4:23- 25 set the truth in the clearest light. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. The word of faith, which we preach, says the apostle, is “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. This necessarily involves repentance toward God, as indeed is often expressly insisted on (Matt. By Christ’s death, as God is glorified, so remission of sins is proclaimed to man: mercy and truth are met together righteousness and peace have kissed.īut man, hitherto living to himself and without God, even if an observer Of forms and duties, is summoned to believe the gospel, not merely that there is grace and truth in Christ, but to believe on Him and His work for his own soul before God. Without Him all for the sinner is a hopeless chaos of contradiction. In such a state (and nothing is more common even in Christendom), the very gospel is turned into a law more galling than that of Moses and some souls sink into indifference or despair, whilst others clothe themselves with the rags of their own righteousness, to find out too late that they are naked in God’s sight.Ĭhrist, Christ’s redemption, alone meets the dilemma, alone puts in their true places God and man, guilt and judgment, peace and holiness. Christ a mere make-weight or help and an impossible example. Self is unjudged, and conscience unpurged God unknown. The anxious soul is thus left a prey to fear, apt to drown his doubts in religious efforts if not in the pleasures of sin for a season. Man can devise no way which does not sacrifice the one to the other. If righteousness rule, love is annulled if love govern, righteousness is swamped. “How should a man be just with God?” Solemn question! to which man can give no satisfactory answer.
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