Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. This Sovereignty of God appears, in appointing Christ to this work of Redemption. His sovereignty was before manifest over Angels and Men by the right of Creation, there was nothing wanting to declare the highest charge of it, but his ordering his own Son to become a mortal Creature; the Lord of all things to become lower than those Angels, that had, as well as all other things, received their being and beauty from him, and to be reckoned in his death among the dust and refuse of the World: He by whom God created all things, not only became a man, but a crucified man by the Will of his Father. Gal. 1.4. Who gave himself for our sins according to the Will of God; to which may refer that expression. Prov. 8.22. of his being possessed by God in the beginning of his way. Possession is the Dominion of a thing invested in the possessor; he was possessed indeed as a Son by eternal Generation. He was possessed also in the beginning of his way or works of Creation as a Mediator by special constitution; to this the expression, seems to refer, if you read on to the end of verse 31. wherein Christ speaks of his rejoicing in the habitable part of his Earth, the Earth of the great God, who had designed him to this special work of Redemption. He was a Son by Nature, but a Mediator by Divine Will; in regard of which Christ is often called Gods servant, which is a relation to God as a Lord. God being the Lord of all things, the Dominion of all things inferior to him is inseparable from him, and in this regard, the whole of what Christ was to do, and did actually do, was acted by him as the Will of God, and is expressed so by himself in the Prophecy, Psal. 40.7. Lo I come, verse 8. I delight to do thy will, which are put together, Heb. 10.7. Lo I come to do thy Will O God. The designing Christ to this work was an act of mercy, but founded on his sovereignty. His compassionate bowels might have pitied us without his being sovereign, but without it could not have relieved us. It was the Counsel of his own will, as well as of his Bowels. None was his Counsellor, or persuader to that mercy he showed, Rom. 11.34. Who hath been his Counsellor, for it refers to that Mercy, in sending the deliverer out of Zion, verse 26. as well as to other things, the Apostle had been discoursing of.