To be sure it is written that "we are justified by faith," But surely,
we are not to understand those words literally or rigidly. For could
faith of itself really justify us? Could it really pay the debt we owe?
It is "the gift of God." Is it not therefore wholly without merit? Is
not its function, rather, to bring us into the consciousness of
justification? I do not see how it could do more than that.
But if we want to know the ground of justification, must we not look for
it in the death of Christ? It is written that we are "freely justified
by his blood." Is not that really the ground? And inasmuch as Christ is
"the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," the merit of his
death goes back to the first, as well as extends to the last, sinner of
our race. When the matter is viewed in this light, does it not seem a
moral necessity that all sin is already forgiven?
But it may be pleaded that God is "angry with sinners every day;" that
"tribulation and wrath" are ordained for "every soul of man that doeth
evil;" and so on. How, then, can divine anger, tribulation, and wrath
rest upon a person that is forgiven?
Simply because God's very nature is opposed to sin in every form; and he
must visit sin with wrath and tribulation, though it be forgiven. In
fact, it is because sin is forgiven, and that thus the basis of
salvation is laid, that God is so painstaking to make the most and the
best of us.
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