God's Plan of Mercy

Here is God's plan of Mercy -- By our sin, by our unrighteousness and rebellion, by the violation of God’s law and rejection of Christ, we have broken our peace with God. We are lost, for God must punish sin. It is not possible that the Righteous King of the universe can allow human sin to go unpunished. It is inevitable in the universe that where there is evil, there must be suffering. If not in this life, yet in another life, which will shortly succeed the life which now is. Every one of your transgressions must receive its meet recompense of reward.

The main question is - How can a sinner be freely forgiven? How can God remain Just and still blot out all our iniquities forever? This is not a puzzling problem left for us to work out. God’s plan of Mercy is made clear by the revelation of Scripture. God, in His infallible word, has told us the means by which guilty sinners can be made righteous before Him; and, instead of being driven from His presence on the Day of Judgment, we may be accepted and dwell at His right hand forever. God tells us that the first sin that ruined us was not ours, but Adam’s, and by the transgression of one man we all fell, so it became possible for God, in consistency with justice, to ordain that Another Man should come in whom we may be justified and restored. That other Man has come - He is “the second Adam, the Lord from heaven.” But the task of lifting up sinners was much harder than that of the fall. A mere man could ruin us, but a mere man could not redeem and rescue us from sin.

Therefore, God Himself, the ever blessed Creator, clothed himself with human flesh and was born of a woman, and was laid in Bethlehem’s manger. Christ Jesus lived here on earth a life of humiliation and self-denial, and at the last upon the Cross of Calvary He took upon Himself all the sins of men in one vast load. Jesus took our sin and guilt upon Him and bore it all in His own body on the tree. On the Cross Jesus hung as the Substitute for us all, and there and then He put away by His suffering all our transgression and iniquity, and now “He that believeth in Jesus is not condemned. He that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting life.”

Whenever you go to a foreign city for the first time and stay at a hotel, you may get lost and may not be able to find your way back to your resting place. Therefore, it is expedient for travelers to learn the main streets of every town which they visit. The best thing is to know the main avenue of the city, and you will soon be able to find your way back to safety and rest.

Now, the main street of the Gospel is Substitution Avenue. “God the Father made Jesus Christ to be Sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the Righteousness of God in Jesus Christ.” The main street of the Gospel runs straight through the Cross; follow it, and you will find Christ, the Lamb of God, bleeding and dying in your place. Substitution Avenue is the Main Street of the City of Grace - “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” Christ stood in our place, He suffered that we might not suffer. Christ Jesus “died, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” Whosoever believes in Jesus Christ's shed blood alone is saved from the damning power of sin and delivered from the wrath to come.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - Take this fact and believe it, never doubt it, and you have the key of the Gospel. Whosoever trusts his soul with the Lord Jesus Christ, relying only on His atoning blood sacrifice on Calvary's tree which He voluntarily offered, and the bloody death which He endured to pay the penalty for your sins, is saved instantly from the love and power of sin.

You have God’s word on it; simply and humbly believe the Gospel and rejoice alone in Jesus. Just be nothing and make Jesus everything. “Whosoever believeth in Christ Jesus is not condemned,” for, “like as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so the Son of man has been lifted up, and now whosoever believeth in JESUS shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Now understand - Repent of your own selfish, wicked way and your unrighteous thoughts, and put simple, childlike reliance upon the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God will have mercy upon your miserable soul, and He will abundantly pardon you. There's no time like the present - Sincere Faith in Christ alone freely gives immediate and complete salvation to the trusting soul.