Monday, April 30, 2012

The Gist of Grace

Christ Jesus is God over all blessed forever. Jesus is God Incarnate. He walked on water, forgave sins, raised the dead, stilled the storms, healed the lepers, and fed the five thousand. Jesus did things that only God can do. Jesus is the Almighty *Revelation 1:8*, accept Him as your God. JEHOVAH became a Jewish man, He cheerfully and willingly took upon Himself our nature, He was born of a Jewish virgin, lived a life of holiness, and died a death of of sinless Sacrifice.

Accept Him as your Priest and Sacrifice. Jesus offered Himself as a sinless Blood Sacrifice for human sin. Believe in Jesus as your Priest and in His sufferings and bloody death as your Sacrifice. Study closely the Atonement, the Redemption, the Cross, and you will be surely comforted. Look only to the Cross and the Precious Blood of the Atonement. The scourging, spitting, shame, wounding, thorns, bleeding, crucifixion, nailing, thirst, desertion, and death of Jesus was all for your sins. Repose all your confidence in the Atonement once made for all sinners by the Great Sufferer on Calvary's tree.

The quick and only way of being at peace with God is not to try and mend your ways, or perform certain works, or go through certain ceremonies or ordinances, but to resort to Christ, the one and only Mediator, who was nailed to the Cross, and bled to death for our sins. He is risen from the dead, and is now at the right hand of God. Jesus will wash you from your guilt in His own Blood, and the Righteousness of Christ will cover you with beauty and make you acceptable in God's sight. Trust Him, depend upon His finished work, leave off depending upon yourself. Throw yourself flat down upon the finished work of Jesus Christ. Salvation by Blood and the power of the Holy Ghost is God's way of mercy. Behold the Lamb of God, look to Him, resort to Him by faith, close with Him by trusting to His Blood. You must resort to the Cross, for there only is the way by which sin is pardoned and a sinner is accepted with God. Your sin is not too great for God's mercy. Christ Jesus came into the world to justify the ungodly.

God laid my sins upon Christ; God punished Christ for me; Christ was obedient to the death on my behalf. Christ's obedience is now my obedience. I am declared just in Christ's Righteousness. There is no legal charge that can be brought against me, Christ stood in my place, He has been punished in my place. The Judge of all the earth says I am clear, and that is enough. God laid my sins on Jesus; God punished Christ for me; and I am clear now and cannot be condemned. Christ was condemned for me. He died to pay for my sins penalty.

Christ has paid my sin debts in full, those debts have ceased to be. Christ bore the punishment for my sins. The Just has suffered for the unjust to bring me to God. I deserved vengeance, but it has fallen upon Jesus who deserved it not, who voluntarily placed Himself in my place, that He might answer to divine justice for me. He was punished that I might not be punished. He bore the penalty of my sins, that I could be redeemed from the dread punishment that divine justice demanded of my sins. Jesus suffered the divine wrath I justly deserved. Christ died for my sins, He was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.

Jesus bore my guilt, and was punished in my place, and whosoever trusts in what He did, in a word, trusts in Him, is saved. Come and rely on Jesus who suffered in the sinner's place, and was punished for the ungodly, bearing our iniquities in His own body on the tree. Jesus Christ bore all the punishment that my guilty soul deserved. God cannot in justice punish me now, for He has punished Christ instead of me. It was absolutely necessary that Jesus should bear the punishment due to my sins on my behalf. A present salvation must be through Grace, and salvation by Grace must be through faith in Jesus' blood. The gist of the whole matter is the plan of salvation by a Substitute's blood. It is either Christ or eternal death; salvation by Christ alone, or eternal damnation without Him.

