(Continued.)
HUMAN righteousness was by works, God’s righteousness is by faith. Do you say, That seems a very simple way of getting it? And is that not the very thing that you need? It is because we are in this lost condition that we need a righteousness so simply procured that one look of faith makes it ours. “The righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ.” But if this righteousness is on the ground of faith, where is the limit? Is it only for the Jew? Oh, no, it goes out to all, and it is of importance to see this. It is a righteousness that is unto all; there is no limit, there is no bound. Be it a Jew or a heathen, this righteousness of God is unto all. But is it upon all? If it is unto all, man might reason then that all would be saved. But here is the limit; it is upon all them only that believe. Apart then from faith this righteousness is not available. It is a righteousness that goes out to everybody; all may have it; nobody can say, I wanted it but could not get it. It is a righteousness obtainable by all, but when it comes to the application of it, it is on the ground of faith alone. That makes nothing of man but magnifies God. But that is not all. None can say, I am better than another. There is no difference if all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
But where does this righteousness come from? It is a righteousness that has a different source from that which Saul of Tarsus had known before. It says in the twenty-fourth verse, that we are justified freely by His grace―that is the unmerited favor of God. Oh! that is a wonderful thing. God is not against the sinner if the sinner is against God. God is not against man, there is nothing in God’s heart for man but grace. It was God who gave His Son. There is nothing in God’s heart towards this sinful world, towards you and me, but grace and love. “Justified freely by His grace.” But if the heart of God is full of love to man, yet God is just, and, therefore, we get at the close of that verse, “Justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” There must be a righteous foundation upon which God can display Himself in blessing towards a poor sinful world; and that is the work of Christ on the cross. God had revealed Himself in love in the person of His own Son as He walked through this world, but now we get the work of Christ as the righteous foundation upon which God can bless the sinner and bring him near to Himself, and so the next verse says, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation”―that is a peculiar word, it is really a propitiatory, or mercy-seat; and what was the mercy-seat in the tabernacle of old? It was the meeting place between God and Moses, who was the representative of the people of Israel.
Turn back for a moment to the twenty-fifth chapter of Exodus. If you read at your leisure from the seventeenth verse, you will see what this mercy-seat was made of, but in the twenty-second verse, “There I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony.” It was the meeting place between God and Moses. It was made of pure gold, and that, in symbolic language, tells us of the righteousness and glory of God. There was the meeting place between God and man, but that meeting place could not be available unless the blood of atonement was sprinkled upon it. Now we have a meeting place not merely according to the requirements of the law, but according to the requirements of a Holy God fully revealed. His righteousness is manifested, His glory perfectly revealed, and we have the precious blood of Christ, which meets it all on our behalf. On this basis is the meeting place where sinners, like we are, and a Holy God can meet together, not in judgment but in blessing. At the day of judgment there will be a meeting between a Holy God and sinful men, but that will be perdition. But the gospel tells me of a meeting place between a Holy God and a sinful man in blessing; and yet God does not lose one iota of His glory and majesty, nay, all that God is, is manifested and glorified at the cross, and by the same means the poor sinner is justified. So it goes on to say, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past.”
To what does that word “past” refer? Not to our individual past sins, but to the sins of past ages, the sins of a David and of the Old Testament saints. God passed them over; He did not visit them with the judgment which those sins deserved. But that did not look like righteousness. Nobody would have called it righteous on God’s part to pass over the sins of David. What would they call it? Forbearance. And so the verse goes on to say, “through the forbearance of God.” When God passed over the sins of His saints of old, His forbearance was shown, not His righteousness. And what does He say in the next verse? “To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness.” At that time His forbearance was manifested, but at this time, that is, since the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, God has been declared righteous in passing over the sins of those who believe, and that is the only thing that will give real, settled, solid peace to the soul. It is not merely the grace of God forgiving the sinner, but it is the righteousness of God justifying him. I need to know that the love of God is shown in pardoning the sinner as well as that the righteousness of God is declared in justifying him. But what gives me peace is to see this, that God is just, and at the same time that He is just, He justifies me, as it goes on to say, “to declare at this time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”
What a wonderful thing that is! God just, yes, perfectly just, and yet He justifies me. Yes, God can justify the guilty; it is not merely that He forgives the guilty. We can all understand that, if a person was brought up for trial and found guilty, the judge might say, There is no question about your guilt, but I forgive you. You might say that such a judge is not worthy to sit on the bench, but we can quite understand that a guilty person might be forgiven. But what we cannot understand is that a guilty person should be justified; nevertheless God proves man’s guilt beyond question, and then He says, I will clear you from all charge of guilt, and how does He do it? Not by passing over the sins as though they were nothing, but by visiting the judgment that they deserved upon the head of the sinless One―His own beloved Son. At the cross a work has been done that has glorified God. At the cross I see that the whole question of my sins has been settled, and everything that could come between me and God has been cleared out of the way. God laid my sins upon Christ, and He has borne them all.
The judgment has been borne, and that is what gives peace. The day of judgment cannot bring to light a single sin that has not been borne on the cross. I can look forward to the judgment day; is there anything to come out then that has not already come out? Nothing. Christ bore the judgment and the believer stands clear before God. God is just, and at the same time that He is just He justifies me, a poor guilty sinner who believes, on the ground of the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, and that is a wonderful thing.
I daresay many of us have heard the illustration given by one known to many of us. He used to say that people hope that their sins will be passed over and that God will not take account of them. But that will never give anybody peace. What gives us confidence with God is that He knows all our sins, and that He did not pass over one of them at the cross. Suppose I am in my house trembling because I hear a footstep at my door, and I fear that a man is corning to whom I owe some money, and I have not a farthing to pay the debt with. The man, a stranger to me, comes in, and he says― “I understand that you are in debt?”
I say, “Well, I do not owe very much,” and I make as light of it as I can, “I only owe a few shillings.”
Then he asks, “How much more do you owe?” I mention another little matter.
He asks again, “Is that really all?”
Then I tell him of another small sum.
“How very slow you are in telling me your debts,” says the stranger, “I have come here to pay them, I have not come here to demand the payment.”
Ah! now I tell them all out as fast as I can. The only thing now that can give me comfort is to think that I have not forgotten one.
But where has the change come? Not in the man who came to pay the debts, he came intending to pay them all, and the debts were just as great before as they are now, but my thoughts about the stranger are completely altered. When he first came in I looked upon him as an enemy, but now I trust him as a friend. So we see God in His love and righteousness clearing the guilty who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
(To be continued.)