A LITTLE boy had been repeating the hymn, “I lay my sins on Jesus," when his mother said to him, “Darling, have you laid your sins on Jesus?” “No," said the child, with great emphasis and decision,” I have not laid my sins on Jesus; but God did it.”
What an answer, coming from the lips of a child of under three years! How great the difference between my laying my sins on Jesus, and God's doing it! The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah declares that “Jehovah laid on him [Jesus] the iniquity of us all." And we find the same precious truth stated by the apostle in 2 Cor. 5, where he tells us that God made Christ “to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
This is a point of immense value and importance in the atonement of Christ. It shows God acting for us, not only in giving His only begotten Son that we might live, but also in bruising Him on the tree for our sins. “It pleased Jehovah to bruise him.”
Yes, "God did it." The work is His from first to last. He knew what was needed and He provided it. He knew the demand, and He met it.
He knew what was to be done, and He did it. This is the only true foundation of peace. It is not enough to be able to say that, “I lay my sins on Jesus." True enough, no doubt, so far as it goes; but then I do not know the ten thousandth part of my sins. My conscience has never seized the full amount of my liability, the depth of my guilt. Human conscience is one thing, divine righteousness quite another. God's estimate of sin is very different from ours. There are thousands of sins that have never come within the range of my conscience—thousands more that have passed clean off the tablet of my memory. What of these?
And then the root of all these; what of it? What of the mighty claims of the throne of God—the claims of His nature, the demands of His holiness?
Is it not evident that before ever a divinely awakened soul can find settled peace he must be led into the depth, fullness, and power of that one brief sentence—"God did it"? Such an one must know and believe that God Himself has taken the whole matter into His own hands, and settled it in such a manner as to glorify Himself throughout all ages. He has been glorified with respect to sin, by the infinitely precious sacrifice of Christ.
It is He Himself who says, “I have found a ransom.”
Reader, what sayest thou to all this? Couldst thou give the same answer, if asked the same question? Dost thou now heartily believe that God Himself has found a remedy for thy ruin—an atonement for thy guilt—a perfect righteousness in which thou mayest stand before Him? This is the solid foundation of the soul's peace. Nothing else will do. It is not our works, our alms, our prayers, our religious duties, our church-going or chapel-going, our frames, feelings, or experiences. Not any of these things, nor all of them put together, can give the soul peace. The believer knows that God has met his case by His own work; that God Himself laid, all his sins on Jesus, who bore them and put them away forever, and is gone into heaven without them. This, we repeat, is the true and only foundation of the believer's peace, and it is fully and forcibly set forth in those three words “GOD DID IT.”