Never better news has come to your ears than this - free justification through the Lamb of God. The Savior's wounds and blood and death provide eternal salvation freely for poor needy sinners. Study closely the old, old story of the Savior's passion, substitution, and redemption by blood. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you understanding and quickening. The Blood of Jesus and the Holy Spirit have done everything for my Salvation. The Atoning Blood signifies that suffering occurred, an innocent life was taken to save my soul. God is Love, but in order for Him to clear the way to pardon rebels like us, God had to give His only begotten Son to die in my place. Jesus took my sins, He carried my sorrows, and He made Atonement on my behalf. Jesus died so the divine justice of God could be satisfied, and so His everlasting love could flow to the guilty human race. Through Jesus' atoning death, God can be at peace with sinners. Christ was punished for my sins, I go free forever. Rely upon Jesus for the free pardon of all your iniquities, and for your complete salvation. Coming to Christ is a mental coming, a spiritual coming; coming to Christ is, in a word, a trusting in and upon the living person of Christ. *John 6:37*

Believe in thine heart that Jesus Christ is God manifest in the flesh, that He is the Atonement for human sin, rely upon Him as such. Come to Him with your mind and heart, it is this coming, receiving and trusting which saves the soul. Right now whosoever the wide world over that relies upon Jesus Christ is saved instantaneously. Great sin requires the Great Atonement. Great guilt requires Great Grace. The Blood Atonement, the New Birth, the Deity of Christ, the power of the Holy Ghost are imperative. Come humbly and penitently to the foot of the Cross, accept with Gratitude the Atonement which Jesus has made for your transgressions. Men are slumbering on the brink of hell, awaken them with the Gospel. The Atonement is a veritable fact you can trust.

Only Jesus was qualified to make an Atonement for human guilt for He was God and man in one person. Dwell on this blessed truth. Trust Jesus, rely upon His merits, cast yourself flat at His feet. Fix your faith on His Atonement, and you shall be saved now without a moment's delay. Christ is my Mediator, my Substitute, my Atonement, His sufferings were in my place. Fellowship with God is only possible through Christ's Atonement. Seek free salvation through Christ, and immediate Reconciliation through His Precious Blood. The great Gospel fact is that whosoever trusts to Christ is saved from the love of sin. Human nature tries to merit its own salvation by its own efforts; it had rather do this, and that, and the other, anything other than just simply trust to Jesus. *Acts 16:31* Simply trust in Jesus, in His Substitutionary work for sinners.

If Jesus Christ is your Substitute, you are safe from the demands of the Law. I have nothing but Christ Himself, I do not want anything else, Christ is my All in All. He is all my Help in life and in death. Jesus suffered the penalty due to my sins. Christ Jesus paid the whole penalty for me. Christ was crucified for sinners, God punished human sin in Christ. Christ crucified bore my sins and was punished instead of me. God's justice was satisfied in Christ's sufferings. The Law says Galatians 3:10; the Gospel says Matthew 11:28. Take the mercy that God freely offers you in Christ. Take mercy without preparation. My sins must be punished. God is just, and He punished my sin in Christ. Believe on Christ, trust in Him.

Jesus actually suffered to vindicate divine justice by enduring, instead of me, the punishment due to my sins. Jesus paid my debts, I am clear from the charges of the divine Law, Jesus bore all my punishment. I am fully acquitted by His sufferings. The Gospel says, pardon full and free is available, a perfect Righteousness through Another, full deliverance from the justice of the Law, adoption, communion with Christ, peace with God, and sanctification by the Spirit. Without Christ you must face sinfulness and a guilty soul, eternal punishment without mercy, eternity without hope, and Hell without escape. Sin, punishment, substitution, salvation. Jesus came and stood in my place, He kept the Law completely for me, He suffered all the punishment for all my breaches of the divine Law. He became my Substitute, obeying the Law, and suffering the Law's penalty too. What I did was imputed to Him, and what He did has been imputed to me freely.

You are in great peril without Christ; while unconverted, you are facing the terrible punishment due to your sins. Flee to Jesus, seek Him for divine Mercy through His Precious Blood. Come at once, poor guilty sinner, to the Great Atonement which was made by the Lord Jesus Christ upon the tree. Repair to Jesus, call upon His name. Trust Him, His words, His work, His goodness and grace.