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   (c) When God damns the sinner, his justice indeed appears—those condemned miscreants have not one righteous syllable to charge their judge withal —but mercy is not seen to sit so glorious on the throne, in this sentence pronounced on the sinner. But when Christ suffered, justice had mercy met. Indeed justice appears never more orient in God or man than when it is in conjunction with mercy.  Now in the Lord Christ’s death they shone both in all their glory, and did mutually set off each the other.  Here the white and the red—the roses and the lilies—were so admirably tempered, that it is hard to say which presents the face of justice most beautiful to our eye, God’s wrath upon Christ for us, or his mercy to us for his sake.

           (d) When God damns the sinner, justice is glori­fied only passively.  God forceth his glory from devils and damned souls; but they do not willingly pay the debt.  They acknowledge God just, because they can do no other, but at the same time they hate him, while they seem to vindicate him.  Now, in the satis­faction that Christ gives, justice is glorified actively, and that both from Christ—who was not dragged to the cross, or hauled to his sufferings, as the damned are to their prison and torment, but ‘gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God,’ Eph. 5:2; suf­fering as willingly for us as ever we sinned against him —and also from believing souls, who now sing praises to the mercy and justice of God that redeemed them, and will for ever in heaven run division on the same note.  Now by how much the voluntary sufferings of Christ are better than the forced torments of the damned; and the cheerful praises of the saints in heaven more melodious in God’s ear than the extorted acknowledgments of damned souls in hell; by so much the justice of God is more glorified by Christ’s sufferings than theirs.  O what incomparable boldness may this send the soul withal to the throne of grace —who, when he is begging pardon for Christ’s sake, may, without any hazard to his eternal salvation, say, ‘Lord, if my damnation will glorify thy justice more, or so much, as the death of Christ for me hath done, and the everlasting praises which my thankful heart shall resound in heaven to the glory of all thy attributes for my salvation, will do, let me have that rather than this.’

           Consideration 3.  Faith doth not only see justice preserved, yea, advanced in this act of pardoning mer­cy; but it will tell the soul, and can make good what it saith, that God, as things now stand, cannot be just, if he doth not pardon the sins of a repenting, believ­ing soul, how great soever they have been.  One great part of justice consists in a faithful and punctual performance of promises; he is, we say, a just man that keeps his word.  And, can God be a just God if he doth not?  The word is gone out of his mouth that he will forgive such.  Yea, he is willing to be ac­counted just or unjust by us, as he makes perform­ance thereof.  See where he lays this his attribute to pawn upon this very account—‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,’ I John 1:9.  He doth not say merciful, but ‘just,’ as the attribute which we most fear should vote against us.  This he would have us know is bound for the performance of the promise.  It was mercy in God to make the promise; but justice to perform what mercy hath promised. ‘Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham,’ Micah 7:20.  God was not bound to make a promise to Abraham and his seed; but having once passed his word to him, it was ‘truth to Jacob,’ who was heir to that bond which God had left in his father’s hand.

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 (c) Observe the why God chose this way of issu­ing out his pardoning mercy; and that is ‘to declare his righ­teousness for the remission of sins.’  Mark! not to declare his mercy.  That is obvious to every eye.  Every one will believe him merciful that is for­giving.  But, to conceive how God should be righteous in forgiving sinners—this lies more remote from the creature’s apprehensions, and therefore it is ingeminated and repeated, ‘To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus,’ ver. 26.  As if God had said, ‘I know why it seems so incredible, poor sinners, to your thoughts, that I should pardon all your iniquities, so great and many.  You think, because I am a righteous God, that I will sooner damn a thousand worlds of sinners than asperse my justice, and bring my name under the least suspicion of unrighteousness, and that thought is most true.  I would indeed damn them over and over again, rather than stain the honour of my justice—which is myself. But I declare, yea, again I declare it, and command you and the greatest sinners on earth, upon pain of damnation, to believe it, that I can be just, and yet the justifier of those sinners who believe in Jesus.’  O what boldness may the believer take at this news! Methinks I see the soul that was even now pining to death with despair, and lotting upon hell in his thoughts—as one already free among the dead—now revive and grow young again at these tidings; as Jacob, when he heard Joseph was alive.  ‘What?  Is justice —the only enemy I feared, and attribute in God’s heart which my thoughts fled from—now become my friend!  Then cheer up, my soul, who shall condemn if God justifies?  And how can God himself be against thee, when his very justice acquits thee?’

