ROMANS ILLUSTRATIONS - PART 1

Romans 2:4 Concerning the Forbearance of God

NO. 3154
PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JULY 22ND, 1909,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,
ON LORD’S-DAY EVENING, APRIL 20TH, 1873.

“Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” — Romans 2:4 (note).

IT is a great sign, of love on God’s part that he condescends to reason with men. When they had offended against him, he might have said to them, “I will punish you for your offenses,” and he might have gone his way until the day for carrying out his threat arrived. But instead of doing so, he is unwilling that any should perish, according to his own declaration, he has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but would rather that he should turn unto him, and live; and therefore he pauses and expostulates. When a man has been greatly offended by another, and is very angry with him, he does not usually stay to reason with his opponent, his anger is too hot for that. But if he, is of a meek and gentle spirit, and anxious that the quarrel should be ended, he begins to reason with the other man, and says to him, “Why did you act so unkindly towards me? Why did you treat me thus? You have acted most unjustly; have you no sense of right? I have not deserved this at your hands; why then did you thus deal with me? Come now, do you utterly hate or despise me, or why do you thus continue to annoy and provoke me?” In such a fashion as this, but with infinite tenderness, the Lord reasons with sinners. So, dear friend, if thou art still unconverted, regard it as a clear proof of God’s lovingkindness toward thee that he again sends to thee the word of expostulation. Take it for granted that he desires thy good, and wishes thee well, otherwise he would not have bidden his servant say to thee, “Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?”

From the connection of our text, it would appear that there were some, in Paul’s day, as there are in ours, who, seeing the great wickedness of mankind, and observing that God did not at once destroy the ungodly, gathered from that fact that they themselves might sin with impunity. Seeing that God did not launch his thunderbolts at even very gross sinners, and strike them with immediate and total destruction by pestilence, famine, or sword, these people wickedly said, “What does it matter what sins or crimes we commit? Evidently God is asleep, or winks at such deeds as these; or perhaps there is no God at all. Anyhow, let us live in sin, and take pleasure therein, for there will be no evil consequences to us if we do so; we may eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and enjoy ourselves to our hearts’ content, and there will be no one to call us to account.” So that, from the very fact, that God was merciful and gracious, they inferred that they might be sinful and rebellious; and because God’s foot was slow to come in vengeance, they imagined that God’s hand would not be heavy when he did come, and they said, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!” It was to a sinner of this sort that Paul put the question, “Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering?” I am going to put that question to you who are here; and I pray that the Holy Spirit may put it to the conscience of every unconverted man and woman.

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I. Now, first Let Us Honor The Goodness, Forbearance, And Longsuffering Of God.

The description given by the apostle is threefold: “the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering.” I shall probably not be wrong in saying that God’s “goodness” may refer to the way in which he has overlooked all our past sins, so that he has not yet dealt with us in justice concerning them; that his forbearance may refer to our present sins, the transgressions of this day and hour, and that his longsuffering may refer to our future sins, for he knows that we shall continue to sin, yet he does not destroy us, but bears with us still. What a heavy weight is upon my mind and heart as I think of the forbearance of God towards the impenitent with regard to their past sins! Why, there are some of you who have committed sins that you would be ashamed to have mentioned, sins against light and knowledge too, which you knew to be sins, not merely one or two, but very many. It would have been the easiest possible thing in the world for God to have destroyed you; yet he has not done so. How long can you keep your temper when you are provoked? Five minutes? Half an hour? “That is a long time,” say you. Suppose, you were insulted to your face, how long would you hold your peace and bear it? An hour? I fear there are not many of you who would do that, but that you would soon give an answer to the man who had dared thus to challenge you. What then shall I say of God, who has borne, with some here thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, perhaps eighty years, in which the mere, fact of their living has been an insult to him, for they have lived in opposition to his will and his law, and have often defied him to his face, and in their provoking blasphemy, have even invited him, to damn their bodies and souls! Oh, the amazing mercy of a God who can bear with a sinner for twelve months, who can even bear with him for fifty times twelve months, and can still stand, and in tones of pity and entreaty say, “Come now, come even now, and let, us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

Then, next, it is no soul mercy that God bears with your present sins, so despise not the riches of his forbearance to you now. Most of you have long been hearers of the gospel; you are sitting in the place where you have sat and heard the gospel preached hundreds of times, and the very pew you are sitting in might witness against you that, although you have so long heard it, you have refused to obey it. You have promised better things, but you have never performed them; you have lied, not unto men, but unto God. You have lulled your conscience to sleep when God has spoken to you through it, and you have even quenched his Holy Spirit when he has striven with you; yet, up to this moment, God who, without uttering a word could send your guilty soul to hell, forbears to do so. He cries “How can I give thee up?” He looks the rebel in the face, and says to him, “How can I damn thee? How can I cast thee into hell? My compassions are moved towards thee; my repentings are kindled together.” It is indeed great grace for God to do this; and he is doing it now. Every moment that an unconverted man is out of hell, God is manifesting towards him the riches of his forbearance, and it is no small strain upon divine mercy when men continue to sit notwithstanding this forbearance. The Roman lictors used to carry on their shoulders the rods with which prisoners were condemned to be beaten, and in the center of the rods was the axe for the final punishment of death; those who were bound round with cords having many knots, and the lictors would untie the knots slowly while the judge waited to see if the prisoner would say something that should prevent him from being beaten; but when the last knot was untied, they bared his back to scourge him. The judge still looked at him to see if there was any sign of repentance; and if there was not any, then came the axe. So, with regard to some of you, God has been undoing the knots one by one,-ay, and he has beaten you with more than one of his rods; you have, suffered from sickness and poverty, and many other tribulations. God’s rods are smiting you now, but he is slow to take up the axe. He is stern in his judgment upon the impenitent, but he is very pitiful and compassionate, and unwilling to deal the death-blow if it can be prevented. “Turn ye,” saith he, “turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” and with all the eloquence of words he cries to men that they would turn unto him; and live.

Then there is the longsuffering of God with regard to sins that are yet to be committed. O sinner, thou canst not promise that thou wilt not sin in the future! Thou mayest foolishly say, “I will not;” but the Ethiopian might sooner change his skin, and the leopard his spots as that thou, who art accustomed to do evil, mightest begin in thine own strength to do well. The fountain of thy heart is foul, so polluted streams must continue to flow from it. Thou art, born of such a race, and thou hast so added to thy natural depravity by thy constant sinfulness that thou wilt, still go on to sin until grace changes and renews thee. How is it that God, who knows this, does not strike thee out of existence? Is he going to spare thee for another year still to set, they hard heart against his love? Sinner, does God mean to spare you for another seven years fornication and lust? Will he permit you to live another ten years to be still a thief? Shall you have another twenty years in which every Sabbath shall be spent in sin, and in which almost every night shall see you reeling as a drunkard through the streets? Oh, if God knows that you will sin like this, how is it that he bears with you? If the destroying angel is told what you will be, he will stand with his sword drawn, or with his hand upon its hilt, and say, “Commission me, dread Sovereign, to cleanse the earth of those who blaspheme thy name, and break thy law, and it shall be, done!” But, God says, “Put up thy sword into its sheath, and wait a little longer! They shall have another appeal, another invitation, and another entreaty.” Oh, that these might be of avail to them, and that they might turn unto God, and live!

