THE KING’S BUSINESS
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the shed blood of Jesus Christ serves as a ground, and the only ground upon which God passes over and spares us. III. T h e R esults of th e A to n in g D eath. W e . have seen then the gracious and glorious purposes of the Atoning Death of Jesus Christ. What are the results of that death? They are even more glorious. I can speak of them this morning only in part. 1. The first result of the atoning death of Jesus Christ is that a propitiation is provided for the whole world. We read in 1 John 2 :2, “He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.” This plainly means that by the death of Jesus Christ a basis is pro vided upon which God can deal in mercy and does deal in mercy with the whole world. All of God’s dealings in mercy with any man are on the ground of Christ’s death. Only on the ground of Christ’s death could God deal in mercy with any man. God’s dealings in mercy with ,the rankest blasphemer or the most blatant atheist is on the ground of the atoning death of Jesus Christ. 2. In the second place through the aton ing death of Jesus Christ all men obtain resurrection from the dead. We read in Rom. 5:18, “So then as through one tres pass (i. e., the trespass of Adam) the judgment came unto all men to condemna tion; even so through one act of righteous ness (i. e., through Christ’s righteous act in dying on the cross in obedience to the will of God) the free gift came unto all men to justification of life.” And we are told in 1 Cor. 15:22, “As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." The Apostle Paul in the whole chapter is speaking about the resurrection of the body, not about eternal life, and he here distinctly teaches that as every child of Adam loses life (physical life—see Gen. 3 .T9) in the first Adam, so also in Jesus Christ, the sec ond Adam, he obtains resurrection from the dead, through the atoning death of Jesus Christ. Every man, the rankest infidel as well as the most devout believer, will some day be
raised from the dead because Christ died in his place. Whether the resurrection which he obtains through the death of Jesus Christ shall be a “resurrection of life” or a “resurrection of condemnation,” “shame and everlasting contempt” (John 5<28, 29; Dan. 12:2) depends entirely upon what attitude the individual takes toward the Christ in whom he gets the resurrec tion. 3. By the atoning death of Jesus Christ all believers in Jesus Christ have forgiveness of all their sins. We read in Eph. 1:7, “In whom (i.e., in Jesus Christ) we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, accord ing to the riches of His grace.” Because Jesus Christ died as a full satisfaction for our sins, forgiveness of sin is not some thing which believers are to do something to secure, it is something which the blood of Jesus Christ has already secured and which our faith has already appropriated to ourselves; “we have forgiveness,” we are forgiven. Every believer in Jesus Christ is forgiven every sin he ever committed or ever shall commit, because Jesus Christ shed His blood in his place. Through Christ’s atoning death all believers in Him, although they once “were enemies” are now “reconciled to God by the death of His Son.” As we read in Rom. 5 :10, “While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son." That is to say, the enmity between God and the sinner is done away, or, as Paul puts it in Col. 1 :20, Christ has “made peace through the blood of His cross,” oi|, as he puts it in the next verse, but one, Col. 1:22, Christ “hath reconciled f” believers “in the body of His flesh through death.” The story is told of a faithful vicar in England who was told that one of his parishioners was dying. She was a good woman, but he hurried to her side to talk with her. As he sat down by the side of the dying woman he said to her very gently but sol emnly, “They tell me you have not long to live.” “No,” she replied, “I know I have not.” “They tell me you will probably not live through the night.” “No," she replied,
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