"And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life."(1 John 5:11-12) *****
THE PRECIOUSNESS OF IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS The older I get the more precious Christ’s imputed righteousness is to me. Here is a truth about which we cannot say too much.
1. THE ETERNALITY OF IMPUTATION. God eternally justified and declared His people to be righteous in the Son of God. He has always been, "THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS" (Jeremiah 23:6). How could God justify and pronounce His people to be righteous even before the Savior died? Our sins were charged to Him before the world was made, and God looked to our Surety for satisfaction to His justice. From old eternity we have been "accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:6).
2. THE LEGALITY OF IMPUTATION. The Savior’s death was a justice-satisfying transaction between the Father and the Son. The sins of His people having been charged to our Substitute, Christ died and rendered full payment for the wages of our sins. Don’t underestimate the importance of the legality of salvation. The greatest issue of all time is, "How can God be just and justify the ungodly?" Here is the gospel answer - only through the substitutionary, sacrificial, justice-satisfying death of our Lord Jesus Christ.
3. THE REALITY OF IMPUTATION. The sins of God’s elect were charged to the spotless Savior, and His righteousness has been credited to His people. We are actually "made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Like the infant described by Ezekiel, we are made perfect through the comeliness of Christ (Ezekiel 16:14). –Pastor Jim Byrd *****
CHRIST IS OUR LIFE "And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son" (1 John 5:11). How often we are looking and looking in vain for life in ourselves. True it is that if God has quickened our souls we are partakers of life divine, of life spiritual, of life eternal, of the life that is in Christ and comes from Christ; and yet how often we vainly seek to find it warm and glowing in our breasts. If once given it never dies; but it is often hidden beneath the ashes, and thus though it slowly burns and dimly glows, yet the ashes hide it from view, and we only know it is there by some remains of warmth. "Your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3) and therefore not only hidden as treasured and stored up safely in God, but hidden from the world, and even hidden from the eyes of its possessor. Christ is our life. There is no other. To look, then, for life in ourselves independent of and distinct from the fountain of life is to look for that in the creature which is lodged in the divine Creator, is to look for that in man which dwells in the God-man; to look for that in self which is out of self, embosomed in the fulness of the Son of God. And it is not merely that life is in Him, but He is the life itself. As the sun not only has light and heat, but is light itself and heat itself, so the blessed Lord not only grants life, but He Himself is what He grants. As a fountain not only gives water, but is itself all water, so Christ not only gives what He is, but is all that He gives. Not only, therefore, is He "the resurrection," centering in Himself everything, both for time and eternity, which resurrection contains and resurrection implies, but He is "the life," being in Himself a fountain of life, out of which He gives from His own fulness to the members of His mystical body. –J. C. Philpot *****
THE PURPOSE OF GOD The purpose of God is the sovereign cause of all that good that is in man, and of all that external, internal and eternal good that comes to man. Not works past, for men are chosen from everlasting; not works present, for Jacob was loved and chosen before he was born; nor works foreseen, for men were all corrupt in Adam. All a believer’s present happiness and all his future happiness springs from the eternal purpose of God. –Thomas Brooks
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