Beside this threefold appeal in the text, God’s goodness is manifested in great abundance: “Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering?” Truly God’s mercy to us has been like a mine of riches. What has God not done for some of us? If I were not, at this moment, a believer, I should be of all here present one of the most ungrateful. I will state my own case knowing it to be similar to that of many others who are present. Cradled in the home of piety, nurtured with the tenderest care, taught the gospel from my youth up, with the holiest example of my parents, the best possible checks all around to prevent me running into sin; yet, notwithstanding all that, sinning and revolting more and more; but checked by conscience, as when a steed tries to leap forth, but its rider reins it in; yet still resolved to sin, determined to go further and yet further into it, and even being angry with God for checking sin; trying to get the bit between one’s teeth, and to run away from God, and sin worse than before; then struck down by the hand of God in sickness, alarmed, terrified, resolving to live differently, but being raised up to health again, shaking off serious impressions: with a laugh, and going back to the follies of sin again; then once more rebuked, made, to tremble, thunderstruck, and awed before God; hearing of the precious Savior, yet putting him off, and saying that another day would be soon enough to be a Christian. That is my sad story until sovereign grace met with me, and that is also the story of many others present here.

Yet, all the while, God has kept you supplied with the blessings of providence so that you have never suffered want; he has preserved you from the dangers and trials and troubles which a great many others have had to endure; he has placed you where an earnest gospel ministry never lets you rest in your sin; he has put you where faithful friends importune you with tears to care about your immortal soul; he has raised you up from sickness, perhaps preserved you in the day of battle, delivering you when many others died all around you. Has God done all this for you, and are there in your mind no tender thoughts toward him, no grateful memories of his great mercy? Oh, think of where you might have been long ago! Might they not have said over your dead body, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust?” Ay, long ago there might have been a portion for you in that dread place where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. Think of the gracious promises that are still proclaimed in your hearing, that, if you return unto the Lord, he will have mercy upon you, and will forgive you all your trespasses. Think of the Christ of God who died for sinners on the cross. Think of the Spirit of God who has come down to earth to strive and plead with sinners. Think of the Father’s almighty love, which is bestowed upon all those who put their trust in Jesus Christ his Son. Oh, there have indeed been riches of mercy, riches of goodness, riches of forbearance, riches of longsuffering, and, man, dost thou despise all this? Woman, away yonder, dost thou despise all this? All this mercy has passed before thee in one long panorama for many years; what dost thou say about it? Dost thou not say, “My God, forgive me that I have so long slighted thee?” Or wilt thou still despise the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering?

I might, if I had time, try to measure the longsuffering of God; and if I did, I should need four lines. The excellence of God’s goodness is manifested by four considerations. First consider the Divine Person who manifests it. Remember who God is; think how great he is. No one likes to be insulted by his inferiors, then how can God bear to be insulted by the creatures whom he has made, the creatures who owe him their very breath? How can God endure to be opposed and defied by one so utterly insignificant and unworthy as man is? Yet he does not crush his rebellious creature as he well might.

Think next of his omniscience. We sometimes bear with people because we forget much of what they have said or done; but what would it be to have before your mind’s eye all the evil speaking of twenty years ago, and all the hard sayings and unkind acts of a long life of enmity against you? Yet, though God has all our sins ever before him, and our most secret sins in the light of his countenance, he doth still forbear to smite and destroy us.

Think, too, how powerful he is; none can escape from him when he pursues them. Moses could run away from Pharaoh, and hide in the land of Midian, but where could we flee to escape from the vengeance of God if he had resolved at once to punish all those who had rebelled against him? How could we have stood up against him? Where are the bars of brass that could resist the omnipotence of the besieging God? None of his creatures can stand against him, any more than the stubble can stand against the flame, or the tow against the fire. And yet he has such forbearance that he has put up with us all these years. O thou blessed God, I love thee for thy wondrous patience to me and to my fellow sinners that thou dost still spare us though we have so sorely provoked thee!

Then take another measuring line, and consider the being to whom God’s goodness is manifested; that is, man. Think of what man is, and then ask yourself if such a little insignificant creature dares to proclaim war against God! Has he the audacity to defy God, and to say, “I will not do what thou hast bidden me do?” Why, the ant that crosses your path, on a summer evening, is not half so insignificant in comparison with you as you are when compared with the almighty God. And it is man, who has received so much from God,-man, who could not live an instant without God’s permission and support, who stands up and says that he will not be God’s servant, and that he will not accept the Savior whom God has appointed! O ye heavens, how is it that ye do not fall and crush the miscreant? Great God, it is only because thou art God that thou dost put up with sinful men so long!

Another measuring line is this,-consider the conduct to which God’s goodness is a reply; in other words, consider what sin is. There is not a person here who has ever seen sin as it really is in God’s sight. In the least sin there is more evil than there is even in hell; for hell is at least the vindication of divine justice, but sin defies that justice. Sin is an unlimited and unmitigated evil; and there are some sins that are so wanton, so aggravating, so wilful, and men go so much out of their way to commit them,-there are some sins that are repeated so often, even in spite of chastisement,- there are some sins that are so polluting, so defiling, in which a man degrades and ruins others as well as himself, and there are some sins so infamous that it is marvellous that God still bears with the men who commit them, and that, while he holds back the thunderbolts of justice, he holds out the silver scepter of mercy, and says even to the chief of sinners, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”

Then if we wanted one other measuring line, it should he the consideration of the boons which God’s goodness brings. Our common mercies, daily bread, raiment to put on, health for necessary labor, rescue from peril, preservation from death, the institution of the Sabbath, the gift of the Bible, the gospel of salvation,-these are immeasurable boons; who then can calculate, the riches of the goodness and forbearance and longsuffering of God?

I cannot help feeling ashamed of myself while I am talking to you upon this theme, for I have a case to plead for God that I think I ought to plead much better than I do; and if I knew how to do it, I would do it, my gracious, blessed God. Alas! alas! there are some of you who treat God so ill, yet he has never done you any harm, and he is always doing you good. If his service were slavery, I should not wonder if you did not serve him. If to be his children were to be tortured and made unhappy I could not so much blame you; but as his service is perfect freedom, as his love is bliss ineffable, as his presence is heaven begun below, why do ye flee from that which is for your own highest happiness, and run away from that which is all of God’s mercy to you? O sin, thou hast made men insane; thou hast given them over to a madness which makes them see no beauty in God, no charms in the person of the Redeemer, and no attraction in the salvation which he has bought with his own most precious blood! O Divine Spirit, I cannot plead as I fain would; come thou, and make men value as they ought the riches of the goodness and forbearance and longsuffering of God!

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II. Now let me briefly try to show you How Men May Despise The Goodness, Forbearance, And Longsuffering Of God.

