Faith Alone in Christ’s Completed Work by Horatius Bonar
“Wholly a sinner! Is that really my character?”
“No doubt of that. If you doubt it, go and search your Bible. God’s testimony is that you are wholly a sinner and must deal with Him as such, for the whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.”
“Wholly a sinner, well! – but must I not get quit of some of my sins before I can expect blessing from Him?”
“No, indeed; He alone can deliver you from so much as even one sin; and you must go at once to Him with all that you have of evil, how much so ever that may be. If you be not wholly a sinner, you don’t wholly need Christ, for He is out and out a Savior; He does not help you to save yourself, nor do you help Him to save you. He does all, or nothing. A half salvation will only do for those who are not completely lost. He ‘His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree’” (1 Peter 2:24).
It was in some such way as the above that Luther found his way into the peace and liberty of Christ. The story of his deliverance is an instructive one, as showing how the stumbling-blocks of self-righteousness are removed by the full exhibition of the gospel in its freeness, as the good news of God’s love to the unloving and unlovable, the good news of pardon to the sinner, without merit and without money, the good news of PEACE WITH GOD, solely through the propitiation of Him who hath made peace by the blood of His cross.
One of Luther’s earliest difficulties was that he must get repentance wrought within himself; and having accomplished this, he was to carry this repentance as a peace-offering or recommendation to God. If this repentance could not be presented as a positive recommendation, at least it could be urged as a plea in mitigation of punishment. “How can I dare believe in the favor of God,” he said, “so long as there is in me no real conversion? I must be changed before He can receive me.” He is answered that the “conversion,” or “repentance,” of which he is so desirous, can never take place so long as he regards God as a stern and unloving Judge. It is the goodness of God that leadeth to repentance, (Rom. 2:4) and without the recognition of this “goodness,” there can be no softening of heart. An impenitent sinner is one who is despising the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering.
Luther’s aged counselor tells him plainly that he must be done with penances and mortifications, and all such self-righteous preparations for securing or purchasing the Divine favor. That voice, Luther tells us touchingly, seemed to come to him from heaven: “All true repentance begins with the knowledge of the forgiving love of God.” As he listens light breaks in, and an unknown joy fills him. Nothing between him and God! Nothing between him and pardon! No preliminary goodness or preparatory feeling! He learns the Apostle’s lesson, “Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5). All the evil that is in him cannot hinder this justification; and all the goodness (if such there be) that is in him cannot assist in obtaining it. He must be received as a sinner, or not at all. The pardon that is proffered recognizes only his guilt; and the salvation provided in the cross of Christ regards him simply as lost.
But the sense of guilt is too deep to be easily quieted. Fear comes back again, and he goes once more to his aged adviser, crying, “Oh, my sin, my sin!” as if the message of forgiveness which he had so lately received was too good news to be true, and as if sins like his could not be so easily and so simply forgiven. “What! would you be only a pretended sinner, and therefore need only a pretended Savior?” So spake his venerable friend, and then added, solemnly, “Know that Jesus Christ is the Savior of great and real sinners, who are deserving of nothing but utter condemnation.”
“But is not God sovereign in His electing love?” said Luther; “Perhaps I may not be one of His chosen.” “Look to the wounds of Christ,” was the answer, “and learn there God’s gracious mind to the children of men. In Christ we read the name of God and learn what He is, and how He loves; the Son is the revealer of the Father; and the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.”
“I believe in the forgiveness of sins,” said Luther to a friend one day, when tossing on a sick bed; “but what is that to me?” “Ah,” said his friend, “does not that include your own sins? You believe in the forgiveness of David’s sins and of Peter’s sins, why not of your own? The forgiveness is for you as much as for David or Peter.”
Thus Luther found rest. The gospel, thus believed, brought liberty and peace. He knew that he was forgiven because he knew that forgiveness was the immediate and sure possession of all who believed the good news.
In the settlement of the great question between the sinner and God, there was to be no bargaining and no price of any kind. The basis of settlement was laid eighteen hundred years ago; and the mighty transaction on the cross did all that was needed as a price. “It is finished,” is God’s message to the sons of men in their inquiry, “What shall we do to be saved?” This completed transaction supersedes all man’s efforts to justify himself or to assist God in justifying him. We see Christ crucified and God in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses; and this non-imputation is the result solely of what was done upon the cross, where the transference of the sinner’s guilt to the Divine surety was once and forever accomplished. It is that transaction that the gospel brings us the “good news” and whosoever believeth it becomes partaker of all the benefits which that transaction secured.
“But am I not to be indebted to the Holy Spirit’s work in my soul?” “Undoubtedly; for what hope can there be for you without the Almighty Spirit, who quickeneth the dead?” “If so, then ought I not to wait for His impulses, and having got them, may I not present the feelings which He has wrought in me as reasons why I should be justified?”
“No, in no wise. You are not justified by the Spirit’s work, but by Christ’s alone; nor are the motions of the Spirit in you the grounds of your confidence or the reasons for your expecting pardon from the Judge of all. The Spirit works in you, not to prepare you for being justified, or to make you fit for the favor of God, but to bring you to the cross, just as you are. For the cross is the only place where God deals in mercy with the transgressor.” It is at the cross that we meet God in peace and receive His favor. There we find not only the blood that washes, but the righteousness which clothes and beautifies, so that henceforth we are treated by God as if our own righteousness had passed away, and the righteousness of His own Son were actually ours.
This is what the apostle calls “imputed” righteousness (Rom. 4:6, 8, 11, 22, 24), or righteousness so reckoned to us by God as that we are entitled to all the blessings which that righteousness can obtain for us. Righteousness got up by ourselves or put into us by another, we call infused, or imparted, or inherent righteousness; but righteousness belonging to another reckoned to us by God as if it were our own, we call imputed righteousness. It is of this that the apostle speaks when he says, “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14; Gal. 3:27). Thus Christ represents us: and God deals with us as represented by Him. Righteousness within will follow necessarily and inseparably; but we are not to wait in order to get it before going to God for the righteousness of His only begotten Son.
Imputed righteousness must come first. You cannot have the righteousness within till you have the righteousness without; and to make your own righteousness the price which you give to God for that of His Son is to dishonor Christ and to deny His cross. The Spirit’s work is not to make us holy, in order that we may be pardoned, but to show us the cross, where the pardon is to be found by the unholy; so that having found the pardon there, we may begin the life of holiness to which we are called.
Teaching Resources International 