Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

1

those who were forgiven in former ages of the world to declare this righteousness to us now,

and so make it manifest, that it was not merely a kind and a compassionate, but also a just thing in God, to justify him who believeth in Jesus.'

The first lesson that we should like to urge upon you from this passage, is the gospel doctrine of our acceptance with God, in all the strict entireness and purity of its terms. There is nothing which so much darkens the mind of an inquirer, and throws such a cloudiness over the simple announcements that God has made to us, as the tendency of a legal spirit, to mix up the doings of the creature with the free grace and mercy of the Creator. Take up with it as an absolute truth, that the law has condemned you. Be very sure that this is the sentence which is in force, against even the most virtuous and upright of the species. Do not try to mitigate the evils of your condition, or to blunt the edge and application of the law, as having pronounced a destroying sentence upon your person-by alleging any extenuation of your offences, or any number of actual conformities. You have broken the law in one point, have you not? So only has the assassin done, in respect to the law of his country. His execution is the legal consequence of his guilt; and by that you will carry out your guilt to its legal consequence. It will be better for you that you regard yourself, as under the law to be wholly undone. If you do not you will keep out from your mind the whole

[ocr errors]

clearness and comfort of the gospel. If you admit any merit, or any innocence of your own, among the ingredients of your security before God-then all is thrown back again upon a questionable and precarious and uncertain foundation. The controversy between God and man is wakened up anew, by such a proceeding. You are again consigned, as before, among the old elements of doubt and distrust; and the question, what degree of comparative innocence is enough to admit your own righteousness into the plea of justification before God, will, by its ambiguous and unresolvable nature, remove you as far from any solid ground of dependence, as if there was no righteousness of another in which you might appear, and as if no propitiation had been made for you. If you want peace to your own minds, and a release to yourself from all its perplexities-better that you dis card all the items of your own personal merit from the account of your acceptance with God. Go not to obliterate that clear line of demarcation which the apostle has drawn, between salvation by works and salvation by grace, and which he proposes to us as the only two terms of an alternative which cannot be compounded together; but of which, if the one be chosen, the other must be entirely rejected. The foundation of your trust before God, must either be your own righteousness out and out, or the righteousness of Jesus Christ out and out. To attempt a composition of them is to lean on a foundation, of which many of the

If

materials may be solid; but many of them also are brittle, and all of them are frailly cemented together with untempered mortar. you are to lean upon your own merit, lean upon it wholly-If you are to lean upon Christ, lean upon Him wholly. The two will not amalgamate together; and it is the attempt to do so which keeps many a weary and heavy-laden inquirer at a distance from rest, and at a distance from the truth of the gospel. Maintain a clear and a consistent posture. Stand not before God with one foot upon a rock, and the other upon a treacherous quick-sand. And it is not your humility alone which we want to inspire -it is the stable peace of your hearts that we are consulting, when we tell you that the best use you can make of the law is to shut your mouth when it offers to speak in the language of vindication; and to let its requirements on the one hand, and your rebellion on the other, give you the conviction of sin.

In stepping over from the law as a ground of meritorious acceptance, step over from it wholly. Make no reservations. You are aware of the strenuousness with which Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, warded off the rite of circumcision from the church. He would admit of no compromise between one basis of acceptance and another. This were inserting a flaw and a false principle into the principle of our justification; and to import the element of falsehood were to import the element of feebleness. We call upon you, not to lean so

الة

L

the

your

much as the weight of one grain or scruple of confidence upon your own doings-to leave this ground entirely, and to come over entirely to the ground of a Redeemer's blood and a Redeemer's righteousness. Then you may stand firm and erect on a foundation strong enough and broad enough to bear you. You will feel that your feet are on a sure place; and we know nothing that serves more effectually to clear and disembarrass the mind of an inquirer from all its perplexities, than when the provinces of the law and the gospel, instead of mingling and mutually encroaching the one upon the other, come to be seen in all the distinctness of their character and offices. The law ministers condemnation and nothing else. The gospel, by its own unaided self, ministers that righteousness which finds acceptance with God. God has sinply set forth Christ to be a propitiation. You have to look upon Him as such, and He becomes your propitiation. Make no doubt of its being an honest exhibition, which God makes of His Son. It is not an exhibition by which He intends to deceive you. And great will be your peace, when thus drawn away from yourself, and drawn towards the Saviour. It will be the commencement of a trust, that will establish the heart in comfort; and, though a mystery which cannot be demonstrated to the world, will it be the experience of every true believer, that it is the commencement of an affection which will establish the heart in the love and in the habit of holiness.

198

LECTURE XII.

ROMANS iii, 27–31.

"Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of

Therefore we conwithout the deeds of

works? nay; but by the law of faith. clude, that a man is justified by faith the law. Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: seeing it is one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid : yea, we establish the law."

THE term law may often be taken in a more general acceptation, than that of an authoritative rule for the observation of those who are subject to it. It may signify the method of succession, by which one event follows another-either in the moral or the physical world; and it is thus that we speak of a law of nature, or a law of the human mind, thereby denoting the train or order of certain consecutive facts, which maintain an unvary. ing dependence among themselves. Both the law of works, and the law of faith, though the judicial character of God is strongly evinced in the establishment of them, may be understood here in this latter sense which we have just now explained. The law of works, is that law by which the event of a man's justification follows, upon the event of his having performed these works. The law of faith is that law, by which the event of a man's justification follows, upon the event of his con

« AnteriorContinuar »