260 THE DOCTRINE Or TIM TRINI'TV, fgEnM, 14. Now Christ becomes our Mediator of reconciliation, eminently, these five ways : 1. By his incarnation, that is, by taking our flesh and blood upon him: And thus he became a man amongst men The Son of God, who is one with the Father in godhead, became one with us in human nature. " The word, who was God, andwho was with God, the same word was made flesh, and dwelt with us," John i. 1, 14. When he became Emmanuel, God with. us, he did not only unite God and man in his own person, but since- he came " in the .likeness of sinful flesh," Rom. viii. S. he did, as it were, exemplify .an union of peace and re- conciliation between a holy God and sinful man. His very incarnation gave us a pledge of that friendship, which he came to restore between God the Creator and. bis guilty creatures, who were before at enmity, and strangers, both by the apostacyof our first parents, and our own continued rebellions. 2. Christ came to reconcile us to God; by fulfilling perfect obedience to the law, which we had broken, and by sustaining the punishment and death, which was due to our sins. This we could never suffer, and out-live the suffering; for the broken law threatened death, but pro- vided no resurrection. Christ Jesus, the Son of God taking flesh and blood upon him, took our sins also, and became a sacrifice for sin ; " he bare our sins in his body on the cussed tree," 1 Pet. ii. 24. and, by his blood, has made complete atonement for sin, has re- paired the honour of the law, and government of God, which we had highly dishonoured; and thus he has made a way for the exercise of the mercy and forgiveness of God, without any disgrace to his governingjustice ; and has laid a happy foundation for our approach to God the Father, though we are, by nature, strangers and re- bels, guilty and condemned. 3. Christ ascended to heaven, to present his own sa- crifice before the throne ofGod, even as the high-priest, under the Jewish dispensation, went into the holy .of holies, to present the blood of the sacrifice of atonement, and sprinkle it before the mercy-seat. This was the chief glory and perfection of the priest-hood of Aaron, and, according to the apostle reasonings, in the epistle
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