Chapter Eleven: sins and "bring in everlasting righteousness." Grace will yet over flow

sins and "bring in everlasting righteousness." Grace will yet over flow for Israel, nationally, as it has now overflowed to us as individual sinners, both Jews and Gentiles.

"Where sin abounded, grace overflowed," for such is ever the result of the work of the cross. Paul, who had been Christ's greatest enemy, the chief of sinners, declares himself to be the great example of mercy and grace: "I obtained mercy," he says "that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all His long-suffering, for an example of them that should hereafter believe on Him unto eternal life." And again: "By the grace of God I am what I am" (I Cor. 15:10; I Tim. 1:16).

We might turn to David and Manasseh in the Old Testament as examples of the overflowing heart of mercy of God. Or we might call up such examples in Church History as the reckless profligate Augustine, whom God made a shining light in His Church; or John Bunyan, the profane tinker, who wrote his wonderful experience of the Divine goodness in "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners"; or John Newton, once a libertine and infidel, "a servant of slaves in Africa," as he wrote of himself for his epitaph,--whom God transformed into one of the great vessels of mercy of the eighteenth century, and whose hymns of praise all the saints sing. It was Newton who wrote:

"Amazing grace! how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me."

and who told his own experience--so really that of all the saints--in the words of the beautiful hymn:

"In evil long I took delight
Unawed by shame or fear,
Till a new object met my sight,
And stopped my wild career.
"I saw One hanging on a tree,
In agonies and blood;
Who fixed His languid eyes on me,
As near His cross I stood.
"Sure, never till my latest breath,
Can I forget that look;
It seemed to charge me with His death,
Though not a word He spoke.
"My conscience felt and owned the guilt,
And plunged me in despair,
I saw my sins His blood had spilt,
And helped to nail Him there.
"Alas, I knew not what I did,
But all my tears were vain;
Where could my trembling soul be hid,
For I the Lord had slain!
"A second look He gave, that said,
I freely all forgive!
This blood is for thy ransom paid,
I died that thou mayest live.'"

On November 18, 1834, Robert Murray McCheyne, of St. Peter's Free Church, Dundee, Scotland, whose memory is like ointment poured forth, wrote his remarkable confession that his sins had caused Christ's death. The title, "Jehovah Tsidkenu," is the Hebrew for "The Lord Our Righteousness." Let it serve our use also, as it has that of thousands:

JEHOVAH TSIDKENU
"I once was a stranger to grace and to God,
I knew not my danger, and felt not my load;

Though friends spoke in rapture of Christ on the tree,

Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me.

"I oft read with pleasure, to soothe or engage,

Isaiah's wild measure, and John's simple page;

But e'en when they pictured the blood-sprinkled tree,

Jehovah Tsidkenu seemed nothing to me.

"Like tears from the daughters of Zion that roll,

I wept when the waters went over His soul;

Yet thought not that my sins had nailed to the tree

Jehovah Tsidkenu--'twas nothing to me.
When free grace awoke me, with light from on high
Then legal fears shook me, I trembled to die;
No refuge, no safety, in self could I see,--
Jehovah Tsidkenu my Savior must he.

"My terrors all vanished before the sweet Name;

My guilty fears banished, with boldness I came
To drink at the fountain, life-giving and free--
Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me.
"Jehovah Tsidkenu! my treasure and boast;
Jehovah Tsidkenu! I ne'er can be lost;
In Thee I shall conquer, by flood and by field--

My cable, my anchor, my breastplate and shield!"

We might multiply examples like these: but these words, "Where sin abounded, grace did completely overflow," with the salvation of Saul of Tarsus as the Scripture example, will suffice. I stood on the bluff at Memphis, Tennessee, and saw the mighty Mississippi, normally a mile wide, stretch over forty miles in flood, covering deep under its multitude of waters the land as far as I could see. So, where sin abounded, the grace of God overflowed everything. [125]

Verse 21: In order that, just as sin reigned-as-king by means of death: grace might reign-as-king, through righteousness, unto life eternal, through Jesus Christ our Lord. This verse unfolds God's great object: that Grace should have a kingdom where Death had had its kingdom: and that, of course, through righteousness,--that is, that all Divine claims should be first righteously met at the cross, and thus that all should be "through Jesus Christ our Lord."

The question of justification is still on in Chapter Five, and not until Chapter Six is "our old man"--all we were from Adam--brought in. Furthermore, to bring into Chapter Five our sinful state by nature, is to confuse our sinful condition with that condemnation which over and over God says was brought about by Adam's single act, and by that only. "The judgment came of ONE TRESPASS unto condemnation," etc.

Now if you and I were condemned in Adam's sin, it is plain that to be justified we must be cleared not only of our own sins, but of our condemnation in Adam: our justification must cover all our condemnation.

Our justification, is, therefore, in this great passage, related not to our personal sins, as in Chapters Three and Four; but to our guilt by and in Adam, from which we are cleared by Christ's death. And Christ being now raised, we, connected with Him at the cross, now share His life: so that our justification is called "justification of life" (vs. 18).

It is true that we are not spoken of as "in Christ" until Chapter Six, where death with Christ is unfolded and our history in the first Adam, and our relation to sin, ended. But Paul speaks of being "justified in Christ" (Gal. 2:17). And certainly the subject in the last section of