It is not what you think of Christ's work, but what God thinks of it, that saves. Your knowledge of what God says of it, by faith, gives peace. God says to Israel in Egypt, not when you see the blood, I will pass over, but “when I see the blood.” He it is that has been offended, He it is that judges, and He it is that has accepted the ransom in justice, as He gave it in love, He is faithful and just to forgive us.
As we may confound sometimes the acuteness of our feelings with the spiritual judgment of our sins, we almost always at the outset confound the work of the Spirit and the work of Christ. Each has its place in the saved; but they must not be confounded. The Spirit of God may humble and convict us, reprove within and thus distress us, or give us joy; and often we set about to judge of all this in order to know our acceptance with God. But these things, though they have their place in the mind of the redeemed, are not the ground of his peace. Christ has “made peace by the blood of His cross.” Christ has done all, and has left us nothing but thanksgiving and praise. If some one has paid my debts, my sorrow at the folly that contracted them, or my joy at their being discharged, adds nothing whatever to the payment of the debt, though both be natural and just. It is sometimes hard to esteem our feelings as nothing; but it is only a remains of self. Only think what it cost the Son of God in undergoing the wrath of God, and we shall feel on one hand the perfect security of our justification, and the nothingness of all our feelings compared with what our sin really was in the sight of God, who remembers it no more, as He has said. If Christ had not completely discharged and effaced it, He could not be in heaven; for He could not sit at the right hand of God charged with our sins, though He was charged with them on the cross.
If your heart demands, But how do I know that I have part in all this? I answer, with the word of the Lord which abides forever that [it is to him] whoso believeth in Him. That all might be grace, God has willed that it should be by faith; yet though faith produces immense effects, it adds nothing to the thing it believes. Christ and the efficacy of His work must be, and be before God, all that I am called to believe them to be, before I believe it. J.N.D.