Active Obedience

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The Following excerpt is from the sermon "Justification and Glory," preached on Sunday morning, April 30, 1865, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.

e find the apostle Paul putting Christ's obedience in contrast to the disobedience of Adam: "As by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many he made righteous." Now this is not Christ's death merely, but Christ's active obedience, which is here meant, and it is by this that we are made righteous. Beloved, you need not sing with stammering tongues that blessed verse of our hymn,

"Jesus, thy perfect righteousness,
My beauty is, my glorious dress."

For despite all the outcry of modern times against that doctrine, it is written in heaven and is a sure and precious truth to he received by all the faithful, that we are justified by faith through the righteousness of Christ Jesus imputed to us. See what Christ has done in his living and in his dying, his acts becoming our acts and his righteousness being imputed to us, so that we are rewarded as if we were righteous, while he was punished as though he had been guilty.

This justification then comes to sinners as an act of pure grace, the foundation of it being Christ's righteousness. The practical way of its application is by faith. The sinner believeth God, and believeth that Christ is sent of God, and takes Christ Jesus to he his only confidence and trust, and in that act he becomes a justified soul.

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