“If Thou Hadst Been Just.”
Among the many “vain repetitions” used in prayer, the “set phrases” made honorable by custom, generally spoken without considering their import, few, if any grate more harshly on the ear than the above. Often do we hear people informing the Lord (it is not praying), that if he had been just with them, they had been cut off, &c. This is a reproach in the ears of unbelievers, and an offense against the gospel of Christ. Many of the theories of religion now extant, rob the gospel of the element of justice, and so dishonor God in his purposes and appointments. This is done directly by those who teach that the Saviour abrogated God’s just law; and also by those who teach that Christ did not suffer the penalty of that law, but something less, substituted for that penalty. By the first class the principles of justice are set aside; by the second its claims are disregarded. God deals with all according to the strictest rules of justice. To do otherwise would be to trample on his own attributes, and destroy the harmony and purity of his own character. Every careful reader must have noticed that the glory of God was ever prominent in the words and actions of the Saviour; this was first in the song of the angels who announced his birth; and Paul says that Christ was set forth as a propitiation, “that God might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.” Rom. 3:23–26. This is one of the most glorious truths of revelation. Justice and mercy unite in the offering of Christ; and in no system of religion do they unite except in the gospel. So to rob the gospel of its grand design of the vindication of justice, is to bring it down to the level of false systems. The same act which enables God to be just and to pass by the sin of the believer, and justify him for the sake of his ransom and substitute, will enable him to be just in giving all the same opportunity to repent and believe. God’s justice rests in Christ, both toward the saved and the lost. He took the penalty of that just law in his own person, by which all judgment is committed to his hands. For the believer, the penitent, he bears the dread consequence of guilt till it is returned upon the head of its originator; but to the impenitent, the incorrigible, who refuse to be reconciled to God through him, he finally returns the demands of justice on their own heads. Dr. Barnes, as quoted in articles on the Atonement, says there was mercy and not justice in the offering of Christ. A refutation of that idea was offered in those articles. We here give an extract from Alexander Campbell in vindication of justice; it is from a letter to B. W. Stone, who seems to have imbibed views subversive of those principles. Mr. Campbell said:— “The difficulty is not about the necessity of his death in order to reconciling us to God; but it is about the necessity of his death in order to God’s pardoning us. . . . Would you have any one to think that Christ’s death occurred simply to demonstrate God’s goodness; and that this demonstration occurred simply to induce repentance; and that repentance alone superinduces forgiveness? . . . For my part I will stand up before the universe of God, not only in affirming, but in attempting to prove, that the death of Jesus Christ, our blessed and only Lord, was, and is, and evermore shall be, as necessary to demonstrating the justice as the goodness of God in forgiving sins. To unite mercy and justice in forgiving the sinner, was, in my view, the supreme end of God’s sparing not his own Son.” Mil. Har. Vol. v., No. 2, p. 66. 1841. This is evidently the true scriptural view. God’s mercy—his boundless mercy is shown in the death of his Son; his infinite justice is honored therein also. Mercy and justice unite in his dealings toward us. He is just in all his ways; he has been just toward us through the cross of Christ, by which we have had a probationary time to repent and return to him. Christ died for all, and he is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. But they who refuse to honor him in his justice can never enjoy his mercies in forgiveness and eternal salvation. May the glory of God, the vindication of his holiness and justice, be ever first in our minds and hearts; as it was in the heart, the life, and gospel of his Son.