Page:Darby - Christianity Not Christendom.djvu/13

. I say this much to avoid mistakes, but it is not my subject; man had duties as man, but he has failed in them; he is a sinner, and is lost, according to Christianity. The full exposition given in the Romans on this great point is, that Gentiles were lawless, the Jews law-breakers; that there was none righteous, no, not one; that every mouth was stopped and all the world guilty before God; all had sinned and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that was in Christ Jesus. And Christianity teaches us that the blessed Son of God finished the work which His Father gave Him to do; and we read that by Him all that believe are justified from all things from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses; that when He had by Himself purged our sins He sat down at the right hand of God; that if this whole work of making peace and perfecting the believers for ever were not accomplished by His one offering, He must have suffered often.

We have seen that it is by faith that we are justified, redemption is through His blood, and hence the believer's being justified through faith, reconciled to God, having peace with God, is one great pillar of Christianity, Christianity itself as a foundation including the blessed revelation of the Father in the Son: for it is not as slighting His blessed person that I speak of His work, but when grace has drawn the heart to own His person, the gospel is the answer to the need the revelation of His person has created. So the poor woman in the city that was a sinner drawn in deep humiliation to His person receives the answer, “thy sins are forgiven thee, thy faith bath saved thee, go in peace;” the thief who owned Him Lord and the Man who had done nothing amiss, and