Man cannot compass it, yet never fear:
The leper Naaman
Shows what God will and can.
God who worked there is working here;
Wherefore let shame, not gloom, betinge thy brow.
God who worked then is working now.2
1 W". M. Macgregor, Some of God's Ministries, 180. 8 Christina G. Rosaetti.
Justification.
253
Literature.
Bennie (J. N.), The Eternal Life, 50. Campbell (R. J.), City Temple Sermons, 13. Farrar (F. W.), Truths to Live By, 215, 260. Griffith -Jones (E.), Faith and Verification, 110. Home (C. S.), The Soul's Awakening, 205. Kuyper (A.), The Work of the Holy Spirit, 354, 372. Macaskill (M.), A Highland Pulpit, 73. New (C), Sermons, 23. Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, viii. 233. Stuart (E. A.), Children of God, 79. Tholuck (A.), Hours of Christian Devotion, 21. Vaughan (C. R.), Sermons, 175.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), vii. No. 673. Williams (T. R.), The Evangel of the New Tlieology, 69. Winterbotham (R.), Sermons, 110.
Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 184 (Morse) ; xxxi. 147 (Lewis) ; xlvii 241 (Gore).
256
Justification.
For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God ; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.— Rom. Hi. 23, 24.
1. What is the position of a sinning moral being under the government of God ? It is that of guilt, which means that he both deserves and is liable to punishment. It is also that of depravity, or the polluting influence of his sin upon his own soul. The way of relief from the first of these difficulties is through the atonement of Christ. The method of relief from the second is through the regenerating and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
2. The object of the text is to explain the method of gaining relief from that element of guilt which involves liability to punishment. The question is, how shall the iron link between sin and penalty be broken and the transgressor be allowed to escape ? But this is not all. Not only is it necessary that the connection between sin and penalty should be broken ; but also that the connection between obedience and reward should be re-established. A real salvation involves not only release from penalty, but a title to life. Unless this title to life can be achieved, conscience cannot be quieted, nor can any reliable hope of future well-being be kindled in the heart. To accomplish both these ends, the sinner must be justified in the full sense of that term ; and the most important inquiry which can be raised by the mind of man is, " How can man be just with God ? "
3. Manifestly man cannot justify himself. He cannot satisfy the penalty and yet live. He can satisfy it by enduring it ; but that is a supposition which implies his ruin, and his salvation on that contingency is self-contradictory and impossible ; he cannot
acts & rom. — 17
258 JUSTIFICATION
be saved and at the same time lost. He cannot fulfil the law ; for his sin has so corrupted his moral nature that all the acts which flow from it are tainted, and he is unable to render that perfect obedience which the law demands, and which alone can carry its rewards. How, then, shall a transgressor of the law be justified ?
4. The Gospel gives the answer to the question in the words of the text, "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Since man cannot effect his own justification, if accomplished at all it must be done for him by some one else. The Gospel answers the great question by the doctrine of a substitute for the hopeless transgressor, undertaking to do for him what it was impossible for him to do for himself; and the development of that wonderful conception constitutes the essence and the chief distinction of the Christian religion. The development of the grand thought of a substitute for the sinner embraces all the distinctive doctrines of Chris- tianity : justification by faith, atonement, redemption, imputation, the divinity of the Eedeemer, the infinitude of the Divine grace, and the absolute effectiveness of the work done for the deliverance of the transgressors of the Divine law.
The subject is Justification. The text contains —
I. The Need of Justification — " For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God."
i. Sin.
ii. All have sinned, iii. Short of the Glory of God.
II. The Manner of Justification — "Being justified freely by his grace."
i. Justification.
ii. Of God's Free Grace.
III. The Means of Justification — "Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."
i. Eedemption. ii. The Eedemption that is in Christ Jesus.
ROMANS m. 23, 24 259
I.
The Need of Justification. " All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God."
i. Sin.
1. We are constantly being haunted by something we have done or have not done, because we have done it or have not done it. And this is not a characteristic of one man or another, but of all men. There are vast differences between men, ranging from the heights of sainthood to the depths of depravity, but there is this feature common to all — a sense that there is a gap between what they are and what they ought to be. There are men who are "given over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness " ; and there are men so good that they make others feel as though they belonged to a better world ; but if you could look into their hearts and listen to their confession, you would find that the best as well as the worst are conscious of this gap, this dislocation, this contrast between " ought " and " is." There is none that doeth good, no, not one ; we have all " gone out of the way," i.e. the way of perfect, ideal goodness.