man's desert, and god's mercy.
Rom. vi. 23. The wages of sin is death ; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
THE distribution of rewards and punishments in the day of judgment will be in perfect agreement with the works of men ; the righteous will be exalted to happiness ; the wicked be doomed to misery. The Gospel makes no difference with respect to this : it provides relief for the penitent, but rather aggravates than removes the condemnation of the impenitent. But it opens to us an important fact : namely, that the punishment of the ungodly is the proper fruit and deserved recompence of their own works : whereas the reward bestowed upon the godly is a free unmerited gift of God for Christ's sake. The Apostle has been shewing, throughout this whole chapter, that the Gospel increases, instead of relaxing, our obligation to good works ; and that it will avail for the salvation of those only who " have their fruit unto holiness :" but in the text he assures us, that
they who are saved will be saved by mere grace ; whereas they who perish will perish utterly through their own demerit.
In the words before us, we have a short, but accu- rate, description of,
I. Man's desert —
By " death," we must understand everlasting mi- sery—
[It is a truth that temporal death was introduced by sin : but that cannot be the whole that is meant by the Apostle in the text, because the " death" procured by sin stands in direct opposition to the " life" which is bestowed by God, which is expressly said to be "eternal." By "death" therefore we understand an everlasting banishment from God's presence, together with a " suffering of his vengeance in eternal fire."]
This is the penalty that is due to sin —
[It is in vain that people endeavour to soften down the expressions of Scripture upon this subject, and to substitute annihilation for misery. Our blessed Lord, in his account of the judgment-day, declares that he himself, as the Judge of quick and dead, will doom the wicked to a participation of the misery inflicted on the fallen angels, and that their punishment shall be of the very same duration with the happiness of the righteous a.
Nor is this more than the real desert of sin. The word we translate " wages," means " provisions13," which in the earlier part of the Roman empire constituted the only pay of soldiers: and it must be confessed that a soldier's pay, at the best, is but a very moderate compensation for the dangers and fa- tigues of war : his wages are certainly no higher than justice demands. Thus the penal evil of damnation is no more than a just recompence for the moral evil of sin : it is the " wages " due to sin.
It is worthy of remark also, that this awful doom is not spoken of as the penalty of many or of great sins, but. of " sin," of every sin, whether great or small. Every " trans- gression of God's holy law is sinc;" and, though all sins are not of equal malignity, there is not any sin which does not deserve God's wrath and fiery indignation, or against which an everlasting curse is not denounced d.
How terrible then is the desert of every man, of the more moral and decent, as well as of the immoral and profane ! for
a Matt. xxv. 41, 46. See also Mark ix. 43 — 43. b fyt'dvia. 0 1 John iii. 4. d Gal. hi. 10.
1850.] man's desert, and god's mercy. 103
" all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;" and therefore all are obnoxious to the punishment of sin.]
Let us now turn our thoughts to a more pleasing- subject, namely,
II. God's mercy —
Notwithstanding our ill desert, God has tendered to us everlasting life —
[" He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and live." He has opened the gates of heaven, and invited sinners of every description to enter in. Nor has he required any thing to be done in oi'der to purchase an admittance into it : he offers it freely, as a " gift " to all who will accept it. His invitation is to all who wish for it, to those also who have no money, to come and receive it at his hands " without money, and without price e." In this he has strongly marked the different grounds of a sinner's condemnation, and a saint's acceptance. Misery is awarded to the one, as " ivages " earned ; and happiness is conferred upon the other, as a gift bestowed. Indeed our minds must be humbled : and we must be willing to accept salvation as a gift: for, if we carry any price whatever in our hands, we cut ourselves off from all hope of obtaining the desired blessingf.]