taken away from us; we cease to be unrighteous. Righteousness is not only imputed to us; it is also implanted within us. We are renewed unto righteousness. We are, after the manner of God, created in righteousness.

This inestimable benefit is always joined with the forgiveness of sins. When we confess any sin to God, He both forgives it and cleanses us from its unrighteousness.

III. The certainty that where sin is confessed, it will be forgiven and cleansed away.

This certainty is based on the faithfulness and righteousness of God. We have a sure ground for believing, an absolute and infallible assurance is afforded us,-in the very fact that God is faithful and righteous. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

We are not referred, in these words, to the fact that God is merciful and gracious, and taught to expect His blessing because He is so. It is indeed most true that His mercy and grace are rich and free, without stint and measure. They most assuredly furnish us with abundant matter of joyous faith and blessed hope. But the words in question direct our attention to a different aspect of the character of God. We are firmly persuaded that God will bless us, because He is faithful and righteous.

1. Because He is faithful. The faithfulness of God is often appealed to in Scripture, as a sure ground of faith and hope. When we believe in God, we judge Him faithful who hath promised. By the faithfulness of God, we mean His fidelity to His promise. What He has promised He will most certainly perform. He is true to His own word. He will accomplish and fulfil it. He will not suffer it to pass away. It must abide for ever, because it is His true and faithful word. Not one word that the Lord hath spoken can ever fail. His word of promise is to be relied upon; it is worthy of all acceptation. He will keep His covenant unto all generations. He will never violate the oath which He has sworn, because it is impossible for God to lie. His gifts and calling are without repentance: He will never reverse and undo the work of His own hands. Faithful is He who calleth us, who also will do it." God is always true to Himself; He cannot deny Himself. One is true to himself when he does that wihch he must do, according to the constitution of his whole being. And so it is with God," God is Light, and in Him is no

darkness at all;" He is only, altogether, and always, Light; He must therefore ever manifest Himself as such. In word and deed He must ever be true to Himself as Light. For the sake of His faithfulness, then, He must forgive and cleanse us when we confess our sins. He has promised to do this, and he cannot but fulfil the word of promise on which He causes His servants to hope. He has bound Himself to us by His covenant of mercy, and His covenant is inviolable. If we confess our sins, we are walking in the Light; and God, who is Light, cannot deny Himself, cannot prove unfaithful to that fellowship of Light which subsists between us and Himself,-cannot but manifest Himself as Light in us who have thus come near to Him, and that by destroying and taking away our sin.

2. But, again, our confidence rests not only upon the faithfulness of God, but also upon His righteousness. This is a somewhat more difficult point, and is deserving of our deepest study. All the thoughts and ways of God are righteous. They are utterly and for ever free from all partiality and caprice. The eternal law of righteousness is the very law of His being. "All His works are done in righteousness." "The righteous Lord loveth righteousness." "Righteousness and judgment are the pillars of His throne." "He will judge the world in righteousness." "There is no unrighteousness in Him." Righteous and upright is He." And this divine quality binds Him quite as much as His faithfulness, to forgive us and cleanse us when we confess our sins.

But how is such a remarkable. announcement to be understood? In answer to this question, we must remove from our minds all one-sided conceptions of the righteousness of God. We often hear it affirmed, as if it contained the whole truth in this matter, that God is righteous and must therefore punish sin. No inference could be more correct. It is certainly true, that because God is righteous He must punish unrighteousness. If He loves righteousness, He cannot but hate unrighteousness. If He is righteous, He must approve, maintain, and reward that which is right; He must condemn, overthrow, and punish that which is wrong. The righteous God cannot but judge and condemn all unrighteousness of men. He must destroy the unrighteous, because He is Himself righteous. But is this the only inference that can be drawn from the fact that God is righteous? Is there not another side to this matter, another aspect of this truth? Verily there is, and it only needs to be stated to become

at once clear and radiant in the light of its own self-evidence. True it is, that God, because He is righteous, must punish the unrighteous; but it is equally true that God, because He is righteous, must desire above all things, and must seek by all means, to turn the unrighteous from his unrighteousness,-to make the sinner righteous. The righteousness of God not only prompts Him to punish unrighteousness; it also prompts Him to cleanse and deliver from unrighteousness. And surely, if the righteousness of God is vindicated and magnified in the punishment of men for their unrighteousness, much more thoroughly is it vindicated, and much more illustriously is it magnified, in delivering men from their unrighteousness. Now, without doubt, this aspect of God's righteousness verifies itself; for righteousnes in God must crave for righteousness in man, and that, too, with a craving which the realisation of righteousness in man alone can satisfy. In one view, it repels the sinner, and would banish him to outer darkness, because of its repugnance to sin: in another view, it is pained by the continued existence of sin and unrighteousness, and must desire that the sinner should cease to be sinful, should cease to be unrighteous, should, in fact, cease to be a sinner, and should become righteons. Both these aspects of the Divine righteousness are true and valid. Both must therefore be respected and conserved in any attempt to grasp the full meaning of our text.

