Page images
PDF
EPUB

cept by imputation; for which imputation, their natural relation to Adam, and his federal relation to them, were a fufficient foundation.—It is equally evident, that the one righteousness and the obedience of One are the complete performance of divine precepts by our Lord Jefus Chrift; his actual conformity to the holy law. This the antithefis in the text requires; this the scope of the apoftle's reafoning demands. By this confummate obedience many are made righteous. By this one moft excellent righteoufnefs. all that believe are justified and entitled to immortal glory, without any good works of their own, and before they have performed any acceptable duty. Now, in whatever way the first offence of our original parent was made ours to condemnation; in the fame way is the righteousness of his glorious Antitype made ours to juftification. If that was by imputation, fo is this.

[ocr errors]

The momentous truth for which I am pleading, is emphatically taught inthe following nervous paffage. He hath made Him to be fin for us, who knew no fin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Hence it is plain, that as Chrift the furety was made fin, fo are we made righteousness: in the very fame way that our fins were made his, does his obedience become ours. How, then, and in what fenfe, was the Holy One of God made fin? By being punished for it? No; for He was made that fin which he knew not: but he knew by painful experience what it was to be punifhed. Befides, he could not have been punifhed for fin, if he had not food guilty in the eye of the law; for punishment. always fuppofes guilt, either perfonal or imputed. A perfon may fuffer, but he cannot be punished without a previous charge of guilt; without being con

fidered

fidered as the breaker of fome law: for punishment is no other than the evil of fuifering, inflicted for the evil of finning.-Was he made fin by becoming a facrifice, for it? That he was an expiatory facrifice, is readily granted; is the chriftian's glory: but that this is the fenfe of the phrase may be justly. queftioned. For, to omit other confiderations, it is plain from the text, that he was made that fin which ftands opposed to righteousness; which cannot be affirmed of an expiatory facrifice. Nor could he have been offered as an atoning victim, without having fin transferred to him prior to his being offered. So that He was in fome way or other made fin before he shed his blood and made expiation. Was he then made fin by inhefion, or by transfufion? Was it communicated to him,fo as to refidein him? The idea is abfurd,the fact was impoffible,and the very thought is blafphemy.-It remains, therefore, that if he was made fin, that fin which is oppofed to righteoufnefs; it must be by imputation*. This was the way in which our adorable Sponfor came under a charge of guilt. Hence it follows, by neceffary confequence, according to the rule of oppofition; except we would entirely deftroy the apoftle's beautiful antithefis, and the whole force of his argument; that those who are truly righteous, are made fo by imputation, and by imputation only. For as it is impoffible that any perfon, perfectly innocent, fhould be made fin, but by having the fins of others placed to his account, or charged upon him in a judicial way; fo thofe that are in themselves guilty, cannot be made righteous in another, and by his obedience, without having it imputed to them. As the bleffed Jefus is faid to be made fin, so we are said to be made righteouf

* Non per tropum eft explicandum, fed retos fumendum eft, pro ut oppofitio monitrat. WALTH, Vide CALOVIUM in loc.

n:

nefs. Strongly implying, that it was not by any criminal conduct of is that he became fin; fo it is not by any pious activity of ours that we become righteous. As it was not on account of any evil qualities infufed, that He was treated by divine juftice as an offender; fo it is not in virtue of any holinefs wrought in us, that we are accepted and treated as righteous. And as that fin, for which the condefcending Jefus was condemned and punished, was not found in him, but charged, upon him; fo that righteousness, by which we are justified and entitled to happiness, is not inherent in us, but imputed to us.

The objections, alfo with which the apostle meets, and the way in which he refutes them, when handling the doctrine of justification, strongly imply, that his defign was entirely to exclude all the works of every law, and all duties of every kind: confequently, that our acceptance with God is a bleffing of pure grace, and only by an imputed righteoufnefs.

-The objections plainly fuppofe, that the method of justification, as clearly stated and fully explained by Paul, is not only injurious to the interefts of holinefs, but fubverfive of all morality. His doctrine was charged with making void the divine commands --with encouraging those by whom it was adopted, to continue in fin, because they were not under the law -to multiply tranfgreffions that grace might abound -and to do all manner of evil, that good might come*. -Now if Paul had taught, or given the leaft intimation that righteous deeds, or holy difpofitions, were any way neceffary to a finner's justification; if, in reference to that affair, he had not in the fulleft fenfe renounced all human obedience, and directed finners to

*Rom. iii. 8, 31, and vi, 1, 15.

place

place their whole dependence on the work and worthiness of Chrift alone; it is highly improbable that the apoftolic gospel would have been charged with fuch horrid confequences. For, on that fuppofition, the enemies of facred truth would not have had the leaft plaufible pretence for traducing his doctrine as licentious.

But fuppofing any, through ftupid ignorance or violent prejudice, to have so far mistaken his meaning as to imagine; That he entirely rejected all holy defires and pious endeavours without exception, as conftituting no part of that righteoufnefs for the fake of which a finner is juftified; when at the fame time he only excluded a spurious kind of holinefs, and works of a particular fort: we may reafonably conclude that, in his replies to thofe reproachful charges against his minifterial character, and against that gofpel which was dearer to him than his very life, he would not have failed to point out the egregious miftake on which the objector proceeded, by diftinguishing the works he did admit, from those which he renounced. Had he rejected only the works of the ceremonial law, or fuch duties as are performed prior to regeneration, and without the aids of grace, while he maintained the neceffity of evangelical obedience; it would have been easy, natural, and neceffary for him, when refuting the blafphemous accufations, to have drawn the line of diftinction, in order to prevent future mistakes. But not the leaft veftige of any fuch diftinction appears, in his anfwers to the several hateful charges. He does not fo much as hint that the objector was under a mistake in suppofing, that he entirely excluded all the duties and works of men without any difference.

When

When he puts the objection, What shall we fay then? fhall we continue in fin that grace may abound? he answers by a strong negation, expreffing the utmost abhorrence of any fuch thought; God forbid ! Then he argues from an abfurdity; How ball we that are dead to fin, live any longer therein? By which he fignifies, that thofe who are the fubjects of grace and believe in Jefus Chrift, being dead to fin, cannot walk in the ways of ungodlinefs. For, fo to do, would be abfolutely inconfiftent with their new state, and with that principle of spiritual life which they have received. But he gives not the leaft intimation of the neceflity of holiness, or of obedience, in order to gain the favour of God, or to procure acceptance before him. If myreader fhould fuppofe, that his views of justification are the fame which Paul had, and yet is perfuaded that some holinefs, or moral goodnefs of his own, is neceflary to obtain pardon, or to procure acceptance; I would advife him to confider whether if his fentiments were charged with being licentious, he would not immediately think of a different reply-one better adapted to answer his purpose, than any of those which the apostle made in a fimilar cafe. And, whether he would not be ready to vindicate his creed by obferving, That as he had no expectation of being accepted before the eternal Sovereign without a perfonal obedience, to charge him with making void the law, or with faying, let us do evil that good may come; could proceed from nothing less than the most palpable mistake, or the greatest malevolence. Such perfons, however, as maintain the neceffity of good works, in order to justification before God, are in little danger of being charged by ignorant people withholding licentious principles; which

« PreviousContinue »