Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3038
“Being justified freely by His Grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifer of him who believes in Jesus.” Romans 3:24-26.
THE death of our Lord Jesus Christ answered many valuable purposes. It manifested the manifold Wisdom of God. To angels in Heaven and to saints on earth, God never appeared so infinitely wise as in the ordaining of the plan of salvation by the substitution of His Son for guilty sinners. That death also revealed God’s amazing love. It proclaimed to astonished worlds how “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The Atonement of Christ answered the purpose, moreover, of purifying His people. That He might sanctify the people by His own blood, He suffered outside the camp. He loved His Church and gave Himself for it, we know, “that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.” The Cross has also been the great battering-ram for breaking down the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile. It is by Christ’s blood that we are made one. “Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” Caste is abolished and invidious distinctions are set aside. There is no longer in Christ Jesus barbarian, Scythian, bond or free, circumcised or uncircumcised, but Christ is All-in-All. That same atoning Sacrifice also broke down the wall which separated both Jew and Gentile from God—“that He might reconcile both unto God in one body by the Cross, having slain the enmity thereby.” The alienation prevailed till the reconciliation was effected by the precious blood of Jesus. We remain enemies in our minds by wicked works until we see the great love with which He loved us, and then that love melts our heart and makes us friends ofGod.
Time would fail me did I attempt to enter into anything like an enumeration of the blessed purposes which the blood of Christ serves before God and among men. Try, if you can, to calculate the inestimable value of the air you breathe, how every plant feeds upon it, or upon some portion of it—how every creature, whether on the loftiest mountains, or in the deepest mines, must have a portion of it or else he can no longer exist. Think of the force with which it operates upon the world in wind and tempest. Need I do more than suggest to you the infinite number of ways in which the air becomes valuable, not merely as an accessory to our comfort, but as a necessity of our life? Yet, how infinitely more precious is the blood of Jesus Christ which in every way and in every place becomes efficacious to the everlasting salvation of all Believers! That water which sustains the life of leviathan, and of an infinite multitude of fishes, is your drink and mine. It makes glad the meadows, it fertilizes every field and gives to the farmer his harvest, but while it does this, it has other uses which we cannot stop here to discuss. See how it bears today upon its bosom the commerce of the world and becomes the highway of nations? When you shall have recalled all the excellencies of the water with which God has girdled the globe, you shall then have but opened a parable thoroughly inadequate to represent the immeasurable benefits which come to us through Christ—and the innumerable forms which those benefits assume! We know that it has an operation in the highest Heaven—certainly it has saved us from the deepest Hell.
Do you see that Cross on which Jesus died? What is it more than a simple piece of transverse wood? I see it in vision. I see it growing till its top reaches the most excellent glory, lifting up the elect to the very Throne of the Most High! I see its base sinking deep as our helpless miseries could plunge us in hopeless ruin, going down till it reaches even the depths of the vengeance of God. I see its arms spread till all whom God has chosen are sheltered beneath them and all mankind receive some favors which never would have come to them if it had not been that there the Savior of sinners offered the one availing Sacrifice for sin. As when the servant of Elijah saw a little cloud, the size of a man’s hand, and the Prophet marked in that the sign of abundance of rain—so, when I see the Cross of Calvary, it is as a little cloud, but faith beholds it spread all over Heaven and then drop down in mighty showers of mercy to fructify the earth and bless the children of men! If you would count the drops that fall from that cloud, you must grasp “infinity” in your comprehension!
According to our text it appears that one main purpose of the Sacrifice of Christ was the manifestation of the righteousness of God. The Apostle twice over assures us that this was the case, “Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation . . .to declare His righteousness.” And as if this were not enough, “to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness.” What a grand thought! The death of Jesus Christ is a resplendent manifestation of Divine Righteousness! When we have mused upon that, we will proceed to notice that Divine Righteousness—the moral government of the Almighty—is, by the death of Christ, cleared of two difficulties to which reference is made. Then we shall close by noting the lessons which this great Doctrine teaches.