It is very blessed to preach the fullness of the grace of God, as we were seeking to present it last night — all things of God, all things ready, all finished; God’s own precious grace flowing like a river, the river of the water of life, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, to a barren world, and for every thirsty soul. But I never yet found that a soul got really established in peace by hearing only of the Love of God. The riches of His grace must be unfolded, but also the absolute perfection of His righteousness, His righteousness in justifying the sinner. Until a soul gets thoroughly grounded in righteousness, if it knows only of the grace of God, it will fail to have settled peace. I will give you an illustration, which may help to put the matter more clearly before you. A young man was arrested in London for a grave offense (on a charge of forgery); and it so happened that his father was a friend of the Lord Mayor; so that, when the young man was brought into his presence as his judge, and saw the face of his father’s friend, of one who had often nursed him on his knee, he was convulsed with emotion. When he saw the tears began to trickle down the Lord Mayor’s face — tears of love and compassion — he covered his face with his handkerchief, and sobbed as if his heart would break. What was it made him weep? What added to the acuteness of his sufferings? The consciousness of the love that he knew was in the mayor’s heart. But here was the difficulty; no amount of love on the part of the judge could justify that young man, for he was a criminal; and how could love justify a criminal, or make him feel at ease? Indeed the sense of love only made him more unhappy, only deepened the intensity of his sufferings as he stood there.
Now such exactly is the condition of many a soul that knows the love of God. The more you think of the love of God, the more intense is your suffering and self- condemnation. How can a criminal stand before a judge, and look for justification, when he is guilty? With man this is impossible; and it is far from easy to open up satisfactorily how God can justify a guilty person. It was a great difficulty in days of old, e.g., in Job’s case. Bildad asks (Job 25:44How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? (Job 25:4)), “How can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman?” How can a sinner be justified with God? This is the point. Job’s friends could have shown well enough how an innocent man can be justified with God; it would be an easy matter then; but he is guilty; and how then? The law will justify him who keeps it; and if there be one here who has kept it, I tell him “the law will justify you at once.” Law is extremely profitable for you in that case; but if you break it, what can it do for you? And where is the person who has not broken it? show me the man, and Job’s friends would justify him at once; but they could not justify the guilty. If your little girl did something naughty (stole a piece of sugar, say,) her mother could not justify her, though she be her mother; and suppose she grew up to be a thief, her mother could say and do nothing to justify. There is a lady who belongs to one of the highest families, not only of England but of Europe, who from a child sank step by step into the deepest degradation, and may now be found haunting the lowest gambling-places of the continent. Could her mother justify her, however her heart might bleed for her? Of course not. Suppose your child — God forbid it — grew up to be a thief, whatever amount of love you may have to your child, it will not lead you to justify the child. What! justify a thief, or thieving! Love alone neither can, nor will, justify the guilty; indeed it rather adds to the condemnation. I never yet met with a magistrate who could justify one guilty of the most trifling offense. You cannot justify either the sin or the sinner. That Lord Mayor loved the young man, his heart was breaking to see his friend’s son stand before him in such a position, and proved guilty. What a dreadful thought and word and reality “guilty” is! But do you think he could have taken that young man up in his carriage, and say, “I will drive him to the Exchange, and proclaim to everyone that he is innocent?” He could not. It would have been untrue and unjust.
Thus it is easy enough for any one to justify another if innocent; the difficulty is to justify him who is guilty, and has been proved to be so. You see the difficulty that is before us, and how God can be righteous, and justify the sinner. And I very much question if the righteousness of God has ever once been duly put before many here now. It is a thing scantily and rarely touched on in the sermons you are in the habit of hearing. A few words are taken from the scriptures, on which man’s thoughts are told out. Such is an ordinary discourse. One would desire to deal differently with God’s word.
