Gates to Trinity College, Cambridge.Chapter XI, continued.
ii. As one part of this general subject, I lay it upon myself and my reader, as we seek to live day by day in the strength of the risen Jesus Christ, all the more to lean our experience before God wholly, solely, upon the finished Work of our redeeming Sacrifice, “the Lord our Righteousness.” The holy thirst and hunger to please God is a radically different thing from the anxious effort to reconcile God. Blessed be His name, that work is done, is completed, for us, by the obedience of One. In the deep words of the Second Article, “Christ, very God and very man, truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and to be a sacrifice not only for original guilt but also for all actual sins of men.” And in the words of the Eleventh, never to be separated from those others, “We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith (per fidem).” Such words, technical as they may sound, speak a truth inexpressibly restful to the fully awakened conscience. Do you see the depth of the demand of God’s law? Do you believe what His Word says, speaking, remember, in the person of an inspired saint, “Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord; for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified”? Do you see the sin (to speak of nothing else) of the least inadequacy in your love to God, in your love to others? Then, in true proportion to the spiritual reality and fulness of such insight, you will prize, you will adore, you will submit yourself to, you will learn yourself upon, the finished Satisfaction, the imputed Merit, of your Redeemer. In the words of a departed saint, to whose soul the truth of saving love in this aspect was singularly real and sweet, you will rejoice to feel that “the bed is large enough to lie down upon, the covering ample enough to wrap around” the awakened soul.
Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/93451647@N00/300955696/in/photostream/
Comments