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The Real Monstrous Thought!
Added: Oct 08, 2024 | Category: Theology
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The Lord Jesus Christ came under our sin: not only under the precept, but under the penalty of the law; that whatever wrath there was due to your past, your present, your future sin, all that wrath the Saviour endured. Hence it is written in Psalm 85, ‘you have forgiven the iniquity of your people, you have covered all their sin’. So that He bore all our sins in His own body on the tree; and the word of God is clear, that He has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. It is hard work to feel nothing but depravity in your own heart and mind, and yet believe you shall go to heaven, and that God will bless you; to feel from time to time the truth of the solemn testimony that ‘the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked’, and none but God can know it, and yet that God will bless you. Why, says Satan, for you to think God will bless you, or take you to heaven? You get to heaven! Monstrous!
So it would be monstrous, the thought, if I had to get there by my good nature, by my good works, good tempers, and good deeds; but if I am to get there by the blood of Emmanuel, if I am to get there by the eternal redemption wrought by His blood, if I am to get there to the credit, to the infinite and eternal honour of that God that provided such a Saviour, if I am to get there by the righteousness of Jesus Christ, by the freeness of that grace that is by the mediation of Jesus Christ, let my sinfulness be what it may, it would be a monstrous thought to suppose we could not get there; because that would be to suppose Emmanuel’s blood cannot cleanse from sin. Bring the blood of Emmanuel and the sinner into contact. What is the sinner? Only a creature. What is Emmanuel? Man. What is Emmanuel? God as well as man. And shall not that deity be stronger than your sin; shall not that deity be stronger than your steeped black and wretched nature? Why, the Lord has said by the mediatorial authority and infinite ability of Emmanuel, ‘Come, let us reason together’; look at my Son, see what He is, see what He has done, and, I will tell you that your sins, though red like scarlet, shall be white as snow; though they are like crimson they shall be as wool. ‘If you be willing’, to be saved in this way, ‘and obedient’, with the obedience of faith, ‘you shall eat the good of the land:’ and the good of the land is the bread of everlasting life, and all the dainties of royal luxuries which are by Christ Jesus. That feast of fat things shall make us happy forever. So, then, it is a monstrous thing, says Satan, for you to suppose you will go to heaven, such a poor creature as you are. But it is a more monstrous thought to suppose I shall come short if I am a believer in Jesus Christ.
There is nothing Satan so trembles at as he does at a poor sinner getting hold of the atonement of Christ. The disciples could not help rejoicing in this: ‘Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through your name’. ‘I saw Satan fall as lightning from the heavens.’ ‘They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.’ Oh, see the blessed God here; see His love, see His counsels, see His good will, see His reigning grace, see His sure mercies. But for this infinite efficacy of the work of Christ, the Lord (I say it with reverence) could not have said with propriety, ‘Incline your ear, hearken diligently, and come unto me and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David’. But if that atonement has not with infinite certainty removed sin, past, present, and to come, how can the mercies be sure? What, then, shall we say of this firstborn in dignity and place, that he should take our place? What an awful place! What a cursed place! What a dark place! What a miry pit place! What a stormy place! What an inclement place! Why, what a hell of a place! He took our hell, for these waters could not quench His love, nor could floods drown it.
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