In The Glory of Christ Unveil’d or the Excellency of Christ Vindicated, Joseph Hussey presents a deeply Christ-centered, high-grace perspective of the Lord Jesus Christ, exalting His person and work in a manner that reflects both the majesty of His divine nature and the richness of His mediatorial office. At the heart of Hussey’s Christology is the eternal covenant of grace, where Christ is revealed as the divinely appointed Head of His people, predestined from eternity to act on their behalf as Surety, Representative, and Redeemer. He insists that Christ’s work was not a general provision for all, but a definite and effectual substitutionary satisfaction for the elect alone. Hussey emphasizes Christ’s eternal identity and uncreated majesty as the Son of God, and marvels at the condescending grace by which He assumed our nature – without sin – so as to fully represent His people in their nature. He strongly affirms the impeccability and active obedience of Christ, insisting that Christ’s perfect righteousness is imputed to the believer, and His sufferings were a real, substitutionary satisfaction to divine justice. Hussey rejects any notion of a universal or conditional redemption, seeing such a view as diminishing Christ’s glory and impugning the sufficiency and intention of His work. Instead, he emphasizes the sovereign design and infallible effect of Christ’s death, maintaining that the salvation of all for whom He died is certain. He speaks of Christ as the Alpha and Omega of salvation, appointed by the Father, anointed by the Spirit, and worshipped by the saints as their Redeemer and King. His tone throughout the work is one of reverent exaltation, urging the reader to see by faith the unveiled splendor of Christ in His offices as Prophet, Priest, and King. Christ’s intercession, His reign over all things for the church, and His certain return in glory are all handled with thoughtful spiritual insight. Above all, Hussey insists that to diminish Christ’s glory to any degree, whether by making salvation depend in part on man, or by softening the distinctions of election and reprobation, or by denying the particularity of Christ’s atonement, (making it a vague provision rather than a definite purchase for the elect,) &c., is to cast a veil over the glory of the Redeemer’s finished work, to undermine the very foundation of grace, and to ascribe to man what belongs to Christ alone as the sole Author and Finisher of salvation. Thus, Hussey’s doctrine of Christ is far more than theological formulation; it is deeply devotional and exalts Christ as the crucified and risen Lord in whom all the believer’s hope, holiness, and heaven are found.
In conclusion we will summarize by saying that Hussey’s Christology emphasizes: The eternal mediatorship of Christ. The union of the elect with Christ from eternity. A definite atonement that secures salvation. The declaration of redemption, not its offer, and a strong insistence of Christ’s person and work as the center of all theology. The whole purpose of creation, providence, redemption, and the Gospel is to exalt the glory of Christ. “The glory of Christ is not only the glory He receives, but the glory He reveals.” MPJ