"Peace With God Through Our Lord Jesus Christ."

October 1868 - Edinburgh. A Lecture, J.N.D.

We have been speaking today of the ways of God, and the blessing we have in connection with the Lord Jesus. My thought now is to speak a little more of the foundation on which we walk in conscious relationship with God, out of which our duties and service to God flow, and examine a little in detail how it is a soul can walk in peace. "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God." Many a soul has to say, " No, they could not say they have peace." There is one thing that tests the heart, whether it really has peace, what I often use with souls - what effect the Day of Judgement has on the soul. Some have peace if you speak to them of the cross, but if you speak to them of the Judgement-seat, they have not peace. God would not have His children thus trembling and uncertain before Him. We have a certain knowledge of our relationship with God. Some have a vague sense of the goodness of God, by which they just mean that they hope He will not think worse of their sin than they do themselves. But that is not it at all. He is good, but it is in the giving His Son. All is settled, past, present, and future. We have peace by the work of the Lord on the cross - comfort and strength in the present, and hope f glory in the future. Roman 4:25-5:2

There are two points Scripture treats of: putting away sin entirely, and purging the conscience. He throughly deals with my whole condition as a sinner, so as to bring me into a known relationship with Himself before the Day of Judgement comes. He has gone down into the depths of my heart, and shown me the depths of His - so that I know all my own sin and all His grace: I know what I have done, and what He is. for this there are two things necessary: I must know the ways of God touching sin; I must know that all my guilt has been cleared away before the Day of Judgement deals with me as a child of Adam. But I want more; there is another thing, putting me into an entirely new place - I have got all the flesh produces cleared away, and I am not in the flesh but in Christ - taken out of the first Adam, and put in the second Adam.

In Romans I get, first the clearing away of our sins, then that we are dead with Christ and alive with Christ, but no farther. In Colossians we get a step farther: Not only have we died and are alive, but we are risen with Christ. In Ephesians the Apostle drops the first of this, and holds entirely to the second, and therefore goes on farther - makes us to sit together in heavenly places in Christ. We do not get justification in Ephesians, but sitting in heavenly places in Christ, and with the whole range of the privileges of the Church of God, as a present consciousness by the Holy Ghost. You get these blessed steps in the three Epistles. I turn back now to see how we get into this relationship with God. It is not an innocent Paradise - that is lost; and I cannot be with God in a sinful condition. I must be in the light, as He is in the light. If we cannot be that, we cannot be with Him. In Israel the veil was there. The holy Ghost thus signifying the way into the Holiest was not yet made manifest; there was no question of getting into God's own presence then, there is no question of the believer getting out of it now. You must be in it according to it, or condemned and cast out of it for ever. He begins all that by coming to us as we are in our wretchedness. If I call myself a Christian, I say I belong to a race who, when He was on earth, crucified and spit upon Him. The extremest act of sin met the highest act of love. In the life of Christ we get the power of perfect goodness in the midst of evil - a thing never known elsewhere. We have to follow it for a pattern. It was God in the midst of evil, to show He was greater than the evil. There He began His direct dealings with man, when a man was a sinner without the law, and a sinner with law. There He was dealing with Publicans and sinners, despised by the Pharisee, revealing the heart of God - revealing men's hearts, too, as He did to the Pharisee Simon - shows him He is a prophet by telling him what he is thinking of. Shows He is more than a prophet by telling him this woman's sins are forgiven her - her sins which are many. He knew them all - knew her heart, and revealed to her His own. Luke 7. He detected the whited sepulchres, and laid them bare. " Let him that is without sin cast the first stone at her"; and they went out one by one. Why did not they own their sin, and why not go out all in a lump? Because they were trying to save their characters. John 8. I get in His life on earth man's sin perfectly detected, and God's heart perfectly revealed.

The first great truth is, that instead of putting me away because of my sins, He comes in love and uts my sins away. That is the first half - perfectly clears away my sins, so as to give me a perfect conscience before God. Christ is the accomplishment of promise, and power by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4); that is, that God had done whjat He had spoken of; and, besides that, I get a great power come into the place of death, and declared to be the Son of God.... Christ bore my sins - every one of them. They never can be mentioned again anymore; and having borne them, His blood, makes me as white as snow, and His blood IS shed, so that if you are coming to God by Him, and your sins are not put away, all of them, once for all, they never can be, because Christ cannot die over again. " For when He had by Himself purged our sins. He sat down," etc. Hebrews 1:3. " For by one offering He had perfected for ever them that are sanctified." Hebrews 10:14. When Christ's blood was shed, the proof of the righteousness of God came out in forbearing with the Old Testament saints. Romans 3. ON THIS RIGHTEOUSNESS I REST, AS ON A ROCK. Sin has been imputed to Christ, and therefore it is impossible God can impute sin to me, because God has dealt with it, Christ has borne it, and it is all completely cleared away; and therefore, when it comes to judgement, there is nothing to do with it. To those that look for Him, there is no sin to judge when He comes for them. Hebrews 9:28. Therefore, being justified by faith we have peace with God, etc. And God wa sperfectly glorified in the cross - perfctly glorified about the sin, and so I can tell the sinner: you come - God has been glorified about sin, and if you come the Father will throw His arms round you and be glad to have you. When I get Christ on the cross I get perfect righteousness about sin, and perfect love to the sinner. Not only my sins have been perfectly put away, but God perfectly glorified, death destroyed, Satan's power destroyed - and I can rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Romans 5:2

There is another thing that comes in now, not sins, but sin. The difference is very simple, when we talk of sins, you have committed yours and I mine; but when we speak of sin, "By one man's transgression many were made sinners," etc., there we are all alike. You get this division between the 11th and 12th verses of Romans 5. I cannot have a nature forgiven, I wnat to be delivered from it. " Who shall deliever me," etc.

[The above continues further about our state as come from a fallen stock, or, what "I am." This calls for deliverance - " O wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" Romans 7:24

Romans 8:3, shows the necessity for the condemnation of "sin in the flesh" (" mans's state, the state of his being" - Syn.Romans 8 - J.N.D.). The believer is thus delivered, and is "in Christ" with "no condemnation" - man's state has been judicially dealt with at the cross. What I have done, my sins call for forgiveness and atonement to meet guilt. Romans 6 describes the experimental state as the effect of Romans 8:3. Romans 6 is "not judicial, but the effect of what is Romans 8:3" (J.N.D.)- Ed.]