Proverbs 8:23

I was set up from everlasting.

Christ set up from everlasting

Doctrine: That as Christ is the everlasting God, so, from all eternity, He was foreordained and set up for the great service of man’s redemption.

I. To prove That Christ is the everlasting God.

1. That He existed before the incarnation is evident from the appearance He made to our first parents in paradise.

2. We find His existence and agency in the production of all created beings.

3. Run up to the endless ages before the creation of the world, and we find Him existing or ever the earth was.

II. What is imported in His being set up from everlasting.

1. It supposes the council of peace, or an eternal transaction between the Father and the Son concerning the redemption of lost sinners.

2. It implies the infinite complacency that the Father and Son had in each other from all eternity.

3. It implies a Divine ordination and decree, whereby He was from eternity elected into the great service of man’s redemption.

4. It implies that, in consequence of the decree, He was called of God to undertake the work of redemption.

5. It implies His own voluntary consent to, and complacence with, His Father’s call. He was actually set up in time.

(1) His first appearance was in the promise made to our first parents.

(2) Set up typically under the Old Testament.

(3) Set up prophetically.

(4) Personally and actually, in His incarnation, obedience, and death.

(5) In His resurrection and ascension.

(6) Sacramentally, in baptism and the last supper.

(7) In conversion.

(8) Will be set up at His second coming.

III. For what ends and purposes Christ was thus set up.

1. As a sun, to give light to this lower world.

2. As a second Adam, the head of a new covenant of grace and promise.

3. As a repairer of breaches between God and man.

IV. The grounds and reasons way Christ was set up.

1. Because it was the Father’s will and pleasure.

2. Because of the good-will He did bear to man upon earth.

3. Because of His ability for the undertaking.

4. Because He voluntarily offered Himself for the work and service.

5. Because from everlasting God foresaw what a revenue of glory would accrue to the crown of heaven through His mediation.

V. Application of the doctrine. See the antiquity and activity of the love of God; the stability and perpetuity of the covenant of grace and of the Church; the reason why all hands should be at work to exalt Him. (E. Erskine.)