One of the blessed names of our Lord Jesus Christ: and sweetly doth the Holy Ghost bear witness to it"For thy Maker is thine husband, the Lord of hosts is his name: and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth shall he be called." (Isaiah 54:5)
In considering the peculiarity of this character of Christ, so as to endear him to the heart of his people, it will be sufficient to observe that what constitutes redemption, in the entire accomplishment of it, could be wrought by none but Christ himself. It is the personal and peculiar fitness of the Lord Jesus to the office of Redeemer, that forms the special greatness and importance of the work itself; for if it could be shewn, or ever supposed, that any other beside Christ had been competent, it, would have lessened the dignity, the personal dignity, and glory of the Son of God, and reduced the infinite value of redemption itself. But as none but the Son of God could perform it, so in that performance the value and efficacy of it is heightened beyond all the conceptions the imagination can form of it.
We shall set this in a clear point of view, if we consider what forms the great and leading characters of redemption, in the contemplation of which the glory of Christ will appear abundantly striking as the great Redeemer.
And first, the very idea of redemption is to buy out, or deliver, what was lost or forfeited, and this by giving a full and equivalent value for it. Thus when Abraham made a purchase of a burying-place from the sons of Heth, it is said that he weighed and gave "four hundred shekels of silver, current money of the merchant." (Genesis 23:16) Now such was the redemption by the Lord Jesus Christ of our nature. He gave what might be called current money, that is a full and rich equivalent: yea, more than an equivalent, when for the sins and transgressions of his people he paid for it with the price of his blood. (See 1 Peter 1:18-19)
But the great work of redemption did not rest here. Jesus by his merciful undertaking not only re deemed us from sin, in buying out our mortgaged and forfeited inheritance, but he redeemed our long lost privileges. We were not only justly exposed by nature, and by practice, to the wrath and displeasure of Almighty God, but our whole nature was under the dominion and influence of sin; and none short of Christ could buy us out. The Son of God, therefore, by price and by power accomplished both those purposes of salvation; and not only delivered us from the wrath to come, but brought us into the privileges of a purchased inheritance. Yea, he induced in us a new nature, in taking away the natural enmity of our hearts, and making us "willing in the day of his power." And lastly, having delivered us from all evil, and brought us into all good, he hath accomplished the whole purposes of redemption, so as to obtain favour and peace with God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Such are the outlines of redemption, and such the wonderful work which the Son of God hath in our nature accomplished by his blood! And what tends to endear the Lord Jesus Christ yet infinitely more under his character of Redeemer is, that in the whole of this immense transaction all he hath accomplished is in our nature. It is the man whose name is the Branch, it is Jesus, who in his human nature is bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, that hath wrought out salvation. So that both redemption itself, and the glorious person by whom it is brought, gives a double relish to all the purposes of it, and lifts the heart to all the acts of adoration and praise to the great Author of our felicity. Hail! I would say, thou great and Almighty Redeemer and benefactor of mankind!