August 28

"But now being made free from sin, and become servants of God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." Romans 6:22.

The Word of God means by Gospel justification, the imputation of Christ's infinite and finished righteousness to a repenting, believing sinner; the making over of His perfect obedience in behalf of His church to him that believes. Christ obeyed not for Himself, but for His church. And on the ground of His obedience—His obedience or righteousness imputed to them, in the same manner in which their sins were imputed to Him—they stand before God, the holy, the heart-searching God, fully and freely "justified from all things." "For He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

What consideration shall we urge upon the Christian reader why he should welcome this truth of God's word? Shall we say his sanctification is intimately connected with it? and what an argument should this be with a child of God! To be holy—to be like God—to be conformed entirely to the will and image of Christ—to have the temper, the taste, the principles, the daily walk, all like our blessed Immanuel, who is "the chief among ten thousand, the altogether lovely"—oh! can a believer aspire to a more lofty aim? And this righteousness, this infinite, this divine, this finished righteousness, received in the heart by the power of God the Holy Spirit, broken up to the soul, lived upon daily, will promote all this: "In Your righteousness shall they be exalted." The righteousness of Christ has a most exalting tendency; it exalts a believer's view of God, of His character and perfections; it exalts his view of Jesus, His person, work, and love; it exalts the believer himself, it takes him out of himself, above and beyond himself; it exalts his principles, his practice, his affections, and conforms him to Christ. Shall we say his happiness is intimately connected with it? And where is the believer that does not desire to walk happily with God? This is the attainment the world are eagerly in search of—but the believer in Christ is its only possessor; he has found it, and found it in Jesus; he has found it in a renunciation of self-righteousness, and in a humble reception of Christ; and there is no happiness worthy of the name, that is sought and found out of Jesus. What true happiness can the heart feel while it is unrenewed, its sins unpardoned, the soul unjustified, and therefore under condemnation, and exposed to the wrath of a holy and just God? Oh, dream not of happiness, reader, until you have gone as a repenting sinner to the cross of Christ; until the atoning blood has been applied to your conscience, and the Spirit bears His witness to your adoption.

If this, and this only, is the source of all true happiness, then the more constantly and closely the believer realizes his full and complete acceptance in the Beloved, the greater must his happiness be. You may be a son or a daughter of affliction; in this furnace you may be chosen, and through this furnace it may be the Lord's holy will you should pass all your days. You may be a child of poverty, possessing but little of this world's comforts, lonely, neglected, despised; yet oh, look up! you are precious in God's sight—dear to Him as the apple of His eye. His heart yearns over you with more than a mother's exquisite fondness for her child, because He has loved you with an everlasting love, and, to the praise of the glory of His grace, has accepted you in the Beloved. Realize this, and though rough and thorny may be your path, and fiery the furnace, and deep your poverty, and lonely your situation, you shall experience a peace and a happiness to which the world around you is an utter stranger. "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God."