First, many persons do it by never considering that they do receive goodness from God. They take all that God gives them as a matter of course, and never think about it. If you have been very generous to some, poor man, and have relieved his wants for several years, I think you must sometimes feel grieved if you find that he takes it quite as a matter of course, and never shows any gratitude to you, but expects you still to do just as you have so long done. You think to yourself, “I am not bound to help him, it is entirely an act of favor on my part.” You do not like to say, “I will not give, him any more,” but you are strongly tempted to say so. Now if you have been ungrateful to your God for all his goodness to you, I pray you not to continue so. The swine walk under the oak, and eat up the acorns that fall from it, but never grunt out their thanks for them; will you be such swine as that? Oh, be not so! Rather imitate the little chicken, which drinks out of the stream, and then raises its head as if to thank God. I know that there are many here who would not like to be considered ungrateful, neither are they so to their fellow-men. I know you would scorn such a character; yet you are ungrateful to your best Friend, who has done far more, for you than all the rest of your friends put together. Do not despise his goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering by allowing it to remain unnoticed.

Some despise the longsuffering of God by opposing his design in it. The design of God’s goodness is to make bad men into good men; the design of God’s mercy to impenitent sinners is to make them penitent. You say to God, “I will not have thee for my God;” and he replies, “I will prolong thy life; I will prosper thee in business; I will multiply my favors to thee.” Yet you still say, “But I am not going to be moved by all this.” God comes to your bedside when you are lying there very ill; the cold sweat of death is standing on your brow, and he draws the fever from your system, and again prolongs your life, and gives you another ten years here, yet you say to him, “I love thee none the better even after doing all this for me.” Is that right? God has been gently leading thee, not driving thee, but drawing thee towards himself out of love towards thee; so do not despise his lovingkindness by pulling the other way.

There are some who do even worse than this, for they pervert the longsuffering and forbearance of God into a reason for being unbelieving. They say to themselves, “We have got on very well in this world although we have never been religious. We have had a good time of it though we have never prayed. We have been raised up from sickness, though afterwards we never thought about religion any more; so we may do as we like; God will not be angry with us, he will not stretch out his hand, and smite us.” Ah! I know nothing that is more perilous to an ungodly man than to go on prospering; but whenever I meet with an ungodly man who is in great trouble, I have a hope that God has chosen that man unto eternal life, and that therefore he will not let him go to hell, but puts bars and posts across the road to brook the way to perdition. But as for the man who is prosperous though ungodly, in regard to whom every wind seems to be favorable to his ships, and every season gives him better crops than his neighbors have, and who children are multiplied, and so on,-do you know why God acts thus towards him? I can tell you.

I have heard of a Christian woman, who had a very wicked husband. He was a dreadful swearer, and always opposed her in every good thing; yet she was the kindest wife that a man ever had. One night, or rather, early in the morning, as he sat drinking with boon companions, he told them that he had a splendid wife, and that, if they were all to go home with him, even though it was two o’clock in the morning, if she had gone, to bed, she would get up and prepare supper for them without showing the slightest sign of displeasure, but would, for his sake, wait upon them as if they were lords in the land. They went to the house, and the husband called his wife, as she had gone to bed; she put on her clothes, and came down, and got ready such things as she had, and made them all welcome. They asked her why she was so kind to one who was so brutal to her, but she would not answer. Another day, she said to her husband, when he asked a similar question, “I have prayed for you thousands of times, and I have done all I can to bring you to the Savior; yet there is a dreadful fear in my mind that you will be lost. I am afraid you will continue to sin against God, and that you will be sent to hell, so I have made up my mind that I will make you as happy as you can be while you are, here, for I fear that you will never have any happiness hereafter.” And I believe it is for the same reason that God lets wicked men get rich. “There,” says the Lord, “they shall enjoy themselves while they can. I will give them these things while they are here, for the time will come when I can show them no pity, but my inexorable justice must drive them from all pleasure for ever.” I think if there had been any true manhood in that man whom I have mentioned, he would have said to his wife, “Woman, do you feel like that towards me? Have you loved me so much, and prayed for me so long, and have you put up with any inconvenience so that you may do me good? Then, at any rate, I will be unkind to you no longer, and I will hear what these things are; that you say will make for my peace.” A sane man would talk like that; and if you are sane, I pray you now to heed what your God says to you. This is how he put the case long ago, and he might, put it to you in the same way: “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not, know, my people doth not consider.” Which of you would keep an ox or an ass if it never served you in any way? Which of you would suffer even a dog to be in your house, if it always flew at you when you came near it? Yet God has put up with you, his ungrateful creatures, for these many years. Will you never kiss the hand that feeds you? Are you more asinine than an ass? Are you more of a beast than the ox itself is? Oh, may God deliver sinners from continuing such injustice to him, and such cruelty to themselves!

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III. Now, lastly, Let Us Feel The Force Of The Leading Of God’s Goodness: “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.”

It ought to be reason enough for our not despising God’s goodness that it is a very unjust thing to despise it. I looked in classic history to see if I could find any parallel case to this between man and God, and I found one something like it. In Alexander’s day, a soldier, who had been shipwrecked, was hospitably received by a certain person, who took him to his house, and fed and clothed him; but, as soon as the soldier was able to get back to Alexander, he misrepresented the case, with many falsehoods, and asked the great commander to give him the house of the man who had entertained him. When Alexander afterwards found out the ingratitude of the wretch who thus tried to deprive his host of his own house in order to get it for himself, he ordered him to be branded on the forehead so that he might be known everywhere as the ungrateful guest; but what branding iron and what coals of juniper shall ever be hot enough to brand the ungrateful being who was created by God, fed by God, put in the way of mercy, invited by grace, and yet remained ungrateful still?

Seldom is man so ungenerous to his fellow-man as man is to his God; the very men who would scorn to rob their fellow-men of a farthing go on robbing God without compunction all their lives. Men who are scrupulously just in their dealings with their fellow merchants will persist in injustice to the God who created them. Why is this base conduct? Oh! I pray you, continue it not;-I would, with tears in my eyes, entreat you to continue it no longer. Are you not under great obligation to God? You know that he made you. Deep down in your soul there is a voice that says to you, “It is God who keeps you alive.” You know that it is so; then how can you imagine, that the Creator and Preserver of all can be forgotten with impunity? Let me give you a text that will remind you how dangerous a thing it is to live in the neglect of God’s goodness: “The wicked shall be turned into hell,” (especially notice the next words,) “and all the nations that forget God.” When I began to quote that text, you may have said to yourself, “I am not wicked; I do not do anything outrageous;” but listen again to the rest of the verse, “and all the nations that forget“-not the nations that swear, or blaspheme, or rebel against God, but “all the nations that forget God.” “That is only one text,” say you. Ah! but here is another, and there are many like it: “How shall we escape if we” -what? “If we neglect“-that is all,-it is only a matter of neglect — ”if we neglect so great salvation?” Despising God by neglecting him, despising him by forgetting him, this is a grievous kind of despising that will bring upon men eternal ruin.

