“But is there no hope,” said little Emma, “for the poor sinner? Must he die in that state of condemnation and misery?”
|God’s Method of Mercy.| “No, dear child,” replied her grandmamma. “God is willing, for Christ’s sake, to ‘justify’ us.”
“But what do you mean by that word?” said Emma.
“Listen to me,” said the other, “and I will endeavour to explain. I have already told you that the sinner, standing in the court‐room of justice, with the chains of condemnation fastened round him, cannot answer a word for himself; his ‘mouth is stopped,’ and he has become ‘guilty before God.’
|The Advocate.| “But, in the midst of that court‐room, there is one who stands up to ‘answer’ for him!—it is the ‘Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.’
“God the Judge asks, ‘Sinner! can you say anything to justify yourself?’ The sinner says, ‘Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O God! for in Thy sight no flesh living can be justified.’
|The Grounds of Pardon.| “God is about to execute the awful sentence; but Jesus, his advocate, stands up, and says, ‘I have suffered, “the Just for the unjust;” I have obeyed the law the sinner should have obeyed; I have been “made sin for him;” I have paid with my own blood the price of his redemption!’
|The Acquittal.| “The Great Judge says, ‘It is enough! Take the chains of condemnation off him. I pronounce him, for the sake of what Jesus has done and suffered, “not guilty!” Let him go out of the court‐room a “justified man;” for “there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”’”
“Do you mean to say, grandmamma,” said Emma, “that God thus graciously pardons all the iniquities of the sinner for the sake of Jesus?”
|Two parts of Justification.| |1. Forgiveness of Sin.| “Yes, my child; it is an amazing thought. But, on account of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done, in pouring out His precious blood, this great and holy Judge looks upon the sinner as if he had never sinned at all! He is, in the eye of law, ‘justified’—considered ‘just.’ Jesus is said to be ‘wounded for his transgressions, and bruised for his iniquities.’ Like the scape‐goat under the Jewish law, God ‘has laid upon Christ the iniquities of us all.’ These He has carried away into a land of forgetfulness, where they can never more be found!”