I know there are many here who have never been pulled up about this question of righteousness, and that it is well they should be pulled up. Be God’s love what it may, He is and must remain righteous, and in righteousness what is He going to do with such a man as you? It is no use trying to make as good a case for yourself as possible before God; for He knows all about you — far more than you do yourself. He knows the source of that iniquity which has shown itself more than once, in overt acts of transgression.
The occasion of the writing of the Epistle to the Galatians, was that Jews or Judaizing teachers had come down from Jerusalem, and were trying to seduce the believers from Christ, or rather to add something on to Christ, to substitute something for Him in part. They must be circumcised, not exactly in the place of faith; but after believing, circumcision was brought in in some way to get righteousness by; it was something added to the work of Christ. This might seem a small matter, but the apostle never wrote so vehemently as he did on this subject. The different gospel that was not another was, that it was insufficient for a man to have Christ without circumcision and the law. And this is the gospel (if so it can be called), of the present day; the gospel in which we have been bred. Even Peter got infected by it, when certain came from James, not before. Before he took the ground, that to have Christ is to have everything, he did eat with Gentiles; but when those Judaizing teachers came down, he no longer felt free to eat alike with those who had only Christ (Gentile saints), and those who had circumcision, and the law besides Christ; and he withdrew, fearing those of the circumcision. This opposition to God’s grace originated at Jerusalem where lived great numbers of believing Jews; so that the entire system, city and all, had to be destroyed, and the people scattered, in order to break it up.
These teachers who came down from Jerusalem were zealous of the law, just exactly as they are in some parts of Christendom. People are far more religious than Christians now-a-days. Peter feared them, dissimulation followed, and they ceased to walk uprightly according to the truth of the gospel. The believing Jew had got Christ and the law; the Gentile only Christ. Peter, when thus astray, admitted practically that the law added something to Christ; and it was to correct this that Paul wrote the Epistle to the Galatians. He saw that it destroyed the whole character of the gospel. It was the question of righteousness: “You must be saved by Christ,” said they, “and then keep the law for righteousness.” You will see in this epistle how very simply the subject is introduced to us. “For if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain” (Gal. 2:2121I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. (Galatians 2:21)). So he goes on to say, that as many as put themselves on the principle of law, no matter who they are, they are under the curse.
And we know that no one has kept or can keep the law. This is the doctrinal statement in Galatians, which is fully unfolded in the Romans. Why was the law given? It was added for the sake of transgressions, not surely to produce sin. For two thousand years before the law, sin was in the world; and the law came in by the bye, that the offense might abound, that is, that sin might be manifested in open transgression, so as to prove what fallen man is, to show his sinful and lost condition, and the need of a Savior who could meet his ease. Then he goes on to show the importance of standing fast in the liberty wherewith Christ had made them free.
The Epistle to the Romans opens up this whole subject in detail. The beginning is characteristic of the whole. “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God” (Rom. 1:11Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, (Romans 1:1)). In the gospel of God we have the key-note of the entire epistle. Its great theme is the glad-tidings of God in contrast with the legalism, which others sought to introduce, the system which man has brought in, and in which we have all been brought up. The apostle was separated unto the gospel of God. What I would preach to you now, is entirely from God to man, not from man to God. It comes down from Him, instead of going up to Him. It is not of man, neither is it by man, nor yet about man, but about His SON Jesus Christ our Lord. God is the Author of His own good news, His Son the burthen of it. The object of faith is the Son of God, and this is important to notice, for unless I bring before you the person and character of the Son of God, you will surely mistake and undervalue His work. We must believe in His personal glory before we can appreciate His sacrifice. There must be one competent to go into the holiest before the sprinkling of the blood; the blood must be carried in there to make atonement, but something else must come first, and what was that? The high priest with the golden censer and its incense, symbolizing the sweet savor of the holy uncreated divine person of the Son of God, concerning which we have no account of its formation. And the golden censer was full of incense, the holy fragrance of His person. When the cloud of that incense enveloped the mercy-seat, then the blood was to be brought and sprinkled God must have His only Son presented first, His work afterward. It is the value of the person that infinitely enhances the work.