“Lord, do thou the sinner turn!

Rouse him from his senseless state;

Let him not thy counsel spurn,

Rue his fatal choice too late!”

Romans 3:24-26 Justice Vindicated, and Righteousness Exemplified

NO. 3038
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MAY 2ND, 1907,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,
EARLY IN THE YEAR 1865.

“Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” — (see notes Romans 3:24; 25; 26).

THE death of our Lord Jesus Christ answered many valuable purposes. It manifested the manifold wisdom of God. To angels in heaven, and to saints on earth, God never appeared so infinitely wise as in the ordaining of the plan of salvation by the substitution of his Son for guilty sinners. That death also revealed God’s amazing love. It proclaimed to astonished worlds how “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The atonement of Christ answered the purpose, moreover, of purifying his people; that he might sanctify the people by his own blood, he suffered without the camp. He loved his Church, and gave himself for it, we know, “that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” The cross has also been the great battering-ram for breaking down the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile. It is by Christ’s blood that we are made one. “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” Caste is abolished, and invidious distinctions are set aside. There is no longer in Christ Jesus barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, circumcised or uncircumcised, but Christ is All-in-all. That same atoning sacrifice also broke down the wall which separated both Jew and Gentile from God: “that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.” The alienation prevailed till the reconciliation was effected by the precious blood of Jesus. We remain enemies in our minds by wicked works until we see the great love wherewith he loved us, and then that love melts our heart, and makes us friends of God.

Time would fail me did I attempt to enter into anything like an enumeration of the blessed purposes which the blood of Christ serveth before God and among men. Try, if you can, to calculate the inestimable value of the air you breathe, how every plant feeds upon it, or upon some portion of it, — how every creature, whether on the loftiest mountains, or in the deepest mines, must have a portion of it, or else can no longer subsist; think of the force with which it operates upon the world in wind and tempest. Need I do more than suggest to you the infinite number of ways in which the air becomes valuable, not merely as an accessory to our comfort, but as a necessity of our life? Yet, how infinitely more precious is the blood of Jesus Christ, which in every way and in every place becomes efficacious to the everlasting salvation of all believers! That water, which sustains the life of leviathan, and of an infinite multitude of fishes, is your drink and mine. It makes glad the meads, it fertilizes every field, and gives to the husbandman his harvest; but, while it does this, it has other uses which we cannot here stay to dilate upon. See how it bears today upon its bosom the commerce of the world, and becomes the highway of nations. When you shall have recalled all the excellencies of the water, with which God has girdled the globe, you shall then have but opened a parable thoroughly inadequate to represent the immeasurable benefits which come to us through Christ, and the innumerable forms which those benefits assume. We know that it has an operation in the highest heaven; certainly it has saved us from the deepest hell.

Do you see that cross on which Jesus died? What is it more than a simple piece of transverse wood? I see it in vision. I see it growing till its top reaches the most excellent glory, lifting up the elect to the very throne of the Most High. I see its base sinking deep as our helpless miseries could plunge us in hopeless ruin, going down till it reaches even the depths of the vengeance of God; I see its arms spread till all whom God hath chosen are sheltered beneath them, and all mankind receive some favors which never would have come to them if it had not been that there the Savior of sinners offered the one availing sacrifice for sin. As when the servant of Elias saw a little cloud, the size of a man’s hand, and the prophet marked in that the sign of abundance of rain, so, when I see the cross of Calvary, it is as a little cloud, but faith beholds it, spread all over heaven, and then drop down in mighty showers of mercy to fructify the earth, and bless the children of men. If you would count the drops that fall from that cloud, you must grasp “infinity” in your comprehension.

According to our text, it appears that one main purpose of the sacrifice of Christ was the manifestation of the righteousness of God. The apostle twice over assures us that this was the case, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation . . . to declare his righteousness.” And as if this were not enough, “to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness.” What, a grand thought! The death of Jesus Christ is a resplendent manifestation of divine righteousness. When we have mused upon that, we will proceed to notice that divine righteousness — the moral government of the Almighty — is, by the death of Christ, cleared of two difficulties to which reference is made. Then we shall close by noting the lessons which this great doctrine teaches.

I have nothing new to say this evening, — I should be ashamed of myself if I had. This is the old doctrine, this is the soul-saving truth. It is blessedly simple, and we thank God that it is, and that therefore the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein. It is plain to him that understandeth, and if the Lord giveth us understanding in this thing, we certainly have here the beginning, and we shall soon have in it the end of wisdom.

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I. Jesus; Death, Then, Manifested Divine Justice In The Very Highest Degree.

The expulsion of our first parents from the garden of Eden did manifest the justice of God, but not fully. They were only expelled from paradise, but their lives were spared. In strict justice, they should have died. “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Though that curse was not confined to natural death, it certainly included it. Had justice there been fully vindicated, the human race would have been utterly destroyed. The expulsion of the sinner does not so fully set forth God’s righteousness as does the expiation of the Savior.

The justice of God was exhibited in dreadful forms when the deluge came, and swept the race of man from the earth. Yet why was yonder ark freighted with the chosen eight? Were they not sinners? If justice be come out in its full strength, why does it permit so many as eight to escape? The number may be few, but the principle is infringed. In strict, severe justice, apart from the atonement, not even Noah could have escaped, and certainly not his unrighteous son Ham. The eight, as they are floating yonder, indicate the exercise of some other prerogative than that of absolute and naked justice.

Then comes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. See them, with the other cities of the plain, licked up by tongues of fire; behold the light smoke as it ascends and clouds the heavens! But here was only divine justice upon one atrocious sin, — a sin which will forever bear the name of the place in which it came to its worst height. It was not the declaration of God’s justice against sin as sin, so much as against sin in a certain form when the virus of evil had been most banefully developed.

Hark to the shriek that goes up from the midst of the Red Sea, when the water’s, that stood upright as a heap, suddenly descend, and lock in their death-wooing arms the multitudes of Egyptian chivalry! Do you not see here the justice of God? You do; but you do not see it so completely, because a multitude of sinners, in front, have escaped by this very destruction. I grant you that, here, a most blessed type of our Lord Jesus Christ is conspicuous, but there is not a complete declaration of divine justice, for had divine justice smitten all sinners on that occasion, Israel would have been drowned as well as Egypt. There rather the pride of Pharaoh was subdued than the sin of Egypt. That judgment fell only upon the chief of Egypt, the chief of all her strength was smitten there; but judgment must come upon the little as well as upon the great, when it cometh from the hand of the Most High in its absolute force.

Of all the other judgments which we find mentioned in Holy Scripture, it is enough to say that they were manifestations of divine justice, but they were not such manifestations of it as we have in Christ. If I might use such a metaphor, divine vengeance slept, and all those judgments were but its startings in its sleep. God had not yet laid bare his terrible right arm; judgment was then his strange work. He did not put both his hands to the tremendous work of punishment as he did afterwards, when his only-begotten Son stood before him., the Just in the place of the unjust, and the Guiltless with the guilt of man upon his shoulders.

