By faith Abel offered
unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness
that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he, being dead,
yet speaketh.
Hebrews xi. 4.
Through his righteousness, we are freed from the guilt and
punishment of sin, so that all afflictions have lost their curse and sting, and
are become medicinal. We may have bitter dispensations many times, but they are
not salted with a curse. We may cry with Luther, Strike, Lord! Strike! my sins
are pardoned. When God hath laid up comfort in. the heart beforehand, all our
corrections lose their property, and they are federal dispensations; as David:
Ps. cxix. 75, ‘I know, Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness
hast afflicted me.’ When God thresheth us, it is but that our husk may come
off. They are not acts of revenge to satisfy justice, but only to free us of a
mischievous disease; and death is a friend, it is a remedy whereby we may be
delivered into glory: 1 Cor. xv. 55, ‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave,
where is thy victory?'
This will give us comfort in the hour of death. When the
soul, smitten with the sense of sin, is drawn to the tribunal of God, oh then,
the righteousness of Christ is a comfort. Men dealing with men like themselves
may cry up works; but when they plead their cause before God, then who can
speak of his own righteousness? Then they tremblingly fly to the horns of the
altar and to mercy. There is no screen to draw between us and wrath but Christ,
no way to answer justice but in the satisfaction of Christ, no way to appear
before holiness but by the obedience of Christ. Let one of those audacious
volume writers come and say, Lord, cast them out of heaven that cannot approve
themselves to thee by their own graces.
Then we are made heirs of eternal glory; therefore it is
called justification unto life. A pardoned person is made a favourite: Rom.
viii. 30, ‘Whom he justified, them he also glorified.’ Christ doth not only
prevent the execution, but we are also saved. It is much to be delivered from
wrath to come: Rom. v. 9, ‘Much more then, being justified by his blood, we
shall be saved from wrath through him; ‘as if it were a lesser thing to glorify
a saint than to justify a sinner. When God can accept of us out of his free
grace, certainly he will give us heaven.
Thomas Manton