           Objection.  But Satan will not thus leave the soul.  Dost thou, poor creature, saith he, believe this strange divinity?  Is it just for God to pardon thee for the satisfaction that another makes?  One man com­mit the murder, and another man that is innocent hanged for it!—call, you this just?  The law demands the person sinning to be delivered up to justice.  We find no mention of a surety to be allowed by the cov­enant: ‘In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’

           Answer (a).  Faith teaches the soul to acquiesce in the declaration that God makes of his own mind. Now, though the threatening at first acquaints us with the sinner’s name only, yet faith finds a gracious re­laxation of that threatening in the gospel covenant, where, to the believer's everlasting comfort, God promiseth to accept the sinner’s debt at Christ’s hand, whom therefore we find arrested upon our action.  ‘He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed,’ Isa. 53:5.  Here is bottom strong enough for faith to rest on.  And why should we, shallow crea­tures, ruffle gospel truths, to the ensnarling our own thoughts, by thinking to fathom the bottomless depths of God’s justice with the short cordage of our reason, which we see dunced by the meanest piece of God's work of creation?  Faith spies a devil in this beautiful serpent, Reason, which, for its smooth tongue, Satan useth on a mischievous design to un­dermine, as other, so in particular, this one most sweet and fundamental truth of the gospel—I mean the satisfaction of Christ; and therefore faith protests against the illegality of reason’s court.  What indeed hath reason to call before her lower bench these mys­teries of our faith, that are purely supernatural, and so not under her cognizance?  And O that those, in this proud age of ours, would consider it, who go to law, as I may so say, with the highest gospel truths, before this heathen judge, Reason! whereby they evac­uate one great end of the gospel, which is to sacrifice our shallow reason on faith’s altar, that so we might give the more signal honour to the truth of God, in believing the high mysteries of the gospel upon this naked report of them in the word, though our own reason with its little span cannot comprehend them.

           Answer (b).  The believer can clear God as just in receiving the debt as Christ's hand, from that near union that is betwixt Christ and his people.  The husband may lawfully be arrested for his wife’s debt, because this union is voluntary; and it is to be sup­posed he did, or ought to have considered, what her estate was, before he contracted so near a relation to her.  A suit may justly be commenced against a surety, because it was his own act to engage for the debt.  To be sure Christ was most free in engaging himself in the sinner's cause.  He knew what a sad plight man’s nature was in; and he had an absolute freedom to please himself in his choice, whether he would leave man to perish, or lend his helping hand towards his recovery.  He had also an absolute power of his own life, which no mere creature hath; so that being his own offer—upon his Father’s call—to take our nature in marriage, thereby to interest himself in our debt, and for the payment of it, to disburse and pour out his own precious blood to death; how dare proud flesh call the justice of God to the bar, and bring his righteousness in this transaction into question, for which God promised himself the highest expression of love and thankfulness at his creature’s hands?

           

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  (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.

          

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           Consideration 1.  Faith shows to the soul—and that upon the best evidence—that God may pardon its sins, though never so great and mountainous, with safety to the justice of God.  That question is not now to be disputed, whether God can be just and righteous in pardoning sinners.  This, saith faith, was debated and determined long ago, at the council‑board of heaven by God himself, before so much as a vote, yea, a thought, could pass from God’s heart for the benefit of poor sinners.  God expresseth thus much in the promise: ‘I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment,’ Hosea 2:19.  Who is this that God means to marry? one that had played the whore, as appears by the former part of the chapter.  What doth he mean by betrothing?  No other but that he will pardon their sins, and receive them into the arms of his love and peculiar favour.  But how can the righteous God take one that hath been a filthy strumpet into his bosom? —betroth such a whorish people, pardon such high-climbing sins?  How?  Mark, he will do it ‘in judg­ment and in righteousness.’  As if God had said, ‘Trouble not your thoughts to clear my justice in the act.  I know what I do.  The case is well weighed by me.  It is not like the sudden matches that are hud­dled up by men in one day, and repented of on the next; but is the result of the counsel of my holy will so to do.’  Now when Satan comes full mouth against the believer with this objection, ‘What! such a wretch as thou find favour in the eyes of God?’ faith can easily retort, ‘Yes, Satan, God can be as righteous in par­doning me as in damning thee.  God tells me it is ‘in judgment and in righteousness.’  I leave thee there­fore to dispute this case out with God, who is able to justify his own act.’

           Now, though this in the lump were enough to re­fel Satan, yet faith is provided with a more particular evidence, for the vindication of the justice and righ­teousness of God in this pardoning act.  And this is founded on the full satisfaction which Christ hath given to God for all the wrong the believer hath done him by his sin.  Indeed, it was the great undertaking of Christ to bring justice to kiss mercy, that there might not be a dissenting attribute in God when this vote should pass, but the act of pardoning mercy carried clear, nullo contradicente—without a dis­sentient voice.  Therefore, Christ, before he solicits the sinner’s cause with God by request, performs first the other of satisfaction by sacrifice.  He pays, and then prays for what he hath paid—presenting his peti­tion in the behalf of believing sinners written with his own blood, that so justice might not disdain to read or grant it.  I will not dispute whether God could by a prerogative mercy, without a satisfaction, have issued out an act of pardon; but in this way of satis­faction, the righteousness of God, I am sure, may be vindicated in the conscience of the greatest sinner on earth; yea, the devil himself is but a faint disputant when faith pinches him with this argument; it is a trench which he is not able to climb.  Indeed, God laid our salvation in this method, that even we weak ones might be able to justify him, in justifying us, to the head of the most malicious devil in hell.  Peruse that incomparable place, which hath balm enough in it to heal the wounds of all the bleeding consciences in the world, where there is but faith to drop it in; and for ever to quench the fire of this dart, which is headed with the justice of God.  ‘Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath 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 justi­fier of him which believeth in Jesus,’ Rom. 3:24-26.  O what work will faith make of this scripture!  A soul castled with these walls is impregnable.