The death of Christ did more clearly set forth the righteousness of God than all these put together. In some respects, even hell itself cannot so exhaust the vindication of infinite justice. Do you demur to this last assertion? You may well do so, till I explain my meaning. It needs a whole eternity to set forth, in hell, all the justice of God in the punishment of sin. To manifest to those who suffer, being impenitent, all the vengeance of incensed Deity, demands an ageless age of years, countless and interminable. Behold the Lamb of God! In Christ, you have set forth at once all the fullness of the vengeance of God against the sins of men. See the cup of trembling drained to its utmost dregs. See the baptism accomplished. He sank beneath the swelling waves of vindictive wrath; but, lo! he rises again. He has finished the endurance, and paid the debt that none could reckon. There is more of the vindication of justice on the tree than can be seen at any one time, or at any one point, in the lowest depths of hell.

The death of Christ gloriously set forth divine justice, because it taught manifestly this truth, that sin can never go without punishment. It is a law of God’s moral universe that sin must be punished. He has made that as necessary as the law of gravitation. The law of gravitation he may suspend; the law of justice, never. He will by no means spare the guilty. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” As the Lord had appointed the salvation of his people, even this, the dearest desire of his soul, does not lead him to tamper with his inviolable law. No, a Substitute shall be provided, who shall to the utmost farthing pay whate’er his people owe. Upon his head the fire-cloud shall discharge itself, and into his bosom shall be emptied out, the coals of fire. No pardon without punishment! If the question be asked, “Why not?” it is enough to say that, so long as God rules the universe, he, rules it in wisdom, and his wisdom knows that it would be unsafe if sin were at any time permitted to be blotted out apart from satisfaction received. Christ, therefore, must himself give a satisfaction for sin, that this rule may be declared, and written upon the forefront of the skies, — God will not pardon sin by overlooking it; there must be redemption before there can be remission.

This was shown also very clearly in what the Savior had to endure. A part of the penalty of sin is shame. The wicked will rise “to shame and everlasting contempt.” Rebellion against God is the most contemptible thing that angels ever heard of. The devil will be recognized, at last, as the worst of fools, and become the object of intense mockery. But see our Savior! When he takes the sinner’s place, “He is despised and rejected of men.” His own disciples, as it were, hid their faces from him: “He was despised, and we esteemed him not.” He is the song of the drunkard; reproach hath broken his heart. They that sit in the gate speak against him; they spit in his face, they bow the knee, and hail him with mock homage; they put him to the death of a slave; they give him the pre-eminent place of shame as center of the three crucified ones. Never was shame more shameful than in the experience of our Lord. Here God seemed to declare, once for all, how shameful in his sight sin was. When sin lay but by imputation upon his own dear Son, his Son must be an object of scorn to the universe.

Transcendent was his sorrow as well as his shame. We cannot divine his meaning when he said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” Your sympathies can never interpret those pangs of heart which forced the blood to stream from every pore.

His physical sufferings alone are enough to make us faint, if we would but think of them aright. As for his soul’s sufferings, which were the soul of his sufferings, here is enough to melt our hearts away in grief that we should ever have caused him thus to die. When the Lord thus emptied out all his quivers, and shot every arrow against the heart of his dear Son, — when all his waves and his billows went over him, — when deep called unto deep, and there was the noise of God’s waterspouts, and Christ was made to sink in deep mire where there was no standing, — then God declared most loudly what an intolerable evil sin is, how supremely just he is, and how jealous of his justice.
In the Savior’s sufferings, shame and sorrow were deepened, both of them, by divine desertion. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” has the grief of ages in it. Here you have tremendous pangs distilled and given to Christ in quintessence. “Eloi, Eloi, lama Sabachthani?” is a more desperate cry than ever came from lost souls. Every word of it was emphatic, every syllable needs to be pronounced with the awful force of one who is in the pangs of death, and in the pangs of hell, for the Savior could truly say, “The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me; I found trouble and sorrow. Then called I upon the name of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.” No answer came, for God had forsaken him. His enemies persecuted and took him, and there was none to deliver him. Herein, in the leaving of his own Son, his only-begotten Son, his ever-obedient Son, God showed his intense righteousness and hatred of sin.

Nor was Christ spared the last pinch, — one would have thought that he might have been spared that, — He died. Here shame, and sorrow, and desertion reached the culminating point, — the Savior dies. The holy soul is parted from the pure and blessed body; he suffers the very pangs of death; he yields up the ghost. Though immortal, he dies. Brightness of the Father’s glory, he slumbers in the tomb! See him, believer, as the disciples take him down, drawing out the nails, one by one, so tenderly! See him, as they lay him in the sheet which the holy women had prepared, and wrap him up in the spices which Nicodemus in his love, and Joseph of Arimathea in his bounty, had brought! See the Savior, as they put him in the tomb, and go away sorrowing, for the stone is laid, and the seal is set upon him! See him, I say. See him, whom angels worship, “over all God, blessed for ever,” sleeping thus a captive in the grave! Does not Jehovah here reveal how he hates sin in that he spared not his own Son? The Christ must die when sin and expiation come into contact, even though that contact be but by imputation.

To one more point I must call your attention. The excellency of the Person who suffered all this is the great platform upon which God displays his righteousness. He who suffered this was the Just One; — of spotless nature; — a King; “the King of the Jews.” He was the Messiah, the Shiloh, whom God had foreordained to be the Mediator of the covenant. Nay more; he was the Son of the Highest, being begotten of the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary. Mounting higher still, he was himself “very God of very God.” It is a great mystery, one which, however, we receive with reverence.

The hand that was stretched out to the nail is the very hand that wields the scepter of universal empire; the heart that was pierced is the very heart which will beat on throughout eternity in love to his people; yet more, the very Being, who thus became capable of suffering, was he who built the heavens, and scattered the stars like dust along the sky; who bespake the light, and said, “Light be,” and sent forth the Spirit to brood over chaos, and brought order out of its confusion. “Without him was not anything made that was made.” He is the express image of his Father’s glory and person; “in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” I merely talk; this theme demands an angel’s tongue to sing. Sing of him, spirits before the throne, in your rapturous song, — sing of him, in wonder that he should ever leave your happy choirs, and forsake the throne of his eternal glory, to become a man! Sing of him when he stripped himself of his azure mantle, and did hang it on the sky, and took away his golden rings, and hung them up like stars, and laid aside the vestments of his glorious reign, and came to dwell in humble garments of clay! Oh, mysterious love! — he came to suffer, bleed, and die! Oh, mystery of righteousness, that such an One as this should have to bleed, should have to smart, even to the uttermost, and be obedient, unto death, even the death of the cross! Never, then, did righteousness receive such vindication as when God, the mighty Maker, having assumed flesh, in that flesh died for man, the creature’s, sin.

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II. This Great Manifestation Of Divine Righteousness In The Person Of Christ, as I understand the text, Intelligibly Clears God’s Moral Government Of Two Great Difficulties.

