SERMON X.

ON JUSTIFICATION.

ROM. x. 4.

"Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth."

2

1

"How should man be just before God?"1 is a question which naturally presses itself on the mind under conviction of sin, and apprehension of deserved wrath. If we all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," and if "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men," how shall man escape that wrath? God has, indeed, given a law; and by that law he will try our actions, our words, and thoughts. That law we have transgressed; and the awful denunciation is, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that 2 Rom. iii. 23. 3 Rom. i. 18.

1 Job ix. 2.

are written in the book of the law to do them." + Having transgressed the law and incurred its curse, we cannot now be justified or accounted righteous by the deeds of the law. That which, as a rule, condemns, cannot also justify. The law exhibits to us our deficiency, our want of perfect righteousness; but it does not impart to, or provide for us that perfect righteousness with which God is pleased and which he will accept. This the law cannot do, being weak through the flesh, i. e. through our degenerate nature. "Because all be sinners and offenders against God, and breakers of his law and commandments, therefore can no man, by his own acts, works, and deeds, seem they never so good, be justified, and made righteous before God; but every man of necessity is constrained to seek another righteousness of justification to be received at God's own hands."6 This

righteousness" is, we apprehend, the righteousness which is mentioned in the text: "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." We purpose,

I. TO INQUIRE WHAT THIS RIGHTEOUSNESS IS : II. TO DESCRIBE THE PERSONS TO WHOM IT IS IMPUTED.

4 Gal. iii. 10.

5 Rom. viii. 3.

6 66 'Homily of the Salvation of Mankind,” &c.

66

I. WE INQUIRE WHAT THIS RIGHTEOUSNESS IS. The term "righteousness" is derived from right;" as the term "justice," is from " "just;" and both righteousness and justice in the subject, is a conformity with a law; or the fully doing of those things which are right or just according to that law. Hence, a full, perfect, and continued obedience to the law of God, constitutes "the righteousness of the law;" and the person who yields habitually and fully this obedience to the law, is denominated a righteous or just person. Such an obedience, and, therefore, such a righteousness were Adam's in his primitive state of innocence. "God made man upright."7 Adam was made after the righteous image of his Creator. But that righteousness, and the power of recovering it, he lost both for himself and his posterity; and no one of Adam's natural descendants can now have that perfect righteousness in the present life. That righteousness is indeed imperfectly restored to the soul, and faintly exhibited in the life, of every child of God: yet it is not a righteousness which is commensurate with God's holy law, and, therefore, it is insufficient to constitute a man righteous. the least deviation from the law, or the least failure in observing every part of the law, constitutes sin; "for sin is the transgression of the law."*

7 Eccles. vii. 29.

8 1 John iii. 4.

For

Since "all have sinned," all are destitute of the righteousness of the law: "there is none righteous, no, not one."9 Hence "the scripture hath concluded all under sin :" and as all are "under sin," so all are under the penal sanction of the law, of which law "sin is the transgression."

Though no man has or can have now a "righteousness of the law" by his own conformity with it, may he not have a righteousness by a penal satisfaction by suffering the penalty required by the transgressed law? We answer, no: and man's inability to satisfy the penal demands of the law so as to be constituted righteous by the law, arises from the impossibility of a finite act or payment, such as is the act or payment by a finite creature man, to satisfy an infinite demand, such as is the demand of God's justice. Hence, the guilty creature's suffering the penal sanction of the law, being finite in its quantity, must needs be infinite, i. e. eternal, in its duration. Besides this, the sinful creature, while undergoing the sentence for past transgressions, being all the time sinful, will be adding fresh sins to his former, and ever anew contracting fresh guilt, and incurring fresh punishment. So, neither by his active and habitual obedience to the law, because his obedience cannot but be imperfect; nor by his passive endurance of

9 Rom. iii. 10.

1 Gal. iii. 22.

the penalty of the law, because his suffering is finite in quantity, can man have a righteousness of the law, so as to be "accounted righteous before God."

Since man neither has nor can have a 66 righteousness of the law," or a legal righteousness of his own, either by obedience, or by penal satisfaction, to constitute him righteous before God the supreme Judge; and since the absence of this righteousness constitutes him a sinner, and places him under" the curse of the law," and eternal condemnation, the question recurs, “how should man be just before God?" How shall man be justified, i. e., absolved from guilt, delivered from merited wrath, and restored to the favour of God, yea, adopted as a child into God's family? If he would be just, or accounted righteous before God, he "is constrained to seek for another righteousness of justification, to be received at God's own hands ;" and this righteousness, to be received at God's own hands, must be such as is strictly conformed with his holy law, and fully adequate to meet all the demands of the law-giver.

This righteousness must be legal, or it may be evangelical. It is legal as to the subject in whom it inheres and by whom it is wrought or performed: it is evangelical as to the objects for whom it is wrought and to whom it is imputed for