“SALVATION is of the Lord” — damnation is of our sins and unbelief. It pleases God to save; judgment is forced on Him by our folly. He finds no pleasure in the death of the sinner. Had man never sinned, then trial, judgment, and condemnation had been unknown to him. God being holy and man sinful, then all this is necessary. Where there is repentance, then whatever the trial, there is no condemnation. Self-judgment anticipates and sets aside the necessity for God’s judgment. What is of the Lord, as its spring and source, is salvation. Happy, thrice happy to know this!
The “barbarous people of Melita,” in Acts 28, had a wrong idea of God. They spoke of Him as “Vengeance”! Their religious calculations, as they put together sin and God, amounted to Retribution, and that only. Natural religion — let it assume whatever form it may, whether cradled in barbarous Melita or learned Athens, whether conjured up in the heart of the heathen or in the heart of the merely professing Christian — views God at best as no more than a righteous Judge, perhaps, even as unrighteous — that is, as severe and merciless, as “Vengeance.”
Hence we have nothing, in this matter, for which to thank nature. It cannot help us. The mind of man, with its myriads of religious imaginations, is absolutely unable to shed one ray of light on the most important of all questions — the disposition of God towards fallen beings like ourselves.
Nay, its prescribed remedies have plunged souls into hopeless despair. “The world by wisdom knew not God,” nor does man know how to help or save his brother.
Human wisdom is necessarily limited by the range of the human mind. This may indeed be remarkable, for, without doubt, man is wonderfully clever within the above limit; but, if God be beyond his ken, it follows that, if He is to be known, He must, in grace, reveal Himself. He must draw back the curtain, He must speak in such a way that He can be understood by, and made known to us.
All this He has deigned to do. What an unspeakable mercy! Hence we read in Hebrews 1:2 That “God... hath, in these last days, spoken unto as by His Son.” This is the revelation He has made of Himself in Christianity, It is the whole Christian system stated in a few magnificent words. The revelation is complete, and only wants a heart that, in faith, is humbly receptive of the Marvelous grace it carries. It is salvation, not vengeance, nor judgment, nor condemnation, though it may well be asked “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” (Heb. 2:33How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; (Hebrews 2:3)). That is true! How indeed? Let it never be supposed that because today God is a Saviour, He has finally abandoned His character as Judge. Impossible! His holiness is eternal — His moral separation from sin infinite! The judgment of “the Great White Throne,” with its dread issues, will assuredly demonstrate this. It will prove His intolerance of sin. That is certain! Yet not more so than the cross has already done!
But the cross, while fully vindicating God’s holiness, has also shown His righteousness, and, in the death of His Son, has opened the door of salvation. Now God is “just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.” The cross is the judgment of sin in the person of the Substitute; the Great White throne is the judgment of the sinner for his sins, and, above all, for his refusal of the Substitute. He is judged according to his works, but his chief sin is the rejection of grace.
Wonderful cross and wonderful salvation, flowing thence to poor sinners today. What the eye, and ear, and mind of man could never conceive, is all made known for faith today. “God is love,” not “vengeance,” though it may belong to Him, but, ere judgment — your judgment, my reader — come, His disposition toward you is that of love. He is not willing that you should perish, but rather that you should come to repentance.
“God His Son has given, sent Him from above
That we might not perish, such His wondrous love;
He the work to finish, died upon the tree.
“Whosoever” may believe Him — that means me.”
J. W. S.