We know that our Lord Jesus Christ has all power given to him in heaven and in earth: "Angels and men before him fall, and devils fear and fly:" all things, whether animate or inanimate, confess the majesty of him who is King of kings and Lord of lords. Our text, however, mentions the most stubborn thing in all the world–"flesh." Jesus has power over ALL FLESH. That wilful, wicked, disobedient thing called flesh, Christ knows how to govern. He has power over all men as fallen men for such the term flesh describes. I understand then, that Christ has power over all men, to pardon all whom he wills; Christ has this day as Mediator, power to convince of sin every living soul by his Spirit, if so he wills; and power to bring all men to the footstool of his grace, and to give them pardon if so it seem good in his sight. We do not believe that there is any exception to this rule–CHRIST HAS POWER OVER EVERY MAN OF ADAM BORN, to give to him the grace of conviction and the grace of pardon, if so it should please him to do. He has power also to make those who are not convinced of sin and who are not pardoned, subservient to his purpose; he has power to restrain their evil passions from running to an excess of riot; he can use them as his drudges to effect his purposes even when they proudly rebel against him, so that though they boast themselves in their own free will, they shall really be working out his own eternal purpose. He hath a bit often in the mouth of his fiercest enemy, and a hook in the jaw of the bloodiest persecutor. Over all flesh he has authority, whether it be crowned with royalty or wrapped in rage; whether it curse with profanity or bow down with reverent adoration. There is not a mortal man from the equator to the poles, of any rank or any language, or bearing any hue upon his skin, who is not subject to this universal mediatorial power of the Lord Jesus Christ. If I understand my text and Scriptures parallel with it, it was ordained in order to the salvation of the chosen, that the whole world of man should be taken from under the immediate rule of God as absolute God, and placed under a new form of government of which the Mediator should be King and Head. As the result of this gracious arrangement a fallen race is permitted to exist; a sinful world coming into contact with an absolute God must have been instantaneously doomed to hell. Man, while yet a rebel, lives on in virtue of the mediatorial power of Jesus; He has stepped in between avenging justice and the sinner, and so the sinner is spared. I trace to Christ's atonement the continued life of the most obdurate. All the long-suffering mercy of God seems to me to flow through the channel of the Saviour's authority over all flesh. It is in virtue of this power that the gospel is preached to all men–"All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations." Hence the command to believe receives its divine sanction, and those are condemned who believe not in his name. On account of this universal dispensation of mediatorship, an honest, gracious, and sincere invitation is given to whosoever will, to drink of the water of life freely. It is, I say, on account of this universal mediatorial power of Christ, that I can stand upon this platform and say in the broadest possible terms, that whosoever believeth on the Lord Jesus shall never perish, but have eternal life, and I can preach a gospel which, in its proclamation, is as wide as the ruin and as extensive as the fall.
But why all this? The text tells us that THE OBJECT AND DESIGN OF ALL THIS WAS NOT UNIVERSAL, BUT SPECIAL–that the intention of God in thus putting all men under the power of Christ was not that all men might receive eternal life, but that he might give eternal life to as many as had been given to him; so that in all this universal dealing there is the special and peculiar design, that the chosen may receive life–that the elect may be filled with spiritual life on earth, and afterwards enter into the glory-life above. God might doubtless have acted upon another plan, and have given Christ power only over his elect if he had willed, that he might give eternal life to them, but it has not so pleased God. It has pleased him to put the whole race under the mediatorial sway of Jesus, in order that he might give eternal life to those who were chosen out of the world. God might have commissioned his servants to go into the world and preach the gospel to the chosen; he might have told us to present Christ only to certain persons upon whom there should be a peculiar mark; it has not so pleased him; he bids us go "into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature," his high decree and divine intent being that those whom he hath ordained unto eternal life shall, through believing, enter into the life which he hath ordained for them.