Spurgeon: March PM
* 03/28/PM
"I will accept you with your sweet savour."
--Ezekiel 20:41
The merits of our great Redeemer are as sweet savour to the
Most High. Whether we speak of the active or passive
righteousness of Christ, there is an equal fragrance. There was
a sweet savour in His active life by which He honoured the law
of God, and made every precept to glitter like a precious jewel
in the pure setting of His own person. Such, too, was His
passive obedience, when He endured with unmurmuring submission,
hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, and at length sweat great
drops of blood in Gethsemane, gave His back to the smiters, and
His cheeks to them that plucked out the hair, and was fastened
to the cruel wood, that He might suffer the wrath of God in our
behalf. These two things are sweet before the Most High; and for
the sake of His doing and His dying, His substitutionary
sufferings and His vicarious obedience, the Lord our God accepts
us. What a preciousness must there be in Him to overcome our
want of preciousness! What a sweet savour to put away our ill
savour! What a cleansing power in His blood to take away sin
such as ours! and what glory in His righteousness to make such
unacceptable creatures to be accepted in the Beloved! Mark,
believer, how sure and unchanging must be our acceptance, since
it is in Him ! Take care that you never doubt your acceptance
in Jesus. You cannot be accepted without Christ; but, when you
have received His merit, you cannot be unaccepted.
Notwithstanding all your doubts, and fears, and sins, Jehovah's
gracious eye never looks upon you in anger; though He sees sin
in you, in yourself, yet when He looks at you through Christ, He
sees no sin. You are always accepted in Christ, are always
blessed and dear to the Father's heart. Therefore lift up a
song, and as you see the smoking incense of the merit of the
Saviour coming up, this evening, before the sapphire throne, let
the incense of your praise go up also.