'Hear,'
says our Lord, 'what the _unjust_ judge says: And shall not God
(the just judge), avenge his own elect, who cry day and night to
him, though he bear long with them?' Yes, my friends, God's promise
stands sure, now and for ever. 'Trust in the Lord, and do good; so
shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.'
But now comes in a doubt--and it ought to come in--What are our
works at best? What have we which is fit to offer to God? Full of
selfishness, vanity, self-conceit, the best of them; and not half
done either. What have we ever done right, but what we might have
done more rightly, and done more of it, also? Bad in quality our
good works are, and bad in quantity, too. How shall we have courage
to carry them in our hand to that God who charges his very angels
with folly; and the very heavens are not clean in his sight?
Too true, if we had to offer our own works to God. But, thanks be
to his holy name, we have not to offer them ourselves; for there is
one who offers them for us--Jesus Christ the Lord. He it is who
takes these imperfect, clumsy works of ours, all soiled and stained
with our sin and selfishness, and washes them clean in his most
precious blood, which was shed to take away the sin of the world:
he it is who, in some wonderful and unspeakable way, cleanses our
works from sin, by the merit of his death and sufferings, so that
nothing may be left in them but what is the fruit of God's own
spirit; and that God may see in them only the good which he himself
put into them, and not the stains and soils which they get from our
foolish and sinful hearts.
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