To see the importance of apprehending aright the person of Christ, turn to 1 John 4:99In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. (1 John 4:9): “His only begotten Son” (1 John 4:99In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. (1 John 4:9)),” “and sent His Son” (1 John 4:1010Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (1 John 4:10)); “the Son” (1 John 4:1414But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14)); again “the Son” (1 John 4:1515The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. (John 4:15)); “This is the witness of God which He hath testified concerning His Son” (1 John 5:99If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son. (1 John 5:9)). The gospel is not concerning your feelings and doings, or the church’s in any shape, but concerning His Son; so that, “he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:1212He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. (1 John 5:12)).
I hope you see the importance of really owning the true, eternal, divine person of the Son, by whom the heavens and the earth were made, for “all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:33All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:3)). After thus dwelling for a moment on the key-note of the epistle (to the Romans), read one or two verses in the same chapter (Rom. 1), as to what the gospel is. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel [‘of Christ’ is an interpolation], for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Rom. 1:1616For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. (Romans 1:16)). God is the source, and His righteousness the subject of the gospel; and this is its effect for the believer — it is the power of God unto salvation. And now comes the question of righteousness. If a magistrate cannot possibly lower the dignity of the law in order to justify a theft or thief, surely God has not lowered His righteousness by slurring over sins. On the contrary, we read, “Therein [that is, in the gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed” (Rom. 1:1717For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. (Romans 1:17)). There is the solemn background in (Rom. 1:1818For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; (Romans 1:18)): “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.” This looks like a difficulty, does it not?
On what principle then can God be righteous in justifying the ungodly? This is the question, and I want you to look it fairly in the face. Man always tries to make his case a little better or more hopeful than it is. “A little more prayer, a little more religion, a little more reading of my Bible, and by-and-by I shall be good enough for God to justify.” The epistle opens with the truth which reverses all this. Here we have the apostle opening up what man is at his worst and vilest condition; showing first the shameless idolatry, and shocking moral corruption, into which the Gentiles had sunk: as afterward he proves from the Old Testament that the Jews were not a bit better.
If you plant a tree in your garden, and want to know what it is, you wait and see what kind of fruit it bears. What then was the fruit produced by man? The latter half of Romans 1 to the first half of Romans 3 is the answer. Read first that awful category of evil, which blackens the page of ancient history, for these are historical facts, and facts, I may add, that live to this moment. Who but God knows the sin and the misery in this town? the groanings of those poor broken-hearted wives and children, the wickedness which is crushing hearts into the dust, even here and now? Will you say that some were better than that? The apostle answers by going on to show, that there were those who were in the schools of philosophy and the seats of government, moralists, magistrates, and the like, who assumed to judge of right and wrong, but then the very things which they condemned they practiced themselves. Then he proceeds to prove that the chosen people, the Jews, were no better. They might have God’s law, but they broke it before all the world. Is not this terrible, that professors are no better than the world which makes no profession at all? If a man kept the law it would be excellent, but what good is it if not kept except to condemn the man who is under it? He then quotes in Romans 3 the Jewish scriptures, to prove that they were as bad as, and so more guilty than the Gentiles. The aim and the object of all this must inevitably be, not to improve man’s case, but to demonstrate what it is. Yet the fact that man has no righteousness whatever, no strength, that he is the slave of sin and of Satan, utterly dead to everything that is good before God, his heart and his ways as well, yet the very badness of his condition commends the righteousness of God. The greatest sinner that bows to God is welcome to the Lord Jesus, because he is the Savior of the lost.
