Isaiah 42:21

The Lord is well pleased for His righteousness’ sake

The broken law magnified

I. THE GREAT AND GLORIOUS PARTY HERE SPOKEN OF. “The Lord,” or, as in the original, “Jehovah,” the righteous Judge, the offended Lord and Lawgiver, to whose wrath all mankind are liable, through the breach of the first covenant.

II. SOMETHING ASSERTED CONCERNING HIM, which may arrest the attention of all mankind, and fill their hearts with joy, and their mouths with praises; that is, that He “is well pleased.”

III. THE CAUSE AND GROUND OF THIS SURPRISING DECLARATION. It is “for His righteousness’ sake”; not for the sake of any atonement, or satisfaction, that the sinner could make, for no man can by any means redeem his own or his brother’s soul, nor give unto God a ransom for it. The redemption of the soul is precious, and ceaseth for ever as to him; but it is “for His righteousness’ sake,” who finished transgression, and made an end of sin.

IV. THE REASON WHY THE LORD JEHOVAH SUSTAINS THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF THE SURETY IN THE ROOM OF THE SINNER, or why He is so well pleased for His righteousness’ sake. He not only fulfilled the law, both in its precept and penalty, but He magnifies it, and makes it honourable; He adds a new lustre unto the law, through the dignity of His person who obeys it. (E. Erskine.)

The law magnified and made honourable

Doctrine: That Christ, as our glorious Surety, having magnified the law and made it honourable, the Lord Jehovah declares Himself to be well pleased for His righteousness’ sake. I shall--

I. SUGGEST A FEW THINGS CONCERNING THE LAW, AND HOW IT WAS DISPARAGED BY THE SIN OF MAN.

1. The law here principally intended is the moral law.

2. The moral law is nothing else but s transcript of the original holiness of God’s nature.

3. The law being a copy or emanation of God’s holiness, it must be dearer to Him than heaven and earth, or the whole frame of nature.

4. This law was given to our first parents under the form of a covenant; a promise of life being made to them, upon condition of their yielding a perfect obedience; and a threatening of death added, in case of disobedience.

5. Man being left to the freedom of his own will, through the flattering hisses of the old serpent, “did break the law of God.” and so forfeited his title to life by virtue of that covenant; and brought himself, and all his posterity, under the penalty of death temporal, spiritual, and eternal.

6. The law being violated by sin, the honour of the law, and the authority of God, the great Law, ver, are, as it were, laid in the dust, and trampled under foot, by the rebellious sinner.

7. The law being violated, and the Lawgiver affronted, the salvation of sinners by the law becomes utterly impossible, unless the honour of the law, and of the great Lawgiver, be repaired and restored somehow or other.

II. SPEAK OF THE GLORIOUS PERSON WHO UNDERTAKES THE REPARATION OF IT AS OUR SURETY.

1. He is His Father’s Servant (Isaiah 42:1).

2. His Father’s Elect (Isaiah 42:1; Psalms 89:19).

3. His Father’s Darling or Delight (Isaiah 42:1).

4. He is qualified by His Father for the work and service of redemption, by the anointing of the eternal Spirit (Isaiah 42:1).

5. He is one whose commission is very extensive; for we are told that He shall “bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.”

6. He was to be a meek and lowly Saviour (Isaiah 42:21.

7. He was to be very tender and compassionate towards His poor people, particularly the weaklings of His flock (Isaiah 42:3).

8. He would be victorious and successful in His work (Isaiah 42:3).

9. He would bear His Father’s commission, and be sustained in His work by the right hand of His power (Isaiah 42:6).

10. He is the free gift of God unto a lost world. “And give thee for a covenant of the people” (Isaiah 42:6).

11. He would be the light of the world, and particularly a light to the poor Gentiles, who had so long sat in th4 e regions and shadow of death (Isaiah 42:6).

12. He would loose the devil’s prisoners (Isaiah 42:7)

III. INQUIRE WHAT MAY BE IMPORTED IN THE EXPRESSION OF HIS MAGNIFYING THE LAW, AND MAKING IT HONOURABLE. It supposes--

1. That the law is broken, and thereby the greatest indignity done to it, and to Him who gave it.

2. That God, the great Lawgiver, stands upon reparation.

3. That man, who has broken the law, is utterly incapable to repair its honour, or to satisfy justice.

4. That God, the great Lawgiver, admits of the substitution of a Surety in the room of the sinner.

5. That Christ, as our Surety, actually put His neck under the yoke of the Divine law.

6. That the holy law is no loser by Christ’s substitution in our room; it has all that it demanded in order to its satisfaction.

