A Threefold Consideration With Which Faith Relieves The Soul From Terror of God’s Justice 2/5

  (a) Observe, Christ is here called a propitiation, or, if you will, a propitiatory—alluding  to the mercy‑seat, where God promised to meet his people that he might converse with them, and no dread from his majesty fall upon them, Ex. 25.  Now, you know,  the mercy‑seat was placed over the ark, to be a cover thereunto, it being the ark wherein the holy law of God was kept, from the violation of which all the fears of a guilty soul arise.  Therefore it is observ­able that the dimensions of the one were propor­tioned to the other.  The mercy-seat was to be as long and broad to the full as the ark was, that no part thereof might be unshadowed by it, ver. 10, compared with ver. 17.  Thus, Christ our true propitiatory covers all the law, which else would come in to accuse the believer; but not one threatening now can arrest him, so long as this screen remains for faith to interpose between God's wrath and the soul.  Justice now hath no mark to level at.  God cannot see the sinner for Christ that hides him.  ‘this is not the man,’ saith wrath, ‘that I am to strike.  See how he flees to Christ, and takes sanctuary in his satisfaction, and so is got out of my walk and reach, that being a privileged place where I must not come to arrest any.’  It is usual, you know, in battles to wear a riband, hand­kerchief, or some such thing, to distinguish friends from foes.  Christ’s satisfaction worn by faith is the sign that distinguisheth God's friends from his ene­mies.  The scarlet thread on Rahab's window kept the destroying sword out of her house; and the blood of Christ, pleaded by faith, will keep the soul from receiving any hurt at the hands of divine justice.

           (b) Observe what hand Christ hath his com­mission from: ‘whom God hath set forth to be a pro­pitiation through faith in his blood.’  Christ, we see, is the great ordinance of heaven; him the Father hath sealed; he is singled out from all others, angels and men, and set forth as the person chosen of God to make atonement for sinners, as the lamb was taken out of the flock and set apart for the passover.  When, therefore, Satan's sets forth the believer’s sins in battle‑array against him, and confronts him with their greatness, then faith runs under the shelter of this castle into the holes of this rock.  Surely, saith faith, my Saviour is infinitely greater than my greatest sins. I should impeach the wisdom of God's choice to think otherwise.  God, who knew what a heavy burden he had to lay upon his shoulders, was fully satisfied of his strength to bear it.  He that refused sacrifice and burnt‑offering for their insufficiency, would not have called him had he not been all‑sufficient for the work. Indeed, here lies the weight of the whole building; a weak faith may save, but a weak saviour cannot.  Faith hath Christ to plead for it, but Christ hath none to plead for him.  Faith leans on Christ's arm, but Christ stood upon his own legs, and if he had sunk under the burden of our sins, he had been past the reach of any creature in heaven or earth to help him up.