Is this "somehow" possible?
Listen, guilty and silent soul, to a sound which is audible now. In the turmoil of either secular indifference or blind self-justification you could not hear it; at best you heard a meaningless murmur. But listen now; it is articulate, and it speaks to you. The earthquake, the wind, the fire, have passed; and you are indeed awake. Now comes "the sound of stillness" in its turn.
[Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =But now, apart from Law, God's righteousness stands displayed, attested by the Law and the Prophets; but (δὲ)=--though attested by them, in the Scriptures which all along, in word and in type, promise better things to come, and above all a Blessed One to come--[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =(it is) God's righteousness, through faith in Jesus Christ,= prepared =for all= and bestowed upon all =who believe= in Him. =For there is no distinction;= [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God,= [Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =being justified[37] gift-wise,= gratuitously, =by His grace, through the redemption,= the ransom-rescue, =which is in Christ Jesus.= Yes, it resides always in Him, the Lord of saving Merit, and so is to be found in Him alone; [Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =whom God presented[38],= put forward, =as Propitiation,[39] through faith in His blood,[40]= His blood of death, of sacrifice, of the altar; =so as to demonstrate,= to explain, to clear up, =His righteousness,= His way of acceptance and its method. The Father "presented" the Son so as to shew that His grace meant no real connivance, no indulgence without a lawful reason. He "presented" Him =because of His passing-by of sins done before;= because the fact _asked explanation_ that, while He proclaimed His Law, and had not yet revealed His Gospel, He did nevertheless bear with sinners, reprieving them, condoning them, in the forbearance of God, in the ages when He was seen to "hold back"[41] His wrath, but did not yet disclose the reason why. [Sidenote: Ver. 26.] It was =with a view,= he says again, =to this demonstration (τὴν ἔνδειξιν) of His righteousness in the present period,= the season, the καιρός, of the manifested Gospel; =that He may be,= in our view, as well as in divine fact, at once =just,= true to His eternal Law, =and Justifier of him who belongs to (τὸν ἐκ) faith in Jesus.=
This is the voice from heaven, audible when the sinner's mouth is shut, while his ears are opened by the touch of God. Without that spiritual introduction to them, very likely they will seem either a fact in the history of religious thought, interesting in the study of development, but no more; or a series of assertions corresponding to unreal needs, and in themselves full of disputable points. Read them in the hour of conviction of sin; in other words, bring to them your whole being, stirred from above to its moral depths, and you will not take them either indifferently, or with opposition. As the key meets the lock they will meet your exceeding need. Every sentence, every link of reasoning, every affirmation of fact, will be precious to you beyond all words. And you will never _fully_ understand them except in such hours, or in the life which has such hours amongst its indelible memories.
Listen over again, in this sacred silence, thus broken by "the pleasant voice of the Mighty One."
"_But now_"; the happy "_now_" of present fact, of waking certainty. It is no day-dream. Look, and see; touch, and feel. Turn the blessed page again; γέγραπται, "_It stands written_." There is indeed a "Righteousness of God," a settled way of mercy which is as holy as it is benignant, an acceptance as good in eternal Law as in eternal Love. It is "_attested by the Law and the Prophets_"; countless lines of prediction and foreshadowing meet upon it, to negative for ever the fear of illusion, of delusion. Here is no fortuitous concourse, but the long-laid plan of God. Behold its procuring Cause, magnificent, tender, divine, human, spiritual, historic. It is the beloved Son of the Father; no antagonist power from a region alien to the blessed Law and its Giver. The Law-Giver is the Christ-Giver; HE has "_set Him forth_," HE has provided in Him an expiation which--does not persuade Him to have mercy, for He is eternal Love already, but liberates His love along the line of a wonderfully satisfied Holiness, and explains that liberation (to the contrite) so as supremely to win their worship and their love to the Father and the Son. Behold the Christ of God; behold the blood of Christ. In the Gospel, He is everywhere, it is everywhere; but what is your delight to find Him, and it, here upon the threshold of your life of blessing? Looking upon the Crucified, while you still "lay your hand upon your mouth," till it is removed that you may bless His Name, you understand the joy with which, age after age, men have spoken of a Death which is their life, of a Cross which is their crown and glory. You are in no mood, here and now, to disparage the doctrine of the Atoning Blood; to place it in the background of your Christianity; to obscure the Cross behind even the roofs of Bethlehem. You cannot now think well of any Gospel that does not say, "_First of all_, Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. xv. 3). You are a sinner, and you know it; "guilty before God"; and for you as such the Propitiation governs your whole view of man, of God, of life, of heaven. For you, however it may be for others, "Redemption" cannot be named, or thought of, apart from its first precious element, "remission of sins," justification of the guilty. It is steeped in ideas of Propitiation; it is red and glorious with the Redeemer's blood, without which it could not have been. The all-blessed God, with all His attributes, His character, is by you seen evermore as "_just, yet the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus_." He shines on you through the Word, and in your heart's experience, in many another astonishing aspect. But all those others are qualified for you by this, that He is the God of a holy Justification; that He is the God who has accepted you, the guilty one, in Christ. All your thoughts of Him are formed and followed out at the foot of the Cross. Golgotha is the observatory from which you count and watch the lights of the moving heaven of His Being, His Truth, His Love.