tion, that logical order and chronological succession are different things ; or that the order of nature and order of time are not to be confounded. Many things are contemporaneous or co-instan- taneous which nevertheless stand in a certain logical, and even causal relation to each other. Christ commanded the man with a withered arm to stretch forth his hand. He immediately obeyed, but not before he received strength. He called to Lazarus to come forth from the grave ; and he came forth. But this pre- supposes a restoration of life. So God commands the sinner to believe in Christ ; and he thereupon receives Him as his Saviour ; though this supposes supernatural power or grace.
Our Lord, however, gives another answer to this objection. He says, as recorded in John xvii. 9, "I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me ; for they are thine." The intercession of Christ secures for those given to Him by the Father the renewing of the Holy Ghost. The first act of the renewed heart is faith ; as the first act of a restored eye is to see. Whether this satisfies the understanding or not, it remains clear as the doctrine of the Bible that good works are the fruits and consequences of reconciliation with God, through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Inconsistent with the Grace of the Gospel.
2. It is objected that the Protestant doctrine destroys the gratuitous nature of justification. If justice be satisfied ; if all the demands of the law are met, there can, it is said, be no grace in the salvation of the sinner. If a man owes a debt, and some one pays it for him, the creditor shows no grace in giving an ac- quittal. This objection is familiar, and so also is the answer. The work of Christ is not of the nature of a commercial transac- tion. It is not analogous to a pecuniary satisfaction except in one point. It secures the deliverance of those for whom it is offered and by whom it is accepted. In the case of guilt the demand of justice is upon the person of the offender. He, and he alone is bound to answer at the bar of justice. No one can take his place, unless with the consent of the representative of justice and of the substitute, as well as of the sinner himself. Among men, substitution in the case of crime and its penalty is rarely, if ever admissible, because no man has the right over his own life or lib- erty ; he cannot give them up at pleasure ; and because no human magistrate has the right to relieve the offender or to inflict the legal penalty on another. But Christ had power, i. e., the right
174 part m. Ch. xvn.— justification.
(e&wo-ta) to lay down his life and " power to take it again." And God, as absolute judge and sovereign, the Lord of the conscience, and the proprietor of all his creatures, was at full liberty to accept a substitute for sinners. This is proved beyond contradic- tion by what God has actually done. Under the old dispensation every sacrifice appointed by the law was a substitute for him in whose behalf it was offered. In the clearest terms it was pre- dicted that the Messiah was to be the substitute of his people ; that the chastisement of their sins was to be laid on Him, and that He was to make his soul an offering for sin. He was hailed as He entered on his ministry as the Lamb of God who was to bear the sins of the world. He died the just for the unjust. He redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us. This is what is meant by being a substitute. To deny this is to deny the central idea of the Scriptural doctrine of re- demption. To explain it away, is to absorb as with a sponge the life-blood of the Gospel.
It is the glory, the power, and the preciousness of the Protes- tant doctrine that it makes the salvation of sinners a matter of grace from the beginning to the end. On the part of the eternal Father it was of grace, t. e., of unmerited, mysterious, and im- measurable love that He provided a substitute for sinners, and that He spared not his own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all. It was a matter of grace, i. e., of love to sinners, to the ungodly, to his enemies, that the eternal Son of God became man, assumed the burden of our sins, fulfilled all righteousness, obeying and suffering even unto death, that we might not perish but have eternal life. It is of grace that the Spirit applies to men the re- demption purchased by Christ ; that He renews the heart ; that He overcomes the opposition of sinners, making them willing in the day of his power ; that He bears with all their ingratitude, disobedience, and resistance, and never leaves them until his work is consummated in glory. In all this the sinner is not treated according to his character and conduct. He has no claim to any one in this long catalogue of mercies. Everything to him is a matter of unmerited grace. Merited grace, indeed, is a solecism. And so is merited salvation in the case of sinners.
Grace does not cease to be grace because it is not exercised in violation of order, propriety, and justice. It is not the weak fond- ness of a doting parent. It is the love of a holy God, who in order to reveal that love and manifest the exceeding glory of that attribute when exercised towards the unworthy, did what was