7. That the holy law, instead of being a loser, gains an additional honour and glory by the righteousness of the Surety.

IV. HOW HE MAGNIFIES THE LAW, AND WHAT WAY HE TAKES TO MAKE IT HONOURABLE. The moral law comes under a twofold consideration: it may be considered as a covenant, and as a rule of life.

1. As a covenant, He magnifies it, and makes it honourable; and this He did by fulfilling all its demands.

2. Christ magnifies the law as a rule of life, and this He doth several ways.

(1) By writing a fair copy of obedience to it, in His own example, for the imitation of all His followers.

(2) By explaining it in its utmost extent, for” it is exceeding broad.”

(3) By establishing the obligation of it as a rule of obedience unto all His followers (Matthew 5:17; Romans 3:31).

(4) By writing it upon the heart of all His followers, by the finger of His eternal Spirit (Jeremiah 31:33).

(5) By enforcing obedience to the law, among all His followers, by stronger motives than the law itself, abstractly considered, could afford. “The love of Christ constraineth us.”

(6) By actuating them in their obedience to the law by His own Spirit Ezekiel 36:27).

V. GIVE THE REASONS OF THE DOCTRINE. Why is it that Christ doth magnify the law, and make it honourable?

1. From the regard He had to His Father’s honour and authority, affronted in the violation of the law.

2. Out of love that He bore to our salvation, which could not be accomplished without the penalty of the law had been endured, and the precept of it obeyed.

3. Because He was ordained of God from eternity for His work and service; He was set up for it by the decree and ordination of heaven, and He did always these things that pleased His Father.

4. Because He had given His engagement in the council of peace.

5. He magnified the law as a covenant, that “we might be freed from it,” in its covenant form and curse (Galatians 4:4; Romans 7:4).

6. He magnified the law, and made it honourable, as a covenant, that we may obey it as a rule, and serve the Lord without fear of the curse and condemnation, “in holiness and righteousness all the days of our lives.”

7. To procure and confirm His own right of government as Mediator Romans 14:9).

8. That He might still the enemy and the avenger, and outshoot the devil in his own bow.

VI. MAKE SOME APPLICATION.

1. See hence the excellency of the law of God, and the sacred regard that God bears unto it.

2. See hence the evil of sin, and why Christ came to finish transgression, and make an end of it.

3. See hence the dreadful situation of every sinner that is out of Christ, destitute of His righteousness.

4. See hence the wonderful love of God to lost sinners, in sending His own Son to magnify the law, after we had broken it; and at the same time it discovers the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though He be supreme Judge, King, and Lawgiver, yet was willing to be made “under the law,” and to obey it as a subject, that we might be delivered from law-vengeance, and have the righteousness of it fulfilled in us through Him.

5. See hence the ignorance and error of those who are prejudiced against the doctrine of Justification by faith, as if it were prejudicial to the holy law, or did any way derogate from its honour and authority.

6. See hence the error of those who assert that a justified believer is still liable to the curse or penal sanction of the law.

7. See the error and folly of those who go about to “establish their own righteousness” as the ground of their justification and acceptance, and “refuse to submit unto the righteousness of God.”

8. This doctrine lets us see the error of those who, though they will not absolutely reject the righteousness of Christ, yet will adventure to mingle something of their own with it.

9. See the error of those who deny Christ’s active obedience to the law to be any part of our justifying righteousness.

10. See hence how little reason even believers, who are justified before God, have to be proud of what they are come to. (E. Erskine.)

He will magnify the law, and make it honourable

The law magnified in man’s redemption

1. With respect to “law.” It is a word used in Scripture in two ways; and matters very important are said about it, both as it is a universal thing, and as it is a particular thing.