Still, how can a righteous Judge justify a sinner? how get over from his sins righteously? How is God righteous in justifying the believer? What then is righteousness? Righteousness is what one does consistently with relationship. Holiness is what one is according to God’s nature. If the righteousness of man is what he does, the righteousness of God is what God does, or has done. Now man is found to have no righteousness at all, nor is there anything but sin in him, and the law brings it out evidently in transgression; so that, as you know, the more a man tries to keep the law, the more he finds himself breaking it. Nay, I will go farther, and assert that when you come and question a man converted if not delivered you will find the same principle true. As I, the other day, asked of a lady elsewhere, How can God say to us, “There is therefore now no condemnation” (Rom. 8:11There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1))? “This,” she said, “is just my difficulty, for the longer I live the more I condemn myself.” Look at a Christian or at an unconverted person, the difficulty remains. How can you as a man stand before God and say that there is nothing in you that He can condemn when you are every day condemning yourself? Did you ever abhor yourself so much as to say, “Oh! that I had never been born?” As you walked along the streets, did you wish to sink into the earth from the gaze of men? If this was your judgment of yourself, what, think you, will God say to you, who knows the very thoughts of the heart, and every sin, infinitely better than you? God who cannot look on sin with the least allowance? Does He say of you, “I do not see anything in that person that I can condemn?”
Let us see how this can be, this wonderful non- imputation. But we shall have to take it bit by bit, “line upon line, and precept upon precept (see Isa. 28:10, 1310For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little: (Isaiah 28:10)
13But the word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. (Isaiah 28:13)). How can God justify the very worst sinner before Him here? It will not do to try to mend your case, so as to make it look as well as possible, for God knows all about it far better than you do yourself.
I will illustrate my meaning by an anecdote, which may help you to see this a little more plainly. A German prince was visiting the prisons at Toulon, and, in honor of the presence of so great a personage, the governor gave him liberty to pardon one prisoner. “Well,” said the prince, “you must give me time to go round the prisoners, that I may select my man; I do not want to act at random, but must see who is fit for it.” Permission was given to visit and examine the criminals; and, as he went round, he asked each one of his case. “What brought you here?” “Oh!” said the first prisoner, “my offense was not a very bad one, only a trifle, but the jury and the judge were against me, and they made my case out much worse than it really was; I did not deserve nearly so heavy a punishment as I got.” “This will not do,” said the prince. Number 2 made his case look still better, and Number 8 said he was not guilty at all; he had been arrested and convicted on a false charge! At last he came to a poor broken-hearted-looking fellow; and on asking, “Well, what brought you here?” “Oh!” said the poor man, in anguish, “I was the greatest wretch that ever lived, and my punishment has not been half so great as it ought to be; I deserve to be broken to pieces on the wheel. You do not know how wicked I have been, and it is a mercy I am here at all.” “That is the man for the pardon,” said the prince. Why? Because he was honest and upright, not like the rest trying to make their case look as well as possible, but confessing the truth. The upright man is the man who owns the truth, and he is the man to be pardoned.
We see this distinctly in Job 33:2727He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; (Job 33:27): “He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and have perverted that which was right, and it profited me not, he will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.” “I have sinned:” this is uprightness. A sinner’s uprightness consists in owning his condition. God says he is a sinner, and his uprightness is to own it. This is the way God is going to save souls at this time. The truth must be out, and owned, as to what you are. God will not, as it were, electro-plate you over, and make you look like silver, when you are nothing but dross. The very first step in the conversion of a soul is the owning of his sins before God, not to your fellow-man, not to a priest, but to God. Sin confessed is sin forgiven. Do you say, “I never thought that before; I thought I had to become better in order to be fit to be forgiven?” You have been occupied with your own thoughts about yourself, with self-righteousness; but what we have to bring before you is God’s gospel about His Son, and God’s righteousness revealed in it. If you put yourself under law to obtain righteousness, and God deals with you on the ground you take, He must curse you. Now where is the man who will take this position under law, when God has already been at such pains to show how bad we are, and how utterly powerless to keep it? The world stands already guilty before God; how can it be anything else? It has murdered the Son of God. Man cannot be more guilty.
