Self-Righteousness or the Substitute? 2

Self-righteousness cannot live in the environment of the Cross. You must not try to bring your ‘good works’ to God: for He will refuse you and them. The best you can do, just won’t do in the sight of a holy God. You have sinned and come way short of the glory of God. But Christ Jesus kept every jot and tittle of the Law perfectly and entirely for you.

Do you know what the word “Substitute” means? It means “Christ for us.” Christ will be your Substitute, if you will simply receive Him. The Gospel is not a list of commands you must do in order that God may be reconciled to you, but the Gospel is what the Son of God has done instead of you. He took your place here, on earth, that you might obtain His place in Heaven. As the Perfect One, in life and in death, as the Doer and the Sufferer, He is offered to you that you may freely receive the benefit of His Perfection and Righteousness as soon as you trust in the gospel.

All your sin and imperfection, however great, is lost in the completeness of His perfection, so that God sees you not as you are, but as He is. All that you are, and have done, and have been, is lost sight of in what He is, and has done, and has been. Sinners can only rest upon this sin-bearing completeness of the Son of God, as the Substitute,. You need the Sin-bearer; and God has given you One who is altogether perfect and Divine – the Lord Jesus Christ.

You can only be saved by another (the Lord Jesus) doing the whole for you. This is the way; the only way. It is God’s ONE WAY of saving the sinner. You have nothing to do in order to be saved, but to trust Him. Christ offers Himself to you as your Substitute; to do what you should have done, to suffer what you should have suffered, to pay what you should have paid. Christ died for you personally on the cross to pay your sin debt. But your debt is not paid till you believe: when you trust Him then you sin debt is paid – paid once for all, once and forever; but not till then. You must believe in Christ alone in order to be saved from sin, death, and hell. It is believing in Christ (complete trust) that brings you all the blessings of the sin-bearing work upon the cross. You must trust in Christ and stop trusting in yourself.

God has provided a Substitute for the guilty: 2,000 years ago God became a Man, and His name was Jesus Christ. He suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust. God offers this complete Substitute to you, and He waits for you to make the exchange for your sin. You must do business with God. The Son of God presents Himself to you, offering to be your Substitute. He died in your place, so you could go free. Jesus is willing. Are you willing? Do you want to do business with God one on one? You must go face to face with Jesus Christ to get to Heaven.  He must take yours sins away, or they will forever remain on your guilty soul. Give God your sin, and He will give you His Son. Your yielding to take Christ as your Substitute is faith. That is it. This is the only thing that will break the sinner’s chain. It is in receiving the Divine Substitute that the sinner is set free to serve the living God. To go to Heaven, you must begin with the Substitute; you must deal with Him for pardon and deliverance from sin.

Now is the time, now is the time. Dear sinner, this is your opportunity. Seize it and use it, before it passes away forever. There is danger all around in your life; hell is only a heartbeat away, death is pursuing you this moment, but there is still time. The door of mercy is as wide open as the love of God can throw it; the Son of God begs you to come and He will give you rest. Will you let this opportunity slip? Will you lose heaven, your soul, and eternal gladness? Time is closing, life is ending, and the Judge is coming, prepare to meet the living God, flee from wrath to come, look unto Jesus and trust in His works alone: His blood and His righteousness. Drop your good works and fly to Christ for shelter and refuge from the storm of God’s wrath. There is reconciliation with God simply through the blood of the Lamb. God is waiting to pardon and receive you sinner. Let go of your sin and self-righteousness and lay hold on eternal life – the Lord Jesus Christ.

Men cling to their righteous self with a death grip. Only the Holy Spirit’s power can persuade them to let go. Man is determined to cling to his self-righteousness and that the root problem what makes salvation so difficult.

Deep down in your depraved heart lies this awful evil, which only God can remove, this determination not to give up self-love and self-trust.  You may say, “I can’t believe!” This is only an excuse to cover your guilt and to pass the blame of your unbelief on God. You think that you have some ‘great thing’ to do in order to be forgiven; but the ‘great thing’ is done. Jesus cried, “It is finished!” when He was dying on the cross for your sins. You want to do some great thing, and get the credit and glory for doing it. But God has declared that the great thing is done, “once for all,” never to be done again, but you still try to attempt another great thing within yourself. You want to draw attention to your self and earn a pat on the back by your good works, but your good work, your righteous self, is a hideous monster that lives with you. Your righteous self hates God with a passion and despise the free gospel. You foolishly think you will please God and satisfy your own conscience.

But the receiving of the great thing done (Jesus’ finished work) is what God presses on you as the only thing sufficient for your salvation and your peace. You may think you must wait, and work, and struggle, and weep before you are in a ‘fit state’ for receiving Jesus, but this is only self-delusion. You refuse to do what God wishes you to do; you continually substitute something else of your own, some process of preparation for acceptance with God: but you will not make any progress in your own works and will not receive any reward for your voluntary humility. You may think this is too simple, and turn away seeking something to do so you can receive some accolades and draw attention to yourself!

But God sets the Fountain filled with Jesus’ blood before you, and says, “Wash.” But you turn away to some something else. God brings you the best robe, the righteousness of His Precious Son, and offers you to put it on. But you say, “this is too simple.” And you turn away and cling to your own filthy rags of self-righteousness. You say, “This kind of gospel leaves nothing for me to do. But what about me? Don't I have to impress God somehow?” The gospel of the grace of God leaves nothing for you to do – nothing but to be clothed by another’s hand in another’s raiment. Your soul must be stripped naked of your own goodness before you can put on Christ’s righteousness.