When Christ became a propitiation, he declared God’s righteousness for the remission of sin. We are pardoned through the forbearance of God. For thousands of years, men lived and sinned, and yet were justified; — rebelled, and yet were forgiven; — wandered, yet wore restored. I say, for thousands of years, poor fallible men claimed complete righteousness, and entered into the rewards which belong exclusively to those who are justified before God. There they go, streaming up to heaven, a long bright line of patriarchs, and prophets, and warriors for the holy cause, and kings, and priests, and saintly men and women, who believed in God, and this was imputed to them for righteousness. Now here we are in a difficulty. A just God is saving all these sinners, and taking them to heaven, without any sort of vindication of his justice! But Christ comes in, and declares the righteousness of God “for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God,” and all the difficulties of the antediluvian, and patriarchal, and Mosaic times are cleared up at once.

Another difficulty, with which you and I are far more concerned, is how God can be just, and yet the Justifier. The apostle says that this was cleared up: “To declare, I say, at this time, his righteousness; that he might be just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” This is the great problem which the world has been trying to solve. I know of no religion, except Unitarianism, — which is not a religion, but a philosophy, — which ever pretends to do without a sacrifice. It is remarkable that no religion can be popular except that which deals with a sacrifice for sin; and where this is left out in any man’s ministry, you very soon find there are more spiders than hearers, and very soon the place, which might have been crowded under an Evangelical ministry, grows empty. It is a happy circumstance that it is so, but it is a very significant one. If a man were to open a shop for the sale of bread, and were to sell nothing but stones, it is certain that he would have but few customers. The baker’s shop is the last that is shut up in the parish. When all other trades die out, his will live, for men must have bread; and so, if every other good thing should pass away, the gospel, because it meets the wants of common humanity, is quite certain to survive them all. Dr. Patten, the other Sabbath morning, said to me after service, “I am often asked why so many people come to the Tabernacle, and, my dear friend,” he said, “I cannot give any answer; can you? — except this one, that you do try to preach that which the soul wants, the essential and vital point of how men are saved and justified before God through Jesus Christ; and so,” said he, “if you keep to that old theme, there is no fear but what there will be enough hungry souls to come and feed upon that bread.” And so I think it is. This I know, if a man would have a subject that will never grow stale, and never wear out, let him preach Christ crucified. You need not go to philosophies, nor turn over the books in your libraries, to find out some novelty; the old story is more novel than the new. There is nothing so new as Christ. We may say of him, “Thou hast the dew of thy youth;” for Christ Jesus and his sacrifice exactly meet the common wants of our humanity.

Well, there is a sacrifice provided, and that sacrifice, dear friends, I say, answers the question which God has put into every man’s mind, “How can I be saved, and yet God be just?” Man has the conviction, though he may not express it, that God is just. Every sinner knows that sin must be punished. He may trifle with that knowledge, but he cannot destroy it; and he never can get any peace of mind, when his conscience is really awakened, till he learns this great truth, — God punished Christ instead of you. Christ has so honored the law of God that, without God being unjust, or being thought to be so, he can forgive you. There has been such a satisfaction offered to God’s violated purity, that he can be discovered to be infinitely pure, nay, severely just, and yet, at the same time, infinitely gracious and merciful. O soul, hast thou ever caught a glimpse of this matter? My heart remembers when I first understood that. Though those words, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth,” were the channel of my comfort, yet the ground of it was this, — I did see that Christ suffered for me, that Christ stood as a Substitute for believers, and that precious doctrine of substitution was the window of light to my dark soul.

Hear, ye sinners, hear this! God demands of you two things, — first, that you should keep his law. You cannot do this, for you have already broken it. If you never sinned again, you have put yourselves out of court. On Sinai’s mount there is no safety for you. Even Moses said, “I do exceedingly fear and quake,” when Sinai was altogether on a smoke. But God demands more than this. He demands punishment for the sins that are past, as well as a perfect obedience for the years to come. Can you bear this? Can you endure the flames of hell and the terrors of his vengeance? Your heart quails at the thought. Well, as Christ has come into the world, he has provided for both. He knows your need. Christ has kept the law of God for you; and Christ has suffered the penalty of that law too. You have two answers to the Most High; and when conscience says, “Thou must be punished, for thou art guilty,” thou canst say, “Nay, not I; Christ was punished for my sins. God will never punish two for one offense; — first the Substitute, and then the sinner for whom he was a Substitute.” And when conscience says, “Ah! but thou canst not bring in a perfect righteousness,” thou canst answer, “Yes, I can, for Christ has wrought out and brought in a perfect righteousness, and he gives this to me, according to his own name and title, ’Jehovah-Tsidkenu,’ the Lord our Righteousness.” Oh, that we might have grace, dear friends, to understand that all that God wants of us is found in Christ! You think there is something for you to do in order to save yourself; but Christ has saved all who will be saved, — saved them already, virtually; and you shall be saved actually when, by humble faith, you receive the salvation which Christ has wrought out. To add to Christ anything of your own, would be to tack on your own filthy rags to his gold and silver-threaded garments, to bring your filthy lucre to eke out the golden payment which he has laid down at God’s throne. Do not this, sinner. God is content with Christ; be thou content with him; and as thou seest how God is just, see also how thou mayest be happy and at peace.

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III. And now I conclude by just drawing Two Practical Lessons.

First, let us see what an evil thing sin is, and how God hates it. Christian, do you hate it too. Loathe it; never endure it. If I had to pass the place where some dear friend of mine was murdered, I should dread the very spot; but if there lived on earth the man who had stabbed my dearest friend to the heart, methinks I could never bear him affection, but I should feel moved to stir the myrmidons of justice to pursue him. Now, your sins have murdered your Savior. Revenge here is holy. In other places, it must be very doubtful, but here it is sacred. Seize your sins. Where are they? Seize yourselves, and you have them. If you feel any anger against the murderer of Christ, turn to your looking-glass, and see his face. There stands the man who slew his Friend; there stands he who killed his Friend, who died to save him; yea, in the very act and suffering of murder that Friend gave himself up to bleed and die for the good of his murderers. Shall I spare the sins, then, that nailed my Savior to the tree? O Christian, how you ought to hate the very thought of sin! We are very severe upon the sins of others, sometimes; how much more severe ought we to be upon our own! Truly, a man’s foes are they of his own household. The very thought of sin, the word of sin, the very garments spotted with the flesh, should be hated by the Christian. The Lord give us to feel more and more of this! We shall only get it, however, by living more where the groans of Calvary can meet our ears, and the sight of the Savior’s wounds can melt our hearts.

