Part 80

3. This leads us to the third part of the answer to the question, how men are justified. We find this third part of the answer in Rom. 5:9, +"Much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through Him."+ Here we are told in so many words that we are justified, or counted righteous "by," or more literally, "in," _Christ's blood_, i.e., on the ground of Christ's propitiatory death. We were all under the curse of the broken law of God, for we had all broken it, but by dying in our stead on the cross of Calvary our Lord Jesus +"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree."+ (Gal. 3:13.) Or, as Peter puts it in 1 Pet. 2:24, +"Who his own self bare our sins in his own body upon the tree."+ Or as Paul puts it again in 2 Cor. 5:21, +"Him who knew no sin he (God) made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."+ We shall have occasion to come back to this passage later. All that I wish you to notice in it at this time is that it is on the ground of Jesus Christ becoming a substitute for us, on the ground of His taking the place we deserved; on the cross, that we are reckoned righteous. THE ONE AND ONLY GROUND OF JUSTIFICATION IS THE SHED BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST. Of course, this doctrine is entirely different from the teaching of Christian Science, and entirely different from the teaching of much that is called New Theology, and entirely different from the teaching of New Thought and Theosophy, and entirely different from the teaching of Unitarianism, but it is the teaching of the Word of God. We find this same teaching clearly given by the prophet Isaiah seven hundred years before our Lord was born, in Isaiah 53:6, where he says, +"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid+ (literally, made to strike) +on him+ (i.e., on the Lord Jesus) +the iniquity of us all."+ Get this point clearly settled in your mind, that the _sole but all-sufficient ground upon which men are justified before God is the shed blood of Jesus Christ, offered by Jesus Christ as an atonement for our sins_ and _accepted by God the Father as an all-sufficient atonement_.