ALL OF GRACE 5

5. Just and the Justifier

We have seen the ungodly justified, and have considered the great truth, that only God can justify any man. We now come a step further and ask this question: How can a just God justify guilty men? Here we are met with a full answer in the words of Paul, in Romans 3:21-26. We will read six verses from the chapter in order to get the full context of the passage:

“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

Allow me here to give you a bit of personal experience. When I was under the hand of the Holy Spirit, under conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of the justice of God. Sin, whatever it might be to other people, became to me an unbearable burden. It was not so much that I feared hell, but that I feared sin. I knew myself to be so horribly guilty that I remember feeling that if God did not punish me for sin He should do so. I felt that the Judge of all the earth should condemn the kind of sin that mine was. I sat on the judgment seat, and I condemned myself to perish, because I admitted that if I were God I could have no other choice but to send such a guilty creature as I was down to the lowest chamber of hell. The whole time, a deep concern was on my mind for the honor of God’s name, and the integrity of His moral government. I felt that it would not satisfy my conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly. The sin I had committed must be punished. But then there was the question of how God could be just, and yet justify me who had been so guilty. I asked my heart: “How can He be just and yet the justifier?” I was worried and wearied with this question. I couldn’t see any answer to it. Certainly, I could never have invented an answer that would have satisfied my conscience.

The doctrine of the atonement is, to my mind, one of the most certain proofs of the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture. Who would or could have thought of the just Ruler dying for the unjust rebel? This isn’t some teaching of human mythology, or a poetic dream of the imagination. This method of atonement is only known among men because it is a fact; fiction could not have devised it. God Himself ordained it; it is not a matter that could have been imagined.

I had heard the plan of salvation by the sacrifice of Jesus since I was a young boy; but I did not know any more about it in my innermost soul than if I had been born and bred a savage in the most secluded part of the earth. The light was there, but I was blind; it was of necessity that the Lord Himself should make the matter plain to me. It came to me as a new revelation, as fresh as if I had never read in Scripture that Jesus was declared to be the propitiation for sins that God might be just. I believe it will have to come as a revelation to every newborn child of God whenever he sees it; what I mean is that glorious doctrine of the substitution of the Lord Jesus. I came to understand that salvation was possible through vicarious sacrifice; and that provision had been made in the first establishment and arrangement of things for such a substitution. I was made to see that He who is the Son of God, co-equal, and co-eternal with the Father, from eternity past, had been made the covenant Head of a chosen people so that in that capacity He might suffer for them and save them. Inasmuch as our fall was not a personal one at first, for we fell in our federal representative, the first Adam, it became possible for us to be recovered by a second representative, even by Him who has undertaken to be the covenant head of His people, so as to be their second Adam. I saw that before I actually sinned I had fallen in sin by my first father’s sin; and I rejoiced that therefore it became possible in point of law for me to rise by a second head and representative. The fall by Adam left a loophole of escape; another Adam can undo the damage made by the first. When I was anxious about the possibility of a just God pardoning me, I understood and saw by faith that He, who is the Son of God, became man, and in His own blessed Person bore my sin in His own body on the Cross of wood. I saw the punishment that brought me peace was laid on Him, and that with His stripes I was healed. Dear friend, have you ever seen that? Have you ever understood how God can be fully just, not remitting penalty nor blunting the edge of the sword, and yet can be infinitely merciful, and can justify the ungodly that turn to Him? It was because the Son of God, supremely glorious in His matchless Person, undertook to vindicate the law by bearing the sentence that should be mine; that God is able, therefore, to pass by my sin. The law of God was more vindicated by the death of Christ than it would have been if all transgressors had been sent to Hell. For the Son of God to suffer for sin was a more glorious establishment of the government of God, than for the whole race to suffer.

