as His gift. On His side it is pure and gratuitous
giving, on our side simple and unmeritorious receiving. We contribute
nothing. No distinctions are admitted between those inside the law and
those outside it. The gift is quite apart from the law, though law and
prophets bore witness to it. No questions are admitted as to what we
have done or what we have left undone. Purely and simply out of the
freedom of His love, who is our Creator and our Father, now, when a
bitter experience has taught us again our true attitude towards Him, He
offers us {132} admission into His righteousness, all on the same
level, if we will simply believe in Jesus Christ His Son, that is, take
Him at His word and believe His promises (vers. 21-24).

And what is this offer? It is, first of all, what befits the captives
of sin: it is redemption. God, who of old bought His people out of
captivity in Egypt, without any co-operation of theirs, by a pure act
of His power, has now again, without any co-operation of ours, but by a
manifestation this time of self-sacrificing love, in the person of
Jesus Christ, bought our freedom from sin. And this redemption He
offers to us first of all in the form which befits sinners conscious of
sin and guilt, as the mere gift of forgiveness, the mere power to break
with the past, the mere right to stand and face the future with a clean
record. For as the brazen serpent was lifted up before the eyes of
rebellious Israel, bitten of the fiery serpents, and those who looked
unto it lived, so upon the open stage of history God set forth Jesus
Christ shedding His life-blood--obedient, that is, to God and
righteousness unto death, even the death of the cross. And this
sacrificial shedding of the life-blood of the Son of God--to which we
{133} contributed nothing[2]--is accepted by the Father as
propitiatory, that is, as something which enables Him to show His true
character of righteousness, and to acquit or accept among the
righteous, irrespective of what he has done or been, every one who has
faith in Jesus (vers. 24-26).

And why (we in our age are disposed to ask) did not God simply declare
His forgiveness? why this roundabout method of a propitiatory
sacrifice? It was (St. Paul's language suggests) to prove or vindicate
His righteousness, which means both holiness and mercy. All the long
ages past of the times of ignorance, God had been 'overlooking' or
'passing over' sins in His forbearance, never 'suf