That God has blessed the preached truth in spite of all this I gladly own; but it is an individual work, and the bonds of existing bodies are weakening on all sides. But even where amongst these, and Dissenting offsets front them, trite spiritual truth is individually owned, there even neither a clear full gospel, nor the fact of the presence of the Holy Ghost come down front heaven, nor the expectation of God's Son from heaven, form a part of their faith. I do not mean that they are not orthodox—that they do not own the Holy Ghost as a divine person, or the fact of His coming down on the day of Pentecost, and that Christ will come again some time or other, as at the end of the world: even Romanists are orthodox in these things. The fatal point with them in their teaching on this head is not failure as to the facts, but that the value of what is true is denied in its present reality, or (as far as owned) appropriated by sacraments and works, not by the power of God's word and Spirit; while in the mass they deny that by one sacrifice, once offered, Christ perfected forever those who are sanctified. Now the last point evangelical Christendom has lost too, and for the most part rejects; while the divine effect of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and the present expectation of Christ are not owned at all, nay diligently opposed and these altogether.
On the first point they have gone back from the Reformation doctrine. The personal certainty of one's own salvation was alone held to be justifying faith, and was condemned in the council of Trent as the vain confidence of the heretics. It constituted the distinctive doctrine of the Reformation—what they held to be justification by faith. I am bound to add that I think they put it wrongly. They made assurance about oneself to be justifying faith—faith in something concerning myself; whereas faith is faith in something about Christ, and the Father's love that sent him. I believe that He is Son of God, that God has raised Him from the dead, that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Now, I do not mean what I have learned by education (this is but the unlighted fuel in the fireplace, it is no fire at all); but where the Son as revealed in the word has been revealed in me, God pronounces me judicially justified and saved. But my faith is in Christ and by Him in God, not in anything as to myself. Still, though in an imperfect way, the Reformers all held personal assurance of salvation as the only true Christian place and state, and they were blessed.
This evangelical Christendom has utterly lost and in many cases, I may say, in general, condemns. It is reviving, thank God! but by an action of the Holy Ghost, in individuals outside the corporate system, tending consequently to break them up.
And now to turn to the two great points which the Reformation ignored or rejected. God dwells with men only in consequence of redemption. He did not dwell with Adam in his innocence, nor with Abraham walking by faith and called of God; but so soon as Israel was redeemed out of Egypt, we learn (Ex. 29) that He brought them up out of the land of Egypt that He might dwell among them. And He did so, sitting between the cherubim. When eternal redemption was accomplished, the same blessed result took place, as a present characteristic of it, by the coming of the Holy Ghost; nor will it be lost in eternal ages, but fulfilled in a more glorious and everlasting manner.
Redemption involves two things, perfect glory to God in all that He is, and clearing our sins away according to that glory, so as to bring us out of the condition in which we lay far from God, and with a nature contrary to and at enmity with His, into His own presence, to enjoy it in a nature morally speaking like His, partakers of the divine nature, holy and without blame before Him in love. But it did more, for the Word having been made flesh, man was in the place of Son, with God; and we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Hence when redemption was accomplished, the risen Lord sends word by Mary Magdalene to the apostles, “Go to my brethren; and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” The work on which redemption was founded was complete, its results of course as yet not all produced, but every question as to good and evil brought to an issue and solved, every truth as to them proved and made good man's absolute enmity against God manifested in goodness; Satan's complete power over man; in Christ, man's perfect obedience, and love to His Father; God's holy righteousness against sin in the highest way, and love to sinners. Here, and here only, could God's righteousness as against sin and love to sinners coincide and meet, His majesty be glorified (Heb. 10), or His truth be vindicated.
The double question of life given and secured to man, and responsibility, has been raised from man's creation, but never solved till now. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, involved the two points; and all depended on man's obedience. He fell and was shut out from the tree of life; he was not to fill this world with undying sinful men—it would have been horrible. The sentence of human death was not to be reversed; judgment would come after. The law raised the same question with men in the flesh, only accomplishment of responsibility came first: “Do this and live.” It dealt with man's responsibility as a still open question, testing man with what was a perfect rule for a child of Adam; but he was a sinner and transgressed the law. The coming of Christ not only proved lawlessness and law-breaking; but, when these were already there, enmity against God manifested in goodness where they were. Promises withal were rejected as well as law broken. But then God's blessed work in grace comes out in the very act that proved this enmity. Christ on the cross not only (and thus in the very place of sin, where it was needed for that glory) glorified God in all that He was, but He met our failure in responsibility, bearing our sins, and became the life of them that believe in Him His death had a double character. He appeared once in the consummation of ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and “as it is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.” That work on which the eternal state was founded, God being perfectly glorified, was accomplished, and the sins of those that believed in Him put away so that they were gone forever. This is a work in which responsibility was met, and in a work whose unchangeable value in the nature of things could not alter, the sure basis of eternal blessedness according to the nature of God.
But there is something more, the purpose of God. Christ by His sacrifice obtained for us, according to God's purpose, that we should be with Himself and in the same glory, though He be the Firstborn—that which God ordained before the world for our glory. If we look at ourselves, it is an inconceivable wonder, but intelligible when we read that in the ages to come He should show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus: the wonderful but blessed mystery, that He that sanctified and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause He is not ashamed to call us brethren.
Let us see then where we stand now, how far the fruit of this great work, which stands alone in the history of eternity, and fills it in its counsels and its fruits, is accomplished, The work is done, finished completely and once for all. But more, it is accepted of God as adequate to His glory, as perfectly glorifying Him (John 13:31, 32; 17:4, 231Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. 32If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him. (John 13:31‑32)
4I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. (John 17:4)
2As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. (John 17:2)), and Jesus the Christ has been raised from the dead, and set as man at the right hand of God in the glory He had with the Father before the world was. Man in righteousness, at the right hand of the majesty in the heavens, sits there till His enemies are made His footstool—has overcome and is set down as Son on His Father's throne. Now first this meets perfectly the guilt of him that believes. Christ has borne his sins in His own body on the tree. They that are such are washed from their sins in His blood. All their responsibility as children of Adam—I do not speak of their responsibility to glorify the Lord as saints—but their guilt has been met. “When he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in the heavens;” delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification. And we, justified by faith, have peace with God. The work that clears us as children of Adam is finished. Believing, we are forgiven; our sins effaced; our conscience purged.