Then, let us see our sad condition if we are not delivered from sin. If Christ became the object of his Father’s wrath when sin was only imputed to him, how angry must God be, everyday, with the wicked whose own sins lie upon themselves! There can be no more dreadful thought to a sinner than this, if we will look at it in that light, — that God spared not his own Son. Surely, if the Judge smites his own Son so severely, he will not spare you, his enemy. Ah, you who have no Savior, and who have never looked to Christ to take away your sins, what will you do when you have to stand before the bar of God? Christ needed to be omnipotent to endure the stroke of his Father’s sword; but what will you do when God’s dreadful voice cries, “Awake, O sword, against my foe; against the man that despised my Son, and trampled on his blood”? The wrath of the Lamb is the worst thing a sinner can ever feel. “The wrath of the Lamb!” Think of that! When love turns to anger, it is cruel as the grave. To despise incarnate love, is to entail upon yourself infinite misery. They who perish without the knowledge of Christ, perish happily compared with you. It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for you if you have despised Christ.

My hearers, I have tried as best I can to preach Christ to you, and to lift him up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness; but some of you will not look at him. I fear you never will look, but that you will die in your sins. It was but the other day that I heard of one of your number who, after listening to this voice, suddenly went into eternity in a moment; and the like is happening to very many. You will not be able to say, at the last, that you never heard of Christ, or that I covered him up amidst a multitude of gaudy periods and high-sounding words. I have set forth Christ Jesus in all the naked beauty of his mysterious sacrifice. Look to him, souls! If I have never been able to move your heart before, may God move it now! Look to Jesus! Is salvation such a thing to be trifled with, that you can live without it? Are the joys of being reconciled to God such trifles that you will not have them? If you had to die like dogs, it would be worthwhile to prove the happiness of being reconciled to God in this life. But, oh, remember the world to come! You shall soon pass through the gates of the grave; the death-sweat will settle on your brows; the night of death shall seal your eyes. What will you do, in those few solemn moments when the last sands are trickling from the hour-glass, without a Savior? Say not that these are things not to be talked of because they are too distant. Men and women, they will come to you. Tomorrow, ere next Sabbath-bells shall toll, you may be hurried to the land where the sound of the church-going bell is never heard. May God lead you to lay hold of Christ now; for if not, there remains for you nothing but the fearful looking for of judgment and of fiery indignation. The trumpet sounds, the dead awake, Jesus sits upon the great white throne, the heavens are opened, the angels come to gather God’s harvest, and it is gathered into the garner. But now they come to reap the vintage, and with their sickles they cut down cluster after cluster of the wild vines of sin. Oh! if you are there, you must be gathered with the rest, cast into the winepress of the wrath of God; and, oh! how tremendous will that be, when he who once trod the winepress for his people, shall come to tread the winepress of his wrath for the last time! How dreadful when, to use the prophetic words of the Revelation, the blood flows forth even unto the horses’ bridles! Oh! tremendous vengeance of an incensed God, whose mercy has been despised, and whose grace has been put away!

I am not in the habit of often using such strong words; I rather love to plead the love of Jesus Christ to souls; but strong words must sometimes be used, or slumbering souls will never else awake. Why will you perish? Do you choose your own destruction? Wherefore do ye choose it? Come, let a brother lead you back. Here, in these seats, cover up your eyes, and let the silent confession go up to heaven. Look to Jesus crucified; fly to those dear wounds of his. A Substitute for sinners, there he hangs, and bleeds, and dies.

“There is life for a look at the Crucified One;

There is life at this moment for thee,” —

Romans 3:24-26 Justification, Propitiation, Declaration

JUSTIFICATION, PROPITIATION, DECLARATION.
NO. 3488
PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2ND, 1915.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
ON LORD’S-DAY EVENING, OCT. 9TH, 1870.

“Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to he a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.” — (see notes Romans 3:24; 25; 26).

I think, dear if friends, some of you will be saying, “There is that same old doctrine again that we are so continually hearing,” and I am sure if you do say so I shall not be surprised. Nor, on the other hand, shall I make any sort of excuse. The doctrine of justification by faith through the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ is very much to my ministry what bread and salt are to the Bible. As often as ever the table is set, there are those necessary things. I regard that doctrine as being one that is to be preached continually, to be mixed up with all our discoursings, even as, under the law, it was said, “With all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt.” This is the very salt of the gospel; indeed, it is impossible to bring it forward too often. It is the soul-saving doctrine; it is the foundation doctrine of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is that by which God is pleased to bring many into reconciliation with himself. As the schoolmaster takes care to ground his scholars well in the grammar, that they may get hold of the very roots of the language, so must we be rooted and grounded in this fundamental and cardinal truth of justification through the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Martin Luther, who used to preach this doctrine very vehemently and forcibly, yet declared that he felt as if he could knock the Bible about the peoples heads if he could by any means get this doctrine into them; for so soon after they had learnt it did they forget it. Over and over, and over again must the Christian minister continue to insist upon this truth, that God was, in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. And for ever and ever, as long as the world standeth, must he continue to repeat the truth, that we are justified through the righteousness of our Redeemer, and not by any righteousness of our own. I do not intend at this time to try and preach a sermon, but rather give an “outline exposition” again of this doctrine. And if you turn to the text, I think we can very well divide it, and very properly too, into three parts, and head it with three words of, justification, propitiation, declaration. Justification: “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Propitiation: “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation though faith in his blood to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins.” And then we come to the third; the Declaration: to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God: to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. First, then, here is something about: —

I. Justification.

The sense of this term is, in this place, and in most others, to declare a person to be just. A person is put on his trial, he is brought before the judge. One of two things will happen; he will either be acquitted or justified, or else he will be condemned. You and I are all virtually before the judge, and we are at this moment either acquitted or condemned, either justified or under condemnation. It is not possible that any one of us should be acquitted on the ground of our not being guilty, for we must all confess that we have broken the law of God ten thousand times. It is not possible for any of us to be declared just on the ground of our own personal obedience to the law, for to be just through our own obedience we must have been perfect; but perfect we have not been. We have broken the law, we continue still to break it, and, by the works of the law, it is clear we cannot be just, cannot be justified. The Lord, even the God of heaven and earth, has planned and promulgated a way by which he can be just, and yet can declare the guilty to be just: a way by which, to use the words of our text he can be just and yet the justifier of him that believeth. That way is simply this, a way of substitution and imputation. Our sins are taken off of us, and laid upon Christ Jesus, the innocent Substitute: “For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin.” Then, when this is effected, the righteousness which was wrought out by Jesus Christ is taken from him and imputed, reckoned unto us; so that the rest of the text comes true, “That we may be made the righteousness of God in him.” We are found in him not having our own righteousness which is of the law, but the righteousness which of God by faith. You see, we did not keep the law, but broke it. We were, therefore, condemned. Jesus came and stood in our stead, headed up the whole race that he had chosen, became their representative, kept for them completely all the law, suffered also the punishment due for all their breaches of the law, becoming a substitute actively and passively obeying the law, and suffering its penalty too. And now what he did is imputed to us, while what we did by way of sin was of old imputed to him, and he was made a curse for us: as it is written, “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” If you ask me how this can be a just thing to do, I reply, God hath determined it, and it is not possible that he should have determined anything that was not just.

