Works (Vol 4) - Newton - V - Sermon V (Immanuel)

Required reading
The Works (Vol 4) of John Newton (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Sermon V (Immanuel).

My summary
This week Newton preaches on 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.' (Isa 7:14)

Newton teaches us that if sinners are to be saved, without injury to the honour of God's law and government (and otherwise they must persist), two things are necessary:
(i) that 'a virgin shall conceive, and bring forth a son', i.e. the Messiah is fully human;
(ii) that this son of the virgin shall have a just right to be called 'Immanuel, God with us', i.e. the Messiah is fully God.

What grabbed me
I enjoyed Newton's comments on the importance of the virgin birth:

'Again, Messiah must not only be a man, but a partaker of our very nature. It had been equally easy to the power of God to have formed the body of the second Adam, as he formed the first, out of the dust of the earth. But though, in this way he would have been a true and perfect man, he would not have been more nearly related to us than to the angels. Therefore, when "God sent forth his Son to be made under the law, to redeem us from the curse of the law, that we might receive the adoption of children," and be re-admitted into his happy family, "he was made of a woman." Thus he became our Goel, our near kinsman, with whom the right of redemption lay.

But farther, if he had derived his human nature altogether in the ordinary way, from sinful parents, we see not how he could have avoided a participation in that defilement and depravity which the fall of Adam had entailed upon all his posterity. But his body, that holy thing, conceived and born of a virgin, was the immediate production of God. Therefore he was perfectly pure and spotless, and qualified to be such "a high priest as became us, holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners:" who needed not, as the typical high priest of Israel, "to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sin, and then for the sins of the people." These difficulties were obviated by a virgin's conceiving and bearing a son. His obedience was without defect, his nature without blemish, and having no sin of his own, when he voluntarily offered himself to make an atonement for the sins of his people, his sacrifice was, so far, answerable to the strict and extensive demands of the law and justice of God. '

If we do not affirm the virgin birth, we undermine both Christ's humanity and sinlessness.

Next week's reading
Read Sermon VI (Salvation published from the mountains).

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.