Now, that which proceeds from sovereignty and love on the part of God must absolutely preclude all claim or thought of merit on the part of man. Merit leaves no room, no occasion for grace. Grace begins where merit ends, if grace be given at all.—What, then, is the “great salvation”?
Man, being unholy and guilty, needed a salvation which would include his justification or his forgiveness, and one which would culminate in his sanctification by the restoration to him of his lost spiritual power. In other words, he needed a deliverance from the curse of sin, and also from sin itself.
This deliverance, man cannot find within his own nature. He cannot save himself from the curse of sin; for inasmuch as the law righteously demanded a perfect and constant obedience, he could never blot out the guilt of former sins by acts of obedience at a later period of life. Moreover, such later acts of a perfect obedience are impossible to him, for holiness does not proceed from a sinful nature. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” Men do not “gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles.” Man is as depraved and as weak as he is guilty. Self-salvation is impossible; salvation is of the Lord alone. The gospel is the announcement of the fact that God saves, and of the method in which the great work of salvation is done by Him.
I. The Word of God, both in the Old and in the New Testament, proclaims a dispensation of Divine mercy. So unexpected and so cheering is this proclamation that it has given the gospel the name it bears. It is emphatically “good news”—good news from God to man. This good news announces that the first deliverance which man requires is provided for. God remits the penalty of sin. But how?
He does this in such a way that, so far from weakening law, or invalidating the condemnation of sin, He shows more clearly than ever, how holy is the law, and how just the condemnation. Hence, though this forgiveness is an act of pure mercy, it is mercy exercised in a righteous way through the wonderful sacrifice of Christ. This was the meaning of the promise that accompanied the curse; and so clear was it that it was apprehended in the first sacrifices men ever offered. The Jewish sacrifices shadowed it forth. The Scriptures teach this method of Divine forgiveness in the plainest terms. I quote two or three passages in proof: Rom. iii. 23-26; John i. 29; 1 John ii. 1, 2; 1 Peter ii. 24; Isaiah liii. 4-6.
This is Scripture, and we must not dare to trifle with it. These declarations can have but one meaning. Christ has suffered in our stead the penalty we had all deserved, that we might receive, for His sake, that eternal life and blessedness which He only had deserved. On this point all the types and teachings of both Testaments speak with one voice.
There are, no doubt, in this substitution of the innocent for the guilty, some difficulties for human reason. But we have to do with the Bible. It meets conscience; and reason must bend in submission before a grace the deeper meaning of which it does not see. Observe, however, that according to the Scripture representation, the substitution was divinely appointed, and the Substitute Himself was a willing victim. We accept the doctrine, (1) Partly in virtue of human need. Conscience points to the necessity of a satisfaction. (2) Partly in virtue of the peace and the joy to which faith in the doctrine gives rise.—“Scripture always lays stress upon the Saviour’s humiliation and bitter sufferings. We are not said to be redeemed by His incarnation, by His birth, by His miracles, by His doctrine, not even by His agony in the garden, though all these were necessary to the ransom; but by His blood.” On this ground of the Atonement, the first part of salvation—forgiveness—is secured.
II. Man needs also to be redeemed from sin. This need, like the former, he is unable to meet of himself, but God meets it on his behalf. How? By putting into the heart a fertile germ of holiness.
Freedom from condemnation and regeneration are indissolubly connected together in God’s idea of salvation, and He achieves both by the work of Christ His Son. This redemption from the love, and consequently from the power of sin, is accomplished by Him on a principle which is divinely simple and efficacious; a principle which lies at the root of the theory of evangelical sanctification. This principle is the love which He excites in us by the manifestation of His own love to us. Thus the Apostle John writes: “Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither known Him” (1 John iii. 6). “He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love” (1 John iv. 8). To love God, and, under the constraining influence of love, to serve Him, we have need to know and to realise how great is the love of God to us.
Now this Divine love has been revealed to the world through the medium of that same Saviour, who by His sacrificial death has opened up the way for our pardon and our restoration to the Divine favour. The Son of God came into the world to reveal the heart of the Father. What greater gift could God have bestowed than that of His Divine Son? What greater proof of love could He have exhibited than that which this greatest of all possible gifts presents? “God so loved.” And Christ has perfectly performed His mission. His whole ministry was a declaration of the Divine love. Of that love His death on the cross was the sublimest expression. We learn therefrom not only that God manifests to us His mercy, but also at what cost. Our debt must be paid; and as we are bankrupt, He pays it on our behalf. And who is our Substitute? Not a man, not an angel, not any creature; but the Divine Son, “by whom God made the worlds and upholds them by the word of His power,” “who is the brightness of the Father’s glory and the express image of His person”—it was He who “by Himself purged our sins.” Such is the love of God. We cannot fathom it, for it is Divine; but in proportion as we are enabled to “know” it, we say “We love Him because He first loved us;” “We are bought with a price: we are not our own.” And we say our devout “Amen!” when the chiefest Apostle of mercy says to us: “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”