Excerpts from Christ Crucified - Stephen Charnock

To come with man's wisdom would detract from the strength and excellency of the word, which, as the sun, shines best with it's own beams. The Spirit's eloquence is most piercing and demonstrative, and quickly convicteth a man by it's own evidence. Carnal wisdom charms the ear, but this strikes the heart.


Observe:
(1) All human wisdom must be denied, when it comes in competition with the doctrine of Christ.
(2) Christ and his death is the choicest subject for the wisest ear.
(3) As all Christ, so especially his death, is the object of faith.
(4) As all of Christ, so more especially his death in all the mysteries of it, ought to be the main subject of a Christian's study and knowledge.


He was made sin, not by us, not only by himself and his own will, but by God's ordination; 'He hath made him to be sin for us' (2 Corinthians 5:21) by a divine statute, that is, he was ordained to be put into the state and condition of a sinner in our stead; not into the practical and experimental state of sin, but the penal state of a sinner, to be sacrifice for it, not to be polluted with it.


His death was ordered by God as an act of choicest love.
God at creation beheld man, a godly frame of his own rearing, adorned with his own beautified with his graces, embellished with holiness and righteousness, and furnished with a power to stand. Afterwards God beheld him ungratefully (rebelling against his Sovereign, invading God's rights), and contemning God's goodness, forfeiting his own privileges, courting his ruin, and sinking into misery. So blinded is his mind, as not to be able to find a way for his own recovery. So perverse is his will, that instead of craving pardon of his Judge, he flies from him, and when his flight would not advantage him, he stands upon his own defense, and extenuates his crime; thus adding one provocation to another, as if he had an ambition to harden the heart of God against him, and render himself irrevocably miserable. So God overlooks, as in immense love and grace to settle a way for man's recovery, without giving any dissatisfaction to his justice, so strongly engaged for the punishment of the offense. And rather than this notorious rebel and prodigious apostate should perish according to his desert, God would transfer his punishment (which he could not remit without a violation of his truth, and an injury to his righteousness) upon a person equal to himself, most beloved by him, his delight from eternity, and infinitely dearer to him than any thing in heaven or earth.
Herein was the emphasis of divine love to us, that 'he sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins' (1 John 4:10). It was love that he would restore man after the Fall; there was no more necessity of doing this than of creating the world. As it added nothing to the happiness of God, so the want of it had detracted nothing from it. There was not more necessity of setting up man after his breaking than a new repair of the world after the destructive deluge. But that he might wind up his love to the highest pitch, he would not only restore man, but rather than let him lie in his deserved misery, would punish his own Son, to secure man from it. It was purely his grace which was the cause that his Son 'tasteth death for every man' (Hebrews 2:19).


He was then wounded for our iniquities, and being cast into the furnace of divine wrath, quenched the flames; as a Jonah the type, who being cast into the raging sea quelled the storm.