Love of Christ

Pastor Martin completes the fourfold pattern of sanctification by setting forth the Lord Jesus Christ as the supreme pattern for the believer. He establishes from both the self-consciousness of Christ (Matthew 10, Matthew 20, John 13) and the explicit teaching of the apostles (1 Peter 2, 1 John 2, Philippians 2) that Christ is the example believers must imitate, then explains why: in Christ the image of God is perfectly revealed in the concreteness of our human situation. He gives extended examples of Christ's holiness, love, and obedience to the Father, warns against the idolatry of inventing a Christ in our own image, and pleads that no one can be like Christ until they are first in Christ by repentance and faith.

Pastor Martin opens the period of manifestation in the Gospels, demonstrating that Jesus Christ is truly man as witnessed in his conception, birth, infancy, and growth to manhood. He expounds Luke's record of the virginal conception, the normal pregnancy and birth, and the boyhood years in which Jesus genuinely grew in wisdom, stature, and favor with God and men. The sermon insists that the Gospels portray a real human development without halo or shortcut, then applies this with wonder at Christ's love and consolation that our salvation rests on a true and sinless humanity.

Pastor Martin drives to the essence of Christ's priestly sacrifice through two key texts: Hebrews 9:14 and Hebrews 7:27 — 'He offered up himself.' He unfolds Christ as both the passive substitutionary victim (Isaiah 53, 1 Peter 2:24) and the active representative priest who bound Himself to the altar with cords of love. Drawing on Hugh Martin, he shows that Christ's death was His grandest doing — not mere passive endurance but the most intense spiritual activity, through the eternal Spirit, offered to God without spot.