In considering this great subject, two things claim our attention; first, what Christ has done for us; secondly, what He is doing for us. In the former, we have atonement; in the latter, advocacy. He died for us on the cross: He lives for us on the throne. By His precious atoning death He has met our entire condition as sinners. He has borne our sins, and put them away forever. He stood charged with all our sins--the sins of all who believe in His name. "Jehovah laid on Him the iniquity of us all." (Isa. liii.) And again, "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." (1 Pet. iii. 18.)
This is a grand and all-important truth for the anxious soul--a truth which lies at the very foundation of the whole Christian position. It is impossible that any truly awakened soul, any spiritually enlightened conscience, can enjoy divinely settled peace until this most precious truth is laid hold of in simple faith. I must know, upon divine authority, that all my sins are put away forever out of God's sight; that He Himself has disposed of them in such a manner as to satisfy all the claims of His throne and all the attributes of His nature; that He has glorified Himself in the putting away of my sins, in a far higher and more wonderful manner than if He had sent me to an everlasting hell on account of them.
Yes, He Himself has done it. This is the very gist and marrow--the heart's core of the whole matter. God has laid our sins on Jesus, and He tells us so in His holy Word, so that we may know it upon divine authority--an authority that cannot lie. God planned it; God did it; God says it. It is all of God, from first to last, and we have simply to rest in it like a little child. How do I know that Jesus bore my sins in His own body on the tree? By the very same authority which tells me I had sins to be borne. God, in His marvelous and matchless love, assures me, a poor guilty, hell-deserving sinner, that He has Himself undertaken the whole matter of my sins, and disposed of it in such a manner as to bring a rich harvest of glory to His own eternal name, throughout the wide universe, in presence of all created intelligence.
The living faith of this must tranquilize the conscience. If God has satisfied Himself about my sins, I may well be satisfied also. I know I am a sinner--it may be, the chief of sinners. I know my sins are more in number than the hairs of my head; that they are black as midnight--black as hell itself. I know that any one of these sins, the very least, deserves the eternal flames of hell. I know--because God's Word tells me--that a single speck of sin can never enter His holy presence; and hence, so far as I am concerned, there was no possible issue save eternal separation from God. All this I know, upon the clear and unquestionable authority of that Word which is settled forever in heaven.
But, oh, the profound mystery of the cross!--the glorious mystery of redeeming love! I see God Himself taking all my sins--the black and terrible category--all my sins, as He knew and estimated them. I see Him laying them all upon the head of my blessed Substitute, and dealing with Him about them. I see all the billows and waves of God's righteous wrath--His wrath against my sins--His wrath which should have consumed me, soul and body, in hell, throughout a dreary eternity,--I see them all rolling over the Man who stood in my stead, who represented me before God, who bore all that was due to me, with whom a holy God dealt as He should have dealt with me. I see inflexible justice, holiness, truth, and righteousness dealing with my sins, and making a clear and eternal riddance of them. Not one of them is suffered to pass! There is no connivance, no palliation, no slurring over, no indifference. This could not possibly be, once God Himself took the matter in hand. His glory was at stake; His unsullied holiness, His eternal majesty, the lofty claims of His government.
All these had to be provided for in such wise as to glorify Himself in view of angels, men, and devils. He might have sent me to hell--righteously, justly, sent me to hell--because of my sins. I deserved nothing else. My whole moral being, from its profoundest depths, owns this--must own it. I have not a word to say in excuse for a single sinful thought, to say nothing of a sin-stained life from first to last--yes, a life of deliberate, rebellious, high-handed sin.
Others may reason as they please as to the injustice of an eternity of punishment for a life of sin--the utter want of proportion between a few years of wrong-doing and endless ages of torment in the lake of fire. They may reason, but I thoroughly believe, and unreservedly confess, that for a single sin against such a Being as the God whom I see at the cross, I richly deserved everlasting punishment in the deep, dark, and dismal pit of hell.