• Juliu iii. uu; V.\>h. ii. 3; 2 Cor. v. 18; Ts. xxi. 3, 4; Matt. xvii. 6.
VII.] THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST. 295
(2.) The law of God is fulfilled. Unless this be answered in all the concernments of it, the Lord would he thought to change his will, to reverse his word, and to blur the copy of his own holiness. There is in the whole law and every parcel of it an eternal, indis- pensable righteousness and truth, arising either from the nature of the things themselves concerning which it is, or the relation of one thing unto another. That to fear God, to love him, to obey him, to do no wrong, are everlastingly, indispensably good and necessary, is from the nature of the things themselves, only with this supposition, that God would make creatures capable of yielding him such obedience. That that which is good shall be so rewarded, that which is evil so punished, is also an everlasting truth, upon supposition of such actual performances. Whereas, then, of this law there are two parts, the one absolute or preceptive in the rule and commands thereof, the other conditional, and rewarding in its promise or condemning in its curse, Christ by his death put himself, in their behalf for whom he died (to speak to that particular), under the curse of it: " He re- deemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us,^' Gal. iii. 13.^ Neither is this at all suspended on our believing. The law doth not threaten a curse only if we do not believe, but if we do not all things written therein, Deut. xxvii. 26. Whether we be- lieve or not, the law takes no notice; as to the curse that it de- nounceth, if there hath been any sin, that must be executed. And the law is for the curse, as Isaac for the great spiritual blessing. Gen. xxvii. 27-29. He had but one; it hath but one gi'eat curse, and that being undergone by Christ, it hath not another for them in whose stead Christ underwent it. God having " made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, we become the righteousness of God in him," 2 Cor. V. 21. All separation from God is by the curse of the law; all that is required in it, by it, is, that it be undergone. This is done by Christ for all believers; that thereby is taken away which alone can separate them from God or put any distance between them. But of this, and their subjection to the curse before their believing, more afterward.
(3.) The truth or veracity of God was particularly engaged to see sin punished, upon the account of the promulgation of the first express sanction of the law: " In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die," Gen. ii. 1 7. For the satisfying the engagement of God's truth, there seemed to be a tender made in the sacrifices instituted of old ; but it was rejected as insufficient to make good that word of God so eminently given out. There was neither any such relation, union, or conjunction, between the sinner and the innocent creature sacrificed, nor any such real worth in the sacrifice itself, as that the death of the substituted beast might by any means be so in- ' Rom. viii. 3, x. 3, 4; Gal. iv. 4, 5; Phil. iii. 9.
296 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS* PERSEVERANCE. [CUAP.
terpreted as to amount to tlie accomplishment of the truth of God, death beuig once denounced as the reward of sin : Heb. x. 5, 6, "Sacri- fice and offering thou wouldest not: in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hadst no pleasure;" but saith our Saviour, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God," verse 7. Will that do it? Yea, it will assuredly, for in the volume of his book it is written that he should so do. All that God willed to be done for the accomplishment of his truth was fulfilled by Christ when he came to give up himself, a sweet-smelling sacrifice, Eph. v. 2. God, then, may be true, his truth being salved to the utmost, though never any one of them for whom Christ died do die. But this, to the salvation of believers, is only as removens pro- hihens.
(4.) The distributive justice of God is upon this oblation of Christ engaged, upon the covenant and compact made with Christ as medi- ator to that purpose, to bestow on them for whom he offered and died all the good things which he promised him for them, in and upon the account of his undertaking in their behalf.^ The dis- tributive justice of God is that perfection of his nature whereby he rendereth to every one according to Avhat either his vindictive jus- tice on the one side, or his uprightness and faithfulness on the other, do require." In rewarding, it respects his own faithfulness in all his engagements immediately; in punishing, the demerit of the creature; — there being no such natural connection and necessary coherence, from the nature of the things themselves, between obedience and re- ward as there is between sin and punishment.
Now, the Lord having given many eminent and glorious promises to his Son Jesus Christ (some whereof we shall mention afterward) concerning his seed and offspring, or those that he committed to his charge to be redeemed from their sins,^ it is incumbent on him, in regard of his righteousness, to make out all those things in due time unto them ; and therefore, that he might magnify that righteous- ness and truth of his, he hath cast the whole procedure of his grace into such a way, and all the acts of it into such a dependence upon one another, as that the one of them should have infallible infiuence into the other, and the effects of every one of them be rendered in- dubitably certain.