(1) By law as it is a universal thing, I mean the moral law, which cannot but exist wherever there is an intelligent creature upon earth. We cannot conceive of any creature existing anywhere having intelligence and moral feeling, of whom it is not the duty to love God with all the heart, and to love other beings as himself; and in that one thing we have the elements and rudiments of all possible morals. The law is more than advice--it has authority, and therefore has sanctions associated with it. We cannot conceive of any moral creatures who are not under it,--either in the perfection of their obedience and enjoying the blessedness which waits upon it, or as the victims of it and having administered to them its penalty, or (if there be such a thing) in an intermediate state, in which they are convicted as transgressors, and yet have the opportunity of escaping the penalty. And this last is altogether supernatural; the other two are what we call natural.

(2) What I mean by law as a limited thing is the ceremonial institutions which were given to a particular part of mankind and for a particular time. These have not their basis in the nature of things. They rest simply upon the Divine authority. As such they have an importance affixed to them in the reasonings and representations of Divine truth.

2. To “magnify the law and make it honourable” cannot mean that Messiah was to produce any change in it,--that what He did was to perfect the law itself. As to the moral law, there it is, necessarily resulting from the Divine perfections and government, a glorious and sublime thing, as incapable of improvement as the perfections of God; as changeless and permanent as God. So with respect to the ceremonial law, Christ did not in fact do anything to it in the way of enlarging it.

3. Another idea might be dwelt upon: that we cannot suppose that this means that there was to be any change effected in the conceptions of God about the law,--that the work of Christ was intended to affect the Divine mind in relation to the perceptions that it had of law. There, in the Divine intellect, lay the law in all its perfections and splendour; and we cannot conceive that the Divine mind needed any change in its conceptions of law, or that the law could be magnified and made more glorious in its estimation. We cannot conceive that God could have a more distinct perception with respect to it at one time than at another. And so with respect to the ceremonial law. It was a thing that resulted from the Divine mind, and in the Divine mind there were reasons for every appointment which He made.

4. So that we are led, by these simple and natural steps, to this idea: that this “magnifying the law and making it honourable” must signify the manner in which created minds were to be affected by it. Something (whatever it might be) was to be done by which there should be a certain impression with respect to law produced upon the minds of the intelligent universe. Something might be done that should (so to speak) give body and substance and visibility to God’s own conceptions about His law. These might be made manifest to the universe. God’s creatures might come to understand how He looked at it--the reverence and respect (if we may so speak) that He had for it. And that is what I think it means. That is what I think was done. And for this there was a necessity. And the Scripture teaches this in the plainest way, and puts it before us again and again

5. If sin had never entered into the universe, God’s law would always have been a sublime thing in the estimation of that universe. And if, when sin was admitted into the universe, permitted to enter, the penalties and sanctions of the law were carried out fully and literally, then law would always have been magnified; it would then also have been always a great and glorious thing. But if there is to be the fact, that there are violaters of the law, those that on just principles are exposed to the penalty, and yet there is to be, along with that, another fact--that they escape, that they are treated as if they were actually righteous and enter into the full enjoyment of the results of perfect obedience, then law so far seems to go for nothing. Therefore there was this necessity. It is required that something shall be done the moral effect of which upon the minds of God’s rational creatures, who are all under His government and are all ruled by Him, shall be equivalent to the impression which would have been produced by the literal carrying out of the principles of law itself. And that is just the thing which the work of Christ does. And by the effecting of that thing it is that this prophetic declaration is realised.

6. The conclusion of the matter, then, is--the manner in which this is done.

(1) We might dilate upon the manner in which the scope of Christ’s teaching always maintained the authority of the law.

(2) We might speak with respect to His own personal character.

(3) But all these are hut preliminary and preparatory to that one great act which I deem to be the consummation of Messiah’s work; in which the law was honoured and magnified by His propitiatory sacrifice; in which, in a certain sense, He stood forth bearing the penalty of the moral law, and in another sense manifesting the substance and casting a glory upon the ceremonial. “It became” God thus to act. As “the children were partakers of flesh and blood,” the Son of God took part of the same; that being manifested in our nature, and having thus a body prepared for Him, He might present Himself as the Lamb of God, “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,” and that He might accomplish the great redemption act, which consisted in substitution, in the sacrifice upon the Cross for the sins of the world. There was a substitution in two senses; a substitution of person, and a substitution of suffering.

(4) The law is “magnified and made honourable” by Christ, inasmuch as His people are redeemed unto obedience. The Gospel as it is revealed here is a thing distinct from law, yet is not contrary to it, but consistent with it, illustrative of it, sustaining it, beautifying it, magnifying it. (T. Binney.)