God must bring you face to face with His free-love. He says to you, “Take my Son, and be at rest.” You must recognize the great work of His Son and give Him all the glory. The Bible says, “but him that glorieth, let Him glory in the Lord.” Just face it, if you are ever saved, God must receive all the glory for salvation. But you continue to hesitate or turn wholly from God’s offer of free-mercy.  You refuse to let God’s love flow into your soul, because it so absolutely free. The gospel is simple, faith is simple, the word of God is simple, the way to God is simple; but your heart is wholly set against all of these things. You resist and refuse. You prefer some way of your own, and you cast the blame of your own sin on God. Man’s glory and goodness is clean forgot, dumped, and left out at the cross. The Cross exterminates and extinguishes all human goodness.  Self-righteousness cannot live in the environment of the Cross.

Remember, Jesus Christ came to earth and died in your place to lift off your sin from you and lay it upon Himself. He bore all your sin, and He is mighty to save. That which should have come upon the sinner (wrath and justice) has come upon Jesus, that the sinner might go free. The Judge of all the earth’s Justice is satisfied with the work done on Calvary, and asks no more: and a sinner can only be satisfied by Him (Jesus) who satisfied the Judge, the chains of sin will snap, the burdens fall, and disappear forever – buried in the grave of the Substitute, from which it cannot rise. In the cross there is salvation – and nowhere else. You must come wholly as a sinner to the cross and blood of Christ, or be shut out from God’s mercy forever. God will only the cry for help from a sinful, contrite heart: Send up this heart cry to God – “O God, save me, or I perish. God of the Bible, please forgive me for your Son’s sake. God of mercy, have mercy on me and save me from my sin.”

If you are overwhelmed by guilty and in despair over your sin, there is forgiveness through the blood of the Lamb – the finished work of Immanuel. If eternity is a reality, then it behooves you to prepare for it, for endless terror or endless joy is no small thing to trifle with. If sin is a certainty in your life and consciousness, and the Bible says it is, they you must not play with it; and if God hates sin utterly, they you must hate it too, and you must get rid of it, and you must get rid of it God’s way – through His Precious Son’s works, not yours.

You are not bidden to work for pardon, but to receive it freely – without works. You are not bidden to wait for pardon, but to get it at once as a finished and provided gift, given to every sinner who will go to God for it, and take it in God’s appointed way. You must be in earnest concerning your soul’s destiny. You need to mind eternal things without delay. You must go straight to Jesus Christ for all your needs, and you must meet Him at the cross.

If you will not go to Jesus, you will seek all your life in vain for peace and satisfaction. You are trying to be happy, but you know not how. You go from place to place searching for pleasure, but your life seems to have no joy in it. You are passing through this life weary and unhappy; you live in vain, both for yourself and others.

Sinner friend, would you be happy? You must go to God for His love and joy. This world and your sin will do nothing for you. It cannot give you peace. Only the God who made you can give you peace – His own satisfying peace. Go immediately, and get it from Him. Would you be safe? In Divine Love, God gave His Son, as the bearer of your sins; as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” In love, God wrote down the gospel message in His holy word, the whole story of the life and death of the divine Sin-bearer, the Lord Jesus.

The “Word was made flesh” at Bethlehemjudah; the Son of God there became a man, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. There He who knew no sin came under the burden of your sins. For sin is so evil and God is so just, and the law is so holy, that either you must bear your own sins or another must bear them for you; your sins cannot pass unpunished. There must be a substitute, if you are to have salvation. For thirty-three years “the Son of the Blessed” (the Lord Jesus Christ) dwelt among us, speaking words of grace, doing deeds of mercy, revealing God to men, carrying out the great work of love, and completing the great atonement and propitiation for your sin.

Up Calvary’s mountain, one dreadful morning, JESUS the Incarnate God, went up to the cross as the innocent Sin-Bearer for you; He suffered the wrath of God for six long hours on the cross; He died and went down to the grave; He rose again the third day and His great Sacrifice was accepted by the Father. “He was delivered for our offences, and rose again for our justification.” “He suffered, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” “He made peace by the blood of His Cross.”

All the perfection of Christ’s person and work is now presented to you sinner, that you may receive it, and be saved by the grace and kindness of God. The Gospel comes to you with the finished work of the Substitute, and presses that work on your acceptance. By simply taking Christ as God presents Him, you may stand in the perfectness of Christ, instead of your own imperfectness. Come to the mercy seat of God – the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ – with all of your sinfulness and worthlessness. Only believe and be saved today.

You must seek your soul’s safety in the Son of God, and beneath the protection of His cross. In Him only are you safe. His cross is the only shield and hiding-place for time and eternity. Time for you will soon pass away: you must stand before God and give account of all your sinful thoughts, words, and deeds (open and secret). Seek immediate safety in Christ Jesus, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. He is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him. He waits to welcome a guilty sinner. He loves to bless the sinner. Go to Him now, and deal with Him fully, and fervently, and honestly, about your sin and the destiny of your soul. He will not send you away empty. Flee to Jesus and find safety under the shadow of His wings.  *Psalm 36:7; Matthew 23:37*