Christ was not only the repository of all the affections of the Father's heart, but was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ. Is it the perfection of what Christ is in Himself that we have as the ground-work to rest on before God? No; not this alone. More was needed, but it was the divine perfection that filled Him for the work He came to do. None but a being absolutely and altogether perfect could be a sin-bearer; the least thing God could find fault with in Him would have spoiled it all. The beauty of Christ is precious to the heart as showing forth that perfection. God can say of Him, "I let all My billows go over Him and He only came forth the more bright"; He was made the substitute for sinners, and it is on the truth of this that I am standing before God and rejoicing in it. It is this which connects a soul with Christ. It is the only way my soul can get any power whatever to walk in joy. I remember how the "great white throne" used to stare me in the face; I could never get any rest of soul connected with what I was as a young man dead in sin. How, I thought, shall I be able to bear the light of it?
But what 's the effect of it now when I think of it? I realize that I shall see Him there who bore the whole wrath due to me. The whole power of that wrath came into His soul, and when He had borne my sins in His own body on the cross, and put them away forever, God raised Him to His own right hand, soon to come again and take His people there too; in the interval God sent me the message that He had been my substitute. I have been very feeble in confessing Him as my substitute, but it enables me to say I have done with the first Adam; God sees me in the last Adam. He could not set aside my guilt save by giving the curse due to me to the last Adam on the cross. It is only by closing with His offer that I can say I have set my seal to the truth of that work on the cross having saved me, and given me rest.