Measured thus, can he do worse than he had done? He has been tried in every way, and shown to be entirely worthless in all. What further trial is necessary or conceivable? He cannot be made worse, nor can he do worse than is already done. Hence, when I hear of dreadful crimes committed by men, through allowing their evil passions to flow over, I am not in the least surprised; for my heart turns to a still worse exhibition of human evil — to the cross of Christ. And the guilt is as bad, or worse, of disbelieving it. Every rejecter of Christ is morally judged already, just because he is not subject to the Son. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:3636He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:36).). If you are not justified by God on His principle of faith, then you must be condemned by the righteousness of God, which will by-and-by judge those whom it does not justify now. God must act in consistency with all His attributes, and every person stands justified or judged morally — one of the two.
Now God is absolutely consistent in what He has done. He has given the Son, His Son, the Creator of heaven and earth; He has set Him forth as a mercy-seat. There was in the mercy-seat wood and gold, symbols of the humanity and the divinity of Christ; and the boards rested on sockets of silver, made from the redemption-money. Redemption is the basis of all. The blood was shed, and sprinkled on the gold of the mercy-seat, and before it. There was thus a place where God could righteously remit sins and pardon sinners. The blood of the Son of God has been shed, and accepted; and God now sends out the gospel in virtue of the infinite sacrifice of His Son, by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, to every creature on earth. He is perfectly righteous in proclaiming forgiveness of sins to every soul that believes, and He put on every believer the whole value of the person and work of Christ. Thus does He accept the believer, not according to what he is, but according to what Christ is and has done.
God comes out now, and deals with men on the ground of the death of the Lord Jesus. This death shows how God forbore to judge, and could justify, saints of old, the Abrahams and the Davids, on the ground of what was to come. But if Abraham could look forward in faith to what God would do, we have to declare unto you, what is still more blessed, what God has done. If we believe on Him who raised Jesus from the dead, righteousness is reckoned to us. Believing God about His Son, in virtue of the death and the resurrection of Christ, we stand righteous in the presence of God. Such is the efficacy of Christ and His work. “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God” (Rom. 5:11Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: (Romans 5:1)). The last time I was in Glasgow, a lady said to me after the preaching, “I do not understand it; but I have been seeking peace with God for many months, indeed for some years, and I cannot find it.” My answer was simply, “Peace with God is a thing that you will never find in yourself: God never produces it in any human heart.” “I do not know quite what you mean,” she said. “Well, suppose you had a garden,” I said, “and in that garden an old dead tree, and you tried to produce apples on that old tree; you could not. Impossible to get any fruit from a dead tree. But suppose a friend brings a basket of apples from a living tree, and gives them to you, it is a very different thing, is it not? In fact peace is a thing you cannot grow in your garden; it is not produced in our hearts, but given by God to you.” And the poor woman said, “Why, then, I must go home and pray for it?” “No,” said I, “peace is preached to you, not prayed for; God gives it to faith as distinctly as a person gives you a basket of apples.” Peace is not something grown in the heart, but made by the blood of Christ’s cross, and given to the believer. Are you without spot in the presence of God? And are you quite sure there never can be a cloud nor a spot upon you there? Unless you have got Christ thus, you have not peace solidly. Can this be found in man’s heart?
