If God were to deal with me as a creature I must stand before Him until every one of my sins can be counted up, for each one to receive a just recompense of reward. How perfectly simple it is! If God from Sinai gave certain laws for the government of His people Israel, and not one of those laws could be infringed without a certain penalty, it must needs be the same still to any who take that ground. If you are standing on that ground before God, take care! He will not pass by one single transgression without a just recompense of reward, and you must receive it. If I go before Him to prove my own righteousness, He must weigh me in His scales, must weigh every thought and imagination of my heart.
But if I come before God on the ground of being a poor lost sinner, what are His thoughts? He says, " I am not going to put you on doing this, or not doing that, I have a purchased right to come in and pick you up as lost, and if you are lost, there is a Savior for you."
Have I ever turned my thoughts upon this great salvation in heaven, in the Son of God Oh how blessed to be a poor sinner brought into all the glory, bound up in one lot with Him! Everything sweeps round Him, as waves sweep round a rock, round Him who made all things. When we contemplate the glory of Him who is the brightness of God's glory and the express image of His person in connection with the great salvation that He wrought when He by Himself purged our sins what added glory flows to Him from that great salvation!
After He had purged our sins, He sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. The very last place where man in nature would go to look for one who had been crucified between two thieves. This gives a very special character to salvation. The religion of human nature kept man at the foot of Sinai; the religion of Christ Jesus brings him to the right hand of God. A ruined sinner, and this great salvation, those extreme points, meeting there.
I cannot draw any limit to this great salvation. Drop following drop is not the expression of the fountain's fullness. We may see all these drops, but that is not enough. It is the fountain itself, Himself in person who purged sin, that I want-not salvation only, but a living Savior. The affections of the heart can never flow, unless fixed on Christ in person. When I look at Christ Himself I know it. Christ who has washed me and is ever making intercession for me in heaven. When I get individually a living Savior, one with "me and I with Him, instead of salvation as measured out to all the saved, it is the bright light shining into my heart from His living presence.
Oh! if I can get with all my trials and sorrows into the light where Christ is sitting, at God's right hand I get there fresh life and joy. What a difference it makes in the practical power of walk if you can say, I have not only been washed from my sins, but I have got a Savior at God's right hand, and He Himself is the One I am to live unto; drawing spiritual strength and nourishment from union with Him, as a sucker out of a root.