Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2587
“Much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” Romans 5:10.
THE first great message of mercy to a sinner is put into four short words in the eighth verse of this chapter—“Christ died for us.” A preacher can never be wrong in lifting up Christ Crucified! It is the glory of a congregation if it can be truly said, “Before your eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth, crucified among you.” Well did the Apostle make this his boast—“We preach Christ Crucified.” Still, we must always remember that there is a great deal about Christ besides His Crucifixion and, however glorious His death may be—and we are not disposed to rank it second to anything else—yet there is another glory, another form of His excellency which is seen, not in His death, but in His life! It is of this that the Apostle speaks here—“Much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”
Before we come to the consideration of that subject, dear Friends, let us think of what the death of Christ has done for some of us. The former part of the verse from which our text is taken says, “When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.” What was that reconciliation? Of what did it consist? We will not talk so much doctrinally, as practically and experimentally. We were once enemies of God, but we are not enemies of God any longer. God was once angry with us, but God is not angry with us any more. If we have believed in Jesus Christ, a complete reconciliation has been effected between the offended God and the offending sinner. In this reconciliation, I see, first, that God, who is always Love, and has always loved His people, being just, was unable to deal with the guilty sinner except upon the footing of justice—and justice demanded that the sinning soul should die! But Christ has come that God, as the great moral Ruler, might be able, without violation of His holiness, to deal mercy with sinful men.
Let there be no mistake about the objective and purpose of Christ’s Sacrifice! John Kent’s hymn rightly says—
“‘Twaas not to make Jehovah’s love
Towards the sinner flame,
That Jesus, from His Throne above,
A suffering Man became.
‘Twaas not the death which He endured,
Nor all the pangs He bore,
That God’s eternal love procured,
For God was Love before.”
He was always Love to His people, but, until Christ came to earth and died, the Just for the unjust, that love could not freely flow. There was a dam that blocked up the stream. There was a great rock in the channel and the rivers of love could not flow. But by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, that impediment has been removed. God can now be “just and the Justifier of him which believes in Jesus.” I have already said that in His heart of hearts, there was always love towards His people, but as the Judge upon the Judgment Seat, He could not display that love—He could only manifest His indignation against every soul of man that did evil.
Now, this most righteous wrath of God was removed by the death of Jesus Christ and could not have been removed by any other manner. The sword must find its victim and Christ bared His breast to let infinite Justice spend its full force on Him. The debt had to be paid and Jesus paid it to the last penny with His own life which He poured out upon the Cross. The cup of wrath must be drained—there was no putting it aside—so Jesus took it and, after saying, “O My Father, if this cup may not pass away from Me, except I drink it, Your will be done.” He put it to His lips and never took it away till He had drained it to its last drop. There was a necessity for Christ’s death, “it behooved Christ to suffer,” and by His suffering He appeased the wrath of the great Judge of All, so that He could justly look upon guilty men with complacency. That wondrous change was worked by Christ’s death and now the very justice of God demands our salvation. It is indeed marvelous that the righteousness of God, which was against us, should be made to be for us and that the Justice of God, which pronounced the sentence of death upon us, should be so transformed that Justice, itself, now decrees our eternal life! This is a wonderful part of the reconciliation.
But the Apostle speaks of our being reconciled—our being reconciled. Well, that comes about in this way. We felt in our conscience that we had sinned against God. I am not speaking of all here present, but I am speaking of all those upon whom the Spirit of God has worked salvation—our conscience felt a secret sting, as though a burning poison had entered into the veins of our spirit. I remember when the thought that I had offended God seemed to drink up my very life. Of course I did not love Him and I could not, for it is according to the nature of our sinful heart that if we do anyone an injury, we are sure to hate him. We do not always hate the man who injures us, but if we injure him, our hatred is almost certain to follow. And inasmuch as we had broken all God’s Laws and did not wish to admit it, we hated the Law itself. We kicked against it and tried to persuade ourselves that it was the root of the offense instead of our own willful hearts being the source of the evil. We knew God to be holy, but we did not love holiness—in fact, having no holiness of our own, we could not endure even to hear or read about it! We set up a counterfeit righteousness of our own and pretended that we were good, and all the while we were despising the true holiness and the perfect righteousness of God.