But I must ask you for a few moments to drop your religious life, or anything concerning yourself. Let not self occupy you in the least, but let every eye be fixed now on Another. Turn to two scriptures that are well known, probably, to all here; for I wish to read to you things that you know, that you may get to know things that you do not know. In Isaiah 53 we have the death of Christ distinctly foretold. “He was wounded for our transgressions” (Isa. 53:55But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)). See also Zechariah 13, where we find that in the latter days the Jews are to ask, “What are those wounds?” (Zech. 13:66And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. (Zechariah 13:6)), and He replies that He received them in the house of His friends. This will be the discovery to the Jews in those days, as I pray it may be also to many a soul here now. But fix your eye on the person of the Lord Jesus. I do not dwell on the sorrows of His life, as given in the opening verses, but come at once to the great point — His death — in Isaiah 53:55But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5). Now, do you really believe that the Lord was judged, condemned, bruised, put to death for our sins? “Who was delivered for our offenses” (Rom. 4:2525Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (Romans 4:25)). Not the Jews did so, save instrumentally, but God really. Do we believe that? Forget yourselves altogether, and look at the Son of God under divine judgment on the cross. Did He not cry from the center of that darkness which fell at least on the land, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Psa. 22:11<<To the chief Musician upon Aijeleth Shahar, A Psalm of David.>> My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring? (Psalm 22:1)). Whatever needed to be judged in me has been judged and condemned to the uttermost, beneath the stroke of unsparing judgment, in the adorable Substitute. Read Isaiah 1:6-86From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. 7Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers. 8And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. (Isaiah 1:6‑8). Did God help Him? Did He not justify Him? Not, of course, from aught His own — sins He had none. “He who knew no sin was made sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:2121For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)). The very sin of our nature was judged on Him. For this the holy, the infinite, Son of God bowed His head in death, and His body was laid in the grave among the dead. Aaron’s rod, you remember, was laid among the other rods, but it alone budded. So with Christ: He was laid down among the dead, but lies He there yet? Is He condemned yet? Is He bearing sins still? Far be the thought. God raised Him from the dead. The King of Righteousness arose, the everlasting gates opened, the King of Glory ascended, entered, and sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. But not this only: “He was raised from the dead for our justification” (see Rom. 4:2525Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (Romans 4:25)). The Man that was condemned to the cross, that bare our sins, that cried, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” the Lord of glory, has finished the work given Him to do, and God has raised Him from the dead, and seated Him at His own right hand. Was it not “for us?” Tell me, do you think He has peace with God? Look not at yourselves, but at Him. What do you mean by peace with God? There is One seated in the unclouded presence of God, where a cloud or shadow can never come, that One, the beginning and head of a new creation, crowned once with thorns, now with glory, and this, too, after bearing in His own body our sins. He is seated in the unclouded presence of God. Can sin and death have any more to say to Him? Do not you think he has peace? Assuredly; and more than that, if I turn to Ephesians 2:1414For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; (Ephesians 2:14) I find something still more blessed, “He is our peace.” And if He is our peace, the peace that He has in the presence of God is ours, not as a thing apart from Himself, but His very Person in glory is the believer’s peace.
Again, He said, “My peace I give unto you” (John 14:2727Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. (John 14:27)). Ah! this is an apple brought from the new creation garden, not something produced in me; it is mine, but it comes from Him. He has made peace; I have not to make it, as you hear people speak of making their peace with God. “He is our peace” (Eph. 2:1414For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; (Ephesians 2:14)), but I cannot enjoy this till Christ gives me light. Unless the table with the twelve loaves was placed before the lamp, the light could not fall on the loaves. If you make an imitation table (as Jeroboam did), and place it somewhere else, away from the presence of God, the light cannot shine upon it, you can never there enjoy the peace of God in its perfection. But the first thing to be ascertained is — what is our peace? — to see the foundation on which it rests. When I, a sinner, could not be justified, what could be done with me? I might be condemned, and this I have been, but God has done it in the person of His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin. Everything in me that was not in Him, everything offensive to God, had the sentence of condemnation executed on it in the cross of Christ. And now I bring you back to that lady’s question. “Now just tell me,” I said, “if God has condemned all that He could detect in you, if He has laid the whole of the sins, and the sin, on the person of His Son, and if everything that God could see wrong in you has been already condemned in His cross, how can there be anything left to condemn in you?” “Now,” she said, “I see it: I never did so before.”
