1.—Sins
THE apostle Paul was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Glad tidings it is indeed, and that which exactly meets the need of poor, lost, ruined man. It is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes; for in it is revealed the righteousness of God. Thereby He can righteously forgive the most guilty, hell-deserving sinner. Nor has God left the smallest ground for a question in the heart of the pardoned sinner as to His entire satisfaction with the reconciliation effected by the death of His Son. He has given assurance of that satisfaction in raising up Jesus from among the dead,— "Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification."
Who can say that God has made light of sin? Our sins apart from Him must have kept us out of His holy presence forever. "But God, who is rich in mercy," in His great love for us even when we were His enemies, devised means by which He could righteously bring us back to Himself. He found the ransom. He has set forth Christ to be a propitiation through faith in His blood; and He now declares His righteousness, that He might be just and the Justifier of him who believes in Jesus.
But can God righteously count the sinner just? Can He reckon me as righteous who was born in sin, have lived in it, and have loved it? This He does, if I believe Him, and rest by faith on what He declares to faith He has done. Christ, who had no sins of His own, He made sin on the cross for all that believe. There God laid all my sins on His holy head, and He confessed and suffered for them as His own. It is by virtue of the work there and then performed, that I am justified from my sins, neither by Christ's obedience to the law nor by my own. "Being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him." All is grace, but through righteousness. Sovereign grace undertook in Christ for us in all the wretchedness of our defiled and ruined condition.
Thus the believer finds in the precious blood of Christ that which alone can clear him in the sight of God from all guilt and deliver hind from the consequences of the deeds done in the body to which divine judgment had to say. It is this question of my sins and God's provision in grace for my rescue from the punishment due to them, which is raised and answered in the early portion of the epistle to the Romans, closing with chapter v. verse II. "Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins; and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." "Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice [boast] in hope of the glory of God."
ERRATA. In January No. page 5, line 2 from top, substitute “cattle” for “earth;” page 6, line 1 at top, add “not” after “doubted.”