The first thing that I notice is that the Christ of the Gospels thought and taught that His death was to be His own act.
I do not think that it is an undue or pedantic pressing of the significance of the words before us, if I ask you to notice two of the significant expressions in this text. The Son of Man came,' and came to give His life.' The one word refers to the act of entrance into, the other to the act of departure from, this earthly life. They correspond in so far as that both bring into prominence Christ's own consent, volition, and action in the very two things about which men are least consulted, their being born and their dying.
The Son of Man came.' Now if that expression occurred but once it might be minimised as being only a synonym for birth, having no special force. But if you will notice that it is our Lord's habitual word about Himself, only varied occasionally by another one equally significant when he says that He was sent'; and if you will further notice that all through the Gospels He never butonce speaks of Himself as being born,' I think you will admit that I am not making too much of a word when I say that when Christ, out of the depths of His consciousness, said the Son of Man came; He was teaching us that He lived before He was born, and that behind the natural fact of birth there lay the supernatural fact of His choosing to be incarnated for man's redemption. The one instance in which He does speak of Himself as being born' is most instructive in this connection. For it was before the Roman governor; and He accompanied the clause in which He said, To this end was I born'--which was adapted to Pilate's level of intelligence--with another one which seemed to be inserted to satisfy His own sense of fitness, rather than for any light that it would give to its first hearer, And for this cause came I into the world.' The two things were not synonymous; but before the birth there was the coming, and Jesus was born because the Eternal Word willed to come. So says the Christ of the Gospels; and the Christ of the Epistles is represented as taking upon Him the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man.' Do you accept that as true of the historic Christ'?
With precise correspondence, if we turn to the other end of His life, we find the equally significant expression in my text which asserts for it, too, that the other necessity to which men necessarily and without their own volition bow was to Christ a matter of choice. The Son of Man came to give."No man taketh it from Me,' as He said on another occasion. I lay it down of Myself.' The Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.' My flesh… I give for the world's life.' Now, brethren, we are not to regard these words as mere vague expressions for a willing surrender to the necessity of death, but as expressing what I believe is taught us all through Scripture, and is fundamental to any real grasp of the real Christ, that He died because He chose, and chose because He loved. What meant that loud voice' with which He said It is finished,' but that there was no physical exhaustion, such as was usually the immediate occasion of death by crucifixion? What meant that surprising rapidity with which the last moment came in His case, to the astonishment of the stolid bystanders? They meant the same thing as I believe that the Evangelists meant when they, with one consent, employed expressions to describe Christ's death, which may indeed be only euphemisms, but are apparently declarations of its voluntary character. He gave up the ghost.' He yielded His Spirit.' He breathed forth His life, and so He died.
As one of the old fathers said, Who is this that thus falls asleep when He wills? To die is weakness, but thus to die is power.' The weakness of God is stronger than man.' The desperate king of Israel bade his slave kill him, and when the menial shrunk from such sacrilege he fell upon his own sword. Christ bade His servant Death,' Do this,' and he did it; and dying, our Lord and Master declared Himself the Lord and Master of Death. This is a part of the history of the historic Christ. Do you believe it?
