Justice Satisfied

Spurgeon takes up the convicted sinner's deepest fear — that God's own justice stands as an impassable barrier to forgiveness — and demolishes it by showing how the cross of Christ has not merely set justice aside but has fully satisfied it, so that God can be simultaneously just and the justifier of the believer: the dignity of the divine Son who suffered, the Father's willingness to smite his own Son in our place, and the infinite depth of Christ's agony in Gethsemane and at Calvary together constitute a payment so complete that justice itself now stands with the penitent sinner and pleads for his pardon. He then draws out the second text — that God is "faithful and just to forgive us our sins" — to show that justice has actually become the sinner's advocate, because God is bound by his own promises, by the faith those promises aroused in the sinner who acted on them, and by his obligation to give his Son what Christ purchased with his blood, so that it would be an injustice for God not to forgive a sinner who confesses and believes. He closes with two practical applications: confession must be personal, sincere, particular, and accompanied by making right any wrongs done to others; and faith must be a simple, complete casting of oneself on Christ alone — and he assures every such sinner that there is neither possibility nor probability of being lost, for God cannot demand payment twice for a debt already paid in full.Sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on May 29th, 1859.