and his Father, and his people, might all be united in one. John 17:21–23, “That they all may be one; as thou Father art in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me; that they may be made perfect in one.” Christ has brought it to pass, that those that the Father has given him, should be brought into the household of God; that he, and his Father, and his people, should be as it were one society, one family; that the church should be as it were admitted into the society of the blessed Trinity.