I ask you, can any man stand up, and say that God was not righteous in raising Christ from the dead? Did He finish the work, or not? Did He glorify God for sin on the cross? Could the Infinite offer a finite sacrifice? Could the eternal Son fail in the work He was engaged in for you? No; He glorified God perfectly; He put away sin completely; He is now crowned with glory, and God is righteous in so crowning Him. And He is your peace. He was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Christ is all, and in all that believe. And if God has crowned Him with glory, He will crown me with glory too. His glory is ours (John 17).
“Well, if that is the case, as a believer I am justified!” Of course you are; God says so.
Christ is the propitiation for the whole world. Jehovah’s lot, you remember (Lev. 16); was offered and slain, and its blood carried in; but there was no laying of hands on it, no identification of the people with it. There was no substitution in this case. Christ is not the substitute for the whole world, for then the whole world would be saved. He is the ransom for all (1 Tim. 2). Scripture nowhere speaks of Christ being the propitiation for the sins of, but simply for, the whole world. When you come to the scape-goat, then you have substitution; the people were identified with it, and their sins confessed upon its head — faith is the hand on the head of the sacrifice. And thus you see how immensely important is the principle of faith, because otherwise you have no part in the thing. If you read Leviticus 16, you will see that on Jehovah’s goat, which was for all the people, there was no hand laid. The propitiation is for the whole world, so that mercy and pardon may be proclaimed unto the world, but none are pardoned and justified, save those who believe. Faith alone gives you a part in the thing. It is only where the soul believes God, and says, “I believe that God sent His Son, and that He died for sinners, and that He was raised again. If this is enough for God, it is enough for me.”
This is faith, and the soul is identified with all that Christ is. I ask not if you feel at peace, but if He who suffered for sins, Just for unjust, made and is peace. Joyfully you will answer that since the cross no cloud can come between God and the Son of man, who glorified Him. I believe, and am sure; I know, and enjoy it. The peace the Lord Jesus has with God the Father is my peace, and there is no other, for the peace He has with God is the peace He made for us, and gives to us. As to the past, we have perfect peace; as to the present, we have absolute favor; and as to the future, nothing short of the glory of God to hope for, and even now boast in.
The apostle never reasons from man up to God (which is what men are constantly doing), but from God to man. I once asked a young preacher what that verse meant, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts” (Rom. 5:55And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. (Romans 5:5)). He immediately commenced to reason upward, as he had been accustomed to do, from himself to God, and, after thinking some time, replied, “Well, I suppose it means that, the more we love God, the more He will love us.” He put himself first, and God second. Now, as to our loving God — supposing I do — but I walk along the street, and look into a shop window, and something attracts me that I would like to have, where is my love to God? How soon I forget God! My love is not to be depended on; but does God’s love vary, or ever change? Thus the Holy Spirit puts God first, and man second. If I know that He loves me, then I love Him who first loved me. It is not by trying that we love God. Who ever knew such a thing, even in human affections? Who ever heard of a mother trying to love her child? I never heard of a man who tried to love his wife but one — who would give a straw for his love? And as to the mother loving her child, why, she cannot help doing so. But in our case with God, it was when we were enemies, when there was distrust and dislike in our hearts to God, that He loved us. “If when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Rom. 5:1010For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10)). If God only loved us as we love Him, He never would have loved us at all. I know that many dear Christians doubt this. They think that God does love them because they love Him, and that if they feel cold toward God He will cease to love them.
“My dear friend, do you not know that God’s love is an everlasting love? that it does not change when you change, or cease when you fail to deserve it, and that all these twenty years He has been loving you, while you did not know it?” So said I once to a poor man who, although a converted soul, had been going about for twenty years with the idea that God hated him. The relationship of a child is permanent; the Father will chasten the child. He cannot wink at sin; but He does not make me a servant only if I am a child. Whatever my failure, I do not cease to be a child. The one offering of Jesus Christ has forever perfected all them that are sanctified before God.