Spurgeon: September AM
* 09/25/AM
"Just, and the justifier of him which believeth."
--Romans 3:26
Being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Conscience
accuses no longer. Judgment now decides for the sinner instead
of against him. Memory looks back upon past sins, with deep
sorrow for the sin, but yet with no dread of any penalty to
come; for Christ has paid the debt of His people to the last jot
and tittle, and received the divine receipt; and unless God can
be so unjust as to demand double payment for one debt, no soul
for whom Jesus died as a substitute can ever be cast into hell.
It seems to be one of the very principles of our enlightened
nature to believe that God is just; we feel that it must be so,
and this gives us our terror at first; but is it not marvellous
that this very same belief that God is just, becomes afterwards
the pillar of our confidence and peace! If God be just, I, a
sinner, alone and without a substitute, must be punished; but
Jesus stands in my stead and is punished for me; and now, if God
be just, I, a sinner, standing in Christ, can never be punished.
God must change His nature before one soul, for whom Jesus was a
substitute, can ever by any possibility suffer the lash of the
law. Therefore, Jesus having taken the place of the believer--
having rendered a full equivalent to divine wrath for all that
His people ought to have suffered as the result of sin, the
believer can shout with glorious triumph, "Who shall lay
anything to the charge of God's elect?" Not God, for He hath
justified; not Christ, for He hath died, "yea rather hath risen
again." My hope lives not because I am not a sinner, but because
I am a sinner for whom Christ died; my trust is not that I am
holy, but that being unholy, He is my righteousness. My faith
rests not upon what I am, or shall be, or feel, or know, but in
what Christ is, in what He has done, and in what He is now doing
for me. On the lion of justice the fair maid of hope rides like
a queen.