the 11enee that all men BRTed, whether temporally or epiritue.lly, are, in their relation to him, sinful, or transgressors of the Law. But in rele.tion to others and in relation to spe~lfic o?lige.tions which he may impose on them, ~hey may be relatively righteous, and hie ee.vmg them may ho because they are so. 'lhus: 1. Tho8e who are rightemu, in life, as compared with other,, are saved fr{)'TTI, cal,u;mity and Buffering. Noah was a righteous man, and therefore was spared, while the Flood carried away the wicked. Lot was a righteous man in comparison with the Sodomites, e.nd therefore was delivered by Divine pressure put upon him from the destruction which befell the rest. Some of the better Churches in Asia were not doomed to the woe that was to come on others, because God "knew their works" (Rev. ii., iii.). The more holy and devoted to Christ we are, and the more minutely our lives a.re regufated by the laws of God as written in his Word and works, and in our own mental and physical nature, the more shall we be saved from woes that come upon others who violate laws physical, moral, and spiritual. 2. Those who suffer as being 'tlinrighteous, when all the time they are not so. This was the case of David, who was persecuted most bitterly by Saul on the ground that he hated his king and aought hie life, when all the time he loved his king and guarded his life. It was as a righteous man in this particular that God saved him from distress. The same was true of Joseph in prison; of the Apostles Peter and Paul; yea, of our Saviour himself. And often still does God save his people from the reproach and sorrow brought on them by beinj? represented as being other than they really are (Matt. v. 11, 12; 1 Pet. iv. 14--17). 3. Those who conform to the gospel law of salvatwn. Before God all are sinners, and condemned by their own consciences as also by the broken Law. But Christ has made full atonement for sin, and now therefore God, in his sovereign grace, has laid down a new law for us to keep, based upon bis acceptance of Christ's perfect work, namely, that we exercise faith in Christ as our atoning Saviour. We are not to try and keep the Decalogue as a condition of being accepted; we cannot attain to the righteousness of the moral Law. We are not to plead the value of repentance and a future life better than the past; all that is indefinite, uncertain. But we are simply to have faith in Christ as set forth in the gospel, that is all that God requires for our acceptance; that is the newly created law, the sum of all obligations in reference to obtaining justification before God. In other ,words, we are to attain to the "righteousness of faith," the righteousness which consists in fulfilling the obligation created by gospel grace, and then there is no condemnation: we walk then as freed sons in the glorious liberty of the children of God. II. IN ALL THESE INSTANCES IT IS CONSONANT WITH Gon's NA.TUBE TO SAVE THE RIGHTEOUS. God's treatment of Noah and Lot, and of all who keep his truth in the midst of prevailing-degeneracy, marks his distinction of character on the basis of good- ness, It is the Divine nature to love the good snd hate the evil tendencies of men. When the persecuted are delivered, there is a vindication of character and a repressing of wrong which cannot but accord with God's natural love of justice. When he graciously accepts us on the condition that we he.ve fulfilled all that he requires under the gospel order, and in our justification recognizes the "righteousness of faith" (Rom. iii. 25--28; iv. 6, 6, 11, 13), he, accepting that kind of righteousness, that fulfilment of all obligation, maintains the honour of the violated Law under which we had lived, and glorifies the sacrificial work of his beloved Son. There is therefore nothing arbitrary in the "law of faith." Ill '!'HEBE SPECIAL INSTANCES OF SALVATION ABE IN ACCORD WITH THE GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF Gon's GOVERNHENT. David was quite warranted in saying that when God, in the matter of the deliverance from the persecutions of Saul, recompensed him according to his righteousness (ver. 25), ~e was simply acting in harmo!1y with bis general kindness to the merciful and upnght, and bis stem and repress_1ve ways of providence toward the perverse (vers. 26, 27). The actual laws revealed in the Deca- logue, in the civil institutions of Moses, in the precepts of the New 'l'estamen~, in the constitution of the physical and mental worlds, all go for the good and agamst the wicked, whatever be the form or degree of the goodness or wickedness. It may be that for reasons not yet made clear, the wicked triumph for a while and the righteous ory ~ut in agony, "0 Lord, how long I" but God's government is vas~, intricate, and ,tretching fM into the future, Blld there are forces at work by which at la.it tb~ 642 THE SEOOND BOOK OF SAMUEL, [ctt, xt.11, 1-61.
righteous sb&ll be exalted and the wicked abased (Ps, v. 4:-6, 111 12; x::txvii, 61 71 23--40), IV. 'l.'HOSE WHO A'Bl!: IIAVED BY GoD ON THE GROUND OF BIGHTEOUBNEBB LAY NO CLAIM TO MERIT, The object of David in this passage is not to proclaim hla own deeds and claim a right to God's favour, but rather to set forth the righteli>U8nesa and goodness of God in l!Bving those who conform to his will. He had kept the ways the statutes, and the judgmente of God (vers. 23, 24) in respect to his behaviour to~d Saul,-he could honestly say that; and he considers it a matter of praise and glory to God that he manifested his love of what is just in coming to the rescue of such e. one. To have allowed Se.ul to triumph would have been a reflection on Divine justioe. In all this, therefore, there is no reference to merit in the sight of God, any more .than Noah felt that he merited God's favour. It was in neither case a question of the desert of the entire life, but of the state of the life in relation to other men. So in our personal salvation through faith, there is no claim of merit. It is all of grace. 'l'he "law of faith" is the creation of grace, and the heart to conform to it is of grace. The light in which we see spiritual things, and in which we rejoice, is not our own, The Lord is our Lamp, and he lightens our darkness (ver. 29). lf we are able to break through troops of spiritual foes, and leap over walls (ver. 30) that hem us in, it is not :use of our strength; it is only by our God, who of his free mercyr supplies .all our