The Gospel of the LORD Jesus Christ, (Who He is, why He came, what He accomplished by His coming, doing and dying and for whom He did it) will most certainly confound the wisdom of the ‘wise’ of this world. And yet, it has pleased God to reveal it unto ‘babes,’ (helpless, undiscerning and weak) sinners for whom Christ died, Matthew 11:25-26.

To those that are without, no amount of explaining will clear it up for them. To those who have been taught of the Spirit of God, it is not only clear to their hearts, having been made so by God’s Grace but it is His PRECIOUS Truth. In his sermon notes written on January 1, 1982, the late Brother Ed Hale penned these words regarding Christ and the seeming paradoxes in the Gospel concerning His person and work:

The prophets foretold that the coming Messiah was:

1. Both God and Man
2. Exalted and abased
3. Priest and Sacrifice
4. King and Servant
5. Mortal and Conqueror of death
6. Rich and Poor
7. A King, a Conqueror, glorious and yet a Man acquainted with grief, Man of Sorrows in His state of great humiliation. All of these are reconciled in the person of Christ, the Messiah.

The greatest paradox of all is that: all that Christ Jesus was made, was not for good, righteous, pleasing people (for there is none righteous) but for wretched, condemnable sinners that God the Father purposed to save from all eternity, Who, in the fullness of the time, God sent Him forth to redeem them, being made a Surety for them, Heb. 7:22.

The word ‘surety’ is a derivative of the word ‘sure’ which means ‘of a certainty’ or ‘surely.’ With regard to the elect sinner the LORD Jesus Himself is the Sure Substitute and Sacrifice for their sin.