be no doubt, for he is described as "the righteous branch" of
David, and thus all the commentators explain it. In these
three passages, then, of the Word of God, sinners are pointed
to the Messiah as their hope and their righteousness. He is
God's righteous servant, and his sufferings and his merits are
all-sufficient to do that which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
cannot do. The great mistake of the oral law is to point to
wrong persons, who have no righteousness, and almost totally
to pass by Him whom God hath set forth as the hope of
sinners. But it may here be asked, if Messiah be a man, how
can he have merits more than Abraham, or any other of the
children of Adam? The answer is, that though very man, he
is not a sinful man as we are, neither is he a mere man. If he
were a man like us, he could have no merits, and therefore
could not justify us any more than we could justify him. The
declaration, therefore, that he is the Lord's righteous servant,
and that he is appointed for the justification of sinners,
necessarily implies that he is more than a man, and the title
given him by the Prophet Jeremiah puts this beyond doubt.
Jeremiah calls him by the incommunicable name of God (
Hebrew characters)
concerning which God himself says:—
(Hebrew characters)
"I am the Lord: that is my name, and my glory will I not
give to another." (Isa. xlii. 8.) If then (Hebrew characters) be the name of
God, then that Being who is called by that holy name must be
God. Some of the modern rabbies reply, that this holy name
is also given to the city of Jerusalem, both by Jeremiah and
Ezekiel. But even if we admit this, still this is no answer to
our argument. There is no fear that a city which, however
great or noble, is only a mass of stones and mortar, should be
mistaken for the living God, the Creator of the Universe.
When, therefore, the name of God is attributed to the city,
God's honour is not given to it. But when we are told of the
Messiah, first that he is righteous, secondly that his righteousness
is so great as to justify the guilty, and lastly that his
name is (Hebrew characters), "The Lord our Righteousness;" that is when
we see that the attributes and the name of God are attributed
to him, then we must conclude either that he is God, or that
God has done what he has declared that he would not do, and
given his honour to another. Righteousness is the attribute of
God alone, and so Daniel says:—
(Hebrew characters)
"O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces, as at this day." (Dan. ix. 7.) But, in the above passages, righteousness is said to belong to the Messiah, and that in such an immeasurable degree as to be sufficient to
