Blessed Redeemer, for I take it for granted that we all admit the great truths of Christianity.  What I desire now to do is to point out that, if saved at all, we are saved by a Person, and that that Person is divine.  The Lord Jesus Christ is a personal Saviour, and as a personal Saviour, saves us from the death of sin.  It is as much a personal act as when a bold swimmer leaps into the ocean and saves a drowning man.

Now it is plain that everything depends on the nature and power of the person who saves us.  If He be only man, then we can hope for nothing more than a man-made salvation.  The salvation will not rise above the Saviour; but if He is divine, then we may rest on His divine omnipotence, and look for the power of God unto salvation.  Thus the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ is a matter of life and death to us.  The question is whether we are to save ourselves or be saved by our God.  And this is the issue which He Himself raised when He said, “I give unto them eternal life.” [18b]  The statement of that passage is that He, as a Person, holds His people in His own hand, and holds them with omnipotent strength because He is divine, for He and the Father are one.  There, then, is both the foundation and the keystone of our trust.  We may see all kinds of difficulties; there may be confusion, perplexity, and the cry of distress in every direction, but according to His divine power God has provided a divine Saviour, and in that Saviour we may rest, for He is the Son of God.

II.  A Divine Salvation.

The whole plan from first to last is divine.  The world is full of human plans, some of which are successful and some total failures.  One man contrives one thing and one another, but God alone planned the great salvation.  It was not in the power of ruined nature to restore itself, so in boundless mercy and in His own divine omnipotence He provided a plan of restoration.  Thus the purpose is divine, His own eternal purpose before the world was; the mode of reconciliation is divine, the release of the sinner through the imputation of sin to the sin-bearer.  The propitiation was divine, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.” [20a]  The imputation of righteousness is divine, “For God hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” [20b]

The work of sanctification is divine, “Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us . . . sanctification;” [20c] and the final gathering of God’s elect will be divine for “all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.” [20d]

It is most important to bear this well in mind, for it places the subject beyond the sphere of human speculation.  If a man starts a new system of philosophy, or if people advocate any particular system in politics, we are perfectly at liberty to criticise it.  What one man does, another man may criticise.  But it is a very different thing with the salvation of God.  Once admit that it is a divine plan, arranged in divine wisdom and carried out in divine power, and it is then manifestly beyond the reach of human intellect.  There may be things in it which seem to us very mysterious; but what else can we expect when the infinite and divine arrangements of God are subjected to the speculations of the finite mind of man?  If the whole salvation were of such a character as to present no points of difficulty to the human inquirer, we might almost doubt its divinity, and believe that as it is within the range of man’s mind, so it had its origin in man’s ingenuity.  But when we see it beyond the reach of man, then we are taught by our own inability to fathom it, to regard it as a plan above ourselves, for the simple reason that it is divine.

III.  Divine Revelation.

But when we have acknowledged that the Saviour and the salvation are divine, there remains a further question of the utmost possible importance.  It is this.  In what way is this divine salvation made known to mankind?  Is it known by human discovery or divine communication?  Do we know it by thinking out the subject, or by receiving a revelation from God?  Surely the answer to this question is obvious, that a divine salvation can only be known by a divine communication.  The eternal purpose of God can only be known by divine communication from Himself.  A supernatural salvation requires in the very nature of things a supernatural communication from God.  Thus an Apostle describes [21] the faith, not as having been discovered by the saints, but as having been delivered to the saints, delivered to them, that is, in God’s own inspired Word.  As God has planned a complete salvation, so He has given a complete revelation of that salvation.  He has not left us to grope for it as blind men feeling for the wall; but has revealed His plan in His own word, and taught us to rest in the scripture of truth as His own revelation of His purpose of grace.

IV.  The Divine Application.

To many this is the most difficult of the four points mentioned at the outset.  They are perfectly satisfied as to the divine Saviour, the divine salvation, and the divine revelation in the Word of God, but have found no little difficulty in the application of it to themselves.  They can see the chain with its three links hanging down from heaven over their heads, but it is just out of their own reach, and as a poor dying sailor once said to me, “I see the rope, but I cannot get hold of it.”  So they see the salvation, but cannot get hold of it as their own.  If there are any anxious on the subject, and earnestly desiring “to get hold” on the great salvation, let them remember that what they really want is for the Saviour to lay hold on them, and this is what He practically does by the power of the Holy Ghost.  It is the peculiar office of the Holy Ghost to take of the things of the Lord Jesus Christ and apply them unto us, and without that act of His we may struggle in vain to reach the blessing.  It is not enough for us to be told that God has provided a perfect Saviour, that that Saviour has made a perfect propitiation, and that by virtue of that propitiation the great salvation is offered to us as a gift.  We may be assured of all that and yet live on without it, for we want in addition that which the human heart cannot find in itself, the power to receive the gift and, receiving it, to live.  It is by this mighty power that those who