Audio Book- The Blood of Christ - (Robert Roberts)

The conditions of Forgiveness But then forgiveness hath its conditions. God does not offer forgiveness indiscriminately; He does not say He will forgive the sins of the world, whether they take notice of Him or not. Very far from this: He restricts forgiveness to those who fear Him and submit to the conditions He has provided. The question is, What are those conditions? There are various conditions, but we look not now at subsidi- ary conditions, but at the one that comes before all others, as brought forward by Paul in the declaration before us—the propitiatory setting forth of Christ as an object of faith in the shedding of his blood. It is forgiveness that is offered, but not without this—not apart from this. But now comes the question, Why is the death of Christ a sufficient foundation for the forgiveness of sin unto life eternal, when the death of animals was not so? We find answer in the statement that the death of Christ was “to declare the righteousness of God” as the ground of the exercise of His forbearance. That is to say, God maintains His own righteousness and His own supremacy while forgiving us: and exacts the recognition of them and submission to them, as the condition of the exercise of His forbearance in the remission of our sins. Now as we look at Christ, we find in his death the declaration of that righteousness. When we look at the killing of a lamb or of an animal of any kind, it is not a declaration of the righteousness of God that we see except in shadow, in type, in figure: the animal has done no wrong, and in the abstract, there would be wrong and not righteousness in punishing one for the sin of another. The death of Christ was “that God might be just” while acting the part of justifier or forgiver. The sacrifice of animals did not illustrate this, except typically and preliminarily. It did not exhibit the righteousness of God except in the prophetic sense; it was a type of the true exhibition of God’s righteousness that God would accomplish in the Lamb of His own providing. “God shall provide Himself a lamb, my son”, said Abraham to Isaac. He spoke by the Spirit of God, pointing forward; and when Jesus appeared, John said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”.