“This is the summit of all blessing” by Horatius Bonar
“The life of our surety was one of sorrow and unrest, for our penalty lay upon Him; but when this penalty was paid by His death, He ‘rested.’
The labour and the burden were gone; and as one who knew what entering into rest was (Heb. 4:10), He could say to us, ‘I will give you rest.’
He carried His life-long burden to the cross, and there laid it down, ‘resting from His labors.’
Or rather, it was there that the law severed the connection between Him and the burden; loosing it from His shoulders, that it might be buried in His grave.
From that same cross springs the sinner’s rest, the sinner’s disburdening, the sinner’s absolution and justification.
Not for a moment are we to lose sight of the blessings flowing from resurrection, or to overlook and undervalue the new position into which we are brought by it.
The ‘power of His resurrection’ (Phil. 3:10) must be fully recognized and acted on for its own results.
We are crucified with Christ. With Him we died, were buried, and rose again.
‘Risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead’ (Col. 2:10). ‘He hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus’ (Eph. 2:5, 6).
Such are the terms in which the apostle describes the benefits of Christ’s resurrection, and in which he reveals to us our oneness with Him who died and rose.
But nowhere does he separate our justification from the cross; nowhere does he speak of Christ meeting our legal responsibilities by His resurrection; nowhere does he ascribe to His resurrection that preciousness in whose excellency we stand complete.
Acceptance, and completeness in our standing before God, are attributed to the cross and blood and death of the Divine Substitute.
Poor as my faith in this Substitute may be, it places me at once in the position of one to whom ‘God imputeth righteousness without works.’
God is willing to receive me on the footing of His perfection; and if I am willing to be thus received, in the perfection of another with whom God is well pleased, the whole transaction is completed.
I AM JUSTIFIED BY HIS BLOOD. ‘As He is, so am I (even) in this world,’—even now, with all my imperfections and evils.
To be entitled to use another’s name, when my own name is worthless; to be allowed to wear another’s raiment, because my own is torn and filthy; to appear before God in another’s person,—the person of the Beloved Son,— this is the summit of all blessing.
The sin-bearer and I have exchanged names, robes, and persons! I am now represented by Him, my own personality having disappeared; He now appears in the presence of God for me (Heb. 9:24).
All that makes Him precious and dear to the Father has been transferred to me. His excellency and glory are seen as if they were mine; and I receive the love, and the fellowship, and the glory, as if I had earned them all.
So entirely one am I with the sin-bearer, that God treats me not merely as if I had not done the evil that I have done; but as if I had done all the good which I have not done, but which my substitute has done.
In one sense I am still the poor sinner, once under wrath; in another I am altogether righteous, and shall be so for ever, because of the Perfect One, in whose perfection I appear before God.
Nor is this a false pretense or a hollow fiction, which carries no results or blessings with it.
It is an exchange which has been provided by the Judge, and sanctioned by law; an exchange of which any sinner upon earth may avail himself and be blest.”
–Horatius Bonar, The Everlasting Righteousness; or, How Shall a Man be Just with God? (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1874/1993), 42-45.
