2. Here it is fully and amply done ; the gospel holdeth out a clear way : and that it may appear to you, I shall show you what the way is, and prove that it must needs be a sure way.
[1.] What the gospel doth.
(1.) It discovereth perfect righteousness. The drift of the gospel is to discover this righteousness — actively, for the fulfilling of the law passively, for the satisfying of the breaches of it. For ' therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith.' The apostle proveth that it is 'the power of God to salvation,' for there is a righteousness to be found in it. For that is it which the creature wants, a righteousness to appear just before God : Rom. i. 21, ' But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested.' We must be righteous, or we cannot be saved. Now the gospel discovereth this perfect righteousness in Jesus Christ ; for it is by his righteousness that we are justified. And therefore it is everywhere called ' God's righteousness,' and dis-
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tinguished from our own. Now this is done here ; the wrath of God is pacified, and the law fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
(2.) The gospel discovereth a way how this righteousness may be- come ours : it is made ours by faith, and our union with Christ. When a man hath an interest in Christ, he is possessed of all that is in him ; you have his righteousness, and therefore he is so often called Phenazidkem} 'the Lord our righteousness,' Jer. xxxiii. IG ; and Isa. Iviii. 8, ' Thy righteousness shall go before thee.' You shall have an interest in what is his : ' Thy righteousness;' i.e., you have it in Jesus Christ.
[2.] This must needs be a sure way, because God's ends are furthered by it.
(1.) God is glorified. God would honour his justice ; and whatever that required to be done or suffered was accomplished by Christ ; God justifying sinners, and yet being just : Rom. iii. 26, ' To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.' That was the special attribute ; mercy shiueth forth from it. But the chiefest was that he might be just ; and therefore here you have mercy and justice shining forth in their greatest strength and brightness.
(2.) The creature is contented and satisfied. God, as he would glorify every one of his own attributes, so he would do that which was most satisfying and engaging to our spirits. Now this is so done that every doubt and scruple is answered. The creature is troubled be- cause he cannot keep the law ; it is kept for us : because it cannot satisfy for breaches, it is done for us. If our consciences be scorched with the wrath of God, there is the blood of Christ to quiet them; if troubled with fears, Christ was heard in what he feared, to allay ours.
Use. Is by way of inference : —
First, To exhort us to bless God for the gospel. Oh, what a mercy is it that such a way is found out for our returning to God ! Acts xiii. 48, ' They were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord ; ' that is, spake wonderfully and affectionately of the gospel. What so good a word ? If we had been to have satisfied the law, we had been miser- able. Christians, we are not sensible of the mercy of being freed from the rigour of the law, of being justified by the knowledge of the doc- trine of Christ. Do but consider what it would have been with us then, and how it is with us now.
First, How it would have been v-ith us then ; the misery that we were in then by reason of the rigour of the law, which consisteth in two things : —
1. The matter, what was required ; such a burden as we nor our fathers were ever able to bear. See what kind of obedience it was that it requires.
[1.] It must be full and entire, so as to take in the inward and outward man. The pharisees indeed did strive to lighten the law, and would have it only reach the outward part and external acts in wursliip, and obedience to the commanding part, and the grosser acts in the prohibition. But alas 1 our Saviour in Mat. v. showeth that it reacheth the least dissonancy that may be, as a glance of the eye, the
^ Qu. * Jehovah tsklkcnu ' ! — Ei>.
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roving of the thoughts, looking upon a woman to lust after her, and there all their peace is gone : Rom. vii. 14, ' The law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.' Paul, when a pharisee, thought that the law was only conversant about externals, but he found it spiritual, and himself carnal. So Ps. xix. 7, ' The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul.' Man's law reacheth the body and the flesh, but God's law goeth to the very spirit and conscience. And alas ! upon what miserable terms should we be with God, if this were the rule of our acceptance with him ! A man hath some command of himself in these outward things, but who can guide his spirit in an even pro- portion to the law of God ?