But, moreover, there was an original reason for it, for our first ruin came upon us through our first parent, Adam. Our first fall was not our doing, but the doing of the man who stood as our representative. Perhaps had we, each one of us, at the first separately and distinctly sinned, without any connection with him, redemption might have been as impossible to us as we have reason to believe it is to fallen angels; but inasmuch as the first sin was in connection with the federal hardship of the first Adam, it became possible and right that there should be a salvation through a second federal headship, even Jesus Christ, the second Adam. “As by man came death, so by man also comes the resurrection from the dead.” As by man sin came into the world, and the race perished, so by the second glorious man, Christ Jesus, grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life. But you need not question the justice of the plan. The Sovereign against whom you have offended deigns to accept it, and what God accepts we need not hesitate to rely upon. If the offended One be satisfied to proclaim us just, we may be perfectly satisfied with what he shall do toward us: for if he justifies, who can condemn? If he acquits, who dare accuse? We may boldly say, if once we are acquitted, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?”

Now notice what the text says of this plan of justification. It tells us that, as far as we are concerned, it is given to us freely. Being justified freely, God forgives the sinner’s sins gratis, freely; not on account of any repentance of his meritoriously considered — not on the ground of any resolutions of his which might bribe the Eternal mind — not on account of penance, or suffering endured or to be endued, but he puts sins away freely because he chooses to do it — for nothing; without money, without merit, without anything that could move him but his own grand nature, for he delighteth in mercy — “Being justified freely.”

And then to make it clearer still, it is added by his grace, which is not a tautology, though it be a repetition. We are justified, not by any debt due to us, not because God was bound to justify, but because out of his own abundant love and rich compassion he freely makes the guilty to be pardoned, and the unrighteous to be justified by the righteousness of Christ. I know it has been said by some that we make out that there is no such thing as free pardon and free justification, because we set the righteousness of Christ in, as the procuring cause of both. I grant you we do, but we equally strenuously hold the pardon to be free, and the justification to be free, though it is through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus — free to us, free so far as the heart and mercy of God is concerned, and only through redemption, because God must be just, he must be righteous, he cannot separate sin from the penalty. He is a Sovereign, but he never, in his sovereignty, violates righteousness; and it would be a sovereign act of unrighteousness if he passed by sin without awarding to it the punishment which he threatened should follow it: an act which it is not possible for God to do; for he must be just, and he has himself declared the will by no means clear the guilty. Still, the justification is free to you, free to every soul that will have it, free to every man that believeth in Jesus.

Now note this justification is put before you as being through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus. There is a price paid, it is through the redemption. There is an intervening suffering, and an intervening obedience. We are not justified freely without redemption, nor justified by his grace without the intervention of the atoning sacrifice. Oh! how men labored to get rid of this. There are certain persons who think themselves philosophic, who will do all they can to throw dirt into the face of this doctrine of substitution, but it is the very soul, head, foundation, corner, and keystone of the entire gospel; and if it be left out, I hesitate not to say that the gospel preached is another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that trouble you.

“In vain the guilty conscience seeks

Some solid ground to rest upon.

With vain desire the spirit breaks,

Till we apply to Christ alone.
Till God in human flesh I see;

My thoughts no comfort find

The holy, just, and sacred three

Are terrors to my mind.
But if Emmanuel’s face appear,

My hope, my joy, begins;

His grace forbids my slavish fear,

His love removes my sin.”

We cannot give up the doctrine of redemption, the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. This is it, soul: listen to it — thou art justified freely, but it cost the Savior dear; it cost him a life of obedience; it cost him a death of shame, of agony, of suffering, all immeasurable. There was thy cup of wrath which thou must drink for ever, and which thou couldest never drain to the bottom. It must be drunk by someone. Jesus drinks it, sets the cup to his lips, and the very first drop of it makes him sweat great drops of blood falling to the ground; but he drinks right on, though head, and hands, and feet are all suffering: drinks right on, though he cries, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Drinks right on, I say, until not one black drop or dreg could be found within that cup, and, turning it upside down, he cries, “It is finished. It is finished,” as he gives up the ghost. At one tremendous draught of love, the Lord hath drunk condemnation dry for every one of his people for whom he shed his blood. “Justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” There was a redemption by substitutionary suffering, a redemption by vicarious obedience, a redemption by interposition of Christ on our behalf: —

“To bear, that we might never bear

His Father’s righteous ire.”

Understandest thou this, sinner? Understandest thou this? If thou dost not, then God help thee to grasp it now, for it is a thing of the present — is it not here a present participle? — being justified freely, that is, now, now justified. O sinner, thou art now condemned, but if thou now wilt look to Jesus standing as the victim in thy stead, if thou wilt now trust in Jesus dying in thy room, thou shalt be now just, thy sins shall be now forgiven; the righteousness shall be thine now, and thou shall know the meaning of that text, “There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” See ye, then, what justification means? Oh! may you enjoy it; it will make you leap for joy if you do. And now the second word is: —

II. Propitiation — a reference here to the mercy-seat, the covering in; in our own word it is a reconciliation, a something by which God is propitiated; an atonement by which God and man are made one, a propitiation; a something which vindicates the injured honor of God, which comes in to make amends to the divine law for human offenses.

Now concerning this propitiation let us speak, and may the Holy Spirit give us utterance. Thou sayest, O sinner, “Wherewithal shall I come before God? How shall I draw near to the Most High God?” What would you give to be saved? All that you have, you would freely present; if you had bullocks and sheep upon a thousand hills, and their blood could cleanse you, you would pour it out in rivers. You ask again, “What is the propitiation I can bring?” God tells thee. Here he tells thee that he has provided a propitiation in the person of his dear Son. And I would have thee notice first of all who it was that provided it — whom God had set forth. Admire the love of this — that the God who was angered is the God who finds the propitiation. Against God the sin was revelled; God himself finds the way of being gracious towards sinners. How safe it must be to accept a propitiation which God, the offended one, himself proposes. Notice next that it is said that God hath set this forth. The margin has it, “Has fore-ordained it.” The atonement of Christ is not a new idea; it is an old determination of the Most High, and it is no close secret. God has published it — set it forth. By his prophets in his Word — by his preachers in all your streets, God has set forth Christ to be the propitiation for human sin. It is his own arranging, his own, and the publication to you to-night is by his own authority. Oh! regard ye this, and ye that seek his mercy leap to think that it comes to you certified in such a way.

But then notice that the main point in this propitiation is the blood. “Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.” Some cannot bear to hear about the blood of Jesus, and yet, under the old law, it was written, “It is the blood which shall make atonement for sin.” And again, “Without shedding of blood there is no remission,” and again, “The blood is the life thereof,” and again, “When I see the blood I will pass over you,” that is to say, that which makes atonement for human sin is not the life of Christ as an example — nor the actions of Christ as a vindication of righteousness — but the suffering of Christ — the death of Christ. Everyone knows that this is what is meant by the blood. In the blood-shedding, Jesus suffered his body suffered — inwardly his soul bled, his spirit suffered — his soul-sufferings were the soul of his sufferings. Then came death. Death was the penalty of sin. Jesus died, literally died; and the heart’s blood came fo