2. Consider also the imputed righteousness of Christ. He made himself one of us, and became our substitute on the cross. As our representative, He bore our sins in his own body, and as our representative He is now at the right hand of God. God punished our sins in Him upon the cross. God accepts us in Him as his ransomed people. Our sins were placed to his account, and his righteousness to ours. This explains 2 Cor. v. 21, “For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” He was not made really sinful, but sin was imputed to him; he was reckoned as a sinner; he bore the sinner’s curse. But we are made the righteousness of God in the same sense in which he was made sin; that is, righteousness is imputed to us, we are reckoned righteous, we are made heirs of the Redeemer’s glory. Now this righteousness is indeed a justifying righteousness: it is the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness of God, perfect in every thought, perfect from eternity. For ever, and for ever, has he been one with God, and never for one single moment, has one single tainted thought dared to intrude on the heavenly holiness of his most holy soul. Now if this righteousness be imputed to us, what can ours add to it? If we be justified by Christ’s merit, how is it possible that we should be any longer justified by our own? Can ours add to his? Can it supply any defects in his? Can we make up a patchwork righteousness, partly his, and partly ours? The very holiest act of the very holiest of men would be like a spot upon the sun, a stain and blemish to the perfect brilliancy of the holiness of Jesus.
Now that is the justifying righteousness of the believer. In Christ we stand, in Christ we are accepted, in Christ the law is satisfied, in Christ we are free from the curse, in Christ we have peace with God—so in Christ, and in Christ alone, must the true believer look for life.
Away, then, with all false thoughts of human merit; away with the deadly heresy that man by inherent excellence can recommend himself to God; away with the self-exalting notion that any man, at any time, can stand in any other attitude than that of a convicted sinner, freely pardoned through the blood of the Lamb. We will strive to please him, we will press on along the path of life, we will spare nothing that we may walk with God. We will long for the day when Christ’s image shall be formed in perfection within the soul. But, meanwhile, we will rest on his atonement, on his righteousness alone: and though worldly men may count it folly, though self-righteous men may deem it frenzy, though Rome may hurl against us the thunder of her anathemas, we will believe, and believe to our everlasting peace and joy, that “God hath made him to be sin for us”; and that by that one act, without the smallest human merit, “We are made the righteousness of God in him.”
SERMON III.
PURGATORY.
Luke xxiii. 43.
And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.
Have you ever stood by the bedside of a dying believer? ever watched the decaying strength of some dear object of your fondest love? Then you know the deep emotions of that solemn moment, when, in the stillness of the chamber of death, the heavy breathing ceases, and the happy spirit wings its flight to God. What conflicting feelings then struggle for mastery in the heart! Faith, joy, doubt, and sorrow, seem in turn to take possession of the soul: nay, rather! they all reign there at once: we mourn in widowhood, but acquiesce in faith: we look on our own life as desolate through separation; but, thinking on the present glory of the departed, we cannot withhold a glad Amen from Cowper’s lines upon his mother.
But oh! the thought that thou art safe and he!
That thought is joy, arise what may to me.
Yes it is a joy! a mournful joy, but a joy unutterable; a joy that draws from the same eye tears of rejoicing, and tears of grief; a joy which, strange to say, melts us into sadness, while it gives a calm, holy, peaceful satisfaction from the full and complete assurance that those we love most are for ever safe with Jesus. This joy is the birthright of God’s faithful children; and this the balm with which in our funeral service, we strive to staunch the mourner’s tears. Who that has ever wept beside the open grave can fail to remember those hallowed words: “I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, from henceforth, blessed are the dead which die in the Lord, even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours”?
But the Church of Rome, at one fatal blow, robs us of all this; and in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, declares, [35a] “Besides (hell,) there is a fire of purgatory, in which the souls of the pious being tormented for a definite time, expiate their sin, that so an entrance may be opened to them, into the eternal country, into which nothing defiled can enter.”
You will here observe four things.