Jesus has suffered the death penalty on our behalf. Behold the wonder! There He hangs upon the Cross! This is the greatest sight you will ever see. Son of God and Son of Man, there He hangs, bearing pains unutterable, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. Oh, the glory of that sight! The innocent punished! The Holy One condemned! The Ever-blessed made a curse! The infinitely glorious put to a shameful death! The more I look at the sufferings of the Son of God, the more sure I am that they must meet my case. Why did He suffer, if not to turn aside the penalty from us? If, then, He turned it aside by His death, it is turned aside, and those who believe in Him need not fear it. It must be so, that since atonement is made, God is able to forgive without shaking the basis of His throne, or in the least degree blotting the statute book. Conscience gets a full answer to her tremendous question. The wrath of God against iniquity, whatever that may be, must be terrible beyond all conception. Moses said it quite well: “Who knows the power of Your anger?” (Psalm 90:11). Yet when we hear the Lord of glory cry, “Why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46), and see Him yielding up the spirit, we feel that the justice of God has received abundant vindication by obedience so perfect and death so terrible, rendered by so divine a Person. If God Himself bows before His own law, what more can be done? There is more in the atonement by way of merit, than there is in all human sin by way of demerit.

The great gulf of Jesus’ loving self-sacrifice can swallow up the mountains of our sins, every single one of them. For the sake of the infinite good of this one representative Man, the Lord may well look with favor upon other men, however unworthy they may be, in and of themselves. It was a miracle of miracles that the Lord Jesus Christ should stand in our stead and...

Bear that we might never bear

His Father’s righteous ire.

But He has done so. “It is finished” (John 19:30). God will spare the sinner because He did not spare His Son. God can pass by your transgressions because He laid those transgressions upon His only begotten Son nearly two thousand years ago. If you believe in Jesus (that is the point), then your sins were carried away by Him who was the scapegoat for His people.

What is it to believe in Him? It is not merely to say, “He is God and the Savior,” but to trust Him completely and entirely, and take Him for all your salvation from this time forth and forever-- your Lord, your Master, your all. If you will have Jesus, He has you already. If you believe on Him, I tell you that you cannot go to hell; for that would be to make the sacrifice of Christ of pointless. It cannot be that a sacrifice should be accepted, and yet the soul should die for whom that sacrifice has been received. If the believing soul could be condemned, then why a sacrifice? If Jesus died in my stead, why should I die also? Every believer can claim that the sacrifice was actually made for him: by faith he has laid his hands on it, and made it his own, and therefore he may rest assured that he can never perish. The Lord would not receive this offering on our behalf, and then condemn us to die. The Lord cannot read our pardon written in the blood of His own Son, and then smite us. That would be impossible. Oh that you may have grace given to you at once to look away to Jesus and to begin at the beginning, even at Jesus, who is the Fountainhead of mercy to guilty man!

“He justifies the ungodly.” “It is God who justifies,” therefore, and for that reason only, it can be done, and He does it through the atoning sacrifice of His divine Son. Therefore it can be justly done-- so justly done that no one will ever question it-- so thoroughly done that in the last tremendous day, when heaven and earth shall pass away, there shall be none that shall deny the validity of the justification. “Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died. Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies” (Romans 8:34, 33).

Now, poor soul! will you come into this lifeboat, just as you are? Here is safety from the wreck! Receive the sure deliverance. “I have nothing with me,” say you. You are not asked to bring anything with you. Men who escape for their lives will leave even their clothes behind. Leap for it, just as you are.

I will tell you this thing about myself to encourage you. My sole hope for heaven lies in the full atonement made upon Calvary’s Cross for the ungodly. On that I firmly rely. I do not have even the shadow of a hope anywhere else. You are in the same condition as I am; for neither of us have anything of our own worth as a ground of trust. Let us join hands and stand together at the foot of the Cross and trust our souls once and for all to Him who shed His blood for the guilty. We will be saved by one and the same Savior. If you perish trusting Him, I must perish too. What can I do more to prove my own confidence in the gospel that I set before you?

[Charles Haddon Spurgeon's classic, All of Grace, has been edited in Modern English by Jon Cardwell. A chapter or two will be posted each Friday.]