The Fall was so grievous that he must come right down into the place of our ruin; he must come to the dunghill that he might lift us out of it. God sat in heaven and said, “Let there be light,” and the darkness fled before him, but he could not sit in heaven and save sinners: he must needs come into the world to do so; down into this polluted creation the eternal Creator must himself descend. Lo, there in Bethlehem’s manger he sleeps, and on a woman’s breast he hangs! He cannot save sinners, so great is their ruin, unless he becomes incarnate and takes upon himself our nature.
And being here, think how dreadful must be the ruin when we see that he cannot return, saying, “It is finished,” until first of all he dies. That sacred head must be crowned with thorns, those eyes must be closed in the darkness of the tomb, that body must be pierced even to its heart, and then must lie a chill, cold corpse in the grave, ere man can be redeemed; and all that shame, and suffering, and death were but the outer shell of what the Savior suffered, for he passed under divine wrath and bare a load such as would have crushed the whole race of men had they been left to bear it.
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Faithful Saying," delivered May 26, 1878. Image by Anita Ritenour on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.
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