Morning, September 25
Go To Evening Reading
“Just, and the justifier of him which believeth.”
Romans 3:26
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Conscience accuses
no longer. Judgment now decides for the sinner instead of against
him. Memory looks back upon past sins, with deep sorrow for the sin,
but yet with no dread of any penalty to come; for Christ has paid
the debt of his people to the last jot and tittle, and received the
divine receipt; and unless God can be so unjust as to demand double
payment for one debt, no soul for whom Jesus died as a substitute
can ever be cast into hell. It seems to be one of the very principles
of our enlightened nature to believe that God is just; we feel that
it must be so, and this gives us our terror at first; but is it not
marvellous that this very same belief that God is just, becomes afterwards
the pillar of our confidence and peace! If God be just, I, a sinner,
alone and without a substitute, must be punished; but Jesus stands
in my stead and is punished for me; and now, if God be just, I, a
sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished. God must change
his nature before one soul, for whom Jesus was a substitute, can ever
by any possibility suffer the lash of the law. Therefore, Jesus having
taken the place of the believer—having rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that his
people ought to have suffered as the result of sin, the believer can
shout with glorious triumph, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Not God, for he hath justified; not Christ, for he hath died, “yea rather hath risen again.” My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because I am a sinner
for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am holy, but that being
unholy, he is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall
be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what he has done,
and in what he is now doing for me. On the lion of justice the fair
maid of hope rides like a queen.