But it is just here that we are confronted by a question of no small importance, viz., if God's righteousness demands at once the punishment and the deliverance of the sinner, how can both of these demands be granted, or rather, must not one or other of them be refused? The answer is, that neither of them can be refused, that both must be complied with. Were it not so, the righteousness of God would be overthrown. Righteousness would cease to be righteousness, did it not obtain what it requires. But are not its requirements contradictory? Is it possible to satisfy both its demands? Must not one be sacrificed to the other? Have we not here a hopeless schism, a division of righteousness against itself? The solution of this problem depends on the following considerations:-

His resources are

may be sure that

(a.) All things are possible with God. infinite. His wisdom is unsearchable. We He is able to solve the problem, that He is able to meet and satisfy both demands of righteousness.

(b.) But further, God, in His manifold wisdom, has solved the

problem. The cross of Christ, the death of God's Son, supplies a full answer to every question. Righteousness has been satisfied, in all its requirements, by the sacrifice which was offered once for all on the accursed tree. All unrighteousness of men has been judged, condemned, and punished in the death of Christ; all unrighteousness of men has been abolished, cleansed, and purged away in the death of Christ. All men had been condemned, and were under sentence of death because of sin. But the death which Christ died freed them from this condemnation, and cancelled this sentence. When Christ poured out His soul unto death in obedience to the commandment of His Father, He submitted Himself to the judgment of God's wrath against human sin. The sentence of death under which we all lay was executed on Him. He endured the punishment of our trespasses. Our curse was borne by Him. God meted out to Him the measure which He metes out to sin. He caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. Thus we see how the first aspect of the Divine righteousness is fully conserved by the death of Christ. God vindicates and magnifies His righteousness by inflicting on His Son the punishment of our sin. Righteousness demands that sin shall be visited with death, and it is visited with death, and that the death of the cross. Moreover, it is rendered not less, but more apparent, when we consider that He who died on the cross for our sins was Himself sinless and righteous. For He was born into the world under our sentence of death; He took our nature under the conditions of the Fall; He became a partaker of our flesh and blood, and thereby identified Himself with our lot. God sent His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin, and accordingly, made Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us. Christ, too, vindicated and magnified the righteousness of God, by becoming obedient until death. In giving Himself up to be crucified and slain, He endorsed and ratified the judicial sentence which God had pronounced against the world's sin. He said "Amen" to the judgment of God. He confessed, "Thou art

righteous, O Lord, who hast judged thus. Thy sentence is rightteous, that men are worthy of death, and behold, I present myself to Thee, that their death may be inflicted on Me." Christ, therefore, justified the righteous judgment of God.

But it is also evident that the second aspect of the Divine righteousness is as fully conserved by the death of Christ as the first aspect. For we cannot but see why it was that God sent His Son into this world, and delivered Him up to death. It

was for us, in our interest, on our behalf, that He did this. It was that He might save us from our sins, redeem us from all iniquity, cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It was that sin might be destroyed; that we might be freed from sin, and become the servants of righteousness. And this is no other than the second aspect of the Divine righteousness, according to which God craves and yearns for the realisation of righteousness in us. Further, it must be noted that righteousness was, as a matter of fact, perfectly realised in man, when Jesus the Son of God was crucified. The death of Christ was not only an endurance of the penalty of transgression: it was also a fulfilling of all righteousness. It was the most perfect obedience ever rendered to the will and commandment of God. God beheld in His Son, who had become flesh, that perfect righteousness which, because He is righteous, He longs to see in us, and He was well pleased. We know that Jesus laid down His life in obedience to His Father. "Therefore doth My Father love Me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father." The death of Jesus was the culminating point in that course of obedience on which He had entered by emptying Himself of the form of God, and taking instead thereof the form of a servant.

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'He humbled Himself and became obedient until death, and that the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him." How perfect, how complete, how absolute His submission to the will of God! How unreservedly He renounced His own will, and surrendered Himself to that of God! The cup which His Father had given Him to drink was indeed bitter; He could not but shrink from the painful and accursed death which He was about to die. "O, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from Me," was the utterance of His fleshly weakness, in view of the terrible fate in store for Him. "Nevertheless, let not My will but Thine be done," was the expression of His stedfast, unfaltering resolution to submit Himself to whatever might be His Father's will. He had always pleased God; He had ever devoted Himself in self-sacrificing love to the service of His brethren; and now He was about to give the crowning proof of His obedience and self-sacrifice. He yielded Himself to suffer the most shameful and bitter of deaths, out of perfect love